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d. he owned just one household slave.
e. he owned more than 100 slaves.
62. Which statement is true about the founding fathers and slavery?
a. Only the northern founding fathers owned enslaved people.
b. All the founding fathers supported the abolition of slavery.
c. Thomas Paine was a founding father who did not own slaves, unlike many others.
d. Thomas Jefferson freed all his slaves before he wrote the Declaration of Independence.
e. Only the southern founding fathers owned enslaved people.
63. Who publicly referred to slavery as a “national crime” that would one day bring “national punishment”?
a. Thomas Jefferson
b. Joseph Brant
c. Lord Dunmore
d. George Washington
e. Benjamin Rush
64. What effect did the American Revolution have on the practice of slavery?
a. On the whole, slaves rejected any form of patriotic ideology and were resigned to their fate.
b. Slaves began using the language of liberty in their arguments against slavery.
c. The Revolution inspired the British to immediately outlaw slavery throughout their empire.
d. It resulted in more Indians being enslaved in the United States than people of African heritage.
e. In some states, indentured servants started to outnumber slaves.
65. What was the first concrete step taken toward ending slavery in New England?
a. the authorization of financial compensation for those who voluntarily freed their slaves
b. the banning of the slave trade
c. the successful uprising of most of New England’s slaves
d. the confiscation of slaveholders’ lands
e. the presentation of freedom petitions
66. What were “freedom petitions”?
a. legally binding agreements that allowed slaves to earn their freedom after thirty years of service
b. protests in the streets of southern towns, where slaves demanded freedom
c. newspaper articles that called out slaves who had illegally gained their freedom
d. documents signed by free white men in an attempt to liberate slaves
e. arguments for liberty presented to New England’s courts and legislatures in the early 1770s by enslaved African-Americans
67. Who was Lemuel Haynes?
a. a New York Deist prominent in arguing for the separation of church and state
b. a wealthy Virginian who emancipated the hundreds of slaves he owned
c. a black minister in Massachusetts who spoke out against slavery
d. a Scots-Irish Presbyterian farmer in South Carolina who led a tax revolt
e. a free black man elected to the legislature in Pennsylvania
68. Who was Phillis Wheatley?
a. a poet who wrote about how African-Americans felt about freedom
b. a fund-raiser for the Ladies’ Association, whose efforts fed starving men at Valley Forge
c. a pamphleteer whose ringing protests reminded Bostonians that women, too, cared about liberty
d. a woman who, disguised as a man, died while fighting during the Yorktown campaign
e. a slave who helped dozens of other slaves escape to freedom behind British lines
69. A volume of Phillis Wheatley’s poems was published with a testimonial from prominent citizens certifying that she was,
indeed, the author. What does this illustrate about the status of African-Americans at the time?
a. African-Americans were highly revered.
b. African-Americans were subject to the same standards as white authors, who also had to go through this verification process.
c. African-Americans were trusted only to write novels.
d. African-Americans were not allowed to publish anything without the explicit permission of a white person.
e. Many whites found it difficult to accept the idea of blacks’ intellectual ability.
70. Which settlement in Africa did the British establish for former slaves from the United States?
a. Liberia
b. Sierra Leone
c. Monrovia
d. Ghana
e. Benin
71. What caused the largest geographic movement of slaves from plantations in the South before the Civil War?
a. Slaves voluntarily deserted their owners to flee to British lines during the Revolutionary War.
b. The Americans forced slaves to relocate to Britain as part of the treaty after the Revolutionary War.
c. Slaves escaped to northern states, which had all passed emancipation laws.
d. A prolonged drought in the South caused most planters and slaves to move to the North.
e. Slaves moved West to work in the mines since there was no longer much demand for tobacco.
