Period 5: 1844–1877
189 soru
Read the excerpt below and answer the question that follows.
"What is the territory, Mr. President, which you propose to wrest from Mexico? It is consecrated to the freedom of man, by her organic law... If you acquire it, you must take it as it is. Will you then, by your law, establish slavery where it is now forbidden?... You ask for territory for the purpose of establishing slavery there, and thus changing the balance of political power in this Union. If you persist in this, the Union is dissolved!"
— Senator Thomas Corwin, Speech in the United States Senate, 1847
Which of the following historical developments did the arguments in the excerpt most directly foreshadow?
"Resolved, That the present war with Mexico has its primary origin in the admission of Texas into this Union... and that it was unconstitutionally commenced by the order of the President... to the end of extending and perpetuating slavery, and for the national aggrandizement by conquest; and that the people of Massachusetts, and her representatives in Congress, are hereby bound to oppose the further prosecution of the war, and to promote by all constitutional means the restoration of peace."
— Massachusetts General Court, Resolutions on the War with Mexico, 1847
Which of the following historical developments in the late 1840s and 1850s most directly resulted from the sectional tensions described in the excerpt?
"All freedmen, free negroes and mulattoes in this State, over the age of eighteen years, found on the second Monday in January, 1866, or thereafter, with no lawful employment or business... shall be deemed vagrants, and on conviction thereof shall be fined... and if cannot pay, shall be hired out to the person who will pay the fine."
— Mississippi Vagrant Law, 1865
Which of the following was a primary goal of Southern state legislatures in passing laws such as the one in the excerpt?
"I hear with distress and anguish the word 'secession,' especially when it falls from the lips of those who are patriotic... Secession! Peaceable secession! Sir, your eyes and mine are never destined to see that miracle. The dismemberment of this vast country without convulsion! The breaking up of the fountains of the great deep without ruffling the surface! Who is so foolish, I close my eyes of this day, as to expect that this Union can be demolished by a peaceable secession? ...
Then, Sir, there are the complaints of the South... about the failure of the North to perform its constitutional obligations in regard to the return of runaway slaves. I think that the North has been in the wrong here. It has not felt the gravity of the constitutional obligation. The Constitution of the United States says, in the most distinct manner, that persons bound to service in one State, escaping into another, 'shall be delivered up.' ... I say that the South is right in this complaint, and the North is wrong."
— Senator Daniel Webster, speech to the United States Senate, March 7, 1850
Which of the following best describes the primary political strategy advocated by the speaker in the excerpt to address sectional tensions?
Read the following excerpt from the Supreme Court decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857):
"Now... the right of property in a slave is distinctly and expressly affirmed in the Constitution. The right to traffic in it, like an ordinary article of merchandise and property, was guarantied to the citizens of the United States, in every State that might choose it, for twenty years. And the Government in express terms is pledged to protect it in all future time, if the slave escapes from his owner. ... And no word can be found in the Constitution which gives Congress a greater power over slave property, or which excludes property of that description from the territory of the United States."
Which of the following was a direct historical consequence of the ruling excerpted above?
"It is of the transition of our people from a state of independence to one of complete subjugation to military power that I wish to speak... The conscription law, the seizure of private property for public use without just compensation, and the arbitrary arrests of citizens by military authorities have produced a state of feeling in North Carolina which is deeply to be regretted."
— Governor Zebulon Vance of North Carolina, letter to Confederate President Jefferson Davis, 1863
Which of the following central tensions of the Confederacy during the Civil War is best reflected in the excerpt?
Read the following excerpt from a political document published in 1860:
"Whereas, experience has demonstrated that Platforms adopted by the partisan conventions of the country have had the effect to mislead and deceive the people, and at the same time to widen the political divisions of the country, by the creation and encouragement of geographical and sectional parties; therefore,
Resolved, That it is both the part of patriotism and of duty to recognize no political principle other than the Constitution of the country, the Union of the States, and the Enforcement of the Laws."
— Constitutional Union Party Platform, 1860
Which of the following historical developments during the 1850s was the most direct cause of the political realignment described in the excerpt?
"All contracts for labor with freedmen, free negroes, and mulattoes for a longer period than one month shall be in writing... and if the laborer shall quit the service of the employer before the expiration of his term of service, without good cause, he shall forfeit his wages for that year up to the time of quitting."
—Mississippi Black Code, 1865
The legislation described in the excerpt most directly prompted which of the following responses from Congress?
"The whole public are tired out with these annual autumnal outbreaks in the South, and the great majority are ready now to condemn any interference on the part of the government. ... That the public mind will no longer admit of anything of the kind is, I think, quite clear. ... Therefore, the Governor [of Mississippi] must preserve the peace by the use of his state forces."
— U.S. Attorney General Edwards Pierrepont, letter to Mississippi Governor Adelbert Ames, September 1875
Which of the following developments in the South was a direct consequence of the federal policy position described in the excerpt?
“Resolved, That the President of the United States be respectfully requested to inform this House:
First. Whether the spot on which the blood of our citizens was shed, as in his messages declared, was or was not within the territory of Spain, at least after the treaty of 1819, until the Mexican revolution.
Second. Whether that spot is, or is not, within the territory which was wrested from Spain, by the revolutionary government of Mexico…”
— Representative Abraham Lincoln, "Spot Resolutions," 1847
Which of the following was a primary political objective of the Whigs who supported the resolutions in the excerpt?
