America at 250

Notes from an online Yale history course.

Rob James

September 18, 2025

[intro to come]

Course Description. This one-time-only course examines U.S. history from 1776 to the present, in advance of the nation's semiquincentennial (or 250th birthday) in 2026. Taught jointly by Professors Joanne Freeman, David Blight, and Beverly Gage, the course emphasizes the history of the nation-state and the contested nature of American national identity. The class explores U.S. political history broadly conceived–not just as a realm of presidents, elections, and wars (though there will be plenty of those) but as a conversation across time between citizens about what the United States is, was, and was meant to be. It proceeds from the premise that the American Revolution was the first but not the last radical act of reimagining in U.S. history. YouTube channel with lecture videos

INTRODUCTION (tutti)

Lecture 1. The Road to 250

Robert Penn Warren: “History is what you cannot resign from.” The so-called Founders individually confessed they were improvising, not divining eternal principles that now appear etched in marble in our founding documents and our imaginations.

PART 1. THE AMERICAN EXPERIMENT (Freeman)

Lecture 2. Revolutionary (and Not-So-Revolutionary) Beginnings

“Democracy” at this time was generally pejorative (consider the real Alexander Hamilton, not the Broadway one); it meant direct democracy, hence mob rule. Thomas Jefferson instead spoke of “democratical republicanism.” Don’t engage in ahistorical “democra-speak”—terms like democracy, liberty and freedom have meant different things to different people over time.

The colonists considered themselves British subjects, entitled to all the rights and liberties of Englishmen. The concern was not so much “taxation without representation” as anything without representation. Paul Revere wouldn’t have said “The British are coming”—he was British! He would have said “The regulars are coming.”

The professor starts with the French & Indian War 1754-1763. (1) The colonists through their joined militias worked together for the first time. (2) in the treaty the British agreed not to expand beyond the Appalachians, ticking off the colonists. (3) The British spent lots of money and needed new revenue sources. (4) The British learned that colonists were smuggling lots of goods without paying tariffs on them. That led to legislation targeted down the value chain like the 1765 Stamp Act (must pay for stamped paper not only for legal documents, but also for household items like newspapers and playing cards); it was the first tax visible to ordinary folk. Stamp Act Congress convened with nine colonies represented, kindling in Freeman’s nice phrase the “inkling of a we.” Parliament repealed it but passed the Declaratory Act saying they could do it again “in all cases whatsoever” (a phrase that really stuck in the American craw; mentioned in the Declaration of Independence). A bunch of other Acts and reactions followed—the Tea Party, the first brief Continental Congress, and all that.

In April 1775 at Lexington and Concord, British soldiers killed British subjects. Ticonderoga was taken by Benedict Arnold and Ethan Allen (“great Jehovah”) (British would retake 1777). John Adams: the die is cast, the Rubicon is crossed. (There were “patriots,” there were “loyalists,” and there were a lot of people in between and “situational.” Not everything was “revolutionary.” John Adams guessed a third were rebel, a third were tory and a third were neutral.) In July 1775, the second Continental Congress issued the Olive Branch Petition to George III, who reportedly refused to read it and instead declared the colonists in rebellion.

Lecture 3: Declaring Independence

When and how was independence declared? Some say as early as May 1775, when John Adams was busy making “to do” lists of all the things a new country would need (coinage, allies, victualing of soldiers). But many colonists were wobbly, still thinking themselves British subjects not traitors. The 1774 immigrant Thomas Paine’s January 1776 Common Sense changed the American conversation. He refuted arguments against independence, explained how it could be attained, and remarkably attacked not just George III but monarchies in general. The subject went from unspeakable in some circles to ubiquitous. He reached a broad audience with plain language. (Jefferson later in life complimented his “perspicuity of expression,” the polar opposite of Paine’s style!)

Independence was being proclaimed all over. Pauline Maier’s American Scripture identifies some ninety such declarations in towns across the land in early 1776. Some were invited by the colonial governments (Massachusetts General Assembly) while others were urged upon ambivalent delegates (Maryland). Either way, delegates listened; they were “representative” in exactly the way that Parliament was not. A “republic” in this time was understood as a polity (a) deriving authority in some sense from the popular will and (b) governed by persons who are in some sense representative of the electorate. Not the same as a “democracy,” but definitely not the British polity.

What happens after such a declaration? What future, what adversity? What was worse—to declare independence before one has the power to back it up, or not to declare and inhibit foreign powers from helping? Colonists would need to pledge their lives and fortunes in order to take such an audacious step.

In May 1776, the second Continental Congress asked colonies to set up new governments. A committee appointed to produce an appropriate instrument (Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, Robert Livingston) tapped Jefferson to draft it; he denied originality (and he did crib, from John Locke, George Mason’s Virginia Declaration of Rights, and his own draft Virginia Constitution), instead intending “an expression of the American mind.” (The Broadway musical 1776 essentially quotes Adams urging the authorship on Jefferson.) The preamble’s profession of equally created men endowed by Nature’s God with unalienable rights to life, liberty and “the pursuit of happiness” (the latter substituting for John Locke’s more pedestrian “property”) was not the original focus. The preamble later became the famous part that we all recite, and (as we will see later in the course) the fount of natural-law arguments including those made on behalf of marginalized communities.

No, the contemporary spotlight was on saying the colonies constituted “one people” and especially on all the grievances. The grievances ingeniously turned the tables—it was the King who had “unkinged himself” and betrayed the trust of his heretofore loyal subjects. Read them aloud to feel the rhetorical power of the repetitions. The reign of George III was “Tyranny”: he hindered foreigners from migrating; he made judges dependent on his will alone; he kept standing armies among the people without the legislature’s consent; he rendered the military superior to the civil power; he imposed taxes without consent; he deprived some of trial by jury; he transported some overseas for pretended offenses. (No 2025 comment.)

