Comparative Questions

COMPARATIVE QUESTIONS

Document Links

Document 12-1: Abraham Lincoln Explains the Free-Labor System

Document 12-2: The Anxiety of Gain: Henry W. Bellows on Commerce and Morality

Document 12-3: Gold Fever

Document 12-4: That Woman Is Man's Equal: The Seneca Falls Declaration

Document 12-5: A Farmer's View of His Wife

  1. How do Abraham Lincoln's view of the free-labor system compare with Henry Bellows's views of the temptations and anxieties of material success, including during the gold rush, as witnessed by Walter Colton?
  2. In what ways are the views of men as presented in the Seneca Falls Declaration comparable to those of Lincoln, Bellows, and the prairie farmer interviewed by Eliza Farnham?
  3. The prairie farmer, Farnham, and the authors of the Seneca Falls Declaration asserted convictions about what women's rights were in fact and what they should be. What assumptions, if any, did these commentators share? What differences did they express? What arguments might appeal most strongly to the farmer's wife? What might influence her or her husband to reconsider their opinions?
  4. Each of the documents in this chapter provides evidence of the achievements and limitations freedom offered Americans in the 1840s and 1850s. To what extent do the documents suggest that the problems of American society could be overcome by expanding freedom?