Unit 2

Questions 1-4 refer to the excerpt below:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator
with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure
these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the
governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the
People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and
organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient
causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are
sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long
train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under
absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards
for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity
which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. “
The Declaration of Independence, 1776

1. Based on the excerpt above, which of the following viewpoints most directly influenced the writers of the
Declaration of Independence?
(A) A belief in the right of self-rule through a republican government
(B) A belief in the power of human reason to shape governments
(C) A belief that corrupt governments are still worthy of some loyalty
(D) A belief in unconditional submission to government authority

2. Evidence in the excerpt most clearly reflects the influence of which of the following movements?
(A) The Great Awakening
(B) Educational secularization
(C) The Enlightenment
(D) Religious toleration

3. Which of the following was the most direct effect of the ideas described in the excerpt?
(A) Unification of American support for independence
(B) Establishment of constitutions within individual colonies
(C) American creation of a national government system
(D) Strengthening of the Loyalist cause against independence

4. Which of the following best describes the primary difference between American and European societies in
the 18th century?
(A) American citizens enjoyed complete equal opportunity.
(B) European society was more open and fluid.
(C) America was a nation of small freeholders of property.
(D) Europeans emphasized privilege through birth right.

Questions 5-8 refer to the excerpt below.

“On Wednesday, the 14th of December, 1763, fifty-seven men, from some of our frontier townships, who had
projected the destruction of this little Common-wealth [the Native American community], came, all well-
mounted, and armed with firelocks, hangers and hatchets, having travelled through the country in the
night, to Conestogoe Manor. There they surrounded the small village of Indian huts, and just at break of day,
broke into them all at once. Only three men, two women, and a young boy were found at home, the rest being
out among the neighboring white people, some to sell the blankets, brooms and bowls they manufactured, and
others on other occasions. These poor defenseless creatures were immediately fired upon, stabbed and hatcheted
to death! . . . All of them were scalped and otherwise horribly mangled. Then their huts were set on fire, and
most of them burnt down. When the troop, pleased with their own conduct and bravery, but enraged that any of
the poor Indians had escaped the massacre, rode off, and in small parties, by different roads, went home.

The universal concern of the neighbouring white people on hearing of this event, and the lamentations of the
younger Indians, when they returned and saw the desolation, and the butchered half-burnt bodies of their
murdered parents, and other relations, cannot well be expressed. The Magistrates of Lancaster sent out to collect
the remaining Indians, brought them into the town for their better security against any farther attempt; and it is
said condoled with them on the misfortune that had happened, took them by the Hand, comforted and promised
them protection.”
Benjamin Franklin, A Narrative of the Late Massacres, in Lancaster County, of a Number of Indians, Friends of
this Province, by Persons Unknown, With some Observations on the Same, 1764

5. Which of the following led most directly to the conflict depicted in the excerpt above?
(A) Attempts by Native Americans to reassert their power in western lands
(B) Ineffectual leadership by British-appointed Indian superintendents
(C) Internal conflicts between western settlers and colonial governments
(D) Tensions between settlers and natives over fur trade markets

6. Which of the following best reflects the goal of the British government in limiting the settlement of western
lands?
(A) To manage the fear and costs associated with Native American conflicts
(B) To punish greedy colonial land entrepreneurs
(C) To protect western and eastern trade markets
(D) To allow expansion of a military presence in the western territories

7. Which of the following most directly led to conflicts between Native Americans and the American
government in the late 18th century?
(A) The disorderly and unstable western land policies created by the national government
(B) The refusal of most Native Americans to accept or sign government land treaties
(C) Attacks on natives led by white settlers within disputed territories
(D) The ineffective use of government treaties ceding large areas of land claimed by Native Americans

8. Conflicts between Native Americans and white settlers led to which of the following developments in the late
18th century?
(A) Efforts by the American government to protect Native American land claims
(B) Establishment of a strong native confederacy
(C) A decline in white expansion in the West
(D) Conflicts within and between Native American tribes

Questions 9-12 refer to the excerpt below.

“An Ordinance for the government of the Territory of the United States northwest of the River Ohio.

