Deck 11: The Peculiar Institution

Question 1

Southern farmers in the backcountry:

A) generally worked the land using family labor.
B) were all directly involved in the market economy from the start of the nineteenth century.
C) owned a substantial number of slaves.
D) were highly self-sufficient but still bought most of their supplies from stores.
E) were fortunate that their land was far better for farming than that owned by planters.

Answer 1

generally worked the land using family labor.

Question 2

The U.S. slave population by 1860 was approximately:

A) 1 million.
B) 2 million.
C) 3 million.
D) 4 million.
E) 5 million.

Answer 2

4 million.

Question 3

What economic effect did southern slavery have on the North?

A) It was minimal, which explains why northerners opposed slavery.
B) Many northerners profited from investing in real-estate partnerships that controlled southern plantations.
C) A few New York shipping companies benefited from slavery, but the institution had little effect otherwise.
D) Southern slavery helped finance industrialization and internal improvements in the North.
E) Southern slavery drained resources from the North and helped keep the whole nation in a depression during the 1850s.

Answer 3

Southern slavery helped finance industrialization and internal improvements in the North.

Question 4

Which of the following was NOT true of the South and slavery in nineteenth-century America?

A) The Old South had developed into the largest and most powerful slave society the modern world has known.
B) The rate of natural increase in the slave population had more than made up for the ban on the international slave trade that was enacted in 1808.
C) In the South as a whole, slaves made up only 10 percent of the population.
D) The amount of money invested in or represented by slavery in the United States exceeded that of the nation's factories, banks, and railroads combined.
E) The Industrial Revolution promoted slavery because it required intensive production of cotton.

Question 5

Which of the following is NOT true of the South and its economy in the period from 1800 to 1860?

A) Southern cities, like New Orleans and Baltimore, lay mainly on the periphery of the South.
B) The South produced nearly two-fifths of the nation's manufactured goods, especially cotton textiles.
C) Slavery helped to discourage the immigration of white workers to the South, with such notable exceptions as New Orleans.
D) Slavery proved very profitable for most slave owners.
E) Southern banks existed mainly to finance plantations.

Question 6

In the South, the paternalist ethos:

A) reflected the hierarchical society in which the planter took responsibility for the lives of those around him.
B) declined after the War of 1812, as southern society became more centered on market relations rather than on personal relations.
C) suffered because southern slaveholders lived among their slaves, so that the groups' constant exposure to each other made southern slavery more openly violent than elsewhere.
D) brought southern society closer to northern ideals.
E) encouraged southern women to become more active and better educated so that they could help their husbands in their paternal roles.

Question 7

In the nineteenth century, which product was the world's major crop produced by slave labor?

A) tobacco
B) indigo
C) sorghum
D) cotton
E) rice

Question 8

Frederick Douglass argued that:

A) slaves were truer to the principles of the Declaration of Independence than were most white Americans.
B) the United States should adopt a gradual emancipation plan that would eliminate slavery within forty years.
C) free blacks would be better off if they moved to Liberia, where a colony of former American slaves had been founded.
D) blacks should not serve in the U.S. army during the Civil War because of the racial discrimination they faced.
E) free African Americans should "let down their buckets where they were" and accept inequality, at least for a period of time.

Question 9

In 1850, a majority of southern slaveholders owned how many slaves?

A) 1 to 5
B) 6 to 10
C) 15 to 20
D) 25 to 30
E) at least 35

Question 10

The term "Lords of the Loom" refers to:

A) early New England factory owners.
B) preachers who wove heart-wrenching stories of slave suffering into their sermons.
C) planters who established textile operations on their plantations.
D) master artisans who produced cloth in the South.
E) an influential 1840s novel about slavery.

Question 11

In 1860, what percentage of southern white families were in the slaveowning class?

A) 10 percent
B) 25 percent
C) 40 percent
D) 55 percent
E) 75 percent

Question 12

What did the Reverend Charles C. Jones of Georgia NOT do?

