Chapter 5

Question 1

The government’s formerly lax oversight of the colonies ended as the architects of the British Empire put these new reforms in place. What did this change cause to happen?

Answer 1

The British hoped to gain greater control over colonial trade and frontier settlement as well as to reduce the administrative cost of the colonies and the enormous debt left by the French and Indian War. Each step caused backlash and over time imperial reforms pushed many colonists toward separation from the British Empire.

Question 2

The massive debt the war generated at home, however, proved to be the most serious issue facing Great Britain. What obstacles did they come across?

Answer 2

The frontier had to be secure in order to prevent another costly war. Greater enforcement of imperial trade laws had to be put into place. Parliament had to find ways to raise revenue to pay off the crippling debt from the war. Everyone would have to contribute their expected share, including the British subjects across the Atlantic

Question 3

In a broad-based alliance that came to be known as:

Answer 3

Pontiac’s Rebellion, Pontiac led a
loose coalition of these native tribes against the colonists and the British army.

Question 4

Pontiac started bringing his coalition together as early as 1761, urging Indians to “drive [the Europeans] out and make war upon them.” The conflict began in earnest in 1763, when Pontiac and several hundred Ojibwas, Potawatomis, and Hurons laid siege to Fort Detroit. At the same time, Senecas, Shawnees, and Delawares laid siege to Fort Pitt. Over the next year, the war spread along the backcountry from Virginia to Pennsylvania. Pontiac’s Rebellion (also known as Pontiac’s War) triggered horrific violence on both sides. This caused stories of what?

Answer 4

Firsthand reports of Indian attacks tell of murder, scalping, dismemberment, and burning at the stake. These stories incited a deep racial hatred among colonists against all Indians.

Question 5

Well aware of the problems on the frontier, the British government took steps to try to prevent bloodshed and another costly war. At the beginning of Pontiac’s uprising, the British issued the____________, which forbade white settlement west of the Proclamation Line, a borderline running along the spine of the Appalachian Mountains. The ____________ aimed to forestall further conflict on the frontier, the clear flashpoint of tension in British North America. British colonists who had hoped to move west after the war chafed at this restriction, believing the war had been fought and won to ensure the right to settle west. This therefore came as a setback to their vision of westward expansion.

Answer 5

Proclamation of 1763
Proclamation Line

Question 6

THE BRITISH NATIONAL DEBT
Great Britain’s newly enlarged empire meant a greater financial burden, and the mushrooming debt from the war was a major cause of concern. The war nearly __________

Answer 6

doubled the British national debt, from £75 million in 1756 to £133 million in 1763. Interest payments alone consumed over half the national budget, and the continuing military presence in North America was a constant drain. The Empire needed more revenue to replenish its dwindling coffers. Those in Great Britain believed that British subjects in North America, as the major beneficiaries of Great Britain’s war for global supremacy, should certainly shoulder their share of the financial burden

Question 7

What Act caused a unity of outrage of otherwise unconnected American colonists and gave them a chance to act together both politically and socially?

Answer 7

The crisis of the Stamp Act allowed colonists to loudly proclaim their identity as defenders of British liberty. With the repeal of the Stamp Act in 1766, liberty-loving subjects of the king celebrated what they viewed as a victory.

Question 8

For many British colonists living in America, the _____________ raised many concerns. As a direct tax, it appeared to be an unconstitutional measure, one that deprived freeborn British subjects of their liberty, a concept they defined broadly to include various rights and privileges they enjoyed as British subjects, including the right to representation.

Answer 8

Stamp Act

THE STAMP ACT AND THE QUARTERING ACT

Question 9

Without _______________ there could be no taxation.

Answer 9

Representation

Question 10

Only representatives for whom British subjects voted could tax them under the unwritten British Constitution, supporters and protesters of the Stamp Act felt what?

Answer 10

Parliament was in charge of taxation, and although it was a representative body, the colonies did not have “actual” (or direct) representation in it. Parliamentary members who supported the Stamp Act argued that the colonists had virtual representation, because the architects of the British Empire knew best how to maximize returns from its possessions overseas. However, this argument did not satisfy the protesters, who viewed themselves as having the same right as all British subjects to avoid taxation without their consent. With no representation in the House of Commons, where bills of taxation originated, they felt themselves deprived of this inherent right.

Question 11

Which two groups led the popular resistance to the Stamp Act?

