Deck 10: The Opening of America 1815-1850

Question 1

The chapter introduction tells the story of clockmaker Chauncey Jerome to make the point that

A) clocks both made possible and symbolized the organized routines of an industrialized society.
B) Jerome's rise and fall were made possible by the opportunities offered in an expanding market economy that bound Americans together through ever more complex and specialized ways.
C) the intricate but comprehensible mechanism of a clock was to become the favorite metaphor for an age that believed human reason could discern the workings of natural law and apply those discoveries to improving the material conditions of life.
D) Jerome exemplifies the exploited urban laborer who becomes a helpless victim of the forces of rapid and relentless industrialization.

Answer 1

Jerome's rise and fall were made possible by the opportunities offered in an expanding market economy that bound Americans together through ever more complex and specialized ways.

Question 2

A post-War of 1812 program of economic centralization, designed to promote internal economic development, was pushed by a group of aggressive young Republican nationalists. Which of the following did this program NOT include?

A) funding the war debt
B) a protective tariff
C) a national bank
D) federal subsidies for public works projects

Answer 2

funding the war debt

Question 3

The key component needed for the United States to have a truly national market economy was

A) greater capital investment.
B) an efficient transportation system.
C) steam power.
D) a modern communications system including four-season postal roads and the telegraph.

Answer 3

an efficient transportation system.

Question 4

During the quarter-century after the War of 1812 ended, the most expansive force in the American economy was

A) cotton production.
B) land sales.
C) textile manufacture.
D) canal construction.

Question 5

Which of the following proved to be the breakthrough necessary to push cotton production to the center of the American agricultural stage?

A) extensive railroad development
B) development of vast overseas markets
C) federal subsidies of cotton production
D) invention of the cotton gin

Question 6

The Erie Canal

A) was made financially feasible by the development of the steamboat.
B) connected the Hudson and Ohio Rivers.
C) never repaid the original public investment, but stimulated migration and economic growth.
D) stimulated construction of other canals by other cities and states.

Question 7

The accelerating growth of a national market was due in large measure to the fact that the cost of ________ dropped by 95% between 1825 and 1855.

A) transportation on land
B) construction
C) imported goods
D) borrowing money

Question 8

The steamboat was first introduced ________ but had its greatest impact ________.

A) from Europe; when Americans invented improvements
B) on the Hudson River; on western rivers
C) as a low-cost, democratic innovation; on the wealthy classes, who could continue to enjoy its amenities even after fares skyrocketed
D) with exaggerated claims as to its future importance; in literature rather than as an economic tool

Question 9

Which of the following did farmers begin to do in their shift toward commercial agriculture?

A) barter goods with friends and neighbors
B) plant more acres of land with the use of slave labor
C) work shorter hours
D) adopt scientific farming methods

Question 10

John Marshall's Supreme Court decisions sought to promote American enterprise by

A) upholding literacy among slaves.
B) blocking English interference with private property.
C) ruling that Indian lands must be turned over to white developers.
D) creating a climate of business confidence.

Question 11

Taken as a body of legal doctrine, the rulings of the Marshall Court

A) enlarged federal power to an extraordinary degree.
B) expanded individual economic rights by limiting government's role in stimulating the economy.
C) protected minority groups against the abuse of power by majorities.
D) limited the rights of private property by expanding the powers of government.

Question 12

Europeans especially noted which tendency in American life?

A) the emphasis on speed that pervaded every aspect of life
B) the tendency for native-born Americans to stay east of the Appalachians, while immigrants settled in the new western lands
C) how rooted to a particular place Americans tended to be, despite geographic mobility
D) how religious and other-worldly Americans tended to be, despite rapid economic growth

Question 13

Which of the following is an accurate statement concerning population trends in the 1820s and 1830s?

A) Population continued to grow slowly.
B) Death rates accounted for virtually all of the country's population growth.
C) Immigration accounted for most of the population increase.
D) Western lands absorbed much of the population increase.

Question 14

What was the most basic reason so many Americans moved so much, especially to the new western lands?

A) greater political freedom
B) improved economic opportunity
C) more comfortable social relationships
D) a sense of providential destiny

Question 15

Which of the following groups purchased the greatest amount of western land from the federal government?

A) industrialists
B) small farmers
C) squatters
D) speculators

Question 16

Which of the following helps to account for the shift to factory production?

A) a growing birth rate
B) the availability of investment capital and credit
C) the lack of workers
D) inventions that gave the U.S. a head start over Europeans

Question 17

Which of the following contributed to the growth of urban areas in early nineteenth-century America?

A) improved transportation
B) declining productivity of eastern farms
C) arrival of immigrants
D) All these answers are correct.

Question 18

For their work force, the factories at Lowell before 1845 depended upon

A) children.
B) young women.
C) displaced farmers.
D) migrants.

Question 19

The factory system began in which industry?

