1. Imagine that you are a Virginia cotton planter or planter's wife. Compose a letter to a friend in New York explaining why your state has just seceded from the Union.
2. Repeated sectional compromises in 1820, 1833, and 1850 held the Union together and averted civil war. Why did compromise fail in 1860-1861?
3. Although the Compromise of 1850 postponed secession and civil war for a decade, it also contributed to embittered feelings in each section toward the other. Discuss and illustrate this statement.
4. Discuss the birth of the Republican party. How and why did it come about? Who supported it and why? What did it stand for? How and why did it broaden its appeal in the late 1850s?
5. Discuss the demise of the second party system. How is its breakdown related to immigration, nativism, slavery, and the spread of slavery into the West?