• Syllabus
• Presentation Schedule
• Goals of Course Discussion and Debate

  Main-Points of the Documents:

1. John Cotton, The Divine Right to Occupy the Land (1630)

2. John Winthrop, A Model of Christian Charity (1630)

3. The Trial of Anne Hutchinson (1637)

4. John Winthrop, Little Speech on Liberty (1645)

5. Samuel Adams, The Rights of the Colonists (1772)

6. Samuel Johnson, Taxation No Tyranny (1772)

7. Thomas Pain, Common Sense (1776)

8. Edmund Burke, Conciliation with America (1775)

9. Adam Smith, America and the Wealth of Nations (1776)

10. Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of Independence (1776)

11. James Madison, Federalist #10 (1787-1788)

12. Thomas Jefferson, Jefferson on Slavery (1784)

13. Michael St. John de Crevecoeur, Letters from an American Farmer (1782)

14. Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, Jefferson and Adams on Aristocracy (1813)

15. Daniel Webster, Against Universal Manhood Suffrage (1820)

16. George Bancroft, The Office of the People (1835)

17. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (1835)

18. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance (1844)

19. Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Young American (1844)

20. John O’Sullivan, Manifest Destiny (1845)

21. Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience (1849)

22. Ramon Alvarez et. al., The Mexican View of the War (1850)

23. George Bancroft, The Progress of Mankind (1854)

24. Frederick Douglass, What To The Slave Is The Fourth Of July? (1852)

25. Frederick Douglass, My Bondage and My Freedom (1855)

26. Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861)

27. Alexander Stephens, Slavery and the Confederacy (1861)

28. B.M. Palmer and M.J. Raphall and Henry Ward Beecher, Fast Day Sermons (1861)

29. Lincoln, The Gettysburg Address (1863)

30. Frederick Jackson Turner, The Significance of the Frontier in American History (1893)

31. Theodore Roosevelt, The Strenuous Life (1900)

32. William Graham Sumner, What the Social Classes Owe to Each Other (1883)

33. Thorstein Veblen, Theory of the Leisure Class (1899)

34. Seneca Falls Convention, Declaration of Sentiments (1848)

35. Horatio Storer, The Origins of the Insanity in Women (1865)

36. U.S. Supreme Court, Bradwell v. The State of Illinois (1873)

37. Margaret Sanger, Woman and the New Race (1920)

38. IDA B. Wells, A Red Record (1895)

39. Brooker T. Washington, Atlantic Exposition Address (1895)

40. W.E.B. Du Bois, Strivings of the Negro People (1887)

41. W.E.B. Du Bois, The Niagara Movement (1905)

42. U.S. Supreme Court, Lochner v. New York (1905)

43. Walter Lippmann, Drift and Mastery (1914)

44. U.S. Supreme Court, Abrams v. United States (1919)

45. Herbert Hoover, Relief Efforts (1931)

46. Socialist Party, Socialist Party Platform, (1932)

47. Franklin D. Roosevelt, Inaugural Address (1933)

48. Franklin D. Roosevelt, Four Freedoms (1941)

49. Harry S. Truman, The Truman Doctrine (1947)

50. J. Edgar Hoover, The Communist Menace (1947)

51. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Farewell Address (1961)

52. U.S. Supreme Court, Brown v. Board of Education (1954)

53. Sam J. Ervin and Others, The Southern Manifesto (1956)

54. Martin Luther King, Letter from Birmingham Jail (April 16, 1963)

55. Patrick Moynihan, The Negro Family (1965)

56. Jimmy Carter, Energy and National Goals (1979)

57. Ronald Reagan, Support for the Contras (1984)

58. Andrew Sullivan, This Is a Religious War: September 11 was Only the Beginning (October 7, 2001)

59. George W. Bush, President Says Saddam Hussein Must Leave Iraq Within 48 Hours: Remarks by the President in Address to the Nation (March 17, 2003).

60. Barack Obama, Speech on Race (March 18, 2008)

  Links to websites and other material:

1. John Cotton, The Divine Right to Occupy the Land
2. Adam Smith: (Part II, Economic Policy)
3. Adam Smith: The Principle of the Mercantile System
4. Crevecoeur: Letters from an American Farmer
5. Jefferson on Slavery (1784)
6. PBS: Jefferson's Blood
7. Sally Hemings' Biography
8. Jefferson's letter to Adams on natural and artificial aristocracy
9. Adam's letter to Jefferson on equality and aristocracy
10. Jefferson's letter or Adams on equality and aristocracy
11. Some excerpts of Jefferson's letters to Adams
12. Adams Re-Considered in Harper’s Magazine
13. Alexis de Tocqueville
14. George Bancroft, The Office of the People
15. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance
16. Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Young American
17. Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience
18. Alexander Stephens, Slavery and the Confederacy
19. Bradwell v. The State of Illinois (1873)
20. William Graham Sumner, What Social Classes Owe to Each Other (1883)
21. Thorstein Veblen, Theory of the Leisure Class
22. Frederick Jackson Turner, The Significance of the Frontier in American History (1893)
23. W.E.B. Du Bois, Strivings of the Negro People (1897)
24. W.E.B.Du Bois (PowerPoint)
25. Theodore Roosevelt, The Strenuous Life (1900)
26. Roosevelt and U.S. Imperialism
27. Lochner v. New York (1905)
28. William James, The Moral Equivalent of War (1910)
29. The Robert Frost Web Page
30. Abrams v. United States (1919)
31. Abrams v. United States 2
32. John F. Carter, Jr., Wild Young People (1920)
33. Martin Luther King, Letter from Birmingham Jail
34. Martin Luther King, I Have a Dream
35. U.S. Supreme Court, Brandenburg v. Ohio