Revivalists of the Second Great Awakening taught that people could choose their own salvation, rejecting which Calvinist doctrine?
Predestination
✓
The Trinity
The authority of scripture
Salvation through faith
Correct Answer
Predestination
Predestination held that God had already chosen the few who would be saved, and revival preachers rejected it by teaching that any sinner could choose to be born again. The Trinity remained a core belief of the Baptists, Methodists, and Presbyterians who led the revivals. The authority of scripture was something revival preachers stressed, not rejected. Salvation through faith was a basic Protestant teaching that revivalists embraced.
Category: Second Great Awakening
Question 2
Why did western New York become known as the burned-over district?
Great forest fires cleared it for farming
Repeated waves of intense religious revivals swept it
✓
Wheat farming exhausted its soil
Factory fires spread along the Erie Canal
Correct Answer
Repeated waves of intense religious revivals swept it
The nickname referred to the religious fervor of the Second Great Awakening, as revival after revival swept the region and new movements arose there. Great forest fires cleared it for farming is not the source of the name. Wheat farming exhausted its soil has nothing to do with the nickname. Factory fires spread along the Erie Canal is invented; the canal brought growth, not the name.
Category: Second Great Awakening
Question 3
Which denomination grew out of the church that Richard Allen led for Black Methodists in Philadelphia?
The American Bible Society
The American Colonization Society
The African Methodist Episcopal Church
✓
The American Tract Society
Correct Answer
The African Methodist Episcopal Church
In the 1790s Richard Allen led Black Methodists in Philadelphia in forming their own congregation, which grew into the African Methodist Episcopal Church, a denomination under Black leadership. The American Bible Society, founded in 1816, distributed Bibles and was not a Black-led church. The American Colonization Society sought to send free Black Americans to Africa. The American Tract Society distributed religious pamphlets.
Category: Second Great Awakening
Question 4
Which idea best summarizes what Ralph Waldo Emerson and like-minded thinkers of the American Renaissance valued?
Obedience to church authority
Strict reason over all emotion
Loyalty to a political party
Individual insight over social conformity
✓
Correct Answer
Individual insight over social conformity
Transcendentalists believed each person could grasp truths beyond ordinary sensory experience and urged individuals to trust their own insight rather than conform. Obedience to church authority runs against their distrust of institutions. Strict reason over all emotion reverses their debt to romanticism, which prized feeling. Loyalty to a political party is the opposite of their call for independent thinking.
Category: Transcendentalism
Question 5
Which essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson, published in 1841, urged readers to think independently and reject mass conformity?
Self-Reliance
✓
Civil Disobedience
Song of Myself
Walden
Correct Answer
Self-Reliance
Emerson's Self-Reliance argued that each person should trust his or her own judgment, declaring that a true individual must be a nonconformist. Civil Disobedience was Henry David Thoreau's essay on resisting an unjust government. Song of Myself was a poem by Walt Whitman. Walden was Thoreau's account of living in a cabin near Concord.
Category: Transcendentalism
Question 6
Which poet and critic, also known for his tales of horror, openly mocked the writings of Emerson's transcendentalist circle?
Walt Whitman
Edgar Allan Poe
✓
Margaret Fuller
Henry David Thoreau
Correct Answer
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe, a poet, critic and author of dark tales, scorned the transcendentalist movement and openly mocked the transcendentalists' writing. Walt Whitman celebrated the individual in Leaves of Grass and admired Emerson. Margaret Fuller was a leading transcendentalist and editor of The Dial. Henry David Thoreau was a transcendentalist and a close friend of Emerson.
Category: Transcendentalism
Question 7
Which practice was a defining feature of the Shaker communities that followed Mother Ann Lee?
Complex marriage among members
Plural marriage for leaders
Celibacy for all members
✓
Private ownership of farms
Correct Answer
Celibacy for all members
Shakers lived celibate lives, so their communities depended on converts and adopted children; they also shared all property and treated men and women as equals. Complex marriage among members was practiced at John Humphrey Noyes's Oneida Community. Plural marriage for leaders was a Latter-day Saint practice. Private ownership of farms was forbidden among Shakers, who held property in common.
