Paper Topics
For this class, one of the ways you may write the research paper is to take an event, person, law, or idea and see what Ohioans or Clevelanders thought about it as expressed in newspaper editorials and letters to the editor. The following are possibilities for you to consider as the subject of such “reaction” papers.
How did Ohioans react to, or what did they think about:
Escaped slaves
- Margaret Garner
- Anthony Burns
- The Christiana Riot
- or another incident
The American Anti-slavery Society
The Underground Railroad
- John Rankin
- Levi Coffin
- Sojourner Truth
- Josiah Henson
- Emigration/colonization
- Others; see below under abolitionists
Abolitionists
- William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, The Grimke Sisters
- Ohio: Benj. Lundy, Charles Osborn, James Birney, Salmon Chase, Harriet B. Stowe, John Parker, Theodore Weld, Joshua Reed Giddings, Benj. Wade
- Attacks on abolitionists (Elijah Lovejoy)
- The Lane Seminary debates & controversy
- Oberlin College
- The Oberlin-Wellington Rescue
The Anti-Slavery Pamphlet Campaign, Post Office Riots, & the Ban
The Anti-Slavery Petition Campaigns and the Gag Rule
Southerners’ Pro-Slavery Ideology
Attempts to Expand Slavery:
- The Knights of the Golden Circle
- Filibusters into Cuba, Mexico, or Central America
- The Ostend Manifesto
- The Mexican War
- The Wilmot Proviso and other proposals about slavery in the Mexican Cession
The Missouri Compromise
Nat Turner’s Rebellion
The Annexation of Texas
The Admission of Oregon
The Crisis of 1850
The Compromise of 1850
The Fugitive Slave Act
Personal Liberty Laws
Various Elections (in terms of slavery and the sectional conflict)
- Presidential elections: 1844, 1848, 1852, 1856, 1860
- Congressional, State, & Local Elections in various years
The Liberty Party, formation, political battles
The Free-Soil Party, formation, political battles
The Whig Party, etc.
The American Party (“Know-Nothings”), etc.
The Republican Party, etc.
The Kansas-Nebraska Act
“Bleeding Kansas” and the LeCompton Constitution
John Brown and His Raid on Harper’s Ferry, VA
The Dred Scott Case
Secession—the first and second wave
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