America at 250: A History
Rob James
November 13, 2025
[introduction to come]
Course Syllabus: 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 and 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 national reimagining in U.S. history.
INTRODUCTION (tutti)
The Road to 250
PART 1: THE AMERICAN EXPERIMENT (Joanne Freeman)
2. Revolutionary (and Not So Revolutionary) Beginnings
3. Declaring Independence
4. What Kind of Union?
5. Framing a Nation: The Constitution
6. Republican Precedents and Presidents: The Placement of Power
7. What Kind of Nation? Democracy, Hamilton, Jefferson, and More
8. Jacksonian “Democracy”
9. Whose America? Protest and Reform
PART 2: AMERICAN DISUNION (David Blight)
10. The Mexican War and its Aftermath: Compromise or Armistice
11. The Road to Disunion: Politics, Dred Scott, and the Crisis of the 1850s
12. Two Constitutions, Secession and War, 1860-1862
13. Union Victory, Confederate Defeat, and Emancipation
14. Reconstruction: Andrew Johnson vs. the Radical Republicans
15; The Defeat of Reconstruction, 1870-1877 and Beyond
16. Gilded Age and the Aftermath of Reconstruction, South, North, and West
17. A Violent Reunion: The Lost Cause, New South and Origins of Jim Crow
C. Vann Woodward, The Strange Career of Jim Crow: Began not immediately after the Civil War, but in the 1880s and 1890s. The catalyst was the fear of a populism that would unite blacks with poor whites, necessitating social and political institutions of white supremacy to split them apart. Focus was on miscegenation—as with Birth of A Nation (1915), any black who fraternized with white women was a target. 4000 lynchings 1880-1920, 5000 by 1968. From apartheid ideas to whites-only facilities.
The lecture was a mishmash of currents in the bloody and unhappy 1880s and 1890s.
William Graham Sumner’s sociology, social Darwinism, and laissez-faire government
Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) larger than suffrage and abolitionist movements—save the family by keeping dad from liquor
Growth of corporate power—railroads, mining, steel, oil—trending to monopoly, and the beginnings of regulation
Tariffs favored by domestic manufacturers against interest of consumers
Veterans had power—Grand Army of the Republic major Republican forces. US spent $2bn on Civil War but $8bn on pensions, 40% of federal budget in 1890
Western expansions and segregation of Native Americans into reservations 1890 and Indian schools; Supreme Court held them “wards” and not citizens (until twentieth century)
Corruption in federal employement (James Garfield shot by frustrated job seeker) led to Civil Service Act
Teeming cities, 2.6 million immigrants 1880-1920
Panic of 1893 hit everyone but especially farmers
Split between those favoring more money in the economy (silver, debtors) and those favoring less (gold, creditors). Most Democrats silver, most Republicans gold. Populist party emerged as real threat to two-party system. William Jennings Bryan nominated 1896 on Cross of Gold speech and campaigned with religious fervor; William McKinley stayed home and promised moderation and prosperity, and won.
PART 3: THE AMERICAN CENTURY (Beverly Gage)
18. Immigration and its Discontents
19. Money, Power, and Progressivism
20. A New Deal for America
21. A New Deal for the World
22. Anticommunism and the American Way
23. Race, Rights, and Resistance
24. Reagan’s America
25. Making Sense of the Millennium
CONCLUSION (tutti)
26. Meanings on the Eve of 2026