AMH Midterm Study Guide

Most men preferred to fight as "regular" troops in the Continental Army, with a guarantee of a cash bounty and a yearly clothing issue, than as "irregular" troops in the local militias.

False

Mounds built by the Adena and Hopewell cultures of the Ohio and Mississippi valleys, were built as sacrificial platforms for their religious ceremonies.

False

On his first voyage to the New World, Columbus realized that he had not encountered China.

False

Puritans were the first English colonizers.

False

Spain was the first European nation to sail around the southern tip of Africa, claiming the discovery of a sea route to India.

False

The British were more tolerant of Indian culture and Indian religions than were the French.

False

The Ciboneys, who had emigrated from northern South America, expanded throughout the Greater Antilles and the Bahamas

False

The Jamestown settlement was an instant success.

False

The Mayans are considered to be the first city builders in the Americas.

False

The Olive Branch Petition which was sent to the colonists by King George III offering them an opportunity to affirm their loyalty to the crown, was rejected by the Second Continental Congress.

False

The first black settlers who came to the English colonies in North America came directly from Africa.

False

The internal African slave trade did not become prominent until the Europeans began to demand slave labor for the New World.

False

The most magnificent culture of the ancient Eastern Woodlands, the Mississippian, owed much of its prominence to a vast trade network.

False

The population of the English Caribbean colonies was equally divided between whites and blacks, freemen and slaves.

False

There were no significant slave rebellions during the colonial era.

False

When Europeans arrived in North America, native tribes were generally able to unite in opposition to white encroachments on their land.

False

What was the most important result of the uprising of western Massachusetts debtor farmers led by Daniel Shays?

It gave crucial momentum to the growing movement to strengthen the national government.

Which of the following was NOT a charge raised by opponents to Hamilton's program?

It violated the idea of a broad or loose construction of the Constitution.

The Great Awakening can best be described by which of the following statements?

It was an emotional revivalist movement, which had its greatest impact both in the coastal regions and the backcountry.

Of the following, which is the most likely reason that Maryland granted religious toleration?

Its Catholic founders wished to provide a haven for Catholics.

Which of the following leaders shaped the framing of the federal Constitution more than anyone else?

James Madison

The Louisiana Purchase was significant for all of the following reasons, EXCEPT that

Jefferson's constitutional scruples caused him to hesitate to act in the Republic's best interests.

The sloop Liberty, whose seizure prompted several thousand angry Bostonians to rough up customs officials and a night of violent rioting, was owned by which wealthy Boston merchant?

John Hancock

The individual most responsible for creating the notion of "judicial review" was

John Marshall.

Which of the following is NOT an accurate description of immigrants to Virginia during the tobacco boom of the 1620s?

Nearly all were recruited from peasant villages where they had lived all their lives.

In the early 1600s, migrants to New England differed from those who went to the Chesapeake in that

New Englanders immigrated in family groups.

What was Anne Hutchinson's heresy?

She embraced controversial positions on doctrine and shared these ideas with others.

The Mogollon, the Hohokam, and the Anasazi peoples were North American cultures from which region of the United States?

Southwest

The first European power to explore North America's interior were the

Spanish.

Which of the following is NOT a true statement concerning African Americans following the Revolution?

The number of blacks in slavery quickly declined dramatically.

During the early stages of the war, the Continental Army gained a key victory over the British at ________, which demonstrated its ability as a fighting force and won support for its cause in the region.

Trenton

A contributing factor to Cortés' successful conquest of Mexico, was the fact that many peoples remained outside of Aztec domination, and conquered city-states within the empire bitterly resented Aztec rule.

True

Although Spain was the first European power to explore North America's interior, it confined its northern ventures to the regions of the upper Rio Grande and Florida.

True

Which of the following was NOT one of the ways that English and American politics differed?

Unlike England, most colonies had unicameral legislatures.

________ was the Spanish empire's last major colonial project in North America.

California

According to Calvin's teachings God expected his elect to serve the good of society by unrelenting work in a "calling," which emphasized the importance of good works.

False

After their initial contact with the kingdoms of West Africa, European powers were able to colonize territory in the region.

False

After their initial contact with the kingdoms of West Africa, Europeans powers were able to colonize territory in the region.

False

Although England's lower classes were larger and worse off than those in the colonies, England had a much larger middle class (traders, professionals, and artisans)than the colonies.

False

Although slavery had existed in Europe prior to the age of colonization, by the fifteenth century the Portuguese were no longer establishing sugar producing, slave run plantations.

