Chapter 16: The South and Slave Controversy

From the outset, the U.S. government grappled with the uncomfortable question of slavery in all of the following legal measures EXCEPT the

• Northwest Ordinance of 1787

• constitutional ban on slave imports beginning in 1808

• Missouri Compromise in 1820

• Non-importation Act of 1807

• Compromise of 1850

What single invention halted idealistic discussions in the early republic about the eventual end of slavery?

• The War of 1812

• The invention of the cotton gin

• The election of slave-holding presidents like Washington and Jefferson

• The explosion of tobacco as an export crop

• The congressional gag order

Which of these economic woes was NOT associated with cotton cultivation in the plantation South?

• A concentration of wealth, economic resources, and power in fewer and fewer hands

• Excessive land cultivation and soil depletion

• Over-speculation in land and slaves

• Increasing vulnerability to a volatile world market

• A rising number of new immigrants seeking to profit from land

By 1860 nearly three-quarters of all white Southerners

• owned no slaves

• owned slaves

• cultivated cotton

• were connected to the plantation system

• lived in or around the Appalachian Mountains

Which of the following is NOT a true statement about free blacks in antebellum America?

• Some of them owned slaves and property

• They shared the same voting and other rights as white men everywhere

• Some of them purchased their freedom by working after hours for extra money.

• Southern freedmen were at risk of being captured and re-enslaved.

• They were often despised more in the North than in the South

Slaves worked to undermine their masters and regain some margin of autonomy-however small-in all of the following ways EXCEPT

• slowing down the pace of their work

• taking food from their masters' kitchens and gardens

• destroying homes and crops

• pilfering household and other goods from their masters' homes

• sabotaging equipment

The earliest antislavery efforts focused mainly on

• immediate and complete emancipation

• gradually freeing the slaves over a period of years

• transporting slaves to their own colony within the region that would become the United States

• aiding slave rebellions and uprisings

• exporting slaves back to Africa

How did the two great abolitionists, former slave Frederick Douglas and northern white businessman William Lloyd Garrison, differ in their strategy for ending slavery?

• Douglas believed that the North should break away from the slave-holding South; Garrison did not.

• Garrison renounced political remedies; Douglas embraced them.

• Garrison sought violent overthrow of slavery; Douglas did not.

• Douglas made incendiary speeches; Garrison appealed more to reason, principle, and integrity.

• Douglas was prone to theatrics; Garrison was known for his impassioned speeches

Which of these was NOT offered as a defense of slavery?

• That is was a positive good, supported by the Bible

• That slaves were treated as family members

• That is was good for Africans, who were inferior people

• That slaves were better treated and cared for than northern factory workers

• That slavery provided blacks with minimal education in reading and writing

The main reason that much of the North did NOT initially embrace abolitionism or support it until the 1850s was that

• the northern economy was tightly bound to that of the South

• most northerners disliked the lecturing, protests, and other tactics employed by abolitionists.

• northerners were not yet sure whether slave or paid labor would drive industrialization.

• territorial expansion had not yet become a major concern for the North.

• northerners considered slavery a matter for the states to decide.