SS Chapter 13 The South

Why did the value of slaves drop in the South following the American Revolution?

• Slaves began to escape to the North.
• Crop process fell and the demand for slaves decreased.
• Slaves launched rebellions throughout the South.
• The practice of slavery became unpopular in the South.

How did Eli Whitney's original cotton gin work?

• Horses drew the machine through green-seed cotton fields to harvest seedless fibers.
• Cotton was put into the machine, which seeded, baled, and tied the fibers with hemp.
• A worker cranked the machine and "teeth" separated green seeds from cotton fibers.
• A steam engine powered the machine, which removed seeds from long-staple cotton.

How did long-staple cotton differ from short-staple cotton?

• It was sold only to Great Britain.
• It was much cheaper.
• It was easier to grow.
• It was easier to process.

Why did southern cotton planters rely on the region's rivers to ship goods?

• The transportation revolution had introduced the flatboat.
• The lack of roads made shipping by land very difficult.
• The new railroad transport was still too costly.
• The traffic on the roads made road travel time consuming.

What was the "cotton belt"?

• A long stretch of land in the South where short-staple cotton crops were wiped out by disease in the 1830s.
• The southern region east of the Mississippi that produced two-thirds of the cotton grown in the United States.
• An area stretching from South Carolina to Texas that grew most of the country's cotton crop.
• Fields in Mexico where agricultural scientists worked to crossbreed short-staple cotton with Mexican cotton.

What does "crop rotation" involve?

• Crossbreeding short-staple cotton with other varieties to maximize quality.
• Raking fertilizer into the ground around the roots of young plants to mix air and nutrients into the soil.
• Turning the soil over after a harvest to prevent insects from spending the winter underground and infesting the next season's plants.
• Changing the type of plant grown on a given plot each year in order to protect the land from mineral loss.

What was the Tredegar Iron Works?

• A southern factory that turned iron into useful products for industry and the military.
• A northern company that specialized in turning iron into steel by heating it.
• A northern mine that provided coal to manufactureres of iron products.
• A southern manufacturing plant that produced locomotives for the government.

What was the main problem with the production of tobacco before the 1840s?

• Tobacco took a long time to grow.
• Tobacco was illegal in many states.
• Tobacco could be grown only in the North.
• Tobacco needed to dried before shipping.

In the fist half of the 1800s, what portion of white southern families had slaves?

• one-third
• one-half
• two-thirds
• three-quarters

What was a "yeoman"?

• established plantation owner
• freed southern slave
• white owner of a small farm
• northern slave sold to a Southerner