72. Who was Harry Washington?
a. the son of George Washington who freed the family slaves following his father’s death
b. the author of the first freedom petition presented to a New England court
c. a young Mohawk in upstate New York who hoped to create an Indian confederacy
d. a former slave of George Washington who became a British corporal
e. the economist who wrote a great treatise known as The Wealth of Nations
73. After the Revolution, African-Americans in the North
a. sometimes saw their children end up in a state similar to that of indentured servitude.
b. began fleeing to the South when they saw that the new states would not approve emancipation.
c. benefited greatly from the popularity of manumission (or voluntary emancipation of slaves by whites).
d. were guaranteed to be free during their lifetimes.
e. were unable to establish their own communities or institutions because their numbers were too low.
74. Abolition laws in the North
a. ended slavery north of Maryland altogether by 1830.
b. immediately freed enslaved children under the age of eighteen.
c. freed all enslaved people in New England as of 1804.
d. ended slavery in the northern states in a drawn-out process that took decades.
e. freed only enslaved women.
75. Which of the following is true of abolition laws between 1777 and 1804?
a. They focused exclusively on freeing living slaves.
b. By 1810, they resulted in there being no slave population north of Maryland.
c. They soon freed all slaves north of South Carolina.
d. They reflected the importance of property rights by freeing only the future children of slaves.
e. They officially ended the continuation of any form of indentured servitude.
76. Where did most free blacks live in 1810?
a. Georgia and South Carolina
b. Massachusetts
c. Maryland and Virginia
d. New York
e. Connecticut and New Jersey
77. The free black population after the Revolution in most states
a. declined in number as newly freed slaves left the country whenever possible.
b. often enjoyed the right to vote if its male members met taxpaying or property qualifications.
c. all took the last names of their former masters.
d. refused to provide havens for fugitive slaves and jeopardize their own emancipation.
e. never joined in supporting the abolitionist cause.
78. In the early republic, free black men could vote
a. under no circumstances unless authorized by Congress.
b. if they met tax and property requirements, in all states except Virginia, South Carolina, and Georgia
c. only in New York and New Jersey, if they met tax and property requirements.
d. only if they had fought in the Continental army.
e. only if they were Anglican Protestants.
79. In Samuel Jennings’s painting Liberty Displaying the Arts and Sciences, what was one of the symbols of freedom he used?
a. the American flag
b. a cage with broken bars
c. a smiling black family
d. an overgrown cotton field
e. a slave’s broken chain
80. Why did the number of slaves in America increase from 1776 to 1790?
a. America successfully repatriated nearly all slaves freed by the British during the war.
b. Christian sects such as the Quakers promoted a “God-given duty” to own and Christianize slaves.
c. Slavery survived the War of Independence, and the slave population naturally increased.
d. Increased wealth in the North enabled more people to buy slaves there than in the South.
e. There was not yet a sizeable free black population in the United States.
81. Who was Deborah Sampson?
a. a woman who disguised herself as a man to fight in the Continental army
b. the leader of the Ladies’ Association that raised funds for soldiers
c. a poet who promoted the revolutionary cause
d. an activist who was outspoken against the practice of coverture
e. a former slave who ended up owning her own land
82. What was the significance of the Ladies Association founded by Esther Reed and Sarah Franklin Bache?
a. It demonstrated how women in the colonies had tended to support the British and failed to aid the Patriots in any notable way.
b. It was the first women’s organization led entirely by former slaves and had the joint causes of abolition and women’s rights.
c. It was an example of women taking an active role in the public sphere in response to the Revolution.
d. It was a women’s group that focused on providing a support network for disadvantaged mothers.
e. It was a small regiment of the Patriot army that was composed entirely of women who trained and fought as soldiers on the
battlefield.
83. What argument did Abigail Adams make in her letter to her husband, John, written on March 31, 1776?
a. She used the language of Adam Smith to make the case for the economic value of women and the importance of free trade in
the new nation.
b. She urged her husband to take women into account when working on the code of laws for the new nation, noting men’s
tendencies to be tyrannical when given the chance.
c. She cautioned against the separation of church and state and held that Christianity must be at the center of the new nation,
especially the principle of treating others as one wishes to be treated.
d. She was careful to reassure her husband that she deferred to him in terms of all important questions and claimed that she had
little loyalty to other women.
e. She tried to convince her husband to rethink his decision to turn away from the king and referred to the greater opportunities for
their family available in Britain.
