African American History: Chapter 6 Test
How did steam engines affect the lives of slaves?
Railroads opened new territories to cotton production.
Which of the following helps explain why agricultural technology was relatively primitive in the Cotton Kingdom?
Southerners preferred to invest in slaves rather than in machines.
Slaveholders typically __________.
gave slave women some time to recover from childbirth
Which of the following best explains the westward spread of cotton cultivation between 1830 and 1860?
growing demand for cotton in Britain and New England
What message did slaves hear in plantation churches?
that slaves were to obey their masters
Which historian argued in the 1910s that slavery was a generally benign institution in which slaveholders cared for happy slaves?
Ulrich B. Phillips
Why did masters sometimes find it difficult to exert control over urban slaves?
Urban slaves had opportunities to earn money for themselves.
Which of the following was true of slaveholders in the Old South?
Very few slaveholders owned more than 50 slaves.
__________ had the largest slave population in 1820.
Virginia
Most slaves ___________.
chose their own mates
A group of slaves who were chained together for transport or sale was known as a __________.
coffle
Historian Stanley M. Elkins compared slaves to __________.
concentration camp prisoners
Which of the following crops did southerners produce primarily for consumption on plantations?
corn
Slave marriages _________.
were sometimes arranged by masters
In Frederick Douglass's view, masters _______.
whipped their slaves for almost any reason
Solomon Northup was _______.
born free in New York
The sexual relationship between Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings began when he was 44 and she was __________.
14
In the decade before the Civil War, about __________ slaves per decade moved toward the southwest.
150.000
Roughly __________ percent of southern slaves worked in industry in 1860.
5
Between 1790 and 1860, the slave population in the region between the Atlantic coast and Texas increased by almost __________ percent.
600
Roughly __________ percent of slaves worked in the fields.
75
Which new states led the production of cotton, in what was called the "Black Belt"?
Alabama and Mississippi
Which of the following was true of the slave populations of southern cities?
Baltimore and New Orleans had large slave populations.
Most slaves sold in the domestic slave trade were from the __________.
Chesapeake
Which of the following was true of cotton cultivation?
Cotton was the nation's most important crop.
Which of the following was a disadvantage of working as a house slave?
House slaves were under tighter supervision than field slaves were.
__________ helped facilitate the expansion of cotton cultivation.
Indian removal under Andrew Jackson
Which of the following was true of the sexual exploitation of slave women by white men?
It was common throughout the South.
What was distinctive about term slavery?
It was not for life.
Which of the following was true of churches in the pre-Civil War South?
Many had biracial congregations.
Which of the following was true of the religion of slaves in the mid-nineteenth century?
Most were Protestants.
Which of the following had the most slaves of all the western territories?
Oklahoma
In what way were black southerners unique among New World slave populations?
The population grew by natural reproduction.
How did skilled slaves differ from field slaves?
They had more opportunities to leave the plantation.
Which of the following was necessary for sugar cultivation?
a consistently warm climate
At what age did slave children begin to perform adult fieldwork?
between 8 and 12
Many white southerners believed that __________.
black women were sexually promiscuous
What crop did most agricultural slaves tend?
cotton
Brer Rabbit represented __________.
enslaved African Americans
Where was rice cultivation important?
in the low country of South Carolina and Georgia
As a group, African Americans suffered from __________.
lactose intolerance
The sickle-cell blood trait protected African-American slaves from __________.
malaria
Slaves' diets in the period between 1820 and 1860 were __________.
poor by today's standards
Which of the following had the highest infant mortality rates in the first half of the nineteenth century?
southern black people
Slave clothing was generally __________.
sparse, as they generally received clothing from the master only twice a year
The decline of slavery in the Chesapeake contributed to __________.
the expansion of the domestic slave trade
Which of the following helps explain why slave health improved after 1830?
the rising economic value of slaves
Most white southerners believed that slaves would not work unless __________.
they faced the threat of punishment
Aside from financial reasons, why did some black people become slaveholders?
to protect their families from sale
Quite often, the heroes of African-American folktales were __________.
trickster animals
