Deck 12: Slavery and Sectionalism: the Political Crisis of 1848-1861

Question 1

What does this image of African American abolitionists killing a Maryland slaveholder searching for his runaway slave in Christiana, Pennsylvania, and the case of Shadrach Minkins, a runaway who was physically removed from his court hearing in Boston by abolitionists, reveal about abolitionists' attitudes toward the Fugitive Slave Act?

A) Abolitionists were willing to cooperate with slaveholders and return their property.
B) Abolitionists turned to religion to convince the public to resist this law.
C) Abolitionists were willing to break laws to resist the Fugitive Slave Act.
D) Abolitionists adhered to "personal liberty laws" that prohibited Northern state and local courts from trying cases of runaway slaves.

Answer 1

Abolitionists were willing to break laws to resist the Fugitive Slave Act.

Question 2

What does the 1850 political cartoon Scene in Uncle Sam's Senate, which depicts Mississippi Senator Henry S. Foote pulling a pistol on Missouri Senator Thomas Hart Benton, imply about the debate over the Compromise of 1850 in the United States Senate?

A) Senators were still willing to compromise over the issue of slavery.
B) Animosity over slavery in the western territories grew at an alarming rate.
C) Conflicts between senators were based on North-South sectionalism.
D) Senators were unified in their opposition to the Compromise of 1850.

Answer 2

Animosity over slavery in the western territories grew at an alarming rate.

Question 3

Southerners' demands that Northerners comply with the Fugitive Slave Act contradicted

A) the Constitution
B) their permissiveness regarding immigration
C) a key ruling by the Supreme Court
D) their support of states' rights

Answer 3

their support of states' rights

Question 4

Which of the following provisions from the Compromise of 1850 was a victory for members of the Free-Soil Party as shown on the map?

A) admitting California to the Union as a free state
B) allowing New Mexico and Utah territories to decide on slavery through popular sovereignty
C) settling the boundary between Texas and New Mexico
D) including a stronger Fugitive Slave Act

Question 5

Why did the artist include both the biblical quotation "Thou shalt not deliver unto the master his servant which has escaped from his master unto thee…" and the opening from the Declaration of Independence that declares all men are created equal on this image showing the effects of the Fugitive Slave Act?

A) to show that property should be returned to its rightful owner
B) to demonstrate that slavery was a violation of both religious and republican tenets
C) to appease Southerners whose slaves had run away to freedom
D) to prove that slavery was a principle believed in by biblical patriarchs

Question 6

Although both Whigs and Democrats tried to avoid the slavery issue in Congress after the election of 1848, what event first resurrected slavery as a major concern for the federal government?

A) the Gold Rush
B) the Fugitive Slave Act
C) the Kansas-Nebraska Act
D) Dred Scott v. Sandford

Question 7

What does this page from Ohio Quaker Daniel Osborn's 1844 diary reveal about the issue of slavery in his surrounding environment?

A) His home was a safe house on the Underground Railroad.
B) He cooperated with the Fugitive Slave Act and returned runaway slaves to their owners.
C) Large numbers of the South's four million slaves fled to freedom.
D) He was deputized by a federal marshal to assist in capturing fugitive slaves.

Question 8

What do the results of the 1852 presidential election indicate?

A) The Democratic Party was the only political party that had support in different parts of the nation.
B) The Whigs performed stronger than they did in the 1848 presidential election.
C) The Free-Soil Party garnered enough electoral votes to swing the election in the Democrats' favor.
D) No candidate won over 50 percent of the popular vote.

Question 9

Why did the discovery of gold and the population explosion in California immediately affect political rather than economic or social issues?

A) Californians wrote both a proslavery and an antislavery state constitution.
B) The state government would have to determine if the Californio ranchers still had title to their lands.
C) Both proslavery and antislavery settlers were fighting a series of violent conflicts there.
D) Congress would have to decide if California would be a free or slave state.

Question 10

What was President Zachary Taylor's proposal regarding the issue of slavery in California and New Mexico?

