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Q:
Why did barbed wire destroy the open-range cattle industry?
A) It cost so much to fence an entire ranch.
B) It mangled large numbers of animals.
C) It prevented the free movement of cattle.
D) It was too expensive to maintain.
Q:
Who was the inventor of barbed wire?
A) Joseph F. Glidden
B) Joseph G. McCoy
C) Walter Prescott Webb
D) S. D. Butcher
Q:
Major John Wesley Powell believed that western lands should be divided into three classes. Which of the following is one of these classes?
A) farm land
B) wet land
C) grass land
D) pasturage land
Q:
The future director of the United States Geological Service, __________, advocated a system for dealing with the semiarid conditions of western lands.
A) John Wesley Powell
B) Othniel C. Marsh
C) Mark Hopkins
D) Thomas Fitzpatrick
Q:
Which future American president was involved in open-range ranching?
A) Rutherford B. Hayes
B) Theodore Roosevelt
C) William H. Taft
D) William McKinley
Q:
By the 1880s, large corporations were dominating which industry?
A) textile
B) furniture
C) tobacco
D) ranching
Q:
What made ranching in the American West so profitable?
A) The soil was very fertile.
B) The grasslands were very thickly grown.
C) Western beef was superior to any other beef on the market.
D) The rising demand for beef in the nation's cities pushed up prices.
Q:
Open-range ranching in the late nineteenth century required which of the following?
A) miles of fences
B) large land holdings
C) control of a stable water supply
D) special permits issued by state legislatures
Q:
The discovery that cattle could feed on the prairie grasses of the public domain of the northern plains led to the development of which of the following?
A) bonanza farms
B) open-range ranching
C) refrigerated railroad cars
D) sharecropping
Q:
Cattle herds were driven across the unsettled grasslands of the __________ Trail on their way to the railroad at Abilene, Kansas.
A) Pecos
B) Goodnight-Loving
C) Chisholm
D) Oregon
Q:
How did Christopher Columbus shape the American West?
A) The first explorers of the trans-Mississippi West came from his crew.
B) He named most of the territory west of the Mississippi.
C) He brought cattle to the Americas, which later spread wild across the Western prairie.
D) The gold he brought back to Spain had originated in California, which began a centuries-long quest for the Pacific Coast.
Q:
What was the only transcontinental railroad built without land grants?
A) Southern Pacific
B) Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe
C) Union Pacific
D) Great Northern
Q:
Which two railroads joined in 1869 to form the first transcontinental railroad?
A) the Great Northern and the Northern Pacific
B) the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy and the New York Central
C) the Kansas Pacific and the Chesapeake and Ohio
D) the Central Pacific and the Union Pacific
Q:
The ability to finance the building of the railroad with money received from federal land grants __________.
A) allowed the rail operators to come through an economic depression without bankruptcy
B) caused the operators to be extravagant and sometimes even corrupt
C) meant that the railway operators could pay their workers much higher average wages
D) made the rail lines be conservative with operating costs
Q:
Available evidence seems to indicate that railroads in the West __________.
A) made comparably modest profits from the first sale of land grants
B) made most of their profits by transporting government goods and personnel
C) were far more efficient and frugal due to government involvement
D) had little incentive to encourage settlement in the West
Q:
Transcontinental railroads used their zone of "indemnity" lands to prevent which of the following?
A) military confiscation of lands for forts
B) state taxation of railroad property
C) sale of federal land along the right-of-way
D) homesteading along the railroad
Q:
The Pacific Railway Act of 1862 set the pattern for government land grants by giving the builders of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads __________.
A) five square miles of public land on each side of every mile of track laid
B) a ten-year exemption from state taxes
C) a twenty-year exemption from government regulation
D) the right to import an unlimited supply of Chinese labor
Q:
Which railroad was allotted the first federal land grant in 1850?
A) Central Pacific
B) Illinois Central
C) Rock Island Line
D) Baltimore and Ohio
Q:
Which of the following is true of the frontier farmers of the 1870s and 1880s?
A) Only the "bonanza" farmers survived the drought of the late eighties.
B) They farmed the land with little knowledge or concern for preventing erosion or preserving fertility.
C) Cultivating the prairie grasslands was quite similar to their experience in Ohio and Illinois.
D) Farmers who diversified their crops were most likely to fail.
Q:
In the decades following the Civil War, which area of the country became known as the "breadbasket" of America?
A) the Plains states west of the Mississippi
B) the Deep South
C) the North
D) the states bordering the eastern side of the Mississippi
Q:
What were the gigantic corporation-controlled farms that were created to take advantage of the newly available acreage in the South and West known as?
