History 151: Final Examination Study Guide
Most recent update: March 9, 2008
The Final Examination will consist of three parts.
Part 1. "Objective" (multiple choice, fill in the blank, etc.) questions on material covered since the second midterm.
Part 2. An essay question dealing with Frederick Douglass' Narrative (see the study guide posted on Carmen).
Part 3. A comprehensive essay dealing with three important themes in American life from colonial times to 1877.
Terms:
“The South”
herrenvolk democracy
Nat Turner’s Rebellion, 1831
“Reform Movements”
Second Great Awakening
Charles G. Finney
Temperance Crusade
“Discovery of the Asylum”
Dorothea Dix
Abolitionism
William Lloyd Garrison
Frederick Douglass
Manifest Destiny and Sectional Controversy
Missouri Compromise, 1820
“gag rule”
Wilmot Proviso
Compromise of 1850
Fugitive Slave Act of 1850
Kansas-Nebraska Act, 1854
Popular Sovereignty
“Bleeding Kansas”
Dred Scott Decision, 1857
Civil War
Lincoln-Douglas Debates, 1858
John Brown
Harpers Ferry Raid, 1859
Crittenden Plan
Jefferson Davis
Fort Sumter
The Emancipation Moment, 1862-1877
"Great Emancipator" thesis
"self-emancipation" thesis
contraband camps
Andrew Johnson
Presidential Reconstruction
Radical Reconstruction
Share-Cropping
Nash, The American People:
Chapter 10: “Currents of
Change in the Northeast and the Old Northwest”
1) What three basic phases has the American economy gone through? What were the main features of each phase?
2) What was the "Market Revolution"? What were the five main developments that gave rise to it?
3) How did the Market Revolution undermine the subsistence farmer?
4) In what ways did the government support the transportation revolution?
5) For success of a subset of an economy a region often specifies a domain of expertise. What reasons caused New England to specify in manufacturing?
6) In what sense did the invention of the cotton gin perpetuate slavery?
7) In what ways are the concepts of slavery and republicanism inconsistent from one another?
8) What was the “Lowell System?”
Chapter 12: “Shaping America in the Antebellum Age”
9) What effect did the Second Great Awakening have on the American political system? In what ways did it affect the republican experiment? What groups still remained excluded from political participation?
10) Why is Andrew Jackson considered such an exemplar of the rise of democracy during this period? How was he viewed by the common man?
11) What is the Second Party System? What are the main differences between the two opposing parties? What factors influenced their creation?
12) What was the Nullification Crisis and how did it come about? What did the Nullifiers hope to accomplish?
13) What significance did “the trail of tears” hold for the Indian nations?
14) How did the Market Economy lead to increased racial tension?
15) Why did public education become important during the early 19th century?
16) What movements exemplified Americans desire to reform their society?
17) Why did Americans drink so much during the early 19th century and why were women so involved in the temperance movement?
18) What was abolitionism? What percentage of Americans considered themselves abolitionists?
19) For what reason were upper-middle-class women more involved in seeking women’s rights than those of the working class?
Chapter 11: “Slavery”
20) The average slave was owned by whom and worked where? The average slaveholder owned how many slaves?
21) For what reasons did the abolitionist movement emerge?
22) What effect on the abolition movement did Nat Turner’s Rebellion have? White Southerners? Slaves?
23) What economic and social patterns characterized the planter class of the Deep South?
24) How did slaves retain a sense of community?
Chapters 7, 9, 13, 14, 15,
16:
The Sectional Conflict, Civil War, and Reconstruction
30) What efforts were made to keep the issue of slavery out of national politics?
31) How did the Mexican war affect the institution of slavery?
32) What was the significance of the Dred Scott Decision?
33) For what reasons did the South move toward secession from the North?
34) What political reasons influenced Lincoln’s decision to emancipate enslaved African Americans? What role did slaves play in bringing about emancipation?
35) What factors gave the Union advantage over their Confederate counterparts? How did these factors assist their victory?
36) What was President Andrew Johnson's policy toward the defeated South? Why did many Northern Congressmen find it unatisfactory?
37) What were the differences in political philosophy between Johnson and most Republicans that led to the bitter clash between the president and Congress over Reconstruction?
38) What were the main provisions of Congressional (Radical) Reconstruction?
39) In what ways did the freedpeople create new lives for themselves after the Civil War? How much assistance did they receive from the federal government? Why didn't the government do more to help?
40) Which groups supported the new state governments that took form in the South after 1867?
40) Between 1866 and 1877, it can be argued that some conservative white Southerners fought an low-intensity conflict--an insurgency like the one in Iraq, albeit with somewhat different tactics--and ultimately regained a dominant political voice in the region. What means did they use to gain success? How did the Republican state governments in the South try to deal with them? How did the federal government try to deal with them?
Possible Essays:
See the study guide for Frederick Douglass' Narrative.
Comprehensive Essay:
For the conprehensive essay, discuss three important themes in American life from colonial times to 1877. You are free to select any three themes that seem most important to you, but here are a few possibilities:
The role of religion in American life
The effect of abundant land and resources on the American character
The sense that the America has a special and positive role to play in the world
The challenges of creating and maintaining a republic
The divide between the promise of human freedom and equality versus the presence of unfreedom and inequality within American society, and the efforts made to reconcile the two.