The study in general
Most people take a US History class junior year. Whether they're taking it conventionally or through the rarer full Pilot project, students are supposed to demonstrate summative-level work in three time periods by the end of the year: 1800-1875, 1875-1940, and 1940-present.
But this year, partly due to an accident of timing and partly due to finding a new passion, I spent the entire year delving into the period from the late 18th century to mid 19th century. I always thought the antebellum era was really boring, but it's actually a really fascinating time, when so many new political movements were taking shape as the founders passed away and left the country in the hands of a wild cast of techno-utopians, slaveholders, abolitionists, imperialists, anti-imperialists, socialists, capitalists, suffragists, anarchists, and populists. For someone who enjoys reading about the spread of ideas and policies, it's an absolute gold mine.
But this year, partly due to an accident of timing and partly due to finding a new passion, I spent the entire year delving into the period from the late 18th century to mid 19th century. I always thought the antebellum era was really boring, but it's actually a really fascinating time, when so many new political movements were taking shape as the founders passed away and left the country in the hands of a wild cast of techno-utopians, slaveholders, abolitionists, imperialists, anti-imperialists, socialists, capitalists, suffragists, anarchists, and populists. For someone who enjoys reading about the spread of ideas and policies, it's an absolute gold mine.
The bookI would not have enjoyed this study nearly as much if I had not been learning about it through Jill Lepore's These Truths. Lepore is a Harvard professor of American history, a critical thinker, and a phenomenal writer and essayist.
These Truths is a political history - it's the story and analysis of how ideas, policies, behaviors, and movements took shape from the country's inception to its current state. It's also absolutely packed with evidence, the notes section taking up over a hundred pages and composing an impressive 10% of the book's 900+ page volume, making it a really great base source to learn from. (Between Jill Lepore, Robert Sapolsky, and Steven Pinker, I am absolutely spoiled for citation-heavy books.) |
Founding and ideasWhen I began reading, I discovered so many fascinating origins of ideas that had never occurred to me. Parliament began as a meeting of noblemen to negotiate taxes with the king, until those nobles began claiming they were 'representatives' of 'the people' to give them more bargaining power! The right to trial by jury came from this old obscure treaty signed way back in the 13th century, resurrected in the 16th so Parliament could exercise some control over the king! It was fascinating at every turn. I regret only that I didn't always take thorough notes on what I was reading; I got better at that in the second semester (stay tuned).
Notebook pages Anki notes (what's Anki?) |
Justification of BeliefsThe thing that most jumped out at me in those early days were the contradictions. How could the king of Spain justify slaughtering native tribes by asking them to accept a declaration of his right to rule - read aloud in Spanish? How could Thomas Jefferson, lover of liberty and freedom, blame King George for slavery but continue to hold his own?
I was so interested in this that I started writing an essay about justification of beliefs - why and how and when we rationalize irrational ideas, and how we can persuade people, with background in psychology as well as history. That essay remains unfinished (I may revisit it in future), but I hope it'll give you an idea of what I was looking into at the time. Notebook pages (where I analyze a psych paper and begin planning the essay) JUSTIFICATION - Outline JUSTIFICATION - First Draft |
Obsidian notes - the 19th centuryAt the turn of the semester, while messing around a few days before a vacation, I stumbled upon Obsidian.md, a free and high-quality notetaking app in the intriguing domain of personal knowledge management (PKM). Obsidian allows you to make notes in markdown, then link them to one another like a wiki, creating a sprawling web of your own thoughts, research, and ideas.
I worked with Obsidian and really enjoyed it. Unfortunately, it's a little bit tricky to document them well without paying for Obsidian Publish, so there are two options. The first is to download Obsidian and open my notes yourself: the folder below, when unzipped and opened in the app, will show you everything in full detail. Otherwise, you can look at the core of my notes in a Word Doc format, which doesn't have all the backlinks, but gives you the body text. ZIP File (good, have to download Obsidian) Notes on chapters 5, 6, 7, and 8 (less good, but still complete) |
Final essaysTo summarize and interconnect what I'd learned in my notes over the past semester, I wrote two essays on some of the most interesting topics encountered. The first was the rise of democracy: contrary to popular belief, the founders of the US used "democracy" as a negative term and sought to avoid one at all costs. The second was the interaction between free speech and slavery: there are a number of unexplored reasons why censorship went hand in hand with owning slaves. Below are links to my original planning document, and each of the (finished!) essays.
Questions of the 19th Century (PLANNING) The Rise of Democracy Free Speech and Slavery |