Deck 16: The South and the Slavery Controversy, 1793-1860

Question 1

The plantation system of the Cotton South before the Civil War  

A) resembled a tightly controlled oligarchy in its monopolistic features.
B) became more democratic and open to newcomers.
C) was very financially stable over many years.
D) was attractive to European immigrants.
E) included no expectation that planter aristocrats had any obligation to serve the public as politicians or statesmen.

Answer 1

resembled a tightly controlled oligarchy in its monopolistic features.

Question 2

As their main agricultural crop, southern subsistence farmers raised  

A) cotton.
B) tobacco.
C) corn.
D) wheat.
E) sugar cane.

Answer 2

corn.

Question 3

Slaves regarded the least prosperous, nonslaveholding whites as  

A) potential, yet undesirable, masters.
B) their equals in doing the least desirable work.
C) violent, rabble-rousers who often picked on slaves.
D) hillbillies and "poor white trash"-too lazy and shiftless to work productively.
E) potential allies in slave revolts against planter aristocrats.

Answer 3

hillbillies and "poor white trash"-too lazy and shiftless to work productively.

Question 4

The majority of southern whites owned no slaves because  

A) they opposed slavery.
B) they could not afford the purchase price.
C) their urban location did not require them.
D) their racism would not allow them to work alongside African Americans.
E) they feared the possibility of slave revolts.

Question 5

Some southern slaves gained their freedom as a result of  

A) the prohibition of the Atlantic slave trade after 1807.
B) purchase by northern abolitionists.
C) fleeing to mountain hideaways.
D) purchasing their way out of slavery with money earned after hours.
E) the objection to slaveholding by some white women.

Question 6

Plantation agriculture was wasteful largely because  

A) it relied mainly on artificial means to fertilize the soil.
B) it required leaving cropland fallow every other year.
C) excessive water was used for irrigation.
D) it was too diversified, thus taking essential nutrients from the soil.
E) its excessive cultivation of cotton despoiled good land.

Question 7

All of the following were weaknesses of the slave plantation system except that  

A) it relied on the destructive one-crop economy of cotton and failed to institute a system of crop rotation.
B) it repelled a large-scale European immigration.
C) it stimulated racism among poor whites.
D) it created an aristocratic political elite.
E) its land continued to remain predominately in the hands of the small farmers.

Question 8

In society's basement in the South of 1860, there were nearly ____ million black human chattels.  

A) 1
B) 2
C) 4
D) 8
E) 10

Question 9

As a result of the introduction of the cotton gin  

A) fewer slaves were needed on the plantations.
B) short-staple cotton lost popularity.
C) slavery was reinvigorated in the South.
D) Thomas Jefferson predicted the gradual death of slavery.
E) the African slave trade was legalized.

Question 10

For free blacks living in the North  

A) living conditions were nearly equal to those for whites.
B) voting rights were widespread.
C) good jobs were plentiful.
D) education opened the door to economic opportunity.
E) discrimination against blacks concerning employment, the right to vote, and obtaining a public educationwas common.

Question 11

All of the following are true statements about free blacks except  

A) they were banned from entering several northern states.
B) they were always vulnerable to being hijacked back into slavery in the South.
C) slaveholders feared that they were living examples of what might be achieved with emancipation.
D) in the North, they forged ties with the Irish, who similarly worked in menial jobs.
E) most states denied them the right to vote.

Question 12

All told, only about ____ of white southerners owned slaves or belonged to a slaveholding family.  

A) one fourth
B) one third
C) half
D) fifteen percent
E) five percent

Question 13

Members of the planter aristocracy  

A) produced fewer front-rank statesmen than the North.
B) dominated society and politics in the South.
C) provided democratic rule in the South.
D) promoted tax-supported public education.
E) were much more progressive about race and black people than white yeoman farmers and laborers in the South.

Question 14

By 1860, the overwhelming majority of all southern whites did not own slaves, but instead  

A) lived and worked as laborers, artisans, or tradesmen in the emerging cities of the South.
B) eked out a living in the mountains and backcountry raising corn and hogs.
C) owned small farms where they and their families raised cotton.
D) farmed an annually rotated sequential mix of wheat, tobacco, rice, and cotton.
E) None of these choices are correct.

Question 15

Plantation mistresses  

A) were frequently assaulted by vengeful slaves.
B) were primarily responsible for controlling the plantation's male slaves.
C) frequently supported abolitionism.
D) commanded a sizable household staff of mostly female slaves.
E) were almost universally loved by their slaves.

Question 16

The most pro-Union of the white southerners were  

A) plantation owners.
B) mountain whites residing in the Appalachian range.
C) small slaveowners.
D) nonslaveowning subsistence farmers.
E) mistresses of southern plantation owners.

