"A study of the sectional conflict beginning with the nullification crisis. The course will not only examine the political, social and economic developments in the period leading to the Civil War, but will emphasize the political thought of Abraham Lincoln, Stephen Douglas, and John C. Calhoun."

"The course examines how Americans have used military force, focusing on the relationship between civilian and military leaders, characteristic strategic approaches, and the connection between our political principles and our military practices."

"This course focuses on three topics: political developments in North America and the British empire and the arguments for and against independence, culminating in the Declaration of Independence; the Revolutionary War as a military, social and cultural events in the development of the American nation and state; and the United States under the Articles of Confederation."

Professor John Wood Sweet "uses the dramatic story of Venture Smith, an enslaved African in New England who earned his freedom, to anchor an analysis of the colonial dynamics that brought together — and kept apart — a series of disparate regions and peoples in the increasingly global early modern world."

Scholar Robert Bonner "examines a multi-faceted 'proslavery Americanism' that sought to nationalize Southern slaveholding within the late antebellum U.S. before providing a platform for the Confederate departure of the early 1860s. This lecture is part of the Gilder Lehrman Center Brown Bag Lunch Series."

"This seminar will trace Woodrow Wilson’s evolution as a world leader. A novice in foreign affairs when he entered the White House, he ardently championed U.S. neutrality for the first two years of the war, then joined it on the side of the Allies but insisted on American command of American troops. Admired throughout the world by the end of the war, Wilson figured prominently in the peacemaking and pressed for a new world order in which nationalism would be tamed by internationalism. To that end, he persuaded the world to establish the League of Nations, and although he could not persuade his own nation to join, the main tenets of his new order (collective security, national self-determination, and the spread of democracy) remain central to American foreign policy."

"This seminar views the American Declaration from three global perspectives: first, by placing 1776 into the context of contemporary international and global connections; second, by examining the legacy of the Declaration in the century or so after 1776; and third, by analyzing other declarations of independence since 1776 for their debts to -- and divergences from -- the American model. The result should be an enriched understanding of the importance of the Declaration in world history, as well as a novel account of what was truly revolutionary about the American Revolution."

This seminar explores the history of the American antislavery movement, from its institutional and ideological origins in the post-Revolutionary era to the eve of the Civil War. A particular focus of the course will be the historical reality and mythology of the Underground Railroad, understood through the lives, strategies, writings, and fate of black abolitionists.

"This seminar is concerned with the formative period of early American constitutionalism. It begins with the pre-Revolutionary debate over the rights that the American colonists could claim under the 'ancient' imperial constitution, and ends with the escalating controversies over the interpretation of the Federal Constitution of 1787, culminating (in a sense) with the Supreme Court’s much-heralded decision in Marbury v. Madison and its less known but arguably more important holding in Stuart v. Laird a week later. In between, the heart of the seminar focuses on the constitutional experiments of the 1770s and 1780s: the adoption of the first state constitutions (1776-1780), and the framing and ratification of the Federal Constitution (1787-1791, if we throw in the first ten amendments)."

"This seminar will use a variety of resources: lectures, books, documents, video documentaries, and the resources on the internet. There will also be ample opportunity for participants and hosts to learn from one another. It will be, in short, a week of total immersion in the lengthy, occasionally dangerous, and (almost) always intriguing history of the Cold War, filled with debate and new information."