Deck 9: The Rise of the South, 1815-1860

Question 1

When the Indian removal policy of the 1830s was completed, _________.

A) many Native Americans became dependent on government payments for survival
B) a sense of peace, harmony, and renewal among the Cherokee led to the Cherokee Renaissance
C) the Native Americans received an amount of land west of the Mississippi equal to the amount of land they had been removed from in the East
D) no Native Americans remained east of the Mississippi

Answer 1

many Native Americans became dependent on government payments for survival

Question 2

Southern yeomen farmers who migrated into the area west of the Appalachians in the early nineteenth century wanted to:

A) Take advantage of the expanding market economy by becoming commercial farmers
B) Establish a nonslaveholding agrarian society
C) Take advantage of the lucrative fur trade in the region
D) Acquire rich, fertile farmland

Answer 2

Acquire rich, fertile farmland

Question 3

Which of the following statements is not correct in context of the North and South?

A) Northerners and Southerners invoked with nearly equal frequency the doctrine of states' rights against federal authority.
B) The geographical sizes of the North and South were different.
C) Urban growth was slower in the South than in the North.
D) Southerners spoke the same language and worshipped in the same Protestant fashion as Northerners.

Answer 3

The geographical sizes of the North and South were different.

Question 4

Which of the following American values were not associated with the North in the decades before the Civil War?

A) Individualism
B) Materialism
C) Family loyalty
D) Faith in progress

Question 5

Which of the following statements is correct?

A) William Harper argued that slaveholding was essentially a matter of property rights.
B) Proslavery writers in the 1840s and 1850s asserted that whites were the more intellectual race, and blacks the race more inherently physical and destined for labor.
C) Presbyterian minister George Bourne was welcomed in Virginia for his antislavery sermons.
D) John C. Calhoun and John Quincy Adams were close allies in the antislavery movement.

Question 6

In their defense of slavery, Southerners often demonstrated a belief in

A) egalitarianism among all whites.
B) maintaining the social order as God and nature prescribed it.
C) the eventual emergence of a truly integrated society.
D) education as a way to achieve the goal of equality among all people.

Question 7

The largest industry in the antebellum South was _____________.

A) clothing
B) fishing
C) lumbering
D) shipbuilding

Question 8

After which year did the interests and social structures of the North and South diverge?

A) 1850
B) 1804
C) 1904
D) 1815

Question 9

_________________, a self-educated Cherokee, invented a phonetic alphabet for the Cherokee language that enabled his people to have both a Bible and bilingual newspaper in their native language.

A) Sequoyah
B) Tecumseh
C) Prophet
D) Chief John Ross

Question 10

In which year did Jefferson declare his "moral and physical preference of the agricultural over the manufacturing man"?

A) 1804
B) 1815
C) 1850
D) 1904

Question 11

In the 1840s and 1850s, the political power base of the South shifted toward

A) old southern states such as Virginia and South Carolina.
B) yeoman farmers and away from planters.
C) planters who wanted to modernize southern society.
D) southwestern boom states such as Mississippi and Arkansas.

Question 12

Which of the following arguments was most likely to have been used by southerners in the 1830s and 1840s to defend the institution of slavery?

A) It is true that slavery is an evil within human society, but for economic reasons it is presently a necessary evil.
B) Society is ordered in a particular way by the dictates of nature, and nature has ordained that blacks are born to be slaves.
C) All whites are born to be free and equal, but all non-whites are frowned on by God and were born to be slaves.
D) Human beings are equal in the sight of God only if they have accepted the tenets of Christianity; therefore, non-Christians may be enslaved.

Question 13

When President Monroe first proposed the policy of Indian removal to the West, he did so in response to pressure from ______________________.

A) the state of Georgia
B) Christian missionaries
C) the Department of War
D) the Native Americans themselves

Question 14

The Seminole War between 1835 and 1842 ended with _________________

A) the Seminoles surrendering and ceding their lands to the United States
B) the extermination of the Seminoles
C) the forcible removal of the Seminoles from Florida to the West
D) the United States allowing some Seminoles to remain in Florida

Question 15

In Worcester v. Georgia, Chief Justice John Marshall ___________________.

A) ruled that matters pertaining to Indian tribes should be settled by Congress rather than the courts
B) ruled that the laws of Georgia had no force in the Cherokee nation
C) upheld the removal of Native Americans from the South
D) declared that the state government of Georgia could seize Indian lands within its borders

Question 16

Which of the following was a major demographic characteristic of Southern society between 1830 and 1860?

