SparkNotes: The Pre-Civil War Era (1815

1. The election of 1816 marked

(A) The end of the Federalist Party

(B) The beginning of the Era of Good Feelings

(C) The inauguration of the American System

(D) All of the above

2. All of the following were components of Henry Clay’s American System except

(A) An improved national banking system

(B) Universal manhood suffrage

(C) Internal improvements

(D) Protective tariffs for manufacturing

3. Why did the Old World powers obey the Monroe Doctrine?

(A) They didn’t want to lose any lucrative trade deals with the United States

(B) They no longer had any interest in North and South America

(C) They feared the Royal Navy

(D) They were too preoccupied with the Napoleonic Wars in Europe

4. The Monroe Doctrine declared that

(A) American settlers should push westward until the United States spanned the continent

(B) The United States would annex Texas and Oregon

(C) The Old World powers of Europe should not interfere in the affairs of the Western Hemisphere

(D) Only the United States could intervene in Latin America

5. What did the Tallmadge Act do?

(A) Outlawed slavery north of 36° 30'

(B) Admitted Missouri to the Union on the condition that its slaves would gradually be set free

(C) Nullified the 1828 Tariff of Abominations

(D) Renewed the charter for the Bank of the United States

6. The 1820 Missouri Compromise achieved all of the following except

(A) It admitted Maine as a free state and Missouri as a slave state

(B) It maintained the balance between free and slave states in the Senate

(C) It outlawed slavery north of 36° 30'

(D) It provided for the gradual emancipation of slaves in Missouri

7. The Era of Good Feelings ended after

(A) The Missouri crisis

(B) The Monroe Doctrine

(C) The Panic of 1819

(D) All of the above

8. What tainted John Quincy Adams’s presidency?

(A) The Panic of 1819

(B) The Missouri crisis

(C) The “corrupt bargain”

(D) The spoils system

9. The term “spoils system” refers to

(A) The distribution of civil service jobs to political patrons

(B) Clay’s plan to improve banking and internal infrastructure and protect manufacturing

(C) Jackson’s plan to kill the Bank of the United States

(D) A new refrigeration system that benefited western farmers

10. Why did Andrew Jackson and western farmers hate the Bank of the United States?

(A) They saw it as a symbol of too much federal power

(B) It didn’t print enough cheap paper money

(C) They saw it as a symbol of aristocracy and wealth

(D) All of the above

11. Why did southerners dislike high tariffs on imported goods?

(A) The South had very few factories of its own

(B) Southerners purchased many European goods

(C) They felt that tariffs demonstrated the federal government’s bias against the South

(D) All of the above

12. Why was Jackson outraged by South Carolina’s vote to nullify the Tariff of Abominations?

(A) He felt higher tariffs were necessary to protect manufacturers

(B) He detested the state’s outright disobedience to the federal government

(C) His own vice president had written the “South Carolina Exposition and Protest”

(D) The crisis detracted from the Bank War that Jackson wanted to make the primary election issue in 1832

13. The tariff of 1833 was important primarily because

(A) It prevented the Civil War from starting thirty years earlier than it did

(B) It helped protect a fledgling industrial society in the North

(C) It prevented the South from purchasing cheaper British goods

(D) It kept the international market price for cotton high

14. What heavily influenced John Calhoun’s “South Carolina Exposition and Protest”?

(A) The Bill of Rights

(B) The writings of Thomas Paine

(C) The Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of 1798

(D) The proceedings of the Hartford Convention of 1814

15. Jackson flagrantly disregarded a previous Supreme Court ruling when he

(A) Signed the Force Bill

(B) Dismantled the Bank of the United States

(C) Issued the Specie Circular

(D) Threatened to use federal troops to collect tariff duties in South Carolina

16. The Whigs supported all of the following except

(A) Social reforms

(B) High protective tariffs

(C) Internal improvements

(D) The westward expansion of slavery

17. What caused the Panic of 1837?

(A) Overspeculation in western lands

(B) The Specie Circular

(C) A lack of credit

(D) All of the above

18. During the mid-nineteenth century, most immigrants to the United States came from

(A) England

(B) Italy and Greece

(C) France

(D) Germany and Ireland

19. What did the Know-Nothing Party oppose?

(A) Slavery

(B) Immigration

(C) The annexation of Texas

(D) The consumption of alcohol

20. Who blocked the annexation of Texas?

(A) Democrats

(B) Whigs

(C) Know-Nothings

(D) All of the above

21. Democrats campaigned for all of the following except

(A) An independent treasury

(B) Unfettered westward expansion

(C) A Bank of the United States

(D) Lower protective tariffs

22. What caused the Mexican War?

(A) The dispute over Texas

(B) Polk’s desire to annex California

(C) Unpaid Mexican debts

(D) All of the above

23. Mormons migrated to Utah in the 1840s and 1850s to escape persecution for their belief in

(A) Free love

(B) Polygamy

(C) Slavery

(D) Communism

24. The religious revivalism of the antebellum period had its roots in

(A) The First Great Awakening

(B) The Second Great Awakening

(C) The preaching of Charles Finney

(D) The Burned-Over District

25. Where did Methodists and Baptists have the largest following?

(A) The Middle States

(B) The Northeast

(C) The West and South

(D) The Burned-Over District

26. Northern manufacturing blossomed between 1820 and 1840 because of

(A) The cotton gin

(B) Interchangeable parts

(C) The mechanical mower-reaper

(D) All of the above

27. What did the Erie Canal link?

(A) Farmlands in the West to cities in the North

(B) Cotton fields in the South to cities in the North

(C) Texas to lands east of the Mississippi

(D) Farmlands in the West to cotton fields in the South

28. Dorothea Dix crusaded against

(A) The consumption of alcohol

(B) Slavery

(C) The mistreatment of the mentally ill

(D) Prostitution

29. What was the main reason that Britain agreed to give the United States all of the Oregon Territory south of the 49th parallel?