A) bread-basket farms
B) reservation plots
C) bonanza farms
D) agribusinesses
Q:
Which statement about the Homestead Act of 1862 is true?
A) It promised white settlers 40 acres and a mule.
B) It provided railroad companies with generous land grants.
C) It gave southern blacks the opportunity to become landowners.
D) It offered Western settlers 160 acres if they turned the land into a farm.
Q:
Roughing It (1872) by Mark Twain provides us with our most famous pictures of the __________.
A) last Plains Indian wars
B) open-range cattle industry
C) farmers' last frontier
D) mining frontier
Q:
What was one result of the gold and silver rushes of the late nineteenth century?
A) inflation because of the coining of the new metals
B) retarded political development in the West
C) a dramatic decline in the value of the dollar in the world market
D) an improved financial position for America in world trade
Q:
Most of the wealth from the mines in the West went into whose pockets?
A) original prospectors
B) large mining corporations
C) gamblers and desperadoes
D) regional railroads
Q:
Probably the most famous of all the precious metal strikes in the West, the site of the Comstock Lode and the Big Bonanza, was __________.
A) Virginia City, Nevada
B) Deadwood, South Dakota
C) Pike's Peak, Colorado
D) Butte, Montana
Q:
In comparison to its human resources, the natural resources of the nation in the late nineteenth century were __________.
A) even more ruthlessly and thoughtlessly exploited
B) far better preserved by a growing conservation movement
C) treated with exactly the same indifference and lack of foresight
D) even better nurtured and developed
Q:
Partly as a result of the Ghost Dance movement, the army killed some 150 Teton Sioux at __________ in 1890.
A) Wounded Knee, South Dakota
B) Sand Creek, Colorado
C) Washita, Oklahoma
D) Mankato, Minnesota
Q:
Under the Dawes Severalty Act, Indians who accepted land allotments, lived "separate from any tribe," and "adopted the habits of civilized life" were allowed to __________.
A) buy the land they occupied
B) leave the reservation
C) receive cash benefits
D) become citizens
Q:
In 1887, Congress passed the Dawes Severalty Act, which was intended to do which of the following?
A) persuade Indians to abandon their traditional tribal cultures
B) protect tribal life and customs.
C) encourage Native American crafts and trades
D) place all Native Americans on reservations
Q:
Who led the Nez Perce of Oregon and Idaho on a thousand-mile campaign, outwitting federal troops, before being forced to surrender?
A) Sitting Bull
B) Crazy Horse
C) Red Cloud
D) Chief Joseph
Q:
The ability of the Plains Indians to resist white expansion was severely damaged by which of the following?
A) the introduction of the horse
B) the destruction of the buffalo
C) the blizzard of 1873
D) whites' superior military training
Q:
The transcontinental railroad and the destruction of the buffalo __________.
A) were the chief reason for the U.S. military campaign against Plains Indians
B) prompted Plains Indians to intensify their military campaigns against white settlers along the Mississippi
C) caused Plains Indians to surrender and settle down in the reservations
D) prompted a significant decline in the Plains Indian war.
Q:
What was General George A. Custer's greatest mistake at Little Bighorn?
A) He did not provide his men with sufficient ammunition.
B) He grossly underestimated the number of Indians.
C) He delayed the attack until nightfall.
D) He refused to rest his horses before the attack.
Q:
The government's administration of Indian affairs was notable over the years for its __________.
A) dedicated public servants
B) careful long-range planning
C) pursuit of Native American rights
D) level of corruption
Q:
The distinction between "treaty Indians" and "nontreaty Indians" __________.
A) carried special weight in the Southwest
B) was easily enforced by the army
C) was based on possession of horses
D) shifted almost from day to day
Q:
What was one reason a relative handful of Indians could hold off the battle-hardened Civil War veterans of the U.S. Army?
A) The Indians had a highly effective centralized leadership.
B) The U.S. Army had fewer than 2,000 soldiers to cover over ten million square miles.
C) Indian leaders were skillful at organizing campaigns.
D) Indians were superb guerilla warriorsthe best cavalry soldiers in the world.
Q:
In 1867, the government tried which new strategy toward the Plains Indians?
A) negotiating with all tribes to achieve a single unified treaty
B) negotiating with each tribe separately
C) forcing the reservation Native Americans to become farmers
D) accepting the Indians' rights to practice their own religions
Q:
One of the worst massacres committed by white troops in the Indian Wars occurred in 1864 at __________.
