§§ 359, 360.--_a_. Compare the attitude of Douglas and Buchanan upon the admission of Kansas.
_b_. Describe John Brown's raid. Was he a traitor?
_a_. Give, with dates, the important laws as to slavery since 1783.
_b_. What were the arguments in favor of the extension of slavery? Against it?
_c_. Find and learn a poem against slavery by Whittier, Lowell, or Longfellow.
_d_. Make a table of elections since 1788, with the leading parties, candidates, and principal issues. Underline the name of the candidate elected.
_a_. John Brown in Kansas or at Harper's Ferry.
_b_. The career, to this time, of any man mentioned in Chapters 33 and 34.
_c_. Any one fugitive slave case: Jerry McHenry in Syracuse (A.J. May's _Antislavery Conflicts_), Shadrach, Anthony Burns.
Preparation is especially important in teaching this period. The teacher will find references to larger books in Channing's _Students' History._
Show how the question of slavery was really at the basis of the Mexican War. Geographical conditions and the settlement of the Western country should be carefully noted. A limited use of the writings and speeches of prominent men and writers is especially valuable at this point.
Have a large map of the United States in the class room, cut out and fasten upon this map pieces of white and black paper to illustrate the effects of legislation under discussion, and also to illustrate the various elections.
The horrors of slavery should be but lightly touched. Emphasize especially the fact that slavery prevented rather than aided the development of the South, and was an evil economically as well as socially.
[Illustration: THE UNITED STATES IN 1860.]
References.--Scribner's _Popular History_, IV, 432-445; McMaster's _School History_, chap. xxvi (industrial progress, 1840-60).
[Sidenote: Area of the United States, 1860.]
361. Growth of the Country.--The United States was now three times as large as it was at Jefferson's election. It contained over three million square miles of land. About one-third of this great area was settled. In the sixty years of the century the population had increased even faster than the area had increased. In 1800 there were five and a half million people living in the United States. In 1860 there were over thirty-one million people within its borders. Of these nearly five millions were white immigrants. More than half of these immigrants had come in the last ten years, and they had practically all of them settled in the free states of the North. Of the whole population of thirty-one millions only twelve millions lived in the slave states, and of these more than four millions were negro slaves.