The Louisiana Purchase roughly doubled the size of the United States.
Correct Answer
True
True. The territory bought from France in 1803 stretched from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains and roughly doubled the nation's area.
Category: Louisiana Purchase
Question 2
The Lewis and Clark expedition ended in disaster, losing most of its members to disease and warfare.
Correct Answer
False
False. The Corps of Discovery returned to St. Louis in 1806 having lost only one member, who died of what was probably appendicitis.
Category: Lewis and Clark
Question 3
The Corps of Discovery reached the Pacific coast in 1805.
Correct Answer
True
True. The expedition reached the mouth of the Columbia River and the Pacific in late 1805, spent the winter in present-day Oregon, and returned east in 1806.
Category: Lewis and Clark
Question 4
The Adams-Onís Treaty of 1819 ended Seminole resistance to American rule in Florida.
Correct Answer
False
False. The treaty transferred Florida from Spain to the United States, but Seminole resistance continued, and the Seminole fought the United States again in the Second Seminole War, which began in 1835.
Category: Florida and Spain
Question 5
Under the three-fifths clause, three of every five enslaved people were counted toward a state's population for representation in the House.
Correct Answer
True
True. The 1787 compromise counted three-fifths of the enslaved population, which northern critics said gave slave states extra power in the House and the Electoral College.
Category: Missouri Crisis
Question 6
The Missouri Compromise admitted Missouri to the Union as a free state.
Correct Answer
False
False. Missouri entered as a slave state, balanced by the admission of Maine as a free state.
Category: Missouri Crisis
Question 7
The Missouri Compromise preserved the balance between free and slave states in the Senate.
Correct Answer
True
True. Admitting one slave state and one free state together kept the two sections equal in the Senate, which was a central goal of the compromise.
Category: Missouri Crisis
Question 8
The congressional debate over the Tallmadge Amendment split members strictly along party lines.
Correct Answer
False
False. The vote split along sectional lines: northerners of different parties tended to support the amendment and southerners of different parties opposed it.
Category: Missouri Crisis
Question 9
Mexico encouraged American settlement in Texas partly to create a buffer against Comanche raids.
Correct Answer
True
True. Mexican officials hoped settlers would populate the thinly settled province and shield it from Comanche raiding, as well as from American encroachment.
Category: Texas Independence
Question 10
Most American settlers in Mexican Texas came from the free states of New England.
Correct Answer
False
False. Most Anglo-American settlers came from southern slave states, which is why Mexico's abolition of slavery caused so much friction.
Category: Texas Independence
Question 11
The 1836 constitution of the Republic of Texas explicitly protected slavery.
Correct Answer
True
True. The constitution adopted when Texas declared independence set up an American-style government and expressly protected slavery.
Category: Texas Independence
Question 12
After Santa Anna was captured at San Jacinto, the Mexican Congress formally recognized Texan independence.
Correct Answer
False
False. The captured Santa Anna signed the Treaties of Velasco, ending the fighting and secretly promising to work for Texan independence, but he had lost power and the Mexican Congress refused to honor them, so Mexico never recognized the republic.
Category: Texas Independence
Question 13
Texas existed as an independent republic for close to a decade before the United States annexed it.
Correct Answer
True
True. Texas won independence in 1836 and was annexed in 1845, after years of hesitation in Washington over war with Mexico and slavery.
Category: Texas Independence
Question 14
Texas was annexed to the United States as a free state.
Correct Answer
False
False. Texas joined the Union in 1845 as a slave state, which is one reason antislavery northerners had opposed annexation.
Category: Texas Independence
Question 15
James K. Polk won the 1844 presidential election promising to annex Texas and acquire Oregon.
Correct Answer
True
True. Polk, a Tennessee Democrat and slaveholder, ran as an open expansionist, and voters chose him over Henry Clay.
Category: Mexican-American War
Question 16
Most Whigs enthusiastically supported the Mexican-American War, while most Democrats opposed it.
Correct Answer
False
False. The pattern ran the other way: Democrats largely supported the war, while many Whigs, including Abraham Lincoln, criticized it.
Category: Mexican-American War
Question 17
The Compromise of 1850 ended the slave trade, though not slavery itself, in Washington, D.C.
Correct Answer
True
True. The compromise banned the buying and selling of enslaved people in the District of Columbia but left slavery there legal; Congress did not abolish slavery in the capital until 1862.
Category: Slavery in the West
Question 18
The Wilmot Proviso passed both houses of Congress and became law in 1846.
Correct Answer
False
False. The proviso passed the House but was rejected in the Senate, and it never became law.
Category: Slavery in the West
Question 19
The central goal of the Free-Soil Party was to stop slavery from spreading into the western territories.
Correct Answer
True
True. Formed in 1848 by antislavery Democrats, Whigs and Liberty Party members, the Free-Soil Party focused on keeping slavery out of the territories rather than abolishing it where it existed.
Category: Slavery in the West
Question 20
Under the Compromise of 1850, California entered the Union as a slave state.
Correct Answer
False
False. California entered as a free state, which tipped the Senate balance toward the free states.
Category: Slavery in the West