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

Trying Additional Tips to Help You with Chapter 11-15. See toward the bottom but read Cautions and Tips on the way.

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

The two parts of the exam are:

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

·         The written part means a good, competent factual explanation of something in the history covered from Chapter 1 to Chapter 4.

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.

·         The written part displays 1 question worth 20 points for its contents. A separate grade of 20 is for whether you follow the 5 Good Habits for Evidence). Fate (or Blackboard) could ask you any of  the other questions in the set.
In other words, there are a minimum of 16 possible written questions.

Information that students frequently want to know about the two parts of the tests

·         You have thirty minutes for the objective part of the test and forty-five minutes for the written part of the test because of the additional requirements listed in yellow below.

·         You really won’t have time to look up much, but you may use your book and sources in the course.  There is a tip about how to use an Index to refresh your memory on what you learned so you can write adequately.

·         The questions are meant to be ones that are useful understanding about history. They will not be trick questions.

 

Practical Issues About Content That Students Frequently Want To Know

Test questions will be from:

·         The textbook

·         InQuizitive – but not in the exact words of the InQuizitive questions

·         The required primary sources

Caution: Please read and ask if You don’t understand -Information that students frequently want to know about writing an answer:

·         Typically, the best short questions ask you explain an event (or a region at a specific period of time), give specific examples, and explain its major traits.

·         You must be specific and answer the question asked and use evidence appropriate for the question asked.

·         You must only use facts from the textbook or sources in the course.

·         When writing an answer in Blackboard, you must:
1) If you are using a primary as a source, place its name in ( ) right after the fact.
2) If you are using a fact from the textbook, place the specific page number in ( ) right after the fact. If you are the author’s words, you must not only cite the page number, but also use quotation marks (“”) correctly
.
Note: at a minimum I will spot check at least one fact for confirmation that it is the textbook.

·         When writing an answer in Blackboard, you must not:
1) Use your memory or your feelings or your assumptions about history as evidence.
2) Use any source other than the required textbook or the required primaries
.
3) Use other sources. See the syllabus for what results in a 0 for this assignment and its Good Habits for Evidence grade.

·         The best qualities for writing about history are that it follow 5 Good Habits for Evidence.

·         The goal of writing is to help you learn history and the best way to learn history is to try to teach it in a common sense but truthful and brief way.
Think of it as teaching your smart cousin something he or she must learn quickly but well. He or she would not want a lot of words or a lot of fluff or a lot of your opinion.

Do not assume that past experience with writing determines what is required with writing for the discipline of history or for that matter in other fields or jobs where things are real. What your teachers required before is of course their business and always do what your teacher requires.
In this course, however, this simple test will tell you what will make points:
If a boss asked you to figure something out using company documents and write something brief but accurate and useful for work, would he or she continue to sign your paycheck if you wrote in the way you wrote for your prior classes? If he or she would not, then don’t follow that prior method. Instead, meet the goal above.

 

Tip and Caution:

·         You have to learn facts but to write you have to think through how those facts fit together. InQuizitive can’t do that for you—at least on very issues.

·         If you had read the chapters as you used InQuizitive, you could in 30 minutes encounter the question, refresh on any areas in the question (example, if you had the Protestant Reformation Question, you could use the index to quickly find the Protestant Reformation and the section you wanted to talk about). You could jot down 3 or so issues that were useful and write them. Never write what you can’t prove and you will be good.

 

Caution: 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

Caution: What’s the Difference about This Unit Test?—Instructor’s Attempt to Help You

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. 2003-2015

 

WCJC Department:

History – Dr. Bibus

Contact Information:

281.239.1577 or bibusc@wcjc.edu

Last Updated:

2015

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