Deck 14: The Sectional Crisis, 1846-1861

Question 1

The radical abolitionist________ burned a copy of the Constitution to protest slavery.

A) William Lloyd Garrison
B) Abraham Lincoln
C) Henry Clay
D) David Wilmot
E) Stephen Douglas

Answer 1

William Lloyd Garrison

Question 2

When the House voted on the Wilmot Proviso, the vote was split along________ .

A) party lines
B) sectional lines
C) religious lines
D) socioeconomic lines
E) gender lines

Answer 2

sectional lines

Question 3

The first broad, sectional, antislavery party was the________ .

A) Free-Soil Party
B) Whig Party
C) Republican Party
D) Democratic Party
E) Know-Nothing Party

Answer 3

Free-Soil Party

Question 4

The most outrageous component of the Compromise of 1850 was the________ .

A) admission of California as a free state
B) opening of New Mexico and Utah territories to slavery under popular sovereignty
C) reduction of Texas to its present boundaries
D) enactment of the new Fugitive Slave Law
E) prohibition of slavery in the District of Columbia

Question 5

The political party known especially for its anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic philosophy was the

A) Free-Soil Party
B) Whig Party
C) Know-Nothing Party
D) Democratic Party
E) Liberty Party

Question 6

Nativists disliked Irish and German immigrants because so many of the immigrants were

A) communists
B) illiterate
C) Jewish
D) Roman Catholic
E) atheists

Question 7

A smaller conflict over slavery, which prefigured the American Civil War, was fought in which state during the late 1850s?

A) Missouri
B) Kansas
C) South Carolina
D) Tennessee
E) Texas

Question 8

In the Pottawatomie Massacre,________ .

A) John Brown and his followers killed five Native Americans in a land dispute
B) a mob of angry settlers attacked and killed five escaped slaves
C) an escaped slave killed a family of five white settlers
D) John Brown killed eight abolitionists in Kansas
E) John Brown and his followers killed five proslavery settlers in cold blood

Question 9

Between 1856 and 1860, the explosive tensions between________ led to a growing sense that the two groups could no longer coexist in the same nation.

A) blacks and whites
B) northerners and southerners
C) immigrants and native-born citizens
D) farmers and factory owners
E) southerners and former slaves

Question 10

In the 1850s, the most important example of literary abolitionism was________ .

A) Uncle Tom's Cabin
B) The Impending Crisis of the South
C) Tom Sawyer
D) Up from Slavery
E) Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

Question 11

John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia, involved________ .

A) white and black men seizing a federal arsenal in an unsuccessful attempt to start an uprising against slavery
B) a slave rebellion that resulted in the deaths of 18 whites and all of the slaves
C) a group of white men raiding a southern abolitionist office and killing five white and black antislavery protestors
D) white men and women seizing 18 slaves in order to forcibly emancipate them in Mexico
E) a group of white and black abolitionists killing three slave owners and wounding five others

Question 12

Why was Abraham Lincoln chosen as the Republican presidential candidate for the 1860 election over front-runner Senator William H. Seward?

A) Lincoln could carry his home state of Kentucky.
B) Seward strongly supported nativism.
C) Lincoln came from a prosperous, well-known family.
D) Seward was seen as too radical.
E) Abraham Lincoln pledged to end slavery.

Question 13

As a result of the revised Fugitive Slave Law in the Compromise of 1850, it became________ .

A) easier for escaped slaves to stay free
B) easier to kidnap and enslave free African Americans
C) easier for slaves to sue for their freedom
D) easier for slaves to purchase their freedom
E) more difficult for plantation owners to reclaim their escaped slaves

Question 14

Why did the Whig Party's candidate fail overwhelmingly in the 1852 presidential campaign?

A) The Compromise of 1850 strengthened the political differences between Whigs and Democrats.
B) The Whigs did not succeed in rallying public interest in a major political issue.
C) The Whigs alienated immigrants by actively seeeking the nativist vote.
D) The Whig platform did not address the economic problems facing the nation.
E) The Whig nominee lost southern support by allying himself with the antislavery wing of the party.

Question 15

What best explains the rapid growth of the Republican Party in the 1850s?

A) sympathy toward immigrants
B) support of agricultural expansion
C) position on slavery in the territories
D) support of the Catholic Church
E) support of progressive labor laws

Question 16

The Republican Party's nominating convention for the presidential election revealed that it

A) received broad-based support throughout the nation
B) was primarily a sectional party
C) was a party of farmers and laborers
D) was the party of southern planters
E) struggled in its first years of existence

Question 17

The growing division between North and South during the 1840s and 1850s________ .

A) was primarily expressed in political terms
B) was entirely expressed in legal, constitutional terms
C) had little impact on the common man
D) was increasingly seen in cultural and intellectual terms
E) had reached an uneasy but peaceful stalemate by 1860

Question 18

Why did Uncle Tom's Cabin have such an emotional impact Americans in the 1850s?

A) It portrayed southerners as greedy, immoral barbarians.
B) It portrayed northern abolitionists as heroic defenders of morality.
C) It showed that slaves were just as evil as the slave owners.
D) It portrayed slavery as a necessary evil that needed to be preserved.
E) It portrayed slavery as a threat to the family and the Cult of Domesticity.

Question 19

In the Dred Scott v. Sanford decision, the court ruled that________ .

A) an African American could not be a citizen of the United States
B) Congress had the power to prohibit slavery in federal territories
C) the Missouri Compromise was constitutional
D) the Democratic platform was unconstitutional
E) African Americans could sue through the court system

Question 20

Northern evangelicalism focused on________ , while southern evangelicalism focused on

A) self-discipline and social reform, personal piety
B) personal piety, philanthropy
C) the virtues of the family unit, helping the poor
D) philanthropy, self-discipline
E) conversion of the poor, personal piety