Directions: These questions are based on the accompanying documents. The documents have been edited for the purpose of this exercise.

In your response you should do the following: • State a relevant thesis that directly addresses all parts of the question. • Support the thesis or a relevant argument with evidence from all, or all but one, of the documents. • Incorporate analysis of all, or all but one, of the documents into your argument. • Focus your analysis of each document on at least one of the following: intended audience,

purpose, historical context, and/or point of view. • Support your argument with analysis of historical examples outside the documents. • Connect historical phenomena relevant to your argument to broader events or processes. • Synthesize the elements above into a persuasive essay that extends your argument, connects it to

a different historical context, or accounts for contradictory evidence on the topic.

1. To what extent did the events following the Mexican-American War lead to increasing sectionalism and eventually the Civil War?

Document 1

Source: 2nd Nashville Convention, November 1850. The attendance at the 2nd Nashville Convention was different than that of the 1st Nashville Convention and was composed of more radical secession elements.

The authority it exercises over all acquired territory must in good faith be exercised for the equal benefit of all the parties. To prohibit our citizens from settling there with the most valuable part of our property is not only degrading to us as equals, but violates our highest constitutional rights.Restrictions and prohibitions against the slaveholding states, it would appear, are to be the fixed and

settled policy of the government; and those states that are hereafter to be admitted into the Federal Union from their extensive territories will but confirm and increase the power of the majority; and he knows little of history who cannot read our destiny in the future if we fail to do our duty now as free people. We have been harassed and insulted by those who ought to have been our brethren, in their constant agitation of a subject vital to us and the peace of our families. We have been outraged by their gross misrepresentations of our moral and social habits, and by the manner in which they have denounced us before the world... The Union, instead of being considered a fraternal bond, has been used as the means of striking at our vital interests…

Document 2

Source: Hon. Lewis Cass of Michigan, speech delivered in the United States Senate, May 12-13, 1856

In brief, sir, this is my creed upon this subject: 1. I believe that American citizens have rights in the Territories, whether they own land or not. 2. Those rights are independent of Congress, and neither derived from nor granted by that body. 3. It is the duty of Congress to organize governments for the Territories; and if that duty is refused, it is the right of the people to do it for themselves. 4. The change from a Territorial to a State government should not be undertaken without the vote of the majority of the people, authorized by law to be taken; for without such authority it is obvious that the whole transaction becomes a spontaneous one, which will be supported by its partisans only, and in which those who are opposed to it will take no part, and

the result, therefore, will be no indication of the true views of the people. And the foundation will be laid for bitter dissensions, and the resisting and the intruding governments will each find partisans and enemies.Sovereignty is, in no proper acceptation of the word, applicable to the Territories of the United States. They are dependencies of the general government, and possess no attribute of independence.But the question is, what political relation do they bear to that government, and what powers can it constitutionally exercise over their inhabitants?

Document 3

Source: John C. Fremont, 1856

Nothing is clearer in the history of our institutions than the design of the nation, in asserting its own independence and freedom, to avoid giving countenance to the Extension of Slavery. The influence of the small but compact and powerful class of men interested in Slavery, who command one section of the country and wield a vast political control as a consequence in the other, is now directed to turn back this impulse of the Revolution and reverse its principles.

Document 4 Source: “Democratic Platform Illustrated”, 1856

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division[LC-USZC4-12569]

Document 5

Source: “The Dred Scott Decision,” Boston Herald, March 7, 1857

(Tribune Correspondence.) Chief Justice Taney's opinion in the Dred Scott case went upon extreme Southern ground, affirming squatter sovereignty in the broadest disunion construction, and allowing slaves to be carried into any territory. He denied that a negro could be a citizen of the United States in the contemplation of the Constitution, and hence the Court has no jurisdiction in this case, and proceeded to argue upon the Constitutionality of the Missouri Compromise, ending by pronouncing it unconstitutional and void. Judge Nelson evaded the constitutional question, and concurred with the majority, resting his opinion on the late decisions in Missouri.

Judge Catron admitted the jurisdiction of the Court, but declared the Compromise void, because it destroyed the obligation of the third article of the treaty acquiring Louisiana. Justices Campbell and

Daniels have prepared opinions, but desire to withhold them until Justices McLean and Curtis have delivered theirs dissenting from the judgment of the majority, with a view of rebutting their arguments….Five Judges, Taney, Campbell, Catron, Wayne, and Daniel, concur on the Constitutional point against the Missouri Compromise. Nelson and Grier dodge by adopting the Missouri decisions for their justification in joining the majority. McLean and Curtis meet the issue squarely, and sustain the jurisdiction of the Court and the constitutionality of the Compromise.

Document 6

Source: Letter from Abraham Lincoln to John L. Scripps, June 23, 1858

Your kind note of yesterday is duly received. I am much flattered by the estimate you place on my late speech; and yet I am much mortified that any part of it should be construed so differently from any thing intended by me. The language, “place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in course of ultimate extinction,” I used deliberately, not dreaming then, nor believing now, that it asserts, or intimates, any power or purpose, to interfere with slavery in the States where it exists. But, to not cavil about language, I declare that whether the clause used by me, will bear such construction or not, I never so intended it. I have declared a thousand times, and now repeat that, in my opinion, neither the General Government, nor any other power outside of the slave states, can constitutionally or rightfully interfere with slaves or slavery where it already exists. I believe that whenever the effort to spread slavery into the new teritories, by whatever means, and into the free states themselves, by Supreme court decisions, shall be fairly headed off, the institution will then be in course of ultimate extinction; and by the language used I meant only this….

Document 7

Source: John Steuart Curry, John Brown’s Christmas Raid, 1858