Social Studies test

North:



Transportation:

  • Systems of roads and canals

  • Congress funded a road across the Appalachians to connect the western states with the eastern ones

  • President James Monroe vetoed a bill to give the north money to build more roads; he said it was “unconstitutional”

  • River travel was still more practical than road travel, but moving boats upstream was difficult; people invented the steamboat

  • Engineers were hired to build a long canal from the Hudson river to lake eerie; inspired many more

  • Trains were inspired from steamboats and could go anywhere that steamboats could not

  • Railroads became one of the north’s biggest businesses

Society:

  • Mainly neither wealthy nor powerful

  • Largest urban areas were in the north

  • As industrialization grew, the people’s lives changed

  • Blacks in the north were free, however not treated equally; they could not vote, hold office, serve on juries, or attend white churches or schools; they responded by starting their own churches and starting their own businesses

  • Few employers gave blacks skilled jobs so they worked as laborers or servants

  • Immigrants arrived due to many reasons: Irish came because of a potato famine, failed revolutions pushed Germans overseas, some immigrants also just hoped to start a new life

  • Some Americans resented the immigrants for many reasons: they believed they were stealing jobs, had a different religion, etc.

  • Many Irish immigrants were poor

  • Germans were more accepted because most were protestant and middle class

Geography:

  • Four seasons

  • Coast-shipbuilding, fishing, commerce

  • Inland-trade, crafts

  • Hilly

  • Forests with lumber

  • Farther south=rich soil from rivers

Economy:

  • Francis Cabot Lowell-copied British textile mills made them better; built one of the first American textile factories

  • People used steam engines to power machinery; made it so people could build factories places other than alongside rivers

  • Eli Whitney showed people how to assemble products cheaply

  • Factory owners supported a national government that promoted industrial improvements

  • Industrial revolution had great effects on farming

  • Greater machines caused people to be paid less

  • Northern economy grew rapidly after the industrial revolution




South:



Transportation:

  • Not many railroads; if there were, they were mainly to ship products to the north

  • Mainly boats

  • Little need for roads/canals because of all the rivers 

Society:

  • Wealth was determined amount of land and slaves

  • Rich plantation owners at top of society, white farmers/workers in the middle, slaves/african americans at the bottom

  • Slavery

  • Rich children went to colleges/universities, other children received limited education

  • Girls received nearly no education

  • One in four white families owned at least one enslaved person

  • Poor white families rented mountain/forest land and paid rent with crops

  • Many illiterate children

  • Free blacks-forced to wear badges, pay extra taxes, live separately from whites

  • Blacks also either worked as cooks, carpenters, blacksmiths, house servants, nurse maids, laborers

Geography:

  • Long growing seasons

  • Fertile lowlands

  • Tobacco, corn, rice, sugarcane, Cotton

  • Forests with lumber

  • Fish, oyster, crabs in chesapeake bay

  • Broad, flat rivers

  • Cash crops

Economy:

  • Mainly from agriculture

  • Plantation owners mainly used slaves to grow cash crops

  • Eli Whittney created cotton gin=cotton demand spiked=more slaves needed

  • Tredgar iron works-created ammunition, railroads, etc.

  • Not as much technology as the north