A) The population became increasingly urban.
B) The number of foreign-born residents equaled that of the North.
C) The region's population density was low.
D) The region had many more women than men.

Question 17

From 1830 to 1860, the percentage of white Southern families owning slaves declined steadily from __________

A) 50 to 45 percent.
B) 80 to 70 percent.
C) 36 to 25 percent.
D) 45 to 25 percent.

Question 18

Until the 1840s, the North and the South were similar in which of the following ways?

A) Both regions tried to apply the states' rights doctrine against federal authority with nearly equal frequency.
B) Both regions had an equal commitment to industrialization.
C) Slavery was clearly profitable in both regions.
D) Both regions invested heavily in the building of canals and railroads.

Question 19

What would explain absence of highly developed schools, churches, and libraries in the South between 1800 and 1860?

A) Southerners did not enjoy socializing as much as their northern counterparts.
B) Most southerners were far too busy to devote time to nonwork activities.
C) Southerners were afraid that the presence of such institutions would lead to a mixture of the races.
D) The South's low population density meant that financing and operating such institutions was difficult.

Question 20

The life story of John F. Flintoff demonstrates which of the following?

A) Southerners from the mountains generally held antislavery views.
B) Evangelical Christianity caused a significant number of white southerners to question the morality of slavery.
C) The availability of land and capital in the 1840s made it easy for most nonslaveowning southern farmers to become slaveowners.
D) Yeomen farmers generally aspired to become slaveowners.

Question 21

Which of the following is true of the relatively typical southern yeoman farmer, Ferdinand Steel?

A) He worked so hard that he had time for neither family nor religion.
B) Although he grew cotton as a cash crop, he owned no slaves and lived a life marked by hard work and financial insecurity.
C) He spent his lifetime aspiring to become a planter.
D) He planted only cotton because doing so was the only way to acquire capital for the acquisition of land and slaves.

Question 22

Slave cabins were usually ____________.

A) crowded but sanitary
B) clean and spacious
C) unhealthy
D) comfortable

Question 23

The antebellum South lagged far behind the North in which area?

A) Population density
B) Agricultural trade
C) Textile mills
D) Industrial growth

Question 24

During the 1820s and 1830s, the state governments in the recently settled states of the Old Southwest became __________.

A) more and more corrupt
B) less representative of the masses
C) more democratic
D) less democratic

Question 25

What impact did slavery have on the southern value system?

A) The presence of slave labor created an egalitarian value system among the white majority.
B) Slavery created constant tension between slaveowners and nonslaveowners.
C) The availability of slave labor had the effect of devaluing free labor in the South.
D) Slavery created a strong sense of community responsibility among the white majority.

Question 26

Which of the following is true of Southern society between 1830 and 1860?

A) The increased opportunities that accompanied the cotton boom led to a more nearly even distribution of wealth.
B) Slaveholders became less and less concerned about the loyalty of nonslaveholders.
C) The percentage of white Southern families owning slaves steadily declined.
D) As Southern society became more democratic, it also became more tolerant of dissent.

Question 27

The most famous slave rebel of the pre-Civil War period, ___________, began a slave rebellion in a bid for freedom in Southampton County, Virginia, in 1831.

A) Nat Turner
B) Samuel Fleming
C) Mary Chesnut
D) Ralph Ellison

Question 28

The paternalistic ideology of the elite plantation class:

A) Masked the harsher beliefs of rich planters concerning the inferiority of blacks and the importance of making money
B) Was nothing more than a myth advanced by Southern writers
C) Was used to hide the belief by slaveowners that slavery was morally wrong
D) Was openly questioned by religious leaders in the antebellum South

Question 29

Most members of the planter aristocracy saw themselves as

A) the benevolent guardians of an inferior race.
B) capitalistic farmers pursuing their own economic self-interest.
C) self-sacrificing members of the larger community.
D) the champions of the democratic ideal.

Question 30

Which of the following best describes the diet of most slaves in the antebellum South?

A) It was monotonous and lacked proper nutritional value.
B) It was healthy and nutritious.
C) Insufficient amounts were provided so that many slaves lived on the verge of starvation.
D) It was usually devoid of meat.

Question 31

Which of the following is true of landless whites in the South between 1830 and 1860?

A) They usually relied on public relief agencies for food, clothing, and shelter.
B) They often struggled to save enough money from their meager wages to buy land.
C) They were usually able to obtain steady employment.
D) Their economic status was comparable to that of most yeoman farmers.

