Deck 13: The Old South 1820-1860

Question 1

The chapter introduction tells the stories of several southerners-Colonel Daniel Jordan; a nameless Texan; Sam Williams and his wife Nancy; Octave Johnson; and Ferdinand Steel-to make the point that

A) the antebellum South was marked by great diversity, but at its core it was unified by its slave-based agricultural economy.
B) the antebellum South had the reputation for being unified in its views of slavery, but actually only a few in the South actively supported the slave-based agricultural economy.
C) the South was unique among the sections of the U.S. because of racist attitudes and the speculative approach to farming that characterized all classes of its citizens.
D) the South was not much different from other sections, except that the income of the majority of southerners came from slave-grown cotton, while elsewhere the majority of Americans grew corn or wheat with their own labor.

Answer 1

the antebellum South was marked by great diversity, but at its core it was unified by its slave-based agricultural economy.

Question 2

Which of these is a distinctive feature of the southern agricultural system?

A) Crops like cotton, rice, and sugar could be grown only in the South, which also wore out the soil and damaged the environment.
B) Its dependence on staple crops caused great economic displacement for Northern businesses.
C) Its rural agricultural economy was more stable but less profitable than the boom-and-bust cycles of the industrializing North.
D) Its rural agricultural economy was not based on the institution of slavery.

Answer 2

Crops like cotton, rice, and sugar could be grown only in the South, which also wore out the soil and damaged the environment.

Question 3

Where was the black belt region of the South?

A) in central Alabama, in the heart of the deep South, where the rich soil was ideal for cotton
B) in the Tennessee River valley, where devastating flooding was frequent
C) along the Gulf Coast, where the slave population was concentrated
D) in an arc from South Carolina to Mississippi, where in most counties blacks outnumbered whites

Answer 3

in central Alabama, in the heart of the deep South, where the rich soil was ideal for cotton

Question 4

"Cotton was king in the Old South."Which of the following statements about cotton is true?

A) It was grown primarily in the Upper South.
B) It was grown only by the larger slaveowners.
C) Cultivation migrated gradually westward to new agricultural frontiers.
D) By 1860 the United States produced almost half of the world's cotton supply.

Question 5

Which of the following crops were grown extensively in the Upper South?

A) cotton
B) rice
C) wheat
D) sugar

Question 6

Which of the following is NOT evidence of the South's economic underdevelopment?

A) The preoccupation with cotton hindered economic diversification (such as developing internal markets or manufacturing enterprises).
B) The South remained a region vulnerable to market fluctuations and beset by cultural backwardness (e.g., lack of public education).
C) The South remained overwhelmingly rural.
D) The southern economy in general, and white per capita income in particular, lagged behind that of the free states.

Question 7

Which of the following was true about slavery as a labor system?

A) A slave owner could typically expect about a 60 percent profit on a slave's annual labor..
B) As slavery spread into the Deep South, wealth and power became more equally shared among the various classes of white southerners.
C) It was slavery that made possible the South's "mass production" of industrial products for export.
D) Most southerners owned slaves.

Question 8

What was true about slavery as a labor system?

A) As the institution spread throughout the Deep South, a majority of white families came to own slaves.
B) By the 1850s, the United States was the only remaining slaveholding society in the Americas.
C) The gang and task systems were two methods of organizing a slaves' work.
D) The most arduous toil was done by field hands, who were all male.

Question 9

Why was the typical southern plantation less than 1,000 acres of land?

A) a cultural standard
B) land was typically divided into 640 acre lots
C) to avoid excessive property taxes
D) to limit time lost walking to the furthest fields

Question 10

Manufacturing lagged in the South because

A) whites believed slaves could not do industrial work.
B) slaveowners lacked capital to invest in manufacturing.
C) high profits from agriculture discouraged other possible investments.
D) the South lacked a suitable white workforce, since immigrants settled in the North.

Question 11

The slave population

A) was concentrated in the Deep South.
B) moved steadily south and east.
C) was concentrated in the East.
D) was concentrated west of the Mississippi River.

Question 12

The slave population concentrated in all of the following places EXCEPT

A) the Deep South.
B) the Upper South.
C) in areas of fertile soil and relatively flat terrain.
D) in areas accessible to transportation.

Question 13

Slaveowners made up ________ of the southern white population, but the true "planters of consequence"with at least 50 slaves ________.

