Deck 3: Colonial Ways of Life

Question 1

Most indentured servants contracted with masters who managed them in a manner similar to slavery.

Answer 1

True

Question 2

Benjamin Franklin believed a major reason for colonial population growth was:

A) government bounties for large families
B) English immunity to contagious diseases
C) rapid advances in medical science
D) couples marrying later than in Europe
E) an abundance of cheap land

Answer 2

an abundance of cheap land

Question 3

Throughout the colonies, husbands expected what from their wives?

A) submission to their authority
B) an equal partnership in managing the household
C) instruction in religion and morality
D) romantic love as the basis of marriage
E) toleration of sex outside of marriage

Answer 3

submission to their authority

Question 4

Puritans wore colorful clothes and enjoyed secular music.

Question 5

Most colonists strongly believed in the inferiority of women.

Question 6

Because traveling at night was dangerous in the colonies, taverns became important during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.

Question 7

When British settlers reached the New World, they entered a pristine environment little changed by human intervention.

Question 8

The colony of Pennsylvania was one of the most diverse in English North America with English, German, Scots-Irish, and a variety of smaller national and ethnic groups represented.

Question 9

Jonathan Edwards owned the largest plantation and the greatest number of slaves in South Carolina.

Question 10

By 1700, tobacco, rice, and indigo were the most important export crops of Maryland, Virginia, and the Carolinas.

Question 11

George Whitefield was a great preacher who even impressed Benjamin Franklin with his eloquence.

Question 12

By 1750, New England had as many slaves as Virginia.

Question 13

New Englanders, more than southerners, turned to the sea for their livelihood.

Question 14

The English practice of allowing farm animals to roam free:

A) devastated Indian lands and cornfields
B) increased the fertility of colonial farm fields
C) was quickly outlawed in New England
D) introduced deadly diseases to North America
E) caused them to generally die from thirst or starvation

Question 15

Colonists arriving in the New World found that Indians

A) had no concept of a supreme being
B) maintained large herds of horses and cattle
C) had left the landscape virtually unchanged
D) regularly burned forests to promote new growth
E) supported themselves strictly through hunting

Question 16

The settlers known as Pennsylvania Dutch were actually Germans.

Question 17

In the first century of colonization, mortality rates among settlers were highest in which region?

A) New England
B) the middle colonies
C) the South
D) the western frontier
E) Canada

Question 18

British immigrants to America tended to retain much of their British culture.

Question 19

People in the American colonies generally married at a younger age than those in Britain.

Question 20

The "Half-Way Covenant" addressed the problem of New England's unfavorable balance of trade.

Question 21

One chronic problem facing colonial trade was:

A) the lack of foreign markets for American products
B) a way to pay for goods imported from the mother country
C) the French blockade of the Atlantic coast
D) an oversupply of hard currency, which caused rampant inflation
E) an absence of rich soil for agricultural products

Question 22

Which church dominated the Chesapeake region by 1700?

A) Anglican
B) Quaker
C) Puritan
D) Baptist
E) Presbyterian

Question 23

In the seventeenth century, the staple crop that was the basis of the economy in Virginia and Maryland was:

A) rice
B) tobacco
C) indigo
D) cotton
E) barley

Question 24

Of all the slaves brought to the New World from Africa, how many came to the colonies of British North America?

A) about 5 percent
B) about 33 percent
C) about 50 percent
D) about 90 percent
E) about 25 percent

Question 25

During the colonial period, prostitution:

A) was practically unknown
B) was legal
C) was especially common in port cities
D) resulted in equal punishment for men and women
E) was legal in official red light districts

Question 26

Early settlers of Puritan New England typically lived:

A) in harmony with the local Indian tribes
B) in communities loyal to the Church of England
C) on large farms
D) in a religiously tolerant society
E) in communities where church and state were not separate

Question 27

In regard to religion, women:

A) frequently served as ministers
B) were more likely to be churchgoers than men
C) experienced more equality in Puritan churches
D) were more likely than men to question religious authority
E) were frequently employed as faith-healers

Question 28

Which of the following did NOT spur shipbuilding in New England?

A) the abundance of fish and whales off its coast
B) the region's extensive forests
C) British purchase of American-made ships
D) the variety of jobs and businesses it created
E) southern purchases of New England-made ships

Question 29

Slaves who lived in northern colonies:

A) usually lived and worked in cities and towns
B) were agricultural laborers like those in the South
C) enjoyed more humane treatment than those in the Chesapeake
D) usually possessed a trade or special skill
E) were forced to become Puritans

Question 30

Legally speaking, slaves were:

A) contracted workers
B) property
C) unfree laborers
D) necessary for economic success
E) largely Christian

Question 31

Women in the American colonies:

A) generally had a lower status in society than did women in Europe
B) often remained confined to the domestic sphere
C) could vote and hold office
D) were not likely to find eligible men to marry
E) lived lives of quiet and leisure

Question 32

Which of the following was true of New England in the seventeenth century?

