PREFACE
Give Me Liberty! An American History is a survey of American history from the earliest days of European exploration and conquest of the New World to the first decades of the twenty-first century. It offers students a clear, concise narrative whose central theme is the changing contours of American freedom.
I am extremely gratified by the response to the first five editions of Give Me Liberty!, which have been used in survey courses at many hundreds of two- and four-year colleges and universities throughout the country. The comments I have received from instructors and students encourage me to think that Give Me Liberty! has worked well in their classrooms. Their comments have also included many valuable suggestions for revisions, which I greatly appreciate. These have ranged from corrections of typographical and factual errors to thoughts about subjects that needed more extensive treatment. In making revisions for this Sixth Edition, I have tried to take these suggestions into account. I have also incorporated the findings and insights of new scholarship that has appeared since the original edition was written.
The most significant changes in this Sixth Edition involve heightened emphasis on a question as old as the republic and as current as today’s newspapers: Who is an American?
Difference and commonality are both intrinsic parts of the American experience. Our national creed
emphasizes democracy and freedom as universal rights, but these rights have frequently been limited
to particular groups of people. The United States has long prided itself on being an “asylum for
mankind,” as Thomas Paine put it in Common Sense, his great pamphlet calling for American
independence. Yet we as a people have long been divided by clashing definitions of “Americanness.”
The first Naturalization Act, adopted in 1790, limited the right to become a citizen when immigrating
from abroad to white persons. And the right to vote was long denied to many Americans because of
race, gender, property holding, a criminal record, or other reasons. Today, in debates over
immigration and voting rights, the question of “Who is an American?” continues to roil our society.
In a nation resting, rhetorically at least, on the ideal of equality, the boundaries of inclusion and exclusion take on extreme significance. The greater the rights of American citizenship, the more important the definition of belonging. Groups like African-Americans and women, shut out from full equality from the beginning of the nation’s history, have struggled to gain recognition as full and equal members of the society. The definition of citizenship itself and the rights that come with it have been subject to intense debate throughout American history. And the cry of “second-class citizenship” has provided a powerful language of social protest for those who feel themselves excluded. To be sure, not all groups have made demands for inclusion. In the colonial era and for much of the history of the American nation, many Native Americans have demanded recognition of their own national sovereignty
There is stronger coverage of this theme throughout the book, and it is reinforced by a new primarysource feature, “Who Is an American?” The sixteen such features, distributed fairly evenly through the text, address the nature of American identity, the definition of citizenship, and controversies over inclusion and exclusion. These documents range from J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur’s reflections on Americanness toward the end of the War of Independence and the Declaration of Sentiments of the Seneca Falls Convention to Frederick Douglass’s great speech of 1869 in defense of Chinese immigration, “The Composite Nation,” and Mary Church Terrell’s poignant complaint about being treated as a stranger in her own country.
