American History

        In 1764, Thomas Pownall, a former royal governor of Massachusetts and a man highly esteemed by British policy makers for his keen insight into colonial economic affairs, told them that the diversity, expansiveness and disruptiveness of colonial life made American self-rule an impossibility. "The different manner in which they are settled," he stated, along with "the different modes under which they live, the different forms of charters, grants, and frame of government, will keep the several provinces and colonies perpetually independent of, and unconnected with each other, and dependent on the mother country." Discuss three examples in the period from 1600-1763, as taken from A People and a Nation, lectures, and primary documents, that could have supported Pownall's assertions. Then explain how, after 1764, revolutionaries overcame these obstacles to refute Pownall and forge anti-British support for the coming revolution. In The Civil War documentary, Jefferson Davis, the man whom southern secessionists had chosen a just few years earlier to be the president of the Confederate States of America, said in 1865 that apy the Confederacy fails, there should be written on its tombstone, "Died of a theory." What do you think he meant? Discuss his statement. You must take slavery, racism and the outcome of the Civil War into your considerations. Trace these issues, using at least five examples, from 1783 to 1865.