Deck 11: The Peculiar Institution

Question 1

Map: Size of Slaveholdings, 1860

Which of the following was the most significant cause of the trend depicted in the map?

A) Antislavery advocates in the east were pushing slavery westward.
B) the lack of political attempts to limit the expansion of slavery
C) The growth in the slave population led to its westward expansion.
D) Overcultivation depleted arable land in the Southeast.

Answer 1

Overcultivation depleted arable land in the Southeast.

Question 2

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.

Answer 2

75 percent.

Question 3

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.

Answer 3

1 to 5.

Question 4

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.

Question 5

What was true of the South and slavery in nineteenth-century America?

A) England did not need cotton from the South.
B) The South's total population consisted of 20 percent slaves.
C) The Old South had developed into the largest and most powerful slave society the modern world has known.
D) The amount of money invested in slavery was a small part of the economy.

Question 6

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.

Question 7

Map: Size of Slaveholdings, 1860

The trend shown in the map was most encouraged by

A) isolationism.
B) abolitionism.
C) manifest destiny.
D) imperialism.

Question 8

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) benefited in part from a sense of unity bred by criticism from outsiders.

Question 9

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.

Question 10

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

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

Question 11

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.

Question 12

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.

Question 13

From 1800 to 1860, which of the following occurred to the South and its economy?

A) Southern cities, Dallas and Houston, had the most slaves.
B) The South manufactured about half of the cotton textiles.
C) Because the South was a slave society, most immigrants stayed away.
D) Slavery was not profitable for most slaveowners.

Question 14

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.

Question 15

Plantation owners dominated U.S. southern life and:

A) spread slavery to Cuba and other Caribbean islands.
B) wanted to avoid a Civil War at all costs.
C) focused on reuniting slave families.
D) promoted African-American culture.

Question 16

Map: Size of Slaveholdings, 1860

According to the map, which of the following was true about American slavery in the South in the early to mid-nineteenth century?

A) The majority of southerners owned at least five slaves.
B) Most slaves lived on plantations of ten or fewer slaves.
C) The largest plantations were concentrated near waterways.
D) No legislative attempts had been made to limit the spread of slavery.

Question 17

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.

Question 18

Why could someone argue that the North was complicit in the expansion of slavery?

A) Many northern states had slaves at one time.
B) Some slaves ran away to northern states.
C) Some slaveholders were originally from the North.
D) Northern factory demand for cotton steadily increased.

Question 19

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."

Question 20

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

A) Tobacco.
B) Indigo.
C) Sorghum.
D) Cotton.

Question 21

While the North emphasized egalitarianism, the South stressed:

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

Question 22

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.

Question 23

What did the Reverend Charles C. Jones of Georgia do that made him different from most other slaveowners?

A) He improved slave housing and medical care.
B) He executed slaves who performed poorly.
C) He refused to allow slaves to learn about Christianity.
D) He taught his slaves to read and write.

Question 24

In Joseph Taper's letter to Joseph Long, how does Taper analyze his experience of living in Canada?

A) Living under a monarchy was difficult.
B) The treatment of slaves in Canada was abysmal.
C) Blacks did not receive educational opportunities.
D) The British system allowed for more "pursuit of happiness."

Question 25

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

A) Slaves accused of serious crimes were entitled to their day in court, although they faced all-white judges and juries.
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.

Question 26

What did paternalism reinforce?

A) Slaves must formally get married.
B) Slaves need to be watched carefully.
C) Slaves must practice Christianity on their own.
D) Slaves should learn how to read.

Question 27

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.

Question 28

Which of the following would have been a reflection of the paternalist ethos in southern slavery?

A) Slaves saw the slaveholder as their true parent.
B) Abolitionists in the North became more accepting of slavery.
C) It could result in fewer sales of slaves and more keeping of slave families together.
D) The owner felt responsible for his slaves because the slaves could not take care of themselves.

Question 29

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.

Question 30

Free blacks in the South were allowed to:

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

Question 31

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.

Question 32

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.

Question 33

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.

Question 34

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.

Question 35

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

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

Question 36

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.

Question 37

In the New Testament, Jesus did not condemn slavery. What did this mean to southern slaveholders?

A) The Bible was not good for defending slavery.
B) The New Testament could be used to endorse slavery.
C) Jesus was a slaveholder.
D) Slavery did not exist in the ancient Middle East.

Question 38

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.

Question 39

What resulted from the sexual exploitation of slave women?

A) Church ministers criticized the activity as a sin.
B) Most slave men were unaware of the exploitation of their wives and relatives.
C) Some wives of plantation owners resented when this happened and then punished slaves.
D) Many of the babies that resulted from the exploitation were sent to Africa.

