The Early Republic and the American Civil War

Order Description
Please answer and write the paragraph by each Alphabet guidelines- B1, B2, B3 and C1, C2, C3., and D.
Please do not write into one essay with all of these letters. Please separate the answer by A,B,C,D requirements.

B. Discuss the development of the Second Party System (suggested length of 1–2 pages) by doing the following:
1. Compare the platforms of the Whig and Democratic parties.

Note: You may include both similarities and differences of the two parties.

2. Describe the leaders and constituents that defined each party.
3. Explain how the Second Party System contributed to increased democratization of American politics.

C. Discuss the major movements and events that led to the Civil War (suggested length of 2 pages) by doing the following:
1. Explain the pro-slavery and abolitionist arguments of the antebellum period.
2. Describe the role of westward expansion in increasing sectional tensions.
3. Evaluate how three major events (e.g., significant legislation, territorial conflicts, court cases, political debates) contributed to the outbreak of the Civil War.

D. Provide acknowledgement of source information, using in-text citations and references, for quoted, paraphrased, or summarized content.
1. Include the following information when providing source references:
• author
• date
• title
• location of information (e.g., publisher, journal, or website URL)

In Part B2, “constituents” essentially means the average people who made up the parties. Who were members of the Democratic Party? Where did they live (north or south, generally)? What kinds of jobs did they do (farmer, merchants, part of the growing industrial world)? Did they support territorial expansion or the national bank? Where did they stand on slavery? Jackson (as leader of the party) was a Tennessee slave-owner, was he representative of the rank-and-file of his party? Why would Democrats favor expansion of slavery? The evaluators would like you to address them for the Whigs as well, but you could ask similar questions for the members of that party.

In B3, “democratization” has two parts: making politics more responsive to people, and increasing the number of people who are eligible to vote. In both cases, I think the evaluators would like to hear more: names, dates, details, statistics, etc. In a word, they would like to know how the parties created more voters – did they loosen property restrictions so more (white) men could vote? Did they contribute to the naturalization of immigrants to more voters? Did they make it easier to cast a ballot? While you don’t have to rely on a chapter like 12-2, I think it has some important statistics. The number of ballots cast almost doubled between 1824 and 1828, that was from more than enticing voter participation. How did the political parties enfranchise all those people?

In Part C of the task, the evaluators have been fairly explicit regarding their expectations. While you have identified southern concerns about the abolition of slavery, that is only a component of the aspect. They would like you to consider an argument made in favor of abolition, and in my experience, that means identifying and discussing someone by name.

While the evaluators are not looking for a specific chapter, I find chapter 10-9 to be one of the most important resources for this aspect. The evaluators are looking for you to consider the arguments made by those abolitionists, and if you look at Garrison (for instance), you could consider how he tried to persuade his audience by moral suasion and political action (immediate abolition).

Unfortunately, the evaluators are going to need considerably more for the next aspect. While the C-2 aspect is written somewhat broadly, the expectation is rather more narrow. We’re primarily interested about slavery and the lead-up to the Civil War in that aspect (in most of the task, really). If slavery was the core of sectional tensions (or *a* core, at least), why do you think that expanding the country created issues between slave-owning and anti-slavery interests? What did it mean to be a “slave state” or a “free state?” How did the addition of a new state affect the balance of power in the House and the Senate? Why did the Three-Fifths Compromise in the Constitution (counting slaves as population for apportionment of votes) have implications for presidential politics as well? Why were the pro-slavery and anti-slavery positions so hard to reconcile?

While you have identified three events in the Part C3 aspect, that is only part of the evaluators’ expectation. They need for you to explain how the events you have identified contributed to the start of the Civil War. Were these events proximate or systemic causes of the Civil War? It’s not enough to explain the significance of the events, but you need to connect the dots to the war.