History 216-02: "From the Founding of Jamestown through the

American Revolution"

 J.P. Whittenburg

Email: jpwhit@wm.edu
Office: Young House (205 Griffin Avenue)
Web Page: http://jpwhit.people.wm.edu
Telephone: 757-221-7654
Office Hours: By Appointment

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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 web site 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 216-02. 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 Wednesday. 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 field trips 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 appropriate 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 field trip 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, 8 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.

Additional:

History graduate student Melissa Gray will be working with me this semester as an apprentice teacher. I am asking Melissa to serve as our own private "History Writing Resources Center." 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, Melissa and I will look at it weekly and give you feedback, 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 Melissa face-to-face. Melissa can also advise you on orals reports. You can email Melissa at this address: mfgray@wm.edu.

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?

Note: Over the last couple of years that students have come to rely on Wikipedia almost exclusively for these reports. I'm instituting a requirement that there be at least two sources, one of which must be print. You may simply identify the sources at the end of your report. Swem Library's homepage can help: http://www.wm.edu/academics/libraries/index.php

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.

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27 August: 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 (1979), pp. 95-125.  Karen Ordahl

Kupperman, "Apathy and Death in Early Jamestown," The Journal of American History, Vol. 66, No. 1. (1979), pp. 24-40.

James P. Whittenburg, "After the Fort: Jamestown, circa. 1620-1699," Virtual Jamestown Interpretive Essays (2001), pp. 1-7.

Lunch: Dale House Cafe

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3 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; a half-century later slaves were the primary labor force and the Chesapeake was a biracial society. Those changes were reflected in virtually every facet of Chesapeake society, from material culture to political organization. Jamestown Settlement covers the entire seventeenth century, offering a long-range perspective on the outcome of the collision between Native Americans, Africans, and Europeans. 

Sites:

Jamestown Settlement  

Readings:  

J. Frederick Fauz, “’Abundance of Blood Shed on Both Sides’: England’s First Indian War, 1609-1614,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, 98 (1999), 3-54.

Ira Berlin, "From Creole to African: Atlantic Creoles and the Origins of African-American Society in Mainland North America," William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser., Vol. 53, No. 2 (1996), pp. 251-288.

Lunch: Jamestown Pies (pizza)

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10 September: Founded Wholly on Smoke: The Tobacco Culture of the Early Chesapeake

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. The choice of tobacco a cash crop produced with unfree labor--first indentured servants, then slaves--propelled the Chesapeake down some peculiar paths that were evident in both behavior and material culture. The principal theme at Historic St. Mary's City, site of the colonial capital, is the role of tobacco as "driver" for the development of the society that grew up around the great bay.

Sites:

Historic St. Mary's City, MD

Readings:

T. H. Breen, "Looking Out for Number One: Conflicting Values in Early Seventeenth-Century Virginia," The South Atlantic Quarterly, 78 (1979), pp. 342-360.

Edmund S. Morgan, "The Labor Problem at Jamestown, 1607-1618, The American Historical Review, Vol. 76, No. 3 (1971), pp. 595-611

Edmund S. Morgan, "The First American Boom: Virginia, 1618-1630," The William and Mary Quarterly, Third Series, Vol. 28, No. 2 (1971), pp. 170-198

Lunch: picnic at St. Marys (Fresh Market Sandwiches)

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17 September: After the Fall: Virginia from the Dissolution of the Company through 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 eighteenth-century courthouse in Smithfield. The latter will provide us with an opportunity to explore the world of one of the key features of colonial society: the county court.  

Sites:

Bacon's Castle & Slave House
St. Luke's Church
Isle of Wight Courthouse

Readings:

Edmund S. Morgan, "Discontent," from his book, American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia (1975), pp. 235-249.

T. H. Breen, "A Changing Labor Force and Race Relations in Virginia, 1660-1710," Journal of Social History, VII (1973), pp. 3-25.

