Week 3 · Readings & resources

Week 3 — Readings & Resources

U.S. History to 1877 Free sample edition

Your primary reading is Chapter 3 (in this module). Everything below is the optional, go-deeper layer — pick what helps, skip the rest.

How to use this page

This page has 11 items (5 readings and 6 videos). Allow 145–172 minutes for everything. Each group points back to the matching chapter section and class-session segment, so use the full menu when you want more, or take the quick path below.

Every video here has captions: turn them on with the CC button in the player. The chapter covers the same ideas in text. Several items describe the violence of slavery and the slave trade directly; take them at your own pace.

Pick-one quick path (18–23 min total)

① Servants, contracts, and the arrival of 1619

Chapter 3, Section “Define indentured servitude: a contract with an end date” · Session 1, Segment 2, “A contract with an end date” · Remember: indentured servitude was labor for a term of years, and the servant went free when the term ended.

Indentured Servants in Colonial Virginia — Encyclopedia Virginia — a reference entry on who signed indentures, how long adult terms usually ran, why tobacco planters wanted so many servants, and how the number of new servants dwindled as the century went on; it gives its own figures and dates, so compare its story of decline with the chapter's account of the Chesapeake's shift toward enslaved labor. Use it while working through the Week-3 module overview. (reading, 15–20 min)
Africans, Virginia's First — Encyclopedia Virginia — a reference entry on the Africans brought to Virginia in 1619: where they had been captured, how English privateers seized them from another ship, and what is known of their lives afterward. It adds detail the course does not key and traces the count to a letter written in the colony that year, so read it as corroboration of the National Park Service's "20 and odd". (reading, 18–25 min)
Excavations at the Angela Site: First Africans, Enslavement, and Finds from 1619 to Present — Council For Northeast Historical Archaeology — an archaeologist on the team that digs at Jamestown explains the search for the home of Angela, one of the first Africans forcibly brought to Virginia, whom early records place on Jamestown Island; notice why the dig looks for post holes and burials rather than objects that could be tied to her. It is a conference talk with automatic captions, so a few names come out garbled. (video, 15 min) (captions: automatic)

② The Atlantic slave trade and the Middle Passage

Chapter 3, Section “Face the Atlantic slave trade and the Middle Passage” · Session 1, Segment 4, “A forced crossing” · Remember: the people carried across the Atlantic were captives, very many died, and most were taken to the Caribbean and South America.

The Middle Passage — National Park Service — the park service's account of the forced crossing, with the words of people who survived it and of a ship's surgeon who witnessed it. This builds on Week 1's work with the Columbian Exchange as a two-way transfer of crops, animals, people, and diseases. The page gives its own estimates of how many people were carried and how many died; the course teaches those numbers in words and keys none of them. (reading, 10–15 min)
The Transatlantic Slave Trade: Crash Course Black American History #1 — CrashCourse — the host traces where captives were taken from, the three legs of the trade, conditions below decks, and the many ways captives resisted; he warns at the start that the episode describes extreme violence, including sexual violence. Notice that he, too, says most captives went to Brazil and the Caribbean rather than to what became the United States; his figures are estimates, so treat them as the video's, not the course's. (video, 13 min) (captions: creator)
São José Video- Long Version — NMAAHC — a short film from the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture on divers and archaeologists documenting the wreck of the São José, a Portuguese slave ship that broke apart off southern Africa while carrying captives from Mozambique; it opens with an old report of the wreck read aloud, a primary source inside a secondary one. (video, 6 min) (captions: automatic)
The Middle Passage — Frontier Culture Museum of Virginia — a museum's podcast episode in which a staff historian explains the ocean currents the slave ships used, the companies that ran the English trade, how captives were packed below decks, and how the trade was ended. Listen critically: he once says the 1730s and 40s where he means a century later, and his remark that slavery was introduced in Virginia in the 1660s compresses what the chapter teaches as a change built by law over decades. Its closing praise of one English abolitionist as the only person who comes out looking good also leaves out the captives who resisted, whom the other items in this group describe. (video, 27 min) (captions: automatic)

③ How the law made slavery inherited

Chapter 3, Section “Trace how law made slavery hereditary and racial” · Session 2, Segment 5, “Built by law” · Remember: colonial law made slavery last for life, pass from mother to child, and attach to African descent, step by step over decades.

Elizabeth Key: Crash Course Black American History #3 — CrashCourse — the story of a woman in seventeenth-century Virginia who went to court when her enslaver's heirs tried to classify her and her son as enslaved; she argued from her free English father, her baptism, and a term of servitude that had already run out. Watch it as the week's distinction in a single case: a term of years on one side, a status for life on the other. The video gives its own years for her life and case, and the course keys none of them. (video, 8 min) (captions: creator)

④ Revival and authority in the colonies

Chapter 3, Section “Name the First Great Awakening” · Session 2, Segment 7, “Revivals and authority” · Remember: the revivals of the 1730s and 1740s emphasized personal conversion and challenged established clergy.

The First Great Awakening — National Humanities Center — a historian's short essay on how the revivals spread from the Middle Colonies to New England and the South, how traveling preachers drew huge outdoor crowds, and how the revivals split congregations into supporters and opponents. The essay stretches the revival period later than the chapter's 1730s and 1740s, so notice where its dates and the course's differ. (reading, 10–15 min)
Freedom of Religion — Colonial Williamsburg — costumed interpreters at a living-history museum play colonial Virginians who worshipped outside the established church; the narration links them to converts of the revivals of the 1740s, who formed new churches and refused to let the government license their preachers. Watch the first four minutes, through the arrests of traveling preachers. Stop there before the Revolution-era scenes; next week takes up the imperial crisis and the road to revolution. (video, 8 min) (captions: automatic)

Optional one-stop reference (free online reference)

The Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina — the Avalon Project — the full text of the week's workshop document, kept by the Avalon Project; find the passage on slavery the course quotes and the editors' remarks below the text on who framed the form of government, and check the date at the top against the document's own last lines. (reading, 15–20 min)

Heads-up (links rot): these point to outside sites that occasionally move or rename pages. If a link ever fails, tell your instructor and use the reference above in the meantime.

Provenance: Built with The Course Maker · samples.thecoursemaker.com