ABOUT THE AUTHORS AND EDITORSTHE AMERICAN SOCIAL HISTORY PROJECT/CENTER FOR MEDIA AND LEARNING aims to revitalize interest in history by challenging the traditional ways that people learn about the past. Founded in 1981 by the late Herbert Gutman and Stephen Brier and based at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York, ASHP/CML produces award-winning print, visual, and multimedia materials about the working men and women whose actions and beliefs shaped American history. Also with Bedford/St. Martin's, they have published History Matters: A Student Guide to U.S. History Online, based on their popular Web resource of the same name.
CHRISTOPHER CLARK, professor of history at the University of Connecticut, received the Frederick Jackson Turner Award from the Organization of American Historians for The Roots of Rural Capitalism: Western Massachusetts, 1780-1860 (1990). His other publications include The Communitarian Moment: The Radical Challenge of the Northampton Association (1995) and Social Change in America: From the Revolution through the Civil War (2006), together with articles on rural history and the social roots of American economic development. He has also been the co-recipient of the Cadbury Schweppes Prize for innovative teaching in the humanities.
NANCY A. HEWITT is Professor II of history and women's and gender studies at Rutgers University. She has received many awards and prizes, including the Jerome T. Krivanek Distinguished Teaching Award and the Julia Cherry Spruill Book Prize as well as fellowships from the NEH, the Mellon Foundation, and the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Her publications include Women's Activism and Social Change: Rochester, New York, 1822-1872 (1984); Visible Women: New Essays on American Activism, co-edited with Suzanne Lebsock (1993); and Southern Discomfort: Women's Activism in Tampa, Florida, 1880s-1920s (2001). She has published numerous articles on women's history and women's activism.
ROY ROSENZWEIG is Mark and Barbara Fried Professor of History & New Media at George Mason University, where he also heads the Center on History and New Media (http://chnm.gmu.edu). He is the author, co-author, and co-editor of numerous books including The Park and the People: A History of Central Park; The Presence of the Past: Popular Uses of History in American Life; Eight Hours for What We Will: Workers and Leisure in an Industrial City, 1870-1920; History Museums in the United States: A Critical Assessment; Presenting the Past: Essays on History and the Public, and Digital History: A Guide to Gathering, Presenting, and Preserving the Past on the Web. He was co-creator of the CD-ROM, Who Built America?, which won James Harvey Robinson Prize of American Historical Association.
NELSON LICHTENSTEIN is professor of history at the University of California, Santa Barbara where he directs the Center for the Study of Work, Labor and Democracy. He is the author of Labor's War at Home: the CIO in World War II (1982, 2003); Walter Reuther: the Most Dangerous Man in Detroit (1997); and State of the Union: A Century of American Labor (2002), which won the Philip Taft Prize in Labor History. He has held fellowships from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundations. His edited books include Industrial Democracy in America: the Ambiguous Promise (1993); Wal-Mart: The Face of Twenty-First-Century Capitalism (2006); American Capitalism: Social Thought and Political Economy in the Twentieth Century (2006); and Major Problems in the History of American Workers (2003).
JOSHUA BROWN, Visual Editor, is the executive director of the American Social History Project/Center for Media and Learning and professor of history at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He was visual editor of the first edition of Who Built America? and also co-authored the accompanying CD-ROMs and video documentary series. He has served as executive producer on many digital and Web projects, including Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity: Exploring the French Revolution; The Lost Museum: Exploring Antebellum Life and Culture; and The September 11 Digital Archive. Brown is author of Beyond the Lines: The Pictorial Press, Everyday Life, and the Crisis of Gilded Age America (2002); co-author (with Eric Foner) of Forever Free: The Story of Emancipation and Reconstruction (2005); and co-editor of History from South Africa: Alternative Visions and Practices (1991), as well as numerous essays and reviews on the history of U.S. visual culture.