Art. 2. The inhabitants of the said territory shall always be entitled to the benefits of the writ of habeas corpus,
and of the trial by jury; of a proportionate representation of the people in the legislature; and of judicial
proceedings according to the course of the common law. All persons shall be bailable, unless for capital
offenses, where the proof shall be evident or the presumption great. All fines shall be moderate; and no cruel or
unusual punishments shall be inflicted. No man shall be deprived of his liberty or property, but by the judgment
of his peers or the law of the land; and, should the public exigencies make it necessary, for the common
preservation, to take any person's property, or to demand his particular services, full compensation shall be
made for the same. And, in the just preservation of rights and property, it is understood and declared, that no
law ought ever to be made, or have force in the said territory, that shall, in any manner whatever, interfere with
or affect private contracts or engagements, bona fide, and without fraud, previously formed.
Art. 3. Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind,
schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged . . .
Art. 6. There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said territory, otherwise than in the
punishment of crimes whereof the party shall have been duly convicted: Provided, always, That any person
escaping into the same, from whom labor or service is lawfully claimed in any one of the original States, such
fugitive may be lawfully reclaimed and conveyed to the person claiming his or her labor or service as
aforesaid.”
----Northwest Ordinance
9. During which of the following historical eras was the ordinance excerpted above most likely passed into law?
(A) Colonial before 1776
(B) Early republican during the late 1700s
(C) Antebellum of the early and mid-1800s
(D) Reconstruction during the 1860s and 1870s
10. Which of the following articulates a commonality between the legislation referenced in this excerpt and
significant laws organizing lands passed by the U.S. Congress in the mid-1800s?
(A) Both aimed to solidify U.S. territorial control over lands to the west of the nation's borders.
(B) Both contained provisions that prevented debate over the expansion of slavery to the territories.
(C) Both established clear guidelines for the establishment and funding of local public schools.
(D) Both mostly met the needs of large land speculation companies rather than individual farmers.
11. Which of the following best represents a direct, short-term result of the historical process reflected in this
excerpt on the American Indian populations residing in the Americas?
(A) American Indians urged enslaved African Americans to rebel about white domination.
(B) An absence of strong Indian leaders prevented groups from resisting white settlement.
(C) Infighting among American Indian groups over land increased significantly.
(D) American Indian populations migrated as they experienced territorial loss and warfare.

12. Which of the following factors most contributed to the growing sectional tensions that contributed to some
of the provisions of this excerpt?
(A) Frontier farmers mostly supported centralized federal authority.
(B) Northern economic systems benefited relatively little from slavery.
(C) Lower population densities discouraged emigration from the South.
(D) Immigrants to the western frontier were mostly European Catholics.
Questions 13-17 refer to the excerpt below.
“The members of this Congress, sincerely devoted, with the warmest sentiments of affection and duty to His
Majesty's Person and Government . . . esteem it our indispensable duty to make the following declarations of
our humble opinion, respecting the most essential rights and liberties Of the colonists, and of the grievances
under which they labour, by reason of several late Acts of Parliament.
. . . That His Majesty's liege subjects in these colonies, are entitled to all the inherent rights and liberties of his
natural born subjects within the kingdom of Great-Britain.
That it is inseparably essential to the freedom of a people, and the undoubted right of Englishmen, that no taxes
be imposed on them, but with their own consent, given personally, or by their representatives.
That the people of these colonies are not, and from their local circumstances cannot be, represented in the
House of Commons in Great-Britain.
That the only representatives of the people of these colonies, are persons chosen therein by themselves, and that
no taxes ever have been, or can be constitutionally imposed on them, but by their respective legislatures.
. . . That the late Act of Parliament, entitled, An Act for granting and applying certain Stamp Duties, and other
Duties, in the British colonies and plantations in America, etc., by imposing taxes on the inhabitants of these
colonies, and the said Act, and several other Acts, by extending the jurisdiction of the courts of Admiralty be-
yond its ancient limits, have a manifest tendency to subvert the rights and liberties of the colonists.”
---- Resolutions of the Continental Congress, October 19, 1765
13. Which of the following events most directly contributed to the development of the dispute exemplified in
this excerpt?
(A) Colonial charters allowed the establishment of local colonial governments in some places.
(B) Great Britain incurred heavy debts fighting a war for the benefit of its American colonies.
(C) Private companies established colonies in the Americas with high expectations for financial return.
(D) The British king attempted to create a supercolony that placed several existing colonies under one
governor.
14. The political ideals expressed in this excerpt most clearly reflect the influence of which of the following
movements of the era?
(A) Abolitionist society members who demanded an end to the slave trade
(B) Ministers of the Great Awakening who called for a revival of religious sentiment
(C) Enlightenment thinkers who argued for natural rights and rationality
(D) Spanish conquistadors who wished to locate valuable gold and resources
15. Which of the following arguments would most likely have been used by opponents of the ideas expressed in
this excerpt at that time?
(A) American colonists had a duty as British subjects to respect the laws of the commonwealth.
(B) The colonial population was too geographically dispersed to form a central government.
(C) British leaders had no authority to ever impose taxes on the American colonies
(D) Colonial claims of self-government and natural rights were hypocritical in light of the slave trade.
16. The issuance of the excerpted document reflected which of the following political processes taking place at
this time?
(A) Political leaders across the colonies had begun to see themselves primarily as citizens of a nation
separate from Britain.
(B) The New England colonies were separating from other regions due to their continued support for
Parliamentary action.
(C) Supporters of the Patriot cause were demanding that Loyalists be removed from colonial political
positions.
(D) Colonies were increasingly managing their relations with Britain through regional political
organizations.
17. Which of the following colonial groups would have been most likely to agree with the ideals expressed in
this excerpt?
(A) Tribal authorities within the Iroquois Confederacy
(B) French trappers operating along the western frontier
(C) Landowning members of the Virginia House of Burgesses
(D) Enslaved laborers on a South Carolina plantation
Questions 18-21 refer to the excerpt below.
“Philadelphia, 1794
In the early periods of the French Revolution, a warm zeal for its success was in this Country a sentiment truly
universal. The love of Liberty is here the ruling passion of the Citizens of the United States… As long therefore
as the Revolution of France bore the marks of being the cause of liberty it united all hearts and centered all
opinions. But this unanimity of approbation has been for a considerable time decreasing. . . . They have been
witnesses to one volcano succeeding another . . . spreading ruin and devastation far and wide . . .
. . . It is not among the least perplexing phenomena of the present times, that a people like that of the United
States—exemplary for humanity and moderation surpassed by no other in the love of order and a knowledge of
the true principles of liberty, distinguished for purity of morals and a just reverence for Religion should so long
persevere in partiality for a state of things the most cruel sanguinary and violent that ever stained the annals of
mankind, a state of things which annihilates the foundations of social order and true liberty, confounds all moral
distinctions and substitutes to the mild & beneficent religion of the Gospel a gloomy, persecuting and desolating
atheism. To the eye of a wise man, this partiality is the most inauspicious circumstance, that has appeared in the
affairs of this country. It leads involuntarily and irresistibly to apprehensions concerning the soundness of our
principles and the stability of our welfare.”
----Alexander Hamilton Papers

