History 150: "The Colonial &
Revolutionary Tidewater"
J.P. Whittenburg
Email: jpwhit@wm.edu
Office: James Blair Hall 330/331
Web Page: http://jpwhit.people.wm.edu/
Telephone: 757-221-3725
Office Hours: By Appointment
This isn't your typical
class. For one thing, we meet on SATURDAYS ONLY--and
usually for the better part of the day. For another, we will spend most of
our class time "on-site" at archaeological excavations, museums,
or inside standing (or ruined) historic buildings. The schedule says the starting
time is 8:00am, but most of the time we’ll gather in James Blair 219
at 8:30. Only when we have a long drive will I ask you to come
earlier than that. I'll bring coffee, tea, and donuts each Saturday morning.
A word on attendance:
I’ve tried to make the nature of this beast—a course that meets all day once
a week on Saturdays—apparent. There are plenty of valid reasons for NOT being
able to follow such a strange schedule—jobs, sports, etc.—but I cannot change
the way the class works to accommodate them. I can work around maybe one absence
(ie., one absence that does
not involve a medical situation or would for some other reason be excised
by the Dean of Students). If you have other things you must do on multiple
Saturdays, better to switch to another class.
This class will concentrate
on the period from the founding of Jamestown in 1607 through roughly the death of Thomas Jefferson
in 1826, but it is not at all a narrative that follows a neat time-line. I’ll
make no attempt to touch on every important theme and we’ll depart from the
chronological approach whenever targets of opportunities present themselves.
As we have another course (History 220) that deals exclusively with Colonial
Williamsburg, this class will focus mainly on “not-Colonial Williamsburg.” By this I simply mean that, instead of taking you
to "CW" for a series of fieldtrips, I will mostly make assignments
for you to visit specific places and events there on week days prior to our
Saturday class meetings. The Restored Area is easily accessible by foot, your
William & Mary ID cards will get you into all the exhibitions, and Colonial
Williamsburg generally does a terrific job of interpretation. These are not optional activities: we'll incorporate
what you see and hear at CW into our class discussions. By asking you to visit
specific places at CW ahead of time and by matching them up with places we'll
visit on Saturday, I've been able to add a few new fieldtrips to our itinerary.
I'll begin most classes
with some sort of short background session--could be a clip from a movie,
could be oral reports, or maybe something from the Internet. As soon as possible,
though, we'll be into a van and on the road. Now, travel time can be tricky
and I do hate to rush students when we are on-site. I'll shoot for getting
people back in time for a reasonably early dinner--say 5:00.
BUT there will surely be times when we'll get back
later than that. If these admitted eccentricities are deeply troubling, I'd
recommend dropping the course. No harm, no foul—and no hard feelings.
I've always held discussions
in this class over an extended lunch hour. In my opinion, the food has added
considerably to the fun of the course, and I'd like to retain the feature.
We'll picnic some of the time. (pizza or sandwiches)
On those days, I will take orders for food by email and you can reimburse
me. When we eat at a sit-down restaurant, I'll usually put the entire bill
on a credit card and, again, you can reimburse me. Whenever possible, I'll
post a link to a menu on the class website several days before the trip.
Costs beyond the food
might include computer supplies, photographic supplies/services (optional),
and maybe some printing and photocopying. This is all "heap cheap,"
especially in view of....
Readings: Everything
is available FREE on-line! All of the readings we'll
use are available from Blackboard under this course--History
150W-08. Just go to "COURSE DOCUMENTS."
The readings include
both essays from the country's leading professional journals and chapters
from key monographs. In all, you have here a selection of the most important
writing on the early Chesapeake over the last fifty years (plus a "fun" piece
or two). You may read these essays and book chapters on-line or print them
out first. No need to bring them to class. Typically, there will be two or
three essays or chapters to mull over for each Saturday. Our Blackboard site
also includes a digital copy of the writing guide for this course: Mary Lynn
Rampolla, A Pocket Guide to Writing in History (2006).
If you would like to purchase a paper copy, I'd suggest doing it on-line.
