US History Study Guide

Which best explains the massive decline of the Native American population after 1492?

• Direct military defeat by European armies
• Disease introduced by Europeans, to which Native peoples had no immunity
• Forced conversion to Christianity
• Voluntary migration away from European settlements

Diseases like smallpox devastated Native populations who had no acquired immunity, far exceeding deaths from warfare.

The encomienda system in Spanish America primarily provided colonists with:

• The right to Native labor in exchange for 'protecting' and converting them
• Free land grants with no labor obligations
• A form of representative government
• Direct control over the Spanish treasury

Encomienda granted colonists Native labor in exchange for nominal protection and Christianization — functionally forced labor.

Which Native society was known for mound-building and extensive trade networks before European contact?

• Iroquois
• Pueblo
• Mississippian (Cahokia)
• Plains nomads

The Mississippian culture, centered at sites like Cahokia, built massive mounds and maintained extensive trade networks.

The Columbian Exchange introduced which crop to the Americas from the Old World?

• Maize
• Potatoes
• Wheat
• Tobacco

Wheat traveled from the Old World to the Americas; maize, potatoes, and tobacco moved the opposite direction.

What was a primary motive for Spanish exploration and colonization?

• Establishing representative democracy
• Religious conversion and extraction of wealth (gold/silver)
• Ending the slave trade
• Industrial manufacturing

Spain's exploration was driven by 'God, Gold, and Glory' — religious conversion and the pursuit of precious metals.

The labor shortage caused by Native American depopulation was a key cause of:

• The Atlantic slave trade
• The Protestant Reformation
• The Columbian Exchange
• European unification

As Native labor declined from disease, European colonizers turned to the forced importation of enslaved Africans.

Which technology enabled transoceanic European exploration in this period?

• The steam engine
• The caravel and the astrolabe
• The telegraph
• The cotton gin

The caravel (ship design) and astrolabe (navigation tool) were key technologies enabling long ocean voyages.

The Iroquois Confederacy was notable for its:

• Nomadic bison hunting
• Matrilineal clan structure and the Great League of Peace
• Adobe cliff dwellings
• Strict Spanish-style hierarchy

The Iroquois Confederacy united nations under matrilineal clans and a council system known as the Great League of Peace.

Which of the following was NOT a typical European motive for exploration?

• Religious conversion
• Economic gain/new trade routes
• National glory and prestige
• Establishing worker labor unions

Labor unions did not exist in this era; exploration was driven by religion, economics, and national prestige.

Which Native economy relied heavily on salmon fishing to support large, sedentary, socially stratified societies?

• Great Plains
• Pacific Northwest
• Southwest Pueblo
• Northeast Iroquois

Pacific Northwest societies relied on abundant salmon, supporting complex, permanent settlements with social hierarchy.

The Columbian Exchange is best defined as:

• A one-way transfer of goods from the Americas to Europe
• A two-way transfer of plants, animals, disease, and people between hemispheres
• A trade agreement between Spain and Portugal
• A religious movement in the New World

It was a two-way exchange affecting both the Old and New Worlds biologically, demographically, and economically.

What was a major consequence of Spanish silver extraction (e.g., from Potosi)?

• European inflation (Price Revolution)
• The end of the Atlantic slave trade
• American independence
• Native population growth

The massive influx of Spanish silver caused significant inflation in Europe, known as the Price Revolution.

Which factor most enabled Spanish conquistadors to defeat large Native empires like the Aztec and Inca?

• Superior numbers of soldiers
• Disease, superior weaponry, and exploiting Native rivalries
• Peaceful negotiation
• Direct support from other Native nations against Spain

Spanish conquest exploited disease's devastating effects, technological/weapon advantages, and existing rivalries among Native groups.

The casta system in Spanish colonial society was based on:

• Religious denomination only
• A racial hierarchy determining social status
• Age and gender only
• Region of origin within Spain only

The casta system created a rigid racial hierarchy structuring colonial Spanish American society.

Before European contact, which description best fits Native American societies as a whole?

• A single unified culture across the continent
• Highly diverse economies and social structures shaped by regional environment
• Entirely nomadic with no permanent settlements
• Universally centered on maritime trade

Native societies varied enormously by region — from Pueblo agriculture to Plains nomadism to Pacific Northwest fishing economies.

The Columbian Exchange most dramatically affected Native American populations by:

• introducing Old World diseases that caused catastrophic depopulation
• providing horses that improved hunting
• spreading maize cultivation northward
• ending intertribal warfare

Smallpox and other diseases, to which Native peoples had no immunity, killed a large majority of the pre-contact population.

The Spanish encomienda system was primarily a means of:

• extracting forced labor and tribute from Native communities
• granting land to freed Africans
• promoting free trade with France
• settling religious disputes in Spain

Encomienda gave colonists the right to Native labor and tribute in exchange for nominal protection and Christianization.

Which Native society built large earthen mounds and supported a stratified urban center at Cahokia?

• Mississippian
• Pueblo
• Iroquois
• Inuit

Mississippian peoples used maize surpluses to sustain Cahokia, a large mound-building society near modern St. Louis.

European exploration of the Americas was driven above all by the search for:

• new trade routes and sources of wealth (God, gold, glory)
• religious refuge from persecution
• farmland for surplus peasants
• allies against the Ottoman Empire

The desire for a route to Asian markets and for gold and silver, alongside missionary and national rivalry, motivated exploration.

The Pueblo Revolt of 1680 demonstrated that:

• Native peoples could organize sustained, effective resistance to Spanish rule
• the Spanish had abandoned the Southwest
• Catholicism had fully replaced Native religion
• the encomienda system had been peacefully ended

Pueblo peoples drove the Spanish out of New Mexico for over a decade before Spain reconquered the region.

The Spanish casta system organized colonial society primarily by:

• ancestry and place of birth
• wealth alone
• religious denomination
• language spoken

The casta hierarchy ranked people from peninsulares and creoles down through mestizos, Native peoples, and Africans.

Compared with English colonization, Spanish colonization more often involved:

• incorporating and converting large Native populations under colonial rule
• displacing Native peoples to establish family farms
• establishing self-governing town assemblies
• relying on indentured European servants

Spain conquered densely populated regions and ruled over Native labor, while English settlement tended to push Natives off the land.

The 'three sisters' agricultural system of many eastern Native peoples consisted of:

• corn, beans, and squash
• wheat, barley, and rye
• tobacco, rice, and indigo
• potatoes, tomatoes, and peppers

Corn, beans, and squash were grown together in a mutually supportive planting system.

Bartolome de las Casas is best known for:

• condemning Spanish abuses of Native peoples
• leading the conquest of the Aztecs
• founding the first English colony
• charting a westward route to Asia

Las Casas, a Dominican friar, publicized and denounced the brutality of the encomienda system.

Horses, pigs, and wheat moving from Europe to the Americas, and maize, potatoes, and tobacco moving the other way, are all examples of:

• the Columbian Exchange
• mercantile regulation
• the Middle Passage
• the headright system

The Columbian Exchange was the transfer of plants, animals, people, and diseases between hemispheres.

Pacific Northwest peoples such as the Chinook developed large, hierarchical, permanent villages primarily because of:

• abundant salmon and other marine resources
• extensive maize agriculture
• trade with the Spanish
• control of overland trade routes

Rich, reliable fishing allowed dense, socially complex, sedentary communities without farming.

The primary goal of the Spanish mission system was to:

• convert Native peoples to Catholicism and organize their labor
• establish democratic town governments
• trade furs with Native peoples
• defend against French naval attacks

Missions concentrated Native populations for religious conversion and controlled labor.

West African societies at the time of early European contact were:

• organized into a range of states and kingdoms with established trade networks
• without agriculture or metalworking
• uniformly small hunter-gatherer bands
• politically unified under a single empire

Kingdoms such as Songhai, Benin, and Kongo had complex political and commercial systems well before European contact.

The headright system in Virginia was designed to:

• Encourage immigration and provide labor by granting land per paid passage
• Abolish indentured servitude
• Grant land only to enslaved Africans
• Fund the Church of England

Headrights granted 50 acres per person whose passage was paid, encouraging population growth and indentured servitude.

Which colony was founded primarily for religious purposes, seeking to build a model godly society?

• Virginia
• Massachusetts Bay
• Georgia
• South Carolina

Puritans founded Massachusetts Bay to build a 'city upon a hill' — a model of religious purity, per John Winthrop.

Bacon's Rebellion (1676) is significant because it:

• Ended slavery in Virginia
• Accelerated the shift from indentured servitude to racial slavery
• Established the House of Burgesses
• Caused the Salem Witch Trials

The rebellion exposed the dangers of a growing class of poor free ex-servants, prompting elites to prefer enslaved labor instead.

The Navigation Acts were a key tool of which economic policy?

• Free trade
• Mercantilism
• Socialism
• Laissez-faire capitalism

The Navigation Acts enforced mercantilist policy, requiring colonial trade to benefit England.

Which colony was known for religious tolerance under the leadership of William Penn?

• Massachusetts
• Pennsylvania
• Virginia
• South Carolina

Pennsylvania, founded by Quaker William Penn, was known for unusual religious tolerance for the era.

'Salutary neglect' refers to Britain's policy of:

• Strict enforcement of all colonial trade laws
• Loosely enforcing trade regulations before 1754, allowing colonial autonomy
• Direct taxation without representation
• Military occupation of the colonies

Salutary neglect describes lax British enforcement before 1754, which allowed colonial self-governance and smuggling to flourish.

The Stono Rebellion (1739) resulted in:

• The abolition of slavery in South Carolina
• Harsher slave codes across the South
• Immediate emancipation for all enslaved people
• The founding of Georgia

After the largest colonial slave uprising, South Carolina and other colonies enacted harsher, more restrictive slave codes.

Which best describes the Middle Colonies?

• Homogeneous Puritan population
• Ethnically and religiously diverse, known as the 'breadbasket' colonies
• Entirely dependent on tobacco monoculture
• Founded solely as a debtor's haven

The Middle Colonies had diverse populations (Dutch, German, English, Quaker) and fertile farmland earning the 'breadbasket' label.

The Middle Passage refers to:

• The colonial trade route between New England and England
• The brutal ocean voyage transporting enslaved Africans to the Americas
• A path used by settlers moving west
• The passage of the Navigation Acts

The Middle Passage was the deadly transatlantic voyage that forcibly transported enslaved Africans.

The House of Burgesses (1619) is significant as:

• The first representative legislative assembly in English America
• The first Catholic church in the colonies
• The first American newspaper
• The first colonial university

Established in Virginia, it was the first elected representative body in the English colonies.

Why did South Carolina rely heavily on enslaved labor for rice cultivation?

• Rice required no specialized skill
• Enslaved Africans brought rice-growing expertise from West Africa
• Rice was grown only by indentured servants
• Rice cultivation was outlawed for free laborers

Many enslaved Africans came from rice-growing regions of West Africa and brought valuable agricultural expertise.

Colonial slave codes in Virginia (1660s-1705) established slavery as:

• Temporary and reversible
• Lifelong, hereditary, and race-based
• Optional for enslaved individuals
• Limited to non-Christians only

These codes codified slavery as a permanent, hereditary, racially defined status.

Which of these was a defining feature of New England town life?

• Large isolated plantations
• Town meetings and Congregationalist church governance
• Rice and indigo plantations
• Widespread use of the encomienda system

New England towns centered on Congregationalist churches and relatively democratic town meetings.

The triangular trade linked which three regions?

• Europe, Africa, and the Americas
• Asia, Europe, and Africa
• North America, South America, and Asia
• England, France, and Spain

Manufactured goods, enslaved Africans, and raw materials/cash crops circulated among Europe, Africa, and the Americas.

Roger Williams founded Rhode Island primarily to promote:

• Strict Puritan orthodoxy
• Religious toleration and separation of church and state
• A profitable tobacco economy
• Military alliance with Native tribes against England

Williams, banished from Massachusetts Bay, founded Rhode Island on principles of religious freedom and separation of church/state.

By the mid-1700s, the population of the Lower South was increasingly:

• Majority enslaved African in some areas
• Entirely composed of indentured servants
• Free of any slave labor
• Majority Native American

Enslaved Africans formed the majority population in parts of the Lower South by the mid-18th century due to plantation agriculture.

The Virginia colony became economically viable after 1612 primarily through the cultivation of:

• tobacco
• rice
• sugar
• cotton

John Rolfe's tobacco gave the Chesapeake a profitable cash crop and drove demand for labor and land.

The Massachusetts Bay Colony was founded chiefly as:

• a Puritan religious community and 'city upon a hill'
• a royal military outpost
• a Catholic refuge
• a fur-trading company town

Puritans led by John Winthrop sought to build a model godly society.

The headright system in the Chesapeake:

• granted land to those who paid for their own or others' passage
• freed indentured servants after four years
• gave Native peoples title to tribal lands
• limited tobacco planting to protect prices

Headrights of roughly 50 acres per person imported encouraged wealthy planters to import laborers and accumulate land.

Bacon's Rebellion (1676) is often seen as a turning point because it:

• accelerated the shift from indentured servitude to racial slavery
• ended tobacco cultivation in Virginia
• expelled the Puritans from Massachusetts
• established religious toleration in Maryland

Fear of armed, landless former servants pushed planters toward enslaved African labor, which was permanent and racially controlled.

The Maryland Act of Toleration (1649) protected:

• Trinitarian Christians, especially Catholics
• all religions including Judaism
• Puritans only
• Native religious practices

It guaranteed freedom of worship to Christians who accepted the Trinity, largely to protect the Catholic minority.

Compared with the Chesapeake, early New England had:

• longer life expectancy, more balanced sex ratios, and stronger family structures
• a warmer climate suited to plantation crops
• a larger enslaved population
• no established church

Healthier conditions and family migration produced more stable, town-centered communities in New England.

