College 1999
The Board
Advanced Placement Examination
UNITED STATES HISTORY
PART A
(Suggested writing time - 45 minutes)
Percent of Section I1 score - 45
Directions: The following question requires you to construct a coherent essay that integrates your
interpretation of Documents A-H and your knowledge of the period referred to in the question. High
scores will be earned only by essays that both cite key pieces of evidence from the documents and draw
on outside knowledge of the period.
Question 1
To what extent had the colonists developed a sense of their identity and unity as Americans by the eve
of the Revolution?
Use the documents and your knowledge of the period 1750 to 1776 to answer the question.
Document A
Source: Pennsylvania Gazette, 1754
J O I N , or D I E .
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Document B
Source: Edmund Burke, "Notes for Speech in Parliament, 3 February 1766".
Govern America [?I as you govern an English town which happens not to be represented in
Parliament [?I Are Gentlemen really serious when they propose this? Is there a single Trait of
Resemblance between those few Towns, and a great and growing people spread over a vast quarter of
the globe, separated from us by a mighty Ocean?
. . . The eternal Barriers of Nature forbid that the colonies should be blended or coalesce into the
Mass . . . of this Kingdom. We have nothing therefore for it, but to let them carry across the ocean
into the woods and deserts of America the images of the British constitution.
Document C
Source: Richard Henry Lee to Arthur Lee, 24 February, 1774.
The wicked violence of [the] Ministry is so clearly expressed, as to leave no doubt of their fatal
determination to ruin both Countries unless a powerful and timely check is interposed by the Body of
People. A very small corrupted Junto in New York excepted, all N. America is now most firmly
united and as firmly resolved to defend their liberties ad infiniturn against every power on Earth that
may attempt to take them away. The most effectual measures are everywhere taking to secure a
sacred observance of the Association - Manufactures go rapidly on and the means of repelling force
by force are universally adopting.
Document D
Source: Mather Byles, Cotton Mather's grandson, to Nathaniel Emmons, Arthur Wentworth Hamilton
Eaton, The Famous Mather Byles: The Noted Boston Tory Preacher, Poet and Wit, 1707-1 788.
They call me a brainless Tory; but tell me, my young friend, which is better, to be ruled by one tyrant
three thousand miles away, or by three thousand tyrants not a mile away. I tell you, my boy, there
was just as much humbug in politics seventy years ago as there is today.
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Document E
Source: Declaration for the Causes of Taking up Arms, Continental Congress, 6 July 1775.
A Declaration by the Representative of the United Colonies of North America, now met in Congress
at Philadelphia, setting forth the causes and necessity of their taking up arms.
. . . the arms we have been compelled by our enemies to assume, we will, in defiance of every hazard,
with unabating firmness and perseverance, employ for the preservation of our liberties; being with
one mind resolved to die freemen, rather than live [like] slaves.
Lest this declaration should disquiet the minds of our friends fellow-subjects and in any part of the
Empire, we assure them that we mean not to dissolve that union which has so long and so happily
subsisted between us, and which we sincerely wish to see restored. . . We have not raised armies with
ambitious designs of separating from Great Britain, and establishing independent states.
Document F
Source: The Origin and Progress of the American Revolution to the year 1776, a history by Peter
Oliver of Massachusetts, 1781
We [saw] a Set of Men . . . under the Auspices of the english Government; & protected by it . . . for a
long Series of Years . . . rising, by easy Gradations, to such a State of Prosperity & Happiness as was
almost enviable, but we [saw] them also run mad with too much Happiness, & burst into an open
Rebellion against that Parent, who protected them against the Ravages of their Enemies. . . . And why
[was] the sudden Transition made, from Obedience to Rebellion, but to gratifye the Pride, Ambition
& Resentment, of a few abandoned Demagogues, who were lost to all Sense of Shame & of
Humanity? The generality of the People were not of this Stamp; but they were [weak], & unversed
in the Arts of Deception.
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Document G
Source: Contributors of Donations for the Relief of Boston, 1774 and 1775, Collections,
Massachusetts Historical Society
Connecticut
Windham
Groton
Farmington
Glastonbury
Wethersfield
Hartford
Middletown
Middle Hampton
a small flock of sheep
40 bushels of grain
300-400 bushels of Indian corn and rye
"subscription for the relief of the poor"
248 112 bushels of rye, 390 bushels of Indian corn
1,400 bushels of grain
600 bushels of grain
600 bushels of grain
Massachusetts
Wrentham
Pepperall
Charlemont
Roxbury
3 1 bushels of grain
40 bushels of grain
2 barrels of flour
258 sheep
New Jersey
Provincial Assembly
"Cash or articles of provision or other necessaries
we can furnish"
Committees of Correspondence, "moneys from subscriptions or other benefactions"
several counties of New Jersey
North Carolina
Cape Fear
Wilmington
sloop with provisions
52,000
South Carolina
shipload of rice
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Document H
Source: Hector St. John Crevecoeur, Lettersfrom a n American Farmer, composed in the 17701s,
published, 1781.
What then is the American, this new man? He is either an European, or the descendant of an
European, hence that strange mixture of blood which you will find in no other country. I could point
out to you a family whose grandfather was an Englishman, whose wife was Dutch, whose son
married a French woman. . . . He is an American, who leaving behind him all his ancient prejudices
and manners, receives new ones from the new mode of life he has embraced. . . . He becomes an
American by being received in the broad lap of our great Alma Mater. Here individuals of all nations
are melted into a new race of men, whose labours and posterity will one day cause great changes in
the world. . . . This great metamorphosis has a double effect, it extinguishes all his European
prejudices, he forgets that mechanism of subordination, that servility of disposition which poverty
had taught him.
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