COR 100

The revivalist doctrines of salvation, perfectionism, and disinterested benevolence led many evangelical reformers to believe that slavery was the most God-defying of all sins and the most terrible blight on the moral virtue of the United States. While white interest in and commitment to abolition had existed for several decades, organized antislavery advocacy had been largely restricted to models of gradual emancipation (seen in several northern states following the American Revolution) and con...

Founding a Nation, 1776 - 1789, framing the Constitution

Think of the world you will be living in the rest of your life. Actually, you are already living in it. Groups making demands, sometimes peacefully, sometimes violently but almost always disturbingly. Politicians making promises of a brave new world, or at least one from which the troubles of the day are banished. Mass murders in Africa and the Middle East. The clash of religions. Debates over climate change and threats to the environment, balanced against economic growth. What are you to make o...

Frederick Douglass escaped from slavery in 1838 and made his way to New England. By 1841, Douglass was relating his experiences at abolitionist meetings throughout the eastern states. Douglass’s book, The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845), forced him to flee to England as he had revealed his place of escape. However, liberal friends purchased Douglass’s freedom, and he was able to return to Rochester and start his abolitionist newspaper, the North Star. Active in the freedom...

Article: FDR's Second Fireside Chat

In his Report on Manufacturers, excerpted below, Alexander Hamilton articulated an ambitious plan to support the new nation’s infant industries and to encourage industrial development.

Article on Herbert Hoover Protests the New Deal and the Great Depression

Income (Share of income by socioeconomic groups over time), Wealth (Snapshot of concentration of wealth), Intergenerational Transfer of Wealth

The 2015 Supreme Court decision legalizing same sex marriage was the result of a well-organized movement for the LBGTQ rights that adopted, and in some ways perfected, the tactics of the civil rights movement. The drive for LGBTQ rights is often seen as beginning with the Stonewall riots in New York City in 1969, and the Obergefell decision can be considered the greatest achievement of that movement to date, but of course, there are still mountains to climb.

Herbert Hoover, the 31st president of the United States, entered in office on March 4th 1929. On October of that same year, the stock market crashed and the nation started to fall apart. By 1930, four million people were out of work and by the next year six million, and nearly half of the banks of the country had failed.