Deck 11: Cotton, Slavery, and the Old South

Question 1

Rice and sugar production in the antebellum South

A) had short growing seasons.
B) were concentrated in a relatively small geographic area.
C) had difficulty sustaining profits for growers.
D) was in considerable decline by the 1850s.
E) threatened to overwhelm cotton production in the lower South.

Answer 1

were concentrated in a relatively small geographic area.

Question 2

In the 1850s, the southern social theorist George Fitzhugh wrote that women

A) had an obligation to speak their minds.
B) should be the manager of home affairs, while men managed business affairs.
C) possessed as many rights as men.
D) were like children.
E) None of these answers is correct.

Answer 2

were like children.

Question 3

Prior to 1860, affluent southern white women

A) had created the most significant challenge to slavery in the South.
B) occupied a significantly different role from their northern counterparts.
C) commonly held income-producing jobs.
D) typically played an important role in public activities.
E) centered their lives in the home.

Answer 3

centered their lives in the home.

Question 4

The New Orleans magazine publisher, James B. D. De Bow, championed

A) southern economic independence from the North.
B) southern commercial and agricultural growth.
C) closer economic ties with the North.
D) southern economic independence from the North, and southern commercial and agricultural growth.
E) closer economic ties with the North, and southern commercial and agricultural growth.

Question 5

Tobacco cultivation in the antebellum South

A) was easy on the soil.
B) was gradually moving westward.
C) enjoyed a stable market.
D) was centered in the lower South.
E) never made a profit.

Question 6

The historian who wrote "The South [prior to the Civil War] grew, but did not develop" meant that

A) the southern population increased, but new technology had bypassed the region.
B) agriculture remained the leading industry of the South, but the plantation system was declining.
C) the South had failed to move from an agrarian to an industrial economy.
D) the South had expanded as a geographic region but had developed little prosperity.
E) the South had created a prosperous plantation system but had not expanded its borders.

Question 7

Which of the following statements about the southern aristocratic ideal is FALSE?

A) Wealthy southern whites adopted an elaborate code of "chivalry."
B) Dueling became a prominent facet of southern planter life.
C) Wealthy southern whites prided themselves on their egalitarianism.
D) Wealthy southern whites pretended to avoid such "coarse" occupations as trade and commerce.
E) Wealthy southern whites often gravitated toward the military.

Question 8

The South may have failed to develop a large industrial economy due to all the following factors EXCEPT

A) the humid climate.
B) little access to liquid capital.
C) the profitability of cotton.
D) cultural values.
E) a shortage of labor.

Question 9

Sexual relationships between white southern men and female slaves was

A) virtually unheard of.
B) against the law in all slave states.
C) encouraged by proponents of slavery such as George Fitzhugh.
D) an accepted cause for divorce in the southern court system.
E) a common practice.

Question 10

During the first half of the nineteenth century, the "cotton kingdom"

A) was already losing ground to other staples, such as rice and tobacco.
B) saw wealthy planters outnumber small planters.
C) did not rely on large numbers of slaves imported directly from Africa.
D) was the dominant source of the income of the lower South.
E) still had not adopted the cotton gin, despite the time and resources that could be saved.

Question 11

Between 1840 and 1860, the American South's slave population

A) could not meet the South's labor needs.
B) changed little.
C) dramatically shifted into the Southwest.
D) declined in overall numbers.
E) became concentrated in the upper South.

Question 12

In the late 1850s, many of the great landholders of the lower South were

A) still first-generation settlers.
B) part of a wealthy leisure class.
C) from longstanding aristocratic families.
D) rooted to one plantation for many generations.
E) former Old World aristocrats that emigrated from Europe.

Question 13

Prior to 1860, the center of economic power in the South

A) was in Charleston, S.C.
B) remained, as it had been, primarily within the upper South.
C) remained, as it had been, primarily within the lower South.
D) shifted from the lower South to the upper South.
E) shifted from the upper South to the lower South.

Question 14

Prior to 1860, southern white women

A) had about the same access to education as northern white women.
B) were not expected to engage in manual labor, whatever their social standing.
C) generally lived lives that were isolated from the wider world.
D) had a birth rate that was lower than the national average.
E) were more likely to see their children grow to adulthood than northern white women.

Question 15

By 1860, the textile manufacturing sector of the American South

A) was nonexistent.
B) had increased threefold in value over the previous twenty years.
C) had declined in value throughout the 1840s and 1850s.
D) was equal to one-third of the value of cotton exported that year.
E) had come to dominate the South's economy.

Question 16

Prior to 1860, southern women differed from northern women in that they

A) tended to have more formal education.
B) were expected to be more subordinate to men.
C) had fewer children.
D) generally had a lesser engagement in the economic life of the family.
E) were more likely to take a role in public activities.

Question 17

Most "plain folk" of the Old South

A) owned at least one slave.
B) were never able to move into the planter class.
C) were passionately antislavery.
D) were subsistence farmers who owned at least one slave.
E) were subsistence farmers who were passionately antislavery.

