J. Kelly Robison

Outline of American History

  1. Beginnings
    1. America Before Columbus - Native civilizations in the Americas
    2. European Background - Europe shakes off its medieval past
    3. European Exploration - Europe looks across the ocean
  2. Colonization
    1. Spanish Colonization
    2. English Colonization - England challenges Spain's hegemony
    3. The Chesapeake - England settles the New World
    4. New England - Pilgrims, Puritans and the "City on a Hill"
    5. Colonization Complete - the English Civil War and the last colonies
  3. Colonial American Society
    1. The Development of Slavery - labor in the Chesapeake and the unthinking decision
    2. The Great Awakening - religious revival in the Americas and the first national experience
    3. The Enlightenment - the philosophical background to political unrest
    4. Colonial Maturation - the British colonies at 1750
  4. The Revolutionary Era
    1. Road to Revolution - the new British colonial program and the American response
    2. The War of Independence - The military campaigns between the colonists and the British. The social impact of the revolution and its ideals.
    3. Revolutionary Government - thirteen republics and the Articles of Confederation
    4. The Constitution
  5. The Early Republic
    1. The Federalist Period - the administrations of Washington and Adams and the first party system
    2. The Jeffersonian Republic - Jefferson and the Republican ascendency
    3. War of 1812 - the war the U.S. almost lost
    4. The Era of Good Feelings - Nationalism and one-party rule
    5. The Age of Jackson - Jackson as president
  6. Before the Civil War
    1. The Market Revolution - the revolution in transportation and technology, the development of a national market economy and its social effects
    2. The Romantic Impulse - the Second Great Awakening and the flowering of American Art
    3. Era of Reform - reform movements of the ante-bellum period
    4. The Anti-Bellum South - Southern economics, society and slavery
    5. Manifest Destiny - American westward expansion
    6. the Mexican-American War
    7. The Crisis of Union - slavery in the territories; the Wilmot Provison, Compromise of 1850, the Kansas-Nebraska Crisis, rise of the Republican Party, Dred Scott, Lecompton Controversy, Lincoln's election
    8. The Civil War
    9. Reconstruction - the failed attempt to rebuild the nation
  7. The Gilded Age
    1. The New South - the South adapts to a new way of life.
    2. The Old West - "Bonanza" it was not.
    3. The New Economy and the New Society
      1. Industrialization - technology, finance, and the "captains of industry."
      2. The Rise of Labor - the working men push for reform.
      3. Immigration - the new face of America
      4. Urbanization - from country to city and life in the new urban America
    4. American Politics in the Gilded Age
      1. Populism - the farmers organize and enter national politics.
      2. Progressivism - the middle class effort to curb the excesses of industrialization using the power of government on the local and national levels.
      3. US Imperialism - overseas expansion and the headaches of colonies.
      4. World War I - entrance into the war and propaganda on the home front.
  8. America Between the World Wars
    1. Politics and Economics in the 20s - Laissez-Faire Economics and economic growth(?)
    2. the Roaring Twenties - an age of frivolity and the country polarizes into urban and rural.
    3. the Great Depression - the crash and its effects.
    4. the New Deal - Roosevelt's answer to the Depression and the rise of big government
  9. Modern America
    1. From World War II through the Fall of the Wall
      1. American Isolationism and Entry Into World War II - another European war that no one wants, but is entered anyway
      2. World War II - fighting for democracy, laying the seeds of the next war.
      3. World War II - The Home Front - changes in American society back home.
      4. Origins of the Cold War - the US and USSR have differing opinions.
      5. The Cold War Heats Up - containment in practice - Korea.
      6. Vietnam - America's longest war and the conflict at home
      7. The End of the Cold War - the end of the Superpower rivalry and the United States finds new enemies
    2. American Politics and Society from World War II to the Present
      1. American Society in the 50s - The presidents of the political center. "Ozzie and Harriet" and the way we never were.
      2. The New Liberalism - Camelot, the Cold War reheats and Johnson expands on the New Deal.
      3. The Civil Rights Movement - African-Americans strive for equality
      4. Society in the Sixties - the reform movements-the children of Civil Rights
      5. Nixon and Watergate - the disgrace of the presidency
      6. Ford and Carter - the ineffectual presidents
      7. the Reagan Revolution and the Politics of Nostalgia
      8. The Clinton Whitehouse