Mercantilism held that a colony's role was to:

• enrich the mother country by supplying raw materials and buying finished goods
• develop its own manufacturing base
• trade freely with any nation
• become economically self-sufficient

Under mercantilism, colonies existed to strengthen the imperial economy, regulated by acts like the Navigation Acts.

The Navigation Acts required that:

• colonial trade in key goods be carried on English ships through English ports
• colonies pay a direct tax to Parliament
• colonists quarter British troops
• all colonial governors be elected

The acts channeled 'enumerated' colonial goods through England to benefit English merchants and the crown.

The First Great Awakening contributed to the coming Revolution by:

• encouraging colonists to question established authority
• uniting the colonies under one church
• increasing loyalty to the Church of England
• discouraging public preaching

Revivalist challenges to religious hierarchy fostered a broader willingness to question authority.

The 'middle passage' refers to:

• the forced ocean voyage of enslaved Africans to the Americas
• the overland route across the Appalachians
• the sea route from England to the Caribbean for sugar
• the journey of Pilgrims to Plymouth

It was the brutal Atlantic leg of the triangular trade carrying captive Africans to slavery.

The Middle Colonies (Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey) were notable for:

• ethnic and religious diversity and mixed farming
• a rigid Puritan establishment
• near-total reliance on plantation agriculture
• the absence of any European settlement

They attracted varied groups (Quakers, Germans, Dutch, Scots-Irish) and grew grain for export.

The Salem witch trials (1692) are often interpreted as a symptom of:

• social strain, factionalism, and anxiety in a changing Puritan society
• a real outbreak of organized devil worship
• conflict between England and France
• a dispute over tobacco prices

Historians link the accusations to community tensions, gender norms, and frontier insecurity.

Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson were both:

• religious dissenters banished from Massachusetts Bay
• royal governors of New England
• leaders of Bacon's Rebellion
• founders of the Virginia Company

Williams (founder of Rhode Island) and Hutchinson challenged Puritan orthodoxy and were expelled.

The Albany Congress (1754) proposed the Albany Plan of Union, which:

• United the colonies against Britain permanently
• Was an early, ultimately rejected step toward colonial cooperation
• Ended the French and Indian War
• Established the Continental Congress

Franklin's plan for colonial unity was rejected by the colonies but foreshadowed later cooperative efforts.

The Proclamation of 1763 angered colonists because it:

• Raised taxes on tea
• Forbade settlement west of the Appalachian Mountains
• Ended the fur trade
• Established the Stamp Act

The Proclamation restricted westward expansion, frustrating land-hungry colonists after the costly war.

The phrase 'no taxation without representation' arose in protest of:

• The Stamp Act
• The Emancipation Proclamation
• The Missouri Compromise
• The Wagner Act

Colonists protested the Stamp Act (1765) as illegitimate direct taxation without their consent via Parliament.

John Locke's philosophy directly influenced the Declaration of Independence through the concept of:

• Divine right of kings
• Natural rights (life, liberty, property) and government by consent
• Mercantilism
• Social Darwinism

Locke's natural rights and social contract theory underpin Jefferson's arguments in the Declaration.

The main weakness of the Articles of Confederation was:

• Too much centralized power
• Lack of power to tax or maintain a standing army
• An overly powerful executive branch
• A national judiciary that overruled states

The Articles created a deliberately weak national government with no power to tax or field an army, crippling its effectiveness.

Shays' Rebellion (1786-87) demonstrated:

• The strength of the Articles of Confederation
• The Confederation government's inability to maintain order or raise funds
• Support for British reoccupation
• The success of the Bill of Rights

The armed uprising of indebted farmers showed the Confederation government could not effectively respond to internal unrest.

The Three-Fifths Compromise addressed:

• Representation and taxation counting of enslaved people
• The abolition of slavery
• Equal representation for small states
• Presidential term limits

It counted enslaved people as 3/5 of a person for apportioning representatives and direct taxes.

The Great (Connecticut) Compromise created:

• A unicameral legislature
• A bicameral legislature with the House based on population and Senate with equal representation
• A single national executive council
• Direct popular election of the president

The compromise balanced large and small state interests via a bicameral Congress.

Anti-Federalists opposed ratifying the Constitution mainly because:

• They wanted a monarchy
• They feared a strong central government would threaten individual liberties without a bill of rights
• They supported the Articles of Confederation's taxing power
• They wanted to remain part of Britain

Anti-Federalists feared federal overreach and demanded a bill of rights to protect individual liberties.

Hamilton's financial plan included all of the following EXCEPT:

• A national bank
• Federal assumption of state debts
• Protective tariffs
• Abolition of the national debt

Hamilton's plan managed and consolidated debt rather than abolishing it; it included a bank, debt assumption, and tariffs.

The Whiskey Rebellion (1794) is significant because Washington's response demonstrated:

• Federal weakness in enforcing law
• The federal government's willingness and ability to enforce its authority
• Sympathy for tax protesters
• The end of federal taxation

Washington used federal troops to suppress the tax revolt, asserting federal authority under the new Constitution.

Common Sense by Thomas Paine argued primarily for:

• Reconciliation with Britain
• American independence and against monarchy
• Continued colonial loyalty to the king
• A return to salutary neglect

Paine's widely read pamphlet made a persuasive, accessible case for independence and republican government.

The Northwest Ordinance (1787) was significant because it:

• Established a process for territories to become states and banned slavery in the Northwest Territory
• Created the first national bank
• Ended the French and Indian War
• Established the electoral college

It provided an orderly path to statehood and prohibited slavery in the territory, one of the Confederation's few successes.

The first American political party system emerged over disagreements between:

• Hamilton's Federalists and Jefferson's Democratic-Republicans
• Whigs and Democrats
• Republicans and Populists
• Progressives and Conservatives

Hamilton (strong federal government, loose construction) and Jefferson (states' rights, strict construction) led opposing early parties.

The Bill of Rights was added to the Constitution primarily to:

• Increase federal taxing power
• Secure ratification by protecting individual liberties from federal overreach
• Abolish slavery
• Establish a national bank

Anti-Federalist concerns about a lack of explicit rights protections led to the Bill of Rights as a condition for broader support.

The Stamp Act (1765) provoked especially fierce resistance because it was:

• a direct internal tax on printed materials affecting many colonists
• a tax on imported molasses
• a ban on colonial paper money
• a requirement to house soldiers

As an internal revenue tax touching newspapers, contracts, and licenses, it galvanized broad opposition and the cry of 'no taxation without representation'.

Thomas Paine's Common Sense (1776) argued that:

• it was absurd for a continent to be ruled by an island, and independence was the logical course
• the colonies should seek reconciliation with a reformed Parliament
• only the wealthy should hold political power
• France would never aid the American cause

Paine made a plain-language case for immediate independence and republican government.

The most important weakness of the Articles of Confederation was that Congress could not:

• levy taxes or regulate interstate and foreign commerce
• declare war
• negotiate treaties
• run a post office

Without taxing or commerce power, the national government could not pay debts or manage trade disputes.

Shays's Rebellion (1786-87) influenced the movement for a new constitution by:

• highlighting the national government's inability to maintain order and address economic distress
• proving the Articles worked well under pressure
• ending the practice of imprisoning debtors
• sparking a war with Britain

An armed uprising of indebted Massachusetts farmers alarmed elites and boosted support for a stronger central government.

The Great (Connecticut) Compromise at the Constitutional Convention resolved the dispute over:

• representation, by creating a bicameral legislature
• how to count enslaved people
• whether to have a president
• the location of the capital

It paired a House based on population with a Senate giving each state equal representation.

The Three-Fifths Compromise determined that enslaved people would be counted as three-fifths of a person for purposes of:

• both representation in the House and direct taxation
• voting rights
• militia service
• land ownership

It boosted southern representation while also apportioning some federal taxes.

Anti-Federalists opposed ratification of the Constitution mainly because they feared:

• a strong central government that lacked a bill of rights
• that it gave too much power to the states
• that it abolished slavery
• that it kept the Articles in force

They demanded explicit protection of individual liberties, leading to the Bill of Rights.

Hamilton's financial program included all of the following EXCEPT:

• immediate abolition of the national debt through repudiation
• federal assumption of state debts
• a national bank
• a tariff to protect and fund the government

Hamilton wanted to fund the debt at face value to build credit, not repudiate it.

Washington's Farewell Address warned against:

• permanent foreign alliances and the spirit of party (faction)
• establishing a national bank
• westward expansion
• a standing army

He cautioned against entangling alliances and the divisive effects of political factions.

The Whiskey Rebellion (1794) was significant because the federal government:

• demonstrated its power to enforce its laws, unlike under the Articles
• was forced to repeal the excise tax
• lost control of western Pennsylvania
• allied with the rebels against Britain

Washington led troops to suppress resistance to the whiskey excise, showing the new government's strength.

The XYZ Affair (1797-98) worsened relations with:

• France
• Britain
• Spain
• the Barbary States

French agents' demand for bribes to open negotiations outraged Americans and led to the undeclared Quasi-War.

The Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions (1798-99) advanced the theory that:

• states could judge the constitutionality of federal laws (nullification)
• the president could suspend Congress
• the federal courts had final say over all disputes
• slavery could not exist in new territories

Written by Madison and Jefferson against the Alien and Sedition Acts, they asserted a state role in checking federal power.

Jacksonian Democracy expanded political participation primarily for:

• All adult citizens regardless of race or sex
• White men, through the removal of property requirements for voting
• Native Americans
• Enslaved people

Suffrage expansion under Jackson applied to white men; Native Americans and enslaved people faced increased exclusion/oppression.

The Indian Removal Act (1830) led directly to:

• The Missouri Compromise
• The Trail of Tears
• The Nullification Crisis
• The Bank War

The Act authorized forced relocation of tribes like the Cherokee, resulting in the deadly Trail of Tears.

The Erie Canal's completion (1825) primarily contributed to:

• The end of slavery
• Linking the Great Lakes region to Atlantic trade, boosting the Market Revolution
• The start of the Civil War
• The Louisiana Purchase

The canal connected western agricultural regions to Eastern markets, a key part of the Market Revolution.

The Second Great Awakening most directly fueled which reform movement?

• Abolitionism
• Mercantilism
• Nullification
• Manifest Destiny

Religious revivalism's emphasis on human perfectibility and moral action fueled abolitionist and other reform movements.

The Seneca Falls Convention (1848) is best known for:

• Ending slavery in the North
• Launching the organized women's rights movement with the Declaration of Sentiments
• Establishing the Second Bank of the United States
• Beginning the Mexican-American War

The convention, led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, produced the Declaration of Sentiments demanding women's rights.

The Wilmot Proviso (1846) proposed to:

• Ban slavery in territory won from Mexico
• Expand slavery into all new territories
• Abolish slavery nationwide
• End the Mexican-American War

Though it never passed, the Proviso's proposal to ban slavery in Mexican Cession territory intensified sectional tensions.

The Lowell System employed primarily:

• Enslaved laborers
• Young unmarried women in textile mills
• Native American workers
• Formerly indentured servants

The Lowell mills in Massachusetts employed young women under close supervision, an early industrial wage-labor model.

Jackson's veto of the Second Bank of the United States reflected his view that the bank:

• Was an elite monopoly harming ordinary Americans
• Was too weak to control inflation
• Should be expanded, not eliminated
• Was unconstitutional under the Bill of Rights

Jackson saw the Bank as favoring wealthy elites and vetoed its re-charter as part of the 'Bank War.'

The Nullification Crisis (1832-33) centered on South Carolina's claim that:

• States could nullify federal laws (the tariff) they deemed unconstitutional
• Slavery should be abolished immediately
• The president had no veto power
• The Bank of the US should be abolished

South Carolina argued it could nullify the federal tariff, testing the balance of federal versus state power.

William Lloyd Garrison's The Liberator advocated for:

• Gradual, compensated emancipation
• Immediate abolition of slavery
• Colonization of freed slaves to Africa
• Expansion of slavery westward

Garrison was a leading voice for the immediate, uncompensated abolition of slavery.

Manifest Destiny is best defined as:

• The belief that American expansion across the continent was inevitable and divinely sanctioned
• A treaty ending the Mexican-American War
• A Supreme Court ruling on slavery
• An economic policy of protective tariffs

Manifest Destiny was the widely held ideological justification for continental American expansion.

The Mexican Cession resulted from:

• The Louisiana Purchase
• The Mexican-American War (1846-48)
• The War of 1812
• The Missouri Compromise

The U.S. victory in the Mexican-American War brought California and the New Mexico territory into U.S. possession.

Which best characterizes the antebellum middle class ideal of womanhood, or 'cult of domesticity'?

• Women should work exclusively in factories
• Women's proper sphere was the home, as moral guardians of the family
• Women should hold political office
• Women were excluded from religious life

As industrial work moved outside the home, a new ideology idealized women's role within domestic, moral spheres.

Jefferson's Louisiana Purchase (1803) created a constitutional dilemma because:

• Jefferson was a strict constructionist but the purchase required a loose interpretation of federal power
• It required Congressional approval that never came
• It violated the Bill of Rights
• It was rejected by the Supreme Court

Jefferson, who favored strict construction, had to stretch his constitutional views to justify the purchase's constitutionality.

Horace Mann's education reforms primarily promoted:

• Private religious schools only
• Common (public) schools accessible to all children
• The abolition of universities
• Military academies

Mann championed the common school movement, advocating for free, publicly funded education.

The 'corrupt bargain' of 1824 refers to the belief that:

• Henry Clay threw House support to John Quincy Adams in exchange for becoming Secretary of State
• Andrew Jackson bribed electors
• the Bank of the United States bought the election
• Congress ignored the popular vote entirely

Jackson supporters charged that Clay's backing of Adams, followed by Clay's appointment, was a corrupt deal.

