Essay Topic -.
1. Three very different individuals who were active during the nineteenth century—John C. Calhoun, Abraham Lincoln, and William Graham Sumner—are sometimes considered to have made major contributions to American political thought. Please describe, interpret, and evaluate the political thought of either two or all three of them. Were their arguments coherent? Were they persuasive? Have they proved lastingly beneficial (or detrimental)?
2. Essay Topic -. Our readings on nineteenth century thought have included much that is lively—by the great essayists Emerson and Thoreau, the great poet Whitman, Abolitionists and Reconstructionists, prophets of national expansion, and critics of American inequality. Please write an essay with a title such as “American Political Thought in the Nineteenth Century—Apart from Calhoun and Lincoln.” Unless you wrote Essay - on Calhoun and Lincoln, you should substitute the two or three names of the writers you discussed. Your essay should be a lively survey of all the different writers we’ve encountered in the second part of the course (apart from the ones you discussed in Essay -). To the extent possible, it should group them in ways that make your essay clear. With respect to each writer, you should be mindful of the questions raised in Essay Topic -. Were their arguments coherent? Were they persuasive? Have they proved lastingly beneficial (or detrimental)? Please don’t be hesitant to make lively judgments about the merits or lack of merits of the authors. But please, of course, be civilized and sensible.
