Deck 10: The Making of Middle-Class America

Question 1

The famous book in which Alexis de Tocqueville analyzed American society was

A) The American Commonwealth.
B) Democracy in America.
C) Life on the Mississippi.
D) Domestic Life of the Americans.

Answer 1

Democracy in America.

Question 2

During the 1830s and 1840s the economic differences between the rich and the poor

A) constituted a wide and growing gap, especially in the larger eastern cities.
B) remained constant with only a small gap between the two groups.
C) shrank dramatically due to the numerous economic opportunities of the growing economy.
D) remained constant with a large gap between the two groups.

Answer 2

constituted a wide and growing gap, especially in the larger eastern cities.

Question 3

By the 1830s, non-agricultural work increasingly took place

A) outside the home.
B) on the farm.
C) in the family household.
D) in maritime trades.

Answer 3

outside the home.

Question 4

What was the effect of the growth of the factory system and of cities on middle-class families?

A) Children became more valuable as future economic assets.
B) Mothers' power increased because they now worked at home.
C) More families were able to place their children as apprentices.
D) Fathers' power decreased because they were now absent from home so much.

Question 5

"The formation of the moral and intellectual character of the young is committed mainly to the female hand…The mother forms the character of the future man." This statement supports the concept of

A) the Cult of True Womanhood.
B) benevolent hierarchy of skills.
C) benevolent empire.
D) deputy husband role.

Question 6

Middle-class families in the 1830s had a(n)

A) declining birthrate.
B) decreasing divorce rate.
C) stable birthrate.
D) increasing birthrate.

Question 7

Among middle-class families, children came to be seen increasingly as

A) seething cauldrons of original sin.
B) innocent and morally superior.
C) perversely willful.
D) future workers.

Question 8

The most effective preacher of the Second Great Awakening was

A) Charles Grandison Finney.
B) William Ellery Channing.
C) Jonathan Edwards.
D) George Whitfield.

Question 9

A typical theme of the Second Great Awakening was that

A) God had predestined either salvation or damnation for everyone.
B) people did not need to worry about judgment day.
C) those who were saved were filled with God's grace and need not be bound by human laws.
D) people could take their salvation into their own hands.

Question 10

Evangelist Charles Grandison Finney's success depended upon

A) his defense of Catholicism.
B) a rational approach to religion based on college educated ministers.
C) his defense of Calvinism.
D) emotional release through personal testimony of salvation.

Question 11

What your text labels "the third pillar of the emerging American middle class," alongside the family and church, which had neither colonial precedents nor European equivalents, was

A) public education.
B) consumer culture.
C) civil service.
D) voluntary associations.

Question 12

The communitarian group whose members were celibate, held their property in common, valued simplicity and industriousness, stressed equality of labor, and practiced a joyful and fervent religion was

A) Brook Farm.
B) Oneida.
C) the Shakers.
D) the Mormons.

Question 13

The Illinois town founded by Mormon leader Joseph Smith as a semi-independent state within the federal Union was

A) Mount Holyoke.
B) Amana.
C) Nauvoo.
D) Salt Lake City.

Question 14

The communitarian group which attempted to change society the least were the

A) Owenites.
B) Shakers.
C) Mormons.
D) Fourierists.

Question 15

Individual reformers who tried to care for the physically and mentally disabled were

A) usually more effective than the more colorful communitarian reformers.
B) too unscientific to achieve anything.
C) unable to make substantial progress because of the enormous scale of the problems to be corrected.
D) usually less effective than the more pragmatic and less flamboyant communitarians.

Question 16

The pioneer in developing methods for educating deaf people who opened a school for deaf students in 1817 was

A) Thomas Gallaudet.
B) Lyman Beecher.
C) Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe.
D) Benjamin Lundy.

Question 17

One of the most striking aspects of the various practical reform movements of the early nineteenth century was their

A) total dependence on federal funding.
B) unwillingness to try new approaches to old problems.
C) emphasis on creating special facilities for dealing with social problems.
D) hostility toward science.

Question 18

The Auburn system was a pioneering experiment in

A) education for the blind.
B) prison reform.
C) communal living.
D) education for the deaf.

Question 19

" [C]hained, naked, beaten with rods, and lashed into obedience," is the way which of the following described the deplorable conditions of insane asylums to Massachusetts state legislators?

A) Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet
B) Angelina Grimke
C) Clara Barton
D) Dorothea Dix

Question 20

During the 1820s, Americans' per capita consumption of alcoholic beverages

A) decreased dramatically with the religious revivals of the Second Great Awakening.
B) increased to the highest point ever in American experience.
C) decreased because of the high prices of corn and rye whiskey.
D) increased, but to a rate only half as high as that for present-day Americans.

Question 21

Catholic immigrants from Germany and Ireland often

A) participated in the Second Great Awakening.
B) supported the American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions.
C) objected to demands for prohibition of all alcohol.
D) became leaders in the temperance movement.

Question 22

The first effective state law prohibiting the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages was passed by

A) Massachusetts.
B) Maine.
C) Virginia.
D) New York.

Question 23

No reform movement of the early nineteenth century was "more significant" and "more ambiguous" than

A) temperance.
B) prison reform.
C) abolitionism.
D) women's rights.

Question 24

William Lloyd Garrison's views on slavery might best be described as

A) designed to appeal to southern moderates.
B) uncompromising.
C) reflecting the northern viewpoint.
D) moderate.

Question 25

During the 1830s and 1840s, most white Americans thought William Lloyd Garrison's views were

A) supported by scientific research.
B) unconvincing and confrontational.
C) consistent with the teachings of their churches.
D) moderate and levelheaded.

Question 26

In his autobiography and speeches, Frederick Douglass insisted that

A) emancipation should be gradual.
B) returning to Africa was the only hope for American blacks.
C) full social, political, and economic equality for blacks was required.
D) violent revolts were necessary for slaves to obtain their freedom.

Question 27

An important factor in encouraging the growth of the women's rights movement was the

A) female abolitionists' recognition that, like the slaves, they were born into the caste system which destined them for menial roles in society.
B) model of the successful women's rights movement in England which had already succeeded in winning the vote for women.
C) increasing number of professional opportunities for college-educated women.
D) female abolitionists' recognition that the discrimination they faced was unlike the oppression slaves experienced.

Question 28

One of the few advocates of women's rights who did not begin her career in the abolitionist movement and who made a frontal assault on all forms of sexual discrimination in Women in the Nineteenth Century was

A) Lucretia Mott.
B) Margaret Fuller.
C) Sarah Grimke.
D) Catherine Beecher.

Question 29

The co-organizer of the Seneca Falls Convention and author of its Declaration of Sentiments was

A) Elizabeth Cady Stanton.
B) William Lloyd Garrison.
C) Susan B. Anthony.
D) Margaret Fuller.

Question 30

The Declaration of Sentiments from the Seneca Falls Convention states "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal." A primary author of this statement was

A) Margaret Fuller.
B) Dorothea Dix.
C) Elizabeth Cady Stanton.
D) Harriet Beecher Stowe.

Question 31

Susan B. Anthony played a prominent role in the women's rights movement because she was the first to

A) give large sums of money.
B) see the need for thorough organization.
C) write a regular newspaper column on women's rights.
D) advocate working with the abolitionists.

Question 32

The greatest expression of Romanticism in the United States was through

A) Puritanism.
B) Unitarianism.
C) transcendentalism.
D) pragmatism.

Question 33

Both Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau

A) worked actively in abolitionist organizations.
B) sought truth through scientific research.
C) engaged in civil disobedience to protest the Mexican War.
D) objected to many of society's restrictions on the individual.

Question 34

"When were the good and the brave ever in a majority?… If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer." The author of these statements was

A) Henry David Thoreau.
B) Francis Wayland.
C) Ralph Waldo Emerson.
D) George Catlin.

Question 35

The American transcendentalist who defended his refusal to pay taxes to support the Mexican War in his essay "Civil Disobedience" was

A) Herman Melville.
B) Nathaniel Hawthorne.
C) Ralph Waldo Emerson.
D) Henry David Thoreau.

Question 36

The American writer whose works are filled with examples of wild imagination and fascination with mystery, fright, and the occult is

A) Edgar Allan Poe.
B) Ralph Waldo Emerson.
C) John Greenleaf Whittier.
D) Walt Whitman.

Question 37

One of Hawthorne's greatest works, The Scarlet Letter, is a(n)

A) grim but sympathetic analysis of the consequences of adultery.
B) account of his life with a tribe of cannibals.
C) gripping account of the decay of an old New England family.
D) collection of rambling, uneven, free verse that seemed shockingly commonplace.

