Chapter 23
Only after you complete your essays in the practice test (see Chapter 22) do you peek at the answers in this chapter! You may even want to have your teacher (or another student who’s roughly as smart as your teacher) read your essay efforts to independently evaluate how you sound. The essay points in this chapter are just one way to handle the topic. Your clear ideas and the political, economic, and social evidence you bring forward to support your ideas are what matter most. For any question that really stumps you, go back and review the history in this book and in your school textbook. Taking sample tests gives you an early warning so you can tune up for super success on the big AP.
For general tips about scoring and how to handle questions, see Chapters 4, 5, and 6.
Section I: Multiple-Choice
1. (D). Columbus set sail for the East Indies, so the inhabitants at his destination would logically be “Indians.”
2. (B). Remember, meso means middle.
3. (C). The Iroquois Confederation actually gave the early colonies ideas about the power of united action.
4. (E). Meso means middle, not an Indian tribe. Here’s a mnemonic device: “I’m not forgetting the order of the Big Three tribes, AM I?” From north to south, the geographic order is Aztec, Maya, Inca.
5. (E). All four were important foods the settlers picked up from the American Indians. If you know for sure that at least two of the choices are correct, you know that (E) has to be the answer by default.
6. (C). Only Magellan has a GPS system named after him. The others were more local explorers.
7. (E). Even if you don’t remember that the encomienda system gave Spanish colonists legal power over Indians, you can still throw out the smart-aleck answers about housing and cooking as being not worth an AP question. At worst, that gets you down to a three-choice guess, statistically worth the risk.
8. (A). With the Armada gone, Britain got set to rule the waves.
9. (B). Pope’s Rebellion in the Spanish West and King Philip’s War in New England were wars with the American Indians that happened at about the same time in the late 1600s. You can remember the difference if you think of the Indian leader who just happened to be called Pope as associated with the pope-following Catholic Spanish colonists.
10. (D). Settlers didn’t find any gold, but not because they didn’t try.
11. (D). Slavery happened early in the New World.
12. (D). The real money was in growing sugar in the West Indies.
13. (A). The Pilgrims grimly wanted to get completely out of the Church of England; the Puritans simply wanted to purify it.
14. (D). The Puritans thought they were too pure to allow radical self expression, especially coming from a woman (like Anne Hutchinson).
15. (C). The Dutch founded New Amsterdam on the tip of Manhattan.
16. (D). The Quakers in Pennsylvania actually believed in treating the American Indians like human beings.
17. (B). Like Pope’s Rebellion, King Philip’s War was a battle with American Indians, so you can rule out any answer choice that doesn’t include them.
18. (D). In the Dominion of New England, the King tried to dominate.
19. (D). Most slaves went to the West Indies and South America, white indentured servants did most of the hard work before 1700, and slaves rebelled when they could.
20. (C). The late-1600s clothes, stern judges, and multiple girls making accusations identify this picture as the Salem Witch Trials.
21. (D). At the height of their power and fury, the Indians came pretty close to wiping out the original colonial sites. And if you read the question carefully, you see that, although the other answer choices may be nice American Indian images, they’re not about power. Regardless of the details, (D) is the only answer that satisfies the topic.
22. (A). The Germans were an important part of the population from the early days, complete with sausage and beer.
23. (D). The population of the colonies in 1750 was around 1 million; by the Revolution, it was over 2 million. The patriots fought the Revolution with fewer people than now live in the Sacramento area.
24. (C). The Scotch-Irish were poor-but-tough Protestant backwoods farmers.
25. (D). Ben Franklin called out the militia to defend peaceful American Indians against the bloodthirsty Paxton Boys.
26. (D). Outside the aptly named New England, a majority of the population wasn’t technically English. Although they shared a government (often unwillingly), Scotland, Ireland, and Wales weren’t part of England.
27. (C). Mercantilism means colonies send raw materials that get turned into merchandise. Colonies were expected to buy this merchandise at a nice profit to the mother country.
28. (A). Cotton was small-time before the cotton gin, but lots of people wanted to smoke.
29. (D). The Navigation Acts were mercantilism under sail: They were meant to block trade with anybody but England.
30. (C). The colonies were doing very well financially, thank you. See Chapter 9.
31. (C). Early universities were all about religion.
32. (D). New light ministers put emotion into the First Great Awakening.
33. (A). By the clothes and classical pose, this is the picture of a Revolutionary Enlightenment man. The other answers are wrong by generations.
