History of the United States until the Reconstruction

HIST 431 traces how a scattered set of colonies became a continental republic — and then nearly tore itself apart — by working through the political, economic, and intellectual problems of nation-building from first contact through the Civil War. You'll read serious historiography (Morgan, Wood, Genovese, Foner) rather than a textbook, and the work is built around written reports, a presentation, and a final, so you're expected to argue from the sources, not just recall dates. It's a survey, but the kind that sets up later Americanist electives and gives you the vocabulary — periodization, the antebellum crisis, Reconstruction as "unfinished revolution" — that more focused U.S. history courses assume you already have.