Assignment

Write three essays from the topics given below. Thoroughly examine each question, and discuss them in detail. Essays should be at least 1-2 pages each and be in APA/MLA format, and must include bibliographies.

1. Define modernization and explain how it may have set the stage for a conflict over slavery. Why did southern devotion to a slave labor system retard modernization in the South?

2. Discuss abolitionism and the Underground Railroad. Who were some of the prominent abolitionists in the 1850s? Why were northerners increasingly opposed to slavery?

3. What was the Kansas-Nebraska Act? Why did the Kansas-Nebraska Act led directly to "Bleeding Kansas," the destabilization of American politics in the 1850s, and to the emergence of the Republican Party?

4. What mobilization efforts did both sides make? How did secession impact the state of the Union military? Which side do you think did a more efficient job of mobilization? Why?

5. How did emancipation influence the early phases of the war? What policies were enacted? Why was Abraham Lincoln so reluctant to embrace emancipation?

6. Discuss the war goals of the North and South. How did they propose to enact them? What influence did these war goals have on the strategies pursued by each at the beginning of the war?