The History of the United States, 2nd Edition
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Episodes
- S1 E1 - Living Bravely
October 5, 200332minColumbus's discovery of a New World allowed Europeans to, first, exploit natural and human resources, and later, to write new social, economic, and political scripts for their lives in a place where European ideas of society no longer applied. #HistoryFree trial of The Great Courses Signature Collection or buy - S1 E2 - Spain, France, and the Netherlands
October 5, 200332minThe Spanish tapped sources of wealth in the Americas, displaying the most wanton cruelty in obtaining it. By 1600, they had evolved from an extraction society to a settler society. The French attempted extraction incursions and to settle in North America but did not succeed as the Spanish had in the South.Free trial of The Great Courses Signature Collection or buy - S1 E3 - Gentlemen in the Wilderness
October 5, 200331minThe English joined the great game of extraction and settlement last of all the major European nations. By 1680, settlements around the Chesapeake Bay achieved success with tobacco and the forced recruitment of a workforce of African slaves. Virginia worked its way through what became a typical English pattern: from company colony, to unstable free-for-all, to stable aristocracy.Free trial of The Great Courses Signature Collection or buy - S1 E4 - Radicals in the Wilderness
October 5, 200332minIf the southern English colonies were motivated by economic self-interest, the northern settlements were motivated by ideas. In New England's case, the ideas were religious. The "godly commonwealth" of the first Puritans was succeeded by the same slow tendency toward aristocracy, based on transatlantic commerce rather than commodities, that characterized Virginia.Free trial of The Great Courses Signature Collection or buy - S1 E5 - Traders in the Wilderness
October 5, 200330minThe broad stretch of coastal territory between the Chesapeake and Long Island had been settled by the Swedes along the Delaware Bay and the Dutch along the Hudson River. Dutch settlements (renamed New York) developed into a major commercial center. Quaker William Penn's Pennsylvania emerged, by the 1750s, with a commercial aristocracy similar to that of New England.Free trial of The Great Courses Signature Collection or buy - S1 E6 - An Economy of Slaves
October 5, 200331minThe transition of settlements to stable commercial success would not have been possible without a source of cheap labor. America's immensity of land and lack of labor to develop it required forced migration of laborers: convicts, indentured servants, beggars. But a less expensive and more permanent source of labor was the 11 million Africans who were torn from their homes to be slaves.Free trial of The Great Courses Signature Collection or buy - S1 E7 - Printers, Painters, and Preachers
October 5, 200330minAmericans developed cultural forms in both music and art that were uniquely American. The most important cultural transition, part of the European Enlightenment, was from a religious to a scientific and secular understanding of the world. Three illustrative figures of this transition are Cotton Mather, Benjamin Franklin, and Jonathan Edwards.Free trial of The Great Courses Signature Collection or buy - S1 E8 - The Great Awakening
October 5, 200329minThe stresses of Colonial life produced unusual social eruptions that were aimed at regaining some sense of control. The Great Awakening, a revival of radical Protestant religion across New England, helped people recover a sense of spiritual significance and moral direction; it also touched off violent religious controversy.Free trial of The Great Courses Signature Collection or buy - S1 E9 - The Great War for Empire
October 5, 200332minBy the mid-1700s, Britain and France were the two rivals for dominance of America. The war for empire, the French and Indian War, broke out in 1754, and at first went badly for England. But the British Empire had greater resources to draw on. The Treaty of Paris in 1763 forced the French to withdraw entirely from North America.Free trial of The Great Courses Signature Collection or buy - S1 E10 - The Rejection of Empire
October 5, 200331minIn 1765, Parliament moved to levy direct taxes on the colonies and to regulate colonial trade so that it profited Britain. Protests by the legislatures of the North American colonies led to outright conflict, the suspension of colonial governments by Parliament, the creation of a Continental Congress, and, finally, an organized military confrontation at Lexington and Concord in April 1775.Free trial of The Great Courses Signature Collection or buy - S1 E11 - The American Revolution - Politics and People
October 5, 200330minIn the Second Continental Congress of July 1776, a resolution declaring independence was adopted by the Congress and framed by a Declaration of Independence composed by Thomas Jefferson. In the Articles of Confederation of 1781, a joint government for the United States was created.Free trial of The Great Courses Signature Collection or buy - S1 E12 - The American Revolution - Howe's War
October 5, 200329minFrom a military viewpoint, the Revolution started well and spiraled downward. The Continental Army, under the command of George Washington, faced humiliating defeats, abandoning all of New York and New Jersey to the British. Lost more by British incompetence than won by American planning, victory at Saratoga in the summer of 1777 salvaged American hopes.Free trial of The Great Courses Signature Collection or buy - S1 E13 - The American Revolution - Washington's War
October 5, 200332minThe money, credit, weapons, and French naval and military resources forced the British to shift the focus of their war. British field forces fell under a combined land-and-sea campaign conducted by Washington and the French at Yorktown, where the British surrendered. The Treaty of Paris in 1783 reluctantly conceded American independence.Free trial of The Great Courses Signature Collection or buy - S1 E14 - Creating the Constitution
October 5, 200333minThe Revolution was not even over before the ramshackle nature of the Articles of Confederation began to show at the seams. A convention assembled in Philadelphia in 1787 to construct a constitution, which proposed a single executive president, a bicameral Congress, and a judiciary.Free trial of The Great Courses Signature Collection or buy - S1 E15 - Hamilton's Republic
