By Maraisa Glass, Daniella Hernani,
Andrea Arias, Kirsten Blake, Kailey Tooke
Period 1
Question 1 (Document-Based Question): 55 minutes
Suggested Reading period: 15 minutes
Suggested writing period: 40 minutes
Directions: Question 1 is based on the accompanying documents. The documents have been edited for the purpose of
this exercise. You are advised to spend 15 minutes reading and planning and 45 minutes writing your answer.
Write your responses on the lined pages that follow the question.
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. Analyze the role of economic, political, and social factors that contributed to the formation of regional
identities between the North and South during the 1850s and 1860s.
Document A
Source: Published by J.L. Magee in Philadelphia, 1856.
Document B
Source: Hinton Helper, The Impending Crisis of the South, Burdick Brothers, New York 1857.
It is a fact well known to every intelligent Southerner that we are compelled to go to the North for almost
every article of utility and adornment, from matches, shoe pegs and paintings up to cotton-mills, steamships
and…; that we have no foreign trade, no princely merchants, nor respectable artists; that, in comparison with
the free states, we contribute nothing to the literature, polite arts and inventions of the age; that, for want of
profitable employment at home, large numbers of our native population fined themselves necessitated to
emigrate to the West, whilst the free states retain not only the larger proportion of those born within their
own limits, but induce, annually, hundreds of thousands of foreigners to settle and remain amongst them;
that almost everything produced at the North meets with ready sale, while, at the same time, there is no
demand, even among our own citizens, for the production of Southern industry;…and that we are dependent
on the Northern capitalists for the means necessary to build our railroads, canals and other public
improvements….
Document C
Source: George Fitzhugh, Cannibals All! or Slaves Without Masters, Richmond, Virginia 1857.
The Negro slaves of the South are the happiest, and, in some sense, the freest people in the world. The
children and the aged infirm work not at all, and yet have all the comforts and necessities of life provided for
them. they enjoy liberty, because they are oppressed neither by care none labor. The women do little hard
work, and are protected from the despotism of their husbands by their masters. The Negro men and stout
boys work, on average, in good weather, not more than nine hours a day…
…We do not know if free laborers ever sleep. They are fools to do so; for whilst they sleep, the wily and
watchful capitalist is devising means to ensnare and {exploitate (sic) them. The free laborer must work or
starve. He is more of a slave, and has no holiday…He has no liberty, and not a single right…Free laborers
have not a thousandth part of the rights and liberties of the Negro slaves. Indeed, they have not a single
liberty, unless it be the right or liberty to die.
* Fitzhugh was a sociologist from North Carolina. Cannibals All! was one of his most famous books.
GO ON TO THE NEXT PAGE.
Document D
Source: James Henry Hammond, speech, March 4, 1858
Why the South has never yet had a just cause of war except with the North. Every time she has drawn her
sword it has been on the point of honor, and that point of honor has been mainly loyalty to her sister colonies
and sister states, who have ever since plundered and calumniated…
No, you dare not make war on cotton. No power on earth dares to make war upon it. Cotton is King…
But, sir, the greatest strength of the South arises from the harmony of her political and social institutions.
In all social systems there must be a class to do the menial duties, to perform the drudgery of life. That is, a
class requiring but a low order of intellect and but little skill…Fortunately for the South, she found a race
adapted to that purpose to her hand. A race inferior to her own, but eminently qualified in her temper, in
vigor, in docility, in capacity to stand the climate, to answer all her purposes.
Document E
Source: Albert Gallatin Brown – US Senator from Mississippi – September 26, 1860.
[The Northerners] hate us now, and they teach their children in their schools and churches to hate our
children…The John Brown raid, the burning of Texas, the stealthy tread of abolitionist among us, tell the
tale…The North is accumulating power and its means to use that power to emancipate your slaves. When
that is done, no pen can describe…the…horrors that will overspread this country…Seeing is a fearful thing,
but emancipation is much worse. Better to leave the Union now, than be burned from it at midnight by the
[arsonist’s] torch.
GO ON TO THE NEXT PAGE.
