History
371
Devine
Spring
2014
Midterm Review Questions
The
questions that will appear on the midterm will be drawn verbatim from the questions below. If you are able to answer these
questions thoroughly, you will be well-prepared for the midterm. It should be
clear which questions are short answer questions and which are long answer questions.
In Part one of the midterm, there will 10
short essay questions taken from the list below; you will answer SEVEN of them. In Part two, there
will be three long essay questions taken from the list below; you will answer ONE
of them.
PLEASE
BRING AN UNMARKED GREEN BOOK TO CLASS.
- Why were southern plantation
owners in particularly bad financial shape after the Civil War?
- Why did the assassination of
Lincoln make it less likely that reconstruction would be easy on the
South?
- Why were the changes the
Radical Republicans proposed for the South so radical? Why were most Americans reluctant to support the
Radical Republicans’ plans for the South?
- Why
did Radicals decide to impeach Andrew Johnson? Why was it probably for the
best that they failed?
- Why did James J. Hill’s Great
Northern Railroad succeed during the late nineteenth century when other
railroads failed?
- What unintended consequences
resulted when the federal government subsidized the building of railroads?
- According to William Cronon, how did the arrival of the railroad alter
people’s conceptions of time and space? How did railroads change the way
people interacted with the environment (geography, weather, etc.)?
- How did the coming of the
railroad enable farmers to take advantage of “economies of scale” and
“economies of scope”?
- How did the development of a
national railroad system spur economic development throughout the United
States during the late nineteenth century?
- According to Glen Porter’s
article, why,
despite some uneasiness, were most Americans willing to accept the new
industrial economy? What changes for the good did
it bring to their lives?
- What is the difference between
“vertical integration” and “horizontal integration”?
- What is a tariff? Who
stood to benefit from a high tariff? Who benefited from a low tariff?
- Explain how the “4 C’s” –
competition, cooperation, combination, and centralization – resulted in
the development of large corporations during the late 19th
century. How did one “C” lead logically to the next “C”?
- How did the introduction of
“limited liability” make it easier for aspiring entrepreneurs to raise
investment money to create new businesses during the late nineteenth
century?
- How did the arrival of Big Business
and the shift from a producer to a consumer culture affect workers’ jobs
and workers’ identities?
- Why does Jay Mandle (Not
Slave, Not Free) believe that implementing a policy of land
redistribution (taking land from the planters and giving it to the
freedman) would have produced a significantly different economic reality
in the South after the Civil War?
Despite the Radical Republicans’ desire to “punish” the southern
planters, why was such a policy never implemented?
- How
did southern plantation agriculture differ from the family farm system of
the North? Why did northern family
farmers actively embrace new labor-saving technologies while southern
planters largely ignored them?
- Why did the plantation system
keep African Americans poor AND keep the entire South economically
backward?
- How
did the structure of the plantation economy in the South reinforce
southern racism and encourage a culture of paternalism to continue?
- Why was it hard for blacks to
escape plantation labor? Why didn’t
they find work elsewhere doing other things?
- Why was it hard for African
Americans to start their own businesses (or to sustain them if they did
start them)?
- Blacks who worked on southern
plantations after 1865 were no longer slaves, but why does Mandle argue that they were not “free” laborers
either?
- Identify three specific instances in Pudd’nhead Wilson where Mark Twain suggests
that upbringing (and not “blood”) determines one’s character and
behavior.
- How does Mark Twain critique
southern society indirectly in Pudd’nhead Wilson? Why could one argue that
this indirect criticism ends up being more powerful than direct criticism?
- How does Pudd’nhead
Wilson’s “half a dog” joke point out that white supremacy and segregation
have corrupted southern society?
- Pudd’nhead Wilson ends with “Tom” being sold down the river. Does Twain
intend this to be a “happy ending” in which justice has been served and
“order” has been restored? If not, why not?
- Why might one argue that in the
novel Pudd’nhead Wilson, David Wilson himself is a
tragic figure?
- How does Twain
use the duel between Judge Driscoll and Luigi – a scene narrated through
Roxy’s point of view – to make fun of the “southern code of honor”?
- How does James Turner explain
why some Texas farmers became Populists while others did not? What specific evidence does he introduce
to make his case?
- Provide
a sketch of the typical Texas Populist. Why did the circumstances and
context of his daily make the Populism an attractive movement to him?
- Why did so many farmers end up
deep in debt during the late 19th century? Once they were in
debt, why was it so hard to get out?
- During the late 19th
century, why would someone in debt welcome inflation (i.e. higher prices)
and oppose a currency backed only by gold?
- For farmers, what were the arguments
for and against starting a third political party (Populists)? What were
the arguments for and against trying to gain influence in one of the two
major political parties (Republicans and Democrats)?
- Identify two major reasons why
many Americans in the 1890s came to believe that the U.S. should pursue a
more expansionist foreign policy and explain the reasoning behind their
views.
- Why did so many Americans
sympathize with the Cuba Libre! movement? How did the nature of Spanish colonial rule
fuel these sympathies?
- How did many Americans,
including Theodore Roosevelt, use fears about declining masculinity to
pressure President McKinley to declare war on Spain?
- What factors pushed President
McKinley into declaring war on Spain in 1898?
- Why did big business’s
opposition to the Spanish-American war actually build support for the
pro-war side?
- Why did the Philippine
insurrection convince many Americans that pursuing an overseas empire was
not such a good idea after all?
- In looking at the “Four D’s” –
duty, destiny, defense, and dollars – explain how each of the four terms
sheds light on the motivations for US foreign policy at the turn of the twentieth
century.
- According to David Nasaw, why is the phrase “poverty in the midst of
plenty” a good description of the American city of 1900?
- According
to David Nasaw, how did girls’ experiences in
the early 20th century city differ from boys’? Why was this the case?
- Unlike
the child laborers of an earlier generation, why did the children of the
city actually enjoy their jobs?
- Why
was having money important for the children of the city?
- Why
did the “child savers” fail to make much progress in “reforming” the
behavior and habits of the street children?
- What
role did children play in the urban economy at the turn of the twentieth
century? How did city children’s role in the economy shape their world
view as kids and then, later, as adults?
- How was the Progressive reform
movement of the 1910s both a “response to industrialization” and a “search
for order”?
- In what ways did Social
Darwinists and Progressives differ when it came to addressing the problem
of urban poverty?
- Why
do some observers say Progressives’ approach to solving social problems
was grounded in “innovative nostalgia”?
- In looking at how Progressives
set out to solve social problems, how do we know they were both
“interventionists” and “optimists”?