Deck 9: Slavery and the Old South

Question 1

Which of the following nations practiced slavery in Latin America and the West Indies?

A) England
B) Spain
C) France
D) All of the above.

Answer 1

All of the above.

Question 2

Large-plantation agriculture was a dominant force in the antebellum South, but most southern whites were not even slaveholders, much less large planters.

Answer 2

True

Question 3

If the South had become an independent nation in 1860, it would have ranked as one of the wealthiest countries in the world in terms of per capita income.

Answer 3

True

Question 4

After the congressional ban on the importation of slaves, the slave population in the United States steadily declined from 1808 to 1860.

Question 5

Poor whites stayed poor because they developed a culture that opposed the middle-class work ethic.

Question 6

By the 1830s, southerners became increasingly defensive concerning the institution of slavery, no longer claiming it as a "necessary evil," but defending it as a "positive good."

Question 7

Between 1820 and 1860, the number of free blacks doubled in the United States.

Question 8

Most free blacks lived in the Upper South.

Question 9

As sugar production increased in Latin America, the average working life for slaves in the fields dropped from 15 to 7 years.

Question 10

Brazil's slave population reached over 15 million by 1860.

Question 11

Slave cabins were crowded, usually housing more than one family.

Question 12

Slaves lived in poor material conditions, were whipped frequently, and suffered constant health problems.

Question 13

Black slave women were not expected to work in the fields and complete as much labor as enslaved men.

Question 14

Perhaps no issue in American history has generated quite as much controversy or as many interpretations as ________, the "peculiar institution."

Question 15

The Lower South, or ________, stretched from South Carolina to Texas.

Question 16

The largest slave population in the world-one million in 1800-was in ________.

Question 17

Paralleling the growth of the southern economy and its dependence on the slave labor system, the number of slaves in the United States rapidly increased from 1.5 million in 1820 to ________ million in 1860.

Question 18

The ________ church grew enormously in the two decades before the Civil War.

Question 19

Black women from the Catholic order of the Sisters of the ________ started schools and ministered to the old and infirm among the free black community.

Question 20

The island of ________, by 1840, was the world's largest producer of sugarcane.

Question 21

The last Latin American countries to abolish slavery were Cuba and ________.

Question 22

The ________ of American slaves was 21.4 years in 1850.