The Indian Removal Act (1830) and the resulting Trail of Tears involved:

• the forced relocation of southeastern Native nations west of the Mississippi
• voluntary Native migration for better farmland
• a Supreme Court order to protect the Cherokee, which Jackson enforced
• the peaceful purchase of tribal lands at fair prices

Despite Worcester v. Georgia, the Cherokee and others were driven west, with thousands dying en route.

The Nullification Crisis (1832-33) arose when South Carolina attempted to:

• declare a federal tariff null and void within the state
• secede from the Union over slavery
• abolish the national bank
• annex Texas

South Carolina claimed the power to void the 'Tariff of Abominations'; Jackson threatened force and a compromise tariff resolved it.

Jackson's veto of the Second Bank of the United States charter was based on the argument that the Bank:

• was unconstitutional and served wealthy, often foreign, elites
• charged too little interest to farmers
• was controlled by the federal courts
• printed too little paper money

Jackson portrayed the Bank as a privileged 'monster' hostile to the common man.

The Market Revolution was driven above all by improvements in:

• transportation and communication (canals, roads, railroads, telegraph)
• cotton-gin technology alone
• foreign investment from Britain
• federal land grants to freed people

Faster, cheaper movement of goods and information integrated regional economies into a national market.

The Lowell system of textile manufacturing initially relied on the labor of:

• young unmarried New England women
• enslaved people from the South
• Irish immigrant men
• child apprentices from England

Early Lowell mills recruited farm daughters who lived in company boardinghouses.

The Second Great Awakening fueled which set of reform movements?

• temperance, abolition, women's rights, and asylum/prison reform
• free trade and low tariffs
• westward removal of Native peoples
• expansion of the national bank

Revivalist belief in human perfectibility inspired a wide range of moral reform campaigns.

The Seneca Falls Convention (1848) produced the Declaration of Sentiments, which demanded:

• equal rights for women, including suffrage
• immediate abolition of slavery only
• temperance legislation
• free public education

Modeled on the Declaration of Independence, it called for women's equality and the vote.

'Manifest Destiny' was the belief that:

• the United States was destined to expand across the continent
• the North and South must remain politically equal
• industrialization was inevitable
• slavery would die out naturally

The phrase justified territorial expansion as a national and providential mission.

The Missouri Compromise (1820):

• admitted Missouri as a slave state, Maine as free, and banned slavery north of 36 degrees 30 minutes
• abolished slavery in Washington, D.C.
• allowed popular sovereignty in all territories
• repealed the Northwest Ordinance

It preserved the balance of slave and free states and drew a line across the Louisiana Territory.

The 'gag rule' in the House of Representatives (1836-1844):

• automatically tabled antislavery petitions without debate
• banned discussion of the tariff
• required a two-thirds vote for war
• prohibited dueling by members

It suppressed abolitionist petitions and was fought by John Quincy Adams as a free-speech issue.

By the 1830s many white southerners defended slavery as:

• a 'positive good' rather than a 'necessary evil'
• a temporary institution soon to be abolished
• incompatible with Christianity
• economically unimportant

Figures like John C. Calhoun reframed slavery as beneficial to both races and society.

The Compromise of 1850 included all of the following EXCEPT:

• California admitted as a free state
• A stronger Fugitive Slave Act
• Popular sovereignty in Utah and New Mexico territories
• Immediate abolition of slavery nationwide

The Compromise did not abolish slavery; it balanced free/slave state admission and strengthened fugitive slave enforcement.

The Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854) is significant because it:

• Ended slavery in the territories
• Repealed the Missouri Compromise line by introducing popular sovereignty, leading to 'Bleeding Kansas'
• Established the Republican Party's first president
• Resolved the sectional slavery debate peacefully

By allowing territories to vote on slavery, the Act effectively nullified the Missouri Compromise and caused violent conflict.

The Dred Scott v. Sandford decision (1857) ruled that:

• Enslaved people were citizens with full rights
• Enslaved people were not citizens, and Congress could not ban slavery in territories
• Slavery was unconstitutional
• States could nullify federal law

The ruling denied Black citizenship and struck down congressional power to restrict slavery in territories, inflaming the North.

The Emancipation Proclamation (1863) applied to:

• All enslaved people in the United States, including border states
• Enslaved people only in Confederate-held territory
• Only enslaved people in Washington, D.C.
• No one immediately, only a future promise

It freed enslaved people in Confederate territory only, not in the loyal border states, as a wartime measure.

Which battle is considered the war's turning point that also enabled the Emancipation Proclamation?

• Fort Sumter
• Antietam
• Appomattox
• Bull Run

The Union's tactical success (or at least non-defeat) at Antietam (1862) gave Lincoln the opening to issue the Proclamation.

Which event most directly triggered Southern secession?

• The Emancipation Proclamation
• Abraham Lincoln's election in 1860
• The Missouri Compromise
• The Compromise of 1850

Lincoln's election as a sectional, anti-slavery-expansion candidate prompted South Carolina and other states to secede.

Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) had which effect on the nation?

• It calmed sectional tensions
• It galvanized Northern anti-slavery sentiment
• It ended the fugitive slave laws
• It was banned throughout the North

Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel intensified Northern opposition to slavery and heightened sectional conflict.

Which advantage did the Union have over the Confederacy at the start of the Civil War?

• A larger population and greater industrial capacity
• Superior military leadership in every battle
• Home-field defensive advantage
• International recognition from Britain and France

The Union's larger population and industrial base were long-term structural advantages over the agrarian Confederacy.

The Compromise of 1850 included which provision that most inflamed the North?

• a stricter Fugitive Slave Act
• the admission of California as a slave state
• a ban on slavery in Utah
• the abolition of the slave trade in all southern states

The new Fugitive Slave Act compelled northern cooperation in returning escapees, radicalizing opinion.

The Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854):

• repealed the Missouri Compromise line and applied popular sovereignty
• admitted Kansas as a free state
• banned slavery in all western territories
• created the Republican Party by law

By opening territory north of 36 degrees 30 minutes to possible slavery, it triggered 'Bleeding Kansas' and party realignment.

In Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) the Supreme Court held that:

• Black people were not citizens and Congress could not bar slavery from the territories
• the Missouri Compromise was constitutional
• enslaved people who reached free soil were free
• popular sovereignty was illegal

Chief Justice Taney's opinion denied Black citizenship and struck down federal restriction of slavery in the territories.

The Republican Party, founded in 1854, was united primarily by opposition to:

• the expansion of slavery into the territories
• immigration from Ireland and Germany
• protective tariffs
• the national bank

Republicans were a free-soil coalition, not (mostly) abolitionists, focused on stopping slavery's spread.

Lincoln justified the Emancipation Proclamation (1863) primarily as:

• a war measure to weaken the Confederacy
• a fulfillment of the original Constitution
• a response to a Supreme Court ruling
• a treaty obligation with Britain

It freed enslaved people in areas in rebellion, targeting the Confederate war effort and permitting Black enlistment.

During the Civil War the Union Congress passed all of the following EXCEPT:

• the repeal of the tariff
• the Homestead Act
• the Pacific Railway Act
• the Morrill Land-Grant College Act

With southern Democrats absent, Republicans enacted a nationalist economic program, including a higher tariff.

The New York City draft riots of 1863 were fueled largely by:

• working-class resentment that the wealthy could buy exemptions and anger over fighting to free enslaved people
• opposition to the Emancipation Proclamation by planters
• a Confederate invasion of the city
• a labor strike in the shipyards

Irish and other workers attacked draft offices and Black residents, resenting the $300 commutation fee and emancipation.

The 14th Amendment (1868) is best known for establishing:

• Birthright citizenship and equal protection under the law
• The abolition of slavery
• Voting rights regardless of race
• Direct election of senators

The 14th Amendment granted citizenship to all born in the U.S. and guaranteed equal protection of the laws.

The Freedmen's Bureau provided which service during Reconstruction?

• Education, food, and legal aid to formerly enslaved people
• Military weapons to former Confederates
• Voting rights enforcement in the North
• Land grants exclusively to Northern investors

The Bureau assisted freedpeople with education, basic necessities, and legal support after emancipation.

The Compromise of 1877 resulted in:

• The extension of Reconstruction for another decade
• Hayes securing the presidency in exchange for withdrawing federal troops from the South
• Immediate racial equality nationwide
• Impeachment of President Grant

The disputed 1876 election was resolved by giving Hayes the presidency while ending federal enforcement of Reconstruction in the South.

Sharecropping after the Civil War primarily:

• Ended debt for formerly enslaved farmers
• Trapped many freedpeople in cycles of debt and economic dependency
• Provided formerly enslaved people with land ownership
• Was limited to Northern states

Sharecropping often left freedpeople indebted to landowners, replicating economic subordination in a new form.

Radical Republicans in Congress pushed Reconstruction policies that were generally:

• More lenient toward the South than Lincoln's or Johnson's plans
• Stricter and more protective of freedpeople's rights than Lincoln's or Johnson's plans
• Focused solely on economic issues
• Opposed to any constitutional amendments

Radical Republicans favored stronger federal protections for freedpeople than the more lenient presidential Reconstruction plans.

Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) legalized which doctrine?

• 'Separate but equal' racial segregation
• Full racial integration
• Abolition of Jim Crow laws
• Universal male suffrage

The ruling upheld legal segregation under the 'separate but equal' doctrine, a legacy that outlasted Reconstruction.

Which factor most reduced Northern political will to enforce Reconstruction by the mid-1870s?

• A constitutional amendment banning Reconstruction
• War-weariness and the economic Panic of 1873
• A Supreme Court ruling ending Reconstruction immediately
• Southern reunification with full racial equality

Economic troubles and general war-weariness eroded Northern commitment to continued federal enforcement in the South.

The 15th Amendment (1870) specifically addressed:

• Abolition of slavery
• Birthright citizenship
• The right to vote regardless of race
• Equal protection under the law

The 15th Amendment barred denying voting rights based on race, though it left loopholes later exploited by Jim Crow laws.

The Reconstruction Amendments accomplished which of the following?

• abolished slavery, granted citizenship and equal protection, and barred racial denial of the vote
• gave women the right to vote
• established a federal income tax
• limited presidents to two terms

The 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, respectively, achieved these goals (though enforcement soon lapsed in the South).

The Freedmen's Bureau primarily provided:

• food, schools, and legal aid to formerly enslaved people and poor whites
• land grants of 40 acres to every freedman permanently
• military governance of all southern states
• reparations payments funded by former enslavers

It offered relief and education but had limited resources and was dismantled by 1872.

Radical Reconstruction (Congressional Reconstruction) featured:

• military districts in the South and requirements to ratify the 14th Amendment for readmission
• a lenient plan pardoning most Confederates quickly
• the immediate end of federal involvement in the South
• the restoration of prewar state governments

Congress overrode Johnson, divided the South into five military districts, and set conditions for readmission.

'Redeemer' governments that took power in the South after Reconstruction generally:

• cut spending, rolled back Black political power, and entrenched white Democratic rule
• expanded public schools and Black officeholding
• supported high tariffs and industrial subsidies
• welcomed continued federal supervision

Redeemers dismantled Reconstruction reforms and began the long move toward disenfranchisement and Jim Crow.

Andrew Johnson was impeached by the House in 1868 primarily over his violation of the:

• Tenure of Office Act
• Homestead Act
• Fugitive Slave Act
• Sherman Antitrust Act

He removed Secretary of War Stanton without Senate consent, defying the Tenure of Office Act.

The Reconstruction Acts of 1867 divided the South into how many military districts?

• five
• three
• ten
• one

Congress placed the former Confederacy under military oversight in five districts pending new state constitutions.

Hiram Revels and Blanche K. Bruce were the first Black men to serve as:

• United States Senators
• state governors
• Supreme Court justices
• cabinet secretaries

Both represented Mississippi in the U.S. Senate during Reconstruction.

The Enforcement Acts of the early 1870s were aimed primarily at:

• Ku Klux Klan violence against Black voters and officials
• southern tariffs
• Native American removal
• railroad monopolies

They gave federal authorities power to prosecute Klan terrorism and protect voting rights.

The Slaughterhouse Cases (1873) narrowed the reach of the 14th Amendment by:

• distinguishing narrow federal citizenship rights from broader state citizenship rights
• striking down the 14th Amendment entirely
• banning all state regulation of business
• extending full rights to freedmen immediately

The Court's narrow reading limited how far the amendment could be used to challenge state action.

'Redeemer' governments that took power in southern states after Reconstruction generally:

• rolled back Black political power and cut public spending
• expanded voting rights for freedmen
• supported continued federal military occupation
• increased funding for Black public schools

Redeemers dismantled Reconstruction-era reforms and entrenched white Democratic control.

The disputed presidential election of 1876 was resolved by:

• an informal deal trading the presidency for withdrawal of federal troops from the South
• a Supreme Court recount
• a new constitutional amendment
• a second popular vote

The Compromise of 1877 gave Hayes the presidency in exchange for ending Reconstruction enforcement.

Sharecropping differed from slavery chiefly because sharecroppers:

• were legally free but often trapped in cycles of debt to landowners
• owned their land outright
• received full wages in cash
• worked entirely outside agriculture

Freedom from bondage did not mean freedom from economic dependency under the crop-lien system.

Which best describes the overall trajectory of Reconstruction by 1900?

• early gains for Black citizenship and voting were substantially reversed by Jim Crow and disenfranchisement
• full racial equality was achieved and sustained
• the amendments were repealed
• the South seceded a second time

Legal equality on paper gave way to segregation and disenfranchisement in practice.