False

Both the Mogollon and the Hohokom peoples of the American Southwst tended to build their dwellings near sacred sites.

False

Due to the fact that the Americas fall along an north-south axis, stretching from pole to pole, the tremendous geographic and climatic diversity made communication and technology transfers much easier than in the Old World.

False

Following the Seven Years' War, the British government faced huge problems of imperial organization, but had ample funds to deal with those problems.

False

Mogollon and Hohokam refugees fled the Four Corners region, establishing new, permanent villages in Arizona and New Mexico that the Spanish would collectively called the Pueblos.

False

What was the primary reason so many families migrated into the backcountry?

to obtain land

The Alien and Sedition Acts were used primarily

to weaken the Republican party.

What was the most lucrative New World product in the English colonies in North America by the later 1600s?

tobacco

The Sons of Liberty, emerging in the Stamp Act protest, drew their members from the ranks of

traders, lawyers, and prosperous artisans.

The Federalist party

wanted to use government power to promote commerce and industry.

Washington's farewell address

warned against the dangers of parties and called for a restoration of unity in the national political system.

By the mid-1700s, slaves on southern plantations

were about as likely to have been born in America as in Africa.

By 1700, the North American colonies

were becoming permanent, firmly-rooted societies

By the mid-1700s, slaves in the seaport cities

were more likely to be recent arrivals from Africa.

One of the chief controversies that delayed initial ratification of the Articles of Confederation turned out to be the one area of substantial achievement by the Confederation Congress. This related to

western lands.

In the early decades of New England settlement, new colonies in adjacent areas were often founded because of

religious differences.

The Constitutional Convention deadlocked until it could find a compromise solution to the issue of

representation in Congress.

In dealing with French insults and violations of American rights, President John Adams

resisted calls for war, but conducted an unofficial naval war on the high seas.

William Penn and the Quakers differed from the Puritans of New England in their belief that

the state should guarantee all inhabitants freedom of worship.

Jay's Treaty

secured the evacuation of British troops from the Northwest.

The Puritan program for reforming England included all of the following EXCEPT

separating church and state.

The description of Massachusetts Bay Colony using the biblical metaphor of a "city upon a hill" relates to the Puritan founders' idea that the colony should

serve as an example to the world

Jefferson's initial program sought to

slash federal spending and the national debt.

The economic and social system of the Spanish empire rested on all of the following EXCEPT

spices.

Which of the following was NOT one of the goals of Alexander Hamilton's financial proposals?

stimulate the essentially virtuous nature of ordinary citizens, who could take advantage of new economic opportunities

What was the precedent set by the English colonization of Ireland?

that an inferior race could justifiably be brutally repressed

The British shifted to a southern strategy after 1778 because

they felt they could exploit loyalist support.

What is the best description of the United States of America under the Articles of Confederation?

thirteen independent state republics loosely joined together under a virtually powerless representative body

The primary objective of mercantilism was to

build national self-sufficiency through a favorable balance of trade.

Most modern archeologists would agree that the earliest inhabitants of the Western Hemisphere came from which of the following areas of the world?

Asia

After 1680, the English mainland colonies of North America received most of their slaves directly from

Africa.

The three largest groups of non-English immigrants coming to the American colonies in the 1700s were

Africans, Scots-Irish, and Germans.

George Washington's victory at Yorktown came as a joint achievement of the Continental Army and

All these answers are correct.

Which of the following groups lived in what is now known as the Four Corners region of the United States?

Anasazi

America's first governing document was called the

Articles of Confederation.

What was the role of African Americans in the Revolution?

As the war dragged on, blacks—especially northern free blacks—were increasingly welcome to enlist.

About 15,000 years ago B.C.E, which land bridge was used by migrants to cross between Siberia and Alaska?

Bering Strait

"Saratoga changed everything," says your text, referring to which of the following?

Britain's defeat led to a treaty of alliance with France, opening a new phase of the war.

How did foreign policy issues accelerate the emergence of political parties in the U.S.?

Divided over whether France represented republicanism or anarchy, the two sides came to suspect the worst intentions of the other and organized parties against each other.

The Algonquin speakers were part of which group?

Eastern Woodlands

The Mississippian people were from the

Eastern Woodlands.

In the XYZ Affair,

French officials demanded a bribe to open negotiations with the United States.

Whose defeat at the makeshift defensive structure known as Fort Necessity began the Seven Years' War?

George Washington

Which of the following is NOT an example of how the colonies were beginning to seize authority a year before the Declaration of Independence, during early 1775?

