Week 11 · Readings & resources

Week 11 — Readings & Resources

U.S. History to 1877 Free sample edition

Your primary reading is Chapter 11 (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 12 items (6 readings and 6 videos). Allow 57–74 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 war, disease, and the deaths of many Native people; take it at your own pace.

Pick-one quick path (19–22 min total)

① Texas: a declaration and its silence

Chapter 11, Section “Read the Texas declaration: grievances and a silence” · Session 1, Segment 2, “A declaration and a silence” · Remember: a document's silence about something is not evidence that the thing was absent.

Texas Declaration of Independence, March 1836 — Texas State Library and Archives Commission — one entry in the state archive's exhibit of a dozen documents that made a difference, on how the declaration was drafted, signed, and copied. Read it for the convention at Washington-on-the-Brazos, the drafting committee chaired by George Childress, and the full list of signers, J. Antonio Navarro and Lorenzo de Zavala among them. Its summary of the grievances never mentions slavery, which is the same silence the chapter asks you to check. (reading, 4–6 min)
How Did Slavery Affect Texas's Future? — Texas State Library and Archives Commission — a short question-and-answer page from the archive's exhibit on Texas annexation. Read it for slavery under Mexican law, the enslaved people living in Texas in 1836, the Republic's constitution, and the British loan offer that pushed annexation back into American politics. This is the corroborating source the chapter uses against the declaration's silence. (reading, 4–6 min)
Juan Seguin / Standing Their Ground: Tejanos at the Alamo — The Alamo — a short video from the Alamo historic site about Juan Seguín, a Tejano from a leading San Antonio family who fought on the Texas side and later served in the Republic's senate. It closes with a reading of his speech of 1837 at the burial of the Alamo defenders; that speech calls the Mexican army a barbarous enemy, which is his wartime language, not the course's. The video ends in 1837 and does not follow Tejano families past that year. (video, 2 min) (captions: automatic)
José Antonio Navarro: A Hero for all Texans — Texas Historical Commission — the state historical commission's introduction to Navarro, a Tejano merchant born in San Antonio who signed the Texas declaration, and to his home, now a state historic site. Watch it for a signer the declaration's own words about Anglo-American settlers leave out. It is a heritage-site video that celebrates him, so read its praise as the site's view, and notice that it says nothing about slavery. (video, 5 min) (captions: automatic)

② A contested war and a treaty of peace

Chapter 11, Section “Follow a contested war: the U.S.-Mexican War” · Session 1, Segment 4, “A contested war” · Remember: expansion was argued over at the time, and a treaty is evidence of what two governments promised.

The Annexation of Texas, the Mexican-American War, and the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo, 1845–1848 — Office of the Historian — the State Department history office's account, in one page, of annexation by joint resolution, the border dispute between the Nueces and the Rio Grande, Trist's negotiation after his recall, and the Wilmot Proviso. This builds on Week 6's work with the Constitution, which requires two-thirds of the Senate to approve a treaty. Its Senate vote count for the treaty differs from the National Archives' count, a good test of corroboration. Stop here before the Compromise of 1850; next week takes it up. (reading, 6–9 min)
The Mexican-American War — National Park Service — the park service's short history of how the war began in the Nueces Strip, who opposed it, and how American forces treated Mexican civilians. Read it for the blockade of Matamoros, for Lincoln and Thoreau, and for its plain account of the war's violence. Its closing paragraph names the dispossession of Native peoples among the war's results; set that beside the third group below. (reading, 5–8 min)
Archeology of Palo Alto Battlefield — PaloAltoBattlefieldNPS — the park's archaeologist explains how a metal-detector survey mapped the first major battle of the war, fought on an open prairie in 1846. Watch it for a different kind of evidence: buttons, musket parts, and cannonballs that let archaeologists place the armies' lines, and the British-made muskets the Mexican army carried. The count of artifacts he gives is the video's figure, not the course's. Use this example while completing the Week-11 module overview. (video, 8 min) (captions: automatic)
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo — Pritzker Military Museum & Library — a two-minute episode on the steps from Polk's order to the treaty, the envoy Nicholas Trist, and the terms on money, borders, and the Mexican citizens of the ceded lands. Listen for the treaty's full title as a treaty of peace, friendship, limits, and settlement. It tells the story from the army's side and names no Native nation. (video, 2 min) (captions: automatic)

③ Who was left out

Chapter 11, Section “Name the consequences for Native nations” · Session 1, Segment 6, “Who was left out” · Remember: no Native nation signed the treaty, and the nations it wrote about are nations now.

1848: California Gold Rush Brings Miners and Diseases — National Library of Medicine — one entry from the library's Native Voices timeline, on the Miwok, Maidu, and Nisenan people at Sutter's Mill and the diseases and violence the miners brought. It gives a demographers' estimate of California's Native population before and after the Gold Rush; estimates like this are revised, so the course teaches the loss in words and keys no figure. (reading, 2–4 min)
The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and Sutter Fort during the Mexican American War — Sutter's Fort SHP & State Indian Museum — a state-park interpreter explains how the American flag went up over Sutter's Fort, how the fort fed the army, and how gold was found days before the treaty was signed. Listen for the closing point that the treaty recognized no Native nation on land those nations had lived on for thousands of years. He calls the war inevitable, which is his reading, not a settled fact. One slip to catch: he says Texas became part of the United States through the treaty, but Chapter 11 shows Texas was annexed in 1845. (video, 4 min) (captions: automatic)
Nation to Nation — SmithsonianNMAI — a short film from the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian on treaties between the United States and Native nations as agreements between nations. Watch for its answer to manifest destiny: it says the dispossession of Native nations was never inevitable, because at every step people made choices. The count of treaties it gives is the film's figure, not the course's. (video, 5 min) (captions: automatic)

Optional one-stop reference (free online reference)

Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848) — National Archives — the week's workshop document as the National Archives keeps it: read the introduction above the transcript for the cession, the payment, and the Senate's removal of Article X, then find Article VIII in the transcript, which holds the pinned passage. The image at the top is the exchange copy in Spanish and English. Skip the teaching-activity links. (reading, 10–15 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