Q Please answer only one question (250 words minimum) and respond to two other posts (50 words minimum for participation point-- 100 to 150 for content points)! Discussion Questions: 1. According to the text, “Revival audiences responded to the call for reform partly because they were disquieted by the era’s rapid social changes.” Describe these social changes and how revivalism addressed them. Do you find the authors’ argument convincing? Why or why not? 2. What was the “ideal of domesticity?” Do you believe that ideal helped or hurt the position of women in American society? Support your argument with specific examples of how the new ideal affected women’s lives. 3. Give three examples of reform movements that turned to political action to accomplish their goals. Why did these movements turn to political action? How did this represent a departure from earlier ideals? 4. List three utopian communities and three humanitarian reform movements in the Jacksonian era. Pick one from each group and compare their approaches to reform. 5. Historians have seen the reform movements of the 1830s and 1840s as both conservative and radical. Give at least two specific examples of how aspects of the movement were conservative (how they upheld institutions and values). Then suggest at least two examples of how other aspects were radical (how they overturned institutions and values). On balance, was reform a greater force for change or for preservation? 6. How do the activities of the Beecher family illustrate the tensions within the reform community? Discuss the activities of at least two of Lyman Beecher’s children. How did their activities contrast with one another? How did their activities extend beyond the actions and goals of their father? 7. The chapter introduction profiles five southerners: Daniel Jordan, a plantation master in South Carolina; a planter from the Red River country of Texas; Sam Williams, a skilled ironworker slave from Virginia, Octave Johnson, a slave in Louisiana; and Ferdinand Steel, a farmer in Mississippi. Using what you have learned from the text about the class structure of the Old South, to which class does each of these people belong? Explain how each class differs from the others. 8. What were the major geographical regions of the Old South? Explain how the geography of the South was a force of both unity and division. 9. How did the conditions of slavery make it especially difficult for slaves to establish their own culture? How did slave communities work to overcome this? 10. “Some [southern plantation mistresses] drew a parallel between their situation and that of the slaves,” the text reports. What parallels could plantation mistresses draw? Where do the parallels break down? Do you agree with the mistresses’ observations? 11. Do you believe slavery was the most important factor in shaping southern society? If so, explain why, especially since only one third of southerners were African-American and only one quarter of southern whites owned slaves or were members of slave-owning families. If you do not believe slavery was the most important factor shaping southern society, what factor was more important? 12. Give three major differences between the North and the South. What was the significance of each of these differences? Which one do you think was the most important and why? 13. Explain why the South’s dependence on exports made it difficult for an internally diversified economy to develop. How did this dependence retard southern economic development?