The USA faced problems both before and after the Civil War.

Mark scheme

Marking points from the official mark scheme (May/June 2021). The mark or mark type is shown in brackets.

1. [1-4] e.g. 'John Brown tried to start a slave revolt.'
2. [1-4] 'John Brown led a group of armed men into the town and took hostages.'
3. [1-4] 'It was a raid on a US arsenal.'
4. [1-4] 'The raiders cut the telegraph to stop help from coming.'
5. [1-4] 'Some of the local slaves joined Brown.'
6. [1-4] 'Brown captured the armoury.'
7. [1-4] 'The local militia surrounded the armoury.’
8. [1-4] 'A militia company arrived and forced Brown and his men back and freed some of the prisoners.'
9. [1-4] 'US marines attacked the engine house and killed or captured all the raiders.'
10. [1-4] 'John Brown was captured.'
11. [4-5] e.g. 'President Andrew Johnson was the reason why Reconstruction failed. He was a weak president and failed to support Reconstruction properly. He pardoned former Confederate officers and took Union troops out of the South before the rights of black Americans had been secured. This allowed the Black Codes to be introduced and implemented and this reduced the impact of the abolition of slavery. Johnson's idea of Reconstruction did not include involving black Americans or former slaves in government and he did nothing when the Black Codes began to be introduced.'
12. [2-3] e.g. 'It failed because neither President Johnson nor President Grant were really behind it.'
13. [2-3] 'The states of the Confederacy would not cooperate.'
14. [2-3] 'Black Americans were still dependent on the white planters and were unable to develop economically.'
15. [2-3] 'The Freedman's Bureau was understaffed and could not be effective enough.'
16. [2-3] 'The activities of organisations, such as the KKK, undermined efforts at reconstruction.'
17. [2-3] 'White dominated legislatures tried to establish white supremacy by disenfranchising black Americans.'
18. [2-3] 'It failed because the North tried to take power away from Southern white people and they reacted to this.'
19. [2-3] 'It failed for economic reasons – land was not given to freed men so that they had an economic base to help them prosper.'
20. [4-6] e.g. 'I do not think that slavery was all that important. The fundamental issue was that of states' rights and arguments over slavery were just a symptom of this. The population of the North was growing more quickly than that of the South, which was worried that this would lead to the North permanently controlling the government of the USA. One way that the South could protect itself from Northern power was to argue that the power of the federal government should be limited and that individual states should have the power to decide issues such as slavery.'
21. [4-6] OR 'I think that slavery was the most important cause of the Civil War. It was the crucial issue that divided the North and the South. In the years before the war, you can see tensions over slavery rising and the divisions growing greater. The Compromise of 1850 was to prevent a war over slavery, but it was only a temporary solution and the issue came back in the Kansas-Nebraska Act. It was the issue of slavery that led to the violence of 'Bleeding Kansas' in 1855–56, and in 1857 the Dred Scott decision made divisions over slavery even greater. It is clear that all the problems that faced the USA were caused by the issue of slavery and this led to the Civil War.'
22. [2-3] e.g. 'States' rights was a more important issue than slavery.'
23. [2-3] 'The election of Lincoln as president was more important than slavery.'
24. [2-3] 'The main cause of the Civil War was the secession of Southern states.'
25. [2-3] 'Slavery was the main cause. It was crucial to the economy of the South but not to that of the North.'
26. [2-3] 'Slavery was the main issue. There was a fundamental moral disagreement about whether it was evil or not.'
27. [2-3] 'The main cause was the expansion of the United States. Every time a new state was added, it became a battle ground between North and South.'