The ISBN is 1031244673X, but any edition is fine. You'll need Adobe Acrobat
Reader to view the readings for this class. If you need to install it,
you can download it here:
Requirements
& Grades: Students generally want to know every little thing about
the grading system, but truth be known, it is all
pretty-much a subjective process and in the end I will evaluate the totality
of your work over the course of the semester. Admittedly, many students find
this ambiguity unsettling during the semester, but few seem to think the grades
unfair in the end. Keep in mind that A grades are reserved
for EXCEPTIONAL work, and to win an A for
the course means hitting on just about all cylinders just about all of the
time. The grade of B covers a much wider range of perfectly
acceptable, even superior, performance. Any student who scrambles over all
the course requirements and delivers even a modest effort should have no trouble
attaining a C--acceptable, but undistinguished. To receive
a final grade lower than C, a student in this class would
simply have to stop trying. I do use pluses and minuses, by the way.
As I am incapable of higher mathematics, I have devised
"the rule of quarters." Each component of the course will determine
25% (more-or-less) of your grade for the course:
I. Electronic
Journal (25%):
The writing you do in
this class will take the form of an electronic journal in which you will write
a weekly entry that includes both text and images pertaining to our field
trips, readings, and class discussions. NO COMPUTING EXPERTISE IS
ANTICIPATED—I WILL TEACH YOU ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW. You
can check out some recent examples of these electronic journals here: http://www.wm.edu/niahd/journals.
You will also log on at this site to begin and maintain your own journal.
These journals are on-line, so anyone with access to the Internet (like parents
and deans) can view them, so please use good taste. What you write
is the key, and the greatest tool you have is the English language. It is
the medium of William Shakespeare and Jane Austen; Rhys Isaac and Edmund Morgan.
It is free to you for the taking. Don't abuse it.
I will assign you a
very simple digital camera with which you will be able to record fieldtrips
in a visual way and from which you may upload images to your on-line journal.
If you have your own digital camera, you are certainly free to use it instead.
You may use any of the images you take as "art" for your journal,
but you can also use absolutely any images you can find on the internet. I'll
give you plenty of help with that. While it is certainly true that what you
write is more important than these digital images, the photos can provide
very useful “talking points” for your prose. In any event, you MUST
post at least three images per fieldtrip. They can come from the internet,
indeed from any source, as well as from the digital camera. There is provision
for identifying the source of the images as you place them in your journal.
The electronic journal
must be complete by 5:00pm on the Monday following the end of class (Monday, 10
December). Length is unimportant. Quality is everything. I will expect to
see evidence of (1) a grasp of the major points in the readings, (2) critical
evaluation of the meaning of the museums or historic sites in relationship
to the themes expressed in the readings, (3) an understanding of the class
discussions. Although this "electronic term paper" will be a work
in progress without formal grades until I evaluate it as a whole at the end
of the semester, I will look at it weekly and give you feedback from time
to time.
History graduate student
Amy Green will be working with me this semester as an apprentice teacher.
I am asking Amy to serve as our own private "History Writing Resources Center." She will read your entries and email comments
to you, both about expression and about analysis. You will also be able to
make appointments to come to James Blair Hall to discuss the journals with
her face-to-face. You can email her by clicking on her photo below.
Amy
Green
II.
Oral Reports (25%): Each of you will
undertake two oral reports that stress the presentation of factual information
linked in some way to the week's topic. The research should be easily accomplished
from readily-available material on the Internet, in Swem
Library or from the Colonial Williamsburg Research Library (where you will
be welcome, by the way, and where you will have borrowing privileges if you
fill out some paperwork). I'll be happy to guide you to additional places
to look. My purpose is to have you become familiar with a few of the most
basic sources of factual information about early American History and to provide
in your reports some "take off points" for class discussions. You'll
get the topic assignments approximately one week ahead of time. If you will
email me an outline of the report by 5:00 pm on the Thursday prior to your
time at center stage, I'll alert you if anything is amiss and suggest additional
sources if you need them. These are to be SHORT reports--no
more than 5 minutes--sometimes delivered before we depart, sometimes at lunch,
sometimes in the middle of a site visit. Think of them this way: You are
standing near the punch bowl at a party. Two or three people come up and demand
that you explain your topic to them. In the space of consuming one glass of
punch and two crackers loaded with Brie, what would you tell them?
