U.S. Navy captain John Rodgaard reviews the life of Charles Stewart (1778-1869), longest-serving officer in U.S. Navy history who eventually commanded the USS Constitution and came to share its nickname, "Old Ironsides." The presentation includes slides.
During the 1850s, the United States was a nation of foreboding and hope. An irresolvable conflict between North and South seemed to be approaching, along with periodic hopes that the divide could somehow be bridged and conflict forestalled. At the start of the decade, the nation's eloquent orators were led by John C. Calhoun and Daniel Webster; 10 years later, a new voice had been added to public discourse: that of Abraham Lincoln. Literary artists—including Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, and Harriet Beecher Stowe—addressed the issues of slavery, regional autonomy, and federal power both directly and obliquely in poetry and prose. This seminar will explore this ominous yet hopeful era, with the aim of understanding the political and moral issues that drove Americans apart, and how the literature of the period can help readers understand why.
Pittsburg State University (PSU) is pleased to offer graduate credit to workshop participants at a tuition fee of $199 per credit hour. Participants can receive three graduate credit hours for the duration of the week.
Abraham Lincoln will stand at the center of the seminar, though less as a biographical subject than as a prism for exploring key aspects of his age. The themes and topics to be addressed include slavery and the Old South; the abolitionist impulse and the broadening antislavery movement; party political realignment and the sectional crisis of the 1850s; evangelicalism and politics; the election of 1860, the secession of the Lower South, and the coming of war; wartime leadership, political and military; the Civil War 'home front'; emancipation; the elements of Confederate defeat and Union victory; and the meaning of the war for American nationalism.
Pittsburg State University (PSU) is pleased to offer graduate credit to workshop participants at a tuition fee of $199 per credit hour. Participants can receive three graduate credit hours for the duration of the week.
This iCue Mini-Documentary describes the brief period following the 1816 election of James Monroe in which only one political party dominated American politics. But growing partisanship and financial panic soon brought the Era of Good Feelings to an end.
This iCue Mini-Documentary introduces the Erie Canal as the technological wonder of its age. Shipping on the canal was three times faster than moving goods on land.
This iCue Mini-Documentary describes the success of the Erie Canal and the early railroads, which led to the early success of the New York Stock Exchange.
Historian Anthony Sammarco follows the development of downtown Boston from the city's early years to the present day. He focuses on the area called Downtown Crossing, following the Great Boston Fire of 1872, and examines the commercial shopping establishments that replaced pre-fire residences and churches. His presentation includes slides.
The ratification of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution in December 1865 abolished slavery in the United States, formally, officially, and legally. A century and a half after Emancipation, however, the question of slavery still roils the waters of American life. This seminar, led by Ira Berlin, will view the development of chattel bondage in mainland North America from the perspective of the larger Atlantic world. Topics include the nature of the slave trade, the distinction between societies with slaves and slave societies, the evolution of plantation slavery, the transforming face of the Age of Revolutions, the remaking of slavery in the 19th century, and the contemporary debate about the meaning of slavery for American life.
Pittsburg State University (PSU) is pleased to offer graduate credit to workshop participants at a tuition fee of $199 per credit hour. Participants can receive three graduate credit hours for the duration of the week.
Author John Steele Gordon describes the revolution in travel that occurs when the first passenger ships begin to cross the Atlantic on regular schedules.