Many colonial leaders increasingly issued explicit calls for full independence.

Which Wampanoag leader led southern New England's native people to attack and destroy more than two dozen towns in Plymouth Colony?

Metacom

Which tribe of Indians actually gained strength as a result of its contacts with whites?

Mohawks

In an effort to ensure that his American colonies contributed to England's prosperity, King Charles II initiated a series of regulations known as the

Navigation Acts.

The Seven Years' War pitted Britain against France in a struggle to control what region of North America?

Ohio Country

Which group was the first to build cities in the "new world"?

Olmecs

Which of the following, built around 1300, contained more than 2,000 rooms and had a water and sewage removal system?

Paquime

Which of the following was NOT argued by Thomas Paine in Common Sense?

Parliament had deliberately and wickedly brought about all of America's misfortunes.

Which of the following was NOT a reason that Pennsylvania quickly prospered?

Parliament's generous subsidy

Which of the following statements is NOT accurate concerning life in Quaker Pennsylvania?

Penn's colony was completely free of political strife.

Which Spanish explorer led the first official expedition to the North American mainland?

Ponce de León

Who organized a combined uprising of the western tribes in the aftermath of the French defeat?

Pontiac

The ________ Act allowed the housing of British troops in uninhabited private homes, outlying buildings, and barns.

Quartering

In 1638, the Bay Colony government expelled Anne Hutchinson and her followers for sedition. Where did they initially settle after being expelled?

Rhode Island

Regarding the consequences of the Seven Years' War that led to the rift between the colonies and England, which of the following is NOT correctly stated?

The French and Indian threats were removed, so the British government felt they had no need to keep troops in the colonies.

Why were the French less likely than the British to use military force when dealing with the native peoples of North America?

The French population was relatively low.

Which is the best statement of why the British signed the peace treaty granting American independence?

The timing of the occasional American victories led to a global situation where the British needed to salvage the rest of their empire by cutting their American losses.

How did African Americans react to being excluded from political festivals and public jubilees?

They organized their own celebrations.

Which of the following statements is NOT true of the French colonizing efforts in North America?

They were hampered because of relatively hostile relations with native tribes.

Why did the expansion of backcountry districts create a more democratic membership in state legislatures?

They were less developed economically, and their leading men were less rich.

Which president was the first to be inaugurated in Washington, D.C?

Thomas Jefferson

With a few important exceptions, human populations in the Americas seem to have been relatively free from major communicable pathogens.

True

As of the sixteenth century, Europeans had generally built up a greater immunity to smallpox than had the Native Americans.

True

Bacon's Rebellion accelerated the development of slavery in Virginia.

True

Bartolomé de las Casas became a tireless foe of Spanish cruelties towards the Indians, rallying against the "unjust, cruel, and tyrannical" war waged to force them into bondage.

True

Because for the most part Parliament made no effort to assert its authority in America until 1754, the colonies experienced a great deal of freedom in handling their local affairs.

True

Cortés might not have been able to defeat the Aztecs had it not been for an epidemic of smallpox that decimated the native population.

True

English colonies in the Chesapeake were first and foremost business enterprises.

True

Europeans who ventured into West Africa often faced death, with almost one-half of them being killed by malaria.

True

In the newly created states, the privileges that churches enjoyed in the colonial era were largely stripped away.

True

John Locke was the author of the Fundamental Constitution for Carolina.

True

Many of North America's most impressive civilizations had collapsed by the end of the fifteenth century.

True

Pioneers in Mesoamerica began domesticating plants 10,000 years ago.

True

Since whites outnumbered blacks in all of Britain's mainland colonies except for South Carolina, throughout the eighteenth century slave rebellions occurred far less frequently on the mainland of North America than in the Caribbean and Brazil.

True

The "headright" system was used to attract colonists to Virginia.

True

The Articles of Confederation could not be amended until all thirteen state legislatures approved.

True

The British Navigation Acts were designed to protect England from foreign competition in the colonies.

True

The Caribbean settlements of England were the main source of slaves for the English colonies of North America.

True

The Navigation Acts increased the authority of the crown and decreased that of local governments.

True

The Northwest Ordinance laid out the requirements for western territories to become states.

True

The Numic-speaking peoples were located in the Great Basin.

True

The Pueblo Indians continued to practice their native religious rituals even though many of them converted to Christianity.

True

The adoption of agriculture gave peoples in the Southwest and the Eastern Woodlands the resource security necessary to develop sedentary cultures.

