General
Certificate of Education
Advanced
Subsidiary Level and Advanced Level
HISTORY
Paper 5 The
History of the
May/June 2004
3 hours
Additional Materials: Answer
Booklet/Paper
READ
THESE INSTRUCTIONS FIRST
If you have been given an Answer
Booklet, follow the instructions on the front cover of the Booklet.
Write your Centre number,
candidate number and name on all the work you hand in.
Write in dark blue or black pen
on both sides of the paper.
You may use a soft pencil for
any diagrams, graphs or rough working.
Do not use staples, paper clips,
highlighters, glue or correction fluid.
Answer four
questions.
You must answer Question
1 (Section A)
and any three questions from Section B.
At the end of the examination,
fasten all your work securely together.
All questions in this paper
carry equal marks.
SECTION A: The Road to Secession and Civil
War, 1846–61
You
must answer
Question 1.
THE DRED SCOTT DECISION OF THE SUPREME
COURT, 1857
1
Read the
sources and then answer the question.
Source
A
The
right of property in slaves is distinctly and expressly affirmed in the
Constitution. No word can be found there which entitles slave property to less
protection than to any other kind of property. The only power it confers on
Congress is the power and also the duty of guarding and protecting property owners’
rights.
The
Act of Congress prohibiting slavery in territory north of 36 ° 30’ is not
warranted by the Constitution and is therefore void. Accordingly Scott was not
made free by being taken by his owner into
Chief
Justice Taney’s majority judgement
in the case of Dred Scott v Sandford,
Six associate justices agreed with
Taney, two disagreed.
Source
B
The
harmful influence shed by slavery on our national history and on our public men
has not yet spent its evil force. It has reached a height which until a few
years ago, it was thought the wildest fanaticism to predict. The line drawn in
1820, which the slaveholders promised slavery would never overstep, is insolently
as well as infamously ignored – slavery presides in the Cabinet, is seated on
the Supreme Court, is absolute in the halls of Congress; no man can say what
shape its next aggression may take.
Is
the success of this conspiracy to be final and eternal? Are the states
ironically named the
Editorial
in Atlantic Monthly, 1857.
Source
C
It
matters not what the Supreme Court may decide on the question whether slavery
may or may not go into a Territory. The people have the lawful means to
introduce it or exclude it as they please, because slavery cannot exist a day
or an hour anywhere unless supported by local police regulations. Those can
only be established by the local legislature, and if the people are opposed to
slavery, they will elect representatives who will by unfriendly legislation
bring about a change. If, on the contrary, they are for it, their legislation
will favour its extension. The right of the people to
make a Territory slave or free is perfect and complete.
The
Republican creed lays down that under no circumstances
shall we acquire any more territory, unless slavery is first prohibited in that
territory. I answer that whenever it becomes necessary to acquire more
territory, I am in favour of it, without reference to
the question of slavery; and when we have acquired it, I will leave the people
free to do as they please; either to make it slave or free territory.
Stephen
Douglas, speech at Freeport, Illinois, October 1858.
Source
D
The
real issue is the sentiment on the part of one class that looks upon slavery as
wrong, and of another class that does not look upon it as wrong. The sentiment
that contemplates slavery in this country as wrong is that of the Republican
Party. They nevertheless have due regard to its actual existence and the
difficulties of getting rid of it, and to all the constitutional obligations
about it.
They
insist that it should, as far as may be, be treated as a wrong; and to make
provision that it shall grow no larger. They also desire a policy that looks to
a peaceful end of slavery at some time.
I
will say something about this argument
I do
not believe it is a constitutional right to hold slaves in a Territory of the
Abraham
Lincoln, speech at Alton, Illinois, October 1858.
Source
E
The Dred Scott decision provoked a greater storm than any other
judicial decision before or since. While the South was elated, Northern anger
was intense. Republicans alleged that Buchanan and the Supreme Court had
conspired to extend slavery throughout the country and pledged themselves to reverse
the decision.
Northern
opinion, believing that the racist views Chief Justice Taney ascribed to the
Founding Fathers were also his own, was deeply offended. More important, by
establishing the constitutionality of slavery in all the Territories, the Court
cut the ground from under the Republicans. It even called in question the constitutionality
of
From a
modern historian’s account of the Dred Scott decision
of the Supreme Court, 1999.
Now answer the following
question.
‘The Dred Scott decision made
little practical difference to sectional divisions over the slavery issue.’ Using
Sources A – E, discuss how far the evidence supports this assertion.
SECTION B
You
must answer three questions from this section.
2
Assess the
consequences of the Mexican War for the
3
Compare Abraham
Lincoln and Jefferson Davis as war leaders.
4
Was the trend
towards monopoly in the American economy beneficial or harmful in the period to
1914?
5
How different
were the philosophies and policies of Booker T. Washington and W. E. du Bois on how best to attain full emancipation for Afro-Americans?
6
Account for the
Republican ascendancy in the 1920s.
7
To what extent
did the foreign policy of the
8
Examine the
influence of the mass media on American society from 1952 to 1968.