Your essay must answer one of the following questions for the research essay:
(a) Explain the rise of the fall of the mound-builder civilizations of the Ohio River Valley.
(b) To what extent did British colonies in the Americas develop in a similar fashion to older Spanish and Portuguese colonies in the Americas?
(c) What elements of West African culture exist in twenty-first century African-American society?
(d) If you had been alive in the 1770s, knowing what you know now, would you have been a patriot or a tory? Why?
(e) To what extent were the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution emblematic of the “Enlightenment” era?
(f) Was the creation of political parties in the early era of the United States inevitable? Did the development of those parties help or hinder the political system?
(g) Had you been alive in the 1790s, knowing what you know now, would you have supported Hamilton’s faction or Jefferson’s faction?
(h) Why did the United States fight the Barbary Wars?
(i) What parallels exist between Andrew Jackson’s populism and that of other national political figures who claimed to challenge coastal elites, such as William Jennings Bryan, Harry Truman, and Donald Trump? What are the differences?
(j) Why did the Haitian Revolution succeed but the slave rebellions in the American south fail?
(k) To what extent did a revolution in transportation systems improve the US economy in the first half of the nineteenth century (1800-1849)?
(l) Why did the US population grow so rapidly during the first half of the nineteenth century (1800-1849)?
(m) Was the violence of Nat Turner’s revolt justifiable?
(n) To what extent was a US Civil War inevitable?
(o) In the event of a US Civil War, to what extent was a Union victory inevitable?
Write your essays using MS Word, and upload them in Canvas, which will submit the essay to plagiarism software. If you’re not sure what plagiarism is, consider this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlagiarismLinks to an external site.. Cite a source every time your essay makes use of an idea, quote, anecdote, study, or fact that you found in someone’s work.
I call the essay a “research essay” to emphasize that the quality of your essay is largely dependent upon the quality of your research. Use at least four scholarly articles or published books. The phrase “at least” means you are allowed and encouraged to use more than four sources. The length of the essay should be 1,500 to 2,500 words.
Cite your sources wherever you rely on them, using footnotes, parenthetical notes or end notes. Be very specific when citing a source, using either the Chicago, APA, or MLA format throughout.
