Chapter 5

Question 1

What happened to many Native women who left their own people to live with white men in informal sexual and domestic unions at U.S. Army forts or trading centers in the West?

Answer 1

They were abandoned when white women arrived and ended up living on the edges of white culture.

Question 2

What was one remarkable aspect of women’s involvement in the antebellum reform movement?

Answer 2

As many as 10 percent of women in the Northeast were involved in reform groups

Question 3

In the 1840s, Elizabeth Cady Stanton lobbied to get the New York legislature to pass a bill that

Answer 3

gave wives control over their inherited wealth.

Question 4

In 1863, New York City was paralyzed by mobs rioting and protesting

Answer 4

the passage of the Conscription Act.

Question 5

What argument drew many women to the temperance movement in the 1840s and 1850s?

Answer 5

A man who stopped drinking would better support his family.

Question 6

What do documents detailing life on the Oregon Trail show?

Answer 6

Women’s workdays on the trail were generally several hours longer than men’s.

Question 7

The work of northern women during the Civil War differed from that of southern women in that they

Answer 7

created a national umbrella organization to provide services to the troops.

Question 8

In a recurring example of cross-cultural misunderstanding, white emigrants on the Oregon Trail often believed they were under imminent attack by Native Americans when

Answer 8

Native groups were actually approaching the wagon trains to demand money and food.

Question 9

Congress responded to the petition drive of female abolitionists in the 1830s by

Answer 9

passing the “gag rule,” which tabled all antislavery petitions.

Question 10

Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1851–1852) dramatized

Answer 10

the dangers facing runaway slaves under the new Fugitive Slave Law.

Question 11

The most controversial resolution of the “Declarations of Sentiments and Resolutions” passed at the Seneca Falls Convention in July 1848 was that

Answer 11

women had an equal right to vote.

Question 12

The year 1848 was significant in U.S. history because the Mexican War, Seneca Falls Convention, and founding of the Free Soil Party all inaugurated

Answer 12

movements that challenged preexisting social boundaries.

Question 13

Moral reform activists viewed prostitutes as

Answer 13

victims of men’s sexual excesses.

Question 14

What was the major issue facing reformers and the country in the 1850s?

Answer 14

The spread of slavery

Question 15

The Shakers, founded by Mother Ann Lee, challenged conventional notions of marriage by

Answer 15

prohibiting all sexual relations, even within marriage.

Question 16

The Seneca Falls Convention of 1848 issued a manifesto that in both style and philosophy echoed the Declaration of Independence when it called for

Answer 16

equality of men and women before the law.

Question 17

In the spring of 1863, the women of Richmond rioted in the streets protesting

Answer 17

food shortages and triple-digit inflation.

Question 18

Antebellum female health activists, responding to women’s menstrual, reproductive, and sexual complaints, advocated that

Answer 18

women ignore regular doctors and adopt alternative therapeutic regimes.

Question 19

During the California gold rush, most middle-class women who traveled with their husbands to the gold-digging sites made money by

Answer 19

offering domestic services to single men

Question 20

How did the activities of the Grimké sisters produce a split in the abolitionist movement?

Answer 20

Their defense of women’s equal rights created divisions over the proper role of women in the movement.

Question 21

Many female abolitionists were pushed toward advocating women’s rights by their realization that

Answer 21

free women experienced barriers to personhood like those faced by slaves.

Question 22

The Oneida community, which challenged many notions of conventional marriage, earned its greatest notoriety by

Answer 22

rejecting monogamy and advocating extramarital sexuality.

Question 23

Prostitution in California in the mid-nineteenth century had a distinct racial hierarchy with which group at the bottom?

Answer 23

Chinese women

Question 24

The call for the immediate and uncompensated abolition of slavery and full civil rights for black people came first from

Answer 24

the free black community.

Question 25

During the Civil War, northern women activists, such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, formed the Women’s National Loyal League to

Answer 25

pressure Lincoln to adopt a broader emancipation policy.

Question 26

During the moral reform movement in the late 1830s, women emphasized their Christian maternal role and responsibilities in order to

Answer 26

expand their social authority outside the home.

Question 27

By participating in the temperance movement, women were able to

Answer 27

criticize men for their failure to provide for and protect their families.