AP U.S. History
Spilkin
Unit Four
The Civil War and Reconstruction
1848—1877
DIRECTIONS: This is your study resource to use as we progress through our unit. It lists concepts, terms, and an outline of items that may appear on the unit exam or the AP Exam. Use this guide as you wish; it will not be collected. However, all material on this guide (and from class) is subject to being tested.
READINGS: Kennedy, et al, Chapters 16, 18, 19, 20, 21 (excerpts), 22
§ See below for the specific pages to read in Chapter 21
· Taking Sides Issues 14 and 17 (These apply, but are only required if assigned.)
Miscellaneous primary source documents
UNIT DATES: October 14—October 24, 2008
ANTICIPATED TEST: Multiple Choice Test: October 24, 2008
NO FRQ or DBQ on this test.
PLEASE NOTE:
Your weekly agendas may specify certain portions of a chapter, or certain chapters, to be read as homework prior to a day’s lesson. THIS DOES NOT MEAN THAT YOU SHOULD ONLY READ PAGES LISTED IN YOUR AGENDAS. FURTHERMORE, IT DOES NOT MEAN THAT YOU ARE NOT ACCOUNTABLE FOR ALL READINGS FOR THE UNIT. Do not fall into the trap of only reading what is specified in the agendas.
CHAPTER 16: The South and the Slavery Controversy, 1793—1860
Objectives:
1. Point out the economic strengths and weaknesses of the “Cotton Kingdom.”
2. Describe the southern planter aristocracy and identify its strengths and weaknesses.
3. Describe the nonslaveholding white majority of the South and explain its relations with both the planter elite and the black slaves.
4. Describe the nature of African American life, both free and slave, before the Civil War.
5. Describe the effects of the “peculiar institution” of slavery on both blacks and whites.
6. Explain why abolitionism was at first unpopular in the North and describe how it gradually gained strength.
7. Describe the fierce southern response to abolitionism and the growing defense of slavery as a “positive good.”
Identify, define, or describe AND state the historical significance of the following:
Harriet Beecher Stowe William Lloyd Garrison Denmark Vesey
David Walker Nat Turner Sojourner Truth
Theodore Dwight Weld Frederick Douglass Arthur and Lewis Tappan
Elijah P. Lovejoy Oligarchy Abolitionism
“Positive Good” Cotton Kingdom The Liberator
Mulattoes American Anti-Slavery Society “peculiar institution”
Liberty party Lane rebels Gag Resolution
Review Questions:
1. In what way could the complex structure of southern society be described? What role did plantation owners, small slaveholders, independent white farmers, poor whites, free blacks, and black slaves each have in the southern social order?
2. Compare the attitudes and practices regarding slavery and race relations in the North and the South. Explain the common statement that southerners liked blacks as individuals but despied the race, while northerners claimed to like blacks as a race but disliked individuals.
3. How did the reliance on cotton production and slavery affect the South economically, socially, and morally, and how did this reliance affect its relations with the North?
4. How did slavery affect the lives of African Americans in both the South and the North?
5. A large majority of Americans, in both the North and the South, strongly rejected radical abolitionism. Why, then, did abolitionism and antislavery come to shape American politics in the 1840s and 1850s?
6. In what ways did slavery make the South a fundamentally different kind of society from the North? Could the South ever have abolished slavery gradually on its own, as the North did after the American Revolution? Why or why not?
7. If you had been an ordinary northern citizen in the 1830s or 1840s, what would you have proposed to do about the central American problem of slavery, and why? Would either William Lloyd Garrison’s radical abolitionism or Frederick Douglass’s political abolitionism have appealed to you? Did any other “solutions” seem attractive and plausible?
CHAPTER 18: Renewing the Sectional Struggle, 1848—1854
Objectives:
1. Explain how the issue of slavery in the territories acquired from Mexico disrupted American politics from 1848—1850.
2. Point out the major terms of the Compromise of 1850 and indicate how this agreement attempted to deal with the issue of slavery.
3. Indicate how the Whig party disintegrated and disappeared because of its divisions over slavery.
4. Describe how the Pierce administration—as well as private American adventurers—pursued various overseas and expansionist ventures designed primarily to expand slavery.