Category: Utopian Communities
Question 8
John Humphrey Noyes built his Oneida Community around which belief?
God had chosen only a few for salvation
Hard jobs deserved the highest wages
Alcohol was the root of every social ill
People could become entirely free of sin
✓
Correct Answer
People could become entirely free of sin
Noyes preached perfectionism, the belief that people could reach a sinless state, and he claimed to have reached it himself in 1834. God had chosen only a few for salvation is Calvinist predestination, which revival-era perfectionists rejected. Hard jobs deserved the highest wages was a principle of Charles Fourier. Alcohol was the root of every social ill was the outlook of many temperance reformers.
Category: Utopian Communities
Question 9
Brook Farm, a cooperative community in West Roxbury, Massachusetts, drew its leading supporters from which group?
Transcendentalists
✓
Shakers
Latter-day Saints
Rappites
Correct Answer
Transcendentalists
Brook Farm was founded in the 1840s by George Ripley, a transcendentalist, and it attracted Boston-area intellectuals who wanted to combine manual labor with intellectual work. Shakers built their own celibate religious villages. Latter-day Saints gathered in their own settlements such as Nauvoo, Illinois. Rappites were German Pietists who settled in Pennsylvania and Indiana.
Category: Utopian Communities
Question 10
What was the main basis for Robert Owen's community at New Harmony, Indiana?
Revelations from a religious prophet
Faith in human reason and cooperation
✓
Shaker teachings on spiritual mysticism
A pledge of total abstinence
Correct Answer
Faith in human reason and cooperation
Owen, a British mill owner troubled by factory conditions, built New Harmony on faith in human reason and cooperative living rather than religion; infighting ended it within a few years. Revelations from a religious prophet describes the Latter-day Saints under Joseph Smith. Shaker teachings on spiritual mysticism belonged to Ann Lee's followers. A pledge of total abstinence was the tool of temperance societies.
Category: Utopian Communities
Question 11
Followers of the French philosopher Charles Fourier organized cooperative communities known as what?
Missions
Lyceums
Phalanxes
✓
Pueblos
Correct Answer
Phalanxes
Fourier's followers organized cooperative associations called phalanxes, whose members were to live and work together in a large shared building, and dozens of such communities were founded in the United States in the 1840s and 1850s. Missions were religious outposts, such as those Spain built in California. Lyceums were lecture halls and adult education societies. Pueblos are the towns of the Pueblo peoples of the Southwest.
Category: Utopian Communities
Question 12
How did the Washingtonian Temperance Society, founded in 1840, differ from the earliest temperance groups?
Protestant ministers led it and urged moderation
Women led it and marched on saloons
Lawmakers led it to amend the Constitution
Working-class men led it and reached out to alcoholics
✓
Correct Answer
Working-class men led it and reached out to alcoholics
The Washingtonians were led by working-class men who aimed at confirmed drinkers, using public pledges, parades, and theater, and hundreds of thousands took their pledge. Protestant ministers led it and urged moderation describes the New England societies of the 1810s. Women led it and marched on saloons describes the Women's Crusades of the 1870s. Lawmakers led it to amend the Constitution does not fit; a national prohibition amendment came much later.
Category: Temperance and Health
Question 13
Phrenologists claimed they could judge a person's character and abilities by doing what?
Measuring the shape of the skull
✓
Reading lines on the palm
Testing the blood for imbalances
Studying samples of handwriting
Correct Answer
Measuring the shape of the skull
Phrenology held that the mind had distinct faculties whose strength showed in the size and shape of the skull, and traveling lecturers made it popular in the 1830s and 1840s; it is now considered a pseudoscience. Reading lines on the palm is palmistry. Testing the blood for imbalances is not what phrenologists did. Studying samples of handwriting is graphology, a different practice.
Category: Temperance and Health
Question 14
What was the goal of the American Colonization Society, founded in 1816?
