Assignments

Text: Divine, Chapter 13,  pp. 397-408 & Chapter 14: 4/11/00

Special Topics:  The Compromises of 1820 and 1850
                         The Dred Scott Decision

Answer one of the following text questions:

• How well did African Americans cope with being slaves in the American South?  Did free blacks suffer as well as slaves?  Explain.
• What were the consequences of the Mexican War for westward expansion and the politics of slavery in the United States?
• Define the phrase "popular sovereignty" and explain its role in the sectional crisis of the 1850s.
• Why did the sectional crisis in the United States come to a head in the 1850s?  What role did the Republican Party play?

Read and compare the following accounts of slavery in the ante-bellum South.

Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Chapter VI
Mary Norcott Bryan, A Grandmother's Recollections of Dixie, Letter I, Letter III, Letter, IV, Letter V, and Letter IX

Answer at least two of the following primary source questions:

• How do these two accounts of slavery differ?
• Are there any similarities between them?
• What do these two women reveal about family life, both black and white, in the Old South?
• Do you find it surprising that Harriet Jacobs was literate?  What about Mary Norcott?  Why?  Why not?
• Was gender more important than race in the lives of either (or both) of these women?  How?  Why? Why not?

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