84. Which argument in the petitions of slaves to the Massachusetts legislature employed the principles of the American Revolution?
a. Slaves could be productive soldiers.
b. Taxing the poor created an economic burden.
c. British soldiers did not belong in the homes of Bostonians.
d. One of the people killed during the Boston Massacre was of African heritage.
e. Natural rights were universal.
85. Which of the following messages do the excerpts from the “Petitions of Slaves to the Massachusetts Legislature” (1773–1777)
suggest?
a. that, if not granted freedom, slaves would immediately rebel and violently fight for their ability to form their own nation
b. that the horrors of the Revolution led slaves to reject all the ideas that the new nation represented
c. that owning slaves and professing the ideas of Christianity and the Revolution are contradictory
d. that, because slaves were not citizens, they lacked any natural or unalienable rights in common with whites
e. that the persistence of slavery was inexorably leading the new nation toward a civil war between North and South
86. What was the most significant legal barrier to the political participation of women in the years following the Revolution?
a. the fact that women were given greater social and political freedom so rapidly that society was not ready for it
b. the continuation of coverture, a principle that meant woman were unable to own property and were prevented from voting
c. the radical changes the Revolution brought in America with the elimination of the family law inherited from Britain
d. Congress’s insistence that women did not deserve to participate in the new nation because none had contributed to the war
effort
e. the reality that most white American women needed to become indentured servants after the war to repay war debts
87. The words “to have and to hold” appeared in both marriage vows and ________, which demonstrated how legal authority
________.
a. indentured servant contracts; extended to all the hardest workers and caregivers
b. freedom petitions; resulted in slaves commonly having the same property rights as poor whites
c. abolition laws; was granted to slaves in the North through a rapid process
d. the Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom; resided first and foremost with the church
e. deeds transferring land ownership; still rested with the husband over the wife
88. How did the discussion of women’s rights in the revolutionary era compare to discussion of men’s rights?
a. Whereas women’s rights were viewed as grounded in duty, men’s rights were viewed as based on individual liberty.
b. Women’s rights and men’s rights tended to be viewed as equal based on the Lockean concept of natural rights.
c. Both women’s rights and men’s rights were viewed as central to the definition of the republican citizen.
d. Whereas men had long had the right to vote regardless of whether they owned property, only wealthy women were seen
as having the right to vote.
e. Whereas the subordination of women was, like the subordination of slaves, a major source of public debate, men’s rights were
rarely publicly discussed.
89. Which of the following court rulings does the case of Mrs. Martin, mother of James Martin in Massachusetts, illustrate?
a. Having limited independent judgment, wives could not be held legally responsible for choices made in obedience to their
husbands’ wishes.
b. A wife impacted most of her husband’s decisions and, thus, bore full culpability should he do anything wrong.
c. Whereas a woman was considered the property of her husband, her children were her own property.
d. A woman who legally owned property and met other requirements set by the state constitution could exercise the right to
vote.
e. A woman who broke social norms by petitioning Congress could be charged with contempt.
90. Republican motherhood encouraged
a. greater educational opportunities for women.
b. a radical change in the patriarchal structure of the family.
c. women to become public speakers for various social causes in the 1780s.
d. widespread resentment among women.
e. a significant increase in women’s direct involvement in politics in the 1780s.
91. Which of the following women best represented the feminine ideal in late eighteenth-century America?
a. an unmarried schoolteacher
b. an educated mother
c. a farmer’s widow
d. a seamstress
e. an accomplished painter
92. How did the definition of the “household” change in the North following the Revolution?
a. It shifted from denoting both home and farmland to referring to the home only, reflecting a rapid surge in the urban
population.
b. It expanded from referring to just a couple and their children to including extended family even if they lived independently.
c. It shifted from encompassing hired and indentured workers to consisting of just the parents and their children.
d. It evolved from being a synonym for a slave’s quarters to a legal term denoting the entirety of a man’s property.
e. It expanded from strictly including just males in a family of legal age to include all persons—male, female, free, or
enslaved—living in a home.