5. Describe Douglas’s Kansas-Nebraska Act and explain why it stirred the sectional controversy to new heights.
Identify, define, or describe AND state the historical significance of the following:
Lewis Cass Stephen A. Douglas Franklin Pierce
Zachary Taylor John C. Calhoun Winfield Scott
Martin Van Buren Daniel Webster Matthew C. Perry
Harriet Tubman William H. Seward James Gadsden
Henry Clay Millard Fillmore “popular sovereignty”
Free Soil Party Fugitive Slave Law “Conscience” Whigs
“Personal liberty laws” Underground Railroad Compromise of 1850
“Fire eaters” Clayton-Bulwer Treaty “Seventh of March” Speech
Ostend Manifesto “higher law” Kansas-Nebraska Act
Review Questions:
1. What urgent issues created the crisis leading up to the Compromise of 1850?
2. What was the effect of the morally powerful slavery debate on American political parties? What caused the demise of the Whig Party, and the rise of the Free Soil and Republican parties?
3. How did the Compromise of 1850 attempt to deal with the most difficult issues concerning slavery? Was the Compromise a “success?” By what standard?
4. Why were proslavery southerners so eager to push for further expansion in Nicaragua, Cuba, and elsewhere in the 1850s?
5. What were the causes and consequences of the Kansas-Nebraska Act?
6. How similar was the Compromise of 1850 to the Missouri Compromise of 1820? How did each sectional compromise affect the balance of power between North and South? Why could sectional issues be compromised in 1820 and 1850, but not in 1854?
7. Because Senator Stephen A. Douglas’ Kansas-Nebraska Act re-ignited the slavery issues after the Compromise of 1850, should he bear responsibility as an instigator of the Civil War? How and why might Civil War have come even if Douglas’ bill had not been enacted?
Chapter 19: Drifting Toward Disunion, 1854—1861
Objectives:
1. Relate the sequence of major crises that led from the Kansas-Nebraska Act to secession and explain the significance of each.
2. Explain how and why “bleeding Kansas” became a dress rehearsal for the Civil War.
3. Trace the growing power of the Republican Party in the 1850s and the increasing divisions and helplessness of the Democrats.
4. Explain how the Dred Scott decision and John Brown’s Harpers Ferry raid deepened sectional antagonism.
5. Trace the rise of Lincoln as the leading exponent of the Republican doctrine of no expansion of slavery.
6. Determine the complex issues in the election of 1860, the sectional divisions it revealed, and explain why Lincoln won.
7. Describe the movement toward secession, the formation of the Confederacy, and the failure of the last compromise effort.
Identify, define, or describe AND state the historical significance of the following:
Harriet Beecher Stowe Hinton R. Helper John Brown
James Buchanan Charles Sumner John C. Frémont
Dred Scott Roger Taney John C. Breckenridge
John Bell Abraham Lincoln Jefferson Davis
John Crittenden “self-determination” “southern nationalism”
Uncle Tom’s Cabin The Impending Crisis of the South
New England Immigrant Aid Society
Pottawatomie Creek Massacre Lecomption Constitution “Bleeding Kansas”
American (Know-Nothing) Party Dred Scott decision Panic of 1857
Lincoln-Douglas debates Freeport Doctrine Harpers Ferry raid
Constitutional Union Party Crittenden Compromise
Review Questions:
1. How did each of the crisis events of the 1850s help lead toward the Civil War?
2. What role did violence play in increasing the sectional conflict?
3. How did the political developments of the period work to fragment the Democratic Party and benefit the Republicans?
4. Explain the crucial role of Stephen A. Douglas in the political events of the 1850s. Why did Douglas’ attempts to push the conflict over slavery out of sight fail? What role did Douglas play in the election of 1860?
5. Could the Crittenden Compromise or some other proposal have prevented or at least postponed the Civil War? Why was compromise successful in 1820 and 1850, but not in 1860?
6. How did the North and the South each view the various events of the 1850s? Why were their views so different?
7. Abraham Lincoln and the Republicans frequently declared that the sought only to prevent the expansion of slavery, and not to overturn slavery where it existed. Yet, immediately after Lincoln’s election some southerners pursued secession. Why? Were the fears of Lincoln rational or irrational?
CHAPTER 20: Girding for War: The North and the South, 1861—1865
Objectives:
1. Explain how the firing on Fort Sumter and Lincoln’s call for troops galvanized both sides for war.
2. Indicate the strengths and weaknesses of both sides as they went to war.
3. Describe the diplomatic struggle for the sympathies of the European powers.
4. Describe the curtailment of civil liberties and the mobilization of military manpower during the war.
5. Analyze the economic and social consequences of the war for both sides.
Identify, define, or describe AND state the historical significance of the following:
Napoleon III Maximilian Charles Francis Adams
Clara Barton William H. Seward Edwin M. Stanton
Jefferson Davis Morrill Tariff Act National Banking Act
Trent affair Alabama Laird rams
King Cotton Draft Riots
Review Questions:
1. How did the Civil War change from a limited war to preserve the Union into a “total war” to abolish slavery?
2. What political factors affected Lincoln’s approach to the goals and conduct of the war? Why was he a more successful political leader than Jefferson Davis?