A) admit both as states immediately and let the issue be decided by popular sovereignty
B) adhere to the Wilmot Proviso and ban slavery in all territories gained from Mexico
C) extend the 36° 30 line from the Missouri Compromise all the way to the Pacific
D) assign Congress the responsibility of creating two federal territories and determine the issue of slavery in each one

Question 11

What was the fate of most fortune seekers who headed west to mine for gold?

A) A large majority were able to easily extract gold at the surface and become very wealthy.
B) Most did not get rich and eventually worked as wage laborers for large mining corporations.
C) Many set up boomtowns and mining camps that were relatively safe and free of crime.
D) Most bought land titles and settled down as respectable farmers.

Question 12

How did Stephen Douglas's Compromise of 1850 differ from the earlier version proposed by Henry Clay in his omnibus bill?

A) Douglas removed any references to the Wilmot Proviso with regard to the issue of California and New Mexico statehood.
B) Douglas added a provision that banned the slave trade in the nation's capital.
C) Douglas broke up Clay's bill into five separate pieces of legislation that were approved separately.
D) Douglas decided to let the Republic of Texas keeps its disputed territory on its western border with New Mexico.

Question 13

Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe influenced Northerners in what way?

A) They became more hostile toward slavery.
B) They became impassioned abolitionists.
C) They accepted slavery as beneficial to African Americans.
D) They were moved to fight for racial equality.

Question 14

Which tenet associated with the Young America movement is depicted in Emanuel Leutze's painting Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way?

A) Settlers considered Indians valuable allies in a collaborative relationship.
B) Westward expansion was possible only through the extension of slavery.
C) The inclusion of babies and children indicate that the future would benefit from the land's bounty.
D) Women had equal roles to men in the Western territories.

Question 15

What do the sheaves of wheat in front of the goddess Minerva and the ships in the background of California's great seal imply about Californians' vision of their state's future?

A) California's economy would be dependent on slavery.
B) Californians envisioned a robust economy based on agriculture and commerce.
C) California's economic success depended on its harbors located on the Pacific coastline.
D) Californians believed that economic success was only possible through the mining industry.

Question 16

What effect did the heavy tax imposed on Chinese miners by the California state legislature in 1852 have on them?

A) The largest majority returned to their home provinces in China.
B) Many of these miners continued to work in their current jobs.
C) Most left mining but turned to other work such as fishing and operating restaurants.
D) It had no effect on them since the California judiciary overturned it for its racist principles.

Question 17

How does the frontispiece image from the novel Aunt Phillis's Cabin, or Southern Life as It Is compare with the view of slavery presented in Uncle Tom's Cabin?

A) Slaves benefited economically from the cotton they harvested in the fields.
B) Slaves enjoyed a happy, carefree existence instead of brutal treatment from overseers.
C) Slaves actually demanded more rights than what Stowe addressed in her novel.
D) Slaves faced horrible consequences for being lazy and off task.

Question 18

This drawing of Chinese miners was most likely intended to emphasize that they were

A) threatening
B) exotic
C) similar to Indians
D) unlikely to settle permanently

Question 19

Hard-line defenders of slavery who convened a Southern rights convention in Nashville "to devise and adopt some mode of resistance to Northern aggression" were known as .

A) Young Americans
B) "conductors"
C) Confederates
D) "fire-eaters"

Question 20

The 1850 quote made in the magazine DeBow's Review stating that "We have a destiny to perform a 'manifest destiny' over all Mexico, over South America, over the West Indies" is most closely associated with the beliefs of .

A) Northern factory owners
B) Southern fire-eaters
C) the Free-Soil Party
D) the Young America movement

Question 21

Why was sculptor Thomas Crawford's original "Freedom" sculpture on the left, which was intended for the top of the United States Capitol building, rejected by Secretary of War Jefferson Davis?

A) The sculptor was friends with abolitionist Senator Charles Sumner.
B) Her robes looked too much like those of a Catholic priest.
C) Many thought that freedom should be represented as a man.
D) Her hat was like those worn by freed slaves in ancient Rome.

Question 22

What was one outcome of the Kansas-Nebraska Act?

