Why did cotton planters repeatedly move west to clear new land?
Cotton farming wore out the soil
✓
Federal law limited plantation size
Eastern states taxed cotton heavily
River floods ruined eastern fields
Correct Answer
Cotton farming wore out the soil
Growing cotton year after year exhausted the soil, so planters moved to fresh land every decade or so, forcing enslaved people to clear and work new plantations farther west. No federal law limited plantation size. Eastern states did not tax cotton heavily enough to drive planters away. River floods were a local hazard, not the reason for the westward march of cotton.
Category: Cotton Economy
Question 2
What was a major consequence of the cotton gin?
The South needed fewer enslaved workers
Cotton became far more profitable and slavery expanded
✓
Southern farmers shifted to growing wheat
Cotton exports to Britain came to an end
Correct Answer
Cotton became far more profitable and slavery expanded
By removing seeds quickly, the gin made short-fiber cotton profitable across the interior South, which spread cotton planting and greatly increased the demand for enslaved labor. The idea that the South needed fewer enslaved workers is the opposite of what happened, because more acres of cotton required more hands to plant and pick. Southern farmers shifting to wheat happened only in parts of the Upper South, as tobacco declined. Cotton exports to Britain soared rather than ending.
Category: Cotton Economy
Question 3
When southern leaders declared that "cotton is king," what did they mean?
Cotton growers should control the federal government
Cotton prices would rise forever
Northern and British economies depended on southern cotton
✓
Cotton should replace gold as money
Correct Answer
Northern and British economies depended on southern cotton
The slogan expressed the belief that northern and British textile industries were so dependent on southern cotton that no one would dare make war on the South. Cotton growers controlling the federal government was not the meaning of the phrase. A promise that prices would rise forever was not the claim either. Using cotton as money was never proposed.
Category: Cotton Economy
Question 4
Which transportation technology, able to carry heavy loads through shallow water, became central to moving cotton down the Mississippi River system?
The canal barge
The transcontinental railroad
The clipper ship
The steamboat
✓
Correct Answer
The steamboat
Steamboats could move upstream and downstream with heavy cargo on shallow western rivers, and their numbers grew rapidly as the cotton trade expanded. Canal barges served man-made canals such as the Erie Canal, mainly in the North. The transcontinental railroad was not completed until 1869. Clipper ships were fast oceangoing sailing ships, not river craft.
Category: Cotton Economy
Question 5
Most American cotton in the decades before the Civil War was exported to textile mills in which country?
Great Britain
✓
France
China
Spain
Correct Answer
Great Britain
Most exported cotton went to Liverpool and on to the mills of Manchester and other British cities, tying Britain's industrial economy to southern slavery. France bought some cotton but far less than Britain. China was not a major buyer of American cotton. Spain had no large textile industry dependent on it.
Category: Cotton Economy
Question 6
Congress banned the importation of enslaved Africans effective in 1808. What was a major result?
Slavery declined in the Deep South
The domestic slave trade grew rapidly
✓
Prices for enslaved people fell sharply
Most enslaved people were freed
Correct Answer
The domestic slave trade grew rapidly
With imports outlawed, planters in the expanding cotton South bought enslaved people from the Upper South, and the domestic trade became a huge business. The idea that slavery declined in the Deep South is the reverse of what occurred, since it grew there. Prices for enslaved people rose rather than falling sharply, roughly doubling between the 1820s and 1850s. Most enslaved people remained in bondage until the Civil War.
Category: Domestic Slave Trade
Question 7
Which Upper South state was the largest source of enslaved people sold to the Deep South in the domestic slave trade?
Delaware
Kentucky
Virginia
✓
Missouri
Correct Answer
Virginia
As tobacco declined and planters turned to less labor-intensive wheat, Virginia, which had the largest enslaved population of any state, sold more enslaved people south than any other state. Delaware had a very small enslaved population and supplied few people to the trade. Kentucky sold many enslaved people south, but fewer than Virginia. Missouri had a much smaller enslaved population than Virginia.
Category: Domestic Slave Trade
Question 8
Which city had the largest slave market in the United States before the Civil War?
Boston
Baltimore
St. Louis
New Orleans
✓
Correct Answer
New Orleans
New Orleans, the great port of the cotton trade, held the nation's largest slave market. Boston was a northern city in a free state. Baltimore was a source of enslaved people sold south, but its market was much smaller. St. Louis had a smaller trade on the edge of the western frontier.
Category: Domestic Slave Trade
Question 9
Historians use what name for the forced movement of enslaved people from the Upper South to the Deep South in the decades before the Civil War?
The Second Middle Passage
✓
The Trail of Tears
The Great Migration
The Underground Railroad
Correct Answer
The Second Middle Passage
The name compares the domestic slave trade to the Atlantic crossing of the Middle Passage, because it again tore people from families and communities. The Trail of Tears was the forced removal of Native nations such as the Cherokee. The Great Migration was the movement of African Americans out of the South in the twentieth century. The Underground Railroad was the network that helped freedom seekers escape north.
Category: Domestic Slave Trade
Question 10
Slaveholders who claimed they cared for enslaved people as a father cares for children were using which justification?
Nullification
Paternalism
✓
Polygenism
Popular sovereignty
Correct Answer
Paternalism
Paternalism portrayed slaveholders as caring guardians, a self-serving picture that hid the violence of slavery. Nullification was the doctrine that a state could void a federal law. Polygenism was a pseudoscientific claim that races had separate origins. Popular sovereignty let settlers of a territory decide on slavery.
Category: Defending Slavery
Question 11
Which was a common form of everyday resistance among enslaved people?
