America: A Work in Progress, Volume 1

When the first Americans arrived 30,000 years ago, they brought with them their dreams for a better life. As America: A Work In Progress makes clear, they were seekers, scrambling across the continents of North and South America, searching for opportunities. Archeologists, through their intensive research, have told us much about these indigenous people and their lives. Who were they? From where did they come? Why? When? How did they contribute to our understanding of the American story? What is the relationship like between various ethnic groups?  How do they fit into today’s world? Why were indigenous people nearly wiped out by greed, smallpox, force, and alcohol? How do we tell the complete story, including all members of the American family?

America: A Work In Progress examines various themes and issues. We will ask key questions. We will urge you to “dig deeper.” Conflict: wars with England, Mexico, and among ourselves are analyzed in the text. What was the relationship like between the Mother Country of England and its colonies? Why did conflict result in one of history’s messiest divorces: the American Revolution? Who was included and who was excluded from Thomas Jefferson’s pledge “all men are created equal”?

Conflict, gender, and race flow through the pages of America: A Work In Progress."Posterity” was the Constitution Framers’ plan for future generations. Was that document fundamentally flawed or have amendments made it the foundation for modern America? What was life like for those who arrived on slave-trading vessels?

Strong personalities such as Andrew Jackson leap from this book. Determined women such as those who assembled in Seneca Falls, New York in 1848 to draft the Women’s Declaration of Sentiments are discussed as are abolitionists such as Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, the Grimke sisters, and Frederick Douglas. Human rights and dignity and the struggle to end “the peculiar Institution” of human bondage are on our minds as we consider the tumultuous 1850s. They are themes and issues interwoven in the fabric of America. Why was there no stepping away from the edge of the abyss of Civil War?

Manifest Destiny and the restlessness and movement of the American people westward, into the lands of the natives, into the Louisiana Purchase, Texas, the southwest, the gold fields of California is a theme which is explored in our textbook. Constantly, we are in motion, sweeping across a continent and removing anyone standing in the way.

The American Civil War cost 750,000 lives. Much of the south was trampled and devastated by northern generals such as Ulysses S. Grant and William T. Sherman. Why did the south’s Robert E. Lee keep fighting for four long and bloody years? Why is Abraham Lincoln considered our greatest president? His emphasis on emancipation beginning in 1863 transformed and energized the north’s war objectives. The Civil War proved two things: slavery is over and states cannot secede from the Union.

America: A Work In Progress concludes with the failure of Reconstruction. Twelve years of an attempt to change the south’s racial views and heal the ravages of war.  Freedmen and Freedwomen, adjusting to a life beyond being enslaved persons. This book suggests that we continue to work on the matters which brought indigenous people here 30,000 years ago. The story of our nation, a young nation, is far from concluded. Many issues and themes are worthy of us “digging deeper.” Our history is not stagnant, dormant, lifeless, or dusty. It is told vividly on each page, in a human tapestry often bathed in blood, of America: A Work In Progress.