Question 17

Most white southerners were  

A) planter aristocrats.
B) small slaveowners.
C) merchants and artisans.
D) "poor white trash."
E) subsistence farmers.

Question 18

European immigration to the South was discouraged most profoundly by  

A) fierce economic competition with slave labor.
B) an unfavorable experience of growing cotton in Europe by German and Irish immigrant groups.
C) German, Irish, and Jewish antislavery groups.
D) immigration barriers enacted by southern states.
E) the inability of European immigrants to tolerate the hot climate.

Question 19

All the following were true of the American economy under Cotton Kingdom except  

A) cotton accounted for half the value of all American exports after 1840.
B) the South produced more than half the entire world's supply of cotton.
C) 75 percent of the British supply of cotton came from the South.
D) quick profits from cotton drew planters to its economic enterprise.
E) the South reaped all the profits from the cotton trade.

Question 20

Northern attitudes toward free blacks before the Civil War have been described as  

A) supporting blacks right to full citizenship and higher education.
B) disliking the race but professing appreciation for individual blacks.
C) advocating black movement into the new territories.
D) politically sympathetic but socially segregationist.
E) disliking individual blacks, even accomplished blacks such as Frederick Douglass, but professing admiration for the black race.

Question 21

Forced separation of spouses, parents, and children was most common  

A) in the Deep South.
B) on the large plantations.
C) on small plantations and in the upper South.
D) in the territories of Kansas, Nebraska, and New Mexico.
E) as a punishment for running away.

Question 22

The idea of recolonizing blacks back to Africa was  

A) proposed by Timothy Dwight Weld.
B) proposed by John Quincy Adams.
C) advocated by Frederick Douglass.
D) suggested by political leaders of the African nation of Liberia.
E) supported by the black leader Martin Delaney.

Question 23

The great increase of the slave population in the first half of the nineteenth century was largely due to  

A) the reopening of the African slave trade in 1808.
B) larger imports of slaves from the West Indies.
C) natural reproduction.
D) reenslavement of free blacks.
E) the forced, cattle-like breeding of slaves by white masters living in states of the Old South such as Virginia.

Question 24

The idea of transporting blacks back to Africa was  

A) a recognition of blacks' desire to preserve their culture.
B) never carried out.
C) advocated by Frederick Douglass.
D) proposed by the African nation of Liberia.
E) an expression of widespread American racism.

Question 25

By 1860, slaves were concentrated in the "black belt" located in the  

A) border states of Kentucky, Missouri, and Maryland.
B) Deep South states of Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana.
C) old South states of Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina.
D) new Southwest states of Texas, Arkansas, and Indian Territory.
E) mountain regions of Tennessee, West Virginia, and Kentucky.

Question 26

All of the following were characteristic of slaves in the mid-nineteenth century United States except  

A) slaves had no civil or political rights.
B) slaves usually toiled from dusk to dawn in the fields.
C) slaves had minimal protection from murder or unusually cruel punishment.
D) slaves were forbidden to testify in court and their marriages were not legal.
E) floggings were very uncommon and rare.

Question 27

The profitable southern slave system  

A) hobbled the economic development of the region as a whole.
B) saw many slaves moving to the upper South.
C) led to the textile industry's development in the South first.
D) relied almost totally on importing slaves to meet the unquenchable demand for labor.
E) failed to prompt most planters to regard their slaves as investments to be cared for and monitored like any other asset.

Question 28

As a result of white southerners' brutal treatment of their slaves and their fear of potential slave rebellions, the South  

A) formed alliances with white imperialists in Africa.
B) adopted British attitudes toward the "peculiar institution."
C) emancipated many slaves.
D) returned to relying on wage labor and indentured servitude for its main agricultural labor force.
E) developed a theory of biological racial superiority to justify slavery.

Question 29

By the mid-nineteenth century  

A) most southerners owned slaves.
B) the smaller slaveholders owned a majority of the slaves.
C) most slaves lived on large plantations.
D) slavery was a dying institution.
E) southerners were growing defensive about slavery.

Question 30

Match each abolitionist below with his publication.
A.William Lloyd Garrison
B.Theodore Dwight Weld
C.Frederick Douglass
D.David Walker
1)Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World
2)The Liberator
3)Narration of the Life of ____
4)American Slavery as It Is 

A) A-4, B-1, C-3, D-2
B) A-2, B-4, C-3, D-1
C) A-3, B-2, C-4, D-1
D) A-1, B-3, C-2, D-4
E) A-4, B-2, C-1, D-3

Question 31

As a substitute for the wage-incentive system, slaveowners most often used the  

A) promise of eventual freedom.
B) reward of some legal rights.
C) the promise to slaves of a grant of private property to do tenant farming after a period of years of bondage.
D) whip as a motivator.
E) threat of death.

