Quiz on The US Constitution and Early US Government : 10 MCQs

(D) The American Revolution was officially ended with the 1783 Treaty of Paris. In treaty negotiations, the United States was represented by Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and John Jay. With the treaty, Britain recognized the nation’s independence, formalized U.S. borders, and arranged for the removal of British troops. The Treaty of Westphalia ended the European conflict known as the Thirty Years’ War. The Treaty of Versailles ended World War I. The Treaty of Ghent ended the War of 1812, and the Treaty of Tordesillas divided lands in the Western Hemisphere between the Spanish and Portuguese.

(B) While the central government formed by the Articles of Confederation proved to be too weak, it did successfully implement several policies that carried over to the U.S. government under the Constitution. John Hanson under the articles designed the Great Seal of the United States, helped create a system for western territories to apply for state- hood under the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, and created the U.S. Treasury and the postal service. The reservation system for Native Americans was created in 1851 under the Indian Appropriations Act.

(D) Rhode Island did not participate in the 1787 convention that produced the U.S. Constitution. At the time of the convention, Rhode Island had low taxes and modest economic security, and Rhode Islanders feared that the convention would overthrow the Articles of Confederation, producing a government that would be less beneficial to the state. Rhode Island was also the last state to ratify the Constitution, not doing so until May 1780.

(B) The New Jersey Plan was created by William Patterson and gave each state one vote. It was created as a response to the Virginia Plan, in which representation was based on population. Patterson’s plan had one legislative house, which was given the power to tax and regulate commerce.

(D) James Madison’s Virginia Plan called for a bicameral legislature (one that con- tains two houses). Madison believed that the one-state, one-vote system under the Articles of Confederation was ineffective. He therefore called for representation based on popula- tion. In his plan, there would to be an upper and lower house that would choose the execu- tive and judicial branch. The system also called for checks and balances.

(D) The Great Compromise was proposed by Roger Sherman of Connecticut. It took elements of both the New Jersey Plan and the Virginia Plan, creating a bicameral legislature. In the Senate, each state had equal representation, two senators per state. Representation in the House of Representatives was based on population, reflecting the Virginia Plan.

(A) James Madison is often considered the Father of the Constitution for several rea- sons. He researched government before the convention, especially works by Montesquieu. He also took the minutes of the convention, offering insights. His call for a bicameral leg- islature became the basis for the current House of Representatives and Senate.

(A) Judicial review is the power of the courts to strike down laws or actions that violate the Constitution. The only way to overrule judicial review by the legislative body is to amend the Constitution itself. The first use of judicial review was under the Marbury v. Madison ruling decided by Chief Justice John Marshall in 1803.

(B) The Three-Fifths Compromise was introduced by delegates James Wilson of Pennsylvania and Roger Sherman of Connecticut to deal with the debate over deciding representation in the House of Representatives and the distribution of taxes. If only free citizens were counted toward a state’s total population, the South feared it would suffer an imbalance in federal representation, since it possessed a larger slave population, and slaves were not considered citizens. Without a clause taking the slave populations into account, many southern states would have refused to ratify the Constitution.

(A) The Three-Fifths Compromise was an agreement made between the northern and southern states at the 1787 Constitutional Convention to deal with the apportion- ment of seats in the House of Representatives and the distribution of taxes. While delegates who opposed slavery felt that only free citizens should be counted, pro-slavery delegates objected. Roger Sherman and James Wilson introduced the Three-Fifths Compromise to broaden support for the Constitution. Under the proposal, slave populations in each state would be based on three-fifths of the total slave population. The compromise was put in Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution. This was significant because later, in the events leading to the Civil War, it was used to illustrate the constitutionality of slavery. Though the compromise did increase the amount of representation southern states had in Congress, they still were in the minority with only 47 percent of the seats, and this number declined as the northern population rapidly expanded over the next 60 years.