Deck 12: A Regionalized America, 1830-1860

Question 1

How did Americans respond to the influx of immigrants in the mid nineteenth century?

A) They disliked many groups but were more accepting of Irish and German immigrants.
B) Many people formulated a new racial and ethnic identity about what it meant to be an American that differentiated them as better than most immigrants.
C) They encouraged immigrants to seek jobs in all categories of business-just as long as they were working.
D) They insisted on English-only education in the public schools.
E) Americans passed new laws stressing religious toleration.

Answer 1

Many people formulated a new racial and ethnic identity about what it meant to be an American that differentiated them as better than most immigrants.

Question 2

New York City became America's largest city in the 1800s because

A) its cultural diversity attracted rural Americans.
B) the city's generous welfare provisions assured a comfortable lifestyle for the poor.
C) other American cities regulated immigration more strictly.
D) it had the only harbor big enough to accommodate the big Atlantic vessels from Europe.
E) migration from Europe and from the countryside combined to make the city's population reach 814,000 by 1860.

Answer 2

migration from Europe and from the countryside combined to make the city's population reach 814,000 by 1860.

Question 3

An unusual aspect of many plays performed in the nineteenth century was that they

A) were mainly meant to deliver a moral message.
B) often depicted slavery, even though most playwrights hated the institution itself.
C) were usually adapted from popular books of the period.
D) usually expected participation from the audience.
E) tended to have integrated audiences.

Answer 3

usually expected participation from the audience.

Question 4

Northern newspapers usually exhibited strong political partisanship,because

A) they were usually financed by specific political parties.
B) editors believed it was their duty to take a stand.
C) it sold more papers.
D) the public expected their local press to let them know all that was going on.
E) politics had become such great entertainment, and newspapers simply added to the fun.

Question 5

By 1860,the foreign-born of the North comprised about ____ of the U.S.population.

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

Question 6

In 1845,the richest 4 percent of population of New York City owned how much of the city's individual wealth?

A) 4 percent
B) 20 percent
C) 40 percent
D) 60 percent
E) 80 percent

Question 7

The main paying profession open to middle class women during the first half of the 1800s was

A) bank accountant.
B) shopkeeper.
C) teaching.
D) housekeeping.
E) stenographer.

Question 8

About how many Irish immigrated to America to escape the terrible potato famine of the 1840s in Ireland?

A) 100,000
B) 250,000
C) half a million
D) one million
E) three million

Question 9

The immigrants who arrived from the mid-1800s onward tended to avoid what area?

A) California
B) Midwest (Old Northwest)
C) South
D) Boston
E) Middle Atlantic states

Question 10

Which of the following is not a true statement about free blacks in antebellum America?

A) They established the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church because they were barred from white churches.
B) They founded voluntary groups promoting various reform causes.
C) They supported the American Colonization Society's approach to ending slavery.
D) They were early leaders in the abolitionist movement.
E) The educated among them wanted to be called "colored Americans" rather than "Negroes."

Question 11

As the Market Revolution progressed,the northern countryside became

A) more concerned about the future.
B) less isolated from what was happening elsewhere.
C) caught up in trying to quickly change their lifestyle.
D) more interested in foreign news.
E) more interested in moving to urban areas.

Question 12

Southern planters

A) prided themselves on educating their children in their own homes.
B) maintained a provincial outlook and rarely ever traveled.
C) showed little interest in politics
D) were deeply invested in national and international markets.
E) eagerly invested in internal improvements.

Question 13

The traveling public affairs road show,where groups of speakers spoke in small towns,on a wide range of informative,provocative topics was called

A) the lyceum circuit.
B) the Free Soil Party.
C) revivalism.
D) the 48ers.
E) minstrel shows.

Question 14

Which of the following is not true about German immigrants to Milwaukee and St.Louis?

A) Most quickly came to identify themselves as German-American shortly after their establishment in the U.S.
B) They built a brewing tradition that continues to this day.
C) They formed Turnvereine in the spirit of the German liberation movement.
D) They formed distinct ethnic neighborhoods and communities.
E) They assimilated quickly enough not to face any significant nativist resentment.

Question 15

Congress adopted a "gag rule" in 1837

A) to prevent southerners from seeking federal compensation for runaway slaves.
B) to legally table debates about slavery as a way to keep sectional peace.
C) to silence former president, now representative, John Quincy Adams.
D) to ban protests by free laborers who were opposed to slavery.
E) to stop Georgia from offering a bounty on William Lloyd Garrison.

Question 16

Southern yeomen

A) were largely self-sufficient, living with their families in rural farms or small towns.
B) depended on commercial agriculture more than northern farmers.
C) largely avoided growing cotton.
D) cared little about the institution of slavery.
E) enjoyed a decent level of education through public schools.

Question 17

William Lloyd Garrison

A) used his anti-slavery newspaper, The Liberator, to advocate for other causes as well, such as temperance.
B) believed the Constitution was complicit in allowing slavery.
C) helped Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman escape from slavery.
D) did not allow women as members in his American Anti-Slavery Society.
E) favored a gradualist form of abolition.

Question 18

Which of the following was not one of the most popular American novelists of the antebellum years?

A) Herman Melville
B) Harriet Beecher-Stowe
C) Nathaniel Hawthorne
D) Upton Sinclair
E) Fanny Fern

Question 19

Which of the following is not true about leisure in antebellum urban America?