DAVID JAFFEE, Visual Editor, teaches Early American history and interactive pedagogy and technology at the City College of New York and The Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY). He is the author of People of the Wachusett: Great New England in History and Memory, 1630-1860 (1999) and is completing a book titled Craftsmen and Consumers in Early America, 1760-1860. He has also written many essays on artists and artisans in Early America as well as on the use of new media in the history classroom. He is the project director of two NEH grants at CUNY to develop multimedia resources for the teaching of U.S. history. He has been the recipient of various fellowships including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Winterthur Museum, and the Huntington Library.
Note: Each chapter ends with a timeline, "The Years in Review," and a bibliography, "Additional Readings."VOLUME I
Preface
PART I COLONIZATION AND REVOLUTION, 1492-1815
1. A Meeting of Three Worlds: Europe, Africa, and American Colonization, 1492-1680
Peoples of the New World
The Background to Overseas Expansion: Europe and Africa
The Invasion of the Americas Begins: Portugal, Spain, and the Need for Labor
Early Colonization Efforts in North America
The English Colonial Experience
Native Americans: Decline, Resistance, Exchange
Conclusion: The Remaking of Three Worlds
2. Servitude, Slavery, and the Growth of the Southern Colonies, 1620-1760
The Development of the Southern Colonies
The Making of Southern Slave Societies
African-American Culture in the South
Prosperity, Inequality, and Shifting Ideas in Slave Societies
Conclusion: The Southern Colonies at Mid-Eighteenth Century
3. Family Labor and the Growth of the Northern Colonies, 1640-1760
Early New England
America and England in the Late Seventeenth Century
Rural Societies in the Eighteenth Century
Urban America
Hierarchy and Equality in Northern Societies
Conclusion: Prosperity and Inequality at Mid-Century
4. Toward Revolution, 1750-1776
The Colonial Roots of Rebellion
The First British Empire: Triumph and Crisis
Imperial Conflict Grows
Resistance Becomes Revolution
Conclusion: What Sort of American Society?
5. Revolution, Constitution, and the People, 1776-1815
The Course of the War
Building a Republic
Creating a National Government
American Society: Competing Visions
Post-Revolutionary America in the World
Conclusion: Legacies of Revolution
PART II FREE LABOR AND SLAVERY, 1790-1850
6. The Consolidation of Slavery in the South, 1790-1836
Cotton and the Expansion of Slavery
Southern Slave Experiences
Southern White Experiences
Religion, Resistance, and Rebellion
The Planter Class Consolidates Power
Conclusion: The Challenges of a Slave Society
7. Northern Society and the Growth of Wage Labor, 1790-1837
The Early Nineteenth-Century North
A Transformation Begins
Wage Labor and Resistance
Democracy and Class in Jacksonian Society
Conclusion: A Divided Republic
8. Immigration, Urban Life, and Social Reform in the Free Labor North, 1838-1860
The Transformation of the American Labor Force
Urban Mayhem and Middle Class Reform
Radical Reform
Conclusion: The Free Labor North Faces an Uncertain Future
9. The Spread of Slavery and the Crisis of Southern Society, 1836-1848
The Master's Precarious Domain
New Frontiers and New Challenges for Southern Slavery
Extending an Empire of Slavery
Conclusion: Western Expansion and the Path to War
PART III WAR, RECONSTRUCTION AND LABOR, 1848-1877
10. The Deepening Rift over Slavery, 1848-1860
The Transformation of the West
Uneasy Compromises over Slavery
The Labor Question in a Time of Rising Tension
Toward a Showdown
Conclusion The Deepening Rift Becomes a Chasm
11. The Civil War: America's Second Revolution, 1861-1865
The Nation Disintegrates
The War for the Union and Against Slavery
The Cold Realities of War
War Transforms the North
War Transforms the South
Military Victory Assured
Conclusion: Revolutionary Consequences and Daunting Questions
12. Reconstructing the Nation, 1865-1877
The Beginnings of Reconstruction
African Americans Build New Lives After Emancipation
The Drama of Reconstruction Unfolds
The End of Reconstruction
Conclusion: Still Searching for Freedom
13. New Frontiers: Westward Expansion and Industrial Growth, 1865-1877
Change and Violence on the Frontier
Industrialization and the Working Class
An American Labor Movement Emerges
Conclusion: The Lessons of 1877