AP US History · Topic 2.6
Slavery in the British Colonies Practice
Part of Period 2: 1607–1754.
Practice questions
11
Sample questions
5 of 11 — sign in to practice the rest with adaptive difficulty and mastery tracking.
Sample 1difficulty 3/5
The first Africans arrived in English America in 1619 at Jamestown as
- A
Royal officials; appointed by the Crown to oversee the Virginia tobacco economy
- B
Plantation owners; bringing enslaved laborers from Portuguese Angola with them
- Ccheck_circle
Status disputed; treated initially more like indentured servants but soon transitioned to chattel slavery
- D
Free settlers; granted full citizenship and headrights upon arrival in the Chesapeake
Why
Their precise status remains debated; by mid-17th century, racial chattel slavery was codified in Virginia law.
- A
Sample 2difficulty 3/5
"All servants imported and brought into the country... who were not Christians in their native country... shall be accounted and be slaves, and as such be here bought and sold notwithstanding a conversion to Christianity afterwards... If any slave resist his master... and shall happen to be killed in such correction, it shall not be accounted felony." — An Act Concerning Servants and Slaves, Virginia Slave Code (1705)
Compared to the South Carolina Negro Act of 1740, the Virginia code of 1705 was most similar in that both:
- Acheck_circle
Defined slavery as lifelong and hereditary and stripped the enslaved of basic legal personhood
- B
Allowed manumission only by the colonial governor's signature
- C
Granted enslaved people the right to testify in capital trials
- D
Prohibited the use of enslaved labor in rice cultivation
Why
Both codes formalized hereditary chattel slavery, denied the enslaved standing as legal persons, and authorized harsh corporal discipline; the South Carolina act was tightened after the Stono Rebellion of 1739.
- A
Sample 3difficulty 3/5
"On the 9th day of September last being Sunday... a number of Negroes assembled together at Stono, first plundered and burnt Mr. Godfrey's house and killed him, his daughter and son. They then turned back and marched towards Mr. Wallace's tavern... calling out Liberty, marched on with colours displayed, and two drums beating." — Report to South Carolina Assembly on the Stono Rebellion, 1739
The events described occurred within which broader colonial South Carolina context?
- A
A Quaker-dominated mixed-farming economy with few enslaved laborers
- Bcheck_circle
A rice-plantation economy with an enslaved Black majority and tightening slave codes
- C
A frontier fur-trade economy reliant on French Huguenot trappers
- D
A predominantly Puritan town-meeting system of subsistence agriculture
Why
By 1739 South Carolina was a rice-and-indigo plantation society where enslaved Africans outnumbered whites in low-country parishes; Stono triggered the harsher 1740 Negro Act. Quaker Pennsylvania, French Huguenot fur trappers, and Puritan New England town meetings describe other colonies entirely.
- A
Sample 4difficulty 3/5
"On the 9th day of September last being Sunday... a number of Negroes assembled together at Stono, first plundered and burnt Mr. Godfrey's house and killed him, his daughter and son. They then turned back and marched towards Mr. Wallace's tavern... calling out Liberty, marched on with colours displayed, and two drums beating." — Report to South Carolina Assembly on the Stono Rebellion, 1739
Given that the report was prepared for the colonial Assembly, how should a historian most cautiously read its account?
- A
As a transcription of the rebels' own statements taken down at the scene
- B
As an impartial record produced by Spanish officials in St. Augustine
- C
As a missionary tract written to advocate the abolition of slavery
- Dcheck_circle
As a planter-class narrative likely to emphasize violence and downplay rebels' political aims
Why
Reports to a slaveholders' assembly framed events to justify repression and rarely captured rebel motivations beyond passing details (such as "Liberty"). The document was not produced by the rebels, by Spanish officials (though Spanish Florida's offer of freedom helped motivate the uprising), or by abolitionist missionaries.
- A
Sample 5difficulty 3/5
"All servants imported and brought into the country... who were not Christians in their native country... shall be accounted and be slaves, and as such be here bought and sold notwithstanding a conversion to Christianity afterwards... If any slave resist his master... and shall happen to be killed in such correction, it shall not be accounted felony." — An Act Concerning Servants and Slaves, Virginia Slave Code (1705)
Which earlier event most directly accelerated Virginia's shift toward the racial slave regime codified in 1705?
- Acheck_circle
Bacon's Rebellion of 1676, which alarmed elites about armed alliances of poor whites and Black laborers
- B
The Halfway Covenant's expansion of church membership
- C
The Pueblo Revolt's disruption of Spanish trade routes
- D
The Glorious Revolution's restoration of Parliamentary supremacy
Why
Bacon's Rebellion exposed the danger of a multiracial servant underclass to Chesapeake elites, who increasingly turned to lifelong, hereditary, race-based slavery as a more controllable labor system, culminating in codes like that of 1705.
- A