SparkNotes: The American Revolution (1754

1. What was the Seven Years’ War called in the American colonies?

(A) King Philip’s War

(B) Pontiac’s Rebellion

(C) The War of 1812

(D) The French and Indian War

2. All of the following are true about the French and Indian War except

(A) Most Native Americans, fearing encroaching white settlers, sided with the British

(B) The war was the result of long-standing border disputes in the Ohio Valley

(C) Great Britain emerged as the dominant colonial power in North America

(D) It was begun by George Washington

3. What did Parliament’s Proclamation of 1763 do?

(A) Forbade those living in newly acquired French Canada to settle south of the Great Lakes

(B) Granted the American colonists free settlement rights in the Ohio Valley

(C) Forbade American colonists to settle west of the Appalachian Mountains

(D) Created a Stamp Tax on all legal documents, licenses, and paper goods

4. Benjamin Franklin’s famous “Join or Die” political cartoon was drawn

(A) In 1754 to support the Albany Congress

(B) In 1765 to support the Stamp Act Congress

(C) In 1774 to support the First Continental Congress

(D) In 1775 to support the Second Continental Congress

5. Which piece of legislation was not a consequence of the French and Indian War?

(A) The Proclamation of 1763

(B) The Coercive Acts

(C) The Sugar Act

(D) The Stamp Act

6. Why did Pontiac lead a Native American uprising against British and American colonists?

(A) He felt betrayed after he had supported them in the French and Indian War

(B) He was angry at the increasing loss of Native American lands to colonial settlers

(C) He was working with the French who sought to retake Quebec

(D) He was trying to create a pan-Indian nation of tribes united against all Europeans

7. After the French and Indian War, British Prime Minister George Grenville believed all of the following except

(A) Britain was justified in raising colonial taxes

(B) Britain should exert a greater degree of control over its American colonies

(C) Parliament should restrict the issue of currency in the colonies

(D) Britain should grant the colonies home rule

8. Why did Americans hate the Sugar Act and the Stamp Act?

(A) They were the first revenue taxes Parliament had ever levied on the colonists

(B) Those who failed to pay the new taxes would by tried by vice-admiralty courts

(C) They were based on the theory of virtual representation

(D) All of the above

9. “Virtual representation” was the idea that

(A) All members of Parliament, no matter where they came from, represented all British subjects throughout the world equally

(B) Slaves’ interests were represented by their masters in colonial legislatures

(C) Thomas Jefferson was speaking for all oppressed people in the British Empire when he wrote the Declaration of Independence

(D) The physical world is just a representation of the spiritual world

10. All of the following were consequences of the Stamp Act except

(A) Americans protested and even rioted in cities and towns throughout the colonies

(B) Tax collectors were hanged in effigy and tarred and feathered

(C) Delegates met at the Stamp Act Congress to prepare for war

(D) Americans stopped importing certain goods from Britain

11. What did mercantilist economic theory stipulate?

(A) That nations should lower tariffs and promote free trade so that all might benefit

(B) That nations should establish colonies to provide cheap natural resources and closed markets for finished goods

(C) That nations should seek to establish monopolies on key resources in order to gain power over other countries

(D) That nations should promote free enterprise and protect public property in order to become more powerful

12. What were nonimportation agreements?

(A) Mandatory bans on all British imports

(B) Mandatory bans on some British imports

(C) Voluntary bans on all British goods

(D) Voluntary bans on some British goods

13. When Parliament repealed the Stamp Act in 1766, it simultaneously passed

(A) The Declaratory Act

(B) The Currency Act

(C) The Quartering Act

(D) The Townshend Acts

14. Why did Prime Minister Grenville began enforcing the Navigation Acts?

(A) To punish Bostonians after the Boston Tea Party

(B) To delegitimize the small navy created by the Second Continental Congress

(C) To tighten British control over American imports and exports

(D) To protect American shipping from the French navy during the French and Indian War

15. The Coercive, or Intolerable, Acts were passed in response to

(A) The Boston Tea Party

(B) The Stamp Act riots

(C) The Boston Massacre

(D) The Battle of Lexington and Concord

16. British troops were sent to occupy Boston in 1768 after

(A) Bostonians threatened to assassinate the royal governor

(B) The Boston Tea Party

(C) Bostonians vehemently protested the Townshend Acts

(D) Riots broke out in New York and Philadelphia

17. The Boston Tea Party took place after

(A) The governor of Massachusetts refused to allow tea ships to leave the harbor before unloading their cargoes