The Freedmen's Bureau's main functions included:

• providing food, schools, and legal aid to freedpeople and poor whites
• distributing 40 acres of land permanently to every freed family
• policing northern cities
• collecting federal taxes

It offered relief and education with limited, temporary resources before being shut down.

Andrew Carnegie's steel empire is a classic example of:

• Horizontal integration
• Vertical integration
• Free trade policy
• Populism

Carnegie controlled every stage of steel production, from raw materials to finished product — vertical integration.

John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil primarily grew through:

• Vertical integration
• Horizontal integration (buying out competitors)
• Government subsidies
• Labor union support

Rockefeller consolidated the oil industry by acquiring and merging with competing companies.

Social Darwinism was used in the Gilded Age to justify:

• Labor union organizing
• Wealth inequality and opposition to government regulation of business
• Universal suffrage
• Government-run healthcare

Applying 'survival of the fittest' to society, Social Darwinism rationalized inequality and minimal business regulation.

The Chinese Exclusion Act (1882) was significant as:

• The first major U.S. law restricting immigration by nationality
• A law expanding Chinese immigration
• A labor protection law for Chinese railroad workers
• A treaty establishing trade with China

It was the first major federal law to exclude immigrants specifically based on national origin.

Political machines like Tammany Hall provided immigrants with:

• Free college education
• Practical services and jobs in exchange for votes, despite widespread corruption
• Direct representation in Congress
• Free land grants

Machines traded services and patronage jobs for political loyalty, functioning within a system rife with graft.

The Knights of Labor differed from the American Federation of Labor mainly by:

• Organizing only skilled workers
• Welcoming all workers, including women and Black workers, and pursuing broad social reform
• Opposing all labor strikes
• Supporting Social Darwinism

The Knights were broadly inclusive; the AFL (Gompers) focused narrowly on skilled workers' wages and hours.

The Haymarket Affair (1886) resulted in:

• Immediate passage of the 8-hour workday nationwide
• A public backlash against labor unions, linking them to radicalism
• The founding of the AFL
• The end of all labor strikes

The bombing at a Chicago labor rally caused a backlash that associated organized labor with anarchist violence.

The Populist Party's Omaha Platform (1892) called for all of the following EXCEPT:

• Free coinage of silver
• A graduated income tax
• Direct election of senators
• The gold standard

Populists favored free silver to expand the money supply, opposing the tight-money gold standard.

William Jennings Bryan's 'Cross of Gold' speech (1896) advocated for:

• The gold standard
• Free silver to expand the money supply and ease farmer debt
• Abolishing the income tax
• Ending railroad regulation

Bryan championed free silver coinage to inflate currency and relieve indebted farmers, in his famous speech.

The transcontinental railroad (completed 1869) relied heavily on the labor of:

• Enslaved African Americans
• Chinese and Irish immigrants
• Native American laborers exclusively
• European aristocrats

Chinese immigrants (working west from California) and Irish immigrants (working east) provided crucial labor for the railroad.

The Bessemer process was significant because it:

• Made steel production cheaper and more efficient, enabling industrial growth
• Ended child labor
• Created the first labor unions
• Reduced immigration to the U.S.

The Bessemer process lowered steel production costs, fueling railroad expansion and industrial construction.

'New immigrants' of the late 19th century primarily came from:

• Northern and Western Europe
• Southern and Eastern Europe
• Latin America
• East Asia exclusively

New immigrants from Italy, Poland, and Russia (including many Jews) differed culturally from earlier immigrant waves, fueling nativism.

The Social Gospel movement responded to industrial-era poverty by:

• Advocating a return to agrarian life
• Applying Christian ethics to social problems through action like settlement houses
• Supporting unrestricted immigration only
• Rejecting all forms of charity

The Social Gospel encouraged Christians to address social problems directly, exemplified by Jane Addams's Hull House.

The Homestead and Pullman strikes of the 1890s demonstrated that:

• Government consistently sided with striking workers
• Government and private security often sided with business against labor
• Labor unions had no opposition
• Strikes were illegal under all circumstances

Both strikes were suppressed by private security forces or federal troops, showing government's frequent alignment with business interests.

The Grange and Farmers' Alliances were precursors to which political movement?

• Progressivism
• Populism
• Abolitionism
• The Federalist Party

These farmer cooperative organizations evolved into the Populist (People's) Party in the 1890s.

Vertical integration, as practiced by Andrew Carnegie in steel, means:

• controlling every stage of production from raw materials to finished product
• buying out all competing steel firms
• fixing prices with rivals
• selling stock to the public

Carnegie owned mines, ships, railroads, and mills, controlling the whole supply chain.

John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil is the classic example of:

• horizontal integration (dominating one stage of an industry)
• government ownership of industry
• a worker-owned cooperative
• a small-business partnership

Standard Oil absorbed or destroyed competing refiners to control refining, then used a trust structure.

The 'Gospel of Wealth' argued by Andrew Carnegie held that:

• the rich had a duty to use their fortunes for the public good
• poverty was a sign of moral failure that should not be relieved
• government should redistribute wealth
• labor unions were essential to fairness

Carnegie urged wealthy men to act as trustees of their money, funding libraries and education.

Social Darwinism was used in the Gilded Age to:

• justify laissez-faire economics and great inequality as natural
• support strong antitrust regulation
• promote labor unions
• defend Native land rights

Thinkers applied 'survival of the fittest' to society, opposing aid to the poor and regulation of business.

The Haymarket affair (1886) damaged the labor movement because:

• a bombing at a Chicago rally linked unions in the public mind with violence and anarchism
• it revealed that unions had been infiltrated by employers
• the Knights of Labor won and then disbanded
• the government legalized all strikes

After the bomb killed police, a backlash weakened the Knights of Labor and broad labor organizing.

The Homestead Strike (1892) and Pullman Strike (1894) both ended with:

• the use of state or federal force to break the strike
• union victories and recognition
• binding government arbitration
• employer bankruptcy

Troops and injunctions crushed both strikes, showing government's pro-management stance.

'New' immigrants of the 1880s-1900s came predominantly from:

• southern and eastern Europe
• northern and western Europe
• East Asia
• Latin America

Italians, Poles, Russian Jews, and others arrived in large numbers, prompting nativist reactions.

The Populist (People's) Party's Omaha Platform (1892) called for all of the following EXCEPT:

• a return to a strict gold standard
• free and unlimited coinage of silver
• a graduated income tax
• government ownership of railroads and telegraphs

Populists wanted inflationary 'free silver,' not a tighter gold standard.

The election of 1896, in which William McKinley defeated William Jennings Bryan, is often seen as:

• the end of Populism as a national force and the start of Republican dominance
• a triumph for the free-silver movement
• the first election decided by the House
• a victory for the labor vote

Bryan's loss ended the agrarian revolt's momentum and began a long period of GOP power.

Sharecropping in the postwar South:

• kept many Black and poor white families in cycles of debt and dependency
• gave freed people full ownership of the land they worked
• was quickly replaced by wage labor
• was outlawed by the Freedmen's Bureau

The crop-lien system tied tenants to landowners and merchants through perpetual debt.

Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) established the constitutional doctrine of:

• 'separate but equal'
• 'one person, one vote'
• 'clear and present danger'
• 'substantive due process' for corporations

The Court upheld a Louisiana law segregating railroad cars, legitimizing Jim Crow for decades.

Upton Sinclair's The Jungle is an example of:

• Muckraking journalism that spurred food safety reform
• Populist political theory
• New Deal legislation
• Anti-imperialist literature

Sinclair's exposé of meatpacking conditions spurred passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act (1906).

The 17th Amendment established:

• Women's suffrage
• Direct election of U.S. senators by voters
• Prohibition of alcohol
• Income tax

The 17th Amendment (1913) changed senator selection from state legislatures to direct popular election.

Theodore Roosevelt's approach to trusts under the 'Square Deal' was to:

• Break up and eliminate all large corporations
• Regulate rather than eliminate big business
• Ignore corporate practices entirely
• Nationalize all major industries

Roosevelt distinguished between 'good' and 'bad' trusts, pursuing regulation rather than universal dissolution of big business.

The Federal Reserve System, created in 1913, was designed to:

• Eliminate all banks
• Provide a stable, elastic national currency and oversee banking
• End the gold standard immediately
• Replace the Treasury Department

Wilson's New Freedom created the Federal Reserve to stabilize the banking and monetary system.

The Spanish-American War (1898) resulted in U.S. acquisition of:

• Cuba as a full territory
• The Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Guam
• Canada
• Mexico

The war's outcome gave the U.S. control of the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Guam; Cuba became a protectorate.

The Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine asserted the U.S. right to:

• Colonize European nations
• Intervene in Latin American affairs to maintain stability
• Join the League of Nations
• End the Spanish-American War

The Corollary expanded the Monroe Doctrine, claiming U.S. authority to intervene in Latin America as an international police power.

Muckrakers such as Upton Sinclair and Ida Tarbell were:

• investigative journalists who exposed corruption and abuses
• leaders of the Socialist Party
• corporate public-relations writers
• officials in the Roosevelt administration

Their exposes of meatpacking, Standard Oil, and city politics fueled Progressive reform.

The 17th Amendment (1913) provided for:

• the direct election of U.S. senators by voters
• a federal income tax
• woman suffrage
• the prohibition of alcohol

It replaced selection of senators by state legislatures with popular election.

The Federal Reserve Act (1913) created:

• a central banking system to manage currency and credit
• a federal minimum wage
• the Interstate Commerce Commission
• a national health insurance program

It established regional Federal Reserve banks under a national board to provide an elastic currency.

The Spanish-American War (1898) resulted in the United States acquiring:

• Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines
• Cuba as a state
• Hawaii and Alaska
• the Panama Canal Zone

The Treaty of Paris transferred these former Spanish colonies; Cuba became a protectorate.

The Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine asserted a U.S. right to:

• intervene in Latin American nations to preserve stability and forestall European action
• annex any Caribbean island at will
• bar all European trade with Latin America
• grant independence to the Philippines

It made the U.S. an 'international police power' in the Western Hemisphere.

The sinking of the USS Maine in Havana harbor helped push the United States toward war with:

• Spain
• Mexico
• Britain
• Germany

Yellow journalism blamed Spain for the explosion, fueling public demand for war in 1898.

The Treaty of Paris (1898) ending the Spanish-American War gave the United States control of:

• Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines
• Cuba as a full state
• Hawaii and Alaska
• the Panama Canal Zone

Cuba became a U.S. protectorate rather than a colony, unlike the other territories.

The Philippine-American War (1899-1902) resulted from:

• Filipino nationalists resisting continued U.S. rule after expecting independence
• a Spanish attempt to retake the islands
• a rebellion by American settlers
• a dispute with Japan

Filipino forces under Aguinaldo fought a prolonged, costly insurgency against American occupation.

The 19th Amendment (1920) accomplished which reform?

• woman suffrage nationwide
• direct election of senators
• Prohibition
• the federal income tax

It barred denial of the vote on account of sex after decades of activism.

Upton Sinclair's The Jungle most directly led to:

• the Pure Food and Drug Act and Meat Inspection Act
• the Federal Reserve Act
• the Sherman Antitrust Act
• the Interstate Commerce Act

Public outrage over meatpacking conditions pushed Congress to pass food-safety regulation in 1906.

The Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine claimed a U.S. right to:

• intervene in Latin American nations to maintain order and forestall European intervention
• annex any Caribbean nation
• withdraw entirely from hemispheric affairs
• cede the Panama Canal to Colombia

It made the U.S. an 'international police power' in the Western Hemisphere.

'Dollar Diplomacy,' associated with President Taft, used which tool to extend U.S. influence?

• economic investment and loans
• direct military occupation only
• religious missions
• trade embargoes

Taft favored substituting American capital for military force where possible.

Progressive-era direct democracy reforms included all of the following EXCEPT:

• the repeal of the secret ballot
• the initiative
• the referendum
• the recall

Progressives expanded, rather than repealed, tools for direct citizen participation.

The Panama Canal, completed in 1914, was built after the United States:

• backed Panama's independence from Colombia to secure canal rights
• purchased the canal zone from Colombia peacefully
• annexed Colombia entirely
• leased the canal from France indefinitely

U.S. support for a Panamanian revolt secured a treaty granting canal rights.

Ida Tarbell's investigative journalism targeted which company?

• Standard Oil
• U.S. Steel
• the Pennsylvania Railroad
• General Electric

Her expose of Standard Oil's practices fueled antitrust sentiment against Rockefeller's trust.

The Zimmermann Telegram contributed to U.S. entry into WWI by:

• Proposing a German-Mexican alliance against the U.S.
• Announcing German surrender
• Declaring war on Britain
• Requesting American neutrality

The intercepted telegram revealed Germany's proposal to ally with Mexico against the U.S., inflaming American public opinion.

The U.S. Senate rejected the Treaty of Versailles primarily due to opposition to:

• Reparations imposed on Germany
• U.S. membership in the League of Nations
• The redrawing of European borders
• Wilson's Fourteen Points

Senators feared League membership would entangle the U.S. in foreign conflicts, reflecting isolationist sentiment.

The Harlem Renaissance was centered on:

• Prohibition enforcement
• A flourishing of African American art, literature, and music
• Agricultural reform
• Labor union organizing

The Harlem Renaissance was a vibrant cultural movement of Black artists, writers, and musicians in 1920s New York.

The Scopes Trial (1925) centered on a conflict between:

• Evolution and religious fundamentalism
• Prohibition and temperance
• Immigration and nativism
• Labor and capital

The trial pitted the teaching of evolution against fundamentalist religious objections, reflecting 1920s cultural conflict.

