“Be it enacted and it is hereby enacted by the Representatives of the Freemen of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. . . That all persons, as well negroes and mulattoes as others who shall be born within this state, from and after the passing of this act, shall not be deemed and considered as servants for life or slaves; and that all servitude for life or slavery of children in consequence of the slavery of their mothers, in the case of all children born within this state from and after the passing of this act as aforesaid, shall be and hereby is utterly taken away, extinguished and forever abolished.”

Pennsylvania Act, 1780

The law above emerged most directly from the context of which of the following?

“I will allow that bodily strength seems to give man a natural superiority over woman; and this is the only solid basis on which the superiority of the sex can be built. But I still insist that not only virtue but the knowledge of the two sexes should be the same in nature, if not in degree, and that women, considered not only as moral but rational creatures, ought to endeavour to acquire human virtues (or perfections) by the same means as men, instead of being educated like a fanciful kind of half being— one of Rousseau’s wild chimeras.”

-Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, 1792

Wollstonecraft’s remarks in the excerpt most directly reflect which of the following developments during the late-eighteenth-century?

“. . .From the numerous avocations to which a professional life exposes gentlemen in America from their families, a principal share of the instruction of children naturally devolves upon the women. It becomes us therefore to prepare them, by a suitable education, for the discharge of this most important duty of mothers. . . . The equal share that every citizen has in liberty and the possible share he may have in the government of our country make it necessary that our ladies should be qualified to a certain degree, by a peculiar and suitable education, to concur in instructing their sons in the principles of liberty and government.”

Benjamin Rush, Thoughts upon Female Education, 1787

The author of the passage would be most likely to agree with which of the following?

“The American Revolution launched an idea of popular sovereignty that, together with the cost of the war, helped to provoke the downfall of the French monarchy. The French Revolution, dramatic as was its influence on the Old World, also became a fundamental event in the New World because it was eventually to challenge slavery as well as royal power.”

Robin Blackburn, historian, “Haiti, Slavery, and the Age of the Democratic Revolution”, William and Mary Quarterly, 2006

According to the passage, which of the following best explains the most important effect that the American Revolution had on France?

“Be it enacted and it is hereby enacted by the Representatives of the Freemen of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. . . That all persons, as well negroes and mulattoes as others who shall be born within this state, from and after the passing of this act, shall not be deemed and considered as servants for life or slaves; and that all servitude for life or slavery of children in consequence of the slavery of their mothers, in the case of all children born within this state from and after the passing of this act as aforesaid, shall be and hereby is utterly taken away, extinguished and forever abolished.”

Pennsylvania Act, 1780

A historian would most likely use this passage to illustrate which of the following social changes after the American Revolution?

“All male white inhabitants, of the age of twenty-one years, and possessed in his own right of ten pounds value, and liable to pay tax in this State, or being of any mechanic trade, and shall have been resident six months in this State, shall have a right to vote at all elections for representatives, or any other officers, herein agreed to be chosen by the people at large; and every person having a right to vote at any election shall vote by ballot personally. . . .”

-Source: Georgia State Constitution, 1777

The excerpt most directly reflects which of the following trends of the 1770s?

”When the Articles of Confederation were drafted, Americans had had little experience of what a national government could do for them and bitter experience of what an arbitrary government could do to them. In creating a central government they were therefore more concerned with keeping it under control than with giving it the means to do its job”.

-Source: Edmund S. Morgan, The Birth of the Republic, 1763-89, 1956

Which of the following pieces of evidence could best be used to support the argument in the excerpt?

“Instead of a powerful nation-state with imperial pretensions, the government established under the Articles of Confederation was not really much of a government at all, but rather a diplomatic conference where the sovereign states, each of which regarded itself as an autonomous nation, met to coordinate a domestic version of foreign policy. It was, in effect, designed to be weak, and lacked altogether the authority to manage a burgeoning empire.”

-Source: Joseph J. Ellis, historian, American Creation: Triumphs and Tragedies at the Founding of the Republic, 2007

Which of the following actions of the central government under the Articles of Confederation directly undermines Ellis’s assertions?

