Dr. Christopher Phillips
This course is a seminar devoted to analysis of the historical literature on Abraham Lincoln in the era of the Civil War.
The purpose of this course is to introduce students to the events and interpretations of the era surrounding the American Civil War, including the major political, economic, social, and ideological forces that shaped nineteenth-century United States development and Lincoln’s actions before and during the nation’s greatest cataclysm.
The course will allow students to evaluate the multiple influences of the period as well as to form educated historical opinions about slavery and Lincoln’s role in the coming of the Civil War. We will examine the political, social, ideological, military, economic, and constitutional issues that emerged during the war; the critical and related questions of slavery and emancipation; the conceptions of freedom and race by both black and white Americans; federal efforts to reunite the Union and reintegrate the Confederate states; and white southern and other Americans’ resistance to those efforts.
This is a split-level Undergraduate/Graduate course cross-listed with HIST 6146.
