You need a thesis statement and you must have specific historical evidence to support that thesis. You cannot simply say: “Ideas about race developed in the Americas during the colonial period.” You will need evidence to prove that. Don’t just give a list of people or events. You must explain who or what they were and how they are connected.
1. Discuss the slavery from after the War of 1812 to the Civil War.
Look at the expansion of cotton farming westward (Cotton gin!).
What was life on a plantation like for slaves and for whites?
Look at the internal slave trade, urban slavery etc.
How did slaves resist? Culture, religion, rebellion – impact of the Haitian Revolution? Gabriel? Denmark Vesey? Nat Turner?
Underground Railroad, Harriet Tubman
The Amistad
Colonization
What role did the abolitionists play? Moral Suasion? You don’t need to cover all of the abolitionists, but you should cover at least 2. People like Garrison, Douglass, the Grimke sisters, Elijah Lovejoy etc –
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
How does the Fugitive Slave Act fit in? Prigg v. Pennsylvania? The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850?
Bleeding Kansas?
What role did John Brown play? Kansas and Harper’s Ferry
Dred Scott case
How did the Emancipation Proclamation shift the meaning of the Civil War?
2. Discuss territorial expansion from after the War of 1812 through the start of the Civil War.
In this essay, start with the acquisition of Florida, Seminole War etc
Look at the Missouri Compromise (36’ 30’ line and Maine, Henry Clay, Tallmadge) and the issue of the expansion of slavery and the balance between free and slave states.
How did Indian Removal open the western areas to cotton farming?
Manifest Destiny
Texas
Election of 1844
How does the territory the US takes from Mexico after the MX-AM War affect the issue of slavery?
You should cover the Wilmot Proviso and the Free Soil Party.
How does the California Gold Rush affect this issue?
You should look at the Compromise of 1850. Fugitive Slave Act
Stephen Douglas
Popular Sovereignty
How does the Kansas- Nebraska crisis fit in? What are the results? (Bleeding Kansas, Charles Sumner etc).
1856 election
Dred Scott case
3. Discuss the Second Great Awakening and the reform movements that emerged from it.
Make sure you connect it to millennialism – in fact, this would be a good thing to include in a thesis statement.
How did religious revivalism shape society?
You don’t need to cover every one of the groups discussed in the textbook, but you should have representatives from new religious groups like the Mormons, Seventh Day Adventists, Shakers – don’t just list them, tell me who was involved, what were they doing, how did people react to them etc.
utopian societies, Shakers, Onieda
Brooks Farm, Owenites
Temperance
literature, education (Common School)
Abolition, Colonization, Garrison, Douglass, Moral Suasion
How were women’s rights connected to the abolition movement?
4. Discuss the Civil War.
How did Lincoln’s election lead to secession? What was secession about?
I do not expect you to have every battle and every general involved, but you should be able to tell me the major people involved and the way the North and South were prosecuting the war. (how it became a war of attrition for example)
McClellan, Grant
Confederate leaders – Davis, Lee
You should mention some key battles that were turning points, like Ft. Sumpter, Shiloh, Antietam, Gettysburg, Vicksburg, the fall of Atlanta, Appomattox (you don’t need to go into great detail about the actual fighting)
You need to discuss the issue of slavery in the war, so you need to cover the contraband, how slavery was the cause of the war, Radical Republicans, the emancipation proclamation, black soldiers.
What was the opposition to the war in the North? (draft riots, Copperheads etc.)
Why did the North win?
Why did the South lose?
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