Read the passage and study the map from Sugar Changed the World . When the Haitians defeated the French armies, Napoleon lost control of the world's most productive sugar islands and with it his dream of great sugar profits. As a result, Napoleon had no use for the land in North America he had so recently obtained from Spain. Napoleon did, though, need money to pay for his wars. That is why he sold the vast Louisiana Territory to Jefferson for the bargain price of just fifteen million dollars. What textbooks call the Louisiana Purchase should really be named the Sugar Purchase. Americans obtained the middle part of what would become their nation because the Haitians achieved their freedom. But, paradoxically, that gave Haitian slave owners a new home. As sugar planters fled from the revolution in Haiti, some moved to Cuba's Oriente Province, others to North America—to Louisiana. How does the map help develop the central idea that the Louisiana Purchase had profound effects on sugar and the United States?
Read the passage from Sugar Changed the World . In every single American slave state, the population of enslaved people kept rising even after the slave trade was abolished. That was because enough enslaved children were born, lived, and grew to become adults. There was just one exception to this rule: Louisiana, where the native-born enslaved population kept dropping. Sugar was a killer. Unlike the Caribbean, Louisiana has cold snaps. That put an additional pressure on the sugar harvest. Not only did the slaves need to harvest the cane in perfect rhythm with the grinding mills, but the entire crop had to be cut down between mid-October and December. This pace only increased when growers installed improved, steam-powered mills. People needed to work faster than the weather and to keep pace with machines. What is the authors’ purpose in this passage?
Read the passage from Sugar Changed the World . But there is another story as well. Information about sugar spread as human knowledge expanded, as great civilizations and cultures exchanged ideas. In fact, while sugar was the direct cause of the expansion of slavery, the global connections that sugar brought about also fostered the most powerful ideas of human freedom. How do the details in this passage support the authors’ purpose?
Read the excerpt from Up from Slavery by Booker T. Washington. Not only this, but the opportunity here afforded will awaken among us a new era of industrial progress. Ignorant and inexperienced, it is not strange that in the first years of our new life we began at the top instead of at the bottom; that a seat in Congress or the state legislature was more sought than real estate or industrial skill; that the political convention or stump speaking had more attractions than starting a dairy farm or truck garden. . . . I would say: "Cast down your bucket where you are”—cast it down in making friends in every manly way of the people of all races by whom we are surrounded. Cast it down in agriculture, mechanics, in commerce, in domestic service, and in the professions. Read the excerpt from The Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B. Du Bois. Notwithstanding this, it is equally true to assert that on the whole the distinct impression left by Mr. Washington’s propaganda is, first, that the South is justified in its present attitude toward the Negro because of the Negro’s degradation . . . and, thirdly, that his future rise depends primarily on his own efforts. Each of these propositions is a dangerous half-truth. The supplementary truths must never be lost sight of: first, slavery and race-prejudice are potent if not sufficient causes of the Negro’s position . . . and, third, while it is a great truth to say that the Negro must strive and strive mightily to help himself, it is equally true that unless his striving be not simply seconded, but rather aroused and encouraged, by the initiative of the richer and wiser environing group, he cannot hope for great success. Which statement best compares the two arguments?
Read the excerpt from Up from Slavery by Booker T. Washington. I believe that in time, through the operation of intelligence and friendly race relations, all cheating at the ballot-box in the South will cease. It will become apparent that the white man who begins by cheating a Negro out of his ballot soon learns to cheat a white man out of his, and that the man who does this ends his career of dishonesty by the theft of property or by some equally serious crime. In my opinion, the time will come when the South will encourage all of its citizens to vote. It will see that it pays better, from every standpoint, to have healthy, vigorous life than to have that political stagnation which always results when one-half of the population has no share and no interest in the Government. What is the author’s claim?
Read the excerpt from "A Latina Judge's Voice" by Hon. Sonia Sotomayor. Like many other immigrants to this great land, my parents came because of poverty and to attempt to find and secure a better life for themselves and the family that they hoped to have. They largely succeeded. For that, my brother and I are very grateful . The story of that success is what made me and what makes me the Latina that I am . The Latina side of my identity was forged and closely nurtured by my family through our shared experiences and traditions . How do the underlined words and phrases affect the meaning and tone of this passage?
Read the excerpt from "A Genetics of Justice” by Julia Alvarez. During my early teen years in this country, I knew very little about what was actually going on in the Dominican Republic. Whenever Ia situación on the island came up, my parents spoke in hushed voices. In December 1960, four months after our arrival, Time magazine reported the murder of the three Mirabal sisters, who along with their husbands had started the national underground Dominican Republic. My parents confiscated the magazine. To our many questions about what was going on, my mother always had the ready answer, "En boca cerrada no entran moscas.” No flies fly into a closed mouth. Later, I found out that this very saying had been scratched on the lintel of the entrance of the SIM's torture center at La Cuarenta. What is the central idea of this paragraph?
Read the excerpt from "A Genetics of Justice” by Julia Alvarez. Passage A: Given this mandate of silence, I was a real thorn in my mother's side. Passage B: Unfortunately for my mother, I grew up to be a writer publishing under my maiden name. . . . When I published a first novel with a strong autobiographical base, she did not talk to me for months. Passage C: When the [second] novel came out, I decided to go ahead and risk her anger. I inscribed a copy to both Mami and Papi with a note: "Thank you for having instilled in me through your sufferings a desire for freedom and justice." . . . . Days later, my mother called me up to tell me she had just finished the novel. "You put me back in those days. It was like I was reliving it all," she said sobbing. "I don't care what happens to us! I'm so proud of you for writing this book." I stood in my kitchen in Vermont, stunned, relishing her praise and listening to her cry. It was one of the few times since l had learned to talk that I did not try to answer my mother back. If there is such a thing as genetic justice that courses through the generations and finally manifests itself full-blown in a family moment, there it was. How does the author develop the central idea across these passages?
Which details from chapter 6 of Animal Farm support the inference that Napoleon’s actions are motivated by a desire for power and success? Choose three correct answers.
Read the excerpt from Animal Farm. One Sunday morning Squealer announced that the hens, who had just come in to lay again, must surrender their eggs. Napoleon had accepted, through Whymper, a contract for four hundred eggs a week. The price of these would pay for enough grain and meal to keep the farm going till summer came on and conditions were easier. When the hens heard this, they raised a terrible outcry. They had been warned earlier that this sacrifice might be necessary, but had not believed that it would really happen. They were just getting their clutches ready for the spring sitting, and they protested that to take the eggs away now was murder. For the first time since the expulsion of Jones, there was something resembling a rebellion. Led by three young Black Minorca pullets, the hens made a determined effort to thwart Napoleon's wishes. Their method was to fly up to the rafters and there lay their eggs, which smashed to pieces on the floor. Napoleon acted swiftly and ruthlessly. He ordered the hens' rations to be stopped, and decreed that any animal giving so much as a grain of corn to a hen should be punished by death. The dogs saw to it that these orders were carried out. For five days the hens held out, then they capitulated and went back to their nesting boxes. Nine hens had died in the meantime. Their bodies were buried in the orchard, and it was given out that they had died of coccidiosis. Whymper heard nothing of this affair, and the eggs were duly delivered, a grocer's van driving up to the farm once a week to take them away. What is the most likely reason the author wrote this passage?
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