A) the great majority; were found only in the older Tidewater region
B) about half; dominated politics
C) roughly a quarter; made up less than 1 percent of the total white population
D) a small minority; constituted a majority of those slaveholders

Question 14

The Tidewater planter ________, while the planter of the Deep South ________.

A) raised primarily rice; raised primarily cotton
B) aspired to the ideal of the English country gentleman; was an entrepreneur bound on making a fortune
C) dealt brutally with his slaves; tended to treat slaves more humanely
D) defended slavery as a positive good; was often troubled by the immorality of the slave system

Question 15

The upper-class plantation mistress

A) accepted a sexual code that kept white women pure but tolerated sexual relations between white men and slave women.
B) lived a life of leisure centered around artistic and literary pursuits.
C) enjoyed the unique luxury of criticizing her own role in society as well as the slave system in general.
D) faced an unexpected variety of burdensome managerial and service duties.

Question 16

Yeoman farmers in the South

A) owned only a few slaves.
B) hated the planter class.
C) opposed slavery because it hurt them economically.
D) suffered from isolation, a limited market, and chronic money shortage.

Question 17

In terms of sheer numbers, which of the following groups made up the backbone of southern society?

A) the planters of consequence
B) whites who owned only a few slaves
C) whites who owned between 20 and 50 slaves
D) yeoman farmers who owned no slaves

Question 18

The gang and task systems

A) were used alternately in the spring and fall.
B) were the two typical ways of organizing slave labor.
C) were used for rice and sugar production, but not cotton.
D) required constant supervision of the slaves.

Question 19

The slave's diet

A) led to malnutrition because of insufficient calorie intake.
B) was one of several reasons why life expectancy for slaves was lower than for whites.
C) was one of several reasons for a rate of population increase lower than that of whites.
D) would be obtained mostly from slave gardens, hunting, and stealing.

Question 20

In the 1830s, reacting to Nat Turner's rebellion and the growing abolitionist movement, southern slaveholders developed the argument that slavery was a positive good. Which of the following assertions was NOT part of their proslavery argument?

A) Slavery was a beneficial status for blacks, as they required white guardianship.
B) Slavery was sanctioned by the Bible and history.
C) Slavery was more consistent with the humanitarian spirit of the age than the northern wage labor system.
D) Slavery's opponents could build no persuasive argument against it.

Question 21

Nat Turner

A) became a leading advocate of slavery as a "positive good."
B) strongly defended humane treatment of slaves as the slave owners' paternalistic obligation.
C) led a slave revolt despite enjoying relatively humane treatment by his master.
D) was an escaped slave who returned to the South to lead other runaways to freedom.

Question 22

Which of the following is NOT true of Nat Turner's revolt?

A) Turner rebelled due to extreme mistreatment by a series of harsh Louisiana masters.
B) It was small and spontaneous, in contrast to earlier noteworthy slave uprisings.
C) All participants in it, including Turner, were eventually captured and executed.
D) It prompted a debate in the Virginia legislature on the merits of slavery.

Question 23

The most common form of slave resistance was

A) theft.
B) refusal to work.
C) escape.
D) rebellion.

Question 24

The slave family

A) had to be sold as a unit, according to laws in the Upper South.
B) usually consisted of the nuclear unit (father, mother, and their children), but often was part of larger kinship networks.
C) rarely existed in a functional way on large plantations.
D) was essentially impossible to sustain under the conditions of bondage.

Question 25

What is true of slave religion?

A) It was expressed in secret meetings beyond white supervision.
B) It was not central to the culture of most slave communities.
C) It featured songs with voodoo applications.
D) It remained largely unaffected by Christianity until the 1860s.

Question 26

Free blacks in the South

A) developed an internal hierarchy favoring darker or "more African" skin color.
B) lived mostly in urban centers.
C) lived mostly in the Upper South.
D) were primarily mulattoes.

Question 27

While the Old South was a diverse region of the United States, it was united in

A) that most white southerners believed slavery to be on the decline by the 1830s.
B) its dependence on staple crops such as tobacco, cotton, and rice.
C) its dependence on the labor of women.
D) that slavery was central only to the South's economy and not to its culture and identity.

Question 28

After 1830, southerners defended slavery more aggressively due to

A) a perceived decline in southern influence in national politics.
B) the rise of the abolitionist movement in the North.
C) the increasing dependence of the southern economy on slave-grown staples.
D) the American Revolt.