True

The areas that least supported the Revolution were the middle colonies and the southern colonies

True

The early Native peoples who inhabited most of present-day Canada and Alaska, survived mostly by hunting and fishing.

True

The first Europeans to settle in the Hudson Rier Valley were the Dutch.

True

The founders of Maryland encouraged both Protestants and Catholics to migrate to the colony.

True

The imperial powers of Britain, Spain and France, and the United States pressed the Indian tribes to become allies and attacked them when they did not.

True

The intellectual leader of the Constitutional Convention was James Madison.

True

The main crop grown in South Carolina was rice.

True

The majority of the first Africans transported to the Americas as slaves were taken to Brazil.

True

The primary purpose of the Navigation Acts was to restrict colonial trade with Britain's imperial rivals.

True

The societies of the Pacific Northwest contained deep divisions among nobles, commoners, and slaves.

True

The tobacco culture of Virginia created great pressure for territorial expansion.

True

Very little slave resistance took the form of open rebellion.

True

During the first year of the Revolution, American war aims shifted from a desire for redress of grievances to a demand for complete independence. All of the following influenced this shift, EXCEPT

Washington's refusal to command the Continental Army until independence was declared.

Which of the following British leaders actually supported the colonists' objections to taxation by Parliament?

William Pitt

Which of the following statements is NOT true about slave communities on southern plantations?

With few slaves imported directly from Africa, African folkways soon disappeared.

The chapter introduction tells the story of the Battle of Bunker Hill to make the point that

a key question in that battle and throughout the war was whether Americans would really fight to win their independence.

After organizing the government, the First Congress turned its attention to Alexander Hamilton's economic proposals and enacted all of them EXCEPT

a provision that the judiciary should decide the constitutionality of regulating the economy.

Which of the following is NOT one of the reasons the American population grew dramatically in the 1700s?

absorption of French and Spanish colonials as the British empire expanded

The Federalist Papers presented strong and convincing arguments in favor of

adopting the Constitution of 1787.

In the late 1700s, the white American population was doubling nearly every 20 years, primarily because of

an extremely high birth rate.

Jefferson's Republican party

appealed to fears of commerce and urbanization.

How, according to your text, was it possible for a slave to be emancipated legally in French colonial Louisiana?

as a reward for militia service

In the Declaratory Act, Parliament

asserted that it had the power to make laws for the colonies "in all cases whatsoever."

As war broke out in Europe, the Washington administration

asserted the right to steer a path of neutrality.

In resisting the Stamp Act, Americans affirmed all of the following EXCEPT their

belief in virtual representation.

The influential leaders of the younger Republicans, known as the "War Hawks,"

came mostly from the frontier areas and were aggressively nationalistic.

What economic model did the colonists of Carolina use when establishing the colony?

cash crops tended by African slaves

At the end of the Seven Years' War, the Americans ________, while the British ________.

celebrated their contributions to victory; voiced contempt for American soldiering and suspicions of American self-interest

The native peoples of New England

clashed with settlers in periodic violent conflicts that threatened not only white survival but their own.

The ________ was founded both as a military buffer and a philanthropic enterprise.

colony of Georgia

What kind of vessel did the Barbary States use to plunder the cargo of enemy ships and enslave their crews if tribute was not paid?

corsair

The constitutions written by the states provided several important precedents for the later federal system created by the Constitution of 1787. One of the most important was the principle of

creating a written document as supreme law.

Which of these was NOT among the actions taken by the Continental Congress, before the Declaration of Independence, that seemed to be the actions of an independent government?

dealing with Canada

The First Continental Congress, in late 1774,

denied Parliament's right to tax and legislate for the colonies (while acknowledging its authority to regulate their trade), and set up a trade boycott.

Which of the following was NOT included in Penn's vision for his colony?

displacing the savage Indians

The Treaty of Paris (1763) gave Britain title to all French claims

east of the Mississippi, and Spanish Florida.

As the new nation's first president, Washington lamented that nearly all of his actions while in office would

establish a model for those that followed.

All of the following, at one time or another, were objectives of the French effort in North America, EXCEPT

finding a place to resettle dissident French Protestants.

During the Revolutionary War, slaves sought freedom

from whichever side seemed likely to grant it.

The Tea Act of 1773

gave the East India company a monopoly on the American tea trade.

Women in the seventeenth-century Chesapeake

had a good chance of improving their status through marriage.

Columbus succeeded in reaching the Americas because

he grossly underestimated the distance from Europe to the Indies.

Columbus mistakenly labeled the Taino people "Indians," believing that

he had reached the East Indies.

