Unit 3 Study Guide – a guide to preparation for all parts of the Unit Exam

Tips: What Helps Learning? from the FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions)

 

If you have questions about any of this webpage, please ask. I will expand these answers based on your questions.

Tip: the password is at the bottom.

 

Practical Issues That Students Frequently Want to Know.. 1

The one part of the exam is: 1

All of the questions are done as sets: 1

Information that students frequently want to know about the test. 1

Practical Issues About Content That Students Frequently Want To Know.. 2

Test questions will be from: 2

What’s Different about Any Unit Test with 5 Chapters. 2

What’s the Difference about This Unit Test?. 2

Chapter 11: The South and Slavery, 1800-1860. 2

Chapter 12: Religion, Romanticism, and Reform, 1800-1860. 2

Chapter 13: Western Expansion and Southern Secession. 3

Chapter 14: The War of the Union, 1861-1865. 3

Chapter 15: Reconstruction 1865-1877. 3

The password. 4

 

 

Practical Issues That Students Frequently Want to Know

The one part of the exam is:

·         The objective part means methods that are machine gradable, such as multiple choice, true/false, ordering items, and matching items.

·         There is no written part of this exam.

 

All of the questions are done as sets:

·         The objective part consists of 25 questions at 4 points each--but, for each question, fate (or Blackboard) could ask you any 1 of 4 or more questions.
In other words, there are a minimum of 100 questions in the test.

 

Information that students frequently want to know about the test

·         You have thirty minutes for the objective part of the test.

 

Practical Issues About Content That Students Frequently Want To Know

Test questions will be from:

·         The textbook

·         The required primary sources

 

What’s Different about Any Unit Test with 5 Chapters

·         With a test of 25 questions, that means on average each chapter only gets 5 questions, with some chapters getting a few more or less.

·         To be honorable, the instructor will focus on facts that you will need the rest of your life (at least from this instructor’s experiences).

·         It can’t be everything so approach it that way and look at the next section

What’s the Difference about This Unit Test?

Caution: For all chapters, you must read the primaries.

 

Chapter 11: The South and Slavery, 1800-1860

1.    The test will try to focus on the big patterns with slavery and with white Southerners as well.

2.    Be cautious.

-       The South in Jefferson’s time does not have the same understanding of slavery as the period of Polk, for example. The simplest explanation is that the South shifts from viewing slavery as a “necessary evil” to its being a “positive good.”

-       The South has some—to use the textbook’s term—myths. That is your textbook’s polite phrase telling you their belief was not backed by evidence.

-       There are not just rich whites and African American slaves. There are poor and landless whites. There are also African Americans who are in the South and free. (Remember: those African indentured servants from the 1620s for example.)

-       There are African American rebellions and violent repressions.

 

Chapter 12: Religion, Romanticism, and Reform, 1800-1860

1.    You need to the South as well as the North, but do notice the South has less—such as less education—and does not have the active reforms that are going on in the North. Ask yourself what in the past is causing this present?

2.    Notice such things the movements and the people involved in reforms such as:

-       Religious revivalism of the Second Great Awakening and what is different about the South

-       Utopian communities ranging from the Shakers (celibate) to the Mormons (polygamous)

-       Anti-slavery movements and their leaders and the big shift from the American Colonization Society to the varied anti-slavery groups including abolitionists and including African American abolitionist

-       Movements for women’s rights—a movement with individuals who sometimes overlap with anti-slavery movement

-       The rise of an American literature with American themes

-       The transcendentalists who are not only literary figures but also because of their beliefs are a challenge to the Enlightenment and reason

-       The tremendous push for public education in the North and Midwest, especially Horace Mann

 

Chapter 13: Western Expansion and Southern Secession

1.    Notice the tension in this country:

-       Nationalism and unity with gaining more territory

-       Sectionalism and division with who gets to reap the wealth from it—the planters (with their forced labor) or the small farmer

2.    Notice the movements such as manifest destiny and popular sovereignty and free soil

3.    Notice the British have shift on their position on slavery and their colonies before the American Revolution to their elimination of slavery from their colonies in 1830s.

4.    Notice where Americans are going and how they are getting there

-       Oregon fever

-       California, including the gold rush that makes its becoming a state so much faster than expected

-       Texas

5.    Notice elections over expansion (1844) and potentially the division of the political parties into sectional organizations, such as the Southern “cotton Whigs” and the Northern “conscience Whigs” and finally two Presidents actively involved in protecting slavery (Pierce and Buchanan)

6.    Notice the division over the war with Mexico and its interconnection with slavery, including the Wilmot Proviso

7.    Notice the shift from the prior era’s Missouri Compromise and the clash over the Compromise of 1850, including its Fugitive Slave Clause—and the power of the Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin

8.    The tensions increase with the events:

-       A civil war over slavery in “Bleeding Kansas” and the rise of John Brown
(You do not have to know each event within Kansas)

-       A Southerner (Preston Brooks) willing to beat a Senator to death in the Senate chamber

-       The rise in new party, the Republican Party

-       The Dred Scott case

-       John Brown at Harper’s Ferry

-       The election of 1860

-       Fort Sumter and the secession of the Lower South and then the Upper South

 

Chapter 14: The War of the Union, 1861-1865

1.    You do need to notice the strengths and weaknesses of the two sections at war, including financially

2.    You do not need to know every battle or confrontation. The essentials are the battles in the west such as Shiloh and later Vicksburg and in the east Antietam (essential to the Emancipation Proclamation), Gettysburg, Sherman’s “March to the Sea” (essential to the election of 1864)and Appomattox.

3.    You do to notice the shift in Lincoln from being willing to let the South keep its slaves to shifting by 1862 to emancipation in the Southern war zones (not the northern border states who were slave states), and finally to emancipation

4.    Notice the key legislation that the North wants is passed while the South is out of Congress with the secession.

5.    Continue to notice what happens to white male voters, women, Native Americans, and slaves.

 

Chapter 15: Reconstruction 1865-1877

1.    Notice the shifts from Lincoln’s Plan to Johnson’s Plan, to control by Congress, and finally the differences with Grant’s actions from 1868 to 1872 and from 1872 to 1877

2.    Notice the Civil War Amendments—the 13th, 14th, and 15th.

3.    Notice key terms of the era: the Freedmen’s Bureau, sharecropping, Ku Klux Klan (incuding when it starts and what the Republicans do about it in 1870)

4.    Notice Grant’s problems in his presidency, including the financial problems and the scandals

5.    Notice the Compromise of 1877.

The password

You may take exams only 1 time; therefore, the password is


onetimeonly – no spaces and no capital letters.

 

 

 

Copyright C. J. Bibus, Ed.D. 2003-2016

 

WCJC Department:

History – Dr. Bibus

Contact Information:

281.239.1577 or bibusc@wcjc.edu

Last Updated:

2016

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