Jefferson, “deeply conflicted” about the “peculiar institution” (“I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just”) wrote a paragraph accusing the King of supporting slavery, yet attacking the King for offering to free loyalist slaves (yanked out in the revision process by Southern delegates). Jefferson gritted his teeth during the editing “mutilations.” A resolution of independence was adopted July 2, while the document was approved July 4 and signed only by John Hancock and secretary August 2 (others joined 1777). Fair copies were issued to foreign governments and read aloud throughout the land. The combined action of declaring independence in all these ways—Paine, local declarations, Congress, and this evolving document—engaged the populace at large and emboldened them into the willingness to sacrifice all.

Lecture 4. What Kind of Union?

What kind of independent country awaited the colonists? Thomas Jefferson: if we replace a bad regime under George III with another bad regime, we might as well have avoided the “present controversy” and stuck with the old one.

The predominant motive was fear of centralized executive power as wielded by George III in Parliament. In states as well as the Continental Congress, delegates increased the power of the lower house and decreased the power of the executive and upper house (e.g., rotation of offices). The Articles of Confederation (AoC) was styled among “the United States of Delaware, New Jersey, …” It formed a loose league of friendly states, more like the United Nations than the United States of America. It provided for no executive and no judiciary, just a single legislative chamber with one state one vote. Congress could borrow money but only request states to contribute money or soldiers; it could tax and take other actions only with unanimous consent. (It did have the power to conduct foreign affairs and declare war.) In hindsight it seems hopelessly inadequate, but at the time it avoided the evils they saw in centralized power. It was negotiated until November 1777; after the victory at Saratoga 1778 it was quickly finalized (though not formally ratified until 1781) so there was a country that could entreat with France.

Tensions almost immediately surfaced. Southerners resented the “cunning” New Englanders and sought to install Southern men as clerks. Northerners asked why 10,000 in one state should have the same voice as 40,000 in another. The landless states (Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey) wanted to sell off the western lands, while New York and North Carolina wanted to keep them. George Washington and those in his army camp (Hamilton, John Jay) hated the impotence of Congress to supply men, materiel and funds. Despite the Treaty of Paris 1783, the British did not close their western trading posts as promised, and embargoed the export of manufacturing machines; Congress could do nothing.

Domestically, the AoC Congress was equally powerless to intervene in the movement for Vermont independence from New York and New Hampshire; Ethan Allen even invaded New Hampshire towns and sought a separate peace with the British! North Carolina had to subdue the State of Franklin secession by itself. Shays’ Rebellion in September 1786 was fomented by farmers whose land was taken for nonpayment of taxes and other debts; after petitions and demonstrations failed 1100 marched. The AoC Congress sought an army, but the rebels went guerilla before finally dissipating (Daniel Shays went to Vermont!). (Other uprisings included the Newburgh (NY) conspiracy of ex-officers clamoring for pensions until George Washington promised them action (seeing him fumble for his spectacles in old age made officers cry), and the Pennsylvania rebellion that drove Congress to Princeton.) Hamilton in Federalist No. 21: What if Shays had been a competent general like Crassus? Was there no “United States” except in common cause against a common enemy?

[The Yale lecturer spends very little time on the war itself—the gushing blood, the torn flesh, the general’s blunder, the soldier’s courage, the privations… I suspect this omission or elision will be the same with all wars throughout the course. Here are my notes on the American Revolutionary War proper.]

Lecture 5. Framing a Nation: The Constitution

Professor Freeman wrote in the Chronicle of Higher Education in the aftermath of September 11, 2001 that our nation now has a sense of vulnerability that none of us had ever sensed. But the generation of the 1780s felt that vulnerability, and created a Constitution that responds to crisis after crisis with process. That process rescues us from acting (or reacting) based on emotion and outrage. The Constitution thus establishes not only a structure of government but also a culture of governance.

The Articles of Confederation (AoC) prove that it is easier for many to dislike a form of government for various reasons than it is to create a government that you and disparate others positively like. In hindsight, the strong nationalists (Alexander Hamilton, James Madison) “won” the Convention, but it was far from clear at the time they would prevail; the “Anti-Federalists” had and eloquently expressed valid fears that a central government would eliminate rights of states and individuals.

Twelve states (all but Rhode Island) joined the call for a convention to “amend and improve” the AoC. The 55 delegates were mostly well-educated and affluent, many of whom were lawyers and lawmakers (but not “politicians,” a pejorative then and perhaps now). Anti-Federalists didn’t come, maybe a tactical error to allow so much appearance of consensus inside the room. George Washington presided and was the most trusted man in the world—a successful general who ceded power (thus astounding George III). Benjamin Franklin was the elder stateman with an international reputation. Madison was indeed the Constitution’s father: he was the architect of the Virginia Plan (putting it into the mouth of his fellow Virginian Edmund Randolph as more well-liked and taller!) and careful recorder of deliberations that were supposed to be secret.

The Virginia Plan called for altering the AoC, tracing authority not from “The United States of Delaware, New Jersey, etc.” but from “We the people of the United States of America,” distributing federal power among three branches (bicameral legislature with lower house elected by direct vote and upper house selected by lower house from among individuals proposed by state legislatures, representation allocated among states entirely by population, and federal power to nullify state legislation), executive (one man or committee? term? powers? unclear) and judiciary (one or more supreme judges and lower judges).

Nationalists then quickly scored approval of a single executive. One leader was thought better than a committee—with one man, the blame is all his, and the universal sense of “shame” would surely prevent him from abusing the awesome power. (!)

Smaller states of course fought representation by population. New Jersey Plan: one house with one vote per state, executive approved by Congress, judges picked by executive. Things got a bit wobbly; the concerns about the new government veered from tyranny (monarchy by another name) to anarchy (failure to launch, the evils of mob “democracy”), and a recess was uneasily suggested. Perhaps panicked, Hamilton indeed made a six-hour speech calling for extreme centralization: a national government that even appoints state governors serving for life, senators elected for life, an executive with absolute veto, and legislative members elected by electors who were in turn elected by other electors. (Being from the Caribbean, Hamilton had no use for individual states.) The oration was “praised by all, supported by none.” Later, Hamilton said something like “Hey, I thought we were all just spitballing, this was supposed to be secret!”

