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Making America, A History of the United States
Making America, Third Edition
Carol Berkin, Baruch College, City University of New York
Christopher L. Miller, The University of Texas, Pan American
Robert W. Cherny, San Francisco State University
James L. Gormly, Washington and Jefferson College
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| | Suggested Readings
Chapter 11: The Great Transformation, 1828-1840
Ira Berin. Slaves Without Masters (1975).
A masterful study of a forgotten population:
free African Americans in the Old South. Lively and informative.
Bill Cecil-Fonsman. Common Whites: Class and Culture in Antebellum North
Carolina (1992).
A pioneering effort to describe the culture,
lifestyle, and political economy shared by the antebellum South’s majority population:
non-slaveholding whites. Though confined in geographical scope, the study is
suggestive of conditions that may have prevailed throughout the region.
Patricia Cline Cohen. The Murder of Helen Jewett: The life and Death of
a Prostitute in Nineteenth-Century New York (1998).
An exciting exploration of the seamy underside
of American emerging cities during the antebellum period using the murder of
a celebrity prostitute as a device.
Nancy M. Cott. The Bonds of Womanhood: “Woman’s
Sphere” in New England, 1780-1835 (1977).
A classic work on the ties that held the woman’s
world together, but collectively bound them into a secondary position in American
life.
Thomas Dublin. Women at Work: The Transformation
of Work and Community in Lowell, Massachusetts, 1826-1860 (1979).
An interesting look at the way in which the
nature of work changed and the sorts of changes that were brought to one manufacturing
community.
Benita Eisler, ed. The Lowell Offering:
Writings by New England Mill Women, 1840-1845 (1977).
First-hand accounts of factory life and changing
social conditions written by the young women who worked at Lowell’s various
factories. An excellent and interesting introduction to primary documents.
Elizabeth Fox-Genovese. Within the Plantation Household (1988).
A look at the lives of black and white women
in the antebellum South. This study is quite long, but is well written and very
informative.
Mary P. Ryan. Cradle of the Middle Class:
The Family in Oneida County, New York, 1790-1865 (1981).
A marvelous synthesis of materials focusing
on the emergence of a new social and economic class in the midst of change from
a traditional to a modern society.
Marie Jenkins Schwartz. Born in Bondage:
Growing Up Enslaved in the Antebellum South (2000).
An examination of slave life in the antebellum
South.
George Rogers Taylor. The Transportation
Revolution, 1815-1860 (1951).
The only comprehensive treatment of changes
in transportation during the antebellum period and their economic impact. Nicely
written.
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