ShmoopTube

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[ musical flourish ]

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

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

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Yeah. Sorta.

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All right, give this excerpt a read.

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[ mumbles ]

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All right, and the question:

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How does the excerpt reflect the colonists' ability

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to defeat the British in the Revolutionary War?

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And here are your potential answers.

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[ mumbles ]

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[ mumbling continues ]

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

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

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up their raggedy, homemade sleeves

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during the fight for American independence.

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So does the excerpt suggest that colonists were able to

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defeat the British in the Revolutionary War because A-

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the colonists were familiar with the North American landscape?

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

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the colonists had quite the advantage over the British

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in their familiarity with the North American landscape.

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But neither of these is mentioned in the excerpt,

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so we need to land somewhere else.

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Does the passage claim colonists were able to defeat the British

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

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

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

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So if we drill B out of existence, then

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that means the rebels were able to win the Revolutionary War

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because C - the colonists were fighting with passion

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for a personal ideology.

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John Adams' speech suggests the colonists were fighting for

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their own personal freedoms and that passion gave them

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a distinct advantage over the British military,

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who just basically hired dogs to go

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

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This ideological zeal helped fuel the rebels through

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several terrible winters, but that taste for freedom might have

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

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[ sneeze ]

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