Allen C. Guelzo
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2020.
Language
English
Description
The immense vitality and diversity of American life have been sustained by several recurrent themes. Compared to its high ideals, America always fell short. Compared to the other nations of the world, however, America was far more impressive for its successes than for its failings.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2020.
Language
English
Description
This episode examines the experiences of African Americans on both sides, addressing, among other topics, black soldiers in US military forces, the experience of hundreds of thousands of black refugees in the South, the weakening of the bonds of slavery in much of the Confederacy, and Confederate debates over emancipation late in the conflict.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2020.
Language
English
Description
America is a far more religious society than other Western industrial nations - another example of its exceptionalism. It also tolerated an exotic array of sects and cults, from hippies to the followers of Jim Jones who committed mass suicide in 1978. Religious groups also played a role in the moral-political debates over civil rights, feminism, abortion, homosexuality, and nuclear weapons.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2020.
Language
English
Description
When the Soviet Union went through a peaceful transition to democracy, the United States was left as the world's one great superpower, able to preside over the creation of numerous new nations with more or less democratic and America-inspired political systems. In the 1990s, the absence of Communist repression permitted old ethnic and religious animosities in Eastern Europe to resurface.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2020.
Language
English
Description
The first transcontinental railroad was finished in 1869. Completion cut travel time from the Mississippi to the West Coast from three months to about one week. The line was joined by other transcontinentals; a national network facilitated settlement in the plains and mountain states that had been too remote.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2020.
Language
English
Description
The 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.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2020.
Language
English
Description
The 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.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2020.
Language
English
Description
Columbus'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.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2020.
Language
English
Description
Late 19th-century Europe was full of stories about America, and bad conditions for farmers prompted many of them to emigrate. Parents found that, with hard work, they, or their children, could climb to American prosperity and respectability. Fears of "race suicide" in the 1920s gave rise to an immigration restriction policy.
10) The History of the United States, 2nd Edition: Episode 13,The American Revolution - Washington's War
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2020.
Language
English
Description
The 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.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2020.
Language
English
Description
Deep South states seceded in response to Lincoln's election, but only the crisis at Fort Sumter in April 1861 convinced the Upper South to secede. A range of opinion existed in most slaveholding states regarding secession. This episode also describes the formation of the Confederate States of America.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2020.
Language
English
Description
Congress took control of Reconstruction policy in early 1867. Ulysses S. Grant, who supported Congress, won the presidency in 1868. This episode examines the struggle between Johnson and Congress, analyzes Reconstruction legislation, describes the state governments set up under that legislation in former Confederate states, and assesses the meaning of the election of 1868.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2020.
Language
English
Description
Debates in the North over how best to bring the Confederate states back into the Union began while the war still raged. This episode examines the wartime context and continues through Johnson's early presidency. By the end of 1866, the stage was set for a final showdown between the president and Congress in the fight over Reconstruction in the South.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2020.
Language
English
Description
Thousands of newspapers in 20th-century America, with radio stations, television, and the world's strongest movie industry, informed citizens well about their surroundings and about political and social questions. Media power transformed the nature of politics, lobbying, and even the military, as the armed forces discovered to its detriment in Vietnam.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2020.
Language
English
Description
By 1824, Jefferson's Republican Party was becoming two parties: the National Republicans and the Democratic-Republicans. John Quincy Adams, the heir apparent, was unmistakably a National Republican. The most unpredictable candidate was Andrew Jackson. He swept the popular vote, but his 99 electoral votes did not constitute a majority of the 216 electoral votes cast.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2020.
Language
English
Description
Few 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.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2020.
Language
English
Description
Espionage cases in the late 1940s heightened fears of Communism. The Truman administration began to investigate the loyalty of federal employees. Many businesses, including the Hollywood film industry, conducted anti-Communist purges. Anti-Communist fears allowed Senator Joseph McCarthy to exploit irrational public fears. Post-war Korea and Berlin remained potential flash-points.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2020.
Language
English
Description
By 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.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2020.
Language
English
Description
From the 1820s, Americans embraced the appeal of Romanticism. In literature, it was manifested in the work of Ralph Waldo Emerson and the Transcendentalists, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Herman Melville; in religion, it was illustrated by the Mercersburg theology; and in politics, it was reflected in the rhetoric of Whigs and Democrats and the argument over passion.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2020.
Language
English
Description
In 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.