34. (D). The Three-Fifths Compromise gave slaveholding states M voting credit for every slave, even though they didn’t give the slaves much credit as human beings.
35. (C). The Peter Zenger trial helped establish freedom of the press. Notice the repeat of the word freedom in three of the five choices for this question. The correct answer is usually one that’s part of the pattern.
36. (D). With sugar, tobacco, and slaves, America had its share of bad habits, but opium wasn’t one of them.
37. (B). The Albany Congress was an American-Indian-and-settlers meeting.
38. (A). Remember the order of the laws goes from general to worst: first Navigation, then Stamp, and finally Intolerable.
39. (B). Loyalists viewed themselves as the real patriots — to England.
40. (E). The Revolution and its writings were pure Enlightenment. See Chapter 10.
41. (C). This excerpt is from Martin Luther King’s famous “I have a dream” speech. Be ready for out-of-chronological-order questions: The real AP test will be full of them.
42. (E). Marching is difficult if you don’t have shoes.
43. (C). This is the only answer that even fits the time period; you can throw out all the other answer choices as being too late.
44. (B). The ordinances set up what was then the Northwest of the new United States. In this case, you can get a clue by going with the most important answer: the AP isn’t going to bother you with questions about small happenings.
45. (A). State power goes with the idea of a loose confederation.
46. (C). The Confederation’s biggest legislation was the Northwest law.
47. (D). Look closely at the longest answers. Because test writers don’t want arguments, they usually phrase the right answer carefully. In this case, (D) is the most specific, precisely worded choice (and one of only two that deal with the concept of a republic at all).
48. (A). Thomas Jefferson was one of the most prominent supporters of small government (although he did add a lot of territory to be governed with the Louisiana Purchase).
49. (D). Freedom starts in your mind with religion, speech, and press.
50. (C). Notice that a couple of answers contain the word bill; after you pick that pattern out, the Bill of Rights is hopefully ringing some bells. You can definitely get rid of (E), the Founding Fathers, as a smart-aleck answer.
51. (A). Federalists wanted a strong federal government. You can chuck (C) as a smart-aleck choice.
52. (A). The first thing a repressive government moves to protect is itself. The other answers aren’t sedition.
53. (B). John Marshall made the Supreme Court into a powerful third branch of the federal government.
54. (D). Of the choices, (B) and (D) present the most important concepts. If you remember that Jefferson was for small government, you can eliminate answer (B) right away and recognize (D) as the most likely possibility.
55. (C). Because embargo means to stop trade, (E) doesn’t make sense. (C) is the most important remaining choice and the correct answer.
56. (D). You can eliminate (C), about the Star-Spangled Banner, as a smart-aleck throwaway. Even if you don’t know history, if you can eliminate one choice it’s statistically best to guess.
57. (C). With the AP’s emphasis on social struggle, people in questions will tend to be those who fought back, not just folks who went along with powerful interests. In this case, that points to (C) as the most likely answer.
58. (E). If you know blacks fought in more than one of these battles, you know it has to be all of them, choice (E).
59. (C). The Era of Good Feelings was a victory lap for the new United States, which hasn’t experienced an oversupply of political good feelings since.
60. (A). “Review all laws for constitutionality” is the most important answer choice and the right one for this question.
61. (C). This picture represents the real, in spirit at least, Molly Pitcher. The other choices aren’t even in the right time period; the three-cornered hats give away the time.
62. (E). Manifest Destiny was the idea that God intended for the U.S. to push westward to the Pacific.
63. (A). If you remember that American exceptionalism is the philosophy behind Manifest Destiny, you can eliminate (B) right away and zero in on (A), the choice that best corresponds to the idea of Manifest Destiny (which you’ve already associated with American exceptionalism).
64. (B). (B) is the most precise answer, which is a pretty decent indicator.
65. (A). Unless you’re going to be a lawyer, your mind can go blank when you see Cohens v. Virginia. Carefully checking out the choices can turn the light back on.
66. (C). The U.S. wasn’t in the business of compromising with the American Indians, so you can rule out (D). (B) and (E) don’t make much sense, either; of the two choices remaining, the Mason-Dixon line is the most significant. In this case, it’s not the longest answer, but it’s the best one.
67. (E). Europe wasn’t welcome to grab any more New World land.
68. (A). The Trail of Tears was ethnic cleansing for American Indians.
69. (D). The big voting news in Jacksonian democracy was that non-property-owning white men finally got to vote, so (D) is your answer.