Darrett & Anita Ruttman, " 'Now-Wives and Sons-in-Law': Parental Death in a Seventeenth-Century Virginia County," in Thad W. Tate & David L. Ammerman, eds., The Chesapeake in the Seventeenth Century: Essays on Anglo-American Society (1979), pp. 153-182.

Lunch: Smithfield Ice Cream Parlor

Please visit the Courthouse of 1770 in Colonial Williamsburg prior to this trip.

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24 September: River Gods & 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 ChristChurch, the presence of the greatest of all gentry patriarchs—Robert “King” Carter (1663-17320—is still keenly felt. Carter’s mansion, “Corotoman,” was one of the earliest of the grand mansions and was certainly a rival to the Governor's Mansion in Williamsburg. Corotoman no longer stands, but we can see “Rosewell" on the way to ChristChurch, using it as 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:

Ruins of Rosewell Plantation
Historic Christ Church
Site of King Carter's "Corotoman"

Please visit Bruton Parish Church in Colonial Williamsburg 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.

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 (1974), pp. 345-368.

Rhys Isaac, "Church and Home," chapter 4 from his book, The Transformation of Virginia, 1740-1790 (1982), pp. 58-87

Lunch: Moos Rivers Edge Eatery (Irvington, VA)

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1 October: NO CLASS

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8 October: Pride & Prejudice: The Rise of the Georgian Elite  

Theme: By the early eighteenth century, the great gentry families had 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. 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 Powhatan, Shirley and Westover tell us much about the Georgian Age of the Chesapeake. We’ll discuss the intertwined lives of the families there: the Carters and the Byrds. These two families were very much among the the select few at the top level of Chesapeake Society during the so-called "Georgian Age" from roughly 1720--when the first grand mansions began to appear--to the Revolution, when they faced some very hard choices and followed different paths.  

Sites:

Powhatan Plantation
Westover Plantation
Shirley 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.

Daniel Blake Smith, "Sex Roles and the Female Identity," chapter 2 from his book, Inside the Great House: Planter Family Life in the Eighteenth-Century Chesapeake (1980), pp. 55-81.  

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 (1977), pp. 239-257.

Michael Olmert, "Necessary and Sufficient," Colonial Williamsburg: The Journal of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, XXIV (2002), 33-36.  

Lunch: Blue Heron Restaurant

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15 October: Patrick Henry’s Virginia: Deference or Democracy? 

Theme: Patrick Henry (1736-1799) emerged in the 1760s as a radical advocate of independence, a position he articulated in his unforgettable "Give me liberty or give me death" speech at St. John'sChurch. 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 HanoverCounty--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, and the Raleigh Tavern in Colonial Williamsburg prior to this trip. 

Readings:  

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. (1980), pp. 29-52.

Pauline Maier, "Popular Uprisings and Civil Authority in Eighteenth-Century America," The William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser., Vol. 27, No. 1. (1970), pp. 3-35.  

Polly Longsworth, " 'I am murdered': Trial and Acquittal in the Wake of George Wythe's Death," Colonial Williamsburg: The Journal of Colonial Williamsburg (1986), pp. 5-11.  

Lunch: Michelle's at the Hanover Tavern

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22 October: The World Turned Upside Down

Theme: 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. We'll take a close look at the military situation that produced the allied victory at Yorktown. Most of the earthworks we'll see at reproductions, but we'll see the one redoubt remaining from the Revolution. Yorktown itself suffered greatly during the war and was, in fact, never the same physically. Not for a century did the federal government officially recognize the significance of the fighting there by erecting the Victory Monument. Why did that take so long?

Sites:

Yorktown
Yorktown Battlefield

Readings:  

John O. Sands, "Campaign in the South," "Focus on the Chesapeake," "The Move to York," "The Trap Closes," and "The Battle Won," chapters 1, 2, 3, & 4 from his book, Yorktown's Captive Fleet (1983), pp. 1-20; 21-36; 37-49, 50-67, & 68-92.

