History 1877 Discussion
- In 1808, the (legal) international slave trade ended. Over the next fifty years, the American South developed a complex slave society. Choose one element of that society (plantation owners, white yeoman, free African-Americans, plantation slaves, city slaves) and, writing from that perspective, describe how you fit into the slave society. What is your role in the economy? Who do you interact with on a daily basis? What laws and rules govern your life? How do you feel about slavery??
- What were the main social, political, and economic factors in the early nineteenth century that encouraged the massive physical expansion of the United States??
- How did the woman’s role in American society change between the Revolution and the Civil War? How did it stay the same? In your answer, consider a woman’s place in the public and private spheres.?
- Historians have long debated whether the Civil War was an inevitable “impending crisis” or an avoidable conflict brought on by a “blundering generation” of leaders. Which assessment do you think is more accurate? Why??
- E. B. Du Bois—a scholar, activist, and the founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People—referred to Reconstruction as a “splendid failure.” What do you think he meant? How did Reconstruction fail? What was, nevertheless, splendid about the effort?