A) help improve slave housing
B) help discourage severe punishments for slaves
C) urge an end to slavery
D) organize religious instruction of slaves
E) help improve slave medical care

Question 13

The relationship between rich southern planters and poor southern farmers:

A) led to numerous violent uprisings in the southern hill country.
B) was complicated by the strong antislavery movement among poor farmers in the 1850s.
C) was strained by planters' insistence that farmers participate in the slave patrols.
D) showed itself in politics, as most poor farmers became Whigs and most wealthy planters became Democrats.
E) benefited in part from a sense of unity bred by criticism from outsiders.

Question 14

To qualify as a member of the planter class, a person had to be engaged in southern agriculture and:

A) own at least ten slaves.
B) grow specifically cotton or sugarcane.
C) own at least twenty slaves.
D) live in a large mansion.
E) own at least fifty slaves.

Question 15

On the eve of the Civil War, approximately how much of the world's cotton supply came from the southern United States?

A) 90 percent
B) 75 percent
C) 50 percent
D) 33 percent
E) 25 percent

Question 16

From 1840 to 1860, the price of a "prime field hand":

A) rose about 80 percent, which made it harder for southern whites to enter the slaveholding class.
B) rose less than 10 percent, which kept the size of the planter class about the same.
C) declined about 15 percent as the supply of slaves in the internal slave trade increased.
D) became so inexpensive that the slaveholding class grew to include nearly two-thirds of southern whites.
E) declined because labor-intensive agricultural work became less popular in the South.

Question 17

The internal slave trade in the United States involved the movement of hundreds of thousands of enslaved persons from:

A) older states like Virginia to the Lower South.
B) Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi to Kentucky, Virginia, and Maryland.
C) the West Indies to the Mississippi River Valley.
D) the Lower South to the Upper South.
E) the lower Mississippi River Valley to the upper Mississippi River Valley.

Question 18

Which event is credited with helping to ingrain the paternalist ethos more deeply into the lives of southern slaveholders?

A) Nat Turner's Rebellion
B) the nullification crisis
C) the development of domestic ideology
D) the closing of the African slave trade
E) the secession crisis

Question 19

Which of the following is a true statement relative to the Upper South and the Deep South?

A) Committed to slavery, all states in both the Upper South and Deep South seceded from the Union.
B) The Upper South was less economically diversified than the Deep South.
C) Several Upper South states did not join the Confederacy at the time of the Civil War.
D) Neither the Upper South nor the Deep South had major industrial centers.
E) Richmond, Virginia, is considered to be the heart of the Deep South.

Question 20

Andrew Johnson of Tennessee and Joseph Brown of Georgia rose to political power:

A) because of their membership in and identification with the planter class.
B) in the 1850s, as members of the small but influential southern Republican Party.
C) as self-proclaimed spokesmen of the common man against the great planters.
D) as proponents of gradual emancipation plans in order to destroy the "slavocracy."
E) after gaining popularity for creating public education systems in their states.

Question 21

While the North emphasized egalitarianism, the South stressed:

A) unions.
B) communal living.
C) a code of honor.
D) competition.
E) social mobility.

Question 22

Task labor:

A) got its name for tasking the abilities of slaves; it was very difficult, complicated work.
B) was an acronym for Take All Southerners' Knives, a secret organization of slaves planning an insurrection.
C) always was controlled by an overseer.
D) allowed slaves to take on daily jobs, set their own pace, and work on their own when they were done.
E) was the most common form of slave labor organization in the South.

Question 23

Why did southern slaves live in better conditions by the mid-nineteenth century than those in the Caribbean and South America?

A) They did not; slaves led vastly healthier lives in regions other than the American South.
B) Southern Protestant churches encouraged better treatment of southern slaves than the Roman Catholic Church did with slaves in the Caribbean and South America.
C) The rising value of slaves made it profitable for slaveowners to take better care of them.
D) Laws in the South were far more protective of slaves than were laws concerning slaves elsewhere.
E) Southern slaves had a greater likelihood of becoming free than did other New World slaves.