Read the following excerpt from a political letter written in Illinois in 1856:
'The Whig party has fallen, and can never rise again. Its members are scattered; some have gone to the Democrats, some have taken refuge in the American lodge, and others are seeking a new political home... If we are to resist this encroachment [of the slave interest], we must rally under a new banner—one that unites former Whigs, Free-Soilers, and anti-slavery Democrats on the single platform of preventing the further extension of slavery.'
The political realignment described in the excerpt most directly resulted in which of the following outcomes by the election of 1860?
"It matters not what way the Supreme Court may hereafter decide as to the abstract question whether slavery may or may not go into a territory under the Constitution. The people have the lawful means to introduce it or exclude it as they please, for the reason that slavery cannot exist a day or an hour anywhere, unless it is supported by local police regulations. Those police regulations can only be established by the local legislature; and if the people are opposed to slavery, they will elect representatives to that body who will by unfriendly legislation effectually prevent the introduction of it into their midst."
— Stephen A. Douglas, speech at Freeport, Illinois, 1858
Which of the following was a direct historical consequence of the political position advocated in the excerpt?
"Since the abolition of slavery, the Legislatures of some of the States lately in rebellion have passed laws of the most oppressive character... If the Senate and House of Representatives can make it a crime to rob the post-office... can they not make it a crime to deprive a man of his liberty, and punish him for it? ... This bill is intended to give effect to the declaration of the Constitution, that the citizens of each State shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States."
— Senator Lyman Trumbull, speech introducing the Civil Rights Act, 1866
Which of the following historical developments during Reconstruction was a direct congressional response to the concerns described in the excerpt?
“Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That there is hereby established in the War Department, to continue during the present war of rebellion, and for one year thereafter, a bureau of refugees, freedmen, and abandoned lands, to which shall be committed... the supervision and management of all abandoned lands, and the control of all subjects relating to refugees and freedmen from rebel states...”
— Freedmen’s Bureau Act, March 3, 1865
The establishment of the agency described in the excerpt was most directly a response to which of the following social impacts of the Civil War?
"We support the Democratic candidate... We do this because the newly formed Republican party is a party of the North, organized against the South. A sectional party, having its center and all its strength in one half of the country, and carrying on a war of opinion against the other half, cannot fail to provoke a counter-organization in the other half, and thus divide the nation by a geographical line. If such a party should succeed in electing a President, the Union would be placed in immediate and extreme peril."
—Rufus Choate, former Whig Senator, letter to the Whig State Committee, 1856
Which of the following historical developments of the 1850s most directly contributed to the anxieties expressed by Choate in the excerpt?
Read the passage below and answer the question that follows.
"If slavery is right, all words, acts, laws, and constitutions against it, are themselves wrong, and should be silenced, and swept away. If it is right, we cannot justly object to its nationality—its universality; if it is wrong, they cannot justly insist upon its extension—its universality. All they ask, we could readily grant, if we thought slavery right; all we ask, they could as readily grant, if they thought it wrong. Their thinking it right, and our thinking it wrong, is the precise fact upon which the entire controversy turns."
— Abraham Lincoln, address at Cooper Union, New York, February 27, 1860
Which of the following political developments during the 1850s best supports the argument in the excerpt that the debate over slavery had become an irreconcilable ideological conflict?
“Mexico has passed the boundary of the United States, has invaded our territory and shed American blood upon the American soil... As war exists, and, notwithstanding all our efforts to avoid it, exists by the act of Mexico herself, we are called upon by every consideration of duty and patriotism to vindicate with decision the honor, the rights, and the interests of our country.”
— President James K. Polk, message to Congress, 1846
The acquisition of territory resulting from the war described in the excerpt most directly intensified sectional division over which of the following issues?
"In all social systems there must be a class to do the menial duties, to perform the drudgery of life. That is, a class requiring but a low order of intellect and but little development of soul, of beauty, or of grace. It constitutes the very mud-sill of society and of political government... Fortunately for the South, she found a race adapted to that purpose to her hand... We use them for our purpose, and call them slaves... [The North's] whole hireling class of manual laborers and 'operatives,' as you call them, are essentially slaves. The difference between us is, that our slaves are hired for life and well compensated; there is no starvation, no begging, no want of employment among our slaves... Yours are hired by the day, not cared for, and scantily compensated."
—Senator James Henry Hammond, speech to the U.S. Senate, March 4, 1858
Which of the following Northern arguments from the 1850s most directly challenged the perspective expressed in the excerpt?
"Late in the evening... I learned that... a bill was pending in the House of Representatives to appropriate two millions of dollars to enable the Executive to negotiate a treaty of peace and limits with Mexico... Mr. Wilmot of Pennsylvania moved an amendment to the bill, providing that slavery should be excluded from any territory which might be acquired from Mexico... This amendment was of a sectional character... It is mischievous and foolish, and has no connection with the treaty of peace, but must embarrass the government."
— President James K. Polk, Diary Entry, August 10, 1846
The debate surrounding the legislative amendment described in the excerpt most directly contributed to which of the following?
Read the excerpt below.
"I return with my objections to the House of Representatives... the bill entitled 'An act donating public lands to the several States and Territories which may provide colleges for the benefit of agriculture and the mechanic arts.' ... I deem it to be both inexpedient and unconstitutional... The Federal Government is one of limited as well as delegated powers. It has no power, either express or implied, to appropriate the public lands or the public money for the purpose of establishing systems of education in the several States."
—President James Buchanan, Veto Message, February 24, 1859
Which of the following historical developments best explains why the legislation described in the excerpt was successfully enacted in 1862?