HIST 190-004: Freshman Seminar: Slavery/Freedom:Am Civil War (Spring 2010)

Content:  Until recently, the end of slavery during the Civil War has been poorly understood. But the availability of previously inaccessible documents has generated a flood of recent historical work, particularly regarding the way slaves participated in their own liberation.  This course focuses on some of those primary documents and some of the recent secondary literature to analyze the end of slavery and its relationship to the collapse of the Confederacy.

Texts: The core reading is Free At Last, a rich collection of remarkable primary sources—personal letters, official transcripts, and formal reports—documenting the end of slavery.  These documents are drawn from the award-winning volumes now being published under the title Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation, which has been described as “this generation’s most significant encounter with the American past.  In addition, students will read some secondary literature—books and articles—analyzing specific aspects of the process of emancipation.

Particulars: Students are expected to come to the seminar each week prepared to engage in informed discussion of the assigned reading.  There will be several short writing assignments and a longer essay that offers a deep reading and analysis of one of the documents in Free At Last.  Final grades for the course will reflect a student’s class participation and writing, each receiving approximately equal weight.