end of semester essay:
American Society: 1750 to 1830

Due at the Final Exam

May 14 or 17

In a famous Washington Irving tale, a middle-aged Hudson Valley (New York) resident named Rip Van Winkle mysteriously falls asleep and awakens to find himself among strangers whose interests, attitudes, behaviors, clothing, and manners seem entirely at odds with the world he remembered.  According to Irving, Van Winkle went to sleep in the early 1770s and eventually discovers that he has awakened in the puzzling and strange world of the 1790s.  Despite the passing of just 20 years, he can find only the rivers, streams, mountains, and a few buildings familiar to him; everything else has changed.  Imagine for the moment that you are the fictional Rip Van Winkle and that you too have mysteriously fallen asleep.  But rather than dozing off in the early 1770s, you fell asleep about 1750 and did not awaken until 1830.   Will you too be utterly astonished at the world you find?  Will you be so perplexed that you have trouble finding anything familiar?  Will everything have changed?

We spent little time this semester on clothing, fashion, or manners but we did spend some time talking about political institutions, ideology, the economy, religion, racial issues, labor systems (slavery/servitude, free/unfree), and gender.  Would our fictional Van Winkle have been amazed at the changes in these aspects of American society?  Were the changes only observable at the top of American society or would our small town resident really have found an unfamiliar local world as well after his 80-year nap? What changed and what did not?

Using your textbooks (Foner, Brown), papers written this semester, and especially class notes, prepare a 6-page essay answering this question. Use footnotes as you have done in previous papers to indicate the source of any direct quotations or specific pieces of information. This essay will account for 20% of your course grade.

No Wikipedia or other external web sources for this essay; use class notes and class materials only.  When mentioning specific events or developments, give dates or time period (1776, 1788 or 1760s or 1820s, etc); pay attention to chronology.  No late papers; no email versions of papers; all papers due at beginning of final exam.

Footnote examples:

¹Classnotes, April 24, 2018.

²Linda K. Kerber, "The Revolution and Women's Rights," in Richard D. Brown, ed., Major Problems in the Era of the American Revolution, 1760-1791, 2nd. ed. (Boston, 2000), 298.

³Eric Foner, Give Me Liberty: An American History, Volume 1, 5th edition (New York: W.W. Norton, 2017), 228.

⁴Brown, 302.

⁵Foner, 425-426.

⁶Classnotes, May 10, 2018.