The National Origins Act (1924) was designed to:

• Encourage immigration from Southern/Eastern Europe
• Restrict immigration through quotas favoring Northern/Western Europe
• Ban all immigration
• Grant citizenship to all immigrants

The Act set nativist quotas that favored immigrants from Northern and Western Europe.

Which New Deal program provided retirement pensions and is still in effect today?

• The Wagner Act
• Social Security Act
• The TVA
• The FDIC

The Social Security Act (1935) established a retirement pension system, a lasting New Deal legacy.

The Wagner Act (1935) primarily:

• Ended child labor
• Protected workers' rights to organize unions and engage in collective bargaining
• Established the minimum wage
• Created Social Security

The Wagner Act guaranteed workers' rights to unionize and bargain collectively, a major pro-labor New Deal reform.

What ultimately ended the Great Depression?

• The New Deal alone
• World War II mobilization and full employment
• The stock market recovery of 1932
• The Social Security Act

Massive wartime spending and full employment during WWII, not the New Deal alone, finally ended the Depression.

Japanese American internment during WWII was based on:

• Evidence of individual disloyalty
• Ancestry alone, without individual evidence of wrongdoing
• Voluntary relocation requests
• Court convictions for espionage

Executive Order 9066 forced relocation based solely on Japanese ancestry, later upheld in Korematsu but widely condemned since.

The immediate cause of U.S. entry into World War I in 1917 was:

• renewed unrestricted German submarine warfare and the Zimmermann Telegram
• the sinking of the Lusitania in 1915
• a German invasion of Canada
• the Bolshevik Revolution

Germany's resumption of attacks on shipping plus the proposed alliance with Mexico pushed Wilson to war.

The Schenck v. United States (1919) decision upheld restrictions on speech that posed a:

• 'clear and present danger'
• 'compelling government interest'
• 'rational basis'
• 'strict scrutiny' standard

Justice Holmes ruled that speech obstructing the draft in wartime could be punished.

The Senate rejected the Treaty of Versailles largely because of opposition to:

• Article X and membership in the League of Nations
• the war-guilt clause
• reparations on Germany
• the redrawing of European borders

Reservationists led by Henry Cabot Lodge feared the collective-security obligation would limit U.S. sovereignty.

The 1920s cultural conflicts included all of the following EXCEPT:

• broad national support for the League of Nations
• the Scopes 'Monkey' Trial over evolution
• the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan
• debate over Prohibition

The U.S. never joined the League; the decade's tensions were largely domestic and cultural.

The Harlem Renaissance was:

• a flowering of African American literature, music, and art in the 1920s
• a labor movement among Black steelworkers
• a Great Migration resettlement program
• a civil rights court campaign

Writers and artists like Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston expressed Black identity and creativity.

The First New Deal (1933-34) focused most on:

• immediate relief and economic recovery
• permanent structural reform of capitalism
• balancing the federal budget
• cutting taxes on corporations

Programs like the CCC, AAA, and NRA aimed at jobs, aid, and reviving prices and industry.

The Social Security Act (1935) is considered a 'reform' measure because it:

• created a permanent system of old-age pensions and unemployment insurance
• provided one-time relief checks
• funded public-works construction
• regulated the stock market

It built a lasting federal safety net, funded by payroll taxes.

The Lend-Lease Act (1941) allowed the United States to:

• supply arms and materials to Britain and later the USSR before formally entering the war
• declare war on Germany
• occupy French colonies
• ration gasoline domestically

It ended the pretense of strict neutrality by aiding the Allies against the Axis.

Executive Order 9066 (1942) led to:

• the internment of Japanese Americans on the West Coast
• the desegregation of the armed forces
• wage and price controls
• the drafting of women into combat

Roughly 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry, most U.S. citizens, were forced into camps; upheld in Korematsu.

The core U.S. Cold War strategy of containment aimed to:

• Directly overthrow the Soviet government
• Prevent the further spread of communism without direct war with the USSR
• Ally militarily with the USSR
• End all foreign aid programs

George Kennan's containment strategy sought to stop communism's spread through means short of direct war with the USSR.

Brown v. Board of Education (1954) ruled that:

• Public school segregation was constitutional
• Public school segregation was unconstitutional, overturning Plessy v. Ferguson
• Busing was required nationwide immediately
• Segregation in private businesses was illegal

The Court unanimously ruled that 'separate but equal' schools were inherently unequal, overturning Plessy.

The Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955-56) was sparked by:

• The assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.
• Rosa Parks's arrest for refusing to give up her bus seat
• The passage of the Civil Rights Act
• The March on Washington

Rosa Parks's arrest triggered the boycott, which launched Martin Luther King Jr.'s civil rights leadership.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 primarily banned discrimination in:

• Voter registration only
• Public accommodations and employment based on race, sex, religion, or national origin
• College admissions only
• Military service only

The Act outlawed discrimination in public accommodations and employment across several protected categories.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 specifically:

• Eliminated literacy tests and authorized federal oversight of voter registration
• Granted women the right to vote
• Established the 24th Amendment
• Ended the poll tax nationwide by constitutional amendment

The Act removed discriminatory barriers like literacy tests and allowed federal oversight in discriminatory jurisdictions.

Lyndon Johnson's Great Society included which major program?

• The New Deal
• Medicare and Medicaid
• The Marshall Plan
• The Federal Reserve System

Medicare (elderly health coverage) and Medicaid (health coverage for the poor) were signature Great Society programs (1965).

The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution (1964) is significant because it:

• Ended U.S. involvement in Vietnam
• Gave President Johnson broad authority to escalate military action without a formal declaration of war
• Established the Vietnamization policy
• Created NATO

The resolution granted the president sweeping war powers in Vietnam without Congress formally declaring war.

The Tet Offensive (1968) is considered a turning point in the Vietnam War because:

• It was a decisive North Vietnamese defeat with no political effect
• Though a military setback for the communists, it undermined American public confidence in the war
• It ended the war immediately
• It led to full U.S. withdrawal within months

Despite being a military failure for North Vietnam/Viet Cong, Tet shocked American public opinion and eroded war support.

The Cuban Missile Crisis (1962) was resolved through:

• Direct military conflict between the U.S. and USSR
• Negotiation, with the Soviets removing missiles from Cuba and a secret U.S. pledge on Turkey
• A UN resolution condemning both sides
• The signing of a nuclear disarmament treaty

The crisis ended via back-channel diplomacy, avoiding direct war while resolving the missile standoff.

The War Powers Act (1973) was a direct legacy of which conflict?

• World War II
• The Korean War
• The Vietnam War
• The Persian Gulf War

Congress passed the Act to limit presidential war-making power in response to the executive overreach seen during Vietnam.

Roe v. Wade (1973) established:

• A constitutional right to abortion
• The Equal Rights Amendment
• Title IX protections
• The right to contraception

The Supreme Court ruling recognized a constitutional right to abortion under the right to privacy.

The Watergate scandal ultimately led to:

• President Nixon's impeachment and removal by the Senate
• President Nixon's resignation in 1974
• A constitutional amendment on presidential term limits
• The end of the Vietnam War

Facing near-certain impeachment, Nixon resigned in August 1974 rather than face trial.

Détente under Nixon referred to:

• A policy of intensifying Cold War hostility
• A policy of easing Cold War tensions with the USSR and opening relations with China
• The end of NATO
• An immediate end to the arms race

Détente sought to reduce Cold War tensions through diplomacy, arms limitation talks, and new relations with Communist China.

'Stagflation' in the 1970s refers to:

• Simultaneous high inflation and high unemployment
• Rapid economic growth with low inflation
• A stock market crash
• Deflation combined with a housing boom

Stagflation combined stagnant growth/high unemployment with high inflation, challenging conventional economic policy.

The shift toward 'Black Power' in the late 1960s reflected:

• Full satisfaction with the pace of civil rights progress
• Frustration with the pace of change and an emphasis on Black self-determination
• A return to segregationist policy
• Agreement with all of Martin Luther King Jr.'s tactics

Leaders like Malcolm X and Stokely Carmichael emphasized self-determination amid frustration with slow, incremental change.

The policy of 'containment,' outlined by George Kennan, held that the United States should:

• resist Soviet expansion wherever it occurred, without necessarily rolling back existing communism
• liberate all communist nations by force
• withdraw from European affairs
• share nuclear technology with the USSR

Containment shaped the Truman Doctrine, Marshall Plan, NATO, and interventions in Korea and Vietnam.

The Marshall Plan (1948) provided:

• large-scale U.S. economic aid to rebuild Western Europe
• military forces to fight in Greece
• loans only to the Soviet bloc
• funding for the United Nations

Aid revived European economies and made them more resistant to communism.

Brown v. Board of Education (1954) held that:

• racially segregated public schools are inherently unequal and unconstitutional
• segregation was legal if facilities were truly equal
• the federal government could not regulate schools
• busing was required nationwide

The unanimous decision overturned Plessy in the field of public education.

The Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955-56) is significant because it:

• launched Martin Luther King Jr. to national leadership and showed the power of nonviolent mass protest
• immediately desegregated all southern transportation
• was organized by the federal government
• ended in failure for the protesters

A year-long boycott, plus a Supreme Court ruling, desegregated Montgomery's buses and modeled future campaigns.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964:

• banned discrimination in public accommodations and employment and cut off funds to segregated programs
• guaranteed the right to vote by banning literacy tests
• desegregated only public schools
• applied only to the former Confederate states

It was the most sweeping civil rights law since Reconstruction; voting was addressed in 1965.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was prompted in part by:

• the violent suppression of the Selma to Montgomery march
• the assassination of President Kennedy
• the Watts riot
• the Cuban Missile Crisis

Televised brutality on 'Bloody Sunday' built support for federal oversight of voter registration.

The Great Society under Lyndon Johnson created:

• Medicare, Medicaid, Head Start, and federal aid to education
• Social Security and the FDIC
• the interstate highway system
• the Peace Corps only

Johnson's domestic program greatly expanded the federal role in health, education, and anti-poverty efforts.

The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution (1964):

• gave the president broad authority to use force in Vietnam without a declaration of war
• formally declared war on North Vietnam
• ended U.S. involvement in Vietnam
• authorized the bombing of Cambodia specifically

Congress granted Johnson wide latitude after reported attacks on U.S. destroyers.

The Tet Offensive (1968), though a military defeat for the North, was a turning point because it:

• undermined U.S. public confidence that the war could be won
• forced North Vietnam to negotiate immediately
• led to a U.S. invasion of the North
• ended the draft

The scale of the attacks contradicted official optimism and deepened American disillusionment.

The Cuban Missile Crisis (1962) ended when:

• the USSR removed its missiles from Cuba in exchange for a U.S. no-invasion pledge (and secret removal of missiles from Turkey)
• the U.S. invaded Cuba
• NATO forces blockaded the Soviet Union
• Castro was overthrown

A negotiated settlement pulled the superpowers back from nuclear war.

The feminist movement of the 1960s-70s achieved which of the following?

• passage of Title IX and the Equal Pay Act, and the founding of NOW
• ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment
• a constitutional right to equal pay
• the end of all workplace discrimination

The ERA fell short of ratification, but other legal gains were significant.

Postwar suburbanization was strongly shaped by federal policy, including:

• FHA and VA mortgage programs and interstate highway construction
• a federal ban on apartment buildings
• nationalization of the housing industry
• the GI Bill's prohibition on homeownership

Government-backed mortgages and highways subsidized suburban growth, while redlining excluded Black families.

Reaganomics primarily involved:

• Large tax cuts, deregulation, and increased defense spending
• Higher taxes and expanded social welfare programs
• Nationalization of major industries
• Strict wage and price controls

Reagan's supply-side economic policy combined tax cuts, deregulation, and a defense spending buildup.

Despite Reagan's small-government goals, his presidency saw:

• A balanced federal budget
• Significant growth in the federal deficit and national debt
• The elimination of Social Security
• A decrease in defense spending

Tax cuts combined with increased defense spending led to substantially larger deficits and debt.

Gorbachev's policies of glasnost and perestroika were intended to:

• Strengthen Soviet communism through reform
• Reform and open Soviet society/economy, but unintentionally hastened its collapse
• Increase Soviet military aggression
• Restore Stalinist policies

Gorbachev's reforms aimed to revitalize the USSR but instead accelerated its political and economic disintegration.

The fall of the Berlin Wall (1989) symbolized:

• The start of the Cold War
• The end of Soviet control over Eastern Europe
• The beginning of World War III
• American isolationism

The Wall's fall represented the collapse of Soviet influence in Eastern Europe, a key step toward the Cold War's end.

NAFTA (1994) established a free trade zone among:

• The U.S., Canada, and Mexico
• The U.S., China, and Japan
• All members of the United Nations
• The U.S. and the European Union

NAFTA created a trilateral free trade agreement among the U.S., Canada, and Mexico.

A major criticism of NAFTA and globalization was that they:

• Increased manufacturing jobs in the U.S.
• Contributed to outsourcing of manufacturing jobs overseas
• Ended international trade entirely
• Reduced consumer choice

Critics argued free trade agreements like NAFTA accelerated the loss of U.S. manufacturing jobs to lower-wage countries.

The September 11, 2001 attacks directly led to:

• The Camp David Accords
• The War on Terror and the creation of the Department of Homeland Security
• The end of the Cold War
• The Gulf War

9/11 prompted a major reorientation of U.S. foreign and domestic policy, including new homeland security institutions.

The USA PATRIOT Act, passed after 9/11, primarily:

• Restricted government surveillance powers
• Expanded government surveillance and law enforcement powers to combat terrorism
• Ended the war in Afghanistan
• Reduced airport security measures

The PATRIOT Act broadened federal surveillance and investigative powers in the name of counterterrorism.