Answer 11

Two groups, the Sons of Liberty and the Daughters of Liberty. Both groups considered themselves British patriots defending their liberty, just as their forebears had done in the time of James II
MOBILIZATION: POPULAR PROTEST AGAINST THE STAMP ACT

Question 12

In the protest against the Stamp Act, how did the Sons and Daughters of Liberty boycott?

Answer 12

The protests of the Sons and Daughters of Liberty soon spread until there was a chapter in every colony. The Daughters of Liberty promoted the boycott on British goods while the Sons enforced it, threatening retaliation against anyone who bought imported goods or used stamped paper. In the protest against the Stamp Act, wealthy, lettered political figures like John Adams supported the goals of the Sons and Daughters of Liberty, even if they did not engage in the Sons’ violent actions.

Question 13

In March 1766, the new prime minister, Lord Rockingham, compelled Parliament to repeal the Stamp Act and proposed what Act?

Answer 13

However, to appease opponents of the repeal, who feared that it would weaken parliamentary power over the American colonists, Rockingham also proposed the Declaratory Act. This stated in no uncertain terms that Parliament’s power was supreme and that any laws the colonies may have passed to govern and tax themselves were null and void if they ran counter to parliamentary law.
THE DECLARATORY ACT

Question 14

When the colonists resisted the Townshend Acts, another shared experience among the diverse regions and backgrounds, a partial repeal convinced many that liberty had been _____

Answer 14

Defended. Nonetheless, Great Britain’s debt crisis still had not been solved.

Question 15

William Pitt was ill with Gout and old. His Chancellor, Charles Townshend took on many of his duties, such as:

Answer 15

Raising the needed revenue from the colonies.

Question 16

Conflict turned deadly on March 5, 1770, in a confrontation that came to be known as The ______________________.

Answer 16

Boston Massacre.
On that night, a crowd of Bostonians from many walks of life started throwing snowballs, rocks, and sticks at the British soldiers guarding the customs house. In the resulting scuffle, some soldiers, goaded by the mob who hectored the soldiers as “lobster backs” (the reference to lobster equated the soldiers with bottom feeders, i.e., aquatic animals that feed on the lowest organisms in the food chain), fired into the crowd, killing five people. Crispus Attucks, the first man killed—and, though no one could have known it then, the first official casualty in the war for independence—was of Wampanoag and African descent. The bloodshed illustrated the level of hostility that had developed as a result of Boston’s occupation by British troops, the competition for scarce jobs between Bostonians and the British soldiers stationed in the city, and the larger question of Parliament’s efforts to tax the colonies

Question 17

The Coercive Acts were:

Answer 17

punitive in nature, awakening the worst fears of otherwise loyal members of the British Empire in America.

Question 18

What was the purpose of the Tea Act of 1773?

Answer 18

Parliament did not enact the Tea Act of 1773 in order to punish the colonists, assert parliamentary power, or even raise revenues. Rather, the act was a straightforward order of economic protectionism for a British tea firm, the East India Company, that was on the verge of bankruptcy. In the colonies, tea was the one remaining consumer good subject to the hated Townshend duties. Protest leaders and their followers still avoided British tea, drinking smuggled Dutch tea as a sign of patriotism.
The Tea Act of 1773 gave the British East India Company the ability to export its tea directly to the colonies without paying import or export duties and without using middlemen in either Great Britain or the colonies. Even with the Townshend tax, the act would allow the East India Company to sell its tea at lower prices than the smuggled Dutch tea, thus undercutting the smuggling trade.

Question 19

Colonial Protest against the Tea Act of 1773 protested by:

Answer 19

Protected by a crowd of spectators, they systematically dumped all the tea into the harbor, destroying goods worth almost $1 million in today’s dollars, a very significant loss. This act soon inspired further acts of resistance up and down the East Coast. However, not all colonists, and not even all Patriots, supported the dumping of the tea. The wholesale destruction of property shocked people on both sides of the Atlantic.

Question 20

What represented a direct challenge to British authority?

Answer 20

The First Continental Congress, which comprised elected representatives from twelve of the thirteen American colonies.

Question 21

The First Continental Congress was:

Answer 21

their own de facto government. While the colonists still considered themselves British subjects, they were slowly retreating from British authority.

Question 22

What was the turning point for many colonists?

Answer 22

The Intolerable Acts.