(B) The Dutch East India Company refused to ship tea to the American colonies

(C) British officials increased the price of tea by passing the Townshend Acts

(D) The Continental Association boycotted tea

18. Why did American colonists hate the Quebec Act?

(A) It permitted Canadians to settle on New England lands

(B) It extended Quebec lands and granted more rights to French Catholics

(C) It took shipping contracts from Bostonian shippers and granted them to Quebecois shipping companies

(D) All of the above

19. Why did royal officials disband the New York colonial legislature in 1767?

(A) Legislators were preparing to proclaim their independence from Great Britain

(B) Legislators were dispatching militiamen to protect key arsenals near the harbor

(C) Legislators failed to enforce the Quartering Act

(D) All of the above

20. Even though Parliament repealed almost all of the Townshend Acts, it retained the tax on tea because

(A) The tea tax produced a lot of revenue

(B) The revenue earned from the tax paid for the British troops occupying Boston

(C) Parliament wanted Americans to know it always maintained the right to tax the colonies

(D) Americans were willing to pay the tea tax in exchange for eliminating the other taxes

21. What effect did the passage of the Coercive, or Intolerable, Acts have?

(A) They encouraged colonial leaders to convene the First Continental Congress

(B) They intensified anti-British sentiment throughout the colonies

(C) They prompted many Americans to send food and winter supplies to Boston

(D) All of the above

22. What did delegates at the First Continental Congress do?

(A) Petitioned King George III and Parliament to repeal the Intolerable Acts

(B) Declared the American colonies in a state of rebellion against Great Britain

(C) Asked Parliament for home rule

(D) Declared the Intolerable Acts null and void

23. When it first convened in 1775, the Second Continental Congress did all of the following except

(A) Sign the Olive Branch Petition

(B) Declare war on Great Britain

(C) Create a national army and navy

(D) Designate George Washington commander-in-chief of the Continental Army

24. The “shot heard round the world” refers to

(A) The first shot fired by victorious farmers at Lexington and Concord against British troops

(B) Aaron Burr’s lethal bullet that killed Alexander Hamilton in duel

(C) The gunshot that assassinated John F. Kennedy

(D) Babe Ruth’s “called shot” at Wrigley Field on October 1, 1932

25. Committees of Observation and Safety were significant in the years just before the Revolutionary War for all of the following reasons except

(A) They became the de facto town governments

(B) They enforced the boycott on British goods

(C) They raised town militias

(D) They printed paper money

26. What were the Committees of Correspondence?

(A) A Loyalist attempt to foster pro-British sentiment throughout the colonies

(B) Secret societies that tried to foment war

(C) Groups of people throughout the colonies who exchanged letters and essays containing pro-republican ideas

(D) The groups of men who organized the Boston Massacre and Tea Party

27. Thomas Paine’s 1776 pamphlet Common Sense

(A) United the colonists against Britain

(B) Claimed it was unnatural for a small country to dominate a large one

(C) Encouraged Americans to rebel immediately and create a republican government

(D) All of the above

28. What did Joseph Brant do during the Revolutionary War?

(A) United many Native American tribes against the United States

(B) United many Native American tribes against Britain

(C) Convinced many Native American tribes to remain neutral

(D) Tried in vain to unite Native American tribes under a common leader

29. During the Revolutionary War, black slaves

(A) Mostly supported the United States

(B) Mostly supported Britain

(C) Were divided over whom they should support

(D) Did not care who won

30. American Loyalists drew support from all of the following groups except

(A) New Englanders

(B) The colonies of the lower South

(C) Clergymen

(D) Wealthy merchants

31. What did British commanders assume, erroneously, at the beginning of the Revolutionary War?

(A) That most American colonists wanted to rebel against Britain

(B) That the desire to rebel was felt only by a few select ringleaders

(C) That most black slaves would be willing to fight for their freedom

(D) That the Canadians would help them fight the Americans

32. Which of the following documents set forth the belief that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness”?