93. “Republican motherhood” was an ideology that held that
a. women should be granted suffrage rights.
b. women played an indispensable role in the new nation by training future citizens.
c. Thomas Jefferson’s Republican Party represented maternal interests better than its opponents did.
d. education was wasted on women, who should worry only about having many children to populate the republic.
e. political equality of the sexes fit a republican society.
Matching
TEST 1
___ 1. Thomas Jefferson
___ 2. Adam Smith
___ 3. Samuel Sewall
___ 4. Benjamin Rush
___ 5. Phillis Wheatley
___ 6. Abigail Adams
___ 7. James Otis
___ 8. John Adams
___ 9. Joseph Brant
___ 10. John Carroll
a. was a black poet whose work was often printed with testimonials by prominent citizens
b. was a Pennsylvania radical who warned that slavery was a “national crime”
c. wrote Thoughts on Government, which insisted that the new constitutions should create balanced governments
d. was America’s first Roman Catholic bishop
e. wrote The Selling of Joseph, the first antislavery tract printed in America
f. wrote about universal freedom, including for blacks, and posed the question “What man is or ever was born free if every man is
not?”
g. drafted Virginia’s “Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom” and sought to eliminate religious requirements for voting and office-
holding
h. famously called on the founding fathers in a letter to “Remember the ladies”
i. wrote The Wealth of Nations and described the potential of the “invisible hand” of the free market directing economic life
j. was a young Mohawk who sided with the British in hopes of creating an Indian confederacy lying between Canada and the United
States
TEST 2
___ 1. virtue
___ 2. freedom petitions
___ 3. Loyalists
___ 4. Ladies’ Association
___ 5. republican motherhood
___ 6. suffrage
___ 7. free labor
___ 8. Patriots
___ 9. militia
___ 10. Moravian Brethren
___ 11. Sierra Leone
___ 12. popery
a. raised funds to assist American soldiers
b. entailed working for wages, or owning a farm or shop
c. was an offensive term for the rituals of the Catholic Church
d. was composed largely of members of the “lower orders” and became a “school of political democracy”
e. were colonists who retained their allegiance to the crown
f. were colonists fighting for the American cause and independence
g. was a group that saw church authority undermined by the Revolution
h. involved the responsibility of raising the next generation of leaders
i. was another name for the right to vote
j. were actions slaves took for their immediate release
k. was another word for the ability to sacrifice self-interest for the public good
l. was a settlement in Africa for freed slaves
True/False
1. Abigail Adams advocated for economic independence for women so that they were not reliant on their husbands.
2. Part of the philosophy of the Revolution was embracing the principle of hereditary aristocracy.
3. The men who led the Revolution from start to finish were, by and large, members of the American elite.
4. The men who served in the Revolution through militias were empowered and demanded certain rights, thereby establishing the
tradition that service in the army enabled excluded groups to stake a claim to full citizenship.
5. In Pennsylvania, nearly the entire pre-Revolutionary elite opposed the American independence movement.
6. In their Revolutionary-era constitutions, all states adopted John Adams’s idea of a “balanced” government.
7. The property qualification for voting was hotly debated during the 1770s and 1780s.
8. Until New Jersey added the word “male” to its constitutional definition of a voter in 1807, some of the state’s women enjoyed
suffrage rights.
9. Freedom and an individual’s right to vote had become interchangeable by the war’s end.
10. The Revolutionary War weakened the deep tradition of American anti-Catholicism.
11. Despite the rhetoric of religious freedom, many states had limitations on such freedom, such as reserving officeholding to
Protestants.
12. The principle of the separation of church in state in America developed out of the religious pluralism of the New England
colonies.
13. Because Americans were preoccupied with war, religious liberty was a rather peripheral issue in the 1770s and 1780s.
14. The expansion of religious freedom diminished the influence of religion on American society.
15. In spite of the revolutionary rhetoric of freedom, indentured servitude was still widely practiced in the northern states by 1800.