18. Hamilton’s concerns, represented in the excerpt above, most closely reflect which of the following
diplomatic policies of the new U.S. government?
(A) Establishment of strong foreign alliances
(B) Isolationism with no foreign contact
(C) Limited support for foreign allies
(D) Unconditional neutrality in foreign affairs

19. The influence of the French Revolution contributed most directly to which of the following developments?
(A) Divisions and conflicts among American political parties
(B) Strengthening of the alliance between America and France
(C) Attacks on organized religion in America
(D) Radicalization of American politics

20. Based on the excerpt above, which of the following aspects of the French Revolution most directly opposed
Hamilton’s views?
(A) The anti-aristocratic nature of the movement
(B) Unchecked power in the hands of the masses
(C)Overt religious persecution
(D) The overthrow of the monarchy

21. The evidence in the excerpt above led most directly to which of the following?
(A)A deterioration in French and American relations
(B)Weakening of American ties with Britain
(C) Increased trade agreements with France
(D) Normalized diplomatic relations between America and France

Questions 22-25 refer to the excerpt below.

“Shall a woman be kept ignorant, to render her more docile in the management of domestic concerns? How illy
capable is such a person of being a companion for a man of refinement? How miserably capable
of augmenting his social joys, or managing prudently the concerns of a family, or educating his children? Is it
not of the utmost consequence, that the tender mind of the youth receive an early direction for future
usefulness? And is it not equally true, that the first direction of a child necessarily become the immediate and
peculiar province of the woman? And may I not add, is not a woman of capacious and well stored mind, a better
wife, a better widow, a better mother, and a better neighbor; and shall I add, a better friend in every respect. . . .
When women, no longer the humble dependent, or the obsequious slave, but the companion and friend, is party
to an attachment founded on mutual esteem, then, and not till then, does man assume his intended rank in the
scale of creation. . . .
Suppose one who has from her youth been indoctrinated and habituated to sentiments of female inferiority . . . is
left a widow with a large property and a flock of small dependent children? . . . How poorly capable is she to fill
the vacancy, and act . . . as both father and mother? How incapable also is she of assisting in the settlement and
adjustment of the estate; how liable to fraud, and how probably to be injured by unreal or exaggerated debts.”
----The Female Advocate, Written by a Lady, New Haven, 1801

22. The views expressed in the above excerpt most clearly reflect which of the following?
(A) The acceptance of traditional gender roles within the family
(B) The rejection of religious ideals regarding female morals
(C) The notion of women’s empowerment through education
(D) The establishment of appropriate public roles for women

23. Which of the following best reflects the primary goal of the movement represented in the excerpt?
(A) To encourage women to instill republican ideals in their children
(B) To expand women’s legal rights within marriage
(C) To better define women’s roles within the domestic sphere
(D) To allow women access to the male world of politics and business

24. The excerpt above most clearly reflects influence from which of the following?
(A) The Great Awakening
(B) Republicanism
(C) Evangelicalism
(D) The Enlightenment

25. The evidence in the excerpt above led most directly to which of the following long-term developments?
(A) Social reform movements dominated by women
(B) Religious backlash against female political activists
(C)A breakdown of the traditional nuclear family
(D)A decrease in educational opportunities for women

Questions 26-29 refer to the excerpt below.