Question 24

On the plantation, the white employee in charge of ensuring a profitable crop for the plantation master was called the:

A) journeyman.
B) slave driver.
C) chain gang.
D) overseer.
E) deputy master.

Question 25

John C. Calhoun and George Fitzhugh:

A) agreed that slavery was not a necessary evil but something actually positive and good.
B) fought a famous duel that demonstrated the southern commitment to the idea of defending one's honor.
C) competed for power in Andrew Jackson's administration.
D) were known as two of the most vicious slaveholders, who regularly whipped their slaves.
E) agreed on the need for slavery but disagreed as to whether it actually was beneficial to society.

Question 26

By the late 1830s, the South's proslavery argument:

A) rested on the premise that slavery was a necessary evil.
B) was based entirely on secular evidence.
C) had not yet been accepted by major southern political figures.
D) claimed that slavery was essential to human economic and cultural progress.
E) was roundly criticized by southern newspaper editors, ministers, and academics.

Question 27

Which state had the least amount of free blacks?

A) Mississippi
B) Louisiana
C) South Carolina
D) Virginia
E) Maryland

Question 28

Who said that the language in the Declaration of Independence-that all men were created equal and entitled to liberty-was "the most false and dangerous of all political errors"?

A) James Madison
B) James G. Birney
C) John C. Calhoun
D) Denmark Vesey
E) Solomon Northup

Question 29

Defenders of American slavery claimed that British emancipation in the 1830s had been a failure because:

A) many newly freed slaves moved to West Africa where they became reenslaved later.
B) of the violence it spawned in the West Indies during the 1840s.
C) many of those freed had moved to the United States where they could obtain only menial jobs.
D) the freed slaves grew less sugarcane, which hurt the economy of the Caribbean.
E) the freed slaves could not take care of themselves and many begged their ex-masters to support them.

Question 30

The end of slavery in most Latin American nations:

A) resulted from violent slave revolts that rocked Latin America from 1822 to 1855.
B) involved gradual emancipation accompanied by recognition of owners' legal rights to slave property.
C) was inspired by the emancipation of slaves that occurred as a result of the American Civil War.
D) followed a pattern very different from that established in the northern United States.
E) did not happen until the United States made emancipation an aim of the Spanish-American War.

Question 31

In an 1840 letter written from Canada, fugitive slave Joseph Taper asked for divine blessings upon:

A) the writer Harriet Beecher Stowe.
B) his former master.
C) President Martin Van Buren.
D) abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison.
E) Queen Victoria.

Question 32

What was the name of the vibrant community of former slaves freed by Virginian Richard Randolph?

A) Sea Island
B) Mount Vernon
C) Israel Hill
D) Sherman's Land
E) Promised Land

Question 33

The plantation masters had many means to maintain order among their slaves. According to the text, what was the most powerful weapon the plantation masters had?

A) requiring slaves to attend church
B) the threat of sale
C) exploiting the divisions among slaves
D) withholding food
E) denying a marriage between two slaves

Question 34

Celia was:

A) the pen name of Floride Calhoun, who secretly criticized her husband, John's, views on slavery.
B) a slave tried for killing her master while resisting a sexual assault.
C) the name used to signify a southern plantation mistress in writings about the institution.
D) a slave who became famous for helping other slaves escape via the Underground Railroad.
E) a character in Uncle Tom's Cabin.

Question 35

Which of the following statements about slavery and the law is true?

A) Because slaves were property, a master could kill any of his slaves for any reason.
B) Slaves were legally permitted to possess guns if guns were necessary for their work (tasks such as scaring birds away from rice fields, for example).
C) Laws specifically provided for a slave to be taught to read and write if the master so chose.
D) A slave could, with permission from his or her master, testify against a white person in court.
E) Slaves accused of serious crimes were entitled to their day in court, although they faced all-white judges and juries.

Question 36

Free blacks in the South were allowed to:

A) own property.
B) be bought and sold.
C) carry a firearm.
D) testify in court.
E) vote.