III: Classtime
Discussions (25%):
As much of the discussion
for any week will take place over lunch, we'll often do a lot of talking before
we even see whatever it is we came to see after lunch, which in turn privileges
the readings. Indeed, the only preparation I will expect is that you have
a firm grasp of the readings. There will be also ample opportunity to talk
as we poke around the places we visit and on the way home--anyplace we have
an opening for an impromptu seminar session. Here again you are subject to
my appallingly subjective evaluation of your participation in all class time
activities.
IV: Final Exam
(25%):
The exam will consist
of short-answer questions that will require you to know the readings and be
able to relate them to the sites we'll visit and the discussions we'll have.
I’ll talk more with you about this component toward the end of the course.
Schedule
The schedule below is
tentative, but probably about right.
Background reading:
These two chapters from
Alan Taylor's textbook on colonial America might be useful to any of you who feel you'd like a
better background. They would probably be interesting to everybody. BUT they
are NOT required:
Alan Taylor, "Virginia, 1570-1650" and "Chesapeake Colonies, 1650-1750,"
chapters 6 & 7 from his book, American Colonies: The Settling of North America (2001), pp. 117-157.
1 September: Outpost of Empire—What really happened at Jamestown?
Theme:
There are several competing explanations
for the near-failure of Virginia under the Company, 1607-1624. Some historians argue
for poor management by the Virginia Company. Recent archaeological excavations
seem to undercut that thesis, and even to cast doubt of the long-accepted
notion that Jamestown nearly failed. Certainly, however, the "starving
time" was a reality. It may be that environmental factors hold the key
to understanding that bleak period of Virginia history, or maybe it was the state of mind of the colonists.
Since we’re on “the island,” we’ll also jump ahead to the post-fort era when
Jamestown became—for about 75 years—a true urban place—a city
of surprising size and elegance, when compared to the first decade or so when
the rough timber walls of the fort symbolized the place.
Sites:
Colonial National Park Jamestown
Island
Association for the Preservation of
Virginia Antiquities/Rediscovery Archaeology Project
Readings:
Carville
V. Earle, "Environment, Disease, and Mortality in Early Virginia," in Thad W. Tate & David L. Ammerman, eds., The Chesapeake in the Seventeenth Century: Essays on Anglo-American
Society (Chapel Hill, 1979), pp.
95-125.
Karen Ordahl Kupperman, "Apathy and Death in Early Jamestown," The Journal of American
History, Vol. 66, No. 1.
(Jun., 1979), pp. 24-40.
Lunch:
Jamestown Pizza (picnic)
8 September: Worlds Colliding
Theme:
Almost as soon as the English landed
at Jamestown, they busied themselves with finding a source of profit
from the Virginia enterprise. After many failed experiments and a continuing
bloody struggle with Native Americans, the English hit upon tobacco, which
required massive amounts of both land and labor. For more than fifty years,
white indentured servants from England itself supplied labor for Virginia's tobacco fields, but in one of the most fateful events
in American history, 20 Africans were sold into indentured servitude in Virginia by Dutch traders. By mid-century, racial slavery was
a fact in Virginia, and another half-century later, slaves were the primary
labor force.
Sites:
Jamestown Settlement
Readings:
Edmund
S. Morgan, “The Labor Problem at Jamestown, 1607-18.” The American Historical
Review, Vol. 76, No. 3 (Jun., 1971), pp. 595-611.
James
Axtell, "The Rise and Fall of the Powhatan Empire,"
chapter ten in After Columbus: Essays in the Ethnohistory of Colonial North America (1988), pp. 233-258.
John
Thornton, "The African Experience of the '20. and
Odd Negroes' Arriving in Virginia in 1619," William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd
Ser., Vol. 55, No. 3. (Jul., 1998), pp. 421-434.