Document F
Source: Excerpts written by C.G. Memminger. Adopted December 24, 1860. Source: Library of Congress
Declarations of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession
of South Carolina from the Federal Union
In pursuance of this Declaration of Independence, each of the thirteen States proceeded to exercise its
separate sovereignty; adopted of itself a Constitution, and appointed officers for the administration of
government in all its departments—Legislative, Executive and Judicial. For purposes of defense, they united
their arms and their counsels; and, in 1778, they entered into a League known as the Articles of
Confederation… whereby they agreed to entrust the administration…to a common agent, known as the
Congress of the United States…
We, therefore, the people of South Carolina, by our delegates in Convention assembled, appealing to the
Supreme judge of the world for the rectitude of out intentions, have solemnly declared that the Union
heretofore existing between this State and the other States of North America, is dissolved, and that State of
Carolina has resumed her position among the nations of the world, as a separate and independent State…
GO ON TO THE NEXT PAGE.
Document G
Source: Maps created from various sources
END OF DOCUMENTS FOR QUESTION 1
Civil War DBQ Scoring Guidelines
Prompt: Analyze the role of economic, political, and social factors on the formation of regional identities between the North and
South during the 1850s and 1860s.
Scoring
Thesis: Possible thesis statements could include the following:
Economic factors:
• The South remained a predominantly agrarian economy while the North was an industrialized economy.
• As the South’s “King Cotton” philosophy dominated the economy, it played an increasingly vital role on the increasing sectionalism
between the North and the South. This contributed to Southern dependence on the institution of slavery to thrive their agrarian
economy which furthered tensions in the Northern justification for their abolitionist movement against slavery.
Political factors:
• The dispute on slavery led to secession, and secession brought about a war in which the Northern states fought to preserve the Union
whilst the South fought to establish Southern independence under a new confederation.
• The struggle between the North’s belief that the federal government is supreme compared to the Southern inclination that individual
states should override political power led to sharp divides between the two territories.
• In the Civil War era, this conflict focused heavily on the institution of slavery and whether the federal government had the right to
regulate or even abolish slavery within a single state.
Social Factors:
• The controversial debate on whether slavery was a “necessary evil” (Northern perspective) vs. “positive good” (Southern
perspective) sectionalized these two regions as what constituted as slavery was questioned with the comparison between the free
laborers in the North with the black slaves in the South.
• Having split views on whether slavery was beneficial or not led to the rise of regional identities. Southerners defended the slave
institution as being beneficial to African Americans for in all social systems, there must be a class to perform these lowly duties and
that class consists of black Americans. On the other hand, Northern abolitionists consider slavery as an institution that hinders a
certain race from receiving inalienable rights every person has the right to entitle.
Document A
Source: Unknown publication. Published by J.L. Magee in Philadelphia, 1856.
• Intended audience: The American public
• Purpose: To influence the mindset of those critical of the pro-expansion group. Cartoonist depicted them as
people who would forcibly push for slavery.
• Historical Context: During the Kansas-Nebraska feud, between those who wanted it to become a free state or slave state,
broke out into skirmishes aimed at undermining the other faction. The people pictured in the cartoon are James Buchanan,
Lewis Cass, Stephen Douglas, and Franklin Pierce, the democratic candidates for the presidential election of 1856. The man
being tied down and held is a free-soiler (NOT Abraham Lincoln!), who were former anti-slavery members of the Whig and
Democratic parties who opposed the expansion of slavery into the West. The platform that he is tied to has the names "Kansas",
"Cuba", and Central America" referencing Democratic Party’s plans to expand slavery further in these regions. The background
reflects the savage skirmishes that happened during the period that Kansas and Nebraska had to determine whether they would
allow slavery or ban it.
• The author’s point of view: The artist brands the Democrats as the major blame for violence perpetrated against antislavery
settlers in Kansas in the wake of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. He seems critical of the expansion of slavery and on the issues
pertaining to not only Kansas and Nebraska, but Central America and Cuba.
Document B
Source: Hinton Helper, The Impending Crisis of the South, Burdick Brothers, New York 1857.