Question 32

Who was the ex-slave who led black abolitionists during the antebellum period?

A) Frederick Douglass
B) Louisiana Tubman
C) Samuel Fleming
D) Thomas Supten

Question 33

Which of the following was the main determinant of a man's wealth and social position in the South?

A) The size and furnishing of his home
B) The amount of land and the number of slaves he owned
C) The value of his stockholdings and the amount of money readily available to him in his bank account
D) The extent of his involvement in community affairs.

Question 34

Which of the following was true of free blacks in the South between 1830 and 1860?

A) They often owned land.
B) They usually worked as paid skilled laborers.
C) They were legally required to move to a free state or face being enslaved.
D) They were not legally permitted to own a gun.

Question 35

The multiracial populations of New Orleans, Charleston, and Mobile differed from most other similar populations in the South in that they:

A) Formed a society of their own and were recognized as a distinct class
B) Were allowed to vote in city elections
C) Were exclusively descended from slaves who were emancipated in the era of the American Revolution
D) Were legal immigrants from African countries who fled that continent in the 1790s

Question 36

With regard to sexual relations between white men and enslaved women in the antebellum South, white southern women

A) increasingly spoke out against such liaisons in the 1830s and 1840s
B) were supposed to pretend that they did not notice
C) actively sought passage of laws against interracial sexual relations
D) usually placed the blame for such relationships on the enslaved women

Question 37

Most planters in the boom states of Alabama and Mississippi in the 1840s _________________.

A) were descended from old Virginia and South Carolina families
B) lived in grand plantation mansions
C) had begun to see the slave-labor system as a hindrance to economic progress
D) were newly rich

Question 38

Which of the following is an explanation for the absence of serious conflict between slaveholders and nonslaveholders in the antebellum South?

A) Nonslaveholders recognized and accepted the superiority of the slaveholding planter class.
B) Despite their wealth and power, slaveholders did not expect special privileges.
C) They closely relied on each other economically.
D) Socially and economically, the two groups operated independently of each other.

Question 39

The wife in an upper-class antebellum Southern family was _____________.

A) legally subordinate to her husband
B) usually responsible for managing the budget
C) frequently the real, if tacit, authority in the family
D) roughly equal to the husband in influence and responsibility

Question 40

Which of the following best describes the relations between men and women of the planter class?

A) Paternalistic
B) Honorable
C) Mutually respectful
D) Contemptuous

Question 41

By the early antebellum period, American slaves _________.

A) became more conscious of their separate tribal and ethnic differences based on their African past
B) had cast off all cultural influences from their African past
C) saw themselves as a single group unified by race
D) had rejected Christianity as a white man's religion that encouraged cruelty and oppression

Question 42

Discuss the similarities and differences between the North and the South in the period from 1830 to 1860.

Question 43

Discuss the variety of arguments used by southerners to defend the institution of slavery in the pre-Civil War era.

Question 44

Slave narratives suggest that slaves considered the worst aspect of their enslavement to be the __________.

A) physical pain they endured from whippings and beatings
B) psychological trauma of being considered inferiors
C) unsanitary conditions in which they were forced to live
D) coercion, lack of freedom, and little hope for change, all of which were part of the nature of slavery itself

Question 45

What was unique about the slave population of North America?

A) It was the only slave population in the New World to be subjected to physical cruelty.
B) It was the only slave population in the New World that experienced natural increase.
C) It was the only slave population in the New World to have legal recourse against abusive masters.
D) It was the only slave population in the New World to have an excess of men over women.

Question 46

African influences on slave culture in the New World ___________.

A) can be seen only in the recreational activities of slaves
B) reminded slaves that they had a separate past and a separate identity from their oppressors
C) survived only in areas where slaves were imported from the West Indies
D) disappeared completely after the abolition of the international slave trade

Question 47

Comments from former slaves reveal that the great majority of American slaves ____________.

A) had little self-respect
B) unquestioningly accepted their status
C) retained their mental independence
D) preferred subservience over the uncertainties of freedom

Question 48

The law Congress passed in 1808

A) regulated the slave trade in Washington, D.C.
B) banned the importation of slaves.
C) prohibited the transport of slaves across state lines.
D) allowed slavery in the Louisiana Purchase territory.

Question 49

Defend the following statement: "As the South grew and expanded between 1830 and 1860, it bore the distinguishing features of a slave society."

Question 50

Which of the following statements about the slave family is true?

