AP U.S. History
Unit 4: Age of Jefferson
Chapter 9 Reading Questions
Part I: Boyer, pgs. 255-264
1. What was the western identity in terms of society and customs? How did Easterners tend to view the Westerners?
2. How was the “Far West” different from the “West”?
3. What measures did the government take between 1790 and 1840 to encourage westward expansion (there are
several)?
4. What role did “mixed bloods” have in Native Americans tribes in the Southern U.S.? How did their tribes view them?
5. How did state governments take away Native American authority and subsequently, property?
6. How did the federal government take away Native American authority and subsequently, property?
7. What three factors contributed to the agricultural boom? How did these affect western settlement?
8. Explain how the cycle of short-term debt for long-term profit applied to farmers?
9. Compare land distribution policy of Federalists to land distribution policy of Republicans.
10. What role did the Second National Bank and subsequent private banks play in land distribution?
11. What were preemption laws in the west? Whom did they affect?
Part II: Boyer, 264-274
1. Why was currency undervalued leading up to the Panic of 1819?
2. What was the cycle of debt that affected debt holders, particularly land speculators?
3. What lasting effects did the Panic of 1819 have on the American public?
4. Why did steamboats become the preferred method of commodity transportation in the 1820s and 1830s? What did
this result in, in terms of canals?
5. Why did railroads begin to replace canals in the 1840s? How did the methods of transportation compare?
6. What was the pattern of city growth in the 1820s-1840s?
7. What factors stimulated industrialization (4)?
8. How was early American industrialization similar to and different from its counterpart in Britain?
9. How did the Waltham and Lowell mills come into being in Massachusetts? Describe their operation.
10. What was the system of “outwork?” Was it more popular than mills like those in Waltham and Lowell?
11. What conditions of industrialization and its effects led to organized worker protests in the 1830s?
Part III: Boyer, 274-283
1. How did wealthy Americans generally become wealthy? What was misleading about this, in terms of the “American
dream?”
2. What is the difference between poverty and “pauperism?” What were the types of pauperism?
3. What were the formal (legal) restrictions on free blacks in the North? What were the informal (social) restrictions?
4. What were the important characteristics of the “middling classes?” How did the commercial/market economy affect
those this class?
5. What effects did transience have on Americans in the first half of the 19th century?
6. How did the questioning of authority affect previously respected professions such as doctors, lawyers and ministers?
7. Describe the “age of the self-made youth.”
8. What was the doctrine of separate spheres? Which spheres where men in charge of? Which spheres were women in
charge of?
9. How did the concept of “home” evolve in the first half of the 19th century?
10. What things did women come to have more influence over, as an extension of their “domestic” sphere?
11. Compare the characteristics of vertical allegiance to horizontal societies. What were some horizontal societies?