October 5, 200330minFor Alexander Hamilton, the first secretary of the treasury, the republic depended on developing the republic's systems of finance, manufacturing, and commerce. Opposing him were Thomas Jefferson and the southern agricultural interests in Congress, both of whom believed that the future of America lay in independent domestic agriculture.Free trial of The Great Courses Signature Collection or buy - S1 E16 - Republicans and Federalists
October 5, 200329minThe surprise development in the new republic's political life was the formation of political parties. James Madison became the organizer of the Democratic-Republicans, and Hamilton recruited his Congressional supporters into the Federalist Party. The Federalists only barely managed to elect their candidate, John Adams, as Washington's successor in 1796.Free trial of The Great Courses Signature Collection or buy - S1 E17 - Adams and Liberty
October 5, 200330minFew people liked John Adams, so it was fortunate that the first major challenge of his administration involved a foreign policy problem, where few had more expertise than he. But Adams squandered all the political capital he accumulated. By persuading the Federalists to dump Adams before the election of 1800, Hamilton succeeded in guaranteeing the Democratic-Republicans would win.Free trial of The Great Courses Signature Collection or buy - S1 E18 - The Jeffersonian Reaction
October 5, 200330minThomas Jefferson proved incapable of creating a practical set of alternatives to Hamilton's hard-headed fiscal policies, particularly in defense and in foreign trade. He was also surprised by the activism of the federal judiciary, which, under Chief Justice John Marshall, began to operate as a serious restraint on the scope of Jefferson's actions.Free trial of The Great Courses Signature Collection or buy - S1 E19 - Territory and Treason
October 5, 200328minWith renewed war in Europe on the horizon, Napoleon offered to sell the entire Louisiana province for $15 million. Jefferson asked Congress to finance a secret scouting party under Lewis and Clark. Vice President Aaron Burr, who attempted to set up his own independent republic, was thwarted and saved from a treason indictment only by Chief Justice John Marshall.Free trial of The Great Courses Signature Collection or buy - S1 E20 - The Agrarian Republic
October 5, 200329minJefferson was committed to keeping the American Republic an agrarian society, a culture of independence, nonmarket agriculture, and community. No regard was paid to the claims of the North American Indians. As Americans poured West in search of cheap land, disheartened Indians either accommodated, as with the Seneca and Cherokees, or resisted, as in the revolt of Tenskwatawa and Tecumseh.Free trial of The Great Courses Signature Collection or buy - S1 E21 - The Disastrous War of 1812
October 5, 200330minIn 1812, Madison sent a request to Congress for a declaration of war, but the War of 1812 was a debacle. In October 1814, the Massachusetts legislature passed a peace resolution and threatened secession from the Union. Only the signing of the Treaty of Ghent at the end of 1814 ended talk of a New England separatist movement.Free trial of The Great Courses Signature Collection or buy - S1 E22 - The "American System"
October 5, 200330minThe War of 1812 collapsed the US Treasury, bankrupted hundreds of businesses, and soaked up the tiny hoard of American financial capital by government borrowing. Henry Clay and John C. Calhoun became the principal spokesmen for rebuilding the infrastructure of the American economy after 15 years of Jeffersonianism.Free trial of The Great Courses Signature Collection or buy - S1 E23 - A Nation Announcing Itself
October 5, 200333minBy the 1820s, immigrants flowed through America's seaports from Europe; and with the clearance of Indian resistance, the Northwest Territory was opened by massive government land sales. Many emigrants, however, chose to stay in the cities they first entered, and their numbers soon swelled the size of the American urban population.Free trial of The Great Courses Signature Collection or buy - S1 E24 - National Republican Follies
October 5, 200332minThe year 1819 blew up in the faces of the bankers, brokers, National Republicans, and everyone else who had leveraged themselves to the market system. It was the year of the Great Panic. The United States had to learn that committing itself to the world market system exacted a price in the form of the unpredictable cycle of boom and bust.Free trial of The Great Courses Signature Collection or buy - S1 E25 - The Second Great Awakening
October 5, 200331minThree factors played a role in creating a Christian America: the resiliency of revival, the absorption of virtue, and the substitution of millennialism.Free trial of The Great Courses Signature Collection or buy
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This sweeping series features three award-winning professors sharing their insights into this nation's past in their own areas of special interest, from European settlement and the Revolutionary War to the Civil War, 19th-century industrialization, and two world wars. Gain a lucid picture of the factors that enabled the United States to become the most powerful democratic republic in history.
This sweeping series features three award-winning professors sharing their insights into this nation's past in their own areas of special interest, from European settlement and the Revolutionary War to the Civil War, 19th-century industrialization, and two world wars. Gain a lucid picture of the factors that enabled the United States to become the most powerful democratic republic in history.
This sweeping series features three award-winning professors sharing their insights into this nation's past in their own areas of special interest, from European settlement and the Revolutionary War to the Civil War, 19th-century industrialization, and two world wars. Gain a lucid picture of the factors that enabled the United States to become the most powerful democratic republic in history.
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