History 371H

Devine

Fall 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.

1. Why were southern plantation owners in particularly bad financial shape after the Civil War?
2. Why did the assassination of Lincoln make it less likely that reconstruction would be easy on the South?
3. 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?
4. Why could “freedom” be both a blessing and a curse for African Americans right after the Civil War?
5. Why was James Hill able to build a profitable railroad line without government subsidies? What were the “secrets of his success”?
6. What unintended consequences resulted when the federal government subsidized the building of railroads?
7. How did James Hill insure ahead of time that once his railroad was built, there would be customers and goods to fill the trains?
8. 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.)?
9. How did the coming of the railroad enable farmers to take advantage of “economies of scale” and “economies of scope”?
10. How did the development of a national railroad system spur economic development throughout the United States during the late nineteenth century?
11. Beyond the development of a national railroad system, what factors helped fuel the incredible economic expansion in the United States between 1865 and 1900?
12. What is the difference between “vertical integration” and “horizontal integration”?
13. What is a tariff?  Who stood to benefit from a high tariff? Who benefited from a low tariff?
14. Explain how the “4 C’s” – competition, cooperation, combination, and centralization – resulted in the development of large corporations during the late 19^th century. How did one “C” lead logically to the next “C”?
15. 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?
16. How did the arrival of Big Business and the shift from a producer to a consumer culture affect workers’ jobs and workers’ identities?
17. 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?
18. 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?
19. Why did the plantation system keep African Americans poor AND keep the entire South economically backward?
20. How did the structure of the plantation economy in the South reinforce southern racism and encourage a culture of paternalism to continue?
21. Why was it hard for blacks to escape plantation labor? Why didn’t they find work elsewhere doing other things?
22. Why was it hard for African Americans to start their own businesses (or to sustain them if they did start them)?
23. Blacks who worked on southern plantations after 1865 were no longer slaves, but why does Mandle argue that they were not “free” laborers either?
24. Identify three specific instances in Pudd’nhead Wilson where Mark Twain suggests that upbringing (and not “blood”) determines one’s character and behavior.
25. How does Pudd’nhead Wilson’s “half a dog” joke point out that white supremacy and segregation have corrupted southern society?
26. 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?
27. Why might one argue that in the novel Pudd’nhead Wilson, David Wilson himself is a tragic figure?
28. 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”?
29. 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.
30. Why did so many Americans sympathize with the Cuba Libre! movement? How did the nature of Spanish colonial rule fuel these sympathies?
31. How did many Americans, including Theodore Roosevelt, use fears about declining masculinity to pressure President McKinley to declare war on Spain?
32. What factors pushed President McKinley into declaring war on Spain in 1898?
33. Why did big business’s opposition to the Spanish-American war actually build support for the pro-war side?
34. Why did the Philippine insurrection after the Spanish-American War convince many Americans that pursuing an overseas empire was not such a good idea after all?
35. How did Mark Twain’s view of American expansionism differ from that of Albert Beveridge?
36. 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.
37. According to David Nasaw, why is the phrase “poverty in the midst of plenty” a good description of the American city of 1900?
38. According to David Nasaw, how did girls’ experiences in the early 20^th century city differ from boys’? Why was this the case?
39. Unlike the child laborers of an earlier generation, why did the children of the city actually enjoy their jobs?
40. Why was having money important for the children of the city?
41. Why did the “child savers” fail to make much progress in “reforming” the behavior and habits of the street children?
42. 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?
43. Why were the children of the city often in a better position than their parents to be accepted into middle class American society?
44. What steps did the British take to insure the Americans would be more likely to enter the war on the Allies’ side?  What steps did many Americans – particularly bankers and investors – take that made it more likely the US would enter the war on the Allies’ side?
45. How did German submarine warfare bring the United States into the Great War? If the Germans feared submarine warfare would bring the US into the war on the Allies’ side, why did they continue to engage in it?
46. How did technological advances, urbanization, and industrialization pave the way for the emergence of a new modern consumer society?
47. How did the new urban leisure culture create a “complex interplay among commerce, sexuality, and love” – what Zeitz calls “the commercialization of romance?
48. In what ways did popular culture during the 1920s popularize the figure of the flapper?
49. How did German war reparations and French and British war debt involve the United States? How did this 3-way relationship work and why did it cause international economic instability?
50. Why was the U.S. government’s raising of tariffs and refusal to forgive European war debt during the late 1920s and early 1930s a bad idea?
51. What factors – both domestic and international – brought on the Great Depression of the 1930s?