I. The Nation Divided (1845 – 1865)

• Prelude to Conflict: the “Peculiar Institution” of the South---Slavery; King Cotton; Abolitionists and the Underground Railway; Bleeding Kansas---rehearsing for the real thing; efforts at political compromise fail; John Brown; Lincoln; the Confederate States of America.

• Civil War: the rebels advance, and the Union teeters; riots in the North; slaughter and stalemate; Gettysburg turns the tide of war; Grant, Sherman, and the collapse of the Confederacy.

• Reconstruction: the effects of Emancipation; carpetbaggers; Jim Crow, and the Ku Klux Klan.

• The Western Frontier: Manifest Destiny---America from sea to sea; White Men and Red Men---breaking treaties, breaking heads, breaking nations; the Railroads; range wars; and the California Gold Rush.

 
• From Farm to Factory: the Industrial Revolution in full bloom; waves of immigrants fuel the cities; new technologies transforming the nation; the rise of public schools.

 
• Carrying a Big Stick: the U.S. abroad---in Latin America, in Asia, in the Pacific; an American “empire?”

III.   Blood, Boom & Bust: WWI to the Depression (1915 – 1939)

• The “Great War”: dying by millions in the mud; the machine gun and other new ways to kill; Woodrow Wilson and the League of Nations.

 
• Frontlines at Home: Suffragettes, Teetotalers, and the rising movement for African-American civil rights.

• When the party’s over: the Roaring Twenties turn to Dust

• Fascism on the march: Italy, Spain, Germany, and Japan.

 
• The Sleeping Giant: America sits on the sidelines while Hitler dines on Europe; the wake-up call at Pearl Harbor; mobilization---the nation gets down to the business of war.

 
• A World of Death

 
• America triumphant