Lunch: The Backfin Restaurant
15 September: Founded Wholly on Smoke
Theme:
King James once remarked that Virginia was founded "wholly on smoke." By that he
meant the tobacco trade. The king might as well have included Virginia's neighbor in the Chesapeake region, Maryland, which had actually been a part of Virginia prior to 1632, when the King gave the triangle-shaped
colony to his friend, Cecil Calvert, later Lord Baltimore. Just as much as
Virginia, early Maryland was devoted to tobacco, and society there was equally
warped by the "sot-weed" trade. At St. Mary’s, we’ll find a recreated
tobacco farm from the second half of the seventeenth century, archaeology
sites, and most of a recreated town from the same era.
Sites:
Historic St. Mary's City, Maryland
Readings:
Ebenezer Cook, "The Sot-Weed Factor, or A Voyage
to Maryland (a Sytar)"
(circa. 1630), entire poem.
Edmund
S. Morgan, “The First American Boom: Virginia, 1618 to 1630,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd.
Ser., Vol. 28, No. 2 (Apr., 1971), pp. 169-198.
T.
H. Breen, "Looking Out for Number One: Conflicting Values in Early Seventeenth-Century
Virginia," The South Atlantic Quarterly, 78 (Summer
1979), pp. 342-360.
Lunch: Picnic at St. Mary’s
22 September: Virginia in the Era of Bacon's Rebellion
Theme: By the middle of the seventeenth century, a true gentry class had taken shape in Virginia. It distinguished itself from the yeomanry and from
servants through elements of lifestyle such as the first grand plantation
homes, of which only "Bacon's Castle" (1665) survives. In large
measure, the gentry rose to their exalted position by exploiting the majority
of Virginians—white indentured servants, whites just emerging from the servant
class, and the ever-increasing number of African slaves. In 1676, discontent
boiled over into Bacon's Rebellion. Bacon was never at the Castle, but his
men garrisoned it, hence the name. South of the Castle, St, Luke’s church
offers a good look at parish churches from the era of Bacon’s Rebellion. As
out-of-chronology extras, we’ll visit an 1850s slave
house at Bacon’s castle and an 18th-century courthouse in Smithfield.
Sites:
Bacon's Castle & slave house
St. Luke’s Church
Isle of Wight Courthouse
Readings:
T.
H. Breen, "A Changing Labor Force and Race Relations in Virginia, 1660-1710," Journal of Social History,
VII (1973), pp. 3-25.
Edmund
S. Morgan, "Discontent," from his book, American Slavery, American
Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia (1975), pp.
235-249.
Mark
R. Wenger, "The Central Passage in Virginia: Evolution of an Eighteenth-Century Living Space,"
in Camille Wells, ed. Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture, II (1986),
pp. 137-149.
Lunch:
The Smithfield Ice Cream Shop
29 September: Pride & Prejudice
Theme: Following Bacon's Rebellion in 1676, the great gentry
families consolidated their power in Virginia. They used marriage to create family alliances that
promoted a "super gentry" whose lifestyles set them quite apart
from almost everyone else. Beginning as early as 1720, their great power,
wealth, and access to massive amounts of slave labor allowed them to begin
to build homes that were unlike those of earlier Virginia in terms of size and quality. Many a great family fortune
was under great financial stress as a result of individual- or family-wide-building
campaigns. But ownership of a “great house” was early-on a necessary component
of being gentry. The great "river plantations" like Shirley and
Westover tell us much about the Georgian Age of the Chesapeake. We’ll see two: Shirley and Westover, and discuss the
intertwined lives of the families there: the Carters and the Byrds.
Sites:
Shirley Plantation
Westover Plantation
Readings:
Paula
Treckel, "'The Empire of My Heart': The Marriage
of William Byrd II and Lucy Parke Byrd," Virginia Magazine of History
& Biography, 105, no. 2 (1997), pp. 125-156.
T.
H. Breen, "Horses and Gentlemen: The Cultural Significance of Gambling
among the Gentry of Virginia," William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd. Ser.,
Vol. 34, No. 2 (Apr., 1977), pp. 239-257.
Michael
Olmert, "Necessary and Sufficient," Colonial
Williamsburg: The Journal of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation,
XXIV (Autumn 2002), 33-36.
