Professor Brunsman’s lectures will incorporate the following primary and secondary sources:
Lecture 1: The Cultural Spectrum of Colonial America
- Columbus Reports on His First Voyage, 1493
- Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, account of traveling through North America, 1542
- Great Peace of Montreal (1701) between New France and Thirty-Nine American Indian Nations
- Jane’s Story, Historic Jamestown
- Letter from Richard Frethorne to his parents, March 20, 1623
- Olaudah Equiano on the Middle Passage, 1789
- The Middle Passage, 1749
- Slate, The Atlantic Slave Trade in Two Minutes
Lecture 2: Declaring Independence
- Thomas Jefferson’s “Original Rough Draught” of the Declaration of Independence (1776)
- Benjamin Franklin to William Strahan, July 5, 1775
- George Washington, Address to Congress, June 16, 1775 (Washington Accepts Command of the Continental Army)
- Oneida Indians Declare Neutrality, June 19, 1775
- Lord Dunmore’s Proclamation, November 14,1775
- Thomas Hutchinson, Strictures upon the Declaration of the Congress at Philadelphia, in a Letter to a Noble Lord, &c. (London, 1776) (loyalist response to American Independence)
- John Adams and Abigail Adams on the Rights of Women
- Declarations of Sentiments and Resolutions, Women’s Rights Convention, Seneca Falls, New York, July 18–20, 1848
- Declaration of Independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (1945)
Lecture 3: Compromises in Adopting the Constitution
- George Washington to James Madison, November 5, 1786
- Virginia Plan, Constitutional Convention
- New Jersey Plan, Constitutional Convention
- Hamilton Plan, Constitutional Convention
- George Washington to Alexander Hamilton, July 10, 1787
- George Mason’s Objections to the Constitution, September 1787
- James Madison, Notes from the Constitutional Convention, September 17, 1787
Lecture 4: The Jeffersonian Revolution
- Thomas Jefferson to George Washington, May 23, 1792
- Thomas Jefferson to Philip Mazzei, April 24, 1796
- Testimony in the Trial of Gabriel Prosser, October 6, 1800
- Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1801
- Thomas Jefferson to John C. Breckenridge, August 12, 1803
Lecture 5: Andrew Jackson and a New American Politics
- Andrew Jackson, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1829
- Andrew Jackson’s Message to Congress on Indian Removal, 1830
- Memorial of the Ladies of Steubenville, Ohio, against Indian Removal, 1830
- Andrew Jackson to the Cherokee Tribe, 1835
- John Ross, Memorial and Protest of the Cherokee Nation, 1836
- Lowell Mill Girls and the Factory System, 1840
- George Caleb Bingham, The County Election (1854)
- Common Man and Contradictions: A Mock Trial of Andrew Jackson
Lecture 6: The West, Slavery, and Causes of the Civil War
- The Alamo: Virtual Tour
- North Carolina Law Prohibiting Slaves to Read or Write, 1831
- Frederick Douglass, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?,” 1852
- The Dred Scott Decision and Its Bitter Legacy
- First Lincoln–Douglas Debate, August 21, 1858
- Letter to the New York Times on the reasons for secession, January 10, 1861
- Fort Sumter Video: “Much More Than Brick and Mortar”