Essay Topics Histoy Final

Essay Topics: 1. What strategies of survival and resistance did the slaves use to endure the brutal condition of the institution and gain freedom when possible? • Remnants of the African culture: Their culture was builtfor survival as slaves as much as possible kept remnants. Everything they wore in their dress, hair wear, and variety of colors contained certain meanings. For example, the color yellow represented the color of power. Connections and bonds are thus formed with one another in the culture. • Spiritualism: Animism (everything has a soul and spirit to it). Belief in God, spirits, and ancestors. As a result, this created fear in the hearts of the white people because they did not know what their belief was about. Women and children are afraid of the spiritualism because elder women would cast ‘spells’ and threaten plantation mistresses. • Folk Culture: Stories, music, traditions, mythology, quilts: they all taught lessons, history, values, and morals. Examples: Trickster rabbit (steal from master) & Bear (the slave owner motivated by food). Quilts had directions for escape routes that were hung on fences and often used in the Underground Railroad. Music was a form of communication that regulated work places. • Family: Encouragement from one another to keep on going. Allow parenting: older siblings looked after the younger siblings. Younger children would often find scraps to eat out of the master’s garbage. Women would grow garden crops. Men would do some extra fishing and hunting. • Religion: Because the masters practiced Christianity they would let the slaves hear ministers thinking that they were being taught to obey & serve their masters. However, the slaves would hear messages of equality and were psychologically given hope. • Resistance: a). Running away: Underground Railroad to get to northern states: Ohio, Penn. Illinois. b). Group Resistance: Nat Turner Revolt 1831: killing of 60 white men, women and children. c). Personal Resistance: Unexplained arsons, poisoning at the masters

dinner table, serving burnt food on purpose, and refusing to get beat. 2. What economic, social and political forces contributed to the drive for westward expansion in the early and mid 1800’s? • Economically: Transportation Revolution: As settlers moved to what is now the Midwest, the national infrastructure grew up around them, connecting the nation's cities and towns through a system of roads, canals and railroads. Eventually let to the Transcontinental Railroad

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system in the late 1800’s. The condition of the Louisiana Purchase of 1803 that doubled the size of the U.S. Socially & Politically: The age of Jacksonian Democracy saw the rise of political strife between the ruling Democrats and the opposition Whigs. As the two-party system matured, political tension became clearly focused around the issue of slavery. As the West gradually developed, the existing states were rapidly torn apart. Social divisions became accentuated and both North and South clung to their beliefs and customs. Socially: The future of slavery as new territories of Ca, Tx, and New Mexico territories were gained from the Mexican American War. The future of slavery is what spurred up the North and the South. The famous Lincoln-Douglas Debates had at their core the future of slavery in the West. Economically & Socially: The Gold Rush to Ca., desire & greed for money. 1849ers. Discovery of gold made by Lopez and Sutter. 4. Was Reconstruction a • • • • • •

success or failure, and y? Argue one

position. Reconstruction was a success in the sense that America, after 1877, could once again be called the United States. As one historian noted, the United States before the Civil War were a country, but the United States after the war was a nation. By 1877, all of the former Confederate states had drafted new constitutions. Acknowledged the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments, and pledged their loyalty to the U.S. government. Reconstruction also finally settled the states' rights vs. federalism debate that had been an issue since the 1790s. African Americans were able to reconstruct their own lives w/ the help of the Freedman’s Bureau: est. of edu. for Africans: Howard University ex.