Revolution
During the War for Independence, the principal reason the American government sought diplomatic recognition from foreign powers was to
A.rally all the states behind a common cause
B.convince the British of the justice of the American cause
C.make it easier to levy taxes on the citizens of the several states
D. facilitate the purchase of arms and borrowing of money from other nations
D. facilitate the purchase of arms and borrowing of money from other nations
The government of the Articles of Confederation was successful in resolving the problem of how to
(A) Open British Caribbean ports to American trade
(B) enable American citizens to trade through the port of New Orleans
(C) provide for statehood for western territories
(D) overcome state-imposed tariff barriers to interstate commerce
(C) provide for statehood for western territories
The Great Compromise of 1787 resulted in
(A) a final settlement of the question of slavery
(B) a renewal of the Articles of Confederation
(C) the creation of a national bank
(D) a system of political representation for the states in the federal government
(E) a border agreement between the United States and Canada
(D) a system of political representation for the states in the federal government
“What do we mean by the Revolution? The war? That was no part of the Revolution; it was only an effect and consequence of it. The Revolution was in the minds of the people, and this was effected from 1760 to 1775, in the course of fifteen years, before a drop of blood was shed at Lexington.” John Adams, former president of the United States, letter to Thomas Jefferson, former president of the United States, 1815
Which of the following is the most likely reason why Adams dates the beginning of the American Revolution to the 1760s?
A.The expansion of the colonial population into the interior of the continent
B. Renewed efforts by Great Britain to consolidate imperial control over the colonies
C. Increased involvement of colonial merchants in the Atlantic economy
D. The forging of American Indian political alliances with European powers
B. Renewed efforts by Great Britain to consolidate imperial control over the colonies
The Federalist papers were written in order to
(A) mobilize popular support for keeping the Articles of Confederation
(B) persuade voters to support Thomas Jefferson in the election of 1800
(C) frustrate Spanish efforts to sway the political loyalty of the Southwest
(D) persuade the Continental Congress to declare independence
(E) attain ratification of the Constitution
(E) attain ratification of the Constitution
After the Revolution, the concept of the “republican mother” suggested that
(A) women would be responsible for raising their children, especially their sons, to be virtuous citizens of the young republic
(B) voting would soon become a privilege granted to educated and/or married women
(C) the first duty of mothers was to serve the needs of government
(D) wives and mothers would be welcome in the emerging political parties
(E) women’s virtues had been the inspiration for the ideals of the Revolution
(A) women would be responsible for raising their children, especially their sons, to be virtuous citizens of the young republic
“What do we mean by the Revolution? The war? That was no part of the Revolution; it was only an effect and consequence of it. The Revolution was in the minds of the people, and this was effected from 1760 to 1775, in the course of fifteen years, before a drop of blood was shed at Lexington.” John Adams, former president of the United States, letter to Thomas Jefferson, former president of the United States, 1815
1. Which of the following factors most directly contradicted Adams’ theory about the Revolution?
A. The existence of considerable Loyalist opposition to the Patriot cause
B. The existence of significant social and economic divisions within the colonies
C. The importance of colonial military victories in bringing about independence
D. The importance of support from European allies in defeating the British
(A) The existence of considerable Loyalist opposition to the Patriot cause
Five of the thirteen states voted for ratification of the Constitution only after
(A) slavery was allowed to continue without federal interference
(B) several slave revolts rocked the Carolinas and Virginia
(C) they were assured that the Supreme Court would have the power of judicial review
(D) they were assured that a Bill of Rights would be added shortly after ratification
(E) the other states threatened to organize the government without them
(D) they were assured that a Bill of Rights would be added shortly after ratification
Which of the following helped to convince several states to ratify the United States Constitution?
(A) George Washington gave speeches to large public gatherings, asking for their support.
(B) Thomas Jefferson published essays on the virtues of the Constitution.
(C) James Madison and Alexander Hamilton anonymously published essays explaining the benefits of a strong federal government.
(D) Supporters organized letter-writing campaigns urging the adoption of the Constitution.
(E) The Constitutional Convention gave states control over western lands.
(C) James Madison and Alexander Hamilton anonymously published essays explaining the benefits of a strong federal government.
After the French and Indian War, British political leaders were determined to
(A) require the North American colonies to pay a greater share of the empire’s administrative expenses
(B) end slavery in the North American colonies
(C) encourage colonial expansion into the Ohio Valley by moving all American Indian peoples further west
(D) strengthen the French colonial holdings in Canada and the northwest to discourage Spanish
expansion
(E) convert all Catholic colonists to the beliefs of the Anglican Church
(A) require the North American colonies to pay a greater share of the empire’s administrative expenses
“From infancy I was taught to love humanity and liberty. Inquiry and experience have since confirmed my reverence for the lessons then given me, by convincing me more fully of their truth and excellence. Benevolence towards mankind excites wishes for their welfare, and such wishes endear the means of fulfilling them. Those can be found in liberty alone, and therefore her sacred cause ought to be espoused by every man, on every occasion, to the utmost of his power. . . .“These being my sentiments, I am encouraged to offer you, my countrymen, my thoughts on some late transactions, that in my opinion are of the utmost importance to you. . . .“If the BRITISH PARLIAMENT has a legal authority to order, that we shall furnish a single article for the troops here, and to compel obedience to that order; they have the same right to order us to supply those troops with arms, clothes, and . . . to compel obedience to that order also. . . . What is this but taxing us at a certain sum, and leaving to us only the manner of raising it? How is this mode more tolerable than the STAMP ACT?”
