Which of the following statements about the nation’s aging population is true?
A) On January 1, 2011, one-fifth of the nation’s population was over sixty-five.
B) As the nation ages, the use of the nation’s wealth has begun to shift from health care
and pensions to more economically productive activities.
C) Social Security will always remain solvent, but the monthly payments may drop as
the nation ages.
D) The pressure on Congress from the elderly population to increase old age benefits
has endangered the Social Security Trust Fund.
What did William Graham Sumner mean when he said “It’s root, hog, or die”?
A) The basis of any healthy economy is agriculture.
B) It’s best to live and let live.
C) The key to survival and a healthy society is self-reliance.
D) Only faith in God assures survival of the fittest.
Herbert Hoover’s overwhelming victory in 1928 __________.
A) concealed a major political realignment in American cities
B) relied on the Republican dominance in the South
C) relied on voter apathy in the countryside
D) was compounded by the fact that Al Smith did even worse than Davis in 1924
In their greatest engagement of the war in September 1918, despite the heavy loss of
120,000 casualties, American troops won the Battle of __________.
A) Belleau Wood
B) Chateau-Thierry
C) Verdun
D) Argonne Forest
How can the “don”t ask don”t tell” policy of the Clinton administration best be
described?
A) as a political compromise that improved the situation for gays in the military
B) as a political defeat that made life in the military for gays and lesbians harder
C) as a conservative triumph that prevented the military from having to deal with
homosexuality
D) as an attempt to discourage women in the workplace from filing public complaints
about sexual harassment.
James Madison responded to the Alien and Sedition Acts by __________.
A) condemning them because they assumed that elected officials were the masters
rather than the servants of the people
B) vigorously prosecuting alien critics of the government
C) intentionally violating the Sedition Act to test its constitutionality before the
Supreme Court
D) organizing Republicans in Congress to block any Federalist measures until these acts
were repealed
“The American continents, by the free and independent condition which they have
assumed and maintain, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future
colonization by any European powers.” The source of this quote is which of the
following?
A) the Embargo Act
B) the Transcontinental Treaty
C) Washington’s Neutrality Proclamation
D) the Monroe Doctrine
What was family life like for typical southern planters in the early nineteenth century?
A) Plantation wives were supposed to be “ladies” with few responsibilities.
B) Husbands and wives had rigidly defined separate spheres.
C) Slaveholding families were unlike northern families with similar status.
D) Children (black and white) were raised by free blacks.
How did the Revolution affect attitudes toward the education of women?
A) The British tried to undermine the patriots by encouraging female education.
B) Women were told their place was in the home, not in schools.
C) The idea of female education began to be accepted as important in a republic.
D) Because most states granted women the right to vote, they also encouraged their
education.
One indication of decreasing Soviet-American tensions was a treaty __________.
A) agreeing to submit future conflicts to the United Nations
B) prohibiting the sale of nuclear weapons to non-nuclear nations
C) banning the testing of nuclear weapons in the atmosphere
D) granting “most-favored-nation” trading status to each other
Why did barbed wire destroy the open-range cattle industry?
A) It cost so much to fence an entire ranch.
B) It mangled large numbers of animals.
C) It prevented the free movement of cattle.
D) It was too expensive to maintain.
In the wake of the commission’s assignment of disputed Electoral College votes to
Hayes, __________.
A) Tilden called on Southerners in Congress to march out in protest
B) Northerners celebrated in a premature victory rally in Washington D.C.
C) some veterans in Southern states readied themselves for a march on Washington
D.C