🗽 US History · Colonial America and Revolution
Causes of the American Revolution: true or false
Decide fast, then read the reason. Wrong answers are the best teachers, so every statement explains itself.
All statements and answers
The French and Indian War was fought mainly between Britain and Spain.
✗ False. It was fought mainly between Britain and France, each with Native allies. Britain won in 1763.
Salutary neglect means that Britain began enforcing its trade laws strictly in the 1760s.
✗ False. It means the opposite. Salutary neglect was the loose enforcement before the 1760s. Strict enforcement ended it.
The Proclamation of 1763 was one of the laws that colonists called the Intolerable Acts.
✗ False. The Intolerable Acts were the Coercive Acts of 1774. The Proclamation of 1763 was a different measure, a line along the Appalachians.
The Stamp Act placed a tax on tea.
✗ False. The Stamp Act taxed printed papers such as newspapers and legal documents. The Townshend Acts taxed tea, among other goods.
Colonists who protested the Stamp Act argued that only their own elected assemblies had the right to tax them.
✓ True. The Stamp Act Congress of 1765 declared this. It was the heart of the argument about representation.
Colonists elected some members of Parliament, but their votes were ignored.
✗ False. Colonists did not elect any members of Parliament. That was the point of the complaint about representation.
Many people in Britain itself could not vote for members of Parliament in the 1760s.
✓ True. Voting was limited by property and by place, and women could not vote. Britain used this fact in its argument about virtual representation.
The Boston Massacre happened before the Boston Tea Party.
✓ True. The Boston Massacre was in March 1770. The Boston Tea Party was in December 1773.
Some colonists who opposed Parliament's taxes thought that destroying the tea in the Boston Tea Party went too far.
✓ True. Colonists disagreed about the Tea Party. Many cheered it, but some who opposed the taxes thought destroying property was wrong. Benjamin Franklin, for example, suggested that the tea be paid for.
By 1774, every colonist had become a Patriot.
✗ False. Colonists were divided. Patriots, Loyalists and many undecided people lived side by side.
In the 1770s, some enslaved people in Massachusetts petitioned the legislature for their freedom.
✓ True. These petitions are part of the record of the 1770s, and they show that the talk of liberty did not reach everyone.
In most colonies, women and enslaved people could vote in assembly elections.
✗ False. In most colonies only free men who owned enough property could vote. Women and enslaved people could not.
The Boston Port Act closed Boston Harbor to trade until the destroyed tea was paid for.
✓ True. It was one of the Coercive Acts of 1774, Parliament's answer to the Boston Tea Party.
The fighting at Lexington and Concord took place in 1776, after the Declaration of Independence.
✗ False. The fighting at Lexington and Concord was in April 1775, more than a year before the Declaration of Independence in 1776.