Lunch:  Rivah Cafe of the Riverwalk Restaurant (Yorktown) 

Please visit the Governor's Palace and the Public Magazine in Colonial Williamsburg during the week prior to this trip.

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26 October: Optional Barbecue at 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: Barbecue at Rosewell

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29 October: How Revolutionary was the American Revolution?

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, gender, and class throughout the war. Did those internal divisions affect the war effort? Did the disconnect between the ideology and the realities of the Revolution--especially the failure to destroy slavery during the Revolution--constitute a ticking time bomb for the "First New Nation," as one prominent historian has deemed the United States? Is there any evidence that the status of women changed during or immediately after the Revoultion? Could "deference" survive that struggle? The Yorktown Victory Center invites us to ponder these questions--over lunch in the eightenth-centiru "Cole Diggs House" (aka "The Carrot Tree Kitchen") in Yorktown itself.

Sites:

YorktownVictoryCenter

Readings:

Catherine Kerrison, "By the Book: Eliza Ambler Brent Carrington and Conduct Literature in Late Eighteenth-Century Virginia," Virginia Magazine of History & Biography, 105 (1997), pp. 27-52.

Woody Holton, " 'Rebel Against Rebel': Enslaved Virginians and the Coming of the Revolution," Virginia Magazine of History & Biography, 105 (1997), pp. 157-192

Michael A. McDonnell, "Popular Mobilization and Political Culture in Revolutionary Virginia: The Failure of the Minutemen and the Revolution from Below," Journal of American History, Vol. 85, No. 3. (1998), pp. 946-981.

Lunch: Carrot Tree Kitchen (Yorktown)

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5 November: The Warrior in Peacetime 

Theme: The EarlyRepublic 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 overextended 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, Ann 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, "The Queen of Stratford," and "The Mob," chapters 2 & 4 from his book, Light Horse Harry Lee and the Legacy of the American Revolution (1981), pp. 56-83, 117-168.

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 Room

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12 November: The Merchant of Norfolk

Theme: Born in New York to an émigré Jewish family from Amsterdam, Moses Myer (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. Myer 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 Myer 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 Myer 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 Myer House, Norfolk

Readings:

Richard L. Bushman, "Bodies and Minds," chapter 3 from his book, The Refinement of America: Persons, Houses, Cities (1992), pp. 61-99. 

Bernard L. Herman, "The Merchant Family's House," chapter 2 from his book, Town House: Architecture and Material Life in the Early American City, 1780-1830 (2005), pp. 33-76.

Lunch: Doumar's Drive-in, Norfolk

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19 November: First in War, First in Peace, & First in the Hearts of His Countrymen--and Martha  

Theme: 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 the courtship of George and Martha Washington and explore Martha's social world as the wife of the first president.  

Sites: Mount Vernon 

Readings:  Joseph J. Ellis, “The Farewell,” chapter 4 from his book, Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation (2000), 120-161. 

Barbara G. Carson, "Ways to Make a Meal," chapter 2 from her book, Ambitious Appetites: Dining, Behavior, and Patterns of Consumption in Federal Washington (1990), 24-57.

Patrica Brady, "Young Mrs. Custis," and "The Widow Custis and Colonel Washington," chapters 3 & 4 from her book, Martha Washington: An American Life (2005), pp. 34-51; 52-64.

Lunch: Mount Vernon Inn

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3 December: The Alumnus, Race, and Slavery 

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. His relationship with the African Americans who lived and worked at Monticello is a metaphor for race relations all over the antebellum South. 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 (2000), pp. 171-182.  

Lucia Stanton, “ ‘Those Who Labor for My Happiness’: Thomas Jefferson and His Slaves,” in Peter S, Onuf., ed., Jeffersonian Legacies (1994), pp. 147-171.

Lucia Stanton, "The Dispersal," from her book, Some Free Day: The African Families of Monticello (2000), pp. 141-145.

Lunch: Michie Tavern