Answer:
How did slavery shape colonial society and its economy? What impact did slavery have on the coming of the American Revolution and on the events that transpired during that conflict? What role did it play in the drafting and ratification of the Constitution? How can it be argued that slavery was the sole cause of the Civil War?
Slavery is a pivotal point in the development of the modern United States. In the first stages of the colonial period it was not a widespread economic institution, with indentured servants constituing a significant proportion of the labor force. It was not until the Bacon's Rebellion that slavery become the economic basis for the colonies economy (https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part1/1p274.html).
Therefore, in the century after the end of Bacon's Rebellion, slavery become widespread, becoming a driving ideological force at the time of the American Revolutionary War and the American Independence. It was that use of slaves as the predominantly labor force in the colonies that made impossible for the Founding Fathers to conceive the Afro-american population in equal terms to abolish slavery.
It was after the independence and the gradual separation of an industrialized North, and an agrarian South that slavery become an instability factor in the Union. This was specifically brought to attention after the Mexican-American War and the incorporation of the new territories. Fearing an imbalance, the Compromise of 1850 was drafted to prevent a civll war.
However it was of no avail, tensions continue to grow as both the Democratic and Republican parties began to split over the issue, and finally after the 1860 election which saw the split of the Democratic party, the consensus was broken and secession happened. The Civil War was then ignited, and was primarily over the issue of the legal status of slaves. It is worth to mention that some Republicans that were from the South did not really care about the future of slaves, This was specially the case of then vicepresident Andrew Johnson, and an initial sign of the Jim Crow laws that would emerge in the South.
Explain the role played by religion in the early colonial experience, the coming of the American Revolution, in the cultural and political development of the early Republic, and in the causes of the Civil War. Support your answer with specific historical examples drawn from course lectures and from assigned readings.
Colonization of the US was ignited in the case of the Puritans by a search of excepcionalism and example, thus the quote of the "City in the Hill". During the first century of the American colonies, religion was an excluding factor, with non-Puritans not allowed in the New England area, and dissenters expelled. After the proclamation of New England as a royal province, religion faded until the "Great Awakening" in the early XVIII century.
Religion was then again a pivotal part of colonial life, with many of the Founding Fathers being devout Christians (in conjunction with their Enlightement ideas). Religious schools were important centers of lecturing and alphabetization, and some branches as the Quakers became ardent abolitionists.
Thus the early Republic was also profoundly penetrated by religion, and it was seen in the famous quote "In God we trust". Expansion to the West and the subjugation of indigenous peoples were also justified with religious zeal.
But this zeal would also transform religion into a debate platform of slavery. As beforementioned Quakers, and then Methodists, were ardent defendants of the abolition of slavery, with many members of these congregations helping in the Undeground Railway to aid fugitives. The Civil War period saw a profund shaking in the religious beliefs of many people, but particularly in the South, and finally as in many other aspects of life, religious people would see a polarization that would only fade after the end of the war.