1. What opportunities did freedom provide for African Americans in the North, and what institutions did they establish?

2. How did racial prejudice limit the economic and political opportunities of free African Americans in the North?

1. How did free African Americans in the South achieve their freedom, and what were the primary methods?

2. What legal restrictions and dangers did free African Americans face in the South despite their free status?

3. Why did many free African Americans choose to remain in the South rather than migrate to the North?

1. What daily forms of resistance did enslaved people engage in, and how did White slaveholders interpret these actions?

1. What obstacles and dangers did enslaved people face when attempting to escape, and how did the Underground Railroad and fugitive slave laws reflect changing patterns of escape?

1. How did the successful Haitian slave revolt influence the attitudes and fears of Southern slaveholders?

2. What were the key details of Gabriel Prosser's rebellion, and what prevented it from occurring?

3. How did Denmark Vesey's conspiracy differ from Gabriel Prosser's planned rebellion in terms of organization and inspiration?

4. What made Nat Turner's rebellion significant, and what were the immediate and long-term consequences of the uprising?

1. How did the cotton gin and mechanized textile mills in England transform cotton production and the Southern economy?

2. Why did cotton planters continuously move westward into new states, and what was the relationship between cotton production and soil depletion?

3. What role did cotton exports play in linking the American South to the British economy by the 1850s?

1. How did the justifications for slavery change from colonial times to the 19th century?

1. What defined membership in the planter aristocracy, and how did this elite class maintain its political power?

1. How did the majority of slaveholders differ from the planter aristocracy in terms of land ownership and labor practices?

1. Why did three-fourths of White Southern households own no enslaved people, and how did the slave system affect their social status?

1. How did the attitudes of mountain people toward slavery and planters differ from other White Southerners, and what evidence supports this?

1. Why did the South develop few large commercial cities, and what were the largest cities in the region?

1. What values and attitudes comprised the Southern code of chivalry, and how did it reflect the feudal nature of Southern society?

1. How did educational opportunities differ between the upper and lower classes in the South, and what role did slavery play in these differences?

1. How did the slavery question affect religious denominations in the South, and which churches gained or lost membership?

1. Why did the antebellum reform movement have little impact in the South, and how did Southerners view Northern social reform efforts?

1. How did Ulrich B. Phillips's interpretation of slavery differ from later historians' views, and what evidence did Kenneth Stampp and Conrad and Meyers provide?

1. What was Stanley Elkins's argument about slavery's impact on Black culture, and how did Eugene Genovese challenge this interpretation?

2. What do recent scholars like Tera W. Hunter emphasize about how enslaved people responded to slavery?