US HISTORY 7980 FINAL EXAM SPRING 2016

For each choice of options choose one question and write an essay on your response. You will have a totally of 4 essays that do not need to be longer than a page each.

Answer ONE of the following questions:
1. Explain why there were no major witchcraft scares in the Chesapeake colonies and no uprising like Bacon's Rebellion in New England. Consider the possible social, economic, and religious causes of both phenomena. 
2. What made Native American peoples vulnerable to conquest by European adventurers? 
3. What was the role of the colonies in the British mercantilist system? 
4. How did the French and Indian War change the relationship between England and its American colonies?

Answer ONE of the following questions.
1. Many historians have argued that the war for American independence was not inevitable, that the British empire could have been saved. Do you agree? At what point during the imperial crisis was peaceful compromise possible? 
2. Who was to blame for Britain's failure to win a quick victory over the American rebels: General Howe, General Burgoyne, or the ministers in London? Explain your answer. 
3. Why did Britain switch to a Southern military strategy? Why did that strategy ultimately fail? 
4. Why was the Constitution a controversial document even as it was being written?

Answer ONE of the following questions:

1. Weigh the relative importance of the Industrial and Market revolutions in changing the American economy. In what ways was the economy different in 1860 from what it had been in 1800? How would you explain those differences? 
2. In what ways did the emerging industrial economy conflict with artisan republicanism? How did wage laborers respond to the new economy? 
3. Why did Protestant Christianity and Protestant women emerge as forces for social change? 
4. Why did women's issues suddenly become so prominent in American culture?

Answer ONE of the following questions.
1. How did plantation crops and the slavery system change between 1800 and 1860? Why did these changes occur? 
2. How did the abolitionists’ proposals and methods differ from those of earlier antislavery movements? Why did those proposals and methods arouse such hostility in the South and in the North? 
3. What was the relationship between the collapse of the Second Party System of Whigs and Democrats and the Republican victory in the election of 1860? 
4. In 1860, the institution of slavery was firmly entrenched in the United States; by 1865, it was dead. How did this happen? How did Union policy toward slavery and enslaved people change over the course of the war? Why did it change?