1864—Grant's advance on Lee; Battle of the Wilderness; Sherman's Atlanta campaign; siege of Petersburg; the Alabama sunk by the Kearsarge; Battle of Mobile Bay; fall of Atlanta; Sheridan in the Shenandoah; Sherman's March to the Sea; Battle of Nashville.
1865—Battle of Five Forks; Richmond evacuated; surrender of Lee; Lincoln assassinated; surrender of Johnston; capture of Jefferson Davis; review of Northern army in Washington.
Take up the condition of the South immediately after the war. Have papers on the purchase of Alaska, our increase in population, the crossing of the continent by the railway, and the war with the Indians in which Custer was killed. Mention the administrations as before, and close the period with the war with Spain, and describe our new possessions.
IX—PRESENT-DAY CONDITIONS AND PROBLEMS
The various subjects to be studied under this topic stand out conspicuously: our material wealth; our cities; our manufactures; our coalfields, forests, watercourses, and other resources; our public schools and universities; our vocational schools and schools for the defective; the education of the negro, the Indian, the mountain white; our railway systems; telegraph, telephone, and wireless communication; our scientific discoveries; conservation; our art galleries, museums, theaters, orchestras. Close with discussions of our chief national problems: immigration, labor, and woman suffrage.
This period should have one program on the physical character of our country; its great natural beauties in the Yosemite, the Sierras, the Yellowstone, and the Grand Canyon in the West; the mountains of the East and South; Niagara, the Hudson, the Mississippi, and our seacoast.
X—AMERICAN LITERATURE AND ART
Our literature sometimes seems to be of small consequence as compared with that of older countries, but as a nation we have been occupied with establishing ourselves in our territory, and have had little time to give to what may be called the adornments of life.
In our Colonial Period we had a few outstanding historical books like Bradford's History of the Plymouth Plantation,—Judge Samuel Sewall's Diary, and Cotton Mather's Magnalia. Then, also, we had Jonathan Edwards' great philosophical work on The Freedom of the Will.
In Revolutionary days Benjamin Franklin wrote his autobiography, Thomas Paine his essays, John Woolman his Journal, and the first American novelist appeared, Charles Brockden Brown.