Deck 15: The Union Broken 1850-1861

Question 1

The chapter introduction tells the stories of Lawrence and Pottawatomie, Kansas, to make the point that

A) westward migration continued despite the distractions of sectional strife.
B) it was deliberate, violent acts by an extremist minority that sucked Americans into civil war.
C) the ability of settlers in Kansas to disagree, yet still get along, shows that the Civil War was not necessarily inevitable.
D) violence in Kansas discredited popular sovereignty, the only remaining compromise solution to the growing sectional split.

Answer 1

violence in Kansas discredited popular sovereignty, the only remaining compromise solution to the growing sectional split.

Question 2

Which of the following does NOT characterize the American economy in the 1840s and 1850s?

A) Transportation improvements on land and water, especially the rise of the railroad, transformed the American economy.
B) Agriculture remained largely unaffected by technology, and thus diminished in importance as a component of the market economy.
C) The maturing factory system employed a growing industrial workforce, increasingly foreign-born.
D) Water power was increasingly being replaced by steam power.

Answer 2

Agriculture remained largely unaffected by technology, and thus diminished in importance as a component of the market economy.

Question 3

Which is a correct statement regarding mid-century immigrants?

A) Germans fled a severe potato famine.
B) Germans, Irish, and Scandinavians came seeking improved economic opportunity.
C) The Irish and Scandinavians tended to come as families with some resources, but the Germans were usually single men from impoverished backgrounds.
D) Immigration swelled to its highest levels during periods of economic downturns in the U.S., when employers sought cheaper labor.

Answer 3

Germans, Irish, and Scandinavians came seeking improved economic opportunity.

Question 4

Who invented a sharp-cutting steel plow that could slice through the thick tangle of prairie grass roots without the soil sticking to the blade?

A) John Deere
B) Cyrus McCormick
C) Edmund Flagg
D) Eli Whitney

Question 5

Which of the following was an unintentional consequence of railroads in the urban environment?

A) the economic survival of urban communities becoming less dependent on rail links
B) living near the tracks becoming a marker of social and economic divisions
C) increased traffic in fashionable neighborhoods and shopping areas
D) None of these answers is correct.

Question 6

Southerners voiced many concerns and complaints in the 1850s, including all of the following EXCEPT

A) that the North was making the South into its economic colony.
B) that the immigrant influx strengthened the North's dominance in the House of Representatives.
C) that only the expansion of slave states could overcome the South's isolation and decreasing political clout.
D) that the threats against slavery had led to a sharp drop in the market value of slaves.

Question 7

Stephen Douglas pushed for the organization of territorial governments in the Louisiana Purchase for all of the following reasons EXCEPT

A) to hasten the opening of the West for the sake of economic development.
B) to accelerate the process of bringing the Plains Indians under federal control.
C) to insure that Chicago became the eastern terminus of any transcontinental railroad.
D) to help fulfill the aims of the Young America movement, of which Douglas was a typical representative.

Question 8

Why was the Kansas-Nebraska Act so controversial?

A) Because it worked to the advantage of Douglas's home state, southerners felt betrayed.
B) Because it overturned a policy on slavery already in place, northerners felt betrayed.
C) Because it did not provide for land grants along with territorial government, westerners felt betrayed.
D) Because it would attract immigrants who would vote Democrat, Whigs felt betrayed.

Question 9

Which of the following was an issue driving the collapse of the Jacksonian party system?

A) religion
B) alcohol
C) slavery
D) All of these answers are correct.

Question 10

Which statement about the Republican Party is true?

A) It attracted a coalition of voters throughout the nation.
B) It emerged from a coalition of Democrats and Whigs who opposed the Kansas-Nebraska Act.
C) It was a sectional party pledged to the spread of slavery.
D) It was led by the principle of popular sovereignty.

Question 11

What turned the 1854 elections in Kansas from routine territorial organization into a referendum on slavery?

A) popular sovereignty
B) the Freeport Doctrine
C) the Dred Scott decision
D) the Lecompton constitution

Question 12

Which of the following was NOT part of the Dred Scott decision?