A) Medicine Lodge
B) Sand Creek
C) Fort Sully
D) Horse Creek
Q:
Which of the following statements about U.S. native treaties is true?
A) The U.S. government generally had little interest in honoring them..
B) Due to their lack of written culture, native tribes rarely kept track of their treaty obligations.
C) Savvy about the legal process, native tribes frequently secured U.S. treaty obligations in court.
D) Treaties gave both the United States and native tribes dependable rules, but they reminded both that they still did not live together as one nation.
Q:
In 1851, the government negotiated a new policy with the Plains tribes based on a divide-and-conquer strategy. This was known as the "__________" policy.
A) reservation
B) concentration
C) removal and resettlement
D) dispersal
Q:
The United States treated each tribe __________.
A) as a part of a consolidated whole
B) in accordance with the state laws of the territory that they claimed
C) as one sovereign nation
D) as a separate sovereign nation
Q:
How did horses become a vital part of Plains Indian culture?
A) American settlers reintroduced them in the early nineteenth century.
B) Wild horses had been part of the North American fauna since about 8000 BCE.
C) The Spanish reintroduced horses to the Plains.
D) Plains Indians acquired their horses in raids on native tribes in Canada.
Q:
_________ were/was essential to the culture, religion, and sustenance of the Plains Indians.
A) Maize
B) Hemp
C) Bison
D) Cattle
Q:
On the eve of the Civil War the American Indians in the West __________.
A) were no longer dependent on the buffalo
B) had almost no contact with American and European culture
C) still occupied about 50 percent of the United States
D) were still reluctant to adopt any white technology
Q:
Which of the following statements about immigrants in the West in the late 1800s is true?
A) Only 10 percent of all Californians were foreign-born.
B) Many Mexicans came to the United States to serve as cheap labor on the railroads.
C) There were large populations of Chinese immigrants in the Southwest.
D) The West attracted Chinese immigrants, but many Irish and German ones as well.
Q:
In 1882 Congress passed a law that in effect stopped immigration from which country?
A) China
B) Russia
C) Mexico
D) Poland
Q:
Although we imagine the West in the nineteenth century as a thinly populated rural region, by the late 1870s __________ already had almost 250,000 inhabitants.
A) Las Vegas
B) Sante Fe
C) Tucson
D) San Francisco
Q:
What larger factors explain the end of Reconstruction?
Q:
Was sharecropping an economic victory for black freedmen or a restoration of slavery? Explain.
Q:
Assess Northern white attitudes toward the process of Reconstruction.
Q:
Discuss the importance of the Fourteenth Amendment during Reconstruction.
Q:
Why did President Abraham Lincoln offer such lenient terms for the reconstruction of the South?
Q:
After the Compromise of 1877, black freedmen __________.A) gained economic and political power in the SouthB) were condemned to poverty and indignity in the interests of sectional harmonyC) made no more dramatic political or economic gains until after World War II, but also suffered no economic or political lossesD) continued to share in America's growing wealth and power
Q:
As a result of the Compromise of 1877, __________.
A) the principles of the Radical Republicans became part of the fabric of American politics
B) the power of the president was permanently undermined
C) the Supreme Court stepped in to protect blacks
D) Reconstruction ended and a new political order took shape in the South
Q:
Who became president as a result of the Compromise of 1877?
A) Rutherford B. Hayes
B) Ulysses S. Grant
C) James A. Garfield
D) Grover Cleveland
Q:
Which governmental body decided the disputed electoral votes in the election of 1876?
A) House of Representatives
B) electoral commission created by Congress
C) Senate
D) Supreme Court
Q:
In the wake of the commission's assignment of disputed Electoral College votes to Hayes, __________.
A) Tilden called on Southerners in Congress to march out in protest
B) Northerners celebrated in a premature victory rally in Washington D.C.
C) some veterans in Southern states readied themselves for a march on Washington D.C.
D) Tilden challenged the Republican rival to a duel, but was refused
Q:
Who was the apparent winner of the election of 1876, with 203 electoral votes and a quarter of a million more popular votes than his opponent?
A) James G. Blaine
B) Samuel J. Tilden
C) Rutherford B. Hayes
D) Horace Greeley
Q:
What did Horace Greeley and the Liberal Republicans embrace in 1872?
A) laissez-faire liberalism
B) social conservatism.
C) civil rights and social justice
D) protectionism and Hamiltonian economic plans
Q:
Among the worst scandals of Grant's administration was the __________.
A) Whiskey Ring affair
B) South Sea Bubble
C) Teapot Dome Scandal
D) Yazoo Land Frauds
Q:
What injured the Grant administration most was the president's failure to __________.