(A) The Constitution

(B) The Bill of Rights

(C) The Declaration of Independence

(D) The Articles of Confederation

33. In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson wrote that King George III had committed all of the following crimes against the American people except

(A) Illegally assuming judicial powers

(B) Disbanding representative legislatures

(C) Levying unfair taxes

(D) Interfering with negotiations for the Louisiana Purchase

34. In the Declaration, Jefferson argued that government should only be overthrown when it

(A) Fails repeatedly to act in the interests of its people

(B) Uses military force against its own people

(C) When it levies unfair taxes on the people

(D) All of the above

35. Jefferson wrote in the Declaration that the American people had petitioned Britain to redress grievances on several occasions. The colonists petitioned to redress grievances on all of the following occasions except

(A) The Stamp Act Congress

(B) The Albany Congress

(C) The First Continental Congress

(D) The Second Continental Congress

36. The Declaration of Independence accomplished all of the following except

(A) Enumerated abuses by King George III

(B) Justified American rebellion

(C) United all the colonies together in a common struggle against Britain

(D) Brought France into the war on the side of the Americans

37. Jefferson argued in the Declaration that governments derive their power from

(A) God

(B) Parliament

(C) The people

(D) The military

38. The term “salutary neglect” refers to

(A) Congress’s consideration for blacks serving in the Continental Army

(B) Britain’s treatment of French Canadians until the passage of the Quebec Act

(C) Britain’s treatment of the American colonies prior to the French and Indian War

(D) Male attitudes toward women and the right to vote prior to 1776

39. Why was the 1777 Battle of Saratoga a turning point in the Revolutionary War?

(A) It forced Britain to recognize its former colonies as an independent nation

(B) It was the first American victory and boosted morale in the Continental Army

(C) It convinced the French to ally themselves with the United States against Britain

(D) It convinced British commanders that the war was futile and a waste of time

40. With which country did the United States forge a military alliance in 1778?

(A) Spain

(B) France

(C) Russia

(D) Austria

41. All of the following gave Americans an advantage over the British in the Revolutionary War except

(A) Geography

(B) Popular support for the war

(C) Their offensive strategy

(D) Parliament’s deeply divided opinions on the war

42. Why did geography play a significant role in the Revolutionary War?

(A) Britain was forced to fight a long war thousands of miles away from home

(B) America had no center that Britain could strike to end the war quickly

(C) Americans had experience fighting on the difficult terrain

(D) All of the above

43. Which of the following was one of the Americans’ greatest strengths in the Revolutionary War?

(A) The native officer corps

(B) The highly disciplined militias

(C) The experienced Continental Army

(D) The powerful merchant marine

44. What did the Peace of Paris do?

(A) Ended the French and Indian War

(B) Ended the Revolutionary War

(C) Ended the War of 1812

(D) Ended Shays’s Rebellion

45. The Olive Branch Petition was drafted by delegates at the

(A) Albany Congress

(B) Stamp Act Congress

(C) First Continental Congress

(D) Second Continental Congress

46. What was Britain’s greatest advantage over the United States in the Revolutionary War?

(A) Its powerful army and navy

(B) The widespread support for war among the British people

(C) The army’s experience with military operations in North America

(D) All of the above

47. Britain’s lack of enforcement of the Navigation Acts from 1650 until 1763 is an example of

(A) Virtual representation

(B) Mercantilism

(C) Salutary neglect

(D) An “abuse and usurpation” listed in the Declaration of Independence

48. From whom did Americans receive tacit support at the beginning of the Revolutionary War?

(A) Russia

(B) French Canada

(C) Irish rebels also fighting British rule

(D) Spain

49. The Proclamation of 1763 was issued primarily in response to

(A) French protests that Americans from the British colonies were encroaching on their territory

(B) Native American attacks on white American settlers along the western frontier

(C) Appeals made by the Albany Congress

(D) Protests that American cities were becoming too crowded

50. How did many patriotic American women support the Revolutionary War?

(A) Making yarn and homespun goods to send to troops and to uphold the boycott

(B) Serving as nurses, attendants, and combatants on the battlefields

(C) Assuming traditional male roles on farms and in business

(D) All of the above

The American Revolution (1754–1781)

Quiz