John Dickinson, Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania, to the Inhabitants of the British Colonies, 1768
Which of the following would have been most likely to agree with the sentiments expressed in the excerpt?
(A) Native Americans west of the Appalachian Mountains
(B) Enslaved people in the South
(C) Anglican ministers in the middle colonies
(D) Merchants in New England
(D) Merchants in New England
“Threatened by popular political victories [in the states] and widespread resistance, many elite Pennsylvanians launched an effort to remake the state and national governments so that they were less democratic. . . . Popular policies and resistance . . . threatened elite ideals. . . . Popular calls for a revaluation of war debt certificates, bans on for-profit corporations, progressive taxation, limits on land speculation, and every other measure designed to make property more equal promised to take wealth away from the elite. . . . It was also threatening that popular politics frightened off potential European investors. . . . [They] were alarmed by the Pennsylvania legislature’s 1785 [cancellation] of the Bank of North America’s corporate charter. . . The push for the Constitution was based in part on the belief that state governments across the new nation had been too democratic and, as a result, had produced policies . . that threatened elite interests. Most of the men who assembled at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787 were also convinced that the national government under the Articles of Confederation was too weak to counter the rising tide of democracy in the states.”
Terry Bouton, historian, Taming Democracy: “The People,” the Founders, and the Troubled Ending of the American Revolution, 2007
One piece of evidence Bouton uses to support his argument about why some United States political leaders sought to replace the Articles of Confederation in 1787 was that they
(A) thought that a strong central government threatened Americans’ liberties
(B) opposed the economic policies that some state legislatures pursued
(C) believed that the national government should be more democratic
(D) sought to discourage Europeans from investing in the United States
(B) opposed the economic policies that some state legislatures pursued
“May it . . . please your most excellent Majesty, that it may be declared . . . in this present parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same, That the said colonies and plantations in America have been, are, and of right ought to be, subordinate unto, and dependent upon the imperial crown and parliament of Great Britain; . . . and [they] of right ought to have, full power and authority to make laws and statutes of sufficient force and validity to bind the colonies and people of America, subjects of the crown of Great Britain, in all cases whatsoever.” The Declaratory Act, passed by the British Parliament in 1766
The actions described in the excerpt most immediately led to
A.Parliament strengthening its approach to generating new tax revenue in the North American colonies
B.major and sometimes violent conflicts emerging between the various colonial regions
C.a colonial convention to call for independence from Britain
D.Britain delegating greater authority to colonial assemblies
A.Parliament strengthening its approach to generating new tax revenue in the North American colonies
“The emancipation of slaves in New England, beginning around 1780, was a gradual process, whether by post nati statute [laws freeing enslaved people born after a certain date], as in Rhode Island and Connecticut, or by effect, as in Massachusetts and New Hampshire, where ambiguous judicial decisions and constitutional interpretations discouraged slaveholding without clearly outlawing it. The gradual nature of the process encouraged Whites to transfer a language and set of practices shaped in the context of slavery to their relations with a slowly emerging population of free people of color. The rhetoric of antislavery and revolutionary republicanism fostered this transfer, undergirding Whites’ assumptions that emancipated slaves, likely to be dependent and disorderly, would constitute a problem requiring firm management in the new republic. . . . “Even more problematic was the promise implicit in antislavery rhetoric that abolition, by ending ‘the problem’—the sin of slavery and the troublesome presence of slaves—would result in the eventual absence of people of color themselves. In other words, Whites anticipated that free people of color, would, by some undefined moment (always imminent), have disappeared.” Joanne Pope Melish, historian, Disowning Slavery: Gradual Emancipation and “Race” in New England, 1780–1860, published in 1998
The author claims in the excerpt that antislavery rhetoric in the late eighteenth century was based on
A. legal precedent established during the colonial period
B. religious ideals formed during the First Great Awakening
C.the concern that revolutionary conflict would spread from France to the United States
D. the belief that emancipated people would not be a presence in society
D. the belief that emancipated people would not be a presence in society
“Let us, then, fellow-citizens, unite with one heart and one mind. Let us restore to social intercourse that harmony and affection without which liberty and even life itself are but dreary things. And let us reflect that, having banished from our land that religious intolerance under which mankind so long bled and suffered, we have yet gained little if we countenance a political intolerance as despotic, as wicked, and capable of as bitter and bloody persecutions. . . . We have called by different names brethren of the same principle. We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists. If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.”
Thomas Jefferson, first inaugural address, 1801
Which of the following issues of the period was Jefferson most likely concerned with in the excerpt?
(A) The growth of slave labor
(B) The creation of political parties
(C) The expansion of the right to vote
(D) The growth of various Protestant religious groups
(B) The creation of political parties