Ending slavery at once without payment
Resettling free Black Americans in Africa
✓
Settling white farmers in Texas
Founding schools for freed children
Correct Answer
Resettling free Black Americans in Africa
The society sought to move free Black Americans to Africa and helped found Liberia on the continent's west coast; abolitionists came to condemn the plan as racist. Ending slavery at once without payment was the demand of immediatists like William Lloyd Garrison. Settling white farmers in Texas was the work of empresarios such as Stephen Austin. Founding schools for freed children was not its purpose.
Category: Abolitionism
Question 15
What name was given to William Lloyd Garrison's demand that slavery end at once and that Black Americans receive equal rights?
Gradualism
Colonization
Immediatism
✓
Nullification
Correct Answer
Immediatism
Immediatism rejected slow, compensated emancipation and called for ending slavery right away, a position Garrison promoted through The Liberator and the American Anti-Slavery Society. Gradualism was the slower approach immediatists rejected. Colonization was the plan to send free Black Americans to Africa, which Garrison came to oppose. Nullification was a states' rights doctrine tied to South Carolina and tariffs.
Category: Abolitionism
Question 16
What did the gag rule adopted by the House of Representatives in the 1830s do?
Banned the overseas slave trade
Outlawed abolitionist newspapers
Required the return of fugitives
Blocked consideration of antislavery petitions
✓
Correct Answer
Blocked consideration of antislavery petitions
Proslavery members of the House used the gag rule to keep the flood of abolitionist petitions arriving in Washington from being considered, which many Northerners saw as an attack on the right to petition. Banned the overseas slave trade describes a ban that took effect in 1808. Outlawed abolitionist newspapers did not happen. Required the return of fugitives describes fugitive slave laws, not the gag rule.
Category: Abolitionism
Question 17
Which antislavery political party nominated James G. Birney for president in 1840?
The Liberty Party
✓
The Free-Soil Party
The Know-Nothing Party
The Republican Party
Correct Answer
The Liberty Party
Abolitionists who wanted to fight slavery at the ballot box formed the Liberty Party in 1840 and nominated James G. Birney, a Kentucky-born former slaveholder who had freed the people he enslaved; the party won little support. The Free-Soil Party was formed in 1848, and many Liberty supporters later joined it. The Know-Nothing Party was a nativist party of the 1850s. The Republican Party was founded in 1854.
Category: Abolitionism
Question 18
Sarah and Angelina Grimké caused a public uproar in 1837 by doing what?
Founding the first African American newspaper
Lecturing against slavery to mixed audiences of men and women
✓
Running for seats in the South Carolina legislature
Leading armed raids to free enslaved people
Correct Answer
Lecturing against slavery to mixed audiences of men and women
The sisters, who grew up in a slaveholding South Carolina family, spoke publicly to audiences of both sexes, which many considered improper for women and which pushed the question of women's role into public debate. Founding the first African American newspaper refers to Freedom's Journal, founded by Black editors. Running for seats in the South Carolina legislature was not open to women. Leading armed raids to free enslaved people did not fit the sisters, who were Quakers.
Category: Abolitionism
Question 19
Which earlier American document did the reformers at Seneca Falls in 1848 use as the model for their statement of women's rights?
The Articles of Confederation
The Mayflower Compact
The Declaration of Independence
✓
The Bill of Rights
Correct Answer
The Declaration of Independence
The Declaration of Rights and Sentiments followed the structure and language of the Declaration of Independence, stating that all men and women are created equal and listing grievances against male domination. The Articles of Confederation was a plan of government, not a list of grievances. The Mayflower Compact was a Pilgrim agreement to form a government. The Bill of Rights lists protections from government, not grievances.
Category: Women's Rights
Question 20
What did David Walker's 1829 Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World argue that set it apart from many white abolitionists?
Colonization in Africa was the best hope
Slavery should end slowly with payment
Women should lead the antislavery cause
Violence might be needed to win freedom
✓
Correct Answer
Violence might be needed to win freedom
Walker, a free Black man living in Boston, rejected colonization and urged Black Americans to fight for equality, warning that violence might be necessary, while white leaders such as Garrison rejected violence. Colonization in Africa was the best hope is the plan Walker condemned. Slavery should end slowly with payment is gradualism, which he did not support. Women should lead the antislavery cause was not the theme of his Appeal.
Category: Abolitionism