World History (American Revolution) by Shivlal Gupta

Model Answer

Question #1. Discuss the issues involved in the American Civil War and highlight its significance. 10 marks (150 words)

Approach:

• Briefly introduce with American Civil War ( 25 words)
• Discuss Issues involved in the American Civil War ( 50 words)
• Explain its significance ( 50 words)
• Conclusion ( 25 words)

Hints:

The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 9, 1865) was a civil war in the United States fought between states supporting the federal union ("the Union" or "the North") and southern states that voted to secede and form the Confederate States of America ("the Confederacy" or "the South").

Issues involved in the American Civil War:

• The moral issue of slavery: In fact, it was the economics of slavery and political control of that system that was central to the conflict.
• A key issue was states' rights: The Southern states wanted to assert their authority over the federal government so they could abolish federal laws they didn't support, especially laws interfering with the South's right to keep slaves and take them wherever they wished.
• Territorial expansion: The South wished to take slavery into the western territories, while the North was committed to keeping them open to white labor alone.
• The election of a Republican, Abraham Lincoln, as President in 1860 sealed the deal. His victory, without a single Southern electoral vote, was a clear signal to the Southern states that they had lost all influence.
• Feeling excluded from the political system, they turned to the only alternative they believed was left to them: secession, a political decision that led directly to war.

Significance of Civil War:

• the first war in history in which ironclad warships clashed
• the first in which the telegraph and railroad played significant roles
• the first to use, extensively, rifled ordnance and shell guns and to introduce a machine gun (the Gatling gun)
• the first to have widespread newspaper coverage, voting by servicemen in the field in national elections, and photographic recordings
• the first to organize medical care of troops systematically
• the first to use land and water mines and to employ a submarine that could sink a warship.
• the first war in which armies widely employed aerial reconnaissance (by means of balloons).

Conclusion:

The South was devastated by the war, but the Union was preserved, and the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1865, officially abolished slavery in the entire country. After the war the defeated states were gradually allowed back into the United States. The period after the war in which attempts were made to solve the political, social, and economic problems arising from the readmission to the Union of the former Confederate states is known as Reconstruction (1865–77).

Question #2. Discuss the factors that led to the American Revolution.  How did the American Revolution transform both Europe and America? 15 marks (250 words)

Approach:

• Briefly introduce with American revolution ( 50 words)
• Discuss the causes and how American Revolution transform both Europe and America and explain how it transformed these regions   ( 150 words)
• Conclusion ( 50 words)

Hints:

The American Revolution was an ideological and political revolution that occurred in colonial North America between 1765 and 1791. The Americans in the Thirteen Colonies formed independent states that defeated the British in the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783), gaining independence from the British Crown and establishing the United States of America, the first modern constitutional liberal democracy.
Causes of American Revolution

• The road leading up to the American Revolution did not happen overnight. It took several years and many events to push the colonists to a point where they wanted to fight for their independence.
• Britain and France engaged in the French and Indian War, battling over land in North America. After the British won the war, they gained possession of France’s North American territories east of the Mississippi River. Up until this point the British had left the American colonies mostly on their own, but under the rule of King George III, Great Britain began to exert more control over the colonies.
• The French and Indian War put the British crown in debt. In order to increase revenues for the costs of defending the expanding British Empire, Britain taxed the colonies. It imposed the Sugar Act in 1764, and, one year later, it added the Stamp Act. Colonists protested the added taxes. The Stamp Act was repealed.
• In another effort to raise money and exert its authority over the colonies, Britain established the Townshend Acts in 1767. This series of acts placed taxes on tea, lead, paint, paper, and glass imported to the colonies. The acts were resisted through violence, deliberate refusal to pay, and hostility toward British agents.
• Colonial opposition to the British grew, and the British sent troops to Boston, Massachusetts. As punishment for the colonists’ resistance, the British Parliament enacted four measures known as the Intolerable Acts. Meant to divide the colonies, the act united the colonies and provided justification for organizing the First Continental Congress in 1774.
• After representatives for the colonists called on Britain to cancel the Intolerable Acts, Britain responded by sending more troops. Fighting ensued, and the colonies officially declared independence on July 4, 1776.

Transformation of America:

• Immediate consequence:

1. The creation of state constitutions in 1776 and 1777.
2. The Revolution also unleashed powerful political, social, and economic forces that would transform the post-Revolution politics and society, including increased participation in politics and governance, the legal institutionalization of religious toleration, and the growth and diffusion of the population.
3. The Revolution also had significant short-term effects on the lives of women in the new United States of America.

• The long-term consequence:

1. The Revolution would also have significant effects on the lives of slaves and free blacks as well as the institution of slavery itself.
2. It also affected Native Americans by opening up western settlement and creating governments hostile to their territorial claims.
3. The Revolution ended the mercantilist economy, opening new opportunities in trade and manufacturing. Americans began to create their own manufacturers, no longer content to reply on those in Britain.

• Limitations:

1. The Revolution did not result in civic equality for women. During the immediate post-war period, women became incorporated into the polity to some degree as “republican mothers.” These new republican societies required virtuous citizens and it became mothers’ responsibility to raise and educate future citizens. This opened opportunity for women regarding education, but they still remained largely on the peripheries of the new American polity.
2. The Revolution also did not result in civic equality for Slaves.
3. The Americans’ victory and Native Americans’ support for the British created a pretense for justifying the rapid, and often brutal expansion into the western territories.

American victory (and British defeat) affected Europe in two major ways:

• First, many European liberal movements gained momentum from the American Declaration of Independence and the subsequent American victory.  Liberal revolutionaries held many of the same ideals as the American founding fathers, and consequently associated themselves with the American cause.  The most infamous “result” of the American Revolution was the French Revolution that started nearly a decade later. France also lost their most prized colonial possession – Haiti –due to their uprising inspired by both the American and French Revolutions.
• Secondly,American independence signified the creation of a new nation-state and a new player on the world political/economic scene.  With its history of European ties, an independent America was sure to become a key political and economic player in European affairs.  As the United States grew in the following centuries, its importance to Europe also grew.  Today, the United States is one of Europe’s greatest economic and political allies.

Conclusion:

The American Revolution produced a new outlook among its people that would have ramifications long into the future. The Revolution also unleashed powerful political, social, and economic forces that would transform the post-Revolution politics and society, including increased participation in politics and governance, the legal institutionalization of religious toleration, and the growth and diffusion of the population.