The 2008 financial crisis was primarily rooted in:

• A collapse in agricultural prices
• The housing/mortgage market collapse and financial deregulation
• A sudden oil embargo
• Failure of the Social Security system

Risky mortgage lending, complex financial instruments, and deregulation triggered the 2008 crisis and Great Recession.

The Affordable Care Act (2010) primarily aimed to:

• Eliminate Medicare
• Expand health insurance coverage to more Americans
• End all private health insurance
• Reduce Social Security benefits

The ACA sought to expand health coverage through insurance marketplaces, Medicaid expansion, and related reforms.

The Persian Gulf War (1991) demonstrated:

• U.S. isolationism after the Cold War
• Post-Cold War U.S. military leadership in a coalition to expel Iraq from Kuwait
• A return to the Vietnam-era draft
• The permanent end of U.S. involvement in the Middle East

The U.S.-led coalition's swift victory in the Gulf War showcased America's post-Cold War global military role.

Deindustrialization in the late 20th century particularly affected which U.S. region?

• The Sun Belt
• The Rust Belt
• The Pacific Northwest
• New England exclusively

The 'Rust Belt' (Midwest/Northeast manufacturing centers) saw significant job losses as production shifted overseas.

Which best describes U.S. income inequality trends from the late 20th century onward?

• Inequality steadily decreased
• Wages stagnated for many while wealth concentrated among high earners
• All income groups grew at equal rates
• Inequality was eliminated by NAFTA

Despite economic growth, wage stagnation for many workers alongside wealth concentration widened income inequality.

The Soviet Union officially dissolved in:

• 1989
• 1991
• 1994
• 2001

The USSR formally dissolved in 1991, marking the definitive end of the Cold War and leaving the U.S. as the sole superpower.

The rise of the religious right (e.g., the Moral Majority) in the 1980s reflected:

• A decline in political conservatism
• A conservative political resurgence tied to religious activism
• Growing secularism in American politics
• Opposition to Reagan's presidency

The Moral Majority and similar groups mobilized religious conservatives as a significant force within the Reagan-era conservative coalition.

'Reaganomics' (supply-side economics) called for:

• tax cuts, deregulation, reduced domestic spending, and increased military spending
• higher taxes on corporations to fund social programs
• wage and price controls
• nationalization of key industries

The theory held that cutting taxes and regulation would spur growth and eventually raise revenue.

The end of the Cold War is generally dated to:

• 1989-1991, with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union
• 1972, with Nixon's visit to China
• 1979, with the Iranian Revolution
• 1983, with the invasion of Grenada

Eastern European revolutions in 1989 and the USSR's dissolution in 1991 ended the superpower rivalry.

The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA, 1994):

• created a free-trade zone among the U.S., Canada, and Mexico
• imposed tariffs on Japanese cars
• ended trade with China
• was rejected by the Senate

NAFTA reduced trade barriers across North America and became a lasting subject of political debate.

The USA PATRIOT Act (2001) expanded government power to:

• conduct surveillance and share intelligence in the name of counterterrorism
• regulate the airline industry
• fund homeland infrastructure
• draft citizens for military service

Passed after 9/11, it broadened wiretapping, records access, and detention authority, raising civil-liberties concerns.

The 2000 presidential election was ultimately decided by:

• the Supreme Court in Bush v. Gore, halting the Florida recount
• a vote in the House of Representatives
• a national recount ordered by Congress
• the Electoral College reversing the popular vote deliberately

The Court stopped the Florida recount, effectively awarding the presidency to George W. Bush.

The 2008 financial crisis was triggered most directly by:

• the collapse of a housing bubble built on subprime mortgages and mortgage-backed securities
• a spike in oil prices alone
• a stock-market crash caused by computer trading
• a default by the federal government

Falling home prices and failing mortgage securities brought down major financial firms.

The Affordable Care Act (2010):

• expanded health-insurance coverage through mandates, subsidies, and Medicaid expansion
• created a single-payer national health system
• repealed Medicare
• applied only to federal employees

It aimed to cover the uninsured while keeping a private-insurance framework, and became a partisan flashpoint.

The 'Reagan Revolution' shifted the terms of political debate by:

• making tax cuts and skepticism of federal social programs more central to both parties
• expanding the New Deal coalition
• ending partisan conflict
• increasing union membership

Even later Democratic administrations operated within a more market-oriented, tax-averse framework.

Which best describes late-20th-century immigration patterns?

• a large increase, with most newcomers from Latin America and Asia
• a sharp decline after 1965
• predominantly from Europe
• almost entirely undocumented

The 1965 Immigration Act ended national-origin quotas, and Latin American and Asian immigration rose substantially.

The Persian Gulf War (1991):

• expelled Iraqi forces from Kuwait with a broad U.S.-led coalition
• overthrew Saddam Hussein
• was fought without United Nations approval
• led directly to a long U.S. occupation of Iraq

A quick air and ground campaign liberated Kuwait; Saddam remained in power until 2003.

Political polarization since the 1990s has been reinforced by:

• partisan media, gerrymandering, and party-line congressional voting
• the decline of the two-party system
• the growth of split-ticket voting
• the elimination of the filibuster

Structural and media changes hardened partisan identity and reduced cross-party cooperation.

The response to Hurricane Katrina (2005) became politically significant because it:

• exposed weaknesses in disaster preparedness and raised questions about race and poverty
• led to a constitutional amendment on federalism
• was widely praised as a model of coordination
• prompted the creation of FEMA

The slow, troubled federal response damaged the Bush administration and spotlighted inequality in New Orleans.

A historian argues that the Columbian Exchange 'remade the biology of the planet.' Which evidence best supports this claim?

• The transfer of American crops like potatoes and maize triggered population growth in Europe, Africa, and Asia
• European monarchs competed for Atlantic colonies
• the encomienda system spread across Spanish America
• Native populations in the Southwest adopted adobe architecture

Calorie-rich American staples reshaped diets and demographics on three other continents, a biological transformation.

The differences between Spanish, French, and English colonization are best explained by:

• the differing goals (extraction and conversion, trade, and settlement) and the societies each power encountered
• climate alone
• the year each nation began exploring
• the size of each nation's navy

Spain conquered dense empires for labor and silver; France built trade networks; England planted settler farms, each shaping distinct colonial societies.

Which development most directly resulted from Native depopulation in Spanish America?

• the expansion of the transatlantic slave trade to replace lost labor
• the abandonment of silver mining
• the end of the encomienda
• the collapse of the casta system

As Native laborers died, Spanish and later Portuguese colonizers imported enslaved Africans in growing numbers.

A map showing Cahokia, Chaco Canyon, and Iroquois longhouse villages would best illustrate that pre-contact North America:

• contained diverse, environmentally adapted, and sometimes complex societies
• was sparsely and uniformly populated
• was politically unified
• lacked agriculture

These sites show a range of sedentary, sometimes large and hierarchical, societies shaped by local resources.

The Spanish debate between Las Casas and Sepulveda over the treatment of Native peoples reflected:

• a genuine controversy within Spain about the morality and legality of conquest
• universal Spanish agreement that conquest was just
• a dispute over trade routes
• opposition to Catholicism

The Valladolid debate showed that conquest and coerced labor were contested on moral and religious grounds.

Which best explains why the Pueblo Revolt (1680) ultimately failed to permanently expel the Spanish?

• Spain reconquered the region within about a decade, and Pueblo unity fractered afterward
• the revolt never gained wide participation
• the Spanish had already left voluntarily
• the French intervened on Spain's behalf

Despite temporary success, internal divisions and Spanish reconquest by the 1690s restored colonial rule (though with some concessions).

The introduction of the horse to the Great Plains after Spanish contact led most directly to:

• a transformation of Plains cultures toward mounted bison hunting and greater mobility
• the immediate collapse of Plains societies
• permanent farming villages on the Plains
• alliance with the Spanish crown

Horses, escaped or traded from Spanish herds, reshaped Plains economies and warfare over the following century.

Which statement about African societies involved in the early Atlantic slave trade is most accurate?

• African states and merchants often controlled the supply of captives sold to Europeans on the coast
• Europeans conducted slave raids deep in the interior from the start
• the trade was minor before 1700
• enslaved people were exclusively war captives from a single kingdom

For much of the trade, African polities and traders supplied captives, and Europeans bought them at coastal forts.

A document praising the 'civilizing' work of Spanish missions would most likely omit:

• the coercion, disease, and cultural destruction Native peoples experienced in the mission system
• the role of Catholic priests
• the location of missions
• the crops grown at missions

Pro-mission accounts typically minimized forced labor, mortality, and the suppression of Native religion.

The encomienda and later the hacienda system in Spanish America both:

• organized large-scale agricultural and mining production around coerced or dependent Native labor
• gave Native communities self-government
• promoted small independent farms
• relied entirely on European wage workers

Both concentrated land and labor under Spanish elites, with Native workers bound by tribute, debt, or force.

Which best supports the argument that pre-Columbian North America was not a 'wilderness'?

• Native peoples actively managed landscapes through controlled burning and agriculture
• the continent had no human inhabitants before 1492
• all Native peoples lived in cities
• Europeans found the land already cleared for plantations

Fire management, field clearing, and crop cultivation show extensive human shaping of the environment.

The casta system's emphasis on ancestry most directly foreshadowed:

• later race-based social hierarchies in the Americas
• the abolition of slavery
• religious toleration
• representative government

Ranking people by descent and 'blood' established a template for racial stratification across colonial societies.

Which comparison between the Aztec and Inca empires and European kingdoms is most defensible?

• Both had centralized states, tribute systems, monumental architecture, and social hierarchy
• Both lacked writing or record-keeping of any kind
• Both were nomadic
• Neither practiced agriculture

The Mexica and Inca states were complex, organized polities comparable in scale to contemporary European kingdoms.

The primary reason Portugal, then Spain, pioneered Atlantic exploration was:

• their Atlantic coastlines, navigational advances, and desire to bypass Italian and Muslim control of Asian trade
• a shortage of farmland at home
• the discovery of gold in Iberia
• a papal command to colonize the Americas

Iberian geography, the caravel and improved navigation, and the wish to reach Asian spices directly drove early voyages.

The 'starving time' in early Jamestown (1609-10) is best explained by:

• poor planning, reliance on finding gold rather than farming, and conflict with the Powhatan
• a hurricane that destroyed the colony
• an English government decision to abandon it
• a slave revolt

Colonists came seeking quick riches, failed to grow enough food, and warfare cut them off from Native supplies.

Which best explains the rapid growth of slavery in the Chesapeake after about 1680?

• falling numbers of English indentured servants, Bacon's Rebellion's warning about landless freedmen, and cheaper access to enslaved Africans
• a Supreme Court decision
• a royal decree abolishing indentured servitude
• the exhaustion of tobacco soil

Economic and social pressures made permanent, racially defined slavery attractive to planters.

The New England town meeting and the Virginia House of Burgesses both show that:

• English colonists carried traditions of representative self-government to America
• the colonies were fully democratic
• the crown directly governed all colonies
• colonial assemblies had no real power

Even under imperial authority, colonists developed elected local and provincial institutions.

Puritan 'declension' anxiety and the Halfway Covenant (1662) reflected:

• concern that religious commitment was weakening across generations
• a plan to convert Native peoples
• a dispute over tobacco exports
• opposition to the English monarchy

Ministers created the Halfway Covenant to keep declining church membership from collapsing.

The Navigation Acts affected the colonies by:

• stimulating colonial shipbuilding and a protected market while also encouraging smuggling
• immediately impoverishing all colonists
• ending all colonial trade
• forcing colonists to grow only food crops

The acts had mixed effects: some colonial industries benefited, but the restrictions bred evasion and resentment.

Which best describes the relationship between the First Great Awakening and colonial unity?

• It created shared religious experiences and print culture that crossed colonial boundaries
• It divided the colonies permanently along ethnic lines
• It strengthened loyalty to the Church of England
• It had no effect beyond New England

Itinerant preachers, revival meetings, and printed sermons linked colonists across regions.

The 'middle ground' in the Great Lakes region refers to:

• a zone where Native peoples and Europeans (especially the French) accommodated one another through trade and diplomacy
• a neutral area with no human presence
• the border between New England and New France
• a compromise over slavery

Historian Richard White described a period of mutual adjustment before Anglo-American settlement overwhelmed it.

Compared with sugar colonies in the Caribbean, the mainland southern colonies had:

• a lower enslaved death rate and, over time, natural population increase among the enslaved
• no enslaved people
• a smaller share of the economy devoted to export crops
• enslaved workers who were mostly European

Less lethal conditions than sugar islands meant the mainland enslaved population grew through births as well as imports.

Which factor best explains why the Middle Colonies became the most ethnically and religiously diverse?

• proprietors like William Penn actively recruited settlers and guaranteed religious toleration
• the climate barred plantation agriculture
• the crown assigned each colony a different nationality
• they had no Native inhabitants

Tolerant policies and fertile land drew Quakers, Germans, Scots-Irish, Dutch, and others.

The phrase 'salutary neglect' describes British policy before 1763 in which:

• Britain loosely enforced trade laws, allowing the colonies wide self-government
• Britain taxed the colonies heavily
• colonial assemblies were dissolved
• the colonies were governed directly from London

Lax enforcement let colonial political and economic autonomy develop, which later British tightening disrupted.

Which best explains the different labor systems of New England versus the Chesapeake?

• climate and soil favored small mixed farms in New England but labor-intensive cash crops in the Chesapeake
• New England banned all agriculture
• the Chesapeake had no rivers for transport
• New England colonists were wealthier

Environmental conditions shaped whether family labor or large coerced-labor plantations dominated.

An enslaved person's testimony about the Middle Passage would most directly challenge which contemporary European claim?

