The ring is represented by the dark red circle victims would get once they got the illness. The pocket full posies symbolizes that people would carry around flowers because there were so many people dying so it smelled really bad and the patients themselves smelled bad
The article describes the two-party system in a positive way,because in a multiparty system, More-Extreme parties can gain some Political Power.A two-party system helps prevent radical or extreme View from gaining power.<span />
Answer for the second
'Released from foreign war, we would probably be plunged into all the misery of anarchy and intestine war. Can we suppose that the people of the south, would submit to having the seat of Empire at Philadelphia, or New England; or that the people oppressed by a change of government, contrasting their misery with their former happy state, would not invite Britain to reassume the sovereignty.” — James Chalmers, Plain Truth, 1776
If the one above is the argument, you might consider that the colonists did obtain independence from England. That by itself was something that Chalmers always thought to be impossible without serious repercussions. He used to say that in the case of achieving freedom, America would just end up being attacked and maybe even colonized by some other country. What happened, thought, was that after the revolution, other countries gained respect for America as an opponent and the country was eventually left to be.
This was Horace Mann. He helped create and design the first educational system in the United States, he was the Massachusetts' Secretary of the Board of Education and he started the "Mann's Six Principles", which were his thoughts of how he would choose decisions. He did a lot for schooling and shaped it how it really is today.