Book: Contextualizing America's Past: An Activities Based Reader through 1877

Authors: Brad Cartwright and Susan Stanfield

About the Authors:

Brad Cartwright earned his B.A. from the University of Texas at Austin, his M.A. from the University of Texas at El Paso, and his Ph.D. from the University of Colorado.  His research focuses on race, gender, and imperialism in nineteenth-century America and the Pacific Basin.  Dr. Cartwright teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on early and antebellum American history, as well the pedagogy of history.  He also serves as the director of UTEP’s Center for History Teaching and Learning. In 2015, he was awarded a University of Texas Regents’ Outstanding Teaching Award.

Sue Stanfield earned her B.A. from Baylor University, Masters Degrees from University of North Texas (Communication Studies) and Kansas State University (History) and her Ph.D. in History from the University of Iowa where she also completed a graduate certificate in Gender, Women’s and Sexuality Studies.  Her research focuses on race and gender in the nineteenth-century United States.  Dr. Stanfield teaches the U.S. History Survey (through 1865) as well as undergraduate and graduate courses on African American History, Women’s History, The Civil War and Reconstruction, History of Sexuality and the Nineteenth-Century United States.

About the Book:

Contextualizing America's Past: An Activities Based Reader through 1877 is an affordable and excellent addition to any United States history course's reading list for the period through 1877. This activities based reader challenges students to go beyond just reading the documents of our nation's founding. It engages them with probing questions and activities to evaluate the interpretation and understanding of each reading. The book is priced very affordably, so any instructor can add it to their course's reading list.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 Early Colonial Era (to 1670)

El Requerimiento (1513)

Bartolomé de las Casas: A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies (1542) 

MayflowerCompact (1620)

Letter from Richard Frethorne to His Parents (1623)

Dutch grant “half-freedom” to slaves held in New Netherland (1644)

Virginia Slave Codes (1662 – 1670)

Chapter 2 Middle to Late Colonial (1671-1763)

Bacon’s Rebellion: The Declaration (1676)

Elizabeth Howe is tried for witchcraft (1692)

Price List for Philadelphia from The American Mercury (1731)

Benjamin Franklin’s  “Join, or Die” (1754)

Albany Plan: (1754)

Benjamin Franklin; 13 Virtues (1771)

Chapter 3 The Revolutionary Era (1767)

Declaration of Rights and Grievances of the Stamp Act Congress (1765)

Advertisements for Slaves (1766 & 1769)

Paul Revere: The Bloody Massacre (1770)

Obituary of Patrick Carr (1770)

First Continental Congress: Declaration and Resolves (1774)

Dunmore’s Proclamation: Freedom Declared for Those Joining his Majesty’s Troops (1775)

Abigail Adams and John Adams: The “Remember the Ladies” Letters (1776)

Thomas Paine: Common Sense (1776)

The Declaration of Independence (1776)

Petition of Prince Hall to the Massachusetts Legislature (1777)

Chapter 4 Early American Republic (1788-1819)

The Bill of Rights (1789, 1791)

Amelia Simmons, An American Orphan: Preface to American Cookery (1796)

Sedition Act (1798)

James Madison:  Virginia Resolution (1798)

Tecumseh: Speech to Major General Henry Procter at Fort Malden (1813) 

Tapping Reeve: The Law of Baron and Femme (1816)

Chapter 5  Antebellum Era (1820-1860)

Cherokee Objection to Removal (1829)

Andrew Jackson: Second Annual Message to Congress (1830)

Sarah Mapps Douglass: Mental Feasts (1832)

Prudence Crandall: Advertisement for Her School (1833)

Catharine Beecher: A Treatise on Domestic Economy (1841)

Seneca Falls Convention: Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions (1848)

Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848)

Henry David Thoreau: On the Duty of Civil Disobedience (1849)

Amelia Bloomer: The Lily, “Mrs. Kemble and Her New Costume” (1849)

Chapter 6 Civil War & Reconstruction Era (1860-1877)

A Declaration of the Causes Which Impel the State of Texas to Secede from the Federal Union [1861]

Sarah Morgan, A Confederate Girl’s Diary (1862)

Abraham Lincoln: The Emancipation Proclamation (1863)

Abraham Lincoln: Gettysburg Address (1863)

13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments (1865 – 1870)

Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass: Debate Over Women’s Suffrage (1869)