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The Early American Republic: A Documentary Reader

ISBN: 978-1-405-16097-1

September 2008

Wiley-Blackwell

240 pages

Description
THE EARLY AMERICAN REPUBLIC

UNCOVERING THE PAST: DOCUMENTARY READERS IN AMERICAN HISTORY

“Selected with imagination and wisdom, these incisive and wide-ranging texts will provide a ‘road map’ for students of the first sixty years of American independence.”
Daniel Walker Howe, Winner of 2008 Pulitzer Prize for History

“A nice blend of comprehensiveness and coherence, the selections are individually interesting, relate well to each other, and provide a wide-ranging, imaginative, and disciplined conversation about the Early Republic.”
Paul E. Johnson, University of South Carolina

“This handy collection of speeches, documents, private letters, and pieces of literature, complete with context-setting prefaces, will be invaluable in any course covering major themes in the history of early national America.”
Joanne Freeman, Yale University

“Expertly edited and chock-full of enlightening and telling primary documents, this reader conveys a beautifully textured sense of the past and attends to all of the key issues during the formative years of the United States.”
Mark M. Smith, University of South Carolina

“Finally, a primary sources reader that includes the full breadth of voices (both familiar and lesser known) that characterized the Early American Republic. Sean Adams’s informative introduction ties these voices together well, making this book a helpful teaching tool for conveying the rich variety of social and political issues that the young nation faced.”
Steven Deyle, University of Houston

“Students will marvel at the fifty-year struggle to forge a nation in the decades following the American Revolution.”
Seth Rockman, Brown University

Features
  • Provides students with over 50 essential documents from the Early Republic: the first five decades of the USA
  • Includes lesser-known documents, for example Thomas Jefferson’s rules for ‘republican etiquette’
  • Incorporates eyewitness testimony from major historical figures, alongside that of ordinary people from the period
  • Includes an introduction, document headnotes and questions at the end of each chapter designed to encourage students to engage with the material critically