Part 5

Quiz for Document P5-5: Alexander Stephens, “Cornerstone” Speech (1861)

Reader Quiz

Part 5e

true

Select the best answer for each question. Click the “submit” button for each question to turn in your work. Click the "Previous" button to navigate back if you need to view the textbook.

Question 1

Alexander Stephens proclaims in his “Cornerstone” speech that the new Confederate Constitution is the first in the history of the world to be built on the “great truth” ofA. Hobbes’s “state of nature.”
B. organic social unity.
C. Rousseau’s “general will.”
D. the inferiority of the “negro” race.

Question 2

According to Stephens, the source of the Confederacy’s new understanding of racial distinctions, one that the anti-slavery activists of the North had ignored, wasA. a critical theory in biblical interpretation.
B. an innovation in theories of political economy.
C. a recent advancement in scientific knowledge.
D. the Bantu-Boer conflict in Basotho.

Question 3

Which of the following statements best describes Stephens’s assessment of the U.S. Constitution as it related to the institution of slavery?A. Constitutional guarantees ignored the right to own slaves as property.
B. Slave ownership was protected by the U.S. Constitution but not enshrined as an essential social system.
C. Questions over slave ownership were left to the states under the U.S. Constitution.
D. The North ignored the sufficient protections of slavery that the U.S. Constitution had granted.

Question 4

Along with changing attitudes toward race and biology in the mid-nineteenth century, what other momentous change regarding the U.S. and global economy occurred between 1815 and 1860?A. The Great Awakening
B. An interregnum
C. The Market Revolution
D. The Scientific Revolution