Question 32

Slaves fought the system of slavery by  

A) slowing down the pace of their labor.
B) conducting periodic slave rebellions.
C) sabotaging expensive equipment.
D) running away from their masters.
E) All of these choices are correct.

Question 33

By 1860, life for slaves was most difficult in the  

A) Atlantic states of North and South Carolina.
B) Deep South states of Georgia and Florida.
C) territories of Kansas, Nebraska, and New Mexico.
D) upper South states of Virginia and Maryland.
E) the new southwest states of Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana.

Question 34

Slavery's greatest psychological horror, and the theme of Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, was  

A) the enforced separation of slave families, whose members could be sold away from each other.
B) slaveowners' frequent use of the whip.
C) the breeding of slaves.
D) having to do the most dangerous work on the plantation.
E) forcible sexual assault by slaveowners.

Question 35

All of the following were true of slavery in the South except that  

A) strong-willed slaves were sometimes sent to breakers to coerce slaves into accepting their bondage and the planter's mastery.
B) a distinctive African American slave culture developed.
C) a typical planter had too much of his own prosperity riding on the backs of his slaves to beat them on a regular basis.
D) the explosive growth of cotton production in Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana contributed directly to life being harder for the typical slave in this southern frontier region than other regions of the South or West.
E) most slaves were raised in single unstable parent households.

Question 36

Uncle Tom's Cabin was written in 1852 by  

A) Ralph Waldo Emerson.
B) William Lloyd Garrison.
C) Harriet Beecher Stowe.
D) Margaret Fuller.
E) Harriet Tubman.

Question 37

In 1839, enslaved Africans rose up aboard the Spanish slave ship  

A) Ferdinand.
B) Amistad.
C) La Guerra.
D) La Nina.
E) El Liberte.

Question 38

Most slaves were raised  

A) without the benefit of a stable home life.
B) in stable two-parent households.
C) never knowing anything about their relatives.
D) without displaying African cultural practices including the distinctive African style of responsorial preaching.
E) without exhibiting any religious practices including a hybrid form of African Christianity.

Question 39

Which one of the following has the least in common with the other four?  

A) Nat Turner
B) David Walker
C) John C. Calhoun
D) Denmark Vesey
E) Gabriel

Question 40

In some counties of the deep South, especially along the lower Mississippi River, blacks accounted for more than ____ percent of the population.  

A) 25
B) 50
C) 75
D) 10
E) 95

Question 41

To what extent were cotton production and slavery more a burden to the South than a benefit? Use specific political, economic, and social arguments to support your argument.

Question 42

The slave culture was characterized by  

A) the breakdown of black family life.
B) frequent intermarriage between slaves who were close relatives.
C) a hybrid religion of Christian and African elements.
D) widespread illiteracy among slaves.
E) subtle forms of resistance to slavery.

Question 43

To what extent did the "Gag Resolution" passed by the House of Representatives in 1836 symbolize the threat that slavery posed for all Americans, North and South?

Question 44

The South's "positive good" argument for slavery claimed that  

A) slavery was supported by the authority of both the Bible and the Constitution.
B) slavery was good for the barbarous Africans because enslavement introduced them to Christianity.
C) slaves benefited from receiving education and job training.
D) slaves were usually treated as members of the family.
E) slaves were better off than most northern wage earners.

Question 45

After 1830, most people in the North  

A) held that the Constitution sanctioned slavery.
B) were generally indifferent toward slavery or its expansion.
C) were alarmed by the radicalism of abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison.
D) quickly rallied to the support of proponents of immediate abolition.
E) did not have racist and discriminatory attitudes toward individual blacks in the North.

Question 46

The voice of white southern abolitionism fell silent at the beginning of the  

A) 1810s.
B) 1820s.
C) 1830s.
D) 1840s.
E) 1850s.

Question 47

William Lloyd Garrison pledged his dedication to  

A) shipping freed blacks back to Africa.
B) supporting armed slave insurrections against all white slaveholders in the South.
C) preventing the expansion of slavery beyond the South.
D) forming an antislavery political party.
E) the immediate abolition of slavery in the South.

Question 48

Cotton became important to the prosperity of the North as well as the South because  

A) about two-thirds of the southern cotton crop was sold to New England textile mills.
B) northern merchants handled the shipping of southern cotton.
C) cotton accounted for about half the value of all United States exports after 1840.
D) northern farmers profited from selling their foodstuffs to feed southern slaves.
E) northern investors controlled the cotton futures markets.

Question 49

Even those who did not own slaves in the pre-Civil War South supported that institution because they  

A) dreamed of one day owning slaves themselves.
B) presumed themselves racially superior to black slaves.
C) were always economically better off than slaves.
D) were closely related to people who did own slaves.
E) benefited from the economic growth of the region.