Some big issues and their resolutions: (1) Public opinion drives governance is the “beating heart” of the United States, uniquely amid a world of monarchies, but how is that opinion discerned? Two-, four- and six-year terms were the answer. (2) Representation resolved by the Great or Connecticut (Roger Sherman) Compromise: a two-per-state Senate and a population-based House. (3) Slavery talked about for just a few days in August—some Northerners called for exclusion of slaves from population counts, while Southerners defended the institution on world-historical, moral and economic grounds, and other Northerners were concerned the whole subject would tear the young country apart. So slavery was (not for the last time) swept under the rug—only evidence is barring until 1808 of national regulation of “importation or migration of persons,” the 3/5 of “other persons” population rule, and aid in the “delivery up” of fugitive persons. (4) Executive features: four-year term with no term limits, elected by an Electoral College in turn appointed by state legislatures in such manner as they individually see fit, number of electors equal to sum of Senators and Representatives in that state (not as lopsided a ratio as today’s 100:435)—a rather surprising amount of executive power, given what they overthrew in the Revolution, but here restrained by checks and balances.

The Constitution was signed September 17, 1787, after which the Confederation Congress fatefully approved its release to states. The ratification process was dicey. In New York, Hamilton, Madison and John Jay anonymously published the Federalist essays in newspapers (no longer using the incendiary term “Nationalist”). They are pro-ratification advertisements written heavily in “sale mode” but contain eternal insights (the now famous Madisonian No. 10 on factions was only belatedly celebrated by Charles Beard). In June 1788 the Constitution came into effect upon ratification by the ninth state.

Implications of the Constitution: a structure was created, a national pact was subscribed to (something an officeholder could take an oath to support), a distribution of power was instituted among branches and between federal and state governments, and a process of government began to evolve. Process is essential in crises, it is our anchor in trying times (look at 1780, 1800, 1850s, 1960s, and we hope today). Without process might makes right, which in some sense is no government at all.

Hamilton in Federalist No. 1: “[I]t seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not, of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend, for their political constitutions, on accident and force.”

Lecture 6: Republican Precedents and Presidents: The Placement of Power

It is now the 1790s. George Washington was inaugurated in 1789 and served two terms. What kind of powers and characteristics does a President have? What kind of power do the people have? The Founders were aware they were setting precedents with everything they did. Should Senators stand for the President (as would commoners before a king) or remain sitting (as would the House of Lords)? In a world without other republics, what title should he have? (“His Elective Majesty” was one entry; John Adams was mocked as “His Rotundity.”) They navigated between Americanizing familiar dignified British rites and staking out new grounds. Conscious of the tension, George Washington selected the “medium” quality china, wore a plain brown suit adorned with fancy buttons, and alternated excursions in grand carriages with walks through the muddy streets. But he was still a patrician Virginia planter, making sure his enslaved servants didn’t free themselves by staying in the free state of Pennsylvania for more than six months at a time.

Parties began to emerge, in this case the “Federalists” (Hamilton and Jay; ordinary people should just vote and then stay out of politics until the next election) and what she calls the “Republicans” and I will call the “Democratic-Republicans” (Jefferson and Madison; there should be continuous public engagement and communication). The French-leaning Democratic-Republicans thought the Jay Treaty of 1794 too friendly to Britain. Hamilton argued to an angry crowd that they should not even be discussing a concluded treaty. Hooted out of the debate after being hit by a rock, he challenged others to two duels that very day (out of his lifetime eleven). Regional issues continued to simmer; Jefferson called the Federalist regime a Northern “reign of witches.”

[She doesn’t mention Washington’s September 1796 Farewell Address, in which he praised American unity against regionalism, factions, and foreign influence (“avoid entangling alliances”), called for religion as a foundation of order, and urged amendment not violence as a remedy for any defects in the Constitution.]

By the John Adams administration (1797-1801), the Federalists were even more assertive, and reactions or over-reactions to world affairs barged into American politics (including passage of the Alien and Sedition Acts). All came to a head in the election of 1800, an election that the Federalists even considered trying to prevent. Jefferson called his victory “the Revolution of 1800” equal to the first, though Adams said there was not all that much difference between Jefferson and Aaron Burr. How “democratic” is this “democratical republic” going to be? Are the Constitution’s checks and balances among federal branches and between the nation and states going to work?

Lecture 7: What Kind of Nation? Democracy, Hamilton, Jefferson, and More

(A rumor had circulated that Lin-Manuel Miranda might attend this lecture, but it was just a rumor. Freeman says she had spent her entire teaching career prior to 2015 telling people Hamilton was not as bad a fellow as they might think. Since 2015, she has been telling people Hamilton was not as good a fellow as they might think.)

By the mid-1790s, two poles emerged, though not yet two parties. The Federalists (Hamilton, Jay, Washington, Adams) were for a mercantile, manufacturing, pro-Britain anti-French Revolution country, with central government and central finances to match (first Bank of the United States, federal assumption of state war debts). The Jeffersonian Republicans (Jefferson, Madison, Aaron Burr) were for an agrarian pro-French Liberty country, with weaker federal and greater state potency, as opposed to the “money men.” Democratic-Republican Societies sprung up, and Washington and Hamilton felt they encouraged the western Pennsylvania “Whiskey Rebellion” protesting the liquor tax; Hamilton as Secretary of Treasury—and War—personally led 13,000 federal troops to quell the Pittsburgh protests.