Lunch: Picnic at Shirley Plantation
6 October: Culture Wars: The Ruins of Rosewell
& Christ Church
Theme:
Along with churches and courthouses,
great houses became the key features of the rural landscape in eighteenth-century
Virginia. Many houses and churches were begun early in the century
but only finished (if they ever were finished) very late in the colonial era.
At a place like Christ Church, the presence of the greatest of all gentry patriarchs—Robert “King” Carter (1663-1732) —is still keenly felt. Carter’s mansion, “Corotoman” no longer stands, but we can see “Rosewell" on the way to Christ Church, using it bas a sort-of stand-in. Generally considered
the grandest private residence of eighteenth-century America, Rosewell was home to the
powerful Page family. Like Corotman, it burned,
but the ruins have been preserved. By the time of the Great Awakening, however,
the hegemony of the Anglican gentry was under fire from a perhaps surprising
quarter. The Evangelical Baptists found nothing to like about the lifestyle
of the gentry and did not hesitate to tell them so.
Sites:
Historic Christ Church
Ruins of Rosewell
Plantation
Site
of King Carter’s “Corotoman”
Please
visit Bruton Parish
Church in Colonial Williamsburg during the week prior to
this trip.
Readings:
Carter
L. Hudgins, "Robert 'King' Carter and the Landscape of Tidewater Virginia in the Eighteenth Century," in William M. Kelso,
ed., Earth Patterns: Essays in Landscape Archeology (1990), pp. 59-70.Century
Chesapeake (Ithaca, 1980), pp. 55-125.
Rhys
Isaac, “Evangelical Revolt: The Nature of the Baptists' Challenge to the Traditional
Order in Virginia, 1765 to 1775,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd. Ser.,
Vol. 31, No. 3 (Jul., 1974), pp. 345-368.
Lunch: Willaby's Café,
White Stone, VA
13 October: Fall Break
20 October: Patrick Henry’s Virginia: Deference or Democracy?
Theme:
Patrick Henry (1736-1799) emerged
in the 1770s as a radical advocate of independence, a position he articulated
in his unforgettable "Give me liberty or give me death" speech at
St. John's
Church. He often walked a fine line between courting the popular
will to protect the common good, on the one hand, and mob rule, on the other.
But Henry was also the product of the conservative Virginia system in which money and power were concentrated in
the hand of only a few extremely prominent families--the "super gentry."
Like churches and "great houses," courthouses such as the one for
Hanover County--where Henry argued the "Parson’s Cause" (an
important step down the road to Revolution) in 1763--were bastions and symbols
of gentry power and of the deferential political system they dominated. Henry
never made it into that highest echelon of colonial society, and through his
revolutionary activity, he helped to pull it down. Is that what he intended?
Sites:
Scotchtown (Patrick Henry's plantation),
Hanover County, VA
Hanover
County Courthouse, Hanover County, VA
Hanover Tavern, Hanover, VA
St. John’s Church, Richmond,
VA
Please visit
the Public Hospital,
the Raleigh
Tavern, and the Courthouse of 1770
in Colonial Williamsburg during the week prior to this trip.
Readings:
Pauline Maier, "Popular Uprisings and Civil Authority
in Eighteenth-Century America," The William and Mary Quarterly,
3rd Ser., Vol. 27, No. 1. (Jan.,1970),
pp. 3-35.
A.
G. Roeber, "Authority, Law, and Custom: The
Rituals of Court Day in Tidewater, Virginia, 1720 to 1750," William and Mary Quarterly,
3rd Ser., Vol. 37, No. 1. (Jan.,1980), pp. 29-52.
Polly
Longsworth, " 'I am murdered': Trial and Acquittal
in the Wake of George Wythe's Death," Colonial
Williamsburg: The Journal of Colonial Williamsburg
(Spring 1986), pp. 5-11.
