410: Final Exam

Study guide for the Final Examination, 2022

Topics: Anything assigned to read on Part III of the syllabus, units 21-34.

Time: During our last end-of-term meeting.

What: You will be asked to write one long essay (SA) on a general question and four brief term-identification (ID) essays in which you will identify (who, what, when, where) and explain the significance (it's role in US history) of the term.

General themes:

  1. How America became a modern industrial democracy and the consequences.

  2. How the issue of slavery tore the nation apart.

Study questions for the SA.

You will be asked to answer a question like one of these on the exam by writing a coherent, factual, multi-paragraph essay. You will have two to choose from but will be writing only on ONE. This list is currently under construction and subject to change until Friday, Nov. 18.

  1. Was life better for people living in the subsistence-oriented or the market-oriented economy in the early 19th Century? Which system was better for democracy?

  2. Why did the women's equality movement arise when it did?

  3. Was Jackson the first truly democratic president or a dangerous tyrant, or both?

  4. To what extent was the relationship between slaves and masters governed by paternalism?

  5. “No one person (or group of people) did more to prevent peaceful resolution of the slavery crisis than Stephen A. Douglas.” Assess this statement by considering what Douglas did and the role of others. Do any of them come close or supersede Douglas in influence?

  6. Explore the similarities and differences between Lincoln and Douglas in the positions they took in their 1858 debates. What if anything made Lincoln the more attractive anti-slavery candidate?

Key terms for ID essays.

In which you are asked to identify and explain the significance of a term related to what we have studied. Here are some examples of terms that might appear on the test from the units we have studied so far. I will put seven of the bolded terms on the test and ask you to write about four of them. The other terms may help you think about your answer to the SA questions, but the list is not exhaustive. This list is currently under construction and subject to change until Friday, Nov. 18.

Crevecoeur

Tocqueville

Proletarianizing

Henry David Thoreau

Debt peonage

Company store

Industrialization

Productivity

Division of Labor

Mechanization

Putting out

Steam power

Pro-slavery argument

Market Revolution

laissez faire

Second Great Awakening

Andrew Jackson

Jacksonians

Trail of Tears

Whig Party

Internal improvements

Tariff

Lucretia Mott

Lucy Stone

Seneca Falls

Women's sphere

Female Education

Cult of domesticity

Separate spheres

William Lloyd Garrison

Frederick Douglass

The Liberator

Moral suasion

Elijah Lovejoy

Immediatism

Gradualism

Wage slaves

John C. Calhoun

Free labor ideology

Gag rule

Slave Power

White trash

New Orleans slave market

Slave religion

Nat Turner

Virginia Debate

Br’er Rabbit

Cavaliers

Plantation women

Paternalism

Texas

Mexican War

James K. Polk

David Wilmot

Wilmot Proviso

Manifest Destiny

Popular Sovereignty

Henry Clay

Daniel Webster

Omnibus bill

Fugitive Slave Act

Fire-Eaters

Stephen Douglas

Compromise of 1850

Uncle Tom's Cabin

Transcontinental RR

Kansas-Nebraska Act

Bleeding Kansas

Border ruffians

John Brown

Pottawatomie

Charles Sumner

Preston Brooks

Irrepressible conflict

Blundering generation

Roger Taney

Dough Faces

James Buchanan

Dred Scott

Lecompton Constitution

Black Republicans

House Divided Speech

Lincoln-Douglas debates

Doctrine of necessity

Contingency & Judgement

Election of 1860

John Brown

Secret six

Harper's Ferry

Better Angels