“But the assumptions and conventions depicted in the advertisements of 1800 do not reflect a simple extension
of the oppressive practices of whites and the condition of dependency of people of color associated with the
institution of slavery, during and after the expiration of the institution itself. On the contrary, the particular
conditions of gradual emancipation in New England generated a new concept of ‘racial’ difference on the part
of whites in which the characteristics of availability, dependency, and instrumentality associated with slave
status were redefined as uniquely innate and permanent biological traits in persons of color, irrespective of their
status. The ideology and language of the antislavery movement produced and shaped this redefinition.”
---- Joanne Pope Melish, Disowning Slavery: Gradual Emancipation and “Race” in New England, 1780–1860
26. Which turning point in the development of the African American identity does this excerpt most closely
suggest?
(A) A few African Americans became prominent landowners and slave owners before the Civil War.
(B) Boston and other New England cities were hubs of the abolitionist movement by the 1830s.
(C) Free African Americans lost rights and status around the nation during the early 1800s.
(D) Southern states legalized the institution of chattel slavery during the colonial period.

27. How were the ideas about race and individual status referenced in this excerpt applied in frontier regions of
the Northwest Territory during the early 1800s?
(A) Frontier regions challenged these ideas by welcoming free blacks.
(B) Black codes confirmed the low status of African Americans by limiting their rights.
(C) The establishment of slavery created a racial caste system similar to that of the South. (
(D) Racial hierarchies did not exist because intermarriage among the races was common in the isolated
frontier.
28. How did the tenets of the U.S. Constitution influence the process described in this excerpt during the early
1800s?
(A) It left the issue entirely in the hands of the states.
(B) It laid out a process of gradual emancipation for states to adopt.
(C) It reserved all such changes as a power of the U.S. Congress.
(D) It rejected the process by affirming the federal property rights of slaveholders

29. Which fact, if true, most weakens historian Joanne Pope Melish’s arguments as exemplified by this excerpt?
(A) Abolitionists mostly saw their cause as a moral rather than political one.
(B) Laws had defined slavery as a condition inheritable by race since colonial times.
(C) Some Northern states allowed people to remain enslaved well into the 1800s.
(D) Restrictive black codes limited the rights of free people in the North.
Questions 30-34 refer to the excerpt below.
“1. Resolved, That the several States composing, the United States of America, are not united on the principle of
unlimited submission to their general government; but that, by a compact under the style and title of a
Constitution for the United States, and of amendments thereto, they constituted a general government for
special purposes —delegated to that government certain definite powers, reserving, each State to itself, the
residuary mass of right to their own self-government; and that whensoever the general government assumes
undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force: that to this compact each State acceded
as a State, and is an integral part, its co-States forming, as to itself, the other party: that the government created
by this compact was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself; since
that would have made its discretion, and not the Constitution, the measure of its powers; but that, as in all other
cases of compact among powers having no common judge, each party has an equal right to judge for itself, as
well of infractions as of the mode and measure of redress.”
---- The Kentucky Resolutions of 1798
30. How did the divisions over the meaning of the U.S. Constitution reflected in this resolution mostly shape the
functioning of the political system in the early U.S. republic?
(A) By preventing the full ratification of the proposed constitution
(B) By leading certain states to withdraw their delegates from the legislature
(C) By contributing to the development of formal political parties
(D) By forcing the creation of the federalist system of shared powers

31. Which enduring debate in U.S. politics and government does this resolution most reflect?
(A) States’ rights v. federal authority
(B) Individual liberties v. common good
(C) Democratic v. Republican political parties
(D) Northern v. Southern sectional interests
32. Which of the following best summarizes a commonality between the arguments presented in this resolution
and the claims of supporters of the later theory of nullification?
(A) Federal legislators lack the constitutional right to enact laws for the nation.
(B) The states have the final authority over the validity of federal legislation.
(C) Ratification of the U.S. Constitution did not commit a state to remaining in the Union.
(D) The Constitution grants the U.S. Congress rights over foreign but not economic policies.

33. Which historical political faction held a view most similar to the view supported by the authors of this
resolution?
(A) Free-Soilers, who believed that the federal government had a constitutional right to prevent the
expansion of slavery to the territories
(B) Federalists, who believed that the U.S. Constitution offered the best plan for a strong centralized
government
(C) Tea Partiers, who believed that the legislature had a duty to enact laws that reduced the overall size
of the federal government
(D) Anti-Federalists, who believed that the U.S. Constitution must reserve most powers for the states
and individuals