A) Masters rarely broke up slave families.
B) Masters usually discouraged slaves from forming family units.
C) Most southern states had legalized slave marriages by 1860.
D) Children were often named after relatives of past generations as a way of retaining family history.

Question 51

In response to the Nat Turner Rebellion, many southern states passed laws:

A) Forbidding masters from freeing their slaves
B) Making it easier for slaves to purchase their freedom and the freedom of others
C) Allowing slaves more freedom of movement
D) Against educating Blacks

Question 52

In the aftermath of the 1831 Nat Turner Rebellion, the Virginia legislature _____________.

A) approved a plan, subsequently vetoed by the governor, for the abolition of slavery.
B) approved a measure requiring all free blacks to leave the state or be enslaved.
C) began a debate on slavery that continued and grew more bitter as the years passed.
D) debated but then rejected a measure calling for the gradual abolition of slavery.

Question 53

"Slaveholders have found out a fearful alchemy by which...blood can be transformed into gold. Instead of listening to the cry of agony, they listen to the ring of dollars and stoop down to pick up the coin." This 1857 statement is from

A) former enslaved minister James Pennington
B) black abolitionist orator Frances Ellen Watkins
C) former President John Quincy Adams
D) ex-slave Minnie Fulkes

Question 54

The common belief of slaves in spirits is linked to the:

A) Muslim concept of the afterlife
B) Stories told by masters to frighten slaves into submission
C) African concept of the living dead
D) Idea that God would deliver the slaves from bondage

Question 55

Which of the following is true of Nat Turner?

A) He was convicted and executed in the early 1830s for having planned and executed a violent slave revolt.
B) He became an outspoken abolitionist after escaping to the North.
C) He regularly conducted raids into the slave states to help blacks escape to freedom.
D) He conducted extensive interviews with runaway slaves in writing antislavery pamphlets published in the 1830s.

Question 56

Stories such as the "Brer Rabbit folktales" were actually stories about ______________.

A) racial violence on the plantation
B) survival and resistance
C) violent rebellion against the slave system
D) the importance of family

Question 57

Compare and contrast the Amistad case with Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, paying particular attention to the concepts of individual freedom, race, states' rights, and national sovereignty.

Question 58

Which of the following was generally true of slaves in the South Carolina and Georgia low country?

A) They worked under the task system.
B) They were free to determine their own work patterns.
C) They were separated into a strict hierarchy of field slaves and house slaves.
D) They frequently engaged in work stoppages in an attempt to improve working conditions.

Question 59

In addition to seeking personal salvation through their religion, slaves:

A) Prayed that all earthly power would be placed in their hands
B) Sought group salvation through the belief that God would deliver all slaves from bondage
C) Sought forgiveness for their masters
D) Prayed that they would receive earthly riches as a reward for their trials and tribulations

Question 60

Which of the following is true of slave culture in the antebellum South?

A) Slave culture emerged and thrived in southern cities.
B) Slave culture was centered on religion; therefore, it did not affect the work and leisure of slaves.
C) Slave culture, especially in appearance and in forms of expression, retained many influences from the African past.
D) Slave "culture" was practically nonexistent because of the tyrannical power of slave masters.

Question 61

Discuss the conditions under which slaves lived, worked, ate, and slept on a typical southern plantation.

Question 62

Discuss the black family in the context of the slave community.

Question 63

Discuss the lifestyle of southern slaveholders and the paternalistic ideology that was a central part of their belief system. Explain what the letters of Paul Carrington Cameron reveal concerning the sincerity of the slaveholder's paternalism toward his slaves.

Question 64

Analyze Nat Turner's life and the rebellion he led in the context of the African-American adoption of Christianity.

Question 65

Examine the husband-and-wife relationship within the planter class. How did this relationship differ from the comparable relationship within a slave family? How was it similar? How did upper-class southern women react to their roles as wives, mothers, and slave mistresses?

Question 66

Examine the nature and extent of slave resistance. What was the primary objective of most modes of resistance?

Question 67

Explain the importance of African influences and of religion in the emergence of a distinctive African American culture. How did slaves' culture in general, and African influences and religion in particular, help slaves survive the ordeal of slavery?

Question 68

Discuss the emergence of "the Cotton South," and explain the impact of the cotton boom on southern society.

Question 69

Discuss the similarities and differences in the lives of John F. Flintoff and Ferdinand L. Steel. What characteristics of yeoman farmers may be distinguished in the lives of these two men?