A House Divided - Lincoln - John Brown

We'll start the day with a section of Ken Burns's film The Civil War (23:46-27:52), setting the context of the 1850's, leading up to an important speech from Abraham Lincoln - the "House Divided" speech.

Then we'll read the speech. You'll find it in your American Reader. While you are reading, please use this set of questions - please make a copy to insert your responses. It includes directions for the different paragraphs you'll write today.

• Questions for "House Divided" speech and "A Plea for Captain John Brown"

For the second part of class we'll watch another portion of Burns's film (The Meteor  (27:55-32:54) and then do a journal response in which we try to conclude whether John Brown's actions were justified. We'll then read these sections from Thoreau's essay about John Brown. and write the paragraph that is in the document linked above.

Hard Copy

• Page 31-32 (stop at the end of the 2nd full paragraph; "...determined foe".
• Page 39 (2nd full paragraph "What though...")-41 (stop at the end of the first full paragraph:"...retracted their words")
• Page 45 ("It was his peculiar doctrine...")-End of the essay.

Electronic Version

• Paragraphs 1-5
• Paragraphs 31-41
• Paragraphs 57-End