AP Textbook American Revolution

Question 1

1. Which of the following statements characterizes the British government’s attempts to meet its war
   debt following the Great War for Empire?

Answer 1

D. Parliament increased import taxes on items used by the poor and middling classes such as sugar and beer.

Question 2

2. What percentage of the average American colonists’ income in the 1760s was typically spent on taxes?

Answer 2

D. 25%.

Question 3

3. How did Britain’s skyrocketing national debt affect its government in England and America in the 1760s?

Answer 3

A. The need for higher taxes spurred Britain to increase the size and power of its bureaucracy in England and America.

Question 4

4. The colonists’ real objections to the Sugar Act stemmed from which of the following?

Answer 4

D. Britain’s intention to make the colonists pay for their own defense.

Question 5

5. On what basis did the American colonists object to the vice-admiralty courts in which violators of the Sugar Act were tried?

Answer 5

C. The courts were run by British-appointed judges.

Question 6

6. Which of the following statements characterizes responses to the planned Stamp Act?

Answer 6

D. British politicians, with the exception of William Pitt, refused to consider the idea of American representation in Parliament.

Question 7

7. Which of the following statements describes the Stamp Act Congress, which was held in New York in 1765?

Answer 7

B. The delegates protested loss of American liberties and challenged the act’s constitutionality.

Question 8

8. Which of the following factors was among those that motivated many merchants, artisans, and journeymen to protest against the Stamp Act?

Answer 8

B. Fear that their personal liberty would be undermined.

Question 9

9. Why did the British General Gage refuse to use his military force to protect the stamps that were to be used once the Stamp Act took effect?

Answer 9

C. Gage believed that military force would disperse the protests but spark an insurrection.

Question 10

10. In the 1760s and early 1770s, lawyers and other educated Americans used common-law arguments mainly to

Answer 10

D. assert the colonists’ rights and liberties as Englishmen.

Question 11

11. John Dickinson’s Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania was a response to which of the following policies?

Answer 11

C. The Townshend Acts.

Question 12

12. Patriots’ widely publicized use of natural rights arguments to protest British actions in the 1760s inspired which of the following?

Answer 12

C. African American slaves to petition the Massachusetts legislature for the abolition
of slavery.

Question 13

13. The Townshend Acts of 1767 imposed duties on which of the following goods?

Answer 13

C. Paper, paint, glass, and tea imported into the colonies.

Question 14

14. Which aspect of the Townshend Acts posed a great danger to American political autonomy, according to the colonists?

Answer 14

A. The use of internal tax revenue to pay royal officials.

Question 15

15. How did the Daughters of Liberty contribute to the American boycott of British goods in the late 1760s?

Answer 15

C. They promoted nonimportation by making and wearing homespun cloth.

Question 16

16. Which of the following statements most describes the colonial boycott efforts of 1768–1769?

Answer 16

D. Support began in seaport cities, then spread to more major population centers.

Question 17

17. How did the Stamp Act crisis of 1765 compare to the crisis over the Townshend duties in 1768?

Answer 17

B. The stakes had risen: In 1765, American resistance to taxation had provoked an
argument in Parliament; in 1768, it produced a British plan for military coercion.

Question 18

18. For which of the following reasons did the British government resolve to punish the boycotters and enforce the Townshend Duties by 1769?

Answer 18

B. Hard-hit by the boycott, British merchants and manufacturers petitioned Parliament to repeal the Townshend Duties.

Question 19

19. In the decade before the American Revolution, the colonists’ achieved the greatest effect by using which of the following means of protest?

Answer 19

A. Boycotts.

Question 20

20. Which Patriot leader persuaded Bostonians to create the first committee of correspondence?

Answer 20

C. George Washington.

Question 21

21. The 1774 Coercive Acts applied to which of the following colonies?

Answer 21

D. Massachusetts only.

Question 22

22. At the First Continental Congress in 1774, New England delegates advocated which of the following plans?

Answer 22

C. Political union and defensive military preparations.

Question 23

23. Which of the following actions did the First Continental Congress ultimately decide to implement in 1774?

Answer 23

C. Threatening to cut off almost all American exports to Britain, Ireland, and the
West Indies.

Question 24

24. Which of the following individuals would have been an unlikely Loyalist in 1776?

Answer 24

C. A yeoman farmer in Connecticut.

Question 25

25. What prompted many southern yeomen and tenant farmers finally to support independence from Britain in 1775?

Answer 25

C. Virginia’s royal governor’s promise to free any slave who joined the Loyalists.

Question 26

26. Which of the following outcomes resulted from the Continental Congress’ approval of the

Declaration of Independence?

