Midterm Question and Answers

1. What were the reason(s) for the Three-Fifths Compromise?
One major issue that delegates faced was giving fair representation to both large and small states. Each state would have equal representation in the Senate. The size of the population of each state would determine the numbers in the House of Representatives. The great compromise set up one issue that led conflict to another. Southerners whose states had a large number of slaves included in the population count that determined the number of people in the House. The Northern states did not want this since they had very few slaves. Not counting slaves gave Northerners more representatives than the the Southerners. The delegates eventually agreed to the Three-Fifths Compromise, which called for three-fifths of a state's slaves to be counted as part of the population.
key terms: slaves, population, representation, Northern states, Southern states

2. What were the three major factors that contributed to the immense technological boom that took place in the United States after the Civil War? Explain how any ONE of these factors helped to bring about this technological boom.
The three major factors that contributed to the immense technological boom that took place in the United States after the Civil War were abundant natural resources, government support for businesses, and growth of the urban population. The growing urban population exponentially helped build up the technological boom since it caused people to make inventions such as the telephone. The telephone helped bring better communication by opening a worldwide communications network.

3. Explain and give an example of an immigration “push factor” and an ethnic group that experienced it. Additionally, explain and give an example of a “pull factor” that made the U.S. attractive to immigrants.
An immigration push factor involves immigrants to be driven away from their country and the pull factor is what draws them to a new place which is the location they actually decide to live in. The pull factor is what brought some Chinese immigrants like Fong to California which was to achieve what is to be known as the "American dream". The push factor was experienced by Jews and other Europeans like Italians and Austria-Hungary . Few were left out of there country to escape religious persecution. Some left due to the rise of population which resulted in scarcity for land jobs. Farmers competed with laborers for jobs. Influenced by the thought of the supposed many jobs the U.S. had to offer they sought out to independent lives in America.

4. Why, at the turn of the century, were white Southerners able to get away with discrimination against African-Americans, despite all the laws and amendments that were passed during Reconstruction? Give at least three reasons.
During the 1870's and 80's, the Supreme Court failed to overturn the poll tax or grandfather clause, even though the laws undetermined all federal protections for African Americans' civil rights. Also the racial segregation law, Jim Crow Law, separated the white and black people from public and private facilities. The Court held that the Civil Rights Act of 1875 was unconstitutional and ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment did not prohibit individuals and private organizations from discriminating on the basis of race. However, it was the Supreme Court's decision in Plessy v. Ferguson that led the way to racial segregation. The decision established the doctrine for blacks and whites as long as they provided equal services. it was the Supreme Courts decision in 1954 in Brown v. Board of Education that overturned the Court's decision in Plessy. It held that separate schools were unequal and its ruling helped dismantle racial segregation.

5. Choose one of the following reform movements: prohibition, suffrage, or government. Explain the goals of the movement; identify the people and groups involved in it; identify some of its successes.
After the Seneca Falls convention of 1848 , women split over the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, Which granted equal rights including the right to vote to African American men, but excluded women. Susan B. Anthony was a leading proponent of woman suffrage, the right to vote. In 1869 Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton had founded the NWSA, which united with another group becoming the NAWSA. They achieved a victory in Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, and Idaho that had granted voting rights to women. Later however, Women's reform efforts paid off in improvements in the treatment of workers and And safer food and drug products.