A) Professional sports like horse-racing and boxing attracted large crowds.
B) Towns routinely constructed theaters early in their development where they featured Shakespeare plays, among others.
C) Residents gathered and socialized in small taverns.
D) Men and women mixed and mingled in urban theaters.
E) Minstrel shows, which ridiculed African Americans, were a form of rural comedy theater performed predominately in the South.

Question 20

All of the following statements provide an accurate description of life in the pre-Civil War South except

A) The majority of white southerners were yeoman farmers.
B) Most white Southerners did not own slaves.
C) While most white southerners had no direct connection to a southern plantation, most slaves lived on plantations.
D) A group of landless whites mostly worked as laborers on farms or settled the Southwest.
E) Cotton was king-the most important source of agricultural revenue in the South.

Question 21

How did life change for those living in the northern countryside?

Question 22

Which of these was not a legislative response to Turner's insurrection?

A) Some states passed laws restricting blacks' freedom.
B) There were new laws against teaching slaves to read.
C) Virginia passed a law that would gradually free all slaves and deport them to Africa.
D) Various southern states required that all slave meetings be supervised by whites.
E) Slave behavior was strictly monitored.

Question 23

The most significant part of African American worship that emerged during the 1800s was

A) singing, dancing, and clapping.
B) spirituals that held messages of hope.
C) lengthy sermons.
D) the conviction that accepting their lot in this life would bring great rewards in the next one.
E) All of these were of equal significance.

Question 24

Which of the following is true about Southern slaveholders in the antebellum years?

A) Slaves producing healthy offspring mattered to plantation owners because the United States had outlawed participating in the international slave trade in 1808.
B) Slaveholders granted their slaves a variety of civil rights to keep them from running away.
C) Slaveholders preferred newly imported African slaves over American-born ones.
D) Slaveholders were severely restricted in their treatment of slaves by the law.
E) Owners had the authority to legally marry their slaves.

Question 25

What was everyday life like for most middle-class women in the North?

Question 26

How did southern states react to the news of Nat Turner's Rebellion?

Question 27

How did the lives of planters and of yeomen farmers differ from each other in the antebellum South?

Question 28

Which of the following best describes the actual treatment of slaves by slaveholders in the antebellum South?

A) Humane
B) Indifferent
C) Benignly protective
D) Sympathetic
E) Cruelly coercive and violently punitive

Question 29

On plantations,owners usually preferred to have the slave quarters fairly close to the main house so they could keep a watchful eye on their slaves.

Question 30

Writers who suggested that slavery was necessary to protect blacks who were unable to care for themselves,and who began to reference the Bible when supporting slavery,helped slave owners rationalize that slavery was a "positive good" for all concerned.

Question 31

Which of the following was not part of a typical cotton plantation system?

A) Gangs of twenty or twenty-five workers
B) Sundays off for the slaves
C) Up to sixteen-hour work days
D) The task system
E) A half day off on Saturdays

Question 32

Thomas R.Dew and George Fitzhugh advocated a new position on slavery that was adopted by the slaveholding South.It advocated that

A) slavery benefitted both races.
B) slavery was a "necessary good," since blacks were unable to take care of themselves.
C) the institution was sanctioned by God.
D) All of these choices.
E) None of these choices.

Question 33

At the center of slave culture was

A) singing and dancing.
B) African traditions.
C) separate slave quarters.
D) family and religion.
E) the practice of voodoo.

Question 34

Which of these was the least common form of slave resistance?

A) Stealing from their masters
B) Breaking tools and machinery
C) Pretending to be confused and incapable of understanding
D) Pretending to be ill or hurt
E) Running away

Question 35

How did white Virginians respond to Nat Turner's insurrection?

A) They killed dozens of the rebels.
B) They killed about 200 slaves, some involved in the insurrection, but many not.
C) They killed Turner immediately, planning to "chop off the head" of the rebellion's leader.
D) They fought the rebels for almost a week before finally quelling the uprising.
E) They purposely murdered many innocent slaves to make those who watched more pliable.

Question 36

The Underground Railroad was

A) a series of tunnels that ran north through the South to help slaves escape.
B) a network of people who maintained safe houses, hid runaway slaves, and helped them escape to freedom.
C) made up of abolitionist groups that printed secret newspapers to get the worst impact of slavery out to the public.
D) a series of caves throughout western Kentucky and West Virginia that could house runaway slaves indefinitely.
E) determined to transport all slaves who had run away to freedom in Canada.

Question 37

Describe ways in which whites' defense of slavery changed over time.

Question 38

Describe the growth of American cities in the North between 1830 and 1860.How did the immigrant population contribute to this growth?

Question 39

Social mobility was usually limited in the antebellum,stratified social class system of the South,and when it did occur,it mostly pushed people downward.

Question 40

The actions slaves most often took to retaliate against the slave system would today be called passive resistance.

Question 41

Nativists especially resented Irish Catholic immigrants,who were always willing to work for lower wages than anyone else.

Question 42

Gone with the Wind provided a generally accurate picture of the antebellum American South.

Question 43

Nativists tended to define a true American as someone with an English background who was born in the United States.

Question 44

The system of slavery was more adaptable than some people realize,with some slaves working,at the direction of their masters,in southern cities as craftsmen and sharing a portion of their wages with their masters.

Question 45

One hallmark of a middle-class family was that women were free to choose whether or not they wanted to pursue a career and work outside the home.

Question 46

Unlike the Irish immigrants of the 1840s and 50s,the German immigrants that came to America in the wake of the failed German revolution of 1848 were generally educated and financially well off.