A) address challenges in foreign affairs
B) carry out the will of Congress in Reconstruction
C) control government corruption
D) recognize the importance of the black vote
Q:
The average Northerner lost interest in Reconstruction once it became reasonably certain that the former slaves __________.
A) had economic security
B) were guaranteed the vote
C) would not be re-enslaved
D) were guaranteed social equality
Q:
The three Force Acts (1870"1871) were an attempt by Congress to control groups like the __________.
A) carpetbaggers
B) Union League of America
C) scalawags
D) Ku Klux Klan
Q:
The waning support of Northerners for Radical policy was due in part to which of the following?
A) the retirement of President Johnson
B) the activities of the Ku Klux Klan
C) the increasing fissure between northern and southern whites
D) their loyalty to the Democratic party
Q:
Southern white Republicans often controlled the black vote by the influence of the __________.
A) Freedmen's Bureau
B) Free Soil party
C) Ku Klux Klan
D) Union League of America
Q:
During Reconstruction, the South's share of the national output of manufactured goods __________.
A) increased dramatically
B) declined sharply
C) remained steady
D) came to equal that of the North due to cotton and tobacco production
Q:
Under the crop-lien system, both the sharecroppers and the landowners __________.
A) profited from the South's rapid economic progress immediately after the Civil War
B) depended on credit, often at high interest rates, from local merchants and bankers
C) had strong incentives to diversify their crops
D) suffered from shortages of labor and credit due to the South's rapid industrialization after the Civil War
Q:
What was the main cause of southern rural poverty for both whites and blacks?
A) harsh treatment by Radical Republicans
B) lack of capital to finance their sharecropping economy
C) failure of new varieties of cotton to thrive
D) an ill-advised attempt at rapid industrialization
Q:
As a result of black demands for economic independence and the shortage of capital, the South developed the agricultural system known as __________.
A) sharecropping
B) gang labor
C) tenant farming
D) wage-crop economics
Q:
How did freedmen respond to the abolition of slavery?
A) They more than doubled the cotton output because they worked for themselves
B) They homesteaded on vast sections of land confiscated from Confederate leaders
C) They took advantage of the ability to move "without a pass."
D) They formed large collective farms so they did not need to work for whites.
Q:
Which of the following most accurately describes southern agriculture after the Civil War?
A) Every adult male ex-slave was given forty acres and a mule.
B) Both output and productivity declined dramatically.
C) "Sharecropping" was outlawed.
D) Tobacco replaced cotton as the most valuable crop.
Q:
What was a main weakness in the plan to confiscate land from large plantations to give to freedmen?A) The large plantations were the main source of employment for freedmen.B) Freedmen did not want the land because they did not want to be tied down.C) It was strongly opposed by Congressmen Stevens and Sumner.D) It would provide land but no tools, seeds, or other necessities.
Q:
Thaddeus Stevens was the most prominent congressional advocate of a plan to give every adult male ex-slave which of the following?
A) a free education to the sixth grade
B) 100 dollars
C) 40 acres and a mule
D) free transportation to the West
Q:
What was the political impact of the Compromise of 1877?
A) Democrats regained the White House for the first time since 1856.
B) Republicans maintained their majority in the Senate and on the Supreme Court.
C) The compromise secured the continuation of Reconstruction.
D) The deal allowed white Democrats to oust black Republicans from the House.
Q:
The Freedmen's Bureau and the "black Republican" governments both __________.
A) devoted much energy and money to public education for former slaves
B) found Andrew Johnson to be among their strongest supporters
C) overlooked the importance of political rights and power for former slaves
D) focused only on projects that aided former slaves
Q:
Scalawags were __________.
A) southern white Republicans
B) northern black Republicans
C) poor white Democrats
D) Northern Republicans in the South
Q:
Studies of "black Republican" governments during Radical Reconstruction reveal that __________.
A) white scalawags and carpetbaggers were really in charge
B) former slaves dominated southern state governments
C) free blacks from the North dominated southern state governments
D) white scalawags and carpetbaggers were merely window dressing for the black politicians who controlled southern governments
Q:
Which statement regarding the Fifteenth Amendment is true?
A) It prohibited states from denying black men the right to vote.
B) It gave all men the right to vote.
C) It gave all Americans over 21 years old the right to vote.
D) It created a national standard for voting rights.
Q:
The election of 1868 seemed to indicate that __________.
A) the white electorate was wholeheartedly behind Grant
B) Horatio Seymour was a very weak candidate
C) most white Americans opposed Radical Reconstruction
D) most white Americans supported Radical Reconstruction