From the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History website:

"High school and undergraduate survey courses on U.S. history before 1865 rightly treat the War of Independence and the Civil War as decisive events. Three other significant conflicts of the period, the French and Indian War, the War of 1812, and the Mexican-American War, rate mentions in the textbooks, but their events are usually treated cursorily, and their impacts are rarely considered, if they are mentioned at all. This seminar will demonstrate the powerfully ironic significance of these less well-known imperial wars by exploring the linkages between them and the far more familiar revolutionary civil wars that define this period in American history. For in fact the decisive victory of Britain and its colonists in the French and Indian War brought on the collapse of the British empire, just twelve years after the triumphal Peace of Paris (1763); the similarly decisive victory of the United States over Mexico, confirmed by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848), precipitated the crises that led, in thirteen years' time, to the disintegration of the Union. The War of 1812, usually seen as having ended indecisively with the Treaty of Utrecht (1815), not only decided the fate of native peoples east of the Mississippi and lent a powerful impetus to the democratization of American electoral politics, but also created an ideological justification for warfare that endures in American political culture to the present day. Our exploration of these striking effects will, we hope, encourage the participants both to reconsider the dynamics of early American history and to re-think the contexts in which they discuss with their students the impact of warfare on the formation of the American Republic."

From the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History website:

"This seminar will proceed from two premises: 1) that the Revolution had many meanings to its diverse participants; and 2) that its causes, dynamics, and outcomes, have been interpreted and reinterpreted, ever since. Therefore, we will read secondary works of various historians who have disagreed sharply on how to interpret the American Revolution; and we will examine a variety of primary documents through which we can better understand how people at the time understood what they were fighting for and what outcomes they hoped to enjoy. 'Who shall write the history of the American Revolution?' wrote John Adams to Thomas Jefferson (in 1815). 'Nobody,' Jefferson replied, 'except merely its external facts . . . The life and soul of its history must be forever unknown.' Almost two centuries later, let's discover the answers to that question for ourselves."

From the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History website:

"Professor Gordon Wood investigates George Washington's contributions to the creation of the American republic. The bicentennial of Washington's death in 1999 sparked a reassessment of this extraordinary man and his times. He was commander in chief of the Revolutionary army, a leader in the formation of the Constitution of 1787, and the first president of the new United States. Despite these great accomplishments, he remains strangely distant and inaccessible to us in the early twenty-first century. This brief but intensive course helps explain the sources and meaning of Washington's greatness."

From the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History website:

"The American Revolution describes two different historical events. One was the War for Independence, 1775-1783, that began with Lexington and Concord and concluded with the Treaty of Paris and the evacuation of the British from New York. The 'other' American Revolution occurred in the hearts and minds of the American people. This revolution began in the pamphlets and protests of the 1760s, continued in the Continental Congress, and helped inspire new institutions that emerged after the War for Independence: the abolition of slavery in the North, expanded public roles for women, and the separation of church and state. Both revolutions had global historical significance. George Washington was the pivotal figure in the War for Independence but he played an important role in the second revolution as well. Washington was a representative Virginia planter at the outset of the Revolutionary War. By the time the war concluded, Washington's ideas about slavery, race, and republican government had been transformed. His leadership after the Revolution helped insure the conservation of both American Revolutions. This course will be taught at Mount Vernon, and will utilize the rich resources available at this historic site."