Question 50

After 1830, the abolitionist movement took a new, more energetic tone, encouraged by the  

A) success of the British abolitionists in having slavery abolished in the British West Indies.
B) religious spirit of the Second Great Awakening.
C) success of the American Colonization Society.
D) success of several southern slave insurrections.
E) widespread support for antislavery action in the North.

Question 51

Why was the proposal for colonizing blacks back to Africa attractive to many whites, even as late as the onset of the Civil War? Why was the proposal for colonizing blacks back to Africa racist and highly discriminatory by many American blacks? Do you agree with this assessment that this proposal was underpinned by racism by whites against blacks?

Question 52

The pre-Civil War South was characterized by  

A) a well-developed martial spirit.
B) the lack of free, tax-supported public education.
C) a widening gap between rich and poor.
D) a ruling planter aristocracy.
E) a growing hostility to free speech and a free press.

Question 53

Before the Civil War, free blacks  

A) were far more numerous in the North than in the South.
B) were often the mulatto offspring of white fathers and black mothers.
C) were often forbidden basic civil rights.
D) found their greatest friends and sympathizers in poor Irish immigrants.
E) were disliked in the North as well as the South.

Question 54

To what extent were abolitionists extremists when they undertook to abolish slavery? How did the goals, strategies, and tactics of abolitionists change before the onset of the Civil War?

Question 55

Arrange the following in chronological order: the founding of the
(A)American Colonization Society,
(B)American Anti-Slavery Society, and
(C)Liberty party.  

A) A, B, C
B) C, A, B
C) B, C, A
D) A, C, B
E) C, B, A

Question 56

Assume the role of a southern slave.Describe what life is like for you.What experiences have you had, what have you seen happen to you and your family, what emotions have you felt, and how do you respond to your exploitation and the brutality of your condition? What moral and religious values do you hold and value highly?

Question 57

Many abolitionists turned to political action in 1840, when they backed the presidential candidate of the  

A) Free Soil party.
B) Republican party.
C) Know-Nothing party.
D) Liberty party.
E) Socialist party.

Question 58

Slaves were  

A) regarded primarily as financial investments by their owners.
B) the primary form of wealth in the South.
C) profitable for their owners.
D) never bred like cattle.
E) denied the opportunity to develop any kind of family life by white slaveholders.

Question 59

​In Varying Viewpoints: What Was the True Nature of Slavery, the contemporary historian Eugene Genovese agrees with previous historians of American slavery that   

A) ​this southern institutionembraced a form of economic paternalism which reflected the need of southern slaveholders to control and coax labor out of their reluctant and recalcitrant "investments."
B) southern slaveholders actually treated slaves with a kindly and caring paternalism throughout the lives of most slaves.
C) ​blacks were inferior and submissive by nature, facilitating their participation in the institution of southern slavery.
D) ​blacks did not abhor the coercive social and economic institution that enslaved them.
E) ​this southern institution was notunderpinned by racist attitudes by southern slaveholders and most other southerners as well.

Question 60

Match each abolitionist below with his role in the movement.
A.Wendell Phillips
B.Frederick Douglass
C.Elijah P.Lovejoy
D.William Lloyd Garrison
1)abolitionist martyr
2)black abolitionist
3)abolitionist golden trumpet
4)abolitionist newspaper publisher

A) A-4, B-2, C-l, D-3
B) A-1, B-4, C-2, D-3
C) A-1, B-3, C-4, D-2
D) A-2, B-1, C-4, D-3
E) A-3, B-2, C-1, D-4

Question 61

Elaborate on the text authors' comment that with the invention of the cotton gin, "the slave [was] ...chained to the gin and the planter to the slave."

Question 62

Based on "Varying Viewpoints," discuss the various ways in which historians have viewed the relationships between master and slave.Select one of the discussed views of the master-slave relationship that you believe most accurately and comprehensively depicts the dynamics of this relationship.Defend your analysis of the master-slave relationship.

Question 63

Assess the validity of the following statement, "Slaves were better off than both wage earners in northern industry and free blacks back in Africa." Do you agree? Why or why not?

Question 64

It has been argued that both Britain and the North were inextricably tied to the South with "cotton threads." Explain and defend or attack the legitimacy of this assertion.

Question 65

Describe the arguments and the ways in which the South reacted to antislavery arguments after the 1830s.

Question 66

Assess the validity of the following statement, "White southerners ...liked the black as an individual but despised the race.The white northerner ...often professed to like the race but disliked individual blacks." Do you agree with this statement? Why or why not?

Question 67

How did the strategies and tactics of some of the radical abolitionists hasten the onset of the Civil War? Defend or attack the legitimacy and wisdom of some of the strategies and tactics of the radical abolitionists.