Second Party System Helped Answer 2 History Relat
Write the answer of two questions out of four (each 3 pages long double spaced) and 1 page detailed outlines for each question. Please follow the following instructions:
Be sure to draw on all relevant material from written lectures 7-13, John Lauritz Larson’s The Market Revolution and Bruce Levine’s Half-Slave and Half-Free
Instructions for your outlines
Outlines must be no more than one typed page per each question. Outlines must be in outline form; finished prose is not acceptable. Be sure to include quotes from the two books in your outlines.
Answer two of the following questions.
1. Explain the interconnections between the rise of capitalism as the dominant mode of production in the North and the following social, political, and cultural changes: a) majority rule becoming the principle for decision-making; b) why political parties come to be recognized as the most effective way of maintaining majority rule democracy; c) full rights of citizenship being given to virtually all white men; d) being a productive member of society becoming the meaning of a good citizen. (Lectures 7, 8, and 9)
2. This question has two parts. First, explain how Americans came to accept political parties as not only legitimate, but as essential to democracy (this should be about half of your essay). Then go on to analyze the Second Party system. In answering this second part, make sure you address the following questions: a) the differences between the Whig and the Democratic parties; b) how each party was able to gain the support of its various constituencies; c) how the Second Party system helped alleviate social conflict. (Lecture 10)
3. Write an essay in which you show how the cultural, institutional, and ideological changes taking place over the first half of the nineteenth century in the North – as reflected in the Second Great Awakening and reform movements – are related to the rise of a market economy. Make sure you address the growing belief in moral and material progress – and even human and social perfectibility. Be sure, also, to discuss the new social imperative to encourage maximal productivity. (Lecture 11)
4. Write an essay in which you discuss slavery from the point of view of both slaves and slaveholders. Be sure to address the following points: a) how and why many antebellum slaveholders came to practice a so-called “paternalism” in their relationship with their slaves; b) what this treatment meant in practice for the slaves; c) the various ways that paternalism served to promote the interests of the slaveholding class; d) why paternalism was required to protect slavery against the destructive and destabilizing forces of capitalism and democracy; e) the ways in which slaves were able to resist the oppression directed at them and ultimately shape their own lives. (I would expect that you would spend more space on answering this last part than you would on the first four parts of the question. (Lectures 12 and 13)