HIS-113 surveys United States history from 1607 to 1865, covering the Columbian Exchange, the colonial period, the American Revolution, and the escalating conflict over slavery that led to the Civil War. The course grounds its historical narrative in genuine primary-source analysis, requiring students to engage directly with period documents rather than relying solely on secondary summaries.
A genuinely foundational chronological arc
The course covers a specific, bounded chronological arc — 1607 to 1865 — that traces a coherent developmental thread from early colonization through the nation's founding to the crisis that produced the Civil War, giving students a genuine sense of historical causation across this period.
Primary sources as the evidentiary backbone
HIS-113 requires genuine primary-source analysis throughout, ensuring students engage with actual period documents and evidence rather than only secondary historical narratives about this era.
Key topics in HIS113
- The Columbian Exchange
- The American colonial period
- The American Revolution
- Slavery and sectional conflict
- Primary-source analysis of period documents
- Causes of the Civil War
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Worked example: tracing causation across two centuries
- Isolated-events approach: Studying the Revolution and the Civil War as unconnected events
- HIS-113's approach: Tracing how colonial-era economic and social structures, including slavery, developed continuously into the sectional tensions that caused the Civil War
- Lesson: HIS-113 teaches that understanding genuine historical causation requires following a developmental thread across this full 1607-1865 arc, not studying isolated moments
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Frequently asked questions
Secondary narratives about early American history reflect the interpretive choices of the historians who wrote them, and a student who only reads these summaries cannot independently evaluate whether those interpretations are well-supported by the actual evidence. HIS-113 requires primary-source engagement because it builds the genuine analytical skill of forming historical arguments directly from period evidence, which is foundational to doing credible historical work at any level.
The Civil War represents a genuine historical rupture — the end of slavery and the reconstruction of the American political and social order — that meaningfully separates the nation-building era from the modern industrial era that followed, making 1865 a natural point to divide the survey into two coherent courses. SNHU's HIS-113/HIS-114 split at this point reflects this genuine historical turning point, not an arbitrary chronological midpoint.