Foreign issues infiltrated domestic politics. The U.S. was suspended between France and Britain—make any move toward one and the other would retaliate against the new nation. The French resented the pro-British Jay Treaty and interfered with American ships in the Caribbean. To settle the dispute three American envoys (Marshall, Gerry and Pinckney) met three shadowy Talleyrand agents X, Y, and Z, who demanded a big loan and a bribe as preconditions of any negotiation. Public outcry over the XYZ Affair was fomented by Federalists—John Adams was cheered for the first time!—and they asserted the existence of a “quasi war.”

Emboldened, the Federalists used this wartime assertion to pass the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798. The Alien Acts limited immigration and gave the President powers of surveillance and deportation based on his judgment of national security. The Sedition Act made it criminal to say or print things opposed to the government or tending to bring the President into contempt or disrepute. In the runup to the 1800 election, the Sedition Act was selectively wielded against four of the five largest Republican newspapers; some Republicans spoke of secession while Jefferson assailed the temporary Northern “reign of Witches.” As a strategy, the outnumbered House Republicans shifted their strategy to the state level and asserted the right of each state to “interpose” (Jefferson wrote then crossed out the word “nullify”) its own view of whether a federal action violated the contractual “compact” that is the Constitution (Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions). Extreme partisanship had emerged, out of which political parties were forming.

In 1796 and 1800, prior to the Twelfth Amendment, the electors in each state voted for two men, without designating them for either President or Vice-President. In 1796, that scheme resulted in electing Adams President and his opponent Jefferson VP. Such a pairing of rivals in governance was complicated enough, but in the election of 1800 there was a tie vote between the two Republican candidates, Jefferson and Burr—and Burr refused to step aside. The decision went to the House with one state one vote, where there were 35 further ties. Republican states stockpiled guns and ammunition; some Federalists suggested living with a president pro tem and annulling the election; Jefferson warned that “a wrong outcome would be met with resistance.” The Delaware Federalist sole representative James Bayard feared the impact of a dissolution of the Union on his small state; he finally switched his vote to abstain, and enough other Federalists followed suit, thereby tipping the election Jefferson’s way. The consequences included (i) the fall of the Federalists at the national level (still potent in some states like Connecticut, steered from New Haven in fact), and (ii) the rise of a more “democratic” ethos, though still far from our concept of democracy. If you like the chaos of parties and the promise and perils of expanded democracy, may I introduce you to … Andrew Jackson.

Lecture 8: Jacksonian “Democracy”

“Democracy” meant something different in the Revolution (entitled to participate in politics), Declaration (broader preamble of rights), 1780s (risk of rebellion and secession), early 1790s (aristocratic vs rustic style), and late 1790s (“reign of Witches”). [She necessarily skips over stuff. Briefly, the Northwest Ordinance passed 1787 by the Confederation Congress, fatefully banning slavery in a regional context; the Bill of Rights drafted by Federalist James Madison to respond to Anti-Federalist objections to a Constitution silent on individual and state privileges, ten articles of which were ratified 1791; the Louisiana Purchase agreed 1803, France doing so to shift its forces to the Caribbean and Europe; major early Supreme Court decisions like Marbury v Madison (courts determine constitutionality), McCullough v Maryland (explicit legislative powers include “necessary and proper” actions), and Gibbons v Ogden (federal supremacy over interstate commerce); the administrations of James Madison and James Monroe; and the 1823 Monroe Doctrine against European intervention in the Western Hemisphere. She only mentions the War of 1812 to say (i) many in the U.S. felt pride in winning (or at least not losing), making Oliver Hazard Perry a war hero (“don’t give up the ship,” “we have met the enemy and he is ours”), and (ii) Andrew Jackson’s belated 1815 New Orleans victory making him a folk hero. The War looks pretty complicated; it stemmed from British support for Tecumseh and other Native Americans, restrictions on U.S. trade with France, and impressment of once-British U.S. citizen sailors. Britain blockaded us, which seems to have hurt them more. Many British victories including the burning of Washington, DC (August 1814) but American victories in Baltimore (“Star-Spangled Banner”), Lake Erie and elsewhere. Treaty of Ghent 1814 set the peace terms but fighting including New Orleans transpired thereafter.]

Jackson ran for President in 1824 as an outsider, attacking the elitism of the National Republican (formerly Federalist) John Quincy Adams and the Whig Henry Clay, and won the popular vote though losing the electoral college vote. He benefitted from Martin Van Buren’s New York-centered Jacksonian Democratic party and its extension to other states—they considered nationwide parties a good thing as they mitigated sectionalism. In 1828 Jackson won the Presidency outright, with 12,000 to 20,000 people storming the mansion on inauguration day breaking and stealing china and crystal. He ran as a populist (prone to incapacitating rage, a frequent duelist who encouraged caning and braining of of political opponents) with vague policies, basically “let’s get rid of the effete snob deep state.” His plan for 4-year rotation of executive offices ostensibly rooted out Jeffersonian Republicans (who had been in office 20 years) but also facilitated patronage; his cabinet was known for loyalty not competence. The emerging opposition party to the Jacksonian Democrats was first known as “the anti-Jacksonians” and then as “the Whigs.”

Jackson considered himself the arbiter of the Constitution. He deemed the second Bank of the United States a “hydra of corruption,” and vetoed renewal of its charter. When Georgia regulated tribes under federal treaty concerning newly discovered gold fields and the Supreme Court ruled against the state (Worcester v Georgia), Jackson sought to ignore the ruling and ignore the treaties (he probably did not say “[Chief Justice] Mr. Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it,” that quip not appearing in print until 1867). His party launched the 1830 Indian Removal Act expelling Native Americans west of the Mississippi. In 1838, federal troops pushed 18,000 Cherokees to Oklahoma along the “Trail of Tears” (a quarter died along the way). Opposition caricatured him as “King Andrew.”

We learn from his tenure (i) in a violent age a violent man can do much—Jackson was the man for the moment; (ii) “democracy” embraces contradictions—expansion of rights of white settlers to gold fields came with forfeiture of rights and lives of Native Americans; and (iii) territorial extension carried with it costs and indeed could risk destabilizing the Union. Jackson was representative of his times (and, Freeman might be tacitly implying, representative of our times as well).

