Chapter 16 questions

Chapter 16 Questions

Remember to answer in your own handwriting, in your own words, and fully and completely.

1. What were the specific consequences of the invention of the cotton gin? How did the growth of cotton – the “Cotton Kingdom” lead to the further retrenchment of an aristocratic class in the South? What were the characteristics of this aristocracy?
2. How did the development of the monopolistic plantation system weaken the Southern economy (AND southern society) overall? What was the impact on the soil? In what ways was cotton important economically to both the North and the South?
3. Explain the quote by Emerson on p. 377. What was the intent of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and who wrote it? What was the main theme of Uncle Tom’s cabin—a thing that slaves feared the most?
4. What were the specific impacts of the Cotton Kingdom on the American economy? How did it influence immigration patterns?
5. What were most Southern farmers like, and how did they live? What proportion of the Southern population was slaves, and where did most of them live? Explain how slave ownership was distributed through the population of the South, and why. How did the “mountain whites” feel about slavery, and where were they from?
6. Was slavery always a lifelong condition? Explain. Where was slave conditions the worst, and why?
7. How did Northerners generally feel about free African Americans living among them? Where were free blacks most likely to be? Why does your book call them the “third race?” Where did mixed-race people fit in?
8. How did the jobs slaves were given to do reflect their value? How were slaves motivated to work harder? What exactly were the legal rights that slaves had—or more appropriately, lacked—in the 19th century?
9. What were slave families like? What were slaves’ greatest fear? What was the greatest fear of slaveowners?
10. How did slaves resist the demands and expectations of the slave system? How successful were slave rebellions? What happened aboard the Amistad?
11. How did slaveowners justify their domination of slaves from a philosophical standpoint? How was acceptance of slavery changing throughout the Western world at this time?
12. Create a chart comparing and contrasting the American Colonization Society, the American Anti-Slavery Society, and the Liberty party.
13. Create a chart comparing and contrasting the major abolitionists mentioned in this chapter, including names of their publications. Who was the most and least radical?
14. What happened to abolitionists in the South? When did their movement become practically extinct? How did the abolition movement change after 1830?
15. What specific claims did Ulrich B. Phillips make about slaves in the Varying Viewpoints section?