A) Residents were required to be members of the Puritan church.
B) Residents were intensely loyal to the wishes of the king and Parliament.
C) Church and state were separated in all New England colonies.
D) Considerable cultural and racial open mindedness was practiced.
E) A stronger civic and religious purpose was felt here than in other colonial regions.

Question 33

The events surrounding a suspected slave revolt in New York City in 1741 offer parallels to:

A) the English Civil War
B) the Salem witch craze
C) the American Revolution
D) Bacon's Rebellion
E) the Great Awakening

Question 34

One major reason for the willingness of the English to enslave Africans was the of the Africans.

A) skin color
B) docility
C) physical strength
D) religiosity
E) hostility

Question 35

The Middle Passage:

A) was the route from the African interior to the coastline that slave traders followed
B) was a book authored in defense of slavery in the English colonies
C) proved to be a safe way to transport slaves to the New World
D) was often conducted by fellow Africans
E) resulted in the deaths of one in six slaves

Question 36

Which is NOT true of early colonial slavery?

A) Far more slaves went to the West Indies than to North America.
B) Slavery was present in all the English colonies.
C) Slaves had higher survival rates in North America than in the West Indies.
D) No colony had a majority slave population.
E) Slaves could expect a lifetime in bondage.

Question 37

The discovery of rice as a perfect crop for South Carolina can be credited to:

A) the plentiful labor and land in the colony
B) the native population's willingness to work in the fields
C) the minimal amount of labor it required
D) the rise and fall of tidal rivers that alternately flooded and drained the fields
E) the lack of rain in the region

Question 38

Despite the limitations of slavery, Africans retained:

A) a well-developed sense of kinship
B) a natural antipathy toward Europeans
C) authority over their families
D) the dream of rising into the slaveholding class themselves
E) their original written and spoken languages

Question 39

New England's most important commodity for export was:

A) corn
B) molasses
C) fish
D) turkeys
E) rum

Question 40

The indentured servants who came to the colonies:

A) were mainly convicts shipped over as part of their sentence
B) were essentially the same as slaves
C) were sometimes stolen and placed aboard a seagoing vessel without their knowledge
D) provided mainly household labor
E) arose in several major rebellions

Question 41

The "Half-Way Covenant" adopted in 1662 was a Puritan attempt to address the problem of:

A) declining church membership
B) economic hardship and growing social inequality
C) eligibility of ministers to hold public office
D) whether to interpret the Bible or follow it literally
E) increasing materialism

Question 42

The Pennsylvania Dutch:

A) were immigrants from Holland who settled in the backcountry of New York and Pennsylvania
B) migrated to Virginia and North Carolina in the late seventeenth century to escape religious persecution
C) were almost wiped out because of a genetic intolerance to New World viruses
D) were a mixture of Mennonites, Lutherans, Moravians, Dunkers, and others
E) built windmills and dikes as they had done in their native country

Question 43

New England's Puritans did all of the following EXCEPT:

A) sue each other
B) have sex
C) drink alcoholic beverages
D) regularly read the Bible
E) tolerate adultery

Question 44

John Peter Zenger's trial in 1735 established:

A) that truth is a defense in libel cases
B) absolute freedom of the press
C) private ownership of newspapers
D) the right to send newspapers through the mail
E) the legal difference between libel and slander

Question 45

The largest number of German immigrants to the colonies settled in:

A) Rhode Island
B) South Carolina
C) New York
D) Delaware
E) Pennsylvania

Question 46

Benjamin Franklin emphasized the Enlightenment in his:

A) denial of God's existence
B) rise from poverty to riches
C) passion for science and experimentation
D) scandalous sex life
E) work as a printer and publisher

Question 47

The Scots-Irish:

A) were mainly Irish Catholics
B) were mainly Presbyterians
C) settled largely in New England
D) were associated mainly with coastal areas
E) were actually neither Scottish nor Irish

Question 48

New England was settled by:

A) a joint-stock company
B) religious fundamentalists
C) military officers
D) the king and his family
E) ex-convicts and debtors

Question 49

Of the following colonies, which one most embraced religious and ethnic diversity?