Lecture 9: Whose America? Protest and Reform

The 1820s through the 1840s found America a “hive of activity and struggle”: the Industrial Revolution and the rise of manufacturing in the North; a series of financial panics especially that of 1837 and emergence of big-city “con men”; the first discrete burst of immigration; and the mindset of economic possibility. It was a time of reform movements such as those for temperance and against slavery; dramatic changes in transportation (canals, railroads) and communications (telegraphy, steam-powered printing presses allowing for daily newspapers widely circulated). Those seeking refuge or stability turned to religion in the Second Great Awakening (based in the Burned-Over District of New York; many denominations especially the well-organized tent-preaching Methodists upending the Calvinist doctrine of predestination with the characteristically American view that everyone is redeemable; some new sects like the Mormons and Adventists) or to utopian communities (Oneida among others).

Some statistics evidence the transformation—number of states (1815, 15; 1860, 33—the house housing the House of Representatives had to be expanded); population (1814, 8MM; 1861, 33MM); immigration (1820s, 150K; 1830s, 600K; 1840s, 2.5MM). The transformation had a Northern tilt, but the consequent demand for and profits from King Cotton connected the two sections in one sense and highlighted the explosive impact of debates about slavery in expanded territory in another sense.

The Erie Canal (1817-1825) was funded by New York state (DeWitt Clinton). Americans took pride: though the wealthy built or owned the new networks, there was a groundswell of support from farmers coveting access to Eastern markets. However, the yeoman farmer was thus now subject to wide price swings and speculation, often reducing them to agricultural wage labor. Joining them in drudgery were wage laborers (including women and children) in textile mills, working in assembly lines, and warding off mechanization.

There were some 400 short-line railroad companies in the 1840s, mostly privately financed, creating a demand for accurate clocks and watches and time zones. The printing press and telegraph allowed debates on slavery at a Baltimore Whig convention to be followed in nearly real time in Washington, D.C. When a fight broke out in Congress, a representative noted that what used to be a private “matter of honour” would be splashed across headlines later that day. Technology shapes the course of democracy. (Franklin Pierce tried to be pro-slavery before one audience and anti-slavery before another, which used to work but not any longer.)

Alexis de Tocqueville visited the United States for nine months in 1831 with his companion Gustave de Beaumont (the most French-companiony name I ever heard!), supposedly to inspect prisons. Like Charles Dickens and other visitors eager to witness democracy in action, they are disappointed at what they find. Tocqueville says what American is, Western Europe will inevitably become. Tocqueville displays his aristocratic background in disdaining the vulgar, uncouth, un-intellectual, money-grubbing, and boring individual American, still shaking off “British rust.” But he admires the Americans’ passion for joining in private associations, and their un-European drive for social and economic improvement and geographic mobility. (Compare the English static class system—George Orwell said that “every Englishman is branded on the tongue at birth.”) Tocqueville is shocked by treatment of blacks and Native Americans and predicts not a civil war but a three-way race war.

How can one reconcile liberty with order? Men will prefer equality in servitude to inequality in freedom. Democracy leads to tyranny of the majority and the loss of liberty (checked by checks and balances? by factions or other associations? we are constantly testing this proposition). Is it God’s will that a little joy be spread to all, rather than greater joy for the few? Will centralization crush democracy or give it room to flourish? Will the military seize the opportunity to overcome a political democracy? You can find support for practically any generality somewhere in Democracy in America (1835 & 1840). When a British interviewer asked me in 2025 about the public outcry concerning artificial intelligence data centers, I mentioned the Frenchman’s observation that “scarcely any political question arises in the United States that is not resolved, sooner or later, into a judicial question.” The “Tocqueville effect” is that social frustrations increase, not decrease, as social conditions improve. The Yale professors cited the rather poetic line, “Americans are so caught up in their individualism that they are trapped in the habits of their own hearts.” I also found this riposte to Rousseau’s general will in the face of public opinion: “‘The will of the nation’ is one of those expressions which have been most profusely abused by the wily and the despotic of every age.” 

Freeman concludes her eight lectures. In our democracy your views and voice matter, and to that end your knowledge of history matters.

PART 2. AMERICAN DISUNION (Blight)

Lecture 10: The Mexican War and its Aftermath: Compromise or Armistice

David Blight starts his folksier lectures by noting that blackface minstrel songs (especially those of Stephen Foster) were popular across America across the nineteenth century. That leads him to riff on Oh Susanna (1847), Frederick Douglass’s Narrative (1845), Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick (1851), Emily Dickinson’s miniatures about herself and the Universe beyond Amherst, Frances Allen Watkins’ “Bury Me in a Free Land,” and the first edition of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass (1855). (Emerson called Whitman’s work “American Buddhism,” a combination of the Bhagavad-Gita and the New York Herald Tribune.) Read Song of Myself, Blight says, and compare Song of the Open Road with Bruce Springsteen’s “Thunder Road.” “We have art so we don’t die of reality.”

“Expansion” for white Americans meant removal of Native Americans (1820s-1830s), the Mexican War (1846-48), and the burning issue of expansion and existence of slavery. The crises of the 1850s were fomented by slavery, not just the institution per se but also its bringing together a cluster of issues (expansion, manufacturing vs agricultural economies, moral values, visions of the future vs preservation of the past). It polarized opponents with otherwise compromisable positions into a distorted mental image of each other. In this decade, Americans ran out of ways to compromise, solve, reconcile.

Next up in the White House after Van Buren were the Whigs, William Henry “Tippecanoe” Harrison (1841, died) and his successor John Tyler “Too” (1841-1845). Tyler annexed Texas as a state with uncertain borders and a close vote on a majority-vote resolution rather than the two-thirds treaty requirement. James K. Polk the Democrat (“Young Hickory” in Andrew Jackson’s footsteps)—Southern ringleader John C. Calhoun demanded a true slaveholder to carry the Democratic banner. Polk narrowly beat the Kentucky Whig moderate Henry Clay in 1844, New York having been tipped to Polk by the Liberty third party sapping 2.5% of votes from the Whigs (compare 1992 and 2000). Abraham Lincoln never forgave the abolitionist Liberty Party for causing Clay’s defeat.

