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This course explores key events, trends, and concepts in American history from before European contact until the Civil War. Through readings, lectures, and discussion, students will engage with the social, economic, political, and cultural factors at play in the development of the United States to 1865. The course will examine the motivations and effects of European colonization in North America; the causes of the American Revolution and its political, social, and cultural ramifications; the growth of market capitalism and its effects on American society; the course and nature of westward expansion during the nineteenth century; and the emergence, expansion, and eventual end of slavery in the United States.