• Intended audience: American public, Northern capitalists, Southern plantation farmers
• Purpose: To define the sectional dependencies on each other, illustrating how the South is constantly overshadowed and dependent
on the Northern free states for manufactured goods.
• Historical Context: Before southern secession, after Kansas-Nebraska Act, year of Dred Scott Decision and Lecompton
Constitution. The Northern cities attracted immigrants and minorities and had a larger population than in the South which had small
and fewer cities and less populated. Northern industrial growth and trade hotspot with European nations as well as the vast railroad
industry that extended through the breadth of the U.S.
• The author’s point of view: argued that slavery hurt the economic prospects of non-slaveholders, and was an impediment to the
growth of the entire region of the South.
Document C
Source: George Fitzhugh, Cannibals All! Or Slaves Without Masters, Richmond, Virginia 1857.
• Intended audience: Northern abolitionists such as William Lloyd Garrison
• Purpose: To convince/ re-affirm that Southern slavery is a “positive good” not a “necessary evil” as the abolitionists like to call it.
Fitzhugh is arguing that slavery is beneficial to the slaves themselves, not only the plantation owners who exploit them. He is
counterattacking the abolitionists’ claims and attacking them by saying free labor in the north is worse than slavery.
• Historical Context: Pre-southern secession; the south was on the brink of secession, after the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854, in
context of the slavery debate, the year of the Dred Scott Decision and the Lecompton Constitution, the beginning of James Buchanan’s
administration. These were serious blows to the Democrats’ position of popular sovereignty and the Republicans’ stand against the
expansion of slavery.
• The author’s point of view: As he is from North Carolina, one of the states that seceded from the Union later on and was one of
the states known for its long history of slavery and dependency on the plantation system, his bias would clearly be supporting slavery.
Document D
Source: James Henry Hammond, attorney, politician and planter from South Carolina, speech, March 4, 1858
• Intended audience: Northern abolitionists, United State Senate under admission of Kansas under Lecompton Constitution
• Purpose: He is trying to convince the Northern states to keep out of Southern conflicts and demonstrate that the South has
been nothing but loyal and undeserving of violence by the North. He makes a response toward the Northern perspective
that slavery is only in the South and that it is an immoral act.
• Historical Context: Before the Civil war and secession of Southern states from the Union, after Dred Scott Decision and
Kansas-Nebraska Act, the expansion of "King Cotton" into the Deep South further entrenched the institution into
Southern society, during abolitionist movement, after Seward-Brooks incident
• The author’s point of view: As he is a Southern Carolinian planter from the South at this time, he clearly would have a bias
towards the South as he advocates slavery and cotton due to it being his occupation and his moneymaker.
Document E
Source: Albert Gallatin Brown, U.S. Senator from Mississippi, September 26, 1950
• Intended audience: The Southern white folks who oppose emancipating the slaves.
• Purpose: to antagonize the Northerners by warning the southern citizens about the hatred that they have towards the southerners
and how there is goal to end slavery, and if successful, it will end catastrophically.
• Historical context: there was the Election of 1860 going on and the democratic party split between N. Democrats: Stephen
Douglas- for popular sovereignty & enforcing Fugitive Slave Act, S. Democrats: V.P. John C. Breckinridge (KY) unrestricted
extension of slavery & annexation of Cuba, Republican Party: chose Lincoln whose platform consisted of excluding slavery
from territories, protective tariff, free homesteads, internal improvements , Constitutional Union Party: John Bell of TN
(some Whigs, Know-Nothings & moderate Dems) enforced all laws of Constitution as is Lincoln not on ballot in 9 states in
South but won 59% of electoral votes, but only 39.8% of popular vote, and zero southern support, December 1860 South
Carolina votes to secede unanimously “Declaration of the Causes of Secession”
• The author’s point of view: written by a white southern democrat male who held authoritative power from one of the soon to be
confederate states
Document F
Source: Library of Congress J.A. May & J.R. Faunt, South Carolina Secedes (U. of S. Car.Pr, 1960), pp. 76-81
• Intended audience: the people of South Carolina, the southern states, the northern states
• Purpose: to persuade all three groups that the state had the legal right to secede from the Union and that it was entitled to exercise
that right, as well to show that the south is not willing to compromise with the north and their ideals and clarify the reasons
for secession.