According to the doctrine established in the landmark Supreme Court case Marbury v. Madison, the

high court could rule on the constitutionality of federal laws.

Which of the following most characterized the Virginia colony in its first two decades?

high death rate

Once in power, Jefferson

increasingly put pragmatic considerations above strict political principles.

Although the Aztec eventually drove Cortés and his conquistadors out of their capital city of Tenochtitlán, it eventually fell to siege primarily because of the

infectious diseases brought by the Spanish.

Parliament repealed all of the Townshend duties except the tax on tea because

it was a source of revenue and symbol of Parliament's authority.

The state of New Jersey created legislation in 1807 to close what loophole?

landowning women's suffrage

The Navigation Acts were

laws passed to give English merchants a monopoly on the colonial trade.

Tenskwatawa (the Prophet) ________, while his brother Tecumseh ________.

led a religious revival among western tribes; led a military alliance among western tribes

Unlike slaves on Carolina plantations, those in the Chesapeake

lived on smaller plantations with fewer slaves.

The distinctive feature of Iroquois and Huron architecture was not the temple mound, but the

longhouse.

British authorities based their colonial trade policies, as embodied in the Navigation Acts, on the theory of

mercantilism: insuring self sufficiency by monopolizing trade.

Which group dominated the political and economic life of the seaport towns?

merchants

The diverse colonial population of 1675 New Mexico included all of the following EXCEPT

mesoamericans.

Three distinctive communities existed in eighteenth-century America. These include all of the following EXCEPT

mill towns.

The principal institution used by the Spanish to incorporate natives into colonial society was the

mission.

Immediately after the Revolution, the United States began to have difficulties with Spain. The disputes related to the boundaries of Florida and

navigation rights on the Mississippi.

Which of the following did NOT trigger the revolt led by Nathaniel Bacon?

popular opposition to the restoration of the monarchy

The Puritan belief that God was in control of history fueled a zeal to improve society. This belief is known as

predestination.

The Northwest Ordinance, which established a basis for territorial government for lands between the Ohio River and the Great Lakes, included all of the following provisions EXCEPT

protection of civil and political rights for Indians.

Recently, scholars have begun to find evidence of incredible manipulations of landscapes and environments in the least likely of places,

the Amazon rainforest.

What document was essentially a continuation of the Second Continental Congress?

the Articles of Confederation

The English settlement of Barbados in the West Indies had the greatest influence upon the development of the mainland colonies of

the Carolinas.

What momentous event, which occurred throughout Europe, distracted England from pursuing empire in the 1500s?

the Reformation

The doctrine known as "rational Christianity" stressed which of the following beliefs?

the benevolence of God

Which of the following can be described as a standardized public activity, participated in by blacks and whites, males and females, which brought emotional release, sociability, and moral order to the frontier after 1800?

the camp meeting

The Columbian Exchange was _____.

the ecological transformation which resulted from European contact with the Americas

John Calvin preached all the following doctrines EXCEPT

the free conscience and choice of the individual.

The first, briefer section of the Declaration of Independence dealt with ________, while the second section included ________.

the general right of revolution based on natural rights; the specific offenses of King George III by which England forfeited its right to rule Americans

Whose defeat at Québec effectively ended the Seven Years' War on the continent of North America?

the marquis de Montcalm

The initial fighting in the war occurred in New England; most engagements in the two years after the Declaration of Independence took place in ________; and the conflict in the later war years raged across ________.

the middle states (New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania); the Carolinas and Virginia

All the following factors explain why Spain conquered the Americas so rapidly, EXCEPT

the persistent Indian belief that the Spanish were "gods."

Though the Continental Army lost many conventional battles in the South, the British could not restore political control over the backcountry. Why?

the resilience of the rebel militias

Which of the following is the best description of a "headright"?

the right of a free settler or sponsor of immigrants to receive 50 acres per person or head

The Portuguese contributions to the European impact on the Americas included all of the following EXCEPT

the routes for trade opened by Dias and da Gama.

This chapter tells the story of the French activities in North America to make the point that

while the French gained a foothold especially through the work of the Jesuits, their settlers were few in comparison with the English Calvinists who settled New England.

After 1680, Chesapeake planters began to rely more heavily on African slave labor than on indentured white servants for all of the following reasons EXCEPT that

whites were developing a more egalitarian society.

In the debates over ratification, the Federalists argued that the Constitution

would protect the nation from itself by providing a system of checks and balances.

The second wave of settlers into frontier areas were typically

young easterners who married and started families.