Quest for a Nation Essay Questions

THE FOLLOWING ARE EXAM QUESTIONS FOR YOUR NEXT UNIT TEST. TWO OF THESE QUESTIONS WILL BE RANDOMLY SELECTED; YOU WILL WRITE ON ONE OF THEM.

 

1.      Analyze the relative importance of Hamilton’s financial plan in defining the philosophy of the Federalists.

 

 

2.      To what extent was the Election of l800 aptly named the Revolution of l800?  Respond with reference to 2 of the following areas

• Economics
• Foreign Policy
• Judiciary
• Politics

 

3.      Explain how THREE of the following helped bring about a shift from agricultural economy to an industrial economy in the United States in the early 1800s.

Factory system

Inventions

Labor

Transportation

 

4.      Which political administration did more to establish democracy in America, Jefferson’s administration or Jacksons’?  Please include specific details in your comparison of Jacksonian and Jeffersonian Democracy.

 

5.      Analyze the extent to which THREE of the following influenced the development of democracy between 1820 and 1840.

Jacksonian economic policy

Changes in electoral politics

Second Great Awakening

Westward movement

 

6.      American reform movements between 1820 and 1860 reflected both optimistic and pessimistic views of human nature and society, and as a movement included both idealism and pragmatism.   Assess the validity of this statement in reference to reform movements of THREE of the following areas:

Education

Temperance

Women’s rights

Utopian experiments

Penal institutions

7. Was the Civil War inevitable, or could it have been avoided? Was slavery the only, or even the principal, cause of the war? Were other factors equall or more important?

8. Analyze the implications of TWO of the following for the Dred Scott decision.

• The status of free blacks in the United States
• The Concept of popular sovereignty
• The future of slavery in America

9. Discuss the political, economic and social impact of territorial expansion on national unity between 1800 and 1850.  Be sure to explain why the South was fearful of a Northeastern-Western Axis and what impact expansion in the antebellum period had on nationalism.

 

10. "Slavery was the dominating reality of all Southern life"

Assess the validity of this generalization for TWO of the following aspects of Southern life from about 1840 to 1860: political, social, economic, and intellectual life.

11. In what ways did the Second Great Awakening in teh North influence Two of the following?

Abolitionism

Temperence

The Cult of Domesticity

Utopian communities

12. “In what ways and to what extent did constitutional and social developments [1860-1877] constitute a revolution?”