I am teaching a course entitled “The Long American Revolution” in the spring 2011 semester that uses the Revolutionary War and the Civil War as bookends. Yes, not the most radical reworking of history, but we don’t have enough faculty in my program to offer separate courses on the Revolution and the Civil War. However, I also think the course has an integrity of its own and can raise some questions and themes that courses with a more limited scope could not necessarily explore. I draw on the usual suspects for my baseline view of the period: James McPherson, Sean Read more