HIST 496C Thesis: The US in the Long Nineteenth Century, 1790-1920
The "long" nineteenth century - the years from 1790 to 1920 - saw the United States grow from a fledgling seaboard nation to a continental republic and a quasi-empire. As the period dawned, Thomas Jefferson imagined a rural, agrarian future for the United States, and Abigail Adams unsuccessfully urged her husband John to "remember the ladies" in making laws. By the period's end, the US was the world's largest industrial economy, most of its people lived in cities and towns, and women's fight for political inclusion produced a 19th Amendment to the Constitution. In between, a Civil War begun in the name of destroying the Union and preserving slavery ended up doing the reverse. Struggles over the citizenship and rights of African Americans took place alongside debates about the nation's treatment of native Americans and of the millions of immigrants who swelled its population.
Students in this section of Senior Thesis Seminar may research any period and topic in the history of the United States during the long nineteenth century, from the early republic to the Civil War and Reconstruction, from the rise of urban, industrial America to the reform movements of the Progressive Era. Projects in all fields of history are welcome: politics, diplomacy, and war; immigration, ethnicity, and race; and cultural, religious, and intellectual life.
Prerequisite
Open to History majors and minors only