• Historical context: Election of 1960, Lincoln running for president, North Carolina seceded, soon followed by: GA, FL, AL, MS,
LA, & TX, Feb 1861 representatives in Montgomery, AL create the Confederate States of America, Confederate
Constitution – similar to US but limited Congress tariff power & ability to restrict slavery,
• The author’s point of view: prominent political leader who was the first Secretary of the Treasury for the Confederate States of
America, he was initially moderate on the secession issue, but after Lincoln’s election, Memminger decided secession was
necessary, southern, democrat, white male.
Document G
Source: Maps created from various sources
• Intended audience: N/A
• Purpose: To demonstrate that the railroads were dominated in the North and Slavery and Cotton Production was dominated
in the South. Regional identities are shown here.
• Historical Context: Cotton grew in Southern lands because these lands were more arable than North which dominated in
fish, shipbuilding, and lumber industries with railroads connecting industrial sites to each other and cities to countryside. The
slave system had been used in the South previously due to their dependence on single cash crops to make money off of them.
The South depended on Northern manufacturing goods in order to sustain survival in South. Election of 1860, Northern
Industrialization, King Cotton Diplomacy
• The author’s point of view: N/A; neutral; factual
Analysis of outside examples to support thesis/argument: Possible examples of information not found in the documents that
could be used to support the stated thesis or a relevant argument could include the following.
• The Compromises of 1820 and 1850 which rose tensions over future debates of the slavery institution
• Discussion of the Wilmot Proviso and how it would have upset the Compromise of 1820 and the balance of 15 free and
slave states
• Free-Soil Movement in how some Northerners sought to keep the West open for job opportunities without any
competition with slaves or free blacks
• Fugitive Slave Law in which the enforcement of the new law drove a wedge between the North and the South as it
confronted Northern abolitionists to capture and bring back slaves to the South.
• Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe which brought the effects of slavery to the forefront of domestic politics.
Southerners responded to these as false accusations.
• Kansas Nebraska Act which gave slave owners an opportunity to expand slavery and overturned the Compromise of
1820. Northerners gave it the notion that it was a bill of surrender to the “slave power” which led to a violent out lash
between pro-slavery and anti-slavery farmers called Bleeding Kansas.
• John Brown’s Raid at Harpers Ferry/ Caning of Senator Sumner which outraged North but South glorified this action as
heroic.
• Dredd-Scott Decision- which changed the way slavery would be seen for all parts of the western territory were open to
slavery. Northerners got suspicions of a slave power conspiracy.
• King Cotton diplomacy in the South and the development of an agrarian society dependent upon slaves.
• Development of railroads in North and how that helped to easily transport military operations
• Controversy of the Election of 1860 wherein President Lincoln’s rise to power causes South Carolina’s secession from
the Union
• Wilmot Proviso and how it would have forbade slavery in any of the new territories acquired from Mexico
Contextualization: Students can earn a point for contextualization by accurately and explicitly connecting historical
phenomena relevant to the argument to broader historical events and/or processes. These historical phenomena may include, but
are not limited to, the following.
•
Manifest Destiny and territorial/economic expansionism from 1830-1860 (conflicts over Texas, Maine, Oregon)
•
Mexican War and President Polk’s response; the end result of war (Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo)
•
Reconstruction of the South with the North’s aid
•
Settlement of Western Territories with the urban, farming, mining frontiers
•
Growth in manufactured goods as well as in agricultural products caused a large growth of exports and imports
•
New coalition of parties formed during the Civil War era and the changes that they undertook
•
Railroads and their connection to Gilded Age prosperity
•
Suspension of Civil Liberties/Drafting in wartime governments
•
Political Dominance of the North with the increasing population and economy
•
Women taking over jobs in industries during war but lost opportunity due to veterans returning
•
Confederates’ traditional emphasis on states’ rights worked against a unified effort against the Union
•
13th/14th/15th Amendments
Synthesis: Essays can earn the point for synthesis by crafting a persuasive and coherent essay. This can be accomplished
providing a conclusion that extends or modifies the analysis in the essay, by using disparate and sometimes contradictory
evidence from primary and/or secondary sources to craft a coherent argument, or by connecting to another historical period or
context.
