Assignments

Text: Divine, chapter eleven,  3/28/00

Special Topics:  The Rise of the Modern Family
                         Freedom, Diversity and Reform

Answer one of the following text questions:

• Why is the period between 1830 and 1860 known as an ear of reform?  Were the reforms intended to increase or decrease personal freedom?
• Why was religion important in the United States at this time?
• What were the roles of women and the family in pre Civil War America?  Compared to their colonial forebears, did American women have more autonomy or less by 1840?
• Would you say that Americans were an optimistic or a pessimistic people in the first half of the nineteenth century?  Explain.

Choose one of the following:

1.) "Temperance: Extract from a temperance address by Dr. J. S. Wilson" The Ladies Repository," December 1841

Answer at least two of the following primary source questions:

• What kind of person wrote this address?
• To whom did he direct his remarks and why?
• What does this address say about gender roles in antebellum America?  About family life?  About the nature and purpose of moral reform?
• Do you think these remarks were meant to be read or spoken?  Explain your reasoning.

Answer at least two of the following primary source questions:

• Who was responsible for this broadside?
• What emotions did those responsible want to evoke from their fellow Americans, both northern and southern?
• How are slaves portrayed in these illustrations? What effect has slavery had on them?
• How are slaveholders portrayed?  What effect has slavery had on them?
• How is the north portrayed?  What is the effect of slavery on it?
• Would you call this propaganda?  Why?  Why not?