Deck 10: The Opening of America 1815-1850

Question 1

The chapter introduction tells the story of clockmaker Chauncey Jerome to make the point that

A) clocks both made possible and symbolized the organized routines of an industrialized society.
B) Jerome's rise and fall were made possible by the opportunities offered in an expanding market economy that bound Americans together through ever more complex and specialized ways.
C) the intricate but comprehensible mechanism of a clock was to become the favorite metaphor for an age that believed human reason could discern the workings of natural law and apply those discoveries to improving the material conditions of life.
D) Jerome exemplified the exploited urban laborer who became a helpless victim of the forces of rapid and relentless industrialization.

Answer 1

Jerome's rise and fall were made possible by the opportunities offered in an expanding market economy that bound Americans together through ever more complex and specialized ways.

Question 2

In the years before the Civil War, what single enterprise employed more workers than any other enterprise in the country?

A) Fulton's steamboat company
B) Lowell Mills
C) the postal system
D) the Erie Canal Company

Answer 2

the postal system

Question 3

John Marshall's Supreme Court decisions sought to promote American enterprise by all of the following methods EXCEPT

A) upholding private contracts.
B) blocking state interference with private property.
C) turning Indian lands over to white developers.
D) creating a climate of business confidence.

Answer 3

turning Indian lands over to white developers.

Question 4

Europeans especially noted what tendency in American life?

A) the emphasis on speed that pervaded every aspect of life
B) the tendency for native-born Americans to stay east of the Appalachians, while immigrants settled in the new western lands
C) how rooted to a particular place Americans tended to be, despite geographic mobility
D) how religious and other-worldly Americans tended to be, despite rapid economic growth

Question 5

Which of the following is NOT an accurate statement concerning population trends from 1790 to 1820?

A) Population continued to grow rapidly.
B) Natural increase accounted for virtually all of the country's population growth.
C) Immigration accounted for most of the population increase.
D) Western lands absorbed most of the population increase.

Question 6

What was key to making the Merrimack valley the nation's greatest industrial center in the first half of the nineteenth century?

A) regulating the river's waters
B) the Lawrence dam
C) New Hampshire lakes
D) Lowell's seven canals

Question 7

For industrial workers, work in the factory resulted in ________ compared to work as a skilled artisan.

A) lower productivity
B) less personal freedom
C) higher social status
D) increased upward mobility

Question 8

Craftworkers such as carpenters, printers, and tailors formed unions, and in 1834 individual unions came together in the

A) American Federation of Labor.
B) Allied Craftworkers Union.
C) National Trades' Union.
D) Congress of Industrial Organizations.

Question 9

The national market economy created a society that was more differentiated and specialized. That new condition, in turn, caused

A) specialized labor unions that grew most rapidly in the depression of the late 1830s.
B) an increased pride in craftsmanship that became more important than just sheer productivity.
C) an increasingly unequal distribution of wealth in society, with those at the top controlling a greater share.
D) a class of newly rich, most of whom came from lower-class farm-family backgrounds.

Question 10

In its social impact, the national market economy did all of the following EXCEPT

A) significantly elevate the status of workers.
B) produce greater per capita wealth in American society.
C) stimulate materialism.
D) reorganize society toward greater specialization.

Question 11

Which of the following was NOT characteristic of the economic changes that swept most of America in the early nineteenth century?

A) Economic activity was becoming more specialized.
B) The social structure became more stratified.
C) Factory life necessitated a more regimented schedule.
D) Subsistence agriculture was on the rise.

Question 12

Why was American life marked by anxiety in the midst of early nineteenth-century prosperity?

A) because foreign movements seemed to repeatedly threaten national security
B) because cyclical depressions made that prosperity seem fleeting
C) because corrupt politicians could infringe on a person's liberties at any time
D) because the nagging issue of slavery threatened to cause a permanent rift in the culture

Question 13

What conflict in values emerged as America went through its market revolution?

A) Most farmers clung to the ideal of a semisubsistence way of life, despite the relentless reach of commercial networks.
B) Personal lifestyles prized by northerners, who were more religious, differed from those of southerners, who were more materialistic-a distinction that national market networks made obvious.
C) Americans had long enjoyed living in settled and stable communities, but transportation improvements led to much greater geographic mobility.
D) Although Americans professed to believe in equality, the national market economy coupled with American materialistic pursuits led to ever greater inequalities in wealth.

Question 14

A transportation network grew rapidly as investors poured capital into improvement projects, especially after the opening of the ________ Canal in the state of New York in 1825.

Question 15

Sam ________ used his waterfall jumping skills to gain personal notoriety and as a defiant protest against the changing times.

Question 16

The national market economy made Americans susceptible to the boom-and-bust cycle, as first became evident with the Panic of 1819 when world demand for ________ dropped.

Question 17

What were the new forms of transportation that developed in the period of 1800-1850? What was the importance of each type of transportation?

Question 18

Explain why the transportation revolution stimulated the development of a national domestic market.

Question 19

List three ways the government promoted economic growth after 1815. Which do you think was the most important, and why?

Question 20

How did factories differ from earlier forms of production in the United States?

Question 21

Why did factories develop in the United States? How did they change over time?

Question 22

How did the Supreme Court aid the development of a market economy?

Question 23

How does Chauncey Jerome's life encapsulate the major changes that occurred in this period? How can his life stand as a symbol of the changes discussed in this chapter?

Question 24

What evidence is there that the period from 1815 to 1850 was a time of heightened anxiety in American life? What were the causes of this anxiety?

Question 25

List three ways the development of a national market changed American society after 1815. Did these changes make American society more open than before? What does the phrase "opening of America"mean?

Question 26

What is the difference between social and geographic mobility? How were these related in the years after 1815?

Question 27

The creation of a domestic market, the development of cheap transportation, the rise of cities, and the availability of capital and credit can all be seen to have stimulated the shift to factory production. Choose three of these factors and explain how they contributed to the rise of factories.