Today's students will readily agree that slavery is evil. What should have been done about it before the Civil War is not so clear. Students may profit from trying to answer that question. Divide the class into several sections: abolitionists in favor of immediate abolition, abolitionists in favor of gradual emancipation, and white northerners hostile to the abolitionists. Each group should then prepare a brief statement explaining its point of view. Complicating factors ought to be included as well. Divide those in favor of immediate abolition so that some are willing to use violence and others are opposed. Some are willing to provide compensation to slaveowners and others are opposed. Some favor colonization and others are opposed. Divide the gradualists in this fashion as well. A further complicating factor is to appoint several students, strategically distributed among the groups, to speak principally on behalf of black abolitionists. There is value in emphasizing that African-Americans were actors in the drama of history and not merely acted upon. A recent book supporting this viewpoint is Lawrence B. Goodheart and Hugh Hawkins, editors, The Abolitionists: Means, Ends, and Motivations (third edition; 1995). Some of the more militant steps taken against slavery are noted in Stanley Harrold, The Abolitionists and the South, 1831-1861 (1995).

Have students consult Louis Filler, The Crusade Against Slavery, 1830-1860 (1960); Dwight L. Dumond, Anti-Slavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America (1961); and Gerald Sorin, Abolitionism: A New Perspective (1972). Filler and Dumond are both sympathetic to the abolitionists. Dumond is almost an advocate himself. Sorin provides a synthesis useful for students. And students may consult Richard O. Curry, editor, The Abolitionists: Reformers or Fanatics? (1965), or Lawrence B. Goodheart and Hugh Hawkins, editors, The Abolitionists: Means, Ends, and Motivations (third edition; 1995), for various points of view. Additional information on black abolitionists can be found in C. Peter Ripley et al., editors, Witness for Freedom: African American Voices on Race, Slavery, and Emancipation (1993), a collection of annotated documentary excerpts, and in Clara Merritt DeBoer, Be Jubilant My Feet: African Americans in the Abolition Movement, 1839-1861 (1993). The latter focuses specifically on the American Missionary Association. Each group will prepare perhaps a two-page statement of its position, and on the appointed day, the students will assume their roles and begin a discussion orchestrated by the instructor.

To complicate matters further, the instructor ought to speak privately to several members of the pro-abolition groups and secretly change their assignments. Perhaps two women and a man will be asked to prepare material that will enable them to propose abolitionism from a feminist perspective. That is, their attacks on slavery will emphasize the degradation of women and the threat to the slave family. Their arguments for abolition will also seek to advance the status and influence of women abolitionists who wish to exercise leadership. When a "secret" assignment of this sort works well, it can have the effect of unsettling the argument, adding uncertainty, and generally livening up the proceedings. It ought to be done, as in this instance, only when the point of view is historically legitimate.

The members of the class have all been to school. Most, probably, have attended public schools. Some have been to secular private schools and others to church-sponsored schools. It is likely that there will be some general agreement about the desirability of going to school. Why, then, did school reform meet opposition a century and a half ago? The best study of the matter is to be found in Lawrence A. Cremin, American Education: The National Experience, 1783-1876 (1980). A few students can be asked to play roles on either side of the school-reform issue. One might be Horace Mann himself. See Jonathan Messerli, Horace Mann (1972). One might be an advocate of local control fearful of giving up authority to decision makers far away. See Carl F. Kaestle, Pillars of the Republic: Common Schools and American Society, 1780-1860 (1983). Someone might be concerned about the fate of the Roman Catholic Irish immigrant family faced with the prospect of sending its children to a school in which Protestant religious attitudes are taken for granted. See Vincent P. Lannie, Public Money and Parochial Education: Bishop Hughes, Governor Seward and the New York School Controversy (1968). And someone may be worried about just how much it's all going to cost. Perhaps the instructor will assume this last role and use it as a means of provoking a lively interchange among the participants.

In 1836 Martin Van Buren was elected president, the inheritor of the mantle of his mentor, who had been in office for the previous eight years. On the basis of the Jacksonian record, how would persons of different stations in life and different geographic locations have justified their vote for Van Buren in 1836? Let one student be a butcher from Rochester, New York, another a banker from Peoria, Illinois. Other possibilities are a small planter from South Carolina, a mechanic from Worcester, Massachusetts, or a merchant from Kentucky. Women did not vote in 1840, but they did have opinions. Add a midwife from Ohio, a housewife from Pennsylvania, and others. Students need not prepare a formal paper for this exercise but rather may write a couple of lines that they can use as a prompter in contributing to a class discussion of the election.

The humanitarian movements of this period are a fertile field for formal research papers. They can be brief. The topic can be put in the form of a question that will focus and direct student efforts. The question format is, "Topic: Did It Succeed? Why or Why Not?" And the topics are such matters as the Seneca Falls Convention, the Oneida community, Brook Farm, Fruitlands, and the like. See the excellent bibliography in the textbook at the end of Chapter 10.