Quiz for Sources for America’s History, Part 4

Question

1. The contract issued by the Canal Commissioners of Ohio in the 1820s (Document P4-1) stipulating the standards and requirements for the construction of the state’s canal network points to the connections between the transportation revolution and which of the following developments?

A.
B.
C.
D.

Correct. The answer is b. The contract issued by the Canal Commissioners of Ohio described the massive amount of labor and construction required to build the canal, pointing to the importance of technological innovation for the completion of the project. The engineers and construction workers who built the canal could not have done so without the new tools and machinery that were available by the 1820s.
Incorrect. The answer is b. The contract issued by the Canal Commissioners of Ohio described the massive amount of labor and construction required to build the canal, pointing to the importance of technological innovation for the completion of the project. The engineers and construction workers who built the canal could not have done so without the new tools and machinery that were available by the 1820s.

Question

2. Joseph Story’s “Address Delivered on the Dedication of the Cemetery at Mount Auburn” in 1831 (Document P4-2) reflects the ideas of which of the following early-nineteenth-century intellectual movements?

A.
B.
C.
D.

Correct. The answer is d. Transcendentalists rejected the rigid rationalism of the Enlightenment and embraced the idea that both people and nature were inherently good. Story’s notions that the natural cemetery would provide a place that would “gratify human feelings, or tranquillize human fears” and “secure the best religious influences,” and be a site at which people could “cultivate feelings and sentiments more worthy or ourselves, and more worthy of Christianity” reflect the transcendentalist view that nature was saturated with the presence of God.
Incorrect. The answer is d. Transcendentalists rejected the rigid rationalism of the Enlightenment and embraced the idea that both people and nature were inherently good. Story’s notions that the natural cemetery would provide a place that would “gratify human feelings, or tranquillize human fears” and “secure the best religious influences,” and be a site at which people could “cultivate feelings and sentiments more worthy or ourselves, and more worthy of Christianity” reflect the transcendentalist view that nature was saturated with the presence of God.

Question

3. How did Emmeline B. Wells’s view of nature, as she encountered it on her 1846 journey to the West (Document P4-3), compare to that of Joseph Story in his address at the dedication of Mount Auburn Cemetery (Document P4-2)?

A.
B.
C.
D.

Correct. The answer is b. Wells’s view of nature provides a stark contrast to Story’s view. Whereas Story regarded nature as a source of beauty and union with God, Wells’s description of nature focused on its inconveniences and dangers, regarding it as a force that needed to be tamed and controlled through human intervention.
Incorrect. The answer is b. Wells’s view of nature provides a stark contrast to Story’s view. Whereas Story regarded nature as a source of beauty and union with God, Wells’s description of nature focused on its inconveniences and dangers, regarding it as a force that needed to be tamed and controlled through human intervention.

Question

4. What influence(s) is evident in Asher Brown Durand’s view of humans and their relationship to nature as depicted in Kindred Spirits (Document P4-4)?

A.
B.
C.
D.

Correct. The answer is c. Brown was a founder of the Hudson River School of painting and strongly influenced by Romanticism and Transcendentalism, movements which sought to emphasize humans’ intimate connections with nature.
Incorrect. The answer is c. Brown was a founder of the Hudson River School of painting and strongly influenced by Romanticism and Transcendentalism, movements which sought to emphasize humans’ intimate connections with nature.

Question

5. In his description of the climate and terrain of Texas (Document P4-5), what did Frederick Law Olmstead suggest about how a hostile environment like that of the Texas prairies affected the formation of individuals’ values?

A.
B.
C.
D.

Correct. The answer is b. Olmstead suggested that the hostility of the environment on the Texas prairie led the region’s inhabitants to embrace violence and crime rather than virtuous labor to sustain themselves.
Incorrect. The answer is b. Olmstead suggested that the hostility of the environment on the Texas prairie led the region’s inhabitants to embrace violence and crime rather than virtuous labor to sustain themselves.