A) the admission of Kansas and Nebraska as free states in the Union
B) a brief period of peace in Kansas before the outbreak of the Civil War
C) a bloody civil conflict between proslavery and antislavery forces in Kansas
D) the extension of the Fugitive Slave Act to the unorganized territories

Question 23

This woodcut represents what proslavery view?

A) that illness rendered slaves and whites equal
B) that Northerners did not really care about the welfare of slaves
C) that slave labor was more humane than Northern wage labor
D) that slaves shared in Southerners' lives of luxury

Question 24

The creation of interchangeable parts benefited American industry by making it possible to

A) hire workers who did not speak English
B) purchase parts from abroad
C) leave the final assembly of the product to the customer
D) speed up the manufacturing process

Question 25

What does the political cartoon Immigrants as a Threat to Democracy indicate about nativist views toward Irish and German immigrants in the 1850s?

A) Immigrants were productive members of society who were civically engaged.
B) Immigrants threatened the well-being of the republic through alcohol and rising political power.
C) The Catholic religion followed by many immigrants led to hostilities with nativists.
D) Immigrants often voted for proslavery issues that supported the South.

Question 26

These political cartoons depicting attacks on Senator Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri (top) and Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts (bottom) by Southern politicians indicate that events in Congress in the 1850s provide evidence of the .

A) fervent passions about slavery that made it difficult to find compromise
B) Southern tendency toward brutality
C) proclivity toward violence that made the Civil War inevitable
D) weakness of antislavery Northerners

Question 27

This 1862 advertisement for Colt's Patent Fire Arms Manufactury suggests that manufacturing was .

A) a creator of social harmony
B) powerful but not threatening
C) as dignified as a university
D) a source of pollution

Question 28

Why did poor white Southerners support a slave society in which they had so little power?

A) They had little power but many privileges in a society that was egalitarian despite great divisions in wealth.
B) They viewed enslaved African Americans as having better lives than they did themselves.
C) They believed in the inferiority of African Americans.
D) They benefited from slave labor even on their own small farms.

Question 29

What message does the cartoon Popery Undermining Free Schools, and Other American Institutions, 1855, send to viewers?

A) Catholics were strong supporters of the American public education system.
B) The Pope was a strong ally of antislavery proponents in the United States.
C) Catholics would overthrow the American government by controlling public education.
D) Catholic priests opposed the Pope's plan to take over the United States.

Question 30

What political party emerged for the first time after the 1854 congressional elections and had an overriding commitment to oppose future concessions to Southern slave interests?

A) the Republican Party
B) Northern Democrats
C) the American Party
D) the Constitutional Union Party

Question 31

Both the illustration criticizing the Fugitive Slave Act and the image of Dred Scott portray the fugitives as .

A) pretentious
B) piteous
C) threatening
D) dignified

Question 32

In the Lincoln-Douglas debates, Abraham Lincoln asserted that blacks .

A) were entitled to rights
B) could marry whites
C) had social and legal equality with whites
D) should remain enslaved

Question 33

What do the map and chart addressing the importance of cotton imply about the political relationship between the North and the South in the 1850s?

A) Southerners felt that if concerns over slavery led to secession, they were strong enough to flourish on their own.
B) The South believed that they had acquired enough new lands for cultivation in the Black Belt that western expansion was no longer necessary.
C) Northern industrialists thought that if the South seceded, they had access to foreign cotton markets that could easily replace Southern cotton.
D) Southern secession would have little to no impact on the American economy because of the North's advanced industrial system.

Question 34

George Fitzhugh was best known as being a _ .

A) "Black Republican"
B) Southern United States senator
C) Northern abolitionist
D) defender of slavery

Question 35

How did many Northern abolitionists respond to the 1856 political cartoon Liberty, the Fair Maid of Kansas-in the Hands of the "Border Ruffians," which depicts Democratic politicians Senator Lewis Cass, President Franklin Pierce, and Senator Stephen Douglas as the violators of liberty in that territory?