Question 37

Slave families:

A) were rare because there were too few female slaves.
B) were more common in the West Indies, where living conditions favored their formation and survival.
C) were headed by women more frequently than were white families.
D) usually were able to stay together because most slaveowners were paternalistic.
E) avoided naming children for family members because children so often were sold, and it was better not to build strong kinship ties.

Question 38

All of the following statements are true of the work done by southern slaves EXCEPT:

A) by 1860, some 200,000 worked in factories.
B) slaves sometimes were allowed to supervise other laborers, including white workers.
C) masters rented out slaves to do a variety of jobs.
D) the federal government used slaves to build forts and other public buildings in the South.
E) slaves worked exclusively as agricultural field hands and house servants.

Question 39

Urban slaves:

A) most often were domestic servants.
B) was a term coined by southerners to describe northern factory workers.
C) had less autonomy than plantation slaves because there were more authorities to watch them.
D) could work on their own and always kept the majority of their earnings.
E) increasingly replaced skilled white laborers as the Civil War approached.

Question 40

Free blacks in the United States:

A) had the same rights as whites in the North but faced far more restrictions on their freedom in the South.
B) tended to live in rural areas if they lived in the Lower South.
C) sometimes became wealthy enough to own slaves.
D) made up nearly one-third of the African-American population in the South.
E) could testify in court and vote in most states, but could carry firearms only with the approval of the local sheriff.

Question 41

Although the importation of slaves from Africa was prohibited beginning in 1808, the sale and trade of slaves within the United States flourished in later years.

Question 42

Which of the following stories did NOT play a central role in black Christianity?

A) Moses and the exodus from Egypt
B) Noah and the ark
C) David and Goliath
D) Jonah and the whale
E) Daniel and the lion's den

Question 43

Jumping over a broomstick was a ceremony celebrating:

A) a fugitive slave arriving in a free state.
B) a slave marriage.
C) the birth of a slave baby.
D) surviving the Middle Passage.
E) a slave's promotion from field hand to domestic servant.

Question 44

The slave rebellion aboard the Amistad:

A) nearly captured a fort in Charleston, South Carolina.
B) led to a Supreme Court decision freeing the slaves.
C) inspired the gag rule.
D) took place off the coast of Virginia.
E) helped establish the Republic of Haiti.

Question 45

Slavery did not affect northern merchants and manufacturers.

Question 46

By 1860, the economic investment represented by the slave population exceeded the value of the nation's factories, railroads, and banks combined.

Question 47

Fugitive slaves:

A) generally understood that the North Star led to freedom.
B) were more likely to be women than men, because they were trying to escape sexual assault.
C) succeeded in escaping more frequently from the Deep South because they had access to ships leaving ports like New Orleans and Charleston.
D) benefited from the refusal of non-slaveowners to participate in patrols that looked for fugitives.
E) who escaped to Canada were routinely returned to slavery by the British authorities.

Question 48

Which of the following statements about religious life among African-Americans in southern cities is true?

A) Blacks usually worshipped in churches where they sat side-by-side with whites.
B) Urban free blacks sometimes formed their own churches.
C) African-Americans, free and slave, were banned from religious services.
D) Free blacks could worship publicly, but slaves were not permitted to do so.
E) The formation of the Afro-Catholic Church in 1844 was a major development in black Christianity.

Question 49

Denmark Vesey's conspiracy:

A) reflected a combination of American and African influences.
B) took place in 1831 and was a success.
C) reflected the belief of the conspirators that the Bible endorsed slavery.
D) was discovered, but Vesey escaped North to freedom.
E) resulted in over twenty deaths of white men, women, and children.

Question 50

Although New Orleans was the only city of significant size in the South, it did not have a rich immigrant culture.

Question 51

Gender roles under slavery:

A) were the same as those that existed in white society.
B) differed from those of white society because men and women alike suffered a sense of powerlessness.
C) greatly differed from those of whites when slaves were able to work on their own; the men took on more women's work and vice versa.
D) meant that slave husbands refused to let their wives work in the fields.
E) were unaffected by the ability of masters to take advantage of female slaves sexually.

