HI 4303 New South (AOCE) Study Guide for the Midterm Exam General Hints: The midterm exam

is designed to test what you have learned over the course of the first half of the semester. You will have three hours to complete the exam which will consist of identification and essay questions. Although you will have access to your books, you must still prepare for the exam because it will ask you to connect the various themes you have read about and discussed rather than simply regurgitate information you gleaned from the textbook and the readings. This is not to say, of course, that facts are unimportant. On the contrary they matter a great deal. They are to be used, however, to support a specific argument you will make in answering the essay questions or properly identifying the ID terms and their significance. Identification Questions: The identification questions, of course, require you to correctly identify the who or what along with the when and where of the term posted, be it a person, an event, a thing, or a concept. Obviously, specific details matter since they indicate an understanding of the subject. Perhaps even more important, however, is the why. Why does the person or term matter to southern history? How does he/she/it fit into the larger narrative of the New South? It is essential to explain the significance of the term as it relates to southern history. An adequate identification usually requires a full paragraph. Essay Questions: The essay questions will either pose a specific question that you are to answer or ask you to trace a series of events. In either case, you will be expected to make an argument and to defend that argument with specific evidence. An argument implies that your assertions are provable (or disprovable) and so not based merely upon what you think but upon what you can provide evidence to support. If the essay poses a specific question, then, your answer to that question (boiled down to a single sentence) is your thesis. The rest of your essay should provide evidence to support that thesis. If the question asks you to trace an episode in the southern past, the events you choose to emphasize become a de facto argument. For example, an essay that traces the experience of the South during the New Deal Era but excludes the work done by the Civilian Conservation Corps is effectively arguing that the work of the CCC was not as important as one of the programs the essay did discuss. Please keep in mind the fact that you should always address obvious objections to your thesis. (To take an obvious example from the Old South, if you were to write an essay on the coming of the Civil War and neglect slavery, you would need to explain why the evidence suggests that slavery proved unimportant to the onset of secession and the war.) Vague and muddled answers generally indicate that a student does not really understand the material. Coherently argued answers that indicate an appreciation of the nuances of the southern experience will predictably earn higher grades. There is no set length requirement for the essays; they are to be long enough to adequately address the question. On the one hand, it is generally rather difficult to satisfactorily answer an essay question in a few short paragraphs. On the other, there is no need to artificially fluff up an answer with unrelated filler material that has little bearing on your argument.

Questions to Guide Your Study: The following questions are offered to guide your study. In answering them, you should be able to incorporate evidence both from the textbook and from the documentary readings. Not surprisingly, many of these relate to your weekly quizzes and discussion questions, which might be profitably revisited. If you have questions, dont hesitate to contact the instructor. Please note, however, that while the instructor can help point you in productive directions, it is not the instructors job to provide answers to all of the questions below. 1. How has the perception of southern identity shifted since W. J. Cashs The Mind of the South? What do you make of those transformations? Where does southern identity rest? Whose argument about southern identity from the first chapter of the documents reader did you find most persuasive? Has anything youve learned so far challenged that argument? 2. How and when did Reconstruction begin? What differences were there between Lincolns and Johnsons plans? Between Presidential and Congressional Reconstruction? Why did Congress seize control of Reconstruction from Johnson? How did the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments factor into Reconstruction? What were the major moments? Why did it come to an end? 3. How did Reconstruction play out on the ground in the South? How did it affect local communities? In what ways did Reconstruction open new opportunities for African Americans in the South? How did white southerners respond? How would you assess the efforts of carpetbaggers and scalawags? Why? According to Eric Foner, why did Reconstruction prove so tragic for African Americans in the South? Was he right? 4. Why did sharecropping emerge? In what ways was it a compromise between former slaves and planters? What were crop liens? In what ways did the abolition of slavery transform southern agriculture and rural life? How do you explain the grip of King Cotton? How did this new agricultural system affect the lives of black and white farmers? 5. Who were the best known New South boosters? What characterized their vision of the South? How did the leadership of the New South differ from that of the antebellum era? When did the idea of an Old South arise? Who espoused it? Why? 6. What were the major southern industries? Why have some historians characterized the Souths economy as colonial? Do you agree? Why? How did the Souths industrial development alter social, economic, and political relations in the South? Where was urban growth most pronounced? To what degree does Edward Ayers think the promise of the New South was fulfilled in its industrial development? Does Boles seem to agree with him? 7. Why did the Southern Farmers' Alliance emerge? Why did it break from the Democratic Party to form the Populists? What role did women play in the movement? What aspects of southern society undercut the Populists? What lessons did the southern elites take from Populist challenge to their authority? Did the Populists leave a legacy of any lasting

significance in the region? In short, how would you characterize the experience of the Populists in the South? 8. Why might the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries be considered the nadir (lowest point) of race relations in American history? In what ways did African Americans carve out opportunities and foster community during this time? How did the experience of urban blacks differ from that of African Americans in rural communities? In what ways were their experiences similar? What do the efforts and ideologies of black leaders like Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois reveal about the aspirations of black southerners? 9. Who were the North Carolina Regionalists and Vanderbilt Agrarians? What did they argue about the South? What sorts of critiques were they responding to? Who were some of the key figures (white and black) of the southern literary explosion that marked the early years of the twentieth century? What themes did they address in their writings? What relationship did ragtime, blues, and jazz have to southern culture? In what ways did they trace their roots to various subcultures of the South? 10. How would you characterize the influence of religion in the South in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries? In what ways might the Lost Cause be characterized as a civil religion? In what ways did southern religion differ from that of the North? What sorts of connections could be found between the Progressive Era reforms and southern religion? 11. In what ways did womens lives change in the South over the course of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries? How did the experiences of women differ between the rural and urban South? To what southern institutions did they prove especially integral? In what ways did the Progressive Era witness the transformation of womens role in the public sphere of society? 12. In what ways were the Progressive reform impulses of the early twentieth century contingent on the disfranchisement of African Americans and many poor whites? To what extent was the Progressive Movement an urban phenomenon in the South? What sorts of rural manifestations did it have? Who were the leaders of the reform movements of the Progressive Era? What did southern Progressives accomplish? What limits did southern society place on the extent of their reforms? Where were they successful? Where did their results leave much to be desired? On balance would you characterize the movement as a success in the South? Why? 13. A number of southern leaders that agitated for reform in the first half of the twentieth century (Bilbo, Vardaman, and Long, to name three) have been portrayed as demagogues. To what extent is that characterization true? How did racial considerations factor into their thought? How might Lyndon Johnson and Jimmy Carter be viewed as figures that helped bridge the gap between the South and the rest of the nation?

14. How did race complicate the regions support for Franklin Roosevelts New Deal? To what extent did it alter FDRs efforts? How might the Agricultural Adjustment Act highlight the ways in which southern institutions complicated New Deal initiatives? What New Deal programs proved most influential in the region? What would you argue proved to be the most lasting result of the New Deal in southern society?