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AP U.S. History Videos 277 videos

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AP U.S. History Exam 2.11 173 Views


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Description:

AP U.S. History Exam 2.11. How does the excerpt reflect the colonists' ability to defeat the British in the Revolutionary War?

Language:
English Language

Transcript

00:00

[ musical flourish ]

00:03

And here's your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by ideology,

00:06

the art of fortune-telling from a driver's license.

00:10

Yeah. Sorta.

00:11

All right, give this excerpt a read.

00:12

[ mumbles ]

00:18

All right, and the question:

00:19

How does the excerpt reflect the colonists' ability

00:22

to defeat the British in the Revolutionary War?

00:25

And here are your potential answers.

00:27

[ mumbles ]

00:32

[ mumbling continues ]

00:35

All right, the colonists may not have had the guns and glory

00:37

of the British empire, but they had more than a few tricks

00:39

up their raggedy, homemade sleeves

00:42

during the fight for American independence.

00:43

So does the excerpt suggest that colonists were able to

00:46

defeat the British in the Revolutionary War because A-

00:48

the colonists were familiar with the North American landscape?

00:52

Well, in addition to having the backing of other European nations,

00:55

the colonists had quite the advantage over the British

00:57

in their familiarity with the North American landscape.

01:00

But neither of these is mentioned in the excerpt,

01:03

so we need to land somewhere else.

01:04

Does the passage claim colonists were able to defeat the British

01:07

because D - the colonists had strong, well-trained military leadership?

01:12

Well, the rebels had several things pointing in their favor,

01:15

but a well-trained military was not one of them.

01:17

So if we drill B out of existence, then

01:19

that means the rebels were able to win the Revolutionary War

01:22

because C - the colonists were fighting with passion

01:25

for a personal ideology.

01:27

John Adams' speech suggests the colonists were fighting for

01:30

their own personal freedoms and that passion gave them

01:33

a distinct advantage over the British military,

01:35

who just basically hired dogs to go

01:38

fight a war they didn't really care about. So C is the right answer.

01:41

This ideological zeal helped fuel the rebels through

01:44

several terrible winters, but that taste for freedom might have

01:47

been a little heartier if it came with a loaf of bread and a warm cup of soup.

01:51

[ sneeze ]

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