A) textiles
B) shoemaking
C) firearms
D) iron production

Question 20

The national market economy created a society that was more differentiated and specialized. That new condition, in turn, caused

A) specialized labor unions that grew most rapidly in the depression of the late 1830s.
B) an increased pride in craftsmanship that became more important than just sheer productivity.
C) an increasingly unequal distribution of wealth in society, with those at the top controlling a greater share.
D) a class of newly rich, most of whom came from lower-class, farm-family backgrounds.

Question 21

In its social impact, the national market economy

A) elevated the status of workers.
B) produced greater per capita wealth in American society.
C) stimulated agriculture.
D) reorganized society toward greater class division.

Question 22

In the wake of the national market economy, which of the following became characteristic of Americans?

A) moving away from materialism
B) the hunger for respect and recognition through money-making ability
C) a belief that history was the story of inevitable social disintegration
D) a general preoccupation with economic theory and business systems

Question 23

Which of the following was NOT characteristic of the economic changes that swept most of America in the early nineteenth century?

A) Economic activity was becoming more specialized.
B) The social structure became more stratified.
C) Local economies became tied into regional and national markets.
D) Subsistence agriculture was on the rise.

Question 24

What conflict in values emerged as America went through its market revolution?

A) Most farmers clung to Crèvecoeur's ideal of a semisubsistence way of life, despite the relentless reach of commercial networks.
B) Personal lifestyles prized by northerners, who were more religious, differed from those of southerners, who were more materialistic-a distinction that national market networks made obvious.
C) Americans had long enjoyed living in settled and stable communities, but transportation improvements led to much greater geographic mobility.
D) Although Americans professed to believe in equality, the national market economy coupled with American materialistic pursuits led to great inequalities in wealth.

Question 25

Why were Americans marked by anxiety in the midst of their early nineteenth-century prosperity?

A) because foreign threats seemed at any time to threaten national security
B) because in a national market economy plagued by cyclical depressions, prosperity seemed so fleeting
C) because corrupt politicians could infringe on their liberties at any time
D) because the nagging issue of slavery threatened a permanent rift in the culture

Question 26

The mountain man of the West

A) was, in his own way, as caught up in the national integrated economic network as a farmer.
B) illustrated that some Americans lived beyond the reach of the market economy.
C) was usually fleeing the routines and materialistic pursuits of a market-driven "civilization."
D) functioned as an independent businessman, vulnerable to the market but at least able to be his own boss in an enterprise not yet dominated by large eastern organizations.

Question 27

Of the following statements, which is the most accurate in explaining why the Panic of 1819 was so significant?

A) The nation had never before experienced economic hard times.
B) In reaction, land sales rose to speculative heights.
C) As the first major American depression, it affected city folk and rural Americans alike.
D) It prompted a frenzy of canal building.

Question 28

The factory system asked workers to

A) forgo traditional artisan system of mentorship for industrial productivity.
B) exchange classical timetables of production for more craftsmanship.
C) protect the environment.
D) accept former slaves and women as equals on the factory floor.

Question 29

A transportation network grew rapidly as investors poured capital into improvement projects, especially after the opening of the ________ in New York State in 1825.

Question 30

The most important stimulus to economic development between 1815 and 1840, affecting both North and South (though in different ways), was the growth of the ________ trade.

Question 31

The major form of transportation in the West as the national market was emerging was the ________.

Question 32

In the great federal land rush, most of the public lands offered for sale were bought up by ________, who therefore played a key role in the settlement of the West.

Question 33

Americans seemed notably materialistic to foreign visitors, since ________ became the most obvious symbol of social status

Question 34

The national market economy made Americans susceptible to the boom-and-bust cycle, as first became evident with the ________, when world demand for cotton dropped.

Question 35

What rail and steam engines did for transportation, the ________ did for communication.

Question 36

What were the new forms of transportation that developed in the period of 1800-1850? What was the importance of each type of transportation?

Question 37

Explain why the transportation revolution stimulated the development of a national domestic market.

Question 38

List three ways that the government promoted economic growth after 1815. Which do you think was the most important, and why?

Question 39

How did factories differ from earlier forms of production in the United States?

Question 40

Why did factories develop in the United States? How did they change over time?

Question 41

How did the Supreme Court aid the development of a market economy?

Question 42

How does Chauncey Jerome's life encapsulate the major changes that occurred in this period? How can his life stand as a symbol of the changes discussed in this chapter?

Question 43

What evidence is there that the period from 1815 to 1850 was a time of heightened anxiety in American life? What were the causes of this anxiety?

Question 44

List three ways that the development of a national market changed American society after 1815. Did these changes make American society more open than before? What does the phrase "opening of America"mean?

Question 45

Explain the impact of the market economy on four of the following Americans: a mountain man, a Lowell mill girl, a Lynn shoemaker, a farmer, and Chauncey Jerome.

Question 46

What is the difference between social and geographic mobility? How were these related in the years after 1815?

Question 47

The creation of a domestic market, the development of cheap transportation, the rise of cities, and the availability of capital and credit can all be seen to have stimulated the shift to factory production. Choose three of these factors and explain how they contributed to the rise of factories.