A) The popular sovereignty doctrine was a violation of the First Amendment.
B) Congress does not have the power to ban slavery from any territory of the United States.
C) The Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional.
D) Slaves were not and could not ever be citizens.

Question 13

What was so important about the Lecompton constitution?

A) It was a proslavery document, fairly drawn, that Congress approved.
B) It was a proslavery document, pushed through by fraud, which Congress did not approve.
C) Douglas's support for it undermined his political credibility in the North.
D) Congress had not authorized a separate state of Lecompton.

Question 14

In his Freeport Doctrine, Douglas defended popular sovereignty despite the Dred Scott ruling by arguing that

A) the Scott case was not a valid constitutional interpretation.
B) if the people of a territory refused to pass a slave code, slavery would never be established there.
C) Americans would stand behind congressional legislation to reverse the decision.
D) strategic river cities that chose to ban slavery within their city limits would set the tone for the whole territory.

Question 15

While northerners increasingly feared _______, southerners raised the specter of _______.

A) that the West would become contaminated by black slaves; a South contaminated by northern free-labor industrialism
B) the South's secessionist threats; the North's determination to abolish slavery once and for all
C) a Slave Power conspiracy; a conspiracy by the Black Republicans
D) economic uncertainty; social chaos

Question 16

Which statement about the southern economy in the later 1850s is true?

A) A sense of crisis grew in the region as the price of slaves jumped and the price of cotton remained relatively stagnant.
B) The progress of transportation development reoriented western trade toward New Orleans.
C) Although cotton's importance as an export crop declined, it remained the primary driver of domestic economic growth.
D) As they converted to the new agricultural machinery, southern planters found themselves deeply in debt in a time of declining profits.

Question 17

John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry was significant for all of the following reasons EXCEPT

A) that it provoked bloody retaliation against antislavery voters in Kansas.
B) that it intensified southern fears of slave insurrection.
C) that it intensified southern suspicions about the Republican Party.
D) that it added to the southerners' belief that their interests could not be protected within the Union.

Question 18

What state took the lead role in encouraging the other states of the Deep South to secede from the Union?

A) South Carolina
B) Alabama
C) Virginia
D) Kentucky

Question 19

The flood of new immigrants escaping the potato famine in ________ attracted nativist hostility not only because they were foreign but also because they were Catholic.

Question 20

Explain how changes in three of the following areas heightened sectional tensions: the new commercial agriculture, the growth of a railroad economy, rising industrialization, and immigration.

Question 21

Identify four major sectional events of the period 1854-1856. Which of these events aided the Republican Party?

Question 22

Why did the Know-Nothing Party arise when it did? Why did the Republican Party eventually surpass it?

Question 23

How did the violence in Kansas and the caning of Charles Sumner help the Republicans?

Question 24

What did the Supreme Court rule in the Dred Scott decision? Why did the decision fail to settle the slavery expansion issue?

Question 25

How did the Panic of 1857 worsen the sectional conflict?

Question 26

"Ever since the Revolution, when Americans accused the king and Parliament of deliberately plotting to deprive them of their liberties, Americans were on the watch for political conspiracies."Give examples of the way in which northerners feared that the Slave Power was conspiring against them, and southerners worried about the plots of the Black Republicans.

Question 27

How did economic and social developments of the 1850s contribute to the growing sectional strain between North and South? Do you feel that these factors were more or less important than the political events of the decade? Explain why.

Question 28

Why did southern anxiety increase in the 1850s? What contributed to the South's sense of being beleaguered?

Question 29

What were the provisions of the Crittenden Compromise? Did these deal with the causes of secession? Would this compromise have ended the crisis over secession?

Question 30

What arguments did southern radicals advance in urging secession? Were there effective rebuttals to these arguments?

Question 31

Which of the following issues do you feel was most central to provoking civil war: the debate over slavery, the debate over states' rights, or the growing economic and social differences between North and South? Defend your position by discussing specific events from the 1850s.