Wheeler & Becker, Discovering The American Past - A Look At The Evidence

Abstract

This work is offered as a supplemental book for survey courses in American history. In the preface, the authors state that they believe their "doing history" approach effective for "seminars, small classes, and large lecture classes with discussion sections." Eleven episodes are presented for analysis: early explorer-Indian contacts, the religious trial of Anne Hutchinson in Massachusetts Bay (1637), a demographic study of social trends in the Massachusetts Bay colony, eye-witness accounts of the "Boston Massacre," the 1794 congressional election in Philadelphia, debates on manhood suffrage in the New York constitutional convention of 1821, the conditions and attitudes of girl workers in the textile factories of Lowell, Massachusetts, stories and songs of blacks under slavery, U.S. politics and diplomacy leading to the Mexican War, the question of black-soldier enlistment on both sides of the Civil War, and the work of New York cartoonist Thomas Nast.