Unit 2 Introduction to American Politics 46.101

Unit 2 Introduction to American Politics 46.101

Susan E. Gallagher, Associate Professor, Political Science Dept.

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Unit 2: American Politics before and after the Civil War

Reading Questions for Unit 2Answers due via email to by 2/3/15.

Please bring a copy of your emailed assignment to class on Wednesday, 2/4/15. These questions are strictly designed to make sure that you are keeping up with the readings. Even though your replies can be brief, you must write in complete sentences in response to all non-fill-in-the-blank questions and proofread your work to avoid grammatical errors.

Instructions:Copy the questions below and paste them into the body of an e-mail, type in your answers, and send it without attachments.

Fill in blanks:

1.From the reading on Henry David Thoreau’s 1854 abolitionist speech, “Slavery in Massachusetts:”

"I dwelt before, perhaps, in the illusion that my life passed somewhere only between heaven and hell, but now I cannot persuade myself that I do not dwell wholly within hell. The site of ______." Under these conditions, no one could afford to remain indifferent. "If we would save our lives," he concluded simply, "______."

2.From Dred Scott v. Sanford (1857):

I. The question before us is whether the class of persons [African-Americans] described in the plea in abatement compose a portion of this people, and are constituent members of this sovereignty? We think they are not, and that ______. On the contrary, they were at that time considered as a subordinate and inferior class of beings who had been subjugated by the dominant race, and, whether emancipated or not, yet remained subject to their authority, and ______.

II.It is not the province of the court ______, of these laws. The decision of that question belonged to the political or lawmaking power, to those who formed the sovereignty and framed the Constitution. ______, and ______, according to its true intent and meaning when it was adopted.

III. The only two provisions which point to them and include them ______; no other power, in relation to this race, is to be found in the Constitution; and as it is a Government of special, delegated, powers, no authority beyond these two provisions can be constitutionally exercised. The Government of the United States had no right to interfere for any other purpose but that of protecting the rights of the owner, leaving it altogether with the several States to deal with this race, whether emancipated or not, as each State may think justice, humanity, and the interests and safety of society, require. ______to themselves.

3. From the majority opinion in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896):

I. A statute which implies merely ______—a distinction which is founded in the color of the two races, and which must always exist so long as white men are distinguished from the other race by color—has no tendency to ______, or re-establish a state of involuntary servitude.

II. Legislation is ______, or to abolish distinctions based upon physical differences, and the attempt to do so can only result in accentuating the difficulties of the present situation. If the civil and political rights of both races ______, ______civilly or politically. If one race be inferior to the other socially, the ______.

4. From Justice John Harlan’s dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson:

The white race ______in this country. And so it is, in prestige, in achievements, in education, in wealth, and in power. So, I doubt not, ______, if it remains true to its great heritage, and holds fast to the principles of constitutional liberty. But in view of the Constitution, in the eye of the law, ______In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law. The humblest is the peer of the most powerful. ______when his civil rights as guaranteed by the supreme law of the land are involved.

5. From W.E.B. Dubois’s The Souls of Black Folk:

I. “[T]he problem of the Twentieth Century is ______.”

II. Between me and the other world there is ______: unasked by some through feelings of delicacy; by others through the difficulty of rightly framing it. All, nevertheless, flutter round it. They approach me in a half-hesitant sort of way, eye me curiously or compassionately, and then, instead of saying directly, How does it feel to be a problem? they say, I know an excellent colored man in my town; or, I fought at Mechanicsville; or, Do not these Southern outrages make your blood boil? At these I smile, or am interested, or reduce the boiling to a simmer, as the occasion may require. To the real question, ______I answer seldom a word.

Extra credit:Of the six approaches to constitutional interpretation that you learned about last week, which ones would most accurately describe the approaches adopted in Dred Scott v. Ferguson and Plessy v. Ferguson?

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