1. Who is the author of this document? Who is his audience? How might his audience differ from that of Document 1’s author, Daniel Rice?
2. Under what conditions, according to Van Dyke, is slavery “permitted and regulated by the Divine law, under both the Jewish and Christian dispensations (page 20)”?
3. What common and long-used apology for the institution of slavery does Van Dyke use in his sermon, on page 20? How do you think this argument was received in his Brooklyn, NY church?
4. Why does Van Dyke sympathize with the pro-secession ministers Dr. Thornwell of South Carolina, and Dr. Palmer of New Orleans (page 21)?
5. What rebuttal does Van Dyke offer to the abolitionist’s argument that “the idea of property in man blots out his manhood, and degrades him to the level of a brute or a stone (page 23)”?
6. What purpose might Van Dyke have in claiming “the States in which Abolitionism has achieved its most signal triumphs, are at the same time the great strongholds of infidelity in the land (page 30)”? How does this point support his larger argument about the evils of abolitionism?
7. Van Dyke quotes from an article in the Princeton Review that foretells a violent clash over the issue of slavery, a conflict that will tear the country apart. How does Van Dyke’s opinion on this subject differ from Rice’s? How important is the timing of Van Dyke’s sermon, versus the timing of Rice’s to the writer’s attitudes about how the end of slavery will come about (page 33)?
8. Why, according to Van Dyke, is the issue of slavery “a conflict that will run the ploughshare of division through every state and neighborhood in the land (page 36)”?