Question 52

Slave religion:

A) was based entirely on what slaves learned and heard from white ministers.
B) existed without approval from masters, who thought that letting slaves learn about religion might weaken their control.
C) benefited from masters assigning a member of each slave quarters to serve as a slave chaplain.
D) combined African traditions and Christian beliefs.
E) died out by the early 1820s because of strong opposition from whites.

Question 53

Harriet Tubman:

A) was a mythical character about whom runaway slaves told many stories.
B) led a slave rebellion in Maryland in 1849 that resulted in two dozen deaths.
C) although born free in New York, was kidnapped and made a slave in Louisiana.
D) cleverly escaped from slavery by pretending to be a sickly male slaveowner.
E) was a fugitive slave who risked her life many times to bring others out of slavery.

Question 54

Compared to slave revolts in Brazil and in the West Indies, slave revolts in the United States were:

A) larger in scale but less frequent.
B) smaller in scale but more frequent.
C) larger in scale and more frequent.
D) smaller in scale and less frequent.
E) bloodier and more successful.

Question 55

Most white southerner families owned at least one slave.

Question 56

The Brer Rabbit stories of slave folklore:

A) celebrated how the weak could outsmart the more powerful.
B) borrowed heavily from English folktales but did add some African elements.
C) formed the basis of Uncle Tom's Cabin.
D) introduced the character Paul Bunyan to American culture.
E) were largely unknown until the making of a series of animated films in the twentieth century.

Question 57

Historians estimate that approximately __________slaves per year escaped to the North or Canada.

A) 500
B) 1,000
C) 2,000
D) 5,000
E) 10,000

Question 58

After an 1831 slave rebellion, which state's legislature debated, but did not approve, a plan for gradual emancipation of slaves in that state?

A) Virginia
B) South Carolina
C) Maryland
D) North Carolina
E) Louisiana

Question 59

Which statement about Nat Turner's Rebellion is true?

A) Turner and his followers assaulted mostly men.
B) Fewer than twenty whites were killed during the rebellion.
C) Turner escaped capture.
D) Many southern whites were in a panic after the rebellion.
E) It occurred in Georgia.

Question 60

"Silent sabotage" can be defined as when slaves:

A) ran away.
B) did poor work and broke tools.
C) learned how to read and write.
D) secretly met to worship.
E) named their children after kin.

Question 61

After Nat Turner's Rebellion, the Virginia legislature discussed ending slavery in that state.

Question 62

Slave traders tried hard to keep slave families together.

Question 63

John C. Calhoun's key contribution to the proslavery argument was the claim that slavery was a necessary evil.

Question 64

Free blacks in the South could testify in court and serve on juries.

Question 65

The Underground Railroad used a system of railways to transport slaves.

Question 66

George Fitzhugh, a Virginia writer, believed slaves in the American South were not only very happy but also, to some degree, the freest people in the world.

Question 67

Unlike in Brazil or the West Indies, there was little room for a mulatto group in the United States.

Question 68

Slaves frequently named children after other family members to retain family continuity.

Question 69

In the southern slave society, white women on plantations were seen as weak and helpless.

Question 70

Slaves working in the fields generally viewed the overseer as a cruel and heartless man.

Question 71

Slaves had a few legal rights, but they were not well enforced.

Question 72

As a general rule, slave owners never allowed their slaves to listen to a white preacher in church.

Question 73

Nat Turner was not a particularly religious man.

Question 74

Overall, slaves did not think much about freedom. They were content with their situation as long as their master was kind.

Question 75

Black Christianity is best described as a blend between African traditions and Christian beliefs.

Question 76

Denmark Vesey's 1822 slave rebellion resulted in the deaths of more than thirty whites in Charleston.

Question 77

By 1860 the South's most populous city was New Orleans.

Question 78

Despite being forbidden by law to marry, many slaves were able to create a family life on the plantation.

Question 79

When not in the field, slaves observed more traditional gender roles.

Question 80

By the 1830s, it was illegal to teach a slave to read or write.