After the Fact, Volume 1  (4th edition)

Study Guide
 
Each chapter of After the Fact explores the variety of methods or tools used by historians to investigate the past, and the role of the historian as detective.  You will learn fascinating new information regarding issues and individuals from the American past, and how the use of new methods can open new horizons of historical understanding.

Before reading each chapter, consider the following questions for discussion in class. Your notes on each chapter will be valuable resources for any essays connected to this reading.
Introduction, and Prologue. "The Strange Death of Silas Deane: The Problem of Selecting Evidence."

1.  What is your initial impression of this "apprentice approach to history"? What do the authors mean by this term?

2.  How does this text differ from or compare with other history texts that you have read?

3.  What does the case of "The Strange Death of Silas Deane" demonstrate regarding the methods or techniques of historical research? How and why was this case re-opened, and do you believe that it has been "solved"?

4. Who was Silas Deane, and how do the authors use this case to demonstrate how “history” is created? Who was Edward Bancroft and why is he important to this story?
Chapter 5. "The Invisible Pioneers: Ecological Transformations along the Western Frontier"

1. From the section "Shapers of the Environment," how do the authors describe the relationship that the Indians had with the environment prior to the arrival of the Europeans.  What examples of this do they provide from the text.

2. From the section "The Question of Numbers," how and why have population figures for the pre-Columbian Americas, North and South, changed in the 20th century. What techniques have been used by scholars to find the size of these pre-Columbian populations? What do the latest figures reveal about the size and complexity of the native societies that existed before 1492?

3. From the section "The Migration of Microbes," provide examples of the impact that European diseases had upon the native populations of the Americas. What were these diseases? What was the epidemic of 1837? Describe how these diseases disrupted Indian society.

4. How did European plants and animals prevail against the native American ecology, as described in "Competing Ecological Systems"? What effect did the horse have upon Plains Indian society?
Chapter 1, "Serving Time in Virginia: The Perspectives of Evidence in Social History"

1. From the introduction, what questions are raised by the authors and other historians concerning the reliability of the writings of John Smith as reliable  historical sources on early Virginia.

2. In the section "A Colony on the Edge of Ruin," what was the condition of the colony of Jamestown during the first ten years of settlement?  What was the main problem?

3. What changes by Sir Edwin Sandys briefly turned this colony around, as described in "Blueprint for a Virginia Utopia." Yet what seems to account for the continually high death rate?

4. What commodity turned Virginia into a "Boom Country"? Describe the system of labor emerging in the colony to produce this commodity.

5. After reading "And slavery," why do historians believe that slavery was not a significant source of labor during this first economic boom?
Chapter 2, "The Visible and Invisible Worlds of Salem: Studying Crisis at the Community Level"

1. Why are the following personalities and places important in this story

Samuel Parris Mary Warren   Salem Town
Goody Nurse Tituba Salem Village
George Burroughs Thomas Hutchinson  

:2. How does the research of the historians Boyer and Nissenbaum reveal geographic patterns concerning the apparent outbreak of witchcraft at Salem. What are those patterns?
Chapter 4: "Jackson's Frontier - and Turner's: History and Grand Theory"

1. How did Frederick Jackson Turner’s "frontier hypothesis" challenge existing ideas and approaches to the study of American history in the 1890s? In particular, how did Turner address the issue of the origins of American democracy? Where did he find these origins?

2. How and why does Andrew Jackson serve as a useful model of an individual shaped by the values of the American frontier?

3. Describe how the following historians have differed from each other in their interpretation of Jackson as a product of the American frontier: 

Thomas Perkins Abernethy Arthur Schlesinger Jr. Michael Rogin
Chapter 6: "The Madness of John Brown: The Uses of Psychohistory"

1. Who was John Brown, and what happened in October of 1859 that made him a major figure in American history?

2. How do the historians John Garraty and Stephen Oates differ in their analysis of John Brown's behavior?

3. What evidence does this chapter present regarding the motives of John Brown as an abolitionist?