In early 1846 Polk ordered General Zachary Taylor to Matomoros on the gulf coast, below the Nueces River that Mexico considered the border. After three weeks of fruitless negotiations the Mexicans crossed the Rio Grande that Texas considered the border and killed some settlers; Polk said “the US is at war” and Congress, wanting as later to “support the troops,” “recognized” rather than declared war (40-2 with many Northerners abstaining rather than appearing anti-soldier). 13,000 Americans and perhaps 50,000 Mexicans died. Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848) recognized independence of Texas and US territory stretching westward to what are now California, Arizona and New Mexico, and upwards to what are now Nevada, Utah and Colorado. Emerson: “Mexico will poison us.” One-term Congressman Lincoln: “Mr. Polk’s war is a fever dream.”

in 1848, it was the Free Soil party that drew 2-3%, but the Whig Zachary “Old Rough and Ready” Taylor (1849-1851) still prevailed.

Lecture 11: The Road to Disunion: Politics, Dred Scott, and the Crises of the 1850s

Were the crises of the 1850s and the Civil War preventable? What was the point of no return? Was it Western expansion, Dred Scott, John Brown?

The main characters in the crises of the 1850s are three men nearing the end of their careers—Henry Clay of Kentucky, a moderate Whig and founder of the African relocation society; Daniel Webster of Massachusetts, an eloquent Whig having served in Congress since 1823 (opposing Jackson’s 1831 nullification/interpositions, “one nation inseparable”) and the Senate since 1844; and John C. Calhoun of South Carolina (the Southern Democratic nationalist). The emerging young character is Stephen “The Little General” Douglas of Illinois, a mildly pro-slavery Democrat who preferred to punt (arguing about slavery in the territories today is arguing about “an imaginary slave in an imaginary state”).

New political movements emerged. Abolitionism had been a moral cause since the Revolutionary period but erupted in the North in the 1820s—William Lloyd Garrison’s Liberator 1831, Frederick Douglass’s papers. (But they tore each other apart—was it ideologically pure, or playing politics like the Liberty Party? Many were racist and opposed voting rights or supported repatriation to Africa.) A Free Soil Party advocated for Western expansions benefiting free white farmers, and opposing the “slavocracy” on that basis.

Democrats now had an expansionist policy—westward with as many slave states as possible to beef up the Senate powers, and southward to Cuba and Latin America; they scolded Northerners that to condemn slavery in the west is to condemn it in Alabama.

Rather ineffective Northerner presidents held office in this time—Millard Fillmore after Zachary Taylor’s death (1850-1853), the last Whig; and then the Democrats Franklin Pierce of New Hampshire (1853-1857) and James Buchanan of Pennsylvania (1857-1861).

Now to the compromises. The Missouri Compromise of 1820 had set the 36.5 degree latitude line beyond Missouri as the cutoff for slavery in territories and future states. As territories moved toward admission the Pennsylvanian David Wilmot (surprisingly a Democrat and racist, formerly pro-slavery but deeply affected by the Mexican War) started proposing in several resolutions that slavery should not extend to any land acquired from Mexico. The proviso regularly passed in the House but never in the Senate. Calhoun said the South must either subdue the North on this point or become independent. The political kick-the-can option was “popular sovereignty,” a referendum in the state—but when, after what migration of slave and anti-slave populations, and with what kind of voting integrity?

The issue was brought to a head by the 1849 California gold rush; so many Eastern Americans and people from around “the world rushed in” making statehood inevitable. Would it be one state or more? Slave or free? Calhoun called it the test case, with implications for Texas; he intimidated some Northerners into taking a compromise they really hated. Clay brokered the deal and coerced Webster into accepting the five-part package: (1) California admitted as a single free state, (2) abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, (3) Texas border receded to leave space for many new territories and eventual states without slavery being either imposed or restricted (assuming $10 million of Texas debt), (4) a severe federal fugitive slave act (with federal “magistrates” everywhere paid $10 for determining slavery and $5 for determining freedom—only 370 delivered up, but mass disturbances and thousands leaving for Canada); and (5) creation of Utah as a territory without slavery being either imposed or restricted. All that was the Great Compromise of 1850–voted on seriatim rather than as a bundle, thanks to Douglas’s parliamentary skills. It was hailed as saving the union, but was really just an armistice.

The next crisis emerged as Kansas (with part of Colorado) and Nebraska (including the upper plains) came up for statehood—lots of good land. The chair of the Western committee, ruling first on the transcontinental railroads, was none other than Douglas—he proposed pure popular sovereignty but was prevailed on to violate the Missouri Compromise by allowing referenda above as well as below the 36.5 line. The 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act had many consequences, including (i) cobbling together a new Republican Party from a motley crew opposing (expansion of) slavery, made up of Whigs from a now dying nationwide party, Northern Democrats against the Mexican War, politically inclined abolitionists (loud voices even if only 5-10% of white voters), and the “know-nothing” xenophobic Americans; and (ii) chaotic migration into the territories leading to “Bleeding Kansas” with village-to-village fighting (over 200 dead) and the emergence of “weird John Brown.”

Dred Scott had been taken with his physician master to Illinois and an army base in the Wisconsin Territory (now Minnesota). On return to Missouri supported by abolitionist friends he sued for his freedom—he lost at trial, he won some cases in Missouri appellate court, and his new master John Sandford (a fiction, as Sandford died early in the process) got the case to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1854. Three years later, 80-year-old Roger Taney announced a 7-2 decision that even free blacks could never be citizens of the US or any state, and that Congress was barred by the Fifth Amendment from preventing a white man from taking his “property” anywhere in the country including the territories. The Republicans ran against the 1857 Dred Scott decision, exemplified by the 1858 Lincoln-Douglas Illinois Senate debates. The ruling wiped out compromises and even the possibility of compromise.