Answer 26

C. Mobs toppled statues of King George III.

Question 27

27. Which of these events occurred at the Battle of Long Island in August 1776?

Answer 27

A. General Howe and his British troops forced the Americans to retreat to Manhattan
Island.

Question 28

28. What was significant about George Washington’s leading of his troops across the Delaware River on Christmas night in 1776?

Answer 28

b. Washington’s action surprised the enemy and gave the Americans their first real
victory.

Question 29

29. Which of the following describes the Continental army during the Revolutionary War?

Answer 29

C. Most of its recruits were poor native-born youths and older foreign-born men.

Question 30

30. To finance the war during its first two years, the new American state governments relied primarily on

Answer 30

D. printing large quantities of paper money.

Question 31

31. Which of the following was a consequence of the large increase of paper currency in circulation in the states during the Revolutionary War years?

Answer 31

D. The paper bills quickly fell in value, becoming nearly worthless.

Question 32

32. France gave serious consideration to an alliance with the rebel colonies primarily because it regarded the war as an opportunity to

Answer 32

A. exact revenge on Britain for defeat in the French and Indian War and the loss of
Canada.

Question 33

33. The Treaty of Alliance that the French and Americans signed in 1778 included which of the following stipulations?

Answer 33

D. Neither side would sign a separate peace that failed to recognize American
independence.

Question 34

34. What spurred the British Parliament to repeal the Tea Act in 1778?

Answer 34

d. Parliament hoped it would aid Britain’s efforts to seek a negotiated peace with the
Continental Congress.

Question 35

35. The British strategy in its military campaign in the South in 1778 relied on which of the following factors?

Answer 35

C. A plan to use Loyalists to administer the territories they expected to capture.

Question 36

36. Which of the following battles marked the end of the American Revolution in 1781?

Answer 36

B. Battle of Yorktown.

Question 37

37. Which of the following factors made a critical contribution to the outcome of the Battle of Yorktown in 1781?

Answer 37

C. Washington’s feigned attack on Manhattan while French troops set on Virginia.

Question 38

38. Why did the British surrender to the Americans in the Battle of Yorktown in 1781?

Answer 38

A. The British were outnumbered and cut off from reinforcement or retreat by sea.

Question 39

39. Which of the following factors explains George Washington’s success as an American military leader?

Answer 39

A. His ability to maintain the support and morale of Continental Congress, state governments, and the Continental army.

Question 40

40. Despite the favorable terms Americans achieved in the 1783 Treaty of Paris, they could not ultimately secure which of the following?

Answer 40

D. Forgiveness of their debts to British merchants.

Question 41

41. Which of the following statements characterized Pennsylvania’s democratic constitution of 1776?

Answer 41

D. Many leading Patriots found its radically democratic elements quite alarming.

Question 42

42. Although women made few gains in the eighteenth century, they did achieve a degree of progress in 1790 when they won which of the following?

Answer 42

B. Equal access to public education in Massachusetts.

Question 43

43. Why was the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 significant?

Answer 43

C. It prohibited slavery in the territory and earmarked funds from land sales for
public schools.

Question 44

44. Why were the land ordinances of the 1780s considered a great accomplishment of the Confederation Congress?

Answer 44

A. The ordinances provided for orderly settlement and created a fair process for those
areas to eventually become fully equal states.

Question 45

45. Which of the following statements characterizes postwar trends in American trade?

Answer 45

A. The war had crippled American shipping, which reduced the export of tobacco
and other farm goods.

Question 46

46. Which of the following issues formed the basis for the major political and economic challenges that faced postrevolutionary state governments in the 1780s?

Answer 46

B. Plentiful but worthless paper currency and big debts.

Question 47

47. For this question, refer to the following map, “Land Division in the Northwest Territory.”

Answer 47

D. The failure to define precisely the relationship between American Indian tribes
and the national government.

Question 48

48. The Constitution, as completed on September 17, 1787, gave the national government which of the following?

Answer 48

A. Powers equal to those that were granted to the states.

Question 49

49. To persuade Massachusetts, Virginia, and New York to ratify the Constitution, leading Federalists promised that

Answer 49

A. George Washington would become the first president.