A) Many ignored the situation in Kansas.
B) Many of them sent money or guns to antislavery forces in Kansas.
C) Many of them called for settlers from Missouri to come vote illegally for an antislavery constitution in Kansas.
D) Many of them moved to Kansas to fight proslavery forces.

Question 36

In the controversial Dred Scott decision, the Supreme Court declared that .

A) neither enslaved nor free African Americans could become citizens
B) African Americans were free only when they entered free territory
C) Dred Scott had the right to file a suit, but not the right to freedom
D) only Congress had the right to regulate slavery in the states and the territories

Question 37

What conclusion about the presidential election of 1856 can be made by interpreting this graph?

A) The Republican Party won most of its support in the South.
B) The American Party still demonstrated strength in all national regions.
C) The Republican Party had the advantage of being the only true national party.
D) Although a Northerner, James Buchanan won the election by winning the South.

Question 38

What does the architecture and design of the 1853 Crystal Palace at New York City's "Exhibition of the Industry of the World" reveal about American progress?

A) The building reflected the ideals of Manifest Destiny.
B) The building was constructed with both free and slave labor.
C) The cast-iron and glass structure reflected the latest trends in architecture and construction.
D) The materials used to construct the building came from both the North and the South.

Question 39

Members of the American Party were also known as .

A) free-soilers
B) "Know-Nothings"
C) Young Americans
D) "border ruffians"

Question 40

Who were the "border ruffians"?

A) Antislavery supporters from Missouri who violently fought with proslavery forces in Kansas.
B) New England abolitionists who sent money and guns to support antislavery forces in Kansas.
C) Kansas settlers who wrote a proslavery constitution for their territory.
D) Illegal voters from Missouri who voted for a proslavery government in Kansas.

Question 41

When Lincoln responded to the extension of the Missouri Compromise line to the Pacific and said "On the territorial question, I am inflexible," he was demonstrating his refusal to support the

A) Wilmot Proviso
B) Compromise of 1850
C) Kansas-Nebraska Act
D) Crittenden Compromise

Question 42

Starting in 1860, Southern states began to secede in response to .

A) the election of Abraham Lincoln
B) the attack on Fort Sumter
C) John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry
D) the Kansas-Nebraska Act

Question 43

John Brown hoped that his raid on Harpers Ferry would .

A) force Southern state governments to emancipate slaves
B) start a slave rebellion throughout the South
C) result in the resignation of President James Buchanan
D) induce the Southern states to secede

Question 44

What does this photograph, taken the morning after the Battle of Fort Sumter, indicate about the first armed conflict of the Civil War?

A) Both the Union and the Confederacy suffered huge losses in this first battle.
B) The raised Confederate flag showed that the South was victorious.
C) The Union held on to one of its last federal fortresses in the Confederacy.
D) The Confederacy submitted to federal authority.

Question 45

Why did the Confederacy choose to feature George Washington on its seal?

A) to show that Washington favored states' rights over a strong central government
B) to emphasize its willingness to go to war with the Union
C) to compare secession to the colonies breaking away from Britain during the Revolution
D) to stress Washington's racist views toward African Americans

Question 46

How does the information found on the map and chart illustrate why the Democratic Party lost the presidential election of 1860?

A) Lincoln won the election with a majority rather than a plurality.
B) Lincoln had strong support in the slave states.
C) The Democratic Party split into Northern and Southern factions.
D) The Constitutional Union Party took away enough electoral votes in the lower South.

Question 47

In his first inaugural address, President Abraham Lincoln .

A) acknowledged the legality of secession
B) threatened total war against the rebel states
C) promised to enforce federal law in all of the states
D) offered to negotiate with the rebel states

Question 48

What did John Brown's raised right hand in this daguerreotype taken by black photographer Augustus Washington indicate?

A) Brown pledged to destroy slavery in the United States.
B) The five fingers on his hand represented his support for the five different parts of the Compromise of 1850.
C) Brown was being sworn in as an antislavery member of the state legislature in Kansas.
D) Brown was showing how many proslavery settlers he killed at Pottawatomie Creek, Kansas.