(A) Americans in Oregon greatly outnumbered British settlers

(B) The United States agreed to trade Nova Scotia for Oregon

(C) Britain could no longer afford its costly Indian wars in Oregon

(D) The United States threatened Britain with war over the issue

30. Why did Whigs block the annexation of Texas in 1836?

(A) They wouldn’t accept Texas without all of Oregon

(B) They wanted a buffer state between the United States and Mexico

(C) They feared that Texas would become a slave state

(D) They were bitter they had lost the election of 1836 to Van Buren

31. Where were the majority of internal transportation improvements made during the antebellum period?

(A) In the North, but not in the West or South

(B) In the North and West, but not in the South

(C) In the South and North, but not in the West

(D) In the South and West, but not in the North

32. Cyrus McCormick’s mechanical mower-reaper stimulated agricultural production in the

(A) South

(B) North

(C) West

(D) All of the above

33. What did many Americans in the mid-1800s believe they were “manifestly destined” to do?

(A) Eliminate slavery

(B) Convert Native Americans to Christianity

(C) Eliminate prostitution, alcohol, and other moral vices to create a more perfect society

(D) Settle the entire North American continent, if not the whole western hemisphere

34. Which movement did Joseph Smith found?

(A) The Seventh-Day Adventist Church

(B) The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints

(C) The temperance movement

(D) The abolitionist movement

35. Whig party leaders expelled President John Tyler from the party in 1845 because he

(A) Consistently opposed Whig legislation

(B) Annexed Texas against the party’s wishes

(C) Reestablished the Bank of the United States

(D) All of the above

36. What was the temperance movement’s greatest triumph?

(A) The Kansas-Nebraska Act

(B) The Tallmadge Act

(C) The Wilmot Proviso

(D) The Maine Law

37. John Marshall’s Supreme Court rulings generally

(A) Increased the power of the federal government relative to the power of the states

(B) Increased the power of the Court relative to the power of the states and Congress

(C) Increased the power of the states relative to the federal government

(D) Increased the power of the presidency relative to the power of the Court

38. Many of the most prominent reformers during the antebellum period were

(A) Democrats

(B) Westerners

(C) Women

(D) Blacks

39. All of the following were consequences of Eli Whitney’s inventions except

(A) The South experienced a boom in cotton production

(B) Northern manufacturing surged to life

(C) More slaves were imported to the South

(D) The South began importing more manufactured goods from the North

40. What did Abraham Lincoln’s “spot resolutions” do?

(A) Attempted to eliminate slavery from certain spots in America

(B) Attempted to ban slavery in Texas

(C) Implied that Mexico had not in fact been the aggressor in the Mexican War

(D) Prevented southerners from annexing Cuba and Nicaragua

41. The Mexican War

(A) Provided the South with new slavery territories west of Texas

(B) Ruined the Whig Party

(C) Helped Lincoln defeat Stephen Douglass in the Lincoln-Douglass Debates

(D) Revived the sectional struggle over slavery

42. All of the following writers were active in the Transcendentalist movement except

(A) Walt Whitman

(B) T. S. Arthur

(C) Ralph Waldo Emerson

(D) Henry David Thoreau

43. Many critics have accused James K. Polk of starting the Mexican War in order to

(A) Annex Texas

(B) Take Cuba and Nicaragua from Mexico

(C) Seize California

(D) Conquer all of Mexico

44. Which of the following made major reforms in education?

(A) Horace Mann

(B) Dorothea Dix

(C) Ralph Waldo Emerson

(D) Lucretia Mott

45. The “Gag Resolution” in the House of Representatives temporarily banned discussion about

(A) Slavery

(B) Westward expansion

(C) The Nullification Crisis

(D) The Bank of the United States

46. The murder of Reverend Elijah P. Lovejoy in 1837 demonstrated that

(A) Most Americans supported Manifest Destiny

(B) The temperance movement was not popular

(C) Many northerners were against abolition

(D) New Yorkers in the Burned-Over District were burned out

47. President Polk achieved all of the following during his four years in office except

(A) Lowering the tariff

(B) Reviving the Bank of the United States

(C) Annexing California

(D) Acquiring Oregon

48. The term “states’ rights” refers to the belief that

(A) States have the right to determine whether they will be free or slave

(B) States should have more power than the federal government

(C) States should be able to sue the federal government

(D) The United States has the right to expand westward

49. What was the primary characteristic of the Era of Good Feelings?

(A) More and more Americans were receiving the right to vote

(B) The economy remained relatively stable and was void of any major panics or depressions

(C) Democratic-Republicans had no political opposition

(D) All of the above

50. John Quincy Adams was the son of

(A) Abraham Lincoln

(B) George Washington

(C) King George III

(D) John Adams

The Pre-Civil War Era (1815–1850)

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