Sample Midterm

Essay Question (80%) Write on one of the following:

1. Compare the interaction between the English and the Indians in New England and between the English and the Africans in South Carolina. Discuss the roles each group played in the evolution of colonial society and the strategies of coercion and resistance each developed. Use the Pequot War and the Stono Rebellion to illustrate how three distinct racial identities were created in this context. Use examples from Wood, Salisbury, Boyer and Nissenbaum, and the lectures to support your thesis.

2. By 1776, the British North American colonies were an emerging metropolis increasingly competitive with Engliand. No longer in need of colonial status and eager for economic autonomy, they declared their independence from the old metropolis.

   What, if anything, is wrong with this statement? Use Gross, Boyer, and the lectures to discuss what social and ideological developments complicate this interpretation of the American Revolution.

Identification Questions (20%) Identify and state the significance of four of the following:

Halfway Covenant	William Penn
Virgin Soil Epidemic	Indentured servitude
Stamp Act	Great Awakening
Triangular Trade	Salutary Neglect

Sample Final Exam: Autumn 1996

Identification (20%) Identify and state the significance of seven of the following terms:

Know Nothing Party	Cult of Domesticity
Topsy	George Fitzhugh
Free soil ideology	Mercantalism
Ostend Manifesto	Stono Rebellion
Fort Wilson Riot	Stamp Act
Putnam Family	Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
Market Revolution

Unit Essay (40%) Write on one of the following:

1. To what degree did the culmination of Manifest Destiny following the Mexican-American War unite and to what degree did it divide American society? In your essay, explain the concept of manifest destiny and the importance of the western territories in creating both nationalism and sectional division. Use at least four of the following to support your essay:
   • the Missouri Compromise
   • the Mexican-American War
   • the Compromise of 1850
   • the Kansas-Nebraska Act
   • the Dred Scott decision

2. To what extent was the North anti-slavery? To what extent was it sympathetic to black people in the South? And to what extent was it anti-South? Use examples from Uncle Tom's Cabin and Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass to illustrate your reading of Northern sentiments towards slavery and the South.

Comprehensive Essay (40%) Write on one of the following:

1. The elections of Jefferson, Jackson, and Lincoln were each revolutionary moments in American history. All three illustrated a transformation of political structures and an advocacy of an expanded American democracy. Each president reacted to contemporary conditions, but each also embodied an advance of democracy and freedom in the republic.

   Write an essay using this quotation as a point of departure. Use materials from lectures, Foner, Oakes, and Brinkley to explian

   • How the elections and presidencies of Jefferson, Jackson, and Lincoln illustrated changes in electoral politics and political practices
   • How each president reacted to issues of the time (e.g., Jeffersonian republicanism, Jacksonian reform and celebration of "the common man," and the Civil War)
   • The degree to which you agree that all three illustrate the expansion of democracy and freedom.

2. Historians have argued that the seeds of the American civil war were sown long before its outbreak. Explain how they might make this argument by discussing the following historical developments, covering three eras in United States History
   • The different uses of land and labor that influenced the development of divergent regions during the British colonial era as illustrated by Wood, Boyer and Nissenbaum, and lectures.
   • The increased social and economic differentiation between North and South stemming from urbanization and commercial capitalism in the first half of the nineteenth century. Refer to Johnson, Oakes, and lectures.
   • The ideological justifications used by each section's partisans to argue for their region's superior way of life during the Antebellum period. Again, refer to Oakes and lectures.

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