Question 18

Short-staple cotton

A) helped to keep the South a predominantly agricultural region.
B) was less coarse than long-staple cotton.
C) was easier to process than long-staple cotton.
D) was more susceptible to disease than long-staple cotton.
E) was only grown in the coastal regions of the upper South.

Question 19

Most white southerners owned

A) no slaves.
B) one slave.
C) two slaves.
D) three to five slaves.
E) six to ten slaves.

Question 20

By the time of the Civil War, cotton constituted nearly ________ of the total export trade of the United States.

A) one-fourth
B) one-tenth
C) one-third
D) half
E) two-thirds

Question 21

Of the following, the most common form of resistance to slavery was

A) group rebellions.
B) arson.
C) running away.
D) subtle defiance.
E) poisoning.

Question 22

Within the American South, the institution of slavery

A) isolated blacks and whites from each other.
B) created a unique bond between masters and slaves.
C) encouraged blacks to develop a society and culture of their own.
D) created a unique bond between masters and slaves, while isolating blacks and whites from each other and encouraging blacks to develop a society and culture of their own.
E) None of these answers is correct.

Question 23

A runaway slave making a successful escape from the American South was

A) highly likely.
B) likely.
C) unlikely.
D) highly unlikely.
E) impossible.

Question 24

Though the trade and sale of slaves continued to be legal inside the U.S. until the Civil War, the "slave trade," the importation of slaves from Africa or any other foreign locale, was made illegal in

A) 1808.
B) 1809.
C) 1812.
D) 1815.
E) None of these answers is correct.

Question 25

One actual slave revolt that resulted in numerous white deaths in the nineteenth-century South was led by

A) Nat Turner.
B) Denmark Vesey.
C) Gabriel Prosser.
D) Frederick Douglass.
E) Harriet Tubman.

Question 26

Southern, white, lower-class resentment of the aristocratic system was most likely to be found in

A) the cities.
B) river and ocean port towns.
C) the upper South.
D) the mountain regions.
E) the Deep South.

Question 27

To "manumit" means to

A) purchase.
B) punish.
C) work by hand.
D) deny.
E) set free.

Question 28

Regarding religion, American slaves

A) were expected to worship in black churches separate from whites.
B) had mostly converted to Islam by the early nineteenth century.
C) were usually not allowed to attend a church at all.
D) shunned Christianity in favor of the polytheistic traditions of Africa.
E) often incorporated African features into their Christianity.

Question 29

In 1850, outside of the United States, slavery in the Western Hemisphere also existed in

A) Colombia.
B) Brazil.
C) the Virgin Islands.
D) Haiti.
E) no other country.

Question 30

Which of the following statements regarding slave life is true?

A) Slaves had to grow all of their own food.
B) Slaves were not given medical care except by their own efforts.
C) Slave children did no work until they turned twelve years old.
D) It was uncommon to divide slave families for long periods of time.
E) After 1808, the proportion of blacks to whites in the nation steadily declined.

Question 31

Which of the following statements about the poorest class of white southerners is FALSE?

A) They often felt affinity with slaves as members of another oppressed class.
B) They were known variously as "crackers" or "sand hillers."
C) They supported themselves by foraging or hunting.
D) They suffered from pellagra, hookworm, and malaria.
E) They were forced to resort at times to eating clay.

Question 32

When emancipation came after the Civil War, it was often the ________ who were the first to leave the plantation of their former owners.

A) field hands
B) head drivers
C) house servants
D) subdrivers
E) craftsmen

Question 33

Which of the following statements regarding urban slavery is FALSE?

A) Some urban slaves were skilled trade workers.
B) Urban slaves were prohibited from having contact with free blacks.
C) Urban slaves were less supervised than rural slaves.
D) Urban slaves in the South had little working competition from European immigrants.
E) The line between slavery and freedom in cities was less distinct.

Question 34

Perhaps the single strongest unifying factor of pre-Civil War southern whites was their

A) kinship relationships.
B) contempt of northern capitalism.
C) perception of white racial superiority.
D) fear of federal authority.
E) intense national pride.

Question 35

The name given to the effort by whites and blacks to help runaway slaves escape was the

A) Frederick Douglass road.
B) underground railroad.
C) Fugitive Slave Act.
D) Cumberland passage.
E) Second Middle Passage.

Question 36

Prior to 1860, free blacks in the South

A) were concentrated in the Deep South.
B) were required by law to leave the South.
C) increased in number in the 1850s, as laws encouraged owners to free "surplus" slaves.
D) occasionally attained wealth and prominence and owned slaves themselves.
E) avoided urban centers such as New Orleans or Natchez, where they might attract attention.

Question 37

The slave codes of the American South

A) defined anyone with a trace of African ancestry as black.
B) legalized slave marriages.
C) were rigidly enforced.
D) considered it a crime for an owner to kill a slave.
E) banned blacks from attending church.

