IN-CLASS HISTORY ESSAYS

III. Short-answer Essay Questions

A short-answer essay is a two to three paragraph answer to a historical question. It asks for more specific detail than an identification, but does not demand a thesis statement like a long-essay answer would.

For example, I might ask, "Why did Northerners object to the Dred Scott decision?" To provide a thorough answer, you would want to use your first one or two paragraphs to explain what the Dred Scott decision was and the last to consider why it offended northern public opinion. An answer might run as follows:

"Dred Scott was a slave who whose owner brought him to Illinois (a free state) and Wisconsin (a free territory). During that time, Scott married another slave and they had a daughter, who was born in free territory. When the family was returned to Illinois, Dred Scott sued for his freedom and that of his wife and daughter on the grounds that his residence in free territory made him free. He was freed by a Missouri state court, but the decision was overturned on appeal. Then Scott's owner moved to New York and Scott sued him in federal court. In 1857, the case reached the Supreme Court.

The court decided against Scott. In an extremely influential majority opinion, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney ruled that Scott was not a legitimate plaintiff because no black person, whether free or slave, could be a citizen of the United States. He further declared that residing in free territory did not make Scott free because the whole idea of free territory was unconstitutional-it was a violation of the Fourth Amendment's guarantee of security of property. Taney was essentially trying to settle the issue of the expansion of slavery into the territories by saying that it was not an issue of concern for the federal government.

In the northern states, response to the decision was outraged. Abolitionists felt that the decision was morally wrong. However, even northern whites who were moderate on the issue of slavery often opposed the expansion of slavery into the territories, which they believed should remain the province of freehold farmers, not slave-driven plantations. The decision challenged territorial residents' ability to keep slavery out of the areas where they moved, and potentially undermined free states' rights to ban slavery as well. Many northerners saw the decision as a sign that the federal government had been taken over by a menacing slave owners' conspiracy."