HIST 389: Topics in US. History.
HIST 389-002: Slavery & Founding of the US
(Spring 2027)
12:00 PM to 01:15 PM MW
Horizon Hall 1008
Section Information for Spring 2027
In 1775, as North American colonial resistance to British imperial policy burst into open rebellion, the English writer Samuel Johnson posed an uncomfortable question for the American rebels: “How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?” The question still resonates today. How could the architects of a nation built on the assertion of a universal, natural right to liberty maintain a brutal system of bondage that ultimately denied that liberty to millions of men and women?
In this course we will explore this deceptively simple question by studying the political, social, economic, and cultural history of slavery and race from the American Revolution into the 1850s and the era of the Civil War. By examining individual lives, communities and migrations, political debates, economic production, and large structural transformations, we will seek to understand the complex ways in which the history of slavery was intertwined with the creation and growth of the new United States.
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Course Information from the University Catalog
Credits: 3
This course is graded on the Undergraduate Regular scale.
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