• that the slave trade was a benign commercial enterprise
• that ships crossed the Atlantic
• that sugar was grown in the Caribbean
• that Africa had kingdoms

First-person accounts of terror, death, and brutality contradict sanitized defenses of the trade.

Which best explains why the French and Indian War led to imperial conflict with the colonies?

• Britain's war debt and new western territory prompted taxes and the Proclamation of 1763, which colonists resented
• the colonies lost the war
• France conquered the thirteen colonies
• the war ended salutary neglect by colonial choice

Victory brought debt and administrative burdens that Britain tried to shift onto colonists, sparking resistance.

The colonial argument against the Stamp Act rested on the distinction between:

• 'internal' taxes for revenue and 'external' duties to regulate trade
• direct and indirect elections
• common law and statute law
• federal and state authority

Colonists claimed Parliament could regulate trade but not impose internal revenue taxes without colonial representation.

The Boston Tea Party (1773) provoked the Coercive (Intolerable) Acts, which colonists saw as proof that:

• Britain would punish an entire colony and strip self-government to enforce its will
• Parliament was willing to compromise
• the tea tax had been repealed
• the colonies had no allies

Closing Boston's port and altering the Massachusetts charter radicalized moderate colonists and unified the colonies.

Which most limited the effectiveness of the Articles of Confederation government?

• it could not tax, and amendments required unanimous consent
• it had no legislature
• states were not represented
• it lasted only one year

No taxing power and a near-impossible amendment process left the confederation weak and unreformable.

The Northwest Ordinance (1787) is considered a major success of the Confederation because it:

• created an orderly process for territories to become equal states and banned slavery in the Northwest Territory
• gave the federal government power to tax
• established the Supreme Court
• ended Shays's Rebellion

It set a durable model for admitting new states and restricted slavery north of the Ohio River.

The Federalist Papers were written primarily to:

• persuade New York to ratify the Constitution by answering Anti-Federalist objections
• amend the Articles of Confederation
• argue for a bill of rights
• oppose the Constitution

Hamilton, Madison, and Jay defended the proposed government, addressing fears about tyranny and faction.

Madison's argument in Federalist No. 10 held that a large republic would:

• control the effects of faction by multiplying interests so no single one could dominate
• eliminate all political disagreement
• require a king to keep order
• be impossible to govern

He argued that an extended republic dilutes majority factions, protecting minority rights and stability.

The emergence of the Federalist and Democratic-Republican parties in the 1790s was driven most by disagreements over:

• Hamilton's financial program, federal power, and foreign policy toward Britain and France
• the location of the capital only
• whether to have elections
• slavery in the territories

Debates over the bank, assumption, the tariff, and the French Revolution split Washington's cabinet and the nation.

The Alien and Sedition Acts (1798) are significant because they:

• criminalized criticism of the government and prompted the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions asserting states' rights
• were struck down by the Supreme Court
• applied only to foreign diplomats
• were repealed by Washington

Federalist attempts to silence opposition raised enduring questions about civil liberties and federal-state power.

Which best explains Washington's Proclamation of Neutrality (1793)?

• the new nation was militarily and economically too weak to be drawn into the war between Britain and France
• the U.S. supported the British monarchy
• the 1778 alliance with France had been formally ended
• France had declared war on the U.S.

Washington judged that involvement would be ruinous, despite the treaty of alliance with France.

Republican motherhood held that women should:

• be educated so they could raise virtuous, informed citizens
• have the right to vote
• hold public office
• control family property independently

The ideology expanded arguments for female education while keeping women's public role indirect.

The compromise over the slave trade in the Constitution:

• barred Congress from prohibiting the importation of enslaved people until 1808
• abolished slavery gradually
• counted enslaved people fully for representation
• gave enslaved people the vote

To secure southern support, the framers postponed any federal ban on the Atlantic slave trade for 20 years.

Which best captures the significance of the peaceful transfer of power in 1801 (the 'Revolution of 1800')?

• an incumbent party accepted electoral defeat and handed power to the opposition without violence
• the Federalists refused to leave office
• the election was decided by the Supreme Court
• Jefferson seized power by force

The orderly handoff from Adams to Jefferson set a precedent for legitimate opposition and transfer of power.

The Louisiana Purchase (1803) created a constitutional dilemma for Jefferson because:

• strict construction of the Constitution did not clearly authorize the president to acquire territory
• the Senate opposed expansion
• France demanded the U.S. abolish slavery
• the land already belonged to Spain by treaty

Jefferson, a strict constructionist, stretched his interpretation to seize an opportunity he considered vital.

Which best explains the expansion of white male suffrage between 1800 and 1840?

• states dropped property requirements amid a more democratic political culture
• a constitutional amendment mandated it
• the Supreme Court ordered it
• the federal government paid states to expand the vote

'Jacksonian democracy' saw states remove property qualifications for white men, though women and most Black men remained excluded.

Jackson's response to Worcester v. Georgia (1832) demonstrated:

• the limits of judicial power when the executive refuses to enforce a ruling
• that the Court could not hear Native cases
• that Congress supported the Cherokee
• that Georgia obeyed federal law

Despite the Court's ruling for the Cherokee, removal proceeded, showing enforcement depends on the executive.

The Market Revolution's effect on the North versus the South was to:

• industrialize and urbanize the North while the South committed further to plantation agriculture and slavery
• industrialize both regions equally
• deindustrialize the North
• end slavery in the South

Diverging economies deepened sectional differences in labor, society, and politics.

Which reform movement most directly grew out of the Second Great Awakening's belief in human perfectibility?

• a wide range including temperance, abolition, and asylum reform
• the movement for lower tariffs
• the push for territorial expansion
• the campaign for a national bank

Revivalist optimism about improving individuals and society fueled interlocking moral reforms.

The Nullification Crisis anticipated the Civil War because it raised the question of:

• whether a state could defy federal law and, implicitly, whether it could leave the Union
• how to fund internal improvements
• the future of the national bank
• tariff rates on manufactured goods only

Calhoun's doctrine of state sovereignty foreshadowed secessionist arguments.

Which best explains why abolitionism remained a minority movement in the antebellum North?

• many white northerners held racist views or feared disunion and economic disruption
• the movement had no printing presses
• slavery did not exist anywhere in the country
• the federal government banned abolitionist speech nationwide

Free-soil opposition to slavery's expansion was far more common than support for immediate, universal abolition.

The 'cult of domesticity' (separate spheres) held that middle-class women's proper role was:

• managing the home and moral life of the family, apart from the male world of work and politics
• competing with men in business
• leading political parties
• working in factories

This ideal both constrained women and gave some a platform for moral reform activism.

Manifest Destiny intensified sectional conflict primarily because:

• each new territory forced the question of whether slavery would expand into it
• it required a larger navy
• it reduced tariff revenue
• it depended on European immigration

Expansion repeatedly reopened the slavery question, as with Texas annexation and the Mexican Cession.

The Missouri Compromise 'balance' worked for a generation because it:

• paired admissions of slave and free states and drew a geographic line for future territories
• abolished slavery in the border states
• gave the federal government power over slavery everywhere
• was enforced by the army

Until 1850, the compromise kept a rough Senate balance and a settled expectation about the Louisiana Territory.

The 'gag rule' controversy in Congress showed that:

• the slavery question was increasingly difficult to keep off the national agenda
• abolitionists controlled the House
• the South had abandoned slavery
• petitions were unconstitutional

Attempts to suppress antislavery petitions drew more attention to slavery and to civil-liberties concerns.

Which best explains the appeal of the Whig Party in the 1830s-40s?

• support for active government promotion of economic development (the American System)
• opposition to all banks
• advocacy for immediate abolition
• a program of territorial expansion

Whigs favored a national bank, protective tariffs, and internal improvements to spur growth.

Irish immigration in the 1840s-50s produced a nativist backlash chiefly because of:

• anti-Catholic prejudice and competition for jobs and housing
• fear of Irish military power
• the Irish refusal to work
• a labor shortage that made immigrants unnecessary

The Know-Nothing movement channeled hostility toward Catholic immigrants.

The internal slave trade after 1808 (the ban on imports) meant that:

• enslaved people were forcibly moved from the Upper South to the cotton frontier of the Deep South
• slavery declined for lack of new laborers
• the enslaved population fell sharply
• the Upper South freed most enslaved people

A brutal domestic trade sent roughly a million people south and west, tearing families apart.

The Wilmot Proviso (1846), though never enacted, was significant because it:

• proposed banning slavery in any territory gained from Mexico, sharpening sectional lines in Congress
• ended the Mexican-American War
• admitted California as a free state
• repealed the Missouri Compromise

Its repeated introduction forced northern and southern representatives into openly sectional voting blocs.

Popular sovereignty as a solution to slavery in the territories failed largely because:

• it was ambiguous about when settlers could decide, producing violence as in 'Bleeding Kansas'
• the Supreme Court banned it
• no settlers moved to the territories
• Congress refused to organize any territories

Rival pro- and antislavery settlers rushed to Kansas, and the vague rules led to fraud and armed conflict.

Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) affected politics by:

• dramatizing slavery's cruelty for a mass northern audience and hardening antislavery opinion
• providing a legal argument against slavery
• persuading the South to end slavery
• causing the Dred Scott decision

Stowe's bestselling novel, spurred by the Fugitive Slave Act, shifted northern public sentiment.

The Dred Scott decision (1857) damaged the Union because it:

• denied Black citizenship and struck down federal power to limit slavery in territories, energizing Republicans and enraging the North
• settled the slavery question permanently
• freed all enslaved people who had lived on free soil
• was ignored by all sides

By constitutionalizing slavery's expansion, the ruling made compromise harder and boosted the antislavery Republican Party.

Lincoln's position in 1860 was that slavery:

• should not be allowed to expand into the territories, but he would not interfere with it in existing states
• should be abolished immediately everywhere
• was protected by the Constitution in the territories
• should be decided by the Supreme Court

His free-soil stance still alarmed the South enough to trigger secession after his election.

Which best explains why the border states were crucial to Union strategy?

• their manpower, industry, and strategic geography could tip the war, so Lincoln avoided early abolition to keep them loyal
• they controlled the Mississippi's mouth
• they had the largest enslaved populations
• they had voted for secession

Keeping Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri, and Delaware shaped Lincoln's cautious early approach to emancipation.

The Emancipation Proclamation changed the war by:

• making it a war against slavery, discouraging European recognition of the Confederacy, and allowing Black enlistment
• freeing enslaved people in the border states
• ending the war immediately
• applying only to Washington, D.C.

It reframed Union war aims and added nearly 200,000 Black soldiers and sailors to Union forces.

Presidential (Lincoln/Johnson) Reconstruction and Congressional (Radical) Reconstruction differed most over:

• how strictly to require southern change and how far to protect the rights of freedpeople
• whether the war had been won
• whether to readmit the southern states at all
• the role of the Supreme Court

Congress rejected Johnson's leniency and imposed military oversight and civil-rights guarantees.

The 14th Amendment's long-term importance lies in its:

• guarantees of citizenship, due process, and equal protection, later applied to many rights against the states
• provision ending the draft
• creation of the income tax
• limit on presidential terms

Its clauses became the basis for 20th-century civil-rights and civil-liberties expansion.

Sharecropping emerged after the Civil War as a compromise that:

• gave freedpeople some autonomy over their labor while keeping them landless and often in debt
• restored slavery in all but name legally
• gave every freed family 40 acres
• made freedpeople wage laborers on fixed salaries

Landowners lacked cash and freedpeople rejected gang labor, producing a tenancy system that trapped many in poverty.

White southern resistance to Reconstruction included all of the following EXCEPT:

• broad acceptance of Black officeholding and voting
• the Ku Klux Klan's campaign of terror
• 'Black Codes' restricting freedpeople's rights
• economic coercion of Black voters and workers

Violence, legal restriction, and intimidation, not acceptance, characterized 'Redeemer' resistance.

The end of Reconstruction is best explained by a combination of:

• northern political fatigue, economic depression, Supreme Court narrowing of the amendments, and southern violence
• a constitutional amendment repealing the 14th Amendment
• a foreign war
• the death of Ulysses S. Grant

Multiple pressures led the federal government to abandon enforcement after the Compromise of 1877.

The Slaughterhouse Cases (1873) and United States v. Cruikshank (1876) weakened Reconstruction by:

• narrowly interpreting the 14th Amendment and limiting federal power to protect Black citizens from private violence
• upholding the Black Codes
• declaring the 15th Amendment void
• banning the Freedmen's Bureau

The Supreme Court restricted the reach of the new amendments, leaving enforcement largely to hostile states.

Which is the strongest evidence that Reconstruction achieved real, if temporary, change?

• the election of about 2,000 Black officeholders, including members of Congress, during the era
• the permanent end of racial violence
• full economic equality for freedpeople
• the abolition of the Democratic Party in the South

Black political participation and officeholding, though later suppressed, marked a genuine transformation.

Vertical integration (Carnegie) and horizontal integration (Rockefeller) both aimed to:

• reduce competition and control costs to maximize profit and market power
• raise workers' wages
• increase government regulation
• promote small business

Each strategy consolidated control, one over the supply chain, the other over a single stage of an industry.

Which best explains the weakness of early federal regulation like the Sherman Antitrust Act (1890)?

• vague language and hostile courts led it to be used more against labor unions than against trusts
• it was never signed into law
• it applied only to railroads
• it was repealed within a year

Courts narrowly construed the act, and it was often turned against strikes rather than corporate combinations.

The Gilded Age labor movement's limited success is best attributed to:

• employer power, government hostility, ethnic divisions among workers, and public fear of radicalism
• a lack of any strikes
• full employment that made unions unnecessary
• federal laws guaranteeing collective bargaining

Injunctions, troops, blacklists, and internal divisions repeatedly defeated organized labor.