A) New York
B) Massachusetts
C) Pennsylvania
D) Virginia
E) Maryland

Question 50

The largest city in the colonies at the end of the colonial period:

A) had a population of about 1,000,000
B) had a population of about 2,000
C) was Boston
D) was Philadelphia
E) had as many people as London

Question 51

Education in the colonies was:

A) most advanced in the South
B) primarily intended for young women
C) most advanced in frontier regions
D) hampered in New England by the Puritans' anti-intellectual tradition
E) usually seen as the responsibility of family and church

Question 52

By 1700, the most democratic and important social institutions were:

A) coffee houses
B) churches
C) theaters
D) colleges
E) taverns

Question 53

Enlightenment thinkers such as Isaac Newton stressed the:

A) value of traditional religion
B) virtue of divine right monarchy
C) ability of reason to discover the laws of the universe
D) superiority of art over science
E) presence of God in nature

Question 54

The best explanation for the Salem witch craze is:

A) the play-acting and false accusations of teenage girls
B) the presence of real witches in Salem village
C) social division and anxieties within the village
D) the low rate of literacy among the villagers
E) natural hallucinogens in the local water supply

Question 55

By the end of the colonial period, American cities:

A) were limited to the middle colonies
B) were characterized by increasing social and economic equality
C) held no more than 10 percent of the total population
D) were cleaner, safer, and healthier than rural environments
E) had majority non-English populations

Question 56

The Enlightenment:

A) encouraged the idea that God was like a master clockmaker who planned the universe and set it in motion
B) led most educated men to become atheists
C) was based mainly on the writings of Martin Luther
D) increased church attendance
E) started in America and spread to Europe

Question 57

The covenant theory from which the Puritans drew their ideas contained:

A) the justification for New England's strict theocracy
B) the notion that the king replaced God as the head of the government of the people
C) the notion that men were capable of governing themselves well because they had been absolved of all sin when they entered the church
D) a fundamental belief in democracy
E) certain kernels of democracy in both church and state

Question 58

Puritan commitment to education is best explained by their:

A) need for a literate workforce
B) commitment to Enlightenment principles
C) prior exposure to schools in England
D) innate love of learning
E) need to read the Scriptures

Question 59

The witch craze in Salem started when:

A) a slave named Tituba cursed the village minister
B) Indians attacked and looted the village
C) several people died of a mysterious illness
D) adolescent girls began to exhibit strange afflictions
E) the town minister was caught in a sex scandal

Question 60

The middle colonies:

A) included Rhode Island and Maryland
B) lacked a suitable base for commerce
C) for many years had a black majority population
D) were dominated by plantation agriculture
E) geographically and culturally stood between the New England and southern colonies.

Question 61

One result of the Great Awakening was that it spurred an increase in the number of:

A) slave rebellions
B) suicides
C) marriages
D) witch crazes
E) colleges

Question 62

The English revivalist who preached to thousands and so impressed Benjamin Franklin was:

A) James Davenport
B) Jonathan Edwards
C) Evander Osteen
D) George Whitefield
E) William Tennent

Question 63

Examine mortality in the colonial era making sure to note age, gender, and geographic considerations.

Question 64

During the 17ᵗʰ century, race-based slavery was very important in the New World. Discuss the concept of blackness and how Europeans used it to justify their enslavement of Africans.

Question 65

Seventeenth century slavery was unique in world history for its color basis. Examine the nature of this institution at that time making sure to speak to the economic forces that drove it.

Question 66

Which had the most far-reaching consequences on American culture: the Enlightenment or the Great Awakening? Why?

Question 67

The Great Awakening developed in reaction to the:

A) attempt of British officials to regulate colonial churches
B) increasing education and sophistication of backwoods settlers
C) increasing role of emotionalism in religion
D) tendency of the Enlightenment to place great emphasis on formal religion
E) Deism and skepticism associated with the Enlightenment

Question 68

Describe both American society and the economy of the middle colonies.

Question 69

Explain the system of education in the colonies. Which groups had the greatest impact on expanding educational opportunities to colonial citizens?

Question 70

Discuss the unique nature of colonial cities. Focus your emphasis on the social and political order as well as the urban web.

Question 71

Describe the status of women in colonial society. What factors might account for this?

Question 72

Compare and contrast the way Englishmen and Indians used the land in colonial New England.

Question 73

Discuss the New England shipping industry and its impact on colonial trade.

Question 74

We often think about the colonial period as filled with religion, and therefore filled with morality. With this in mind, discuss the immorality of the age.

Question 75

The religious revivals known as the Great Awakening did all the following EXCEPT:

A) affect all thirteen colonies
B) split a number of churches
C) feature traveling ministers
D) emphasize an emotional style of preaching
E) further promote Enlightenment thinking

Question 76

In what ways did settlement patterns, family life, population growth, and so forth differ in the New England and the southern colonies in the seventeenth century? What factors might account for these differences?

Question 77

Jonathan Edwards's famous sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" described:

A) a distant and uncaring God
B) the gruesome reality of Hell
C) the beauty of God's creation
D) the possibility of universal salvation
E) God's desire that Americans economically prosper

Question 78

Describe the early development of slavery in the American colonies.

Question 79

According to the textbook, "Both geographically and culturally the middle colonies stood between New England and the South." Explain this statement.

Question 80

Describe the ecology of the Atlantic seaboard. Be sure to detail the various factors that shaped America's ecosystems.