Problem 1: Industrialization in the Northeast produced great benefits and also major problems. What were they? Who benefited and who suffered? Did the benefits outweigh the problems or vice versa?
Problem 2: If you were defending the Cherokee and other native nations before the U.S. Supreme Court in the 1830s, what arguments would you make? If you were supporting Indian removal, what arguments would you make?
Problem 3: Does Alexis de Tocqueville's argument about the tyranny of the majority reflect American democracy today? Provide examples to support your answer.
Problem 4: What are the economic and political issues raised by having an imbalance between free and slave states? Why did the balance of free and slave states matter?
Problem 5: Consider the annexation of Texas and the Mexican-American War from a Mexican perspective. What would you find objectionable about American actions, foreign policy, and attitudes in the 1840s?
Problem 6: What strategies did slaves employ to resist, revolt, and sustain their own independent communities and cultures? How did slaves use white southerners' own philosophies-paternalism and Christianity, for example-to their advantage in these efforts?
Problem 7: In what ways did the Second Great Awakening and transcendentalism reflect and react to the changes in antebellum American thought and culture?
Problem 8: Why would Americans view the Compromise of 1850 as a final solution to the sectional controversy that began with the Wilmot Proviso in 1846?
Problem 9: Was it possible to save American democracy in 1860? What steps might have been taken to maintain unity? Why do you think these steps were not taken?
Problem 10: Why did the North prevail in the Civil War? What might have turned the tide of the war against the North?