Lecture 12: Two Constitutions, Secession and War, 1857-1861

Some more keys from the antebellum era. 1848 Seneca Falls convention on women’s rights (the 1851 convention featured Sojourner Truth). 1852 Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe, daughter of staunch abolitionist Henry Ward Beecher. Frederick Douglass Narrative including meditation on the dehumanizing of the slave owner as well as of the slave; his tripartite July 4 speech; his perception that facts and events are greater human motivators than theory. (Stephen Douglas and others would belittle him by calling him “Fred”; he once replied “That will be Frederick, ma’am.”) Panic of 1857, caused among other things by (i) end of Crimean War and glut of Russian wheat and (ii) overspeculation on Western lands, for which North and South blamed each other.

Abraham Lincoln announced his candidacy for Illinois senate in Springfield 1858 with a memorable speech (a house divided against itself cannot stand, cannot survive half slave and half free; we must prevent expansion and allow for its “ultimate extinction” in South; a slave power conspiracy exists spearheaded by “Stephen [Douglas], Franklin [Pierce], Roger [Taney] and James [Buchanan]”). Southerners attacked “Abolitionist Black Republicans,” pointing to John Brown, Bleeding Kansas, and Lincoln’s own speeches. Seven Lincoln-Douglas debates (5’6” vs 6’4”) were widely reported. Pressed by Lincoln at Freeport, Douglas fatefully conceded that popular sovereignty could decide slavery in west, contrary to the Dred Scott decision (the “Freeport doctrine”). Douglas won 54-46 in the Illinois state senate, but Lincoln had made a name for himself across the North.

John Brown was what we would call a terrorist, in his mind’s eye serving righteousness; he reckoned death in that service (“so be it”) more important than a life of political change. He saw his mission as purging the nation of its sin. He and followers used broadswords in 1854 to hack to death four slavery advocates in Kansas. At Harpers Ferry, Virginia, with a force of only eighteen, in 1859 he tried to take the largest federal arsenal, intending to spark a slave rebellion a la Spartacus. Most of his men were killed, their bodies on the Potomac shoreline becoming target practice for locals. He was tried a month later and sent to the gallows. “Martyrs are not born, they are made by people who need them.” His legacy endured in artwork, songs, poems (Stephen Vincent Benet 1928; I prefer Herman Melville’s “Weird John Brown,/meteor of the war”), and a speech by W.E.B. Du Bois (remember, pronounced “Bwaz”) at a 1932 NAACP convention.

The South had already threatened secession before the 1860 party conventions. Democrats met in Charleston, SC where 60% of votes were cast for Stephen Douglas, short of the necessary two-thirds. The “Freeport doctrine” of popular sovereignty attributed to Douglas caused a split; the southerners fomented by Jefferson Davis of Mississippi met a month later in Baltimore and nominated John Breckenridge of Kentucky (note the careful courting of border states). The Republicans met in Chicago; the abolitionist William Seward of New York was the favorite going in, but Lincoln prevailed as more moderate and electable (only calling at that time for prevention of expansion of slavery). (The Republicans are the one successful third party—from 1854 founding to nearly winning only two years later and dominating national offices through 1933.) And a fourth party, the Constitutional Union with John Bell of Tennessee, just wanted to keep the union and punt the divisive issues. Lincoln won the electoral college exclusively in the North and West with 39.8% of the popular vote.

South Carolina seceded December 1860, followed by Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Louisiana and Texas; they formed the Confederate States of America with Davis as president. They sent commissioners to the other southern and border states. After Lincoln was inaugurated in March 1861, with a stirring speech (“mystic chords of memory,” “olive branch,” “better angels of our nature”), he planned to “reinforce” Fort Sumter, S.C. publicly with “provisions” but covertly with weapons; the Confederacy shelled the fort for 36 hours. Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Arkansas seceded—but not Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland or Delaware, and West Virginia broke off in 1863. The American Civil War had begun; in Blight’s words, “the better angels were not in control.”

Lecture 13: Union Victory, Confederate Defeat, and Emancipation

More poetry: Julia Ward Howe, Battle Hymn of the Republic; Walt Whitman, changing his tune from “Beat, beat, drums” (1861) to “The Wound-Dresser” (“come, sweet death”) (1864); Melville, “Slain Collegians” (“kill them in the flesh of the bloom”) (750,000 dead; Blight says “kill the young—that’s war”); Ralph Waldo Emerson (prescient in 1861, “war is the realist”).

The runup to the war in the press featured Northern abstractions (“we flight for the flag, for the Republic, for Union”) and Southern allusions to the Declaration of Independence (existential threat to a civilization, grievances and all). As is well known, the North had all the materiel: white population 20 million vs. 5.5 million, 4x capital, 4x manufacturing 94% cloth, 93% pig iron, 97% arms, 90% railroads. The Anaconda naval blockade of Winfield Scott was a sieve in 1861 but more effective by 1863-64. The South did have the military advantage of interior lines—could move armies around quicker—and the political disadvantage of no dissent, only a Confederate state-party (Lincoln was forced to secure popular support through tough times).

As I expected, Blight gives an absurdly short description of the war itself. A map of the Northern front-line advances year by year makes Northern victory look inexorable and inevitable: 1861-62 Grant victories in Kentucky and Tennessee; New Orleans by April 1862; Antietam 1862 enough of a non-loss to release preliminary Emancipation Proclamation and end any European Southern support; Gettysburg and Vicksburg (unvexing of the father of waters) 1863; Sherman 1864; and oh year, the “deaths of the Army of the Potomac” basically all of 1861-1865 until Appomattox Court House. My notes on the war from other sources are here.