Question 29

The Virginia debate of 1832

A) led to a resolution declaring slavery as a positive good.
B) caused the legislature to condemn slavery but adopt no program to deal with it.
C) led to the adoption of a program of gradual emancipation.
D) was the last significant attempt by white southerners to take action against slavery.

Question 30

The proslavery argument

A) was fully developed before 1830 as part of the anti-tariff campaign.
B) refused to consider the Bible, depending instead on racist scientific treatises.
C) was successful in influencing northern public opinion on slavery.
D) was developed primarily to satisfy the consciences of southerners.

Question 31

Which of the following was NOT an element of the proslavery argument developed in the 1830s?

A) None of the Biblical prophets or Christ himself had ever condemned slavery.
B) Slavery was an unfortunate legacy of earlier tyrannical acts of the English Parliament and northern colonial merchants.
C) Southern slaves lived better lives than northern factory workers.
D) Slaves belonged to an inferior race.

Question 32

What group was vehemently opposed to ending slavery even though they sometimes traded with slaves and keenly resented planters?

A) poor whites
B) yeoman farmers
C) drivers
D) overseers

Question 33

In North America, slave revolts were ________; in Latin American slave societies, full-scale revolts were ________.

A) common; extremely rare
B) very rare; nearly nonexistent
C) extremely rare; common and involved large numbers of slaves
D) numerous but small; nearly impossible to organize

Question 34

The major source of southern wealth and the major stimulus to national economic growth was ________.

Question 35

The backbone of southern society, accounting for more than half the southern population and typically owning no slaves, was ________ farm families.

Question 36

Within the slave community, the ________ and the drivers, who supervised the field hands, enjoyed the highest status.

Question 37

In the organization of slave labor, under the ________ system a specific assignment was given to each slave, with the incentive that the workday was over when it was completed.

Question 38

The traditional head of the slave family was the ________.

Question 39

The most common form of slave resistance was ________.

Question 40

Particularly disturbing to southerners was the 1831 revolt led by the slave ________.

Question 41

The politics of slavery in the South meant that southern candidates had to be careful to avoid being seen as ________.

Question 42

A major difference between slavery in North America and Latin America is that in Latin America, ________ were much more frequent.

Question 43

Give three major differences between society and life on the cotton frontier and in the Tidewater region. What was the significance of these differences?

Question 44

Describe the class structure of the Old South. What was the relationship of slavery to this class structure?

Question 45

What pressures did slavery place on plantation mistresses?

Question 46

What united slaves in the Old South? Were there significant divisions among slaves?

Question 47

What role did religion play in the lives of slaves? How did that role differ from the role of religion encouraged by many white masters?

Question 48

Describe the change in attitudes toward slavery in the South before and after the early 1830s. What events contributed to that change?

Question 49

Compare and contrast slave revolts in North America and Latin America.

Question 50

The chapter introduction profiles several southerners: Colonel Daniel Jordan, a plantation master in South Carolina; a planter from the Red River country of Texas; Sam Williams, a skilled ironworker slave from Virginia, and his wife Nancy; Octave Johnson, a slave in Louisiana; and Ferdinand Steel, a farmer in Mississippi. Using what you have learned from the text about the class structure of the Old South, to which class does each of these people belong? Explain how each class differs from the others.

Question 51

What were the major geographical regions of the Old South? Explain how the geography of the South was a force of both unity and division.

Question 52

How did the conditions of slavery make it especially difficult for slaves to establish their own culture? How did slave communities work to overcome this?

Question 53

Consider this statement: "Some [southern plantation] women drew a parallel between their situation and that of the slaves."What parallels could plantation mistresses draw? Where do the parallels break down? Do you agree with the mistresses' observations?

Question 54

Do you believe slavery was the most important factor in shaping southern society? If so, explain why, especially since only one-third of southerners were African American and only one-quarter of southern whites owned slaves or were members of slave-owning families. If you do not believe slavery was the most important factor shaping southern society, what factor was more important?

Question 55

Give three major differences between the North and the South in this period. What was the significance of each of these differences? Which one do you think was the most important and why?

Question 56

Explain why the South's dependence on exports made it difficult for an internally diversified economy to develop. How did this dependence retard southern economic development?