MIT OpenCourseWare http://ocw.mit.edu 21H.112 The American Revolution Spring 2006 For information about citing these materials or our Terms of Use, visit: http://ocw.mit.edu/terms.21H112, spring 2005, p.2 21H112. THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. Spring 2005. TR 10-30-12. Instructor: Prof. Pauline Maier REQUIREMENTS: (1) Class attendance and participation in discussions, which will focus upon the readings assigned for the week. (2) A research paper of about 15 pages in length. Papers should answer a carefully posed historical question and be based to a considerable extent upon primary sources, that is, documents that for most topics will be from the eighteenth century. The papers can focus upon any aspect of the Revolution, but must go beyond work done in class. All topics must be approved on or before Tuesday, April 12. The final papers must include footnotes or endnotes and a bibliography composed in a correct and comprehensible form. They are due on Friday, May 6, but will be accepted without penalty up through the last meeting of the class on Thursday, May 12. (4) A midterm in-class examination on March 17 and a scheduled final examination. ASSIGNED BOOKS: Anderson, Fred. A People's Army: Massachusetts Soldiers in the Seven Years War. UNC reprint paperback of 1996. ISBN 0807845760 Jensen, Merrill, ed. Tracts of the American Revolution, 1763-1776. Hackett Publishing, ISBN 0872206939. Locke, John. Second Treatise of Government. Any unabridged edition. Recommended edition: Peter Laslett, ed., John Locke. Two Treatises of Government. Cambridge University Press paperback. ISBN 0521357306 Maier, Pauline. From Resistance to Revolution: Colonial Radicals and the Development of American Resistance to Britain, 1765-1776. Norton paperback. ISBN 0393308251 Morison, Samuel Eliot, ed. Sources and Documents Illustrating the American Revolution. Oxford University Press paperback. ISBN 0195002628 Readings for 21H112, The American Revolution. Available for private Xeroxing in the Humanities Library. Shy, John. A People Numerous and Armed. Revised edition, University of Michigan Press paperback. ISBN 0472064312 Wood, Gordon S., The American Revolution: A History. Modern Library Chronicles; New York, 2002. ISBN 0679640576 READING SCHEDULE: February 1-3. Introduction and Historiography. Background: Society, Economy, Politics and Government, America and Britain. Wood, American Revolution, xxiii-xv, 3-24. Maier, From Resistance to Revolution, to p. 26. Anderson, A People's Army, vii-xi, 3-164, 185-210, 222-23. February 8-10. Background, continued, and Ideology.21H112, spring 2005, p.3 Locke, Second Treatise of Government, chs. 1-4, 8-13, 17-19. Maier, From Resistance to Revolution, 27- 48. February 15-17. Overview of the Independence Movement; American and British Arguments, 1764-1770. Wood, American Revolution, 27-44. Maier, From Resistance to Revolution, 51-157. Especially for Feb. 17: Stephen Hopkins, "Essay on Trade" (1764); Hopkins, “The Rights of Colonies Examined” (later 1764); Daniel Dulany, “Considerations on the Propriety of Imposing Taxes in the British Colonies…” (1765); Richard Bland, “An Inquiry into the Rights of the British Colonies” (1766) (note the quotations from a British writer---Thomas Whately---that Bland includes), and John Dickinson, “Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania…” (1768) in Merrill Jensen, ed., Tracts of the American Revolution, pp. 3-18, 41-62, 94-163. Also Morison, Sources and Documents, 14-24, which includes the Virginia Resolutions of 1765 and Soam Jenyns, “The Objections to the Taxation of our American Colonies by the Legislature of Great Britain, briefly consider’d” (London, 1765). NOTE: It's a good idea read the pamphlets in chronological order. How did the American argument shift between the two Hopkins pamphlets, and between Dulany and Dickinson? If you can identify where an author is saying what everyone is saying and focus instead on what's new, and on how the American position is developing (the British didn't change much), you'll be reading efficiently and intelligently. It might take some practice to get the hang of that. Be sure to take notes on each pamphlet immediately after finishing it or all of them will quickly melt together in your mind. February 22: Monday schedule. February 24. Resistance, 1764-1770. Accounts of the Stamp Act uprisings, the Sons of Liberty, and the Virginia Association of 1770 in "Readings." March 1-3. From Resistance to Revolution, 1770-1776. Wood, American Revolution, 47-62. Maier, From Resistance to Revolution, 161-296. Jefferson, "Summary View" (1774), and Paine’s “Common Sense,” in Jensen, Tracts, 256-76, 400-446. Morison, Sources and Documents, 100-115 (Wilson, 1774), 116-25, 137-48. (The discussion will focus on the primary sources, i.e. the last three items on the assigned readings. What distinguishes Wilson and Jefferson from Dickinson’s “Farmer’s Letters”? Is Paine’s Common Sense a logical outgrowth of the line of argument American pamphlets had taken, or something else altogether? How exactly did Paine justify Independence? Was he convincing? Was he moving? More so than others? Why?)21H112, spring 2005, p.4 March 8-10. Declarations of Independence; Loyalism. Especially for March 8: American state and local resolutions on independence; the English Declaration of Rights (1789); Jefferson's draft preamble for the Virginia constitution of 1776 (May-June 1776); an early draft of the Virginia Declaration of Rights (by George Mason) that appeared in the Pennsylvania Gazette, June 12, 1776; the Jefferson/committee draft of the Declaration of Independence with Congress’s editings, in “Readings.” The main focus of discussion will be the draft Declaration with Congress’s editings. What did Congress do, and why? (You might also take a look at Morison’s version of the preamble to the Virginia constitution on p. 151 of Sources and Documents and see if you notice anything odd.) Especially for March 10: Joseph Galloway, “A Candid Examination of the Mutual Claims of Great Britain, And the Colonies” (1775); James Chalmers, “Plain Truth” (1776), in Jensen, Tracts, 350-99, 447-88. Also Mary Beth Norton, "The Loyalist Critique of the Revolution,” The Development of a Revolutionary Mentality… (Washington, D.C., 1972), pp. 127-48, in "Readings." March 15. The British