70. (B). The spoils system was campaign financing before big money — in return for a little preelection back-scratching, winning politicians gave their friends and influential supporters cushy government jobs. Answer (B) is your best choice.
71. (A). Nullification was when a state would try to make a federal law null and void (not applicable) within the nullifying state.
72. (B). Railroads started to be practical before the Civil War. In Andy Jackson’s time, canals were still the happening thing.
73. (A). The humble steel plow changed American prairie grassland into one of the richest agricultural areas in the world.
74. (E). Women began to get power just by running their own households. You can eliminate (B) as being too early for women’s suffrage.
75. (B). Pay attention to the wording of the question: it asks for the most important answer, which is that religion and social action were connected.
76. (D). (B) and (C) don’t seem terribly important. Of the choices left, “utopian communities” seems to better describe groups with names like Brook Farm and New Harmony, and (D) is the correct answer.
77. (A). Women begin to stand up as a group at the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848. The date helps supply the clue.
78. (A). Ralph Waldo Emerson was Mr. Transcendentalism: the pivot point for separating personal spirituality from religious dogma.
79. (A). The United States had intended to get rid of slavery much sooner than they did — the documents in question provide for the phasing out of slavery, so you can rule out (B) and home in on (A).
80. (D). Even slavery’s supporters called it peculiar; guilty conscience, anyone?
Section II: Free-Response Questions
The following essay points show sample information that you can organize for your practice essays. Chapter 5 contains detailed guidance on how to write the DBQ response, and Chapter 6 gives you the lowdown on tackling the regular essays.
Part A: Document-Based Question
The DBQ asks you to discuss the changing nature of slavery and indentured servitude in relation to their evolution, economics, and crops. Here are some general PES facts on the subject of servitude you may want to pull in to your essay:
● Before 1700, white indentured servants outnumbered black slaves.
● In the Chesapeake Bay area, indentured servants grew enough tobacco to increase highly profitable exports of the smoking leaf from 1 million pounds in the 1630s to 40 million pounds in 1700.
● Three out of four English immigrants to this region in the 1700s were servants indentured for around five years of service to pay for their passage.
● The headright system allowed anyone bringing in a laborer to get 50 acres of land per imported worker — instant wealth.
● Almost half of the white indentured servants died before they finished their term of service.
● After 1700, more jobs in England made for fewer indentured servants.
● Plantation owners without indentured servants substituted black African slaves who lived longer and worked until they died.
● At the time of the American Revolution, the U.S. was home to fewer than 1 million slaves, mostly in the South.
● After the Revolution, Southern owners freed thousands of slaves, and all Northern states ended slavery. The U.S. banned the importation of slaves in 1808.
● The cotton gin, invented in the late 1790s, made slavery hugely profitable. One slave with a gin could do the work of 50 without; American cotton brought high prices from newly mechanized cotton mills in the U.S. and Britain.
● Slaves cleared new land, and cotton land spread over much of the South, as did sugar in Louisiana.
● By the time of the Civil War in 1860, the South was prosperous, with more than 4 million slaves. Material from at least some of the provided documents (like the points in the following list) should appear with document letters in brackets in your DBQ essay.
● A: Shows slavery from the very first voyage of Columbus
● B: Shows that a majority of immigrants to the Middle South in the years just before the Revolution were indentured English servants
● C: Demonstrates indentured arrangements
● D: Shows the agony of slavery for Africans at the time of the Revolution
● E: Letter relating wealth from cotton and reporting Negro sales alongside horses and mules
● F: Reveals the complicity of Northern merchants in Southern slavery
● G: The often-reproduced symbol of the antislavery societies
● H: First-person report of slave driver cruelty
● I: Details the economics of slavery
● J: Emancipation of slaves, as imagined during the Civil War, with horrors of slavery behind and benefits of freedom ahead
Part B and Part C
In this section, I provide you with an overview of some points you may want to include on each of the essay choices in Parts B and C. You don’t have to have all of these points, but you should have reasonable PES proof to support your thesis and analysis. See Chapter 6 for more on regular essays.
2. Cultural background of colonies
National origins: The concentration of the English in New England, the majority non-English (but still mostly English-speaking) population in central and Southern colonies, and national origin differences can be overplayed: Both rock-ribbed New England farmers and Southern planters were English. German farmers did well in the central states, and Dutch planters added farming experience to central New York.
