Foundations of American Democracy: A Critical Documents Reader

Reading the founding documents of the United States and understanding their historical context can help us to consider vital questions about governance and democracy in present day America. In Foundations of American Democracy, the 250-year evolution of democratic republicanism is examined through the lens of twenty-one critical documents from our nation’s past.

The reader is divided into three parts. Starting with the Declaration of Independence, “Foundations” explores documents that laid the groundwork on which America was built. “A More Perfect Union” offers selections related to the American Civil War and Reconstruction. And “The Gospel of Freedom” highlights the challenges and struggles faced by generations of citizens who demanded participation and representation in our democracy. The authors of these works wrestled with some of the most difficult questions of their time, creating prose that is in turn eloquent, anguished, and passionate about the challenges of forming “a more perfect Union.” Each chapter includes a concise introduction, one primary document, questions for discussion, and a section on further readings. The reader includes well-known documents such as the Federalist Papers and the Emancipation Proclamation as well as other works that broaden our view of America’s ongoing democratic experiment.

Eleven historians from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill contributed to this volume which was developed as a resource for the foundations of American democracy requirement across the University of North Carolina System.

W. Fitzhugh Brundage is the William B. Umstead Professor of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He studies American history since the Civil War with a particular focus on the American South. His works include Lynching in the New South: Georgia and Virginia, 1880–1930 (1993), The Southern Past: A Clash of Race and Memory (2005), and Civilizing Torture: An American Tradition (2018).

Kathleen DuVal is the Carl W. Ernst Distinguished Professor of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She studies early America, particularly how various Native American, European, and African women and men interacted from the sixteenth through early nineteenth centuries. Her books include Native Nations: A Millennium in North America (2024) and Independence Lost: Lives on the Edge of the American Revolution (2015).

Joseph T. Glatthaar is the Stephenson Distinguished Professor of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He studies the American Civil War and American military history. His works include American Military History: A Very Short Introduction (2020) and General Lee’s Army: From Victory to Collapse (2008).

Miguel La Serna is the chairperson of the Department of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a Bowman & Gordon Gray Distinguished Term Professor of History. His books include With Masses and Arms: Peru’s Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (2020) and The Shining Path: Love, Madness, and Revolution in the Andes (co-authored with Orin Starn 2019).