Detailed Contents.
Recovering the Past.
Maps.
Preface.
Supplements.
About the Authors.
I. A Colonizing People, Prehistory-1776.
1. Ancient America and Africa.
The Peoples of America Before Columbus.
Africa on the Eve of Contact.
Europe on the Eve of Invading the Americas.
Conclusion: The Approach of a New Global Age.
2. Europeans and Africans Reach the Americas.
Breaching the Atlantic.
The Spanish Conquest of America.
England Looks West.
Recovering the Past: Illustrated Travel Accounts.
African Bondage.
Conclusion: Converging Worlds.
3. Colonizing a Continent in the Seventeenth Century.
The Chesapeake Tobacco Coast.
Recovering the Past: Houses.
Massachusetts and Its Offspring.
From the St. Lawrence to the Hudson.
Proprietary Carolina: A Restoration Reward.
The Quakers' Peaceable Kingdom.
New Spain's Northern Frontier.
An Era of Instability.
Conclusion: The Achievement of New Societies.
4. The Maturing of Colonial Society.
The North: A Land of Family Farms.
The Plantation South.
Contending for a Continent.
The Urban World of Commerce and Ideas.
The Great Awakening.
Political Life.
Conclusion: America in 1750.
5. The Strains of Empire.
The Climactic Seven Years' War.
The Crisis with England.
Recovering the Past: Poetry.
The Ideology of Revolutionary Republicanism.
The Turmoil of a Rebellious People.
Conclusion: On the Brink of Revolution.
II. A Revolutionary People, 1775-1828. 6. A People in Revolution.
Bursting the Colonial Bonds.
The War for American Independence.
The Experience of War.
Recovering the Past: Military Muster Rolls.
The Ferment of Revolutionary Politics.
Conclusion: The Crucible of Revolution.
7. Consolidating the Revolution.
Struggling with the Peacetime Agenda.
Sources of Political Conflict.
Political Tumult in the States.
Toward a New National Government.
Recovering the Past: Patriotic Paintings.
Conclusion: Completing the Revolution.
8. Creating a Nation.
Launching the National Republic.
The Republic in a Threatening World.
The Political Crisis Deepens.
Restoring American Liberty.
Building an Agrarian Nation.
A Foreign Policy for the New Nation.
Conclusion: A Period of Trial and Transition.
9. Society and Politics in the Early Republic.
A Nation of Regions.
Indian-White Relations in the Early Republic.
Perfecting a Democratic Society.
The End of Neo-Colonialism.
Knitting the Nation Together.
Politics in Transition.
Conclusion: The Passing of an Era.
III. An Expanding People, 1820-1877.
10. Currents of Change in the Northeast and the Old Northwest.
Economic Growth.
Early Manufacturing.
A New England Textile Town.
Factories on the Frontier.
Urban Life.
Rural Communities.
Conclusion: The Character of Progress.
11. Slavery and the Old South.
Building a Diverse Cotton Kingdom.
Morning: Master and Mistress in the Big House.
Noon: Slaves in House and Fields.
Night: Slaves in Their Quarters.
Recovering the Past: Folktales.
Resistance and Freedom.
Conclusion: Douglass's Dream of Freedom.
12. Shaping America in the Antebellum Age.
Religious Revival and Reform Philosophy.
The Political Response to Change.
Perfectionist Reform and Utopianism.
Reforming Society.
Recovering the Past: Family Portraits.
Abolitionism and Women's Rights.
Conclusion: Perfecting America.
13. Moving West.
Probing the Trans-Mississippi West.
Winning the Trans-Mississippi West.
Going West and East.
Recovering the Past: Personal Diaries.
Living in the West.
Cultures in Conflict.
Conclusion: Fruits of Manifest Destiny.
14. The Union in Peril.
Slavery in the Territories.
Recovering the Past: Senate Speeches.
Political Disintegration.
Kansas and the Two Cultures.
Polarization and the Road to War.
The Divided House Falls.
Conclusion: The "Irrepressible Conflict."
15. The Union Severed.
Organizing for War.
Clashing on the Battlefield, 1861-1862.
The Tide Turns, 1863-1865.
Changes Wrought by War.
Recovering the Past: Photography.
Conclusion: An Uncertain Future.
16. The Union Reconstructed.
The Bittersweet Aftermath of War.
National Reconstruction Politics.
Recovering the Past: Novels.
The Lives of Freedpeople.
Reconstruction in the States.
Conclusion: A Mixed Legacy.
