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Eighth Grade American History
North and South
Homework
Directions: The following homework assignments will be due Friday, November 16. You must complete all
parts of the assignments. You cannot use a homework pass for either assignment.
Part I: Key Terms (15 points)
Study the key terms we have learned this unit. They can be found below and on the back of this
homework sheet. You will take a quiz on Friday, November 16 and your quiz will include 15 key
terms, taken from the 3 previous homework assignments. You can use your previous quizzes to
study.
Part II: Essay (15 points)
Write a 5-paragraph essay in which you contrast (explain the differences between) the North and
the South. You must have a thesis statement in the introduction paragraph and you must choose 3
areas in which the North and the South differed. These 3 areas will be the topic for each body
paragraph, so they should be listed in your thesis statement. On Tuesday, November 13 we will
cover this topic in class and you will be able to take home the proper resources to write the essay,
but if you would like to begin earlier, I can give you the materials ahead of time. This essay is due
Friday, November 16th.
Follow this guide to write your essay:
Paragraph 1: Introduction and thesis statement (your overall point and the 3 main ways the North
and South differ)
Paragraph 2: 1st way the North and South differ
Paragraph 3: 2nd way the North and South differ
Paragraph 4: 3rd way the North and South differ
Paragraph 5: Conclusion with restatement of thesis statement
Key Terms:
1. Industrial Revolution: period of extremely rapid growth in the use of machines in manufacturing and production
2. Samuel Slater: British mechanic who escaped to the U.S and created successful textile mills throughout New
England
3. Mass production: the making of large numbers of identical goods
4. Interchangeable parts: Eli Whitney’s system in which each particular part of a product would be made exactly
the same
5. Rhode Island System: System in which families were hired as textile workers
6. Lowell system: the employment of young, unmarried women in water power textile mills
7. Trade unions: workers organizations that try to improve pay and working conditions, usually formed for specific
trades
8. Robert Fulton: successfully sent the firs steamboat, the Clermont, up the Hudson River which started a demand
for steamboat ferry service
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9. Gibbons vs. Ogden: First Supreme Court ruling on commerce between states, reinforced the power of the
federal government over states. Gibbons was allowed to travel via steamboat between New Jersey and New
York because he had a federal license, though he did not have a state license from New York
10. John Deere: Blacksmith who designed a steel plow that would not get stuck in the dirt and tough grass like iron
plows tended to do
11. Cyrus McCormick: designed the mechanical reaper to cut wheat more quickly, which soon increased U.S
production of wheat
12. Telegraph: a device that sends and receives pulses of electrical current through a wire. Different combinations of
short and long pulses, called Morse code, allowed operators to send and receive many words per minute
13. Isaac Singer: improved the sewing machine with a clever design and a simple way to run it, soon the singer
sewing machine became a staple in American homes
14. Transportation Revolution: a period of rapid improvement in the speed, ease and cost of transportation
15. Cotton Gin: device invented by Eli Whitney in 1793 to separate cotton plants’ fibers from the seeds;
revolutionized the cotton industry
16. Scientific Agriculture: use of scientific techniques to improve crop production
17. Nat Turner: led a group of slaves in Virginia in an unsuccessful attempt to overthrow slavery
18. Plantation: large farms that usually specified in the growing of one type of crop
19. Folk tales: oral stories that often provide a moral lesson, slaves told them to teach lessons about how to survive
under slavery
20. Spirituals: emotional Christian songs sung by slaves that blended African and European tradition to express their
religious beliefs.
21. Planter: large-scale farmers who held more than twenty slaves, often had political and economic power
22. Yeoman: owners of small farms, sometimes held slaves but worked alongside them in the field
23. Cotton belt: area from South Carolina to East Texas where many farmers and their slaves settled to find land
suitable for growing cotton
24. Abolition: complete end to slavery
25. Emancipation: immediate freedom from slavery for all African-Americans
26. American Colonization Society: society that founded the African colony of Liberia which 12,000 African
Americans settled in
27. William Lloyd Garrison: outspoken abolitionist who published the newspaper, The Liberator
28. Frederick Douglass: escaped slave who gave many lectures and published the abolitionist newspaper, North Star
29. Underground Railroad: network of people who arranged transportation and hiding places for escaped slaves
30. Harriet Tubman: Famous conductor on the Underground Railroad who was an escaped slave and led over 300
slaves to freedom
31. Sectionalism: occurs when people favor the interests of one region over the interests of the country as a whole
32. Popular Sovereignty: voters in a territory could decide whether they wanted to ban or allow slavery based on
the will of the majority
33. Compromise of 1850: plan proposed by Henry Clay in which California entered the union as a free state, and the
rest of the Mexican Cession was divided into two territories which would decide to allow or ban slavery based
on popular sovereignty. Slavery was also banned in the capital.
34. Daniel Webster: Massachusetts Senator who opposed the expansion of slavery but also opposed abolitionists
because he wanted to preserve the union
35. Fugitive Slave Act: part of the Compromise of 1850 which made it a crime to help runaway slaves
36. Uncle Tom’s Cabin: Influential antislavery novel written in 1852 by Harriet Beecher Stowe after the passage of
the Fugitive Slave Act