Question 23

1. Which of the following was a cause of the
   British National Debt in 1763?
   A. drought in Great Britain
   B. the French and Indian War
   C. the continued British military presence in
   the American colonies
   D. both B and C

Answer 23

D. both B and C

Question 24

2. What was the main purpose of the Sugar Act of 1764?
   A. It raised taxes on sugar.
   B. It raised taxes on molasses.
   C. It strengthened enforcement of molasses
   smuggling laws.
   D. It required colonists to purchase only sugar
   distilled in Great Britain

Answer 24

C. It strengthened enforcement of molasses
smuggling laws.

Question 25

3. What did British colonists find so onerous
   about the acts that Prime Minister Grenville
   passed?

Answer 25

The Currency Act required colonists to pay British merchants in gold and silver instead of colonial paper money. With gold and silver in short supply, this put a strain on colonists’ finances. The Sugar Act curtailed smuggling, angering merchants, and imposed stricter enforcement. Many colonists feared the loss of liberty with trials without juries as mandated by the Sugar Act

Question 26

4. Which of the following was not a goal of the
   Stamp Act?
   A. to gain control over the colonists
   B. to raise revenue for British troops stationed
   in the colonies
   C. to raise revenue to pay off British debt from
   the French and Indian War
   D. to declare null and void any laws the
   colonies had passed to govern and tax
   themselves

Answer 26

D. to declare null and void any laws the
colonies had passed to govern and tax
themselves

Question 27

5. For which of the following activities were the
   Sons of Liberty responsible?
   A. the Stamp Act Congress
   B. the hanging and beheading of a stamp
   commissioner in effigy
   C. the massacre of Conestoga in Pennsylvania
   D. the introduction of the Virginia Stamp Act
   Resolutions

Answer 27

B. the hanging and beheading of a stamp
commissioner in effigy

Question 28

6. Which of the following was not one of the goals of the Townshend Acts?
   A. higher taxes
   B. greater colonial unity
   C. greater British control over the colonies
   D. reduced power of the colonial governments

Answer 28

B. greater colonial unity

Question 29

7. Which event was most responsible for the
   colonies’ endorsement of Samuel Adams’s
   Massachusetts Circular?
   A. the Townshend Duties
   B. the Indemnity Act
   C. the Boston Massacre
   D. Lord Hillsborough’s threat to dissolve the
   colonial assemblies that endorsed the letter

Answer 29

D. Lord Hillsborough’s threat to dissolve the
colonial assemblies that endorsed the letter

Question 30

8. What factors contributed to the Boston
   Massacre?

Answer 30

The bloodshed illustrated the level of hostility that had developed as a result of Boston’s occupation by British troops, the competition for scarce jobs between Bostonians and the British soldiers stationed in the city, and the larger question of Parliament’s efforts to tax the colonies.
Tensions between colonists and the redcoats had been simmering for some time. British soldiers had been moonlighting as dockworkers, taking needed jobs away from colonists. Many British colonists were also wary of standing armies during peacetime, so skirmishes were common. Finally, the Sons of Liberty promoted tensions with their propaganda.

Question 31

9. Which of the following is true of the Gaspée
   affair?
   A. Colonists believed that the British response
   represented an overreach of power.
   B. It was the first time colonists attacked a
   revenue ship.
   C. It was the occasion of the first official death
   in the war for independence.
   D. The ship’s owner, John Hancock, was a
   respectable Boston merchant.

Answer 31

A. Colonists believed that the British response
represented an overreach of power.

Question 32

10. What was the purpose of the Tea Act of 1773?
    A. to punish the colonists for their boycotting
    of British tea
    B. to raise revenue to offset the British
    national debt
    C. to help revive the struggling East India
    Company
    D. to pay the salaries of royal appointees

Answer 32

C. to help revive the struggling East India
Company

Question 33

11. What was the significance of the Committees of Correspondence?

Answer 33

The Committees of Correspondence provided a crucial means of communication among the colonies. They also set the foundation for a colonial government by breaking away from royal governmental structures. Finally, they promoted a sense of colonial unity.

Question 34

12. Which of the following was decided at the
    First Continental Congress?
    A. to declare war on Great Britain
    B. to boycott all British goods and prepare for
    possible military action
    C. to offer a conciliatory treaty to Great Britain
    D. to pay for the tea that was dumped in
    Boston Harbor

Answer 34

B. to boycott all British goods and prepare for
possible military action

Question 35

13. Which colony provided the basis for the
    Declarations and Resolves?
    A. Massachusetts
    B. Philadelphia
    C. Rhode Island
    D. New York

Answer 35

A. Massachusetts.