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Toolbox Library, primary resources thematically organized with notes and discussion questionsOnline Seminars, professional development seminars for history and literature teachersThe Triumph of Nationalism/The House Dividing, 1815-1850
The Triumph of Nationalism/The House Dividing
Topic: Culture of the Common ManTopic: DomesticityTopic: ReligionTopic: ExpansionTopic: America in 1850


The Star Spangled Banner
1861
The Triumph of Nationalism / The House Dividing


Nationalism and Sectionalism in the United States: 1815-1850

Farewell to the Star Spangled Banner
ca. 1860
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Topics for Triumph of Nationalism/The House Dividing
Topic: Culture of the Common Man
Topic Framing Questions
  •  How did Americans respond to the emergence of a functioning democracy in which the majority of free adult males could vote?
  •  How did Northerners view the purposes of political rights and power?
  •  How did Southerners view them?


Topic: Cult of Domesticity
Topic Framing Questions
  •  How did women of this period define themselves? What stories did they choose to tell?
  •  In what ways did these women exercise—and define—power and influence?
  •  How did the "cult of domesticity" shape the debate over woman's place in antebellum American society?
  •  In what ways did this debate reflect the prevailing tensions of race, class, region, and religion in American society?


Topic: Religion
Topic Framing Questions
  •  How did American Christianity reflect the nation's ideals of democracy, individualism, and progress?
  •  As the nation became more sectionalized, what role did religion play in defining individual and group identity?
  •  How did religion inform the debate over slavery?
  •  How did religious groups outside the mainstream of American Protestantism reflect American culture, even in the act of rejecting it?


Topic: Expansion
Topic Framing Questions
  •  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?


Topic: America in 1850
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):
  •  How volatile is America in 1850?
  •  What holds the nation together? What is pulling it apart?
  •  How serious is the Southern threat to leave the Union?
  •  Is the Compromise of 1850 a triumph of nationalism or sectionalism?
  •  Will the Union survive?


Toolbox: The Triumph of Nationalism / The House Dividing
Common Man | Cult of Domesticity | Religion | Expansion | America in 1850


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