Radical Whigs wanted to broaden political participation, while conservative Whigs wanted power kept among a small group of wealthy families.
Correct Answer
True
True. Radical Whigs pushed for wider participation and more democratic institutions, while conservative Whigs, many of them wealthy landowners and merchants, saw democracy as a path to anarchy and favored rule by an elite.
Category: Republican Ideals
Question 2
The Society of the Cincinnati, founded in 1783, was open to every Continental Army veteran regardless of rank.
Correct Answer
False
False. The Society of the Cincinnati admitted only officers of the Continental Army and the French forces, and membership passed to eldest sons. Critics feared it could become a hereditary aristocracy.
Category: Republican Ideals
Question 3
In a 1776 letter, Abigail Adams urged her husband John to "remember the ladies" as new laws were written.
Correct Answer
True
True. Abigail Adams, who ran the family farm while John served in Congress, asked him to limit husbands' power over wives in the new legal code. John Adams dismissed the request.
Category: Revolutionary Society
Question 4
Mercy Otis Warren is remembered for writing pamphlets that defended British policy against the colonial protesters.
Correct Answer
False
False. Mercy Otis Warren wrote satires attacking British measures and later published a three-volume history of the American Revolution, entering the male world of political writing on the patriot side.
Category: Revolutionary Society
Question 5
The New York Manumission Society, founded in 1785, ran schools for Black children in New York City.
Correct Answer
True
True. Wealthy New Yorkers founded the society to promote gradual emancipation, and it educated Black children and worked to protect free Black people from being kidnapped into slavery.
Category: Revolutionary Society
Question 6
The Revolution brought an immediate end to slavery in every northern state.
Correct Answer
False
False. Northern states ended slavery slowly, often through gradual emancipation laws, and tens of thousands of people remained enslaved in the North, mostly in New York and New Jersey. Slavery in New York did not fully end until the late 1820s.
Category: Revolutionary Society
Question 7
In Notes on the State of Virginia, Thomas Jefferson proposed ending slavery while also claiming that Black people were inferior to White people.
Correct Answer
True
True. Jefferson urged gradual emancipation followed by removing freed people from Virginia, and he described Black people as inferior. He held more than one hundred people in slavery and freed only a few.
Category: Revolutionary Society
Question 8
The Treaty of Greenville in 1795 returned the Ohio country to the Native nations of the Western Confederacy.
Correct Answer
False
False. After Native forces were defeated in the Northwest Indian War, the Treaty of Greenville forced them to give up most of present-day Ohio to the United States.
Category: Revolutionary Society
Question 9
Massachusetts continued to use public taxes to support churches after the Revolution.
Correct Answer
True
True. Unlike Virginia, Massachusetts, Connecticut and New Hampshire kept public support for Christian churches. The Massachusetts constitution linked republican government with promoting Protestant Christianity.
Category: Revolutionary Society
Question 10
The Articles of Confederation created a strong president who could veto acts of Congress.
Correct Answer
False
False. The Articles created only a one-house Congress, with no independent executive, no veto and no national judiciary; its president merely presided over Congress. Revolutionaries who had just fought a king wanted to avoid a powerful central executive.
Category: Articles of Confederation
Question 11
The Articles of Confederation were drafted in 1777 but were not ratified until 1781.
Correct Answer
True
True. Disputes among the states, especially over claims to western lands, delayed ratification for more than three years. The Articles took effect in 1781, shortly before the war's final major battle at Yorktown.
Category: Articles of Confederation
Question 12
The Land Ordinance of 1785 laid out western land in irregular plots that followed rivers and hills.
Correct Answer
False
False. The Land Ordinance of 1785 imposed a rectangular grid of townships and sections on western land so it could be surveyed and sold in orderly units. That grid is still visible across the Midwest.
Category: Articles of Confederation
Question 13
Under the Northwest Ordinance, a territory could apply for statehood once it had 60,000 free inhabitants.
Correct Answer
True
True. The Northwest Ordinance set out stages of government: a territory gained an elected legislature with 5,000 free adult men and could seek admission as a state, equal to the original states, at 60,000 free inhabitants.
Category: Articles of Confederation
Question 14
Shays' Rebellion was an uprising of debt-burdened farmers in western Virginia.
Correct Answer
False
False. Shays' Rebellion took place in western Massachusetts in 1786 and 1787. Farmers burdened by taxes and debt closed courts to stop the seizure of their land.
Category: Articles of Confederation
Question 15
Shays' Rebellion convinced many nationalist leaders that the Articles of Confederation needed to be strengthened.
Correct Answer
True
True. Leaders such as George Washington and Alexander Hamilton saw the uprising as proof that the weak Confederation government could not keep order, which added urgency to the call for the Constitutional Convention.
Category: Articles of Confederation
Question 16
Every one of the thirteen states sent delegates to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia.
Correct Answer
False
False. Rhode Island refused to send delegates to the Constitutional Convention. The other twelve states took part, although some delegates came late or left early.
Category: Constitutional Convention
Question 17
The Constitution barred Congress from banning the Atlantic slave trade before 1808.
Correct Answer
True
True. Delegates from South Carolina and Georgia insisted on protecting the slave trade, so the convention postponed the question for twenty years. Congress outlawed the trade as soon as that period ended.
Category: Constitutional Convention
Question 18
Under the three-fifths compromise, every enslaved person was counted fully when seats in the House of Representatives were apportioned.
Correct Answer
False
False. The three-fifths compromise counted three of every five enslaved people toward a state's population, which still gave slaveholding states extra seats in the House and extra electoral votes.
Category: Constitutional Convention
Question 19
Under the original Constitution, state legislatures rather than voters chose United States senators.
Correct Answer
True
True. Many delegates distrusted direct democracy, so senators were chosen by state legislatures. The Seventeenth Amendment, ratified in 1913, gave that choice to the voters.
Category: Constitutional Convention
Question 20
The framers created the Electoral College so that the president would be chosen by a direct nationwide popular vote.
Correct Answer
False
False. The Electoral College places the choice of president in the hands of electors, with each state's number equal to its senators plus representatives. It was designed to avoid direct popular election of the president.
Category: Constitutional Convention