Question 38

Herman Melville's book which your text calls "one of the finest novels written by an American" is

A) Typee.
B) The House of the Seven Gables.
C) Leaves of Grass.
D) Moby-Dick.

Question 39

"I celebrate myself and sing myself. And what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you." This was written by

A) Nathaniel Hawthorne in The Scarlet Letter.
B) Edgar Allan Poe in "The Purloined Letter."
C) Herman Melville in Moby Dick.
D) Walt Whitman in "Song of Myself."

Question 40

Walt Whitman's book of poems in rambling free verse on commonplace topics in coarse language was

A) The Waste Land.
B) Songs of Innocence.
C) New England Songs.
D) Leaves of Grass.

Question 41

The text describes the works of Walt Whitman as

A) the most authentically American of any writer of the period.
B) totally rejected by the reading public during his lifetime.
C) quickly accepted by readers and reviewers.
D) usually rather flowery in language, but disciplined.

Question 42

Describing the dissemination of culture, the text observes that northern society was permeated by

A) widespread indifference to standards of taste and high culture.
B) lower-class attempts to unionize factory workers.
C) upper-class desire to bring European culture to America.
D) middle-class concern for being cultivated and refined.

Question 43

The mutual improvement societies which conducted discussions, sponsored libraries, lobbied for better schools, and presented lectures on a variety of topics were called

A) forums.
B) lyceums.
C) art-unions.
D) mechanics' libraries.

Question 44

The most basic goal of the common school movement was

A) sexual integration of public schools.
B) education for democracy.
C) racial integration of public schools.
D) private financing of education.

Question 45

By the 1850s, the common school movement had succeeded in establishing

A) free elementary schools and public institutions for teacher training in every state.
B) laws requiring school attendance to the age of 16 in every state outside the South.
C) free elementary and secondary schools in every state.
D) free elementary schools and public institutions for teacher training in every state outside the South.

Question 46

The most compelling argument for the success of the common schools was that they

A) encouraged independent and critical thought among Americans of all social classes.
B) promoted class consciousness among the industrial proletariat.
C) brought Americans of different economic and ethnic backgrounds together in mutually beneficial contact.
D) encouraged people to replace religion and superstition with science and reason.

Question 47

In Jacksonian America private colleges

A) shared the vigorous growth of the common schools.
B) expanded slowly and cautiously.
C) had too few students for too many colleges.
D) had too many students for too few colleges.

Question 48

Alexis de Tocqueville came to visit America because he thought that democracy was the wave of the future for European society.

Question 49

The nineteenth-century view that women were pure of mind and body and selflessly devoted to the care of others was criticized for making a cult out of "womanhood."

Question 50

The Second Great Awakening began as a counteroffensive to overemotional religious revivals.

Question 51

Wives of business leaders were often very responsive to the message of the Second Great Awakening.

Question 52

The Oneida Community, led by John Humphrey Noyes, practiced "complex" marriage.

Question 53

The antislavery movement entered the political arena in 1840 when the Liberty party nominated William Lloyd Garrison for president.

Question 54

When women sought to involve themselves in reform movements before the Civil War, they discovered that their roles as wives and mothers were major advantages in addressing the major social issues.

Question 55

The transcendentalists were complete individualists who viewed society as no more than the sum of its individual parts.

Question 56

Improved printing techniques greatly reduced the cost of newspapers and books to bring them within the reach of average Americans.

Question 57

Despite the obvious needs, there were no efforts to reform the traditional college curriculum in the early nineteenth century.

Question 58

Why did Alexis de Tocqueville visit America? Summarize his conclusions about American society. Compare and contrast the strengths and limitations of his observations.

Question 59

Describe the major changes that occurred in family life in America in the early nineteenth century.

Question 60

Describe the major reform movements of the early nineteenth century. What assumptions and problem-solving strategies did they share?

Question 61

Explain the ideas of the major romantic authors and describe how they affected American culture. Cite specific examples of individual authors described in the text.

Question 62

Explain how education and middle-class culture were transformed in the early nineteenth century by efforts to create a truly American and democratic society.

Question 63

What is the definition of the following key term:
-Cult of True Womanhood :

Question 64

What is the definition of the following key term:
-lyceums :