In Becoming America, author Jon Butler persuasively argues that the late American colonial period of 1680-1770 was one of monumental change, the end result being an essentially "modern- culture. ... While many Americans consider slavery and the indirect genocide of the Indians to be regrettable, but concluded chapters of American history, the ethnocentrism that spawned those two phenomena is still alive in modern culture. ... Butler proves that these characteristics of American culture and the American people have their origins in the late colonial era. ... The rise in international trade of b...

• Word Count: 2312
• Approx Pages: 9
• Grade Level: Graduate

Its origins stretch back to the democratic stirrings of the American Revolution, the Antifederalists of the 1780s and 1790s, and the Jeffersonian Democratic Republicans. More directly, it arose out of the profound social and economic changes of the early nineteenth century. ... In the West, the seizure of lands from Native Americans and mixed-blood Hispanics opened up fresh areas for white settlement and cultivation "and for speculation. ... According to the Jacksonians, all of human history had involved a struggle between the few and the many, instigated by a greedy minority of wea...

• Word Count: 2407
• Approx Pages: 10
• Grade Level: Graduate