Voting against slaveholding candidates
Suing for back wages in court
Slowing work and breaking tools
✓
Organizing labor unions on plantations
Correct Answer
Slowing work and breaking tools
Enslaved people resisted daily by working slowly, feigning ignorance and damaging tools, which reduced what slaveholders could extract from them. Voting against slaveholding candidates was impossible because enslaved people could not vote. Suing for back wages in court was not an option for people the law treated as property. Organizing labor unions on plantations could not happen under slavery.
Category: Resistance and Community
Question 12
Who led the 1831 rebellion of enslaved people in Southampton County that was crushed within about two days?
Denmark Vesey
Charles Deslondes
Frederick Douglass
Nat Turner
✓
Correct Answer
Nat Turner
Nat Turner, an enslaved preacher who believed he was called by God, led the revolt in Southampton County, Virginia, which deepened white southern fears and led to harsher laws. Denmark Vesey was accused of planning a revolt in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1822. Charles Deslondes led the 1811 German Coast Uprising in Louisiana. Frederick Douglass escaped slavery and became an abolitionist writer and speaker.
Category: Resistance and Community
Question 13
Why were large-scale slave revolts rare in the antebellum South?
Enslaved people knew retaliation would be brutal
✓
Federal troops guarded every plantation
Enslaved people could vote for change
Slaveholders rarely used physical punishment
Correct Answer
Enslaved people knew retaliation would be brutal
Enslaved people understood that revolts were quickly crushed and followed by mass executions and harsher controls, so most resistance took quieter forms. Federal troops did not guard plantations; local militias and slave patrols did the policing. Enslaved people could not vote. Slaveholders used whipping and other physical punishment routinely.
Category: Resistance and Community
Question 14
Where did most free Black southerners live before the Civil War?
On Deep South cotton plantations
In the Upper South and in cities
✓
In the Texas ranching country
On the Florida frontier
Correct Answer
In the Upper South and in cities
Free Black southerners were concentrated in the Upper South, where manumission had been more common after the Revolution, and in cities with more work opportunities. Deep South cotton plantations had relatively few free Black residents. The Texas ranching country was not a center of free Black life. The Florida frontier was not one either.
Category: Southern Society
Question 15
Which group of white southerners owned small farms and few or no enslaved people?
Planters
Cotton factors
Yeoman farmers
✓
Slave traders
Correct Answer
Yeoman farmers
Yeoman farmers were independent small landowners who worked their own land, often alongside family members, and owned few or no enslaved people. Planters were the wealthy elite with large estates and many enslaved workers. Cotton factors were merchants who marketed planters' crops. Slave traders bought and sold enslaved people for profit.
Category: Southern Society
Question 16
Why did many white southerners who owned no enslaved people still support slavery?
Slaveholders paid them a yearly federal stipend
Northern states barred them from moving west
Southern law required every family to own land
Shared white supremacy and hopes of becoming slaveholders
✓
Correct Answer
Shared white supremacy and hopes of becoming slaveholders
A shared belief in white supremacy united white southerners across class lines, and many hoped to buy enslaved people themselves one day. No yearly federal stipend paid non-slaveholders. Northern states did not bar southern whites from moving west. No southern law required every family to own land.
Category: Southern Society
Question 17
How did antebellum southern writers idealize the southern lady?
As gentle, pious and submissive
✓
As independent and politically active
As trained for a profession
As outspoken critics of slavery
Correct Answer
As gentle, pious and submissive
Writers praised the southern lady as gentle, devout and subservient to her husband, although elite women's own letters and diaries describe hardship, grief and loneliness. Independent and politically active women did not fit this ideal. Being trained for a profession was not expected of elite women. Being outspoken critics of slavery was the opposite of the role assigned to them.
Category: Southern Society
Question 18
What did John C. Calhoun's idea of the "concurrent majority" propose?
Requiring two-thirds of Congress to admit states
Letting a regional minority veto hostile laws
✓
Electing senators by popular vote
Letting Congress overrule the Supreme Court
Correct Answer
Letting a regional minority veto hostile laws
Calhoun argued that a major region, such as the South, should be able to block national laws it considered a threat, protecting slavery from a northern majority. Requiring two-thirds of Congress to admit states was not part of his theory. Electing senators by popular vote came much later, with the Seventeenth Amendment. Letting Congress overrule the Supreme Court was not his proposal.
Category: Defending Slavery
Question 19
Why did many slaveholders in the 1850s want the United States to acquire new territory in the Caribbean and Central America?
To resettle free Black Americans abroad
To end the international slave trade
To create new slave states
✓
To build naval bases against Spain
Correct Answer
To create new slave states
Southern expansionists saw lands such as Cuba as a way to add slave states and keep slavery's power in Congress as free states multiplied. Resettling free Black Americans abroad was the aim of colonization societies, not these expansionists. Ending the international slave trade was the opposite of what some filibusters did. Building naval bases against Spain was not their goal; they hoped to buy or take Spanish Cuba itself.
Category: Filibusters and Expansion
Question 20
Which Tennessee-born filibuster seized control of Nicaragua in 1855 and later legalized slavery there?
Narciso López
Davy Crockett
Sam Houston
William Walker
✓
Correct Answer
William Walker
William Walker took power in Nicaragua with a small band of followers, became its president, and legalized slavery before he was driven out in 1857. Narciso López was a Venezuelan-born filibuster who tried to seize Cuba. Davy Crockett was a Tennessee frontiersman and congressman who died at the Alamo in 1836. Sam Houston led the Texan army in 1836 and never ruled in Central America.
Category: Filibusters and Expansion