Examples could include, but are not limited to, the following.
• Linking the argument to earlier debates about the Missouri Compromise and how the Kansas-Nebraska Act refuted this
Compromise of 1820
• Linking the argument to end of slavery, Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896, and Jim Crow Laws (segregation in the South) in
20th century
• Linking the argument to the results of Civil War and how the North helped out the South in Reconstruction
• Linking the argument to Jamestown in 1607 and the stimulation of the first cash crop tobacco.
• Linking the argument to debates about territorial expansion prior to debate over the expansion of slavery
such as the Mexican-American war where slavery already existed in western territories.
APUSH Sample “7” DBQ Essay
In the preceding decades of the climatic Civil War in the 1860s, the economic prosperity of the 1850s
and the dispute over the enslavement of blacks in the South had bitterly divided the country. Northern industrial
growth thrived through market expansion and advanced technological innovations. The Southern economy, on
the other hand, thrived on the spread of cotton plantations and on the subjugation of an inferior black race that
became known as the institution of slavery. As the South’s “King Cotton” philosophy dominated the economy,
it played an increasingly vital role on the increasing sectionalism between the North and the South. This
contributed to Southern dependence on the institution of slavery to thrive their agrarian economy which
furthered tensions in the Northern justification for their abolitionist movement against slavery. More so the
struggle between the North’s beliefs that the federal government had supreme rule contrasted to the Southern
inclination that individual states should override political power led to sharp divides between the two territories.
Federal vs. state rule affected views on slavery as Southerners defended the slave institution by arguing that
slavery is beneficial to African Americans for in all social systems, there must be a class to perform these lowly
duties and that class consisted of the inferior black race. On the other hand, Northern abolitionists considered
slavery as an institution that hindered a certain race from receiving inalienable rights every person had the right
to entitle. Overall, the North’s industrialized economy, views that the federal government had the power to
override states’ powers, and their “necessary evil” perspective on slavery compared to the South’s agrarian
dominated economy, views that individual states should have more power than the federal government, and
their “positive good” perspective on slavery clearly showed the rising sectional tensions that would eventually
precipitate the Civil War.
While the Northern economy was more diversified into agricultural, commercial, manufacturing, and
transportation industries, in contrast, the South was solely agricultural, dependent on slave plantations to
maintain their prosperous economy. For instance, in Hinton Helper’s The Impending Crisis of the South, he
stated that the South was heavily reliant on the North for their manufactured goods and that the economy was at
a constant disadvantage due to the small population occupied in the agrarian-dominated region. Whereas, the
North, he described, was virtually a self-sufficient economy and a trade hub with large, burgeoning cities that
possessed vaster populations, attracting an influx of immigrants. Helper lists Northern advantages to Southern
disadvantages to argue that slavery hurt the economic prospects of non-slaveholders, and was an impediment to
the growth of the entire region of the South. (Doc. B). Similarly, in maps depicting railroads in 1860, it clearly
illustrated that the railroads dominated the Northern region and splintered into the Southern states whilst the
slave density and cotton production in 1860 illustrated that it is dominated in the Southern region. Depicting
contrasting economies, these maps show that slavery was seen as indispensable for South's prosperity as the
“King Cotton” diplomacy thrived in the humid, arable lands of the South and would falter if planted in the
colder, hard-packed soil of the Northern region (Doc. G). These aspects of their regional identities represent the
South’s dominance in agriculture vs. the North’s dominance in industry which becomes crucial to shaping their
views on the institution of slavery.