Question 40

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.

Question 41

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.

Question 42

When comparing colonial slavery to nineteenth-century slavery, what was a major difference?

A) In the colonial period, slaves rarely worked in cotton fields.
B) Few slaves in the colonial period had a desire to run away.
C) The colonial period had no cash crops.
D) Slaves in the nineteenth century had a stronger feeling of connection to Africa.

Question 43

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.

Question 44

One study showed that how many slave men in the South did agricultural work?

A) 90 percent.
B) 60 percent.
C) 70 percent.
D) 80 percent.

Question 45

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.

Question 46

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.

Question 47

What was the key to developing an African-American slave community?

A) There was no slave community.
B) Slaves needed to be set free by their masters.
C) Slaves had to escape bondage before developing a community.
D) Slaves needed to have family members near them.

Question 48

Seeing themselves as a chosen people, blacks viewed which Biblical story as playing a central role in their version of Christianity?

A) Genesis.
B) Jonah and the whale.
C) Moses and the exodus from Egypt.
D) Noah and the ark.

Question 49

Which state had the fewest free blacks?

A) Mississippi.
B) Louisiana.
C) South Carolina.
D) Virginia.

Question 50

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.

Question 51

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.

Question 52

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.

Question 53

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.

Question 54

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.

Question 55

Where did the task labor system originate from?

A) It came from villages in West Africa.
B) It had been used in rural areas of England.
C) It started in the cotton belt areas of Mississippi and Alabama.
D) It was a holdover from the colonial period.

Question 56

Which of the following statements is accurate about the work done by southern slaves?

A) The leasing of slaves ended by 1800.
B) Slaves were prohibited from supervising white laborers.
C) By the time of the Civil War, about 200,000 worked in industrial-type occupations.
D) The federal government used only ex-slaves to build public structures in the South.

Question 57

What role did Christianity play in slavery?

A) Few slaves were interested in Christianity, so they stayed focused on their traditional African religions.
B) Few slaveholders wanted their slaves to learn.
C) Teaching slaves about Christianity helped to reinforce the owners' ideas on paternalism.
D) Slaves rejected the story of Moses as untrue.

Question 58

What was the biggest fear of a slave of any age?

A) Being whipped.
B) Not being taught to read.
C) A family member being sold.
D) Having to work in a cotton field.

Question 59

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.

Question 60

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.

Question 61

What was the Underground Railroad?

A) It used a system of railways to transport slaves.
B) It was a series of interlocking local networks involving abolitionists.
C) It used a single, centralized system with tunnels for slaves.
D) It employed encrypted codes and clearly defined routes and stations.

Question 62

Compare and contrast both passive and violent forms of slave resistance in the South from 1800-1848.

Question 63

Before his execution, how did Nat Turner see himself?

A) He felt guilty about the killing of whites.
B) He felt he was dying for the sin of slavery.
C) He regretted that he did not escape permanently.
D) He felt as if he had wasted his time.

Question 64

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.

Question 65

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.

Question 66

A slave from which state had the best chance of escaping to freedom permanently?

A) Alabama
B) Tennessee
C) South Carolina
D) Florida

Question 67

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) was a fugitive slave who risked her life many times to bring others out of slavery.

Question 68

Which of the following would be an example of "silent sabotage"?

A) With other slaves, Denmark Vesey planned a rebellion.
B) Joseph Taper escaped to Canada and then wrote a letter about his new home.
C) Nat Turner killed a white person during his rebellion.
D) A slave on a large plantation slowed down the work pace.

Question 69

"The antebellum South would not have been able to prosper without its reliance on slavery." Support, modify, or refute this statement.

Question 70

The Haitian slave revolt was successful and the attempts by Denmark Vesey and Nat Turner ultimately failed because:

A) slaves in the United States had less desire to be free.
B) slaves in Haiti had the help of the Spanish government.
C) Haiti had a population that was primarily of African heritage while most of the United States had a higher percentage of whites.
D) none of the black leaders of revolts in the United States were literate.

Question 71

After escaping slavery in the South, what was the primary reason why Henry "Box" Brown moved to England?

A) He wanted to do lectures in Europe.
B) He had family there.
C) He wanted to speak to Queen Victoria about his bondage.
D) He feared being recaptured.

Question 72

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.

Question 73

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

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

Question 74

Northerners who were not abolitionists did what in regards to slavery?

A) Many hoped to become slave owners.
B) A majority wanted the North to secede the union.
C) They faced a dilemma of conscience and law.
D) Most became members of the Underground Railroad.

Question 75

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.

Question 76

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.