A Short History of the United States for School Use Part 43

_c_. How would you have acted had you been a United States officer called to carry out the Fugitive Slave Law?

-- 348.--_a_. Who was Mrs. Stowe? What view did she take of slavery?

_b_. Were there any good points in the slave system?

_c_. Why is this book so important?

CHAPTER 34

---- 349-351.--_a_. Who were the candidates in 1852? Who was chosen? Why?

_b_. What doctrine did Douglas apply to Kansas and Nebraska?

_c_. Why did Chase call this bill "a violation of faith"?

_d_. Was Douglas a patriot? Chase? Sumner? Pierce?

-- 352.--_a_. Give an account of the early life and training of Abraham Lincoln.

_b_. What did he think of the Kansas-Nebraska Act?

---- 353, 354.--_a_. What effect did the Kansas-Nebraska Act have on the settlement of Kansas?

_b_. Describe the election. Do you think that laws made by a legislature so elected were binding?

_d_. Explain the difference in the att.i.tude of the Senate and House on the Kansas question.

---- 355, 356.--_a_. How was the Republican party formed? _b_. Were its principles like or unlike those of the Republican party of Jefferson's time? Give your reasons.

-- 357.--_a_. What rights did the Supreme Court declare a slave could not possess? Was a slave a person or a thing?

_b_. What power does the Const.i.tution give Congress over a territory?

(Art. IV, Sec. 3.)

-- 358.--_a_. Explain carefully the quotations from Lincoln's speeches.

_b_. Was the doctrine of popular sovereignty necessarily favorable to slavery? Give ill.u.s.trations to support your reasons.

_c_. Was Douglas's declaration in harmony with the decision of the Supreme Court?

---- 359, 360.--_a_. Compare the att.i.tude of Douglas and Buchanan upon the admission of Kansas.

_b_. Describe John Brown's raid. Was he a traitor?

GENERAL QUESTIONS

_a_. Give, with dates, the important laws as to slavery since 1783.

_b_. What were the arguments in favor of the extension of slavery?

Against it?

_c_. Find and learn a poem against slavery by Whittier, Lowell, or Longfellow.

_d_. Make a table of elections since 1788, with the leading parties, candidates, and princ.i.p.al issues. Underline the name of the candidate elected.

TOPICS FOR SPECIAL WORK

_a_. John Brown in Kansas or at Harper's Ferry.

_b_. The career, to this time, of any man mentioned in Chapters 33 and 34.

_c_. Any one fugitive slave case: Jerry McHenry in Syracuse (A.J. May's _Antislavery Conflicts_), Shadrach, Anthony Burns.

SUGGESTIONS

Preparation is especially important in teaching this period. The teacher will find references to larger books in Channing's _Students' History._

Show how the question of slavery was really at the basis of the Mexican War. Geographical conditions and the settlement of the Western country should be carefully noted. A limited use of the writings and speeches of prominent men and writers is especially valuable at this point.

Have a large map of the United States in the cla.s.s room, cut out and fasten upon this map pieces of white and black paper to ill.u.s.trate the effects of legislation under discussion, and also to ill.u.s.trate the various elections.

The horrors of slavery should be but lightly touched. Emphasize especially the fact that slavery prevented rather than aided the development of the South, and was an evil economically as well as socially.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE UNITED STATES IN 1860.]

XII

SECESSION, 1860-1861

Books for Study and Reading

References.--Scribner's _Popular History_, IV, 432-445; McMaster's _School History_, chap. xxvi (industrial progress, 1840-60).

Home Readings.--Page's _The Old South_.

CHAPTER 35

THE UNITED STATES IN 1860