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Week 9 · Readings & resources

Week 9 — Readings & Resources

U.S. History to 1877 Free sample edition

Your primary reading is Chapter 9 (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 67–84 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. One group describes the forced removal of the Cherokee Nation and other nations, including the deaths of many people; take it at your own pace.

Pick-one quick path (18–22 min total)

① Buying land and fighting a war

Chapter 9, Section “Read the Louisiana Purchase: a treaty of cession” · Session 1, Segment 1, “A treaty of cession” · Remember: a treaty between two governments is evidence of what they agreed, not of what the Native nations on the land agreed.

  • Louisiana Purchase, 1803 — Office of the Historian — the State Department history office's short account of why Napoleon sold Louisiana and why Jefferson hesitated. Read it for the failed French war in Saint-Domingue, the instructions the American negotiators carried, and Jefferson's doubt about the Constitution. This builds on Week 7's work with strict and loose construction of the Constitution. A note at the top says the page is no longer updated, which is worth knowing when you source it. (reading, 5–8 min)
  • War of 1812–1815 — Office of the Historian — the same office's account of the war's causes at sea and on land and of the Treaty of Ghent. Read the last paragraph closely: it says the peace made terms with Indian nations on the frontier and that western expansion was among the real causes. Set that beside the Canadian War Museum video below. (reading, 5–8 min)
  • The Louisiana Purchase and Its Legacies — Thomas Jefferson's Monticello — a short episode from the museum at Jefferson's home on his hope for an empire spreading west and on what the purchase meant for the Native nations already living there. Listen for the point that the land was home to many nations who did not consider themselves American. It reads one of Jefferson's letters aloud, which is the video's quotation, not one of the course's pinned passages. (video, 5 min) (captions: automatic)
  • 1812: A First Nations Perspective — Canadian War Museum — a chief of the Whitecap Dakota First Nation explains why First Nations allied with Britain in the war and how the Treaty of Ghent left them out of the peace talks. Use it as the second voice in the chapter's corroboration exercise. The count of allied fighters he gives is the video's figure, not the course's. (video, 2 min) (captions: automatic)

② Canals, mills, and cotton

Chapter 9, Section “Follow the market revolution: canals, mills, and cotton” · Session 1, Segment 3, “Canals, mills, and cotton” · Remember: a new market tied northern mills to cotton that enslaved people grew in the South.

  • Two Hundred Years on the Erie Canal: Economic Growth — New York Heritage — one section of an online exhibit from New York Heritage Digital Collections, with a shipping receipt and an 1825 view of canal boats. Read it for how the canal cut the cost of moving goods between New York and the Midwest and turned New York City into the country's largest port. Its figures for costs, cargo, and tolls are the exhibit's, not the course's. Use this example while completing the Week-9 module overview. (reading, 4–6 min)
  • Virtual Tour of the Erie Canal Museum — Erie Canal Museum — a guide walks through the museum in a former canal weigh station, from the canal's planning to the towns, boats, and immigrant workers it brought. Watch for how a canal created whole towns around a general store. It calls the canal the most influential project in the nation's history, which is the museum's view, and it says nothing about the Haudenosaunee nations whose lands the canal crossed. (video, 8 min) (captions: creator)
  • The Massachusetts Mill Workers, Lowell National Historical Park — Prairie Public — a public-television visit to the mill city where young women from farm families tended water-powered machines and organized some of the country's first labor protests. Watch the first five minutes for the mills, the boarding houses, and the long working days. It never mentions where the cotton came from; add the enslaved people who grew it, as the chapter does. It also runs ahead to the late nineteenth century, past this week. (video, 7 min) (captions: creator)

③ Removal, named plainly

Chapter 9, Section “Name the removals plainly: the Cherokee Nation and the Trail of Tears” · Session 1, Segment 6, “The Trail of Tears” · Remember: a President's word that removal was kind is evidence of his argument, and the Cherokee Nation's own record tells another story.

  • What Happened on the Trail of Tears? — National Park Service — the park service's account of the Cherokee Nation's removal, from its constitution and its court victory over Georgia to the Treaty of New Echota, the roundup, and the march west. Read it for the steps in order and for the Cherokee Nation's capital at Tahlequah today. It includes survivors' memories and one estimate of the dead; the park service's own trail overview gives a different one, so the course keys no death figure. (reading, 8–12 min)
  • National History Day 2022: Diplomacy, Debate, and the American Indian Removal Act — SmithsonianNMAI — an educator at the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian lays out the national argument over removal, the five nations the act targeted, and how Cherokee leaders fought it. Watch for the Cherokee Nation's constitution and its newspaper, the Cherokee Phoenix. It frames removal as a national debate of its time; the debate was real, and so were the forced removals that followed it, which the course states plainly. The death estimate it gives is the video's, never keyed, and its closing minutes are a guide for a student contest you can skip. (video, 8 min) (captions: creator)
  • Cherokee Almanac: The End of the Trail — OsiyoTV — the Cherokee Nation's own documentary series on where the Trail of Tears ended: not one place but several depots where survivors arrived, and the frauds in their rations that a later federal report recorded. Watch it for a survivor's story and for the Cherokee Nation's view of its own survival. Stop here before the reform movements; next week takes them up. (video, 5 min) (captions: automatic)

Optional one-stop reference (free online reference)

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.

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