Alike the stark contrast between the regions’ economies, the North’s inclination that the federal
government had the right to regulate or even abolish slavery within a single state conflicted against the South’s
tendency to choose states’ rights over the power of the federal government. For example, as depicted in South
Carolina’s platform for the cause of their secession, C.G. Memminger declared that South Carolina had the right
to establish sovereignty as a separate and independent state. Because the northern states had disregarded the
article of the United States Constitution to return runaway slaves, he argued in these articles that the federal
contract was deliberately broken; therefore, South Carolina was justified in seceding from the Union. Proving
that the state had the legal right to secede from the Union and that it was entitled to exercise that right, as well
as to show that the South is not willing to compromise with the North’s ideals, Memminger clarified the reasons
for secession (Doc F). Likewise Memminger’s statements on Southern secession from the Union, Albert
Gallatin Brown advocated Mississippi’s right to secede from the Union. Further describing the horrid powers
that the North’s emancipation of slavery had caused, Brown antagonized the Northerners. He warned the
Northern citizens about the hatred that they have towards the Southerners and how their goal to end slavery, if
successful, will end catastrophically probably due to his fear that freeing the slaves would lead to violence,
revolution, and social upheaval (Doc E). Another political factor determining the Civil War was depicted in the
political cartoon, as the Kansas-Nebraska feud “Bleeding Kansas” between free-soilers and pro-slavery settlers,
those who wanted Kansas to become a free or slave state, broke out into skirmishes aimed at undermining the
other faction. James Buchanan, Lewis Cass, Stephen Douglas, and Franklin Pierce, the democratic candidates
for the presidential election of 1856, are tying down a free-soiler to regions in which the Democratic Party’s
plan to expand slavery. To influence the mindset of those critical of the pro-expansion group, the cartoonist
depicted Democrats as people who would forcibly push for slavery (Doc. A). As Southern states seceded from
the Union and as pro-slavery and anti-slavery advocates battled the opponents’ ideologies, the differing political
views between the North’s support for federal government rule and the South’s support for states’ individual
rights showed the conflicting perspectives these two regions identified with the opposing region.
Aligned with the false perceptions of the opposing region, the North and the South’s controversial
debate on whether slavery was a “necessary evil” or a “positive good” sectionalized these two regions. What
constituted as slavery was questioned with the comparison between the free laborers in the North with the black
slaves in the South. For instance, James Henry Hammond expressed slavery as a “positive good”. He believed it
benefited the slaves themselves as they are an unintellectual, inferior race whose purpose would not be better
served than in working on cotton plantations. However, as he is a Southern Carolinian planter from the South at
this time, he clearly would have a bias towards the South as he advocates slavery and cotton due to it being his
occupation and his moneymaker. In addition, George Fitzhugh argued that Southern plantation owners had
provided their enslaved workforce with all the necessities they needed; and pointed to the North’s starving and
destitute workforce of free laborers, which received low wages and scant housing, as a more objectionable and
immoral approach than slavery. Counterattacking the abolitionists’ claims and attacking them by saying free
labor in the north is worse than slavery, Fitzhugh defends the institution of slavery (Doc. C). Southerners
justified slavery as a righteous solution for it benefited the slaves and the agricultural economy of the South,
whilst the Northerners, especially the abolitionists, continued to condemn slavery as an immoral act against
humanity.
Since The Civil War, regional identities continued to be apparent through the racism and discrimination
that African Americans faced even after the abolition of slavery was ensured. In the 1960s, the Civil Rights
Movement reflected the social, political, and economic divisions separating the North and South. Influenced by
its regional history, the South would continue to be more politically and socially conservative and racist towards
blacks, as well as to other minorities, which was evident through discriminating legislation like the Jim Crow
laws. In contrast, the Northerners advocated more liberal reforms for civil rights. Furthermore, the liberal
environment in the North was responsible for the vast migration of African Americans from the South to the
North from the 1930s to the 1960s. Though economically the South did shift away from being predominantly
agricultural, the North continued to be an industrial region. Despite attempts at racial equality in the North, the
shadow of slavery and inferiority continued to cast over African-Americans, especially in the South where it
was most difficult to overthrow the racism and mistreatment of African Americans established a century ago.