Students will Understand:

• The major events and issues that promoted sectional conflicts and strained national cohesiveness in the antebellum period (e.g., support and opposition of the Missouri Compromise of 1820, the debate over slavery from the late 1830s to the Compromise of 1850).



• How slavery shaped social and economic life in the South after 1800 (e.g., how the cotton gin and the opening of new lands in the South and West led to increased demands for slaves; differences in the lives of plantation owners, poor free black and white families, and slaves; methods of passive and active resistance to slavery; escaped slaves and the Underground Railroad).



• Different economic, cultural, and social characteristics of slavery after 1800 (e.g., the influence of the Haitian Revolution and the ending of the Atlantic slave trade; how slaves forged their own culture in the face of oppression; the role of the plantation system in shaping slaveholders and the enslaved; the experiences of escaped slaves).



• Divisive issues prior to the Civil War (e.g., the Missouri Compromise and its role in determining slave and non-slave land areas; the issues that divided the North and the South).