After France's defeat in 1763, Native nations of the Ohio Valley and Great Lakes could no longer play rival European empires against each other.
Correct Answer
True
True. With New France gone, Native nations lost a trading partner and their bargaining power between two empires, and the British cut back on gifts and ammunition sales. These grievances helped spark Pontiac's Rebellion.
Category: Frontier After 1763
Question 2
Benjamin Franklin praised the Paxton Boys after they killed Conestoga people in Pennsylvania in 1763.
Correct Answer
False
False. Franklin condemned the Paxton Boys, a mob of frontier settlers who murdered Conestoga people, including some held in protective custody in Lancaster. The killers were never brought to justice, and they had many supporters on the frontier.
Category: Frontier After 1763
Question 3
The Seven Years' War roughly doubled Britain's national debt.
Correct Answer
True
True. The cost of the war nearly doubled the debt, and interest payments consumed a large share of the budget. British leaders therefore wanted the colonies to help pay for their own defense and administration.
Category: Paying for Empire
Question 4
The Currency Act of 1764 encouraged colonial assemblies to print more paper money to pay British merchants.
Correct Answer
False
False. The Currency Act barred the colonies from issuing new paper money and required debts to British merchants to be paid in gold and silver. Colonists resented it because hard money was scarce and credit tightened.
Category: Paying for Empire
Question 5
The Stamp Act of 1765 taxed printed materials such as newspapers, legal documents, and playing cards.
Correct Answer
True
True. Buyers of nearly all printed paper had to purchase a revenue stamp. It was a direct tax levied by Parliament rather than by colonial legislatures, which made it a constitutional issue for colonists.
Category: Stamp Act Crisis
Question 6
The New York Assembly readily complied with the Quartering Act by paying for British troops' supplies.
Correct Answer
False
False. New York, the army's main base, refused to provide the required supplies. Parliament responded with the Restraining Act of 1767, which threatened to suspend the assembly until it complied, and New York eventually agreed to pay.
Category: Stamp Act Crisis
Question 7
Delegates to the Stamp Act Congress framed their protest as loyal British subjects defending their rights, not as advocates of independence.
Correct Answer
True
True. The delegates, mostly members of the colonial gentry, declared their loyalty to the king while arguing that taxation without representation was unconstitutional. Independence was not their goal in 1765.
Category: Stamp Act Crisis
Question 8
The Stamp Act stayed in force until the Revolutionary War began.
Correct Answer
False
False. Parliament repealed the Stamp Act in March 1766, only months after it took effect, under pressure from British merchants hurt by colonial boycotts. It passed the Declaratory Act at the same time.
Category: Stamp Act Crisis
Question 9
Charles Townshend expected that duties on imported goods would draw less colonial anger than the internal tax of the Stamp Act.
Correct Answer
True
True. Townshend believed colonists objected only to internal taxes, so he taxed imports instead. Colonists such as John Dickinson replied that any duty meant to raise revenue was still taxation without representation.
Category: Townshend Acts
Question 10
The Massachusetts Circular Letter of 1768 called on the colonies to declare independence from Britain.
Correct Answer
False
False. The letter argued that taxation without representation was unconstitutional and urged the colonies to unite in protest, but its tone toward Parliament stayed respectful. When Britain threatened to dissolve assemblies that endorsed it, colonial support grew.
Category: Townshend Acts
Question 11
Britain sent troops to Boston in 1768, and friction with residents grew partly because off-duty soldiers competed for jobs on the docks.
Correct Answer
True
True. The troops arrived to support customs officials, and Bostonians resented both their presence and their competition for scarce work. Street confrontations built toward the shooting of March 1770.
Category: Boston Massacre
Question 12
The juries in the Boston Massacre trials convicted every accused soldier of murder.
Correct Answer
False
False. Most of the soldiers were acquitted, and two were convicted of the lesser crime of manslaughter. Their lawyer, John Adams, argued that the crowd had provoked the troops.
Category: Boston Massacre
Question 13
In 1770 Parliament repealed all of the Townshend duties except the tax on tea.
Correct Answer
True
True. Under Lord North, Parliament dropped the other duties because boycotts were hurting British trade, but it kept the tea tax to uphold its right to tax. The enforcement machinery, including the customs board, also stayed in place.
Category: Townshend Acts
Question 14
In 1772, Rhode Island colonists burned the Gaspee, a warship of the French navy.
Correct Answer
False
False. The Gaspee was a British revenue ship enforcing trade laws in Narragansett Bay. Britain's royal commission of inquiry, which could send suspects to England for trial, struck many colonists as another threat to their rights.
Category: Tea and Coercive Acts
Question 15
Committees of correspondence linked towns and colonies by sharing news and coordinating resistance to British policies.
Correct Answer
True
True. Samuel Adams and others revived the Boston committee, and towns and colonies followed. The committees became an information network that rivaled royal government and later tied the colonies together.
Category: Tea and Coercive Acts
Question 16
The Tea Act of 1773 made East India Company tea more expensive than smuggled Dutch tea.
Correct Answer
False
False. By letting the company ship tea directly to the colonies without paying British duties or using middlemen, the act made its tea cheaper than smuggled Dutch tea even with the Townshend tax. Colonists saw it as a trick to get them to accept Parliament's right to tax.
Category: Tea and Coercive Acts
Question 17
Some of the men who dumped tea into Boston Harbor in December 1773 disguised themselves as Mohawks.
Correct Answer
True
True. Members of the Sons of Liberty and their followers, some dressed as Mohawks, boarded the tea ships and destroyed the entire cargo. Not all colonists approved of destroying private property.
Category: Tea and Coercive Acts
Question 18
Parliament aimed the Coercive Acts of 1774 chiefly at punishing New York.
Correct Answer
False
False. The Coercive Acts targeted Massachusetts, and Boston above all, in retaliation for the destruction of the tea. Singling out one colony backfired by uniting the others in its defense.
Category: Tea and Coercive Acts
Question 19
The Massachusetts Government Act placed the colony's government under tighter royal control and limited town meetings.
Correct Answer
True
True. The act gave crown officials more power and required the governor's approval for most town meetings. Colonists responded by forming extralegal bodies such as the Massachusetts Provincial Congress.
Category: First Continental Congress
Question 20
The First Continental Congress met in Boston in 1774.
Correct Answer
False
False. The First Continental Congress met in Philadelphia in the fall of 1774. It demanded repeal of the Coercive Acts and created the Continental Association to enforce a boycott of British goods.
Category: First Continental Congress