3. Why was Lincoln’s skillful handling of the Fort Sumter crisis crucial to arousing the Union’s political determination to force the South to stay in the Union?
4. Why was the South’s confidence in “King Cotton” misplaced? What southern economic weaknesses were exposed by the war?
5. How did careful Union diplomacy manage the Civil War crisis with Britain and end British flirtations with the Confederacy?
6. How did the North and the South each handle their economic and human resources needs? Why were the economic consequences of the war so different for the two sides?
7. What changes did the Civil War bring about it civilian society, North and South? How did it particularly affect women?
8. Some historians have called the Civil War “the Second American Revolution.” What was “revolutionary” about the political, social, and economic conduct of the war?
9. Some historians have argued that the North’s inherent superiority in manpower and industrial strength made its victory in the Civil War inevitable from the beginning. Would you agree or disagree? Why?
CHAPTER 21 (*Excerpts): The Furnace of Civil War, 1861—1865
Objectives
1. Describe the failure of the North to gain its expected early victory in 1861.
2. Explain the Northern turn to “total war” against slavery.
3. Describe the role that African Americans played during the war.
4. Describe the political struggle between Lincoln’s “Union party” and the antiwar Copperheads.
5. Describe the end of the war and list its final consequences
*Read the following sections:
“The Pivotal Point: Antietam,” pp. 459-460
“A Proclamation without Emancipation,” pp. 460-462
“Blacks Battle Bondage”, pp. 462-464
“Sherman Scorches Georgia,” pp. 467-469
“The Politics of War,” pp. 469-470
“The Election of 1864,” pp. 470-472
“The Martyrdom of Lincoln” to the end of the chapter, pp. 474-477
Be sure to read the “Varying Viewpoints” section, p. 478 and “Examining the Evidence: Gettysburg Address”, p. 465.
Identify, define, or describe AND state the historical significance of the following:
Andrew Johnson John Wilkes Booth Robert E. Lee
Ulysses S. Grant William T. Sherman Emancipation Proclamation
Thirteenth Amendment Copperheads Union Party
Battle of Antietam First Battle of Bull Run Election of 1864
Assassination of Lincoln
Review Questions:
1. Why was Lincoln so slow to declare the Civil War as a fight against slavery? Was he wise to move slowly, or could an early Emancipation Proclamation have undermined the Union cause?
2. What role did African Americans, both slave and free, play in the Civil War?
3. What were the key military and political turning points of the war? Why did the South hold onto hopes of winning its goals as late as 1864 and even early 1865?
4. What were the causes and consequences of Sherman’s and Grant’s turn toward “total war” in the conquest of the South? In what ways is it fair to call the Civil War the “first modern war?”
5. Did the South’s best chances for victory lie on the battlefield, or in the hopes of political disillusionment in the North? Was there any chance that Confederate independence could have been won as late as the fall of 1864?
6. Were the costs of the Civil War worth the results to the nation as a whole? What issues were settled by the war, and what new problems were created?
CHAPTER 22: The Ordeal of Reconstruction, 1865—1877
Objectives:
1. Define the major problems facing the South and the nation after the Civil War.
2. Describe the responses of both whites and African-Americans to the end of slavery.
3. Analyze the differences between the presidential and congressional approaches to Reconstruction.
4. Explain how the blunders of President Johnson and the white South opened the door to more radical congressional Reconstruction policies.
5. Describe the actual effects of congressional Reconstruction in the South.
6. Indicate how militant white opposition gradually undermined the Republican attempt to empower Southern blacks.
7. Explain why the radical Republicans impeached Johnson but failed to convict him.
8. Explain the legacy of Reconstruction, and assess its successes and failures.
Identify, define, or describe AND state the historical significance of the following:
Charles O. Howard Andrew Johnson Alexander Stephens
Charles Sumner Thaddeus Stevens William Seward
Freedman’s Bureau 10 percent plan Wade-Davis Bill
“conquered provinces” moderate/radical Republican Black Codes
Civil Rights Act Fourteenth Amendment “swing around the circle”
Military Reconstruction Act Fifteenth Amendment Ex parte Milligan
“radical” regimes scalawags carpetbaggers
Ku Klux Klan Force Acts Tenure of Office Act
“Seward’s Folly”
Review Questions:
1. What were the major problems facing the South and the nation after the Civil War/ How did Reconstruction address them, or fail to do so?