”We found ourselves rather pressed, the Ohio Company appeared to purchase a large tract of the federal lands, about 6 or 7 million of acres— ;and we wanted to abolish the old system and get a better one for the Government of the Country— ;and we finally found it necessary to adopt the best system we could get. . . . When I drew the ordinance which passed (in a few words excepted) as I originally formed it, I had no idea the States would agree to the sixth Art. prohibiting Slavery— ; as only [Massachusetts] of the Eastern States was present—; and therefore omitted it in the draft—; but finding the House favourably disposed on this subject, after we had completed the other parts I moved the art—; which was agreed to without opposition.”

-Source: Nathan Dane, in a letter to Rufus King after the passage of the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, 1787

Which of the following describes an accomplishment of the Northwest Ordinance of 1787?

"The insurgents who were assembled at Worcester in Massachusetts have disbanded. The people at Boston seem to be glad at this event and say it was the effect of fear. But the fact is that the insurgents effected their object . . . The commotions of Massachusetts have wrought prodigious changes in the minds of men in that State [with regard to] the Powers of Government. Everybody says they must be strengthened and that unless this shall be effected there is no Security for liberty or Property. Such is the State of things in the east, that much trouble is to be apprehended in the course of the ensuing year."

-Source: Henry Knox, letter to his former commander George Washington, 1786

Which of the following groups would have been most likely to support the author’s views expressed in the excerpt?

A political cartoon published in The Massachusetts Centinel on August 2nd, 1788. Image credit: Library of Congress

Federalists were able to reach a compromise with Anti-Federalists over the strength of the new central government by agreeing to which of the following?

“In being compelled to labor, not for himself, but for a master. . . the slave may appear to be degraded from the human rank, and classed with those irrational animals which fall under the legal denomination of property. In being protected, on the other hand, in his life and in his limbs, against the violence of all others, even the master of his labor and his liberty; and in being punishable himself for all violence committed against others, the slave is no less evidently regarded by the law as a member of the society, not as a part of the irrational creation; as a moral person, not as a mere article of property. The federal Constitution, therefore, decides with great propriety on the case of our slaves, when it views them in the mixed character of persons and of property. This is in fact their true character.”

-Source: The Federalist Papers, No. 54, 1788

Which of the following events best represents a continuity of the sentiments expressed in the excerpt?

“It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.”

-Source: The Federalist Papers, No. 51, 1788

The ideas about government expressed in the excerpt are most consistent with which of the following?

“To describe the present state and circumstances of the Union we may declare in one word that we are at the Eve of a Bankruptcy and of a total dissolution of Government. Since the close of the war there has not been paid into the general Treasury as much money as was necessary for one years interest of the domestic and foreign debt and Congress have been reduced to the dreadful alternative of borrowing principal to pay interest. Our efforts at home to this end were ineffectual abroad where we were not known and, where enthusiasm for liberty has enrolled us among the most deserving of mankind, we were more successful. The deception cannot much longer be kept up and unless something can be done before the close of the ensuing year we must cease to be a unified government.”

-Source: William Blount, speech to the General Assembly of North Carolina, 1787

The ideas in the excerpt most directly contributed to which of the following?

“Should all the states adopt it, it will be then a government established by the thirteen states of America, not through the intervention of the legislatures, but by the people at large. . . . Thus it is of a complicated nature; and this complication, I trust, will be found to exclude the evils of absolute consolidation, as well as of a mere confederacy. If Virginia was separated from all the states, her power and authority would extend to all cases: in like manner, were all powers vested in the general government, it would be a consolidated government; but the powers of the federal government are enumerated; it can only operate in certain cases; it has legislative powers on defined and limited objects, beyond which it cannot extend its jurisdiction.”

-Source: James Madison, in defense of the proposed Constitution at the Virginia state convention on the adoption of the Federal Constitution, 1788

Which of the following issues of the period was Madison most likely concerned within the excerpt?

“In a single republic, all the power surrendered by the people is submitted to the administration of a single government; and the usurpations are guarded against by a division of the government into distinct and separate departments. In the compound republic of America, the power surrendered by the people is first divided between two distinct governments, and then the portion allotted to each subdivided among distinct and separate departments. Hence a double security arises to the rights of the people. The different governments will control each other, at the same time that each will be controlled by itself.”

-Source: Publius (James Madison), The Federalist Papers, no. 51, 1788

Which of the following best summarizes the author’s argument?