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Topic Framing Questions
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How did Americans respond to the emergence of a functioning democracy in which the majority of free adult males could vote? |
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How did Northerners view the purposes of political rights and power? |
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How did Southerners view them?
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Topic Framing Questions
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How did women of this period define themselves? What stories did they choose to tell? |
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In what ways did these women exercise—and define—power and influence? |
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How did the “cult of domesticity” shape the debate over woman’s place in antebellum American society? |
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In what ways did this debate reflect the prevailing tensions of race, class, region, and religion in American society?
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Topic Framing Questions
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How did American Christianity reflect the nation's ideals of democracy, individualism, and progress? |
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As the nation became more sectionalized, what role did religion play in defining individual and group identity? |
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How did religion inform the debate over slavery? |
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How did religious groups outside the mainstream of American Protestantism reflect American culture, even in the act of rejecting it?
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Topic Framing Questions
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How did the various people living in the United States in the first half of the nineteenth century respond to the emergence of a national market economy?
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Topic Framing Questions
From the perspective of an American in 1850, either Northern or Southern (remember, you don't know what's going to happen over the next 15 years):
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How volatile is America in 1850? |
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What holds the nation together? What is pulling it apart? |
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How serious is the Southern threat to leave the Union? |
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Is the Compromise of 1850 a triumph of nationalism or sectionalism? |
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Will the Union survive?
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