Lunch: Hanover Tavern
27 October: The World Turned Upside-Down
Theme: The objectives of the American War for Independence reflected a mixture of aspirations from many sections
of colonial society. The emphasis on equality or democracy--indeed, the very
definitions of liberty and freedom--differed greatly depending upon your condition
in life, your race, and your gender. Society in Revolutionary Virginia was
deeply divided by considerations of race and class throughout the war. Did
those internal divisions affect the war effort? In 1780, the British embarked
upon a new "Southern" military strategy. General Charles Cornwallis
succeeded at first in the Carolinas, but after suffering reverses, he decided to invade
Virginia. That provided the Americans with an opportunity to
bring to bear the potential military power of their alliance with France, and in October 1781 the allied Franco-American forces
under General George Washington and the Compte de
Rochambeau forced Cornwallis to surrender at Yorktown.
By the time the Revolutionary War ended, there was also subtle evidence of
a parallel liberalization in the status of women, including some teenaged
young women from Yorktown.
Sites:
Yorktown Victory Center
Yorktown
Yorktown Battlefield
Please
visit the Governor's
Palace and the Magazine
in Colonial Williamsburg during the week prior to this trip
Readings:
Woody
Holton, " 'Rebel Against Rebel': Enslaved Virginians
and the Coming of the Revolution," Virginia Magazine of History &
Biography, 105 (Spring 1997), pp. 157-192.
Catherine
Kerrison, "By the Book: Eliza Ambler Brent
Carrington and Conduct Literature in Late Eighteenth-Century Virginia," Virginia Magazine of History & Biography,
105 (Winter 1997), pp. 27-52.
Lunch: Carrot
Tree Restaurant, Yorktown
28 October: OPTIONAL Barbeque at the Ruins of Rosewell
Theme: A favorite haunt of Thomas Jefferson, Rosewell was probably the most impressive private home in
British North America—three full stories with magnificent details. The Page
family seat, it was begun about 1725 and survived until 1916, when it burned.
The ruins are spectacular in their own right—worthy of Edgar Allen Poe. Each
fall the Rosewell Foundation sponsors a barbecue
at the ruins. It is on a Sunday, includes some fabulous food, great live music,
and a silent auction. If you’d like to come with me, I'll cover the cost.
Sites:
Ruins of Rosewell Plantation,
Gloucester County, VA
Readings: NONE
Lunch: Barbeque at Rosewell
3 November: The Warrior
in Peacetime
Theme: The Early
Republic was a mixture of exciting opportunities for great political
and economic success--and the danger of equally spectacular failures. The
unfortunate post-Revolutionary career of General Light Horse Harry Lee (1756-1818)--a
favorite of George Washington, a staunch Federalist, and governor of Virginia after the Revolution--is an example of the darker side
of the era. In war a bold and able man, Lee over-extended himself in all manner
of speculative peacetime ventures and at one point went into debtor’s prison.
Nonetheless, he remade ancient Stratford Hall to reflect new styles appropriate
for a mover-and-shaker of the Federal era. At the same time, women of the
early republic such as Harry's second wife, Anne Hill Carter of Shirley Plantation,
were urged to take on a new role as agents of morality and civic responsibility
who molded their husbands and sons into responsible republican men. How well
did Ann Hill Carter succeed? Light Horse Harry's career is one sort of evidence.
The life of their son--Robert E. Lee--might be said to offer another sort
of evidence. One wonders also how, had he lived that long, the old Revolutionary
War general might have viewed his son's decision to make savage war on the
federal union that Light Horse Harry so cherished.
Sites:
Stratford Hall, Westmoreland County, VA
Please
visit the Public
Gaol in Colonial Williamsburg during the week
prior to this trip
Readings:
Charles
Royster, Light Horse Harry Lee and the Legacy
of the American Revolution (1981), pp. 56-185.
Jan
Lewis, "The Republican Wife: Virtue and Seduction in the Early Republic,"
William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser., Vol. 44, No. 4. (1987), pp.
689-721.
Lunch: Stratford Hall Dining Hall
10 November: The Merchant of Norfolk
Theme: Born in New
York to an émigré Jewish family from Amsterdam,
Moses Myers (1753-1835) ran the Amsterdam
branch of the New York merchant
house, Isaac Moses & Sons, during the American Revolution. The
1787 passage of the Bill of Religious Toleration by the new State of Virginia
apparently was the spur to his decision to relocate to Norfolk.
