20 Questions for self-test and review, UNIT II exam:

You will NOT see these exact questions on the exam, HOWEVER, the terms, concepts, and ideas that are at issue here will be embedded in the test questions.  Use your lecture notes, readings, and the weekly study guides to go review.

1. What were the fundamental challenges to creating successful state governments in the new republic?  A federal government?
2. What was the place of women and blacks in the new republic?
3. What were the incentives for, and obstacles to a constitutional convention?  What role did the "people" play in the ratification of the U.S. Constitution?
4. What is the Bill of Rights and why was it added to the Constitution?
5. How did Jefferson's and Hamilton's views on human nature and beliefs about individual freedom differ and what was the significance of these differences for government policy in the 1790s?
6. What role did England and France play in American domestic politics and foreign policy in the 1790s?  In the early 1800s?  Did U.S. diplomacy succeed or fail at this time?
7. What was the role of technology in the new republic?  Did it have implications for American freedom?
8. What was the role of the Supreme Court in the new republic?  What impact did it have on relations between the federal government and the states?  The different branches of government?
9. Define the phrase "market economy" and explain its significance for immigrants, Native Americans, women and blacks in the early nineteenth century.
10. What was the transportation revolution and why was it important to freedom intake early nineteenth century?
11. How important was the federal government in the lives of most Americans by 1820?  Explain.
12. How mobile were Americans (white, black, and red) in the early nineteenth century?  Was migration voluntary or involuntary?  Explain.
13. In what ways was the United States a land of equal opportunity by the 1830s?  In what ways was it not?  Explain.
14. Did President Andrew Jackson live up to his billing as a man of the "people"?  Why?  Why not?
15. To what extent was sectionalism a problem in the age of Jackson?
16. How different from each other were the political parties of the Jacksonian era?  Did they give voters a real choice between contrasting philosophies of government?
17. Why is the period between 1830 and 1860 known as an era of reform?  Were the reforms intended to increase or decrease personal freedom?
18. Why was religion important in the United States at this time?
19. What were the roles of women and the family in pre Civil War America?  Compared to their colonial forebears, did American women have more autonomy or less by 1840?
20. Would you say that Americans were an optimistic or a pessimistic people in the first half of the nineteenth century?  Explain.