(The quiz at the link is an interactive one. Check it out if you don't know the questions to the answers below)
How much do you know about the founding of the nation?
1. At the time of the American Revolution, which of the following was not true
A. Fifty percent of the wealth in Boston, then a town of about 16,000 people, was in the hands of its 500 wealthiest merchants.
B. One out of three adult men in Boston had no property and no regular job.
C. Banks were on the verge of economic collapse and had to turn to the British government for help.
D. Wages had declined dramatically for average workers in Boston.
2. One reason for American dissatisfaction with Britain was
A. The colonists feared a crackdown on illegal molasses that was being smuggled into Boston harbor to feed a large distilling industry that produced rum for the colonies.
B. King George III had recently imposed a tax on the birth of sons in the colonies.
C. Because of Britain's extensive holdings in coffee plantations, the crown had raised the price of tea in an attempt to make it unaffordable and push the colonists toward drinking coffee instead.
D. British ships had first right to berths in Boston harbor, which meant that the ships of colonists were often forced to wait offshore for days or weeks, unable to unload their cargo.
3. Which of the following details about the Boston Tea Party is not true
A. The participants dressed as Indians, carried tomahawks and communicated in grunts and gestures.
B. Anonymous participants sent a lock the next day to one of the tea ships' captains to replace a lock they had broken.
C. Many of the participants returned home with their pockets full of tea, making them some of the few Boston residents who had tea to drink in the months that followed.
D. Paul Revere embarked on a ride after the cargo was successfully disposed of to take news of the "tea party" to New York.
4. The Stamp Act, passed by the British Parliament and reviled by American patriots, required colonists
A. To pay postage fees on all mail sent within the colonies.
B. To pay for an official stamp on printed material.
C. To pay income tax for the first time.
D. To pay a tax on the loading and offloading of cargo.
5. Which of the following is not true of the silversmith and patriot Paul Revere
A. He was born Apolos Rivoire, the son of a protestant Huguenot who had fled Catholic France.
B. When demand for silver goods dropped during hard economic times, he made false teeth.
C. He rode through the Massachusetts countryside and rang bells to warn the British that they could not take away American arms.
D. When he set out for his April 1775 warning ride, he forgot two things: his spurs and the cloth he needed to muffle the sound of the oars he would use to cross the Charles River. The sweetheart of one of the oarsmen lent her flannel petticoat to the war effort to be used as a sound muffler.
6. Benedict Arnold agreed to tip off the British to the vulnerabilities at West Point in exchange for payment and a commission in the British army. Which of the following about the traitor isn't true
A. His sister became a spinster after Arnold frightened away her suitor by firing pistol shots at his heels.
B. One winter, on returning from business in the Caribbean, Arnold found that his wife, Peggy, would not allow him to touch her because she'd heard that he had contracted a venereal disease during his travels.
C. After his plot was exposed and Arnold fled, he wrote to George Washington asking that his wife be protected, saying that she was "as good and as innocent as an angel."
D. As a young man in Norwich, Arnold stole young birds from the nest and maimed them. He also spread shards of glass outside a local school.
7. George Washington was named commander in chief of the Continental Army in 1775 and became the nation's first president in 1789. Which of the following things is not true of Washington
A. After he was named commander in chief, he asked for a grey horse, saying he wanted nothing so flashy as "a baye or a palominoe."
B. While commanding the Continental Army, he refused the monthly salary that had been authorized for him, saying he would keep an exact accounting of his expenses and be reimbursed only for them.
C. As a young man, he copied rules for living into a notebook. Among them was that he shouldn't clean his teeth on a tablecloth at meals.
D. After meeting Washington in 1775, Abigail Adams wrote to her husband saying that the general reminded her of the lines from John Dryden, "He's a temple, sacred by birth."
8. Which of the following passages is from Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence
A. "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness…"
B. "We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity…"
C. "…that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth."
D. "The said states hereby severally enter into a firm league of friendship with each other, for their common defense, the security of their liberties, and their mutual and general welfare…"
9. John Hancock is best known for the size and flamboyance of his signature on the Declaration of Independence. Which of the following facts about him is not true
A. Before he was 30, Hancock had inherited the largest fortune in New England, a fortune that was made in smuggling.
B. In 1768, a customs investigator reported that he had been shut inside a cabin of a Hancock-owned ship. The door was nailed shut, he said, while the crew unloaded wine that had not been declared.
C. At Harvard, Hancock was demoted for getting a slave drunk.
D. Three days before Hancock's uncle died, making him an extremely wealthy man, the woman Hancock had hoped to marry, Juliet Smith, called off their engagement after he repeatedly stepped on her foot at a dancing party.
10. Thomas Paine's passionate pamphlet "Common Sense," published in 1776, was a rousing call to action. Which of the following passages is not from that work
A. "Ye that dare oppose, not only the tyranny, but the tyrant, stand forth!"
B. "Every spot of the old world is overrun with oppression. Freedom hath been hunted round the globe."
C. "Any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one."
D. "Tar, timber, iron and cordage are [America's] natural produce. We need go abroad for nothing." The information in this quiz -- or at least the correct information -- was drawn from A.J. Langguth's book "Patriots: The Men Who Started the American Revolution."