16. Before the Revolution, indentured servants in the colonies occupied a place in society halfway between slave and free.
17. Adam Smith’s argument that the “invisible hand” of the free market directed economic life more effective ly and fairly than
governmental intervention offered intellectual justification for those who believed that the economy should be left to regulate
itself.
18. The view of economic freedom that became dominant in America after 1779 maintained that the interests of the community took
precedence over the property rights of individuals.
19. In Canada, the Loyalist exiles were viewed as national founding fathers.
20. After the American Revolution, Nova Scotia and Quebec became part of the United States.
21. “Freedom” had not played a major part in Indians’ vocabulary before the Revolution, but after the war, freedom meant defending
their own independence and retaining possession of their land.
22. During the American Revolutionary War, the buying and selling of slaves was temporarily halted.
23. The word “freedom” began appearing in dictionaries of Indian languages for the first time in the early nineteenth century.
24. Some British public figures were critical of Americans for demanding liberty while enslaving Africans.
25. Thomas Jefferson was one of the few southern white elite men who did not own slaves.
26. Slaves comprised less than 5 percent of the population in the American colonies at the time the Revolutionary War.
27. During the American Revolutionary period, slavery for the first time became a focus of public debate.
28. After the Revolutionary War, when George Washington demanded the return of slaves who had escaped, the British commander in
New York refused, saying it would be dishonorable.
29. Britain eventually paid compensation to some Americans after the war who claimed they had been improperly deprived of their
slave property.
30. In the Upper South, a considerable number of slaveholders emancipated their slaves.
31. After the war, abolition of slavery in the North was swift and applied to all slaves.
32. The free black population increased from about 10,000 in 1776 to more than a million by 1800.
33. To show gratitude for their invaluable contribution to the war effort, the Continental Congress awarded women universal suffrage.
34. The idea of republican motherhood encouraged direct female involvement in politics.
35. Already in the eighteenth century, there is evidence that society was beginning to move toward the idea of mutual
dependency as the basis of an ideal marriage.
Short Answer
Identify and give the historical significance of each of the following terms, events, and people in a paragraph or two.
1. suffrage
2. virtuous citizenry
3. “Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom”
Essay
1. Freedom and an individual’s right to vote became interchangeable in the wake of the Revolution. Describe how that transfor-
mation came about and how the various state constitutions dealt with voting qualifications.
2. Thomas Paine wrote that the essence of a republic was not the “particular form” of government but its object: the “public good.”
Discuss how the various states structured their governments and how they believed those governments provided for the public
good.
3. Thomas Jefferson claimed that no nation could expect to be ignorant and free. Explain what he meant by this. How did he define
virtue, and how was that important to his vision?
4. To what extent did Revolutionary-era Americans agree with Noah Webster’s statement that equality was the very soul of a republic?
Your response should define what Americans meant by equality and should consider groups that seemed to enjoy equality as well as
those groups that did not.
5. How did Loyalists view liberty? How were they treated after the war? Why?
6. When Dr. Samuel Johnson, the British writer, asked how it was “that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty from the drivers of ne-
groes,” he was pointing to a key irony of the American independence movement. What arguments did supporters of American inde-
pendence use to justify retaining the institution of slavery? Did any of their contemporaries in America counter their arguments?
How?
7. How did the Revolution’s language of liberty affect slaves and slavery in the 1770s and 1780s? Be sure to include in your response
information from Voices of Freedom.
8. How did women react to the language of freedom and liberty? Be sure to include in your response Abigail Adams’s opinions that
appear in Voices of Freedom.
9. Not everyone supported the independence movement within the colonies. Explain who supported independence and who did not.
Be sure to include a discussion about how socioeconomic standing, race, religion, and gender affected an individual’s support
for or opposition to independence.
10. How did the Revolution transform religion in the new nation? Consider especially issues related to religious toleration, religious
liberty, and church-state relations.
