HIST 250 - United States History to 1865

3 credit (3 lecture, 0 lab) 3 contact hours [Minimum Reading score of 82 on Compass or ENGL 051 ]*

This course critically examines America’s past from before the European takeover and domination of the North American continent until a young but increasingly powerful United States is ripped apart by Civil War. Conflicts between individualism and collectivism and nationalism and sectionalism and conflicts between social classes and ethnic groups are examined. Attention is given to social history, which involves the effort to explore history “from the bottom-up” through the eyes and everyday experiences of common, working-class people preoccupied not with the great events of the day, but with the day-to-day business of living. This course focuses on America before the European invasion; native American cultures; early settlements; the variety of colonial experience and regional differences; independence, war and nationhood; the Constitution; economic growth; an emerging American culture; territorial expansion and manifest destiny; nationalism and sectionalism; North/South Conflict; and the Civil War in an effort to contribute to the understanding of America’s infancy and early youth.
OFFERED: fall semesters