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 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.”

She starts with the French & Indian War 1754-1763. (1) The colonists through their joined militias worked together for the first time. (2) The British spent lots of money and needed new revenue sources. (3) 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 and all that.

April 1775 at Lexington and Concord, British soldiers killed British subjects. 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.”) 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

Lecture 4. What Kind of Union?

Lecture 5. Framing a Nation: The Constitution

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

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

Lecture 8: Jacksonian “Democracy”

Lecture 9: Whose America? Protest and Reform

PART 2. AMERICAN DISUNION (Blight)

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

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

Lecture 12: Two Constitutions, Secession and War, 1860-1862

Lecture 13: Union Victory, Confederate Defeat, and Emancipation

Lecture 14: Reconstruction: Andrew Johnson vs. Radical Republicans

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

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

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