Questions and Topics

453

SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS AND TOPICS

§§ 298-301. TEXAS, MEXICO, AND OREGON

a. Show how the Southern voters enjoyed undue power.

b. Had you been opposed to the extension of slave territory, how would you have voted in 1844? Give your reasons.

c. What did the word " Oregon" signify in 1845, 1847, 1860? Which country, the United States or Great Britain, had the best claim to Oregon in 1846? Why?

§ 302. THE WALKER TARIFF

a. Look up the Walker Tariff (Lalor's Cyclopædia), and compare it with the present tariff, especially as to taxes on raw materials, on textiles, and on luxuries.

b. To what causes do you attribute the prosperity of the country in the years 1846-57? Give your reasons in full.

c. Show how farming on a large scale was immeasurably promoted by the invention of the McCormick reaper.

§§ 303-308. THE COMPROMISE OF 1850

a. Was compromise any more necessary in 1850 than at the time of the Whiskey Rebellion or of the Nullification Episode?

b. Precisely what would have been the effect of the Wilmot Proviso had it been passed?

c. How would you have voted in 1848, and why? If you had been a New York Democrat, how would you have voted?

d. State at length Taylor's and Clay's policy as to slavery extension in 1849-50.

e. Read Webster's "Seventh of March Speech," and explain why it aroused feeling against him in the North.

$308. FUGITIVE SLAVES

a. Explain fully why the Fugitive Slave Law was a blunder on the part of the Southerners.

b. Look up the writ of habeas corpus, or get some lawyer to explain it to you. Quote the clause in the Constitution touching it. Why could it be denied to the fugitive slave and not to the rescuer?

§§ 309-314. ELECTIONS OF 1852 AND 1856

a. Read Mrs. Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, and explain why it was a potent factor in causing the Civil War.

b. Trace the genesis of the Republican party from the parties of Jackson's time. Is the present Democratic party any more the descendant of Jefferson's Republican party than is the present Republican party? Give your reasons.

c. For what candidate would you have voted in 1852? In 1856 ? Give your reasons.

$$ 310-316. THE CONTEST OVER KANSAS

a. Why was the Kansas-Nebraska Act the most momentous measure that ever passed the Congress of the United States ?

b. Read a detailed account of the conflict in Kansas, and state which party acted in the more unlawful manner. Give your reasons.

c. Squatter or Popular Sovereignty: define. Senator Benton's assertion in § 312.

Explain the force of

d. Discuss the Kansas-Nebraska Act as to constitutionality, expediency, immediate and remote effects on the North, on the South, on the Union.

e. State the principal points of the Dred Scott opinion. State Douglas's "Freeport Doctrine." Can you reconcile them?

f. Why did Lincoln believe that the Union could not endure "half slave and half free"? Why was the conflict “irrepressible"?

GENERAL QUESTIONS

a. Make continuous recitations from note-book upon (1) Limited Power of Congress, (2) Fugitive Slave Laws, (3) Nullifying Ordinances, (4) Mason and Dixon's line, (5) Important Treaties, (6) Secession.

b. Subjects for reports based on secondary authorities: (1) the careers, or portions of them, of Generals Scott and Taylor, Senators Seward, Chase, Sumner, and Douglas, Mrs. Stowe; (2) the Fugitive Slave cases, or one of them; (3) the Federal judiciary, 1829-61; (4) the weak Presidents and results of their weakness.

TOPICS FOR INVESTIGATION BY INDIVIDUAL STUDENTS

a. Tabulate the electoral votes of 1844, 1848, 1852, and 1856. Arrange the table to show votes by sections; the North, the South, the East, the Northwest (Stanwood's Elections as cited on pp. 420, 430, 438, 448).

b. Summarize the argument of (1) Clay, (2) Calhoun, (3) Webster, (4) Seward, (5) Chase, (6) Douglas, and (7) Lincoln (Johnston's Orations as cited on pp. 434, 435, 437, 440, 441, 448, 449, 450).

c. Summarize the arguments of the "Independent Democrats" (441, second group).

CHAPTER XII

SECESSION, 1860-1861

Books for Consultation

General Readings. - Johnston's American Politics, 189-196; Wilson's Division and Reunion, 204-216; Morse's Abraham Lincoln; Goldwin Smith's United States.

Special Accounts. - *Rhodes's United States, III, ch. xii (condition of the country in 1860); Greeley's American Conflict; *Von Holst's Constitutional History; Schouler's United States; *Draper's Civil War; Ropes's Story of the Civil War, I; *Stephens's War between the States; Blaine's Twenty Years; *Pollard's Lost Cause; *Taussig's Tariff History. Lives of leading statesmen, Guide, § 25.

Sources. American History Leaflets; Williams's Statesman's Manual; Johnston's American Orations; McPherson's History of the Rebellion; Stedman and Hutchinson's Library of American Literature. Writings of the leading statesmen, Guide, §§ 32, 33.

Maps. Hart's Epoch Maps, Nos. 8, 13.

Bibliography. Channing and Hart, Guide to American History, §§ 56 a, 56b (General Readings), §§ 203-207 (Topics and References).

Illustrative Material. - *Nicolay and Hay, Abraham Lincoln; *Buchanan's Buchanan's Administration; Garrisons' Garrison; Dabney's Defence of Virginia; Sherman's Memoirs; Olmsted's Cotton Kingdom; A. L. Lowell's Political Essays; Wise's Seven Decades; Coleman's Crittenden; Bett's Joseph Henry (M. A.); Holmes's Emerson ; Helper's Impending Crisis; *Davis's Confederate States.

Gayarré's "Sugar Plantation" (Harper's Magazine, May, 1887); Smede's Memorials of a Southern Planter; Page's The Old South ; Trent's W. G. Simms.

SECESSION, 1860-1861

318. Introductory. The year 1860 saw the breaking Southern down of the policy of compromise which had distinguished policy, 1860. the political history of the country since the beginning of the Revolutionary War. This change was brought about by a