Lincoln hardened on eliminating rather than containing slavery (Carl Sandburg aptly described him as a “beautiful paradox”; W.E.B. Du Bois, “he was not perfect, he was a man”) in the total war of 1864. 180,000 blacks served in the U.S. Army—80% of them from the South, not just Robert Gould' Shaw’s Glory Massachusetts troops. The Emancipation Proclamation only freed slaves in the Southern rebel territory—as Lincoln felt he lacked executive or federal authority to do more. Would there even be an 1864 election? The Democrats under George McClellan stoked fears of miscegenation, and there was a Republican dump-Lincoln movement. But the Atlanta victory in August and the Mobile victory in September (David Farragut, “damn the torpedoes! straight ahead”) sealed the re-election. The day after the election, Frederick Douglass preached of the crossing to safety a la Noah, saying “I am the dove.” By April 1865, there seemed a real possibility of the end of war and some path forward.

Lecture 14: Reconstruction: Andrew Johnson vs. Radical Republicans

Read and re-read Lincoln’s March 1865 Second Inaugural, “the most beautifully crafted, simple and amazing Presidential speech.” People like to remember the conciliatory third paragraph “with malice toward none charity for all … bind the nation’s wounds.” But wallow in the haunting second paragraph with the concept of retributive justice—somehow all knew that the one-eighth of the populace held in slavery was the cause of the war; both sides prayed to the same God, who “has his own purposes”; every drop of blood drawn from the lash paid for by drop from the sword; “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.” Appomattox April 12, assassination 14, death 15. The assasin John Wilkes Booth was part of a real conspiracy—Seward stabbed in his bed, attempts on Andrew Johnson (AJ2) and others. Poetry: Whitman's “When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d” (the songbird and the cortege) and “Reconciliation”” Melville, “The Martyr” (“they killed him in his kindness”).

Why AJ2? Lincoln dropped the New Hampshireman Hannibal Hamlin “who could be of no further use for him” and installed the only Southern senator (TN) who didn’t resign. No fan of blacks or abolition. Wartime TN governor, Jacksonian Democrat, fan of states’ rights and slavery in South but paradoxically also of Union. “The Union as it was, the Constitution as it is” (i.e., no new rights beyond mere emancipation).

Compare William Tecumseh Sherman, who allowed no blacks in his army and wanted to treat South as conquered provinces to be cleansed—a proponent of total war, or even a terrorist in modern terms? Gave short shrift to 20 black ministers led by Rev. Trazier (sp?).

Reconstruction began 1863 in District of Columbia. Lincoln was a gradualist, seeking to avoid a second or endless civil war. In 1863 proposed “10% Plan”: as soon as 10% of the 1860 voters had taken an oath (barring only senior generals and federal resignees) return to the Union by act of the President. New governments in LA, TN and AK were weak, totally dependent on federal troops. The “Radical Republicans” in Congress led by mean-looking Thaddeus Stephens (PA abolitionist) and the snooty Latin-quoting Charles Sumner (MA abolitionist) by contrast wanted a harsh and long reconstruction; they treated the south as conquered lands needing treaties or admission as new territories then states—by act of the Senate and the Congress respectively. Proposed Wade-Davis bill—majority of white males, disenfrancishing and even “de-citizensizing” them—pocked vetoed by Lincoln July 1864. Then Lincoln’s hand strengthened with fall of Atlanta, Mobile, and re-election.

January 1865 Freedmen’s Bureau for freedmen, white as well as black refugees, and abandoned lands. Social welfare program through 1869 (money for rations, schools, hospitals, even new contracts between freedmen and their former masters!). February 1865 Thirteenth Amendment( see Steven Spielberg’s and Daniel Day-Lewis’s Lincoln for that month) .(Blight discounts the impact of the imprisonment exception on Black incarceration rates—look to the drug laws for that, he says.) Bingham led Congress through the Fourteenth Amendment June 1866 (ratified July 1868), the “Second Founding of the United States.” Birthright citizenship, protection from states infiringing federal “privileges and immunities,” violating due process, or denying equal protection “Brigham should have a postage stamp.”

Frederick Douglass was rebuffed by AJ2—why, equality would lead to miscegenation and race riots. “The Constitution is good enough when a good man is in the Presidency. But we have to have a Constitution that serves us when a bad man is in the Presidency.”

Lecture 15: The Defeat of Reconstruction, 1870-1877 and Beyond

[Zinn stuff: Civil Rights Act 1875, but 1883 Civil Rights Cases require state action. Court guts privileges and immunities clause but recognizes corporation equal protection and due process rights.]

[Zinn stuff: As condition of Hayes taking White House, troops pull out of South. Bessemer steel process goes from a day to fifteen minutes. Sherman Act 1890 but E.C. Knight (manufacturing not commerce). Pollock (no federal income tax power) superseded by Sixteenth Amendment.]

Lecture 16: Gilded Age and the Aftermath of Reconstruction, South, North, and West

Lecture 17: A Violent Reunion: The Lost Cause, New South and Origins of Jim Crow

PART 3. THE AMERICAN CENTURY (Gage)

Lecture 18: Melting Pot or Guarded Gate

[Zinn stuff: Haymarket 1885, Homestead 1891, Pullman 1894, Triangle Shirtwaist 1911, Ludlow 1914. Depression 1893. William Jennings Bryan 1896 “cross of gold” speech for debtor farmers wanting cheaper currency. Wounded Knee 1890. Panic of 1907. Woodrow Wilson’s guns in Vera Cruz 1914. Palmer raids 1919, Sacco 1927+. ]

Lecture 19: Money, Power, and Progressivism

Lecture 20: A New Deal for America

Lecture 21: A New Deal for the World

Lecture 22: Anticommunism and the American Way

Lecture 23: Race, Rights, and Resistance

Lecture 24: Reagan’s America

Lecture 25: Making Sense of the Millennium

CONCLUSION (tutti)

Lecture 26: Meanings on the Eve of 2026