notes, documents, and dates from a lifetime of reading about the United States
Welcome
This site is what it sounds like: a notebook. I taught American history for thirty-one years, most of them at a community college in Ohio, and when I finally retired I discovered two things. First, that I missed the part of the job where you sit down and organize a complicated story so an ordinary person can follow it. Second, that forty years of lecture notes, xeroxes, and index cards do not organize themselves.
So I started typing. What you will find here is plain narrative history. No animations, no autoplaying anything, no listicles. The pages are long, the sentences are longer, and every date gets checked against the sources listed at the bottom of the page. I have been at it since 2015 and the pile has not gotten smaller, only more organized.
If you are here because of homework: start with the timeline (one event per line, that's the whole trick) and the glossary (the words that keep showing up on exams). If the assignment is a document, go straight to the documents page. If you have a free Sunday, the essays are better and I will stand by that. Nothing here is behind a login, a paywall, or a cookie banner.
What is on this site
The Road to Independence, 1763 to 1789. How thirteen squabbling colonies went from celebrating a British victory to writing themselves a brand new country, and the arguments they had along the way.
The Civil War and Reconstruction, 1850 to 1877. The long fuse, the war itself, emancipation, and the unfinished peace that followed. Includes the 1860 election numbers and the secession dates, because those two tables answer half the questions I ever got.
The Presidents. All forty-six in one plain table, party, term, one honest line apiece. Print it if you want; the stylesheet is set up for that.
A Pocket Archive. The words themselves: excerpts from the Declaration, the Constitution and its amendments, the Gettysburg Address (all of it, it's short), Seneca Falls, and a line from Birmingham Jail. With commentary, because documents without commentary are just old paper.
Essays. Four longer pieces: the 1850s, the day the railroads reset the clocks, what Mathew Brady's photographs did to the war, and why ranking presidents is a mug's game.
Glossary. Words I had to explain twice a semester. Carpetbagger, scalawag, gerrymander, mugwump, and where "Jim Crow" actually comes from.
The Reading List. My shelf, honestly rated. The starred ones I would lend you.
Elsewhere. The places on the web I actually send students, plus one dead site I keep on the list out of loyalty.
Site Log. Every change worth writing down since 2015, including the mistakes readers caught. Kept mostly for myself.
About. Who writes this thing, and why anybody still hand-codes HTML in this day and age.
Yes, the navigation bar is long now. Denny says no navigation bar should need a second line. Denny also still uses a flip phone, so weigh that accordingly.
Quote of the month
The Revolution was effected before the war commenced. The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people; a change in their religious sentiments of their duties and obligations.
John Adams, letter to Hezekiah Niles, 1818
I keep coming back to this one. Adams is reminding us that the shooting was almost the afterthought: by April 1775 the colonies had already spent a decade rethinking everything, and the war just settled the paperwork. (This quote has been "of the month" since March. So it goes.)
Recent changes
June 2021 — tinkered with the page counter, again. Details, as always, in the site log.
May 2021 — the essays page went up: four pieces, footnotes and all.
April 2021 — glossary and reading list added; presidents table carried through the current administration.