9. The New Nation Takes Form, 1789

Chapter Chronology

Quiz for Making Historical Arguments: How Did America’s First Congress Address the Question of Slavery?

Select the best answer for each question. Click the “submit” button for each question to turn in your work.

Question 9.1

1. Which of the following reasons did the 1790 Quaker petitions cite as an objection to slavery?

The domestic slave trade tore slave families apart.

Slavery enriched southern states at the expense of the northern states.

It was unchristian for any man to own slaves.

The institution of slavery violated slaves’ right to liberty.

Question 9.2

2. Some southern Congressmen argued that the Quakers’ petitions should be dismissed immediately because the Constitution explicitly forbade intervention with what before 1808?

Labor conditions

The international slave trade

Religious practice

The treatment of slaves

Question 9.3

3. Which of these reasons did Southerners cite as a justification for maintaining slavery in the United States, despite the protests of abolitionist Quakers in 1790?

Slavery made slaves civilized, instead of barbaric and backwards.

Southern slavery was no worse than the labor conditions of poor northern whites.

Slavery was the only viable labor system for crops like rice and tobacco.

Great civilizations like Greece and Rome also practiced slavery.

Question 9.4

4. The 1790 congressional report that responded to Quaker petitions against slavery declared that Congress had no authority to regulate domestic slavery because this power was reserved for

individual slave owners.

local sheriffs.

the states.

the President.

Question 9.5

5. What is the historical significance of the congressional report that responded to Quaker petitions against slavery in 1790?

Benjamin Franklin’s opposition to slavery proved to be the catalyst necessary to convince Congress to consider eliminating slavery.

The report functioned for nearly a half century as a means to suppress any effort to get the federal government to interfere with slavery.

It was during the debate over the Quaker petitions that southern Congressmen developed the pro-slavery arguments that would be used for decades.