- Explain why there were no major witchcraft scares in the Chesapeake colonies and no uprising like Bacon’s Rebellion in New England. Consider the possible social, economic, and religious causes of both phenomena.
2. What made Native American peoples vulnerable to conquest by European adventurers?
3. What was the role of the colonies in the British mercantilist system?
4. How did the Great War for Empire change the relationship between England and its American colonies?
- The narrative suggests that the war for American independence was not inevitable, that the British empire could have been saved. Do you agree? At what point during the imperial crisis was peaceful compromise possible?
2. Who was to blame for Britain’s failure to win a quick victory over the American rebels: General Howe, General Burgoyne, or the ministers in London? Explain your answer.
3. Why did Britain switch to a Southern military strategy? Why did that strategy ultimately fail?
4. Why was the Constitution a controversial document even as it was being written?
- Weigh the relative importance of the Industrial and Market revolutions in changing the American economy. In what ways was the economy different in 1860 from what it had been in 1800? How would you explain those differences?
2. In what ways did the emerging industrial economy conflict with artisan republicanism? How did wage laborers respond to the new economy?
3. Why did Protestant Christianity and Protestant women emerge as forces for social change?
4. Why did women’s issues suddenly become so prominent in American culture?
1. How did plantation crops and the slavery system change between 1800 and 1860? Why did these changes occur?
2. How did the abolitionists’ proposals and methods differ from those of earlier antislavery movements? Why did those proposals and methods arouse such hostility in the South and in the North?
3. What was the relationship between the collapse of the Second Party System of Whigs and Democrats and the Republican victory in the election of 1860?
4. In 1860, the institution of slavery was firmly entrenched in the United States; by 1865, it was dead. How did this happen? How did Union policy toward slavery and enslaved people change over the course of the war? Why did it change?