By 1860 the American South grew most of the world's cotton.
Correct Answer
True
True. Southern plantations supplied a large majority of the world's cotton by the eve of the Civil War, which is why planters believed cotton gave them great power.
Category: Cotton Economy
Question 2
Cotton could be grown and harvested with little labor.
Correct Answer
False
False. Cotton was very labor-intensive, requiring planting, months of weeding and repeated rounds of picking, which is why planters relied so heavily on enslaved workers.
Category: Cotton Economy
Question 3
Cotton was the leading export of the United States in the decades before the Civil War.
Correct Answer
True
True. Raw cotton was the nation's most valuable export, shipped mainly to British textile mills, and it made slavery central to the national economy.
Category: Cotton Economy
Question 4
Enslaved people could enter into legally recognized marriages.
Correct Answer
False
False. The law did not recognize marriages between enslaved people, although many formed lasting families that were constantly threatened by sale.
Category: Resistance and Community
Question 5
Trickster tales such as the Brer Rabbit stories used humor to show weaker characters outwitting more powerful ones.
Correct Answer
True
True. These stories entertained and also carried lessons about surviving and outsmarting the powerful, a quiet commentary on slavery.
Category: Resistance and Community
Question 6
Nat Turner's Rebellion led Virginia to abolish slavery soon afterward.
Correct Answer
False
False. Virginia kept slavery and passed harsher restrictions after the revolt, and the state remained a major source of enslaved people for the domestic trade.
Category: Resistance and Community
Question 7
The 1811 German Coast Uprising near New Orleans was one of the largest slave revolts in U.S. history.
Correct Answer
True
True. Led by Charles Deslondes, a large group of enslaved people marched toward New Orleans before militias crushed the revolt and executed many participants.
Category: Resistance and Community
Question 8
Enslaved parents taught their children to speak openly and freely around white people.
Correct Answer
False
False. Parents taught children to be guarded and discreet around white people, because careless words could lead to punishment or sale.
Category: Resistance and Community
Question 9
Work songs sung by enslaved people could carry hidden meanings that white listeners missed.
Correct Answer
True
True. Songs might sound simple to white listeners while carrying messages of sorrow, protest or hope that the singers understood.
Category: Resistance and Community
Question 10
Southern states made it easier for slaveholders to free enslaved people in the decades before the Civil War.
Correct Answer
False
False. Southern states increasingly restricted manumission and stripped free Black people of rights as the defense of slavery hardened.
Category: Southern Society
Question 11
Most white southern families owned no enslaved people.
Correct Answer
True
True. Slaveholding was concentrated among a minority of white families, and only a small elite owned large numbers of enslaved people.
Category: Southern Society
Question 12
Yeoman farmers generally favored a strong federal government that would tax them to build canals and railroads.
Correct Answer
False
False. Yeoman farmers generally distrusted an active federal government, opposed taxes for internal improvements, and feared federal interference with slavery.
Category: Southern Society
Question 13
Many slaveholders viewed the Tariff of 1828 as a sign of northern hostility to southern interests.
Correct Answer
True
True. Southerners called it the Tariff of Abominations and saw it as proof that a northern majority could use federal power against them, which fueled the nullification movement.
Category: Defending Slavery
Question 14
Wealth in the antebellum South was spread fairly evenly among white families.
Correct Answer
False
False. Wealth was highly concentrated in a small planter elite, while most white southerners were yeoman farmers or landless poor whites.
Category: Southern Society
Question 15
Proslavery writers argued that northern wage workers were treated worse than enslaved people.
Correct Answer
True
True. Defenders of slavery claimed that wage labor exploited workers and abandoned them in old age, while slaveholders supposedly cared for enslaved people for life.
Category: Defending Slavery
Question 16
The theory of polygenism held that all human races shared a single origin.
Correct Answer
False
False. Polygenism, promoted by Louis Agassiz and others, claimed that races had separate origins, a false idea used to give racism a scientific appearance.
Category: Defending Slavery
Question 17
Many southern slaveholders in the 1850s hoped to acquire Cuba as a new slave state.
Correct Answer
True
True. Cuba already had slavery and a large plantation economy, so expansionists saw it as a way to add slave-state power in Congress.
Category: Filibusters and Expansion
Question 18
Narciso López's 1851 invasion of Cuba sparked a successful uprising against Spanish rule.
Correct Answer
False
False. Cubans did not rise up as López had hoped, and Spanish authorities captured and executed him and many of his followers.
Category: Filibusters and Expansion
Question 19
Britain abolished slavery in its Caribbean colonies in the 1830s.
Correct Answer
True
True. Parliament's 1833 act ended slavery in Britain's Caribbean colonies, with a period of forced apprenticeship that ended in 1838, which made southern slaveholders fear British antislavery influence nearby.
Category: Filibusters and Expansion
Question 20
The federal government officially sponsored filibuster expeditions into Latin America.
Correct Answer
False
False. Filibusters were private, unsanctioned expeditions, and federal neutrality laws dating to 1794 and strengthened in 1818 made such expeditions a crime.
Category: Filibusters and Expansion