African American History

Paper instructions:

Your Midterm Essay Examination consists of five (5) essay questions. You must address five (5) of the following six (6) essay topics. Your essays should be at least 500 words each (about 2 pages, double-spaced). You should properly cite all of your sources in APA or Chicago/Turabian format, including textbooks and any other sources you may use.
1.    During the early years of the British colonies in North America, people of African descent occupied a number of social positions and slavery was not fully codified in law. However, by the early 1700s, racial slavery was legally established and the vast majority of the rapidly growing African population was permanently enslaved. Explain how and why this "terrible transformation" took place—including both the worldwide and local factors—and analyze the main social and economic roles that enslaved black people played by the mid-eighteenth century.
2.    Evaluate the main forms that slave resistance took, analyze the historical forces behind this resistance, and explain its main effects.
3.    Explain why slavery was questioned widely during the Revolutionary period and why the Northern and Southern history of the institution diverged so greatly after the Revolution.
4.    From the early colonial period to the Civil War, enslaved people—who were descended from many African nationalities and ethnicities—managed to construct a broadly common culture and ethnic identity of their own. Explain how they did this, what cultural resources they drew on, and what the main forms of this culture were. Evaluate the importance of the emergence of African American culture under slavery to the history of African Americans and to the U.S. in general.
5.    It is widely believed that, from the Northern point of view, the Civil War was a war to end slavery, but in fact the initial war goal of the Union was to force the secessionist states back even with slavery intact. Explain why the North failed initially to advocate the destruction of slavery. And explain why and how this changed—why and how the Civil War did in fact became for the North a war to abolish slavery.
6.    Explain how subsequent U.S. history might have been different if, during Reconstruction, the plantations of the South had been divided and ex-slaves had been given plots of land and the means to farm these. Evaluate why, despite the demands of freed people, supported by some Radical Republicans, general land redistribution in the South was never implemented by the federal government.

 

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