Religious beliefs: Protestants in New England, Catholics in Maryland and Rhode Island, Church of England in the South. Quakers in Pennsylvania created a safe haven for American Indians and other religions. German Lutherans and Scotch-Irish Presbyterians added religious diversity.
Ethnic background: Most early colonists were of northern European stock with African slaves (and free Africans) accounting for almost 18 percent of the U.S. population by the time of the Revolution. Within the European background of settlers, the Scotch-Irish folks tended to be independent small farmers in mountainous regions, and German Americans often owned productive farms in the central states.
Reasons for coming to America: New England reflected the reform and separatist beliefs of the Puritans and Pilgrims who came to the colonies to found a pure society. Indentured servants in the middle South came from desperate economic necessity and, when they survived, often demanded better treatment from colonial rulers. Scotch-Irish settlers had faced oppression in Northern Ireland; they didn’t put up with being pushed around in the New World. Together, the colonists, with visions of freedom and chips on their shoulders, made a formidable constituency for independence.
3. Charge that America bought freedom with slave labor before and after the Revolution
Economic development: The wealth of the South and some business profits of the North depended on slavery by the time of the Civil War. However, the growth of the colonies up to 1700 centered mostly on individual and indentured English labor. The South managed to recover and grow without slavery after the Civil War. At the time of the Revolution, 82 percent of the population wasn’t in slavery. That free percentage actually increased as the Civil War approached, and the growth of the country outstripped the growth of slavery. Initial Revolutionary activity occurred in New England, which had few if any slaves. The U.S. would have achieved freedom even without slaves.
Political power: Slavery both retarded and advanced the political power of the United States. The rich Southern slave-owning economy added to the wealth of the nation. On the other hand, the escalating fight over slavery drained political resources. The South managed to control much of the political life of the country due to the 3/5 rule that gave them partial representation for all their nonvoting slaves.
Social beliefs: The unity of national purpose that began in the Second Great Awakening of the 1830s quickly dissipated as religious congregations split over slavery. Southerners had no interest in labor issues or women’s rights and a complete hostility to the abolitionist movement. Due to the fragmented, almost-feudal nature of Southern society, public education failed to develop before the Civil War.
Behavioral changes: Although the North moved West, the South moved no further than the Mississippi River bottom land where it could grow cotton and sugar cane with slave labor. The Northern population soon greatly exceeded that of the South, and almost all industrial development took place in the North. Even with the wealth from cotton, the South and slavery were quickly losing ground to freedom. The U.S. got a financial boost from slavery, but it became free despite slavery’s moral burden, not because of slave work’s extra profits.
4. How the federal government changed in the Jacksonian Era
Voting attempts to extend and modify the line between slave and free states led to disagreements and bloodshed that led in turn to the Civil War.
Compromise of 1850: This compromise divided land taken from Mexico, admitted California as a free state, allowed New Mexico, Utah, and Arizona to choose to be slave or free, and established the Fugitive Slave law, which made all Americans legally obligated to help catch runaway slaves even if the slaves escaped to free states. The Fugitive Slave law upset the free states, and the uneconomical prospect of slaves on dry western land did nothing to help the South. This compromise lasted only four years; its replacement (the Kansas-Nebraska Act) was an even worse deal for the North.
Kansas-Nebraska Act: The 1854 legislation allowed both Kansas and Nebraska to decide whether they wanted to be slave or free. Because Kansas and Nebraska were north of the Mason-Dixon line, the Kansas-Nebraska Act effectively repealed the Missouri Compromise, which would’ve designated the two new states as free. Throwing Kansas up in the air led to armed competition between slave and free forces for control of the new state constitution. Now the sides were killing each other on the field of attempted compromise. The Union’s relationship was coming apart.
Dred Scott decision: The South had lost control of the Congress, but they still controlled the Supreme Court. In this decision, the South sent freed slave Dred Scott back to slavery and declared that no ruling body could make slavery illegal anywhere in the United States. The Dred Scott decision invalidated all previous carefully-crafted compromises. The North had gone beyond having a simple moral objection to slavery; with the Fugitive Slave law, the battle over Kansas, and now the Dred Scott decision, many in the North felt that the South was out to extend slavery all over the United States. The North suspected that what it called the slave power would send slaves to take their jobs. What had started as a gentlemanly compromise in 1820 was degenerating into a street fight.
Answer Sheet for Multiple Choice
Use this bubble sheet to mark your answers for Section I of the exam.