Moses married Eliza Judah Chapman, a young Canadian widow on Passover Eve
in 1787. They moved to Norfolk
in March, the first Jewish household in the town. Thereafter, the couple produced
children at the rate of about one every fourteen months. Myers soon emerged
as the most important import merchant in the port and one of the most important
in the new nation. As his financial standing rose, so did his social prominence.
In 1792 Myers built a two-story brick townhouse in the Federal style to reflect
that rising status. About 1796 a two-story octagon ended wing was added as
a dinning room--a space in which to take social advantage of the new trends
in entertaining. The Myers family represents the up side the just-post-Revolutionary
era--sometimes called the "Revolutionary Settlement." With seemingly
everything in flux, the times were ripe for success, if one could be bold,
skillful, AND fortunate.
Sites:
Moses
Myers House, Norfolk
Readings:
Richard L. Bushman, "Bodies and
Minds," chapter III from his book, The Refinement of America:
Persons, Houses, Cities (1992), pp 61-99.
Mark R. Wenger, "The Dining Room
in Early Virginia," in
Thomas Carter & Bernard L. Herman, eds., Perspectives in Vernacular
Architecture, III (1989), pp. 149-159.
Lunch:
Doumar's Drive-In,
Norfolk
17 November: First in War, First in Peace, & First in the
Hearts of His Countrymen
No
early American was more important to the American Revolution, and therefore
to the history of the “First New Nation” than George Washington (1732-1799).
He was not a master tactician, a great strategist, nor a gifted intellectual.
He was, however, the quintessential leader, who by force of will kept the
Continental Army in the field long enough to win an improbable victory over
Great Britain. A great politician but not a great political thinker,
Washington provided equally essential service to the country after
independence as the one person capable of holding the fledgling federal government
together. Over all of this time and more, Washington showed enormous personal growth, and in the end, freed
the Mount Vernon
slaves. At his home on the Potomac, we will investigate the nature of the man and the forces
that shaped his life. We will also consider George and Martha Washington as
key players in the new social world of the New Nation.
Sites: Mount Vernon
Readings:
Joseph
J. Ellis, “The Farewell,” from his book, Founding
Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation (2000),
120-161.
Barbara G. Carson, "Ways to Make
a Meal," from her book, Ambitious
Appetites: Dining, Behavior, and Patterns of Consumption in Federal Washington (1990),
24-57.
Lunch: Mount Vernon Inn
24 November Thanksgiving Break
1 December: Race and the Alumnus on "Little Mountain”
Theme: William & Mary alumnus
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) mirrored the contradictions in American life
after the Revolution. The quintessential advocate of liberty for white men,
he owned slaves his entire life, including Sally Hemings,
the half-sister of his wife. Jefferson's celebrated
liaison with Hemings complicates our interpretation of his legacy. His
relationship with the African Americans who lived and worked at Monticello
is a metaphor for race relations all over the antebellum South. At Monticello,
Jefferson’s material and intellectual world is well
documented and displayed in meticulous detail. "Mulberry Row," where
his slaves resided, began only a few yards from the main residence and is
represented only by archaeology. Still, thanks to archaeology and Jefferson's
own habit for recording details on paper, we know a good deal about slavery
on "little mountain." As the property of even such a man as Thomas
Jefferson, the men, women, and children of "Mulberry Row" faced
very real limitations of their ability to exert control over their world,
but they did manage to construct lives for themselves and even within the
confines of the institution of slavery, they were able to find small areas
of autonomy and privacy.
Sites:
Monticello
Readings:
Annette Gordon-Reed, "Engaging
Jefferson: Blacks and the Founding Father," William
and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser., Vol. 57, No. 1 (Jan., 2000), pp. 171-182.
Lucia Stanton, "The Hemings
Family," from her book, Some Free Day: The
African-American Families of Monticello (2000), pp 102-140.
Lunch:
Christian's Pizza, Charlottesville,
VA