Answer two of the following questions of your choice:
1. What was more important in creating the distinctiveness of the Old South, its economics or its culture?
2. Given that there were relatively few free persons of color and few urban slaves compared to the vast majority of rural slaves, why is it important to understand their experiences?
3. What makes ideas about race so powerful that poor whites in the Old South seemingly ignored their own economic interests to support slavery and the disproportionate benefits it provided the relatively small number of planter elite?
4. Why is it important to learn about slave rebellions in the Old South, since in the nineteenth century there were only three major ones and none succeeded?
5. What was it about the institution of slavery and the way it was practiced that made African American society a true "melting pot"?
6. In what ways were the differences and divisions between the antebellum South and northern society expanding by 1860? Why?
7. What role did Christianity play in both white and black communities in the South? Discuss how the same religion could be seen as promoting the institution of slavery, while also inspiring rebellions, such as that led by Nat Turner.