Political machines like Tammany Hall persisted because they:

• provided services and jobs to immigrants and the poor in exchange for votes
• were supported by reformers
• operated only in rural areas
• received federal funding

Machines filled gaps in social welfare, trading practical help for political loyalty, while skimming graft.

The 'New South' vision promoted by boosters like Henry Grady:

• largely failed to industrialize the region, which stayed poor, rural, and racially stratified
• successfully made the South the nation's industrial leader
• ended sharecropping
• was rejected by all southern politicians

Despite some mills and railroads, the South remained economically dependent on agriculture and cheap labor.

Southern disenfranchisement of Black voters after 1890 was accomplished through:

• poll taxes, literacy tests, and grandfather clauses that evaded the 15th Amendment's plain language
• a constitutional amendment repealing the 15th Amendment
• federal legislation
• voluntary agreements with civil rights groups

'Race-neutral' devices with racist intent and application stripped nearly all Black men of the vote.

The Populist movement's core grievance was that:

• farmers were squeezed by high railroad rates, tight credit, falling crop prices, and a government serving business
• tariffs were too low
• there were too many immigrants in cities
• the currency had too much silver in it

Agrarian distress drove demands for inflation (free silver), regulation, and more democratic government.

Which best explains why Populism declined after 1896?

• Bryan's defeat, the Democrats' absorption of free silver, and returning prosperity took the momentum out of the movement
• the Supreme Court outlawed third parties
• farmers stopped voting
• the movement achieved all its goals

Fusion with the Democrats and better economic conditions dissolved the independent Populist base.

Jane Addams's Hull House represented which response to Gilded Age urban problems?

• the settlement house movement, providing services and reform advocacy in immigrant neighborhoods
• laissez-faire indifference
• machine politics
• Social Darwinism

Settlement workers lived among the poor, offering education and childcare and pushing for reform laws.

The transcontinental railroad's completion (1869) most directly:

• accelerated western settlement, the destruction of the bison, and pressure on Plains Native peoples
• ended immigration from Asia
• reduced the power of railroad corporations
• made farming unprofitable

Rail access opened the West to settlers and industry while devastating Native economies and lands.

The Dawes Severalty Act (1887) aimed to:

• break up tribal landholding and assimilate Native individuals into American society as farmers
• restore land to Native nations
• create large reservations
• fund Native-run schools

By allotting land to individuals and selling the 'surplus,' it stripped tribes of most of their remaining land.

Ida B. Wells's anti-lynching campaign used which method most effectively?

• investigative journalism documenting that lynchings were terror, not responses to crime
• lawsuits in federal court
• lobbying Congress for an anti-lynching law that passed
• organizing armed self-defense militias

Her data-driven reporting exposed the false 'protection of white women' justification for racial terror.

The difference between Theodore Roosevelt's 'New Nationalism' and Woodrow Wilson's 'New Freedom' was mainly:

• whether to accept large corporations under strong regulation or to break them up to restore competition
• whether women should vote
• whether the U.S. should have colonies
• whether to enter World War I

Roosevelt would regulate 'good' trusts; Wilson initially favored dismantling monopoly to free small business.

Which best explains U.S. imperialism around 1900?

• a mix of economic interest in markets, strategic naval thinking (Mahan), missionary and racial ideology, and great-power competition
• a single decision by Congress to build an empire
• pressure from Native American nations
• a defensive response to invasion

Multiple motives converged in the 1890s to push overseas expansion.

The debate over annexing the Philippines centered on:

• whether acquiring a distant colony of non-citizens betrayed American principles of self-government
• the cost of the navy
• tariffs on sugar
• immigration quotas

Anti-imperialists argued that ruling a subject people contradicted the Declaration of Independence.

Progressive reformers disagreed among themselves about:

• how far government should go, whether to include Black Americans, and whether to break up or regulate big business
• whether corruption existed
• whether cities had problems
• whether to use the vote

Progressivism was a broad, sometimes contradictory movement spanning trust-busting, prohibition, eugenics, and social justice.

Wilson's stated war aims (the Fourteen Points) emphasized:

• self-determination, open diplomacy, freedom of the seas, and a League of Nations
• territorial gains for the U.S.
• heavy reparations on Germany
• the spread of communism

Wilson sought a liberal peace, though the Versailles Treaty only partly reflected his vision.

The First Red Scare (1919-20) is best understood as:

• a wave of anti-radical, anti-immigrant fear following the Russian Revolution, labor unrest, and bombings
• a response to a communist takeover of a U.S. city
• a hoax with no real events behind it
• a movement led by labor unions

Strikes, the Bolshevik example, and terror bombings prompted the Palmer Raids and deportations.

The Great Migration of African Americans to northern cities during and after World War I was driven by:

• wartime job openings, escape from Jim Crow and lynching, and the boll weevil's damage to southern cotton
• a federal resettlement program
• the end of segregation in the North
• free land grants in the North

Push factors (racism, violence, agricultural decline) and pull factors (industrial jobs) fueled the movement.

The 1920s economy contained warning signs of the coming Depression, including:

• uneven income distribution, farm distress, weak banks, and speculation on margin
• falling stock prices throughout the decade
• high tariffs that had been repealed
• a shrinking industrial base

Structural weaknesses underlay the apparent prosperity of the 'Roaring Twenties'.

Hoover's response to the Depression is best described as:

• favoring voluntary action and limited federal intervention, then modest measures like the RFC, which proved insufficient
• doing absolutely nothing
• launching a program larger than the New Deal
• nationalizing the banks

Hoover rejected direct relief early on; his later steps were too small and late to reverse the collapse.

The New Deal's lasting legacy is best seen in:

• a permanently larger federal role in the economy and a basic social safety net (Social Security, bank insurance, labor rights)
• the complete socialization of industry
• the elimination of unemployment
• a balanced federal budget

Even after recovery, institutions like the SEC, FDIC, and Social Security reshaped American governance.

Critics on the left (Huey Long, Francis Townsend) attacked the New Deal for:

• not redistributing wealth or aiding the elderly and poor aggressively enough
• being socialist
• spending too much money
• helping big business too much only

Long's 'Share Our Wealth' and Townsend's pension plan pushed FDR toward the more ambitious Second New Deal.

The Supreme Court's clash with FDR (1935-37) and the 'court-packing' plan centered on:

• the Court striking down New Deal laws as exceeding federal power, and FDR's failed attempt to add justices
• the Court's support for every New Deal program
• a dispute over judicial salaries
• the number of federal courts

After losing the packing fight politically, FDR still saw the Court shift to uphold New Deal measures ('the switch in time').

World War II ended the Depression primarily by:

• massive government deficit spending on war production, which created full employment
• cutting taxes
• reducing the size of government
• ending the New Deal programs

War mobilization achieved the demand-driven recovery that New Deal spending had only partly delivered.

The wartime experience of African Americans and the 'Double V' campaign:

• linked victory abroad to victory over racism at home, laying groundwork for the postwar civil rights movement
• had no lasting effect
• ended segregation during the war
• was opposed by the NAACP

Wartime service and rhetoric about freedom sharpened demands for equality and organizing capacity.

The origins of the Cold War are best explained by:

• mutual suspicion, incompatible ideologies and security aims, and disputes over Eastern Europe and Germany after 1945
• a single aggressive act by one side
• a personal feud between Truman and Stalin
• economic competition over oil only

Structural distrust and clashing visions for the postwar order, especially in Europe, drove the rivalry.

NSC-68 (1950) recommended:

• a large, permanent military buildup to counter the Soviet Union globally
• a return to isolationism
• negotiations to end the Cold War
• cutting the defense budget

The document militarized containment and set the pattern for high Cold War defense spending.

McCarthyism damaged American politics by:

• using unsubstantiated accusations of disloyalty to intimidate opponents and chill dissent
• exposing a proven communist takeover of the State Department
• strengthening civil liberties
• uniting the two parties

Sensational, evidence-thin charges ruined careers and made criticism of Cold War policy risky.

The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the sit-ins differed from earlier civil rights strategy by emphasizing:

• mass, direct, nonviolent action rather than primarily courtroom litigation
• armed self-defense
• emigration from the U.S.
• working only through the Republican Party

Grassroots protest complemented the NAACP's legal approach and pressured for federal action.

Which best explains the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965?

• sustained protest and televised violence created public and congressional support, which LBJ mobilized after Kennedy's death
• a Supreme Court order requiring the laws
• a constitutional amendment
• southern Democrats' change of heart

Birmingham, the March on Washington, and Selma, plus Johnson's leadership, overcame a filibuster.

The shift from 'civil rights' to 'Black Power' in the mid-1960s reflected:

• frustration with the slow pace of change, persistent northern inequality, and a desire for self-determination and pride
• the achievement of full equality
• rejection of voting
• a decline in activism

Urban poverty, police violence, and unfulfilled promises pushed some activists toward separatism and self-defense.

The Vietnam War undermined the Great Society because it:

• diverted funding and political capital and split the Democratic coalition
• was strongly supported by antiwar liberals
• reduced the federal deficit
• ended in a quick U.S. victory

'Guns and butter' strained the budget, and the war fractured Johnson's base.

The credibility gap of the late 1960s referred to:

• the growing distance between official government statements about Vietnam and events on the ground
• a shortage of qualified soldiers
• disagreement between the CIA and FBI
• a budget shortfall

Repeated optimistic claims contradicted by news coverage eroded public trust in government.

Which best describes the environmental movement that emerged around 1970?

• a broad push, spurred by works like Silent Spring, that produced the EPA and major clean-air and water laws
• a fringe movement with no legislative results
• opposition to all industry
• a purely local effort with no federal role

Earth Day (1970), the EPA, and landmark statutes marked a bipartisan surge of environmental regulation.

The Warren Court's decisions (Miranda, Gideon, Engel v. Vitale) shared a focus on:

• expanding individual rights and applying Bill of Rights protections against the states
• limiting federal power
• protecting property rights of corporations
• restricting free speech

The Court broadened defendants' rights, separation of church and state, and other civil liberties.

Postwar suburbanization deepened racial inequality because:

• federal mortgage policy and private covenants excluded Black families, concentrating them in underfunded urban areas
• suburbs were legally reserved for veterans of any race
• cities banned white residents
• the GI Bill applied only to Black veterans

Redlining and discrimination in FHA/VA lending built a lasting wealth and opportunity gap.

The rise of the New Right in the 1970s-80s combined:

• economic conservatives, anti-communist hawks, and religious/social conservatives into a single coalition
• labor unions and civil rights groups
• isolationists and free-traders only
• the remnants of the New Deal coalition

Reagan's Republican Party fused free-market, hawkish, and evangelical constituencies.

Reagan's economic record is debated because:

• growth and lower inflation coincided with rising deficits and inequality, and causation is contested
• the economy did not grow at all
• inflation increased sharply
• the federal debt was eliminated

Supporters cite recovery; critics cite deficits, reduced social spending, and widening income gaps.

The end of the Cold War is best explained by:

• Soviet economic stagnation, Gorbachev's reforms, Eastern European movements, and sustained Western pressure
• a single U.S. military victory
• a treaty signed in 1972
• the collapse of NATO

Internal Soviet weakness and reform, popular uprisings, and decades of containment together ended the rivalry.

Globalization since the 1990s has produced which mixed result in the U.S.?

• cheaper consumer goods and growth in some sectors alongside manufacturing job losses and regional decline
• uniform prosperity
• complete economic isolation
• the end of international trade agreements

Trade and technology raised aggregate output but disrupted industrial communities, fueling political backlash.

The 2008 financial crisis prompted which policy responses?

• bank bailouts (TARP), a large stimulus, and new financial regulation (Dodd-Frank)
• a balanced-budget amendment
• the abolition of the Federal Reserve
• a return to the gold standard

Government intervention stabilized the financial system and cushioned the recession, while raising debate about moral hazard.

Which best explains rising political polarization since the 1990s?

• partisan media, ideological sorting of the parties, gerrymandering, and declining cross-party cooperation
• an increase in third parties
• the growth of split-ticket voting
• a decline in political participation

Multiple reinforcing trends made the two parties more internally uniform and mutually hostile.

The post-9/11 'war on terror' raised constitutional questions about:

• the balance between security and civil liberties, executive war powers, and the treatment of detainees
• the tariff power
• states' rights to secede
• the size of the Supreme Court

Surveillance, indefinite detention, and enhanced interrogation prompted legal and political challenges.

The Affordable Care Act's political trajectory shows:

• how a major domestic reform can pass on party lines and then face sustained repeal efforts and court challenges
• that health policy is nonpartisan
• that the Supreme Court struck it down entirely
• that it was quickly repealed

The ACA survived multiple challenges but remained a defining partisan issue.

Immigration since 1965 has:

• substantially increased and diversified the U.S. population, with most immigrants from Latin America and Asia
• fallen to record lows
• come mainly from Western Europe
• been entirely undocumented

Ending national-origin quotas reshaped the demographic makeup of immigration and the country.

A key continuity across U.S. history visible in the contemporary era is:

• ongoing debate over the proper size and role of the federal government
• the absence of political parties
• isolation from world affairs
• agreement on immigration policy

From Hamilton vs. Jefferson to the present, Americans have argued over federal power, taxation, and regulation.

The 2000 and 2016 elections both illustrate that:

• a candidate can win the presidency while losing the national popular vote due to the Electoral College
• the popular vote determines the winner
• the House always decides close elections
• recounts always change the result

The Electoral College can diverge from the popular vote, a recurring source of controversy.

Deindustrialization in the Rust Belt from the 1970s on contributed to:

• population loss, fiscal strain in cities, and shifts in national politics
• a manufacturing boom
• the growth of the Northeast's population
• lower national inequality

Factory closures reshaped regional economies and eventually political alignments.