Question 38

Southern whites who did not own slaves

A) rarely married into the families living on large slave plantations.
B) openly opposed the planter elite.
C) were forced to move west to maintain a livelihood.
D) generally opposed the institution of slavery.
E) were largely dependent on the plantation economy.

Question 39

Most enslaved blacks lived

A) on small farms.
B) on medium- to large-sized plantations.
C) in urban areas.
D) in rigidly-controlled circumstances.
E) in Virginia and the Carolinas.

Question 40

The "peculiar institution" was a southern reference to

A) the plantation.
B) manufacturing.
C) capitalism.
D) slavery.
E) democracy.

Question 41

During the first half of the nineteenth century, the South underwent a much less fundamental transformation than did the North.

Question 42

In the American slave family,

A) most couples did not formally marry.
B) black women typically began bearing children later than white women.
C) premarital pregnancy was uncommon.
D) extended kinship networks were strong and important.
E) premarital cohabitation was frowned upon.

Question 43

The South had an inadequate transportation system and only a rudimentary financial system as late as the middle of the nineteenth century.

Question 44

Approximately one-third of southern whites owned slaves.

Question 45

The mountain regions were the only parts of the South to resist the movement toward secession when it finally developed.

Question 46

The North, unlike the South, experienced great economic growth in the mid-nineteenth century.

Question 47

The southern planter class exercised power far in excess of its numbers.

Question 48

Prior to 1860, southern aristocratic ideals were largely myths.

Question 49

In the South, small farmers, often as much as great planters, were committed to the plantation system.

Question 50

Ways in which slaves expressed elements of their African heritage included

A) singing songs and playing musical instruments, such as the banjo.
B) keeping family diaries and other written personal records.
C) wearing clothing that incorporated traditional African designs or colors.
D) speaking in their native African languages when out of the presence of whites.
E) celebrating traditional African feasts and rites of passage, in defiance of white law.

Question 51

Which of the following is true of American slave families in the antebellum South?

A) A child of a slave could not be sold after he or she had reached three years of age.
B) Blacks typically had weaker family ties than did whites, due to the uncertainties of their lives.
C) Up to one-third of families were broken apart by the sale of family members.
D) Most slaves who ran away did so to avoid punishment.
E) Newly arrived slaves to a plantation were often shunned by the black community.

Question 52

In the South, the most significant opposition to the slave system came from the poorest of southern whites.

Question 53

Society in the antebellum South placed the plantation owner at the top of the social order.

Question 54

Southern women generally had final authority on issues related to the home and children.

Question 55

The southern planter class was quite similar to the landed aristocracies of Europe.

Question 56

As compared to nineteenth-century white practices, religious services for American slaves

A) were not allowed, by law, to mention freedom.
B) were often more emotional.
C) were generally more despondent and melancholy than white services.
D) denied all references to their African heritage.
E) emphasized subservience and submission to God.

Question 57

The central ideology of slavery, and the vital instrument of white control, was

A) fraternity.
B) maternalism.
C) paternalism.
D) sorority.
E) egalitarianism.

Question 58

During the first half of the nineteenth century, the center of economic power in the South shifted from the upper South to the lower South.

Question 59

James De Bow argued that the South should pursue agricultural development while relying on the North for industrial goods and capital.

Question 60

Southern white women had less access to education than their northern counterparts.

Question 61

Slave codes effectively prevented slaves from owning property.

Question 62

The slave system may have created separate spheres for blacks and whites, but each race was nonetheless dependent on the other.

Question 63

According to some scholars, the actual material conditions of American slavery may have been better than those of some northern factory workers and better than those of both peasants and industrial workers in much of nineteenth-century Europe.

Question 64

It was common for slaves to hold an entirely hostile attitude toward their owners.

Question 65

On the eve of the Civil War, ________ was the major means of transportation in the South.

Question 66

Most often, resistance to slavery took the form of open rebellion.

Question 67

One historian said that the South of the period "grew, but it did not ________."

Question 68

The most important new product in the South during the mid-nineteenth century was ________ cotton.

Question 69

To the degree that the South developed a nonfarm commercial sector, it was largely to serve the needs of the ________ economy.

Question 70

The banjo was an important instrument in slave music.

Question 71

For the most part, slaves rejected Christianity.

Question 72

Slaves were expected by their owners to attend church.

Question 73

Within the slave family, women had special burdens, but also a special authority.

Question 74

Slave spirituals were written down and passed on to generations of African Americans.

Question 75

From the 1830s on, state laws governing slavery became gradually less rigid.

Question 76

Most enslaved black couples married with formal wedding vows.

Question 77

In southern cities, slave tasks might include mining, lumbering, blacksmith, or carpentry.

Question 78

Household servants were often the first to leave plantations of their former owners when emancipation came after the Civil War.

Question 79

The nuclear family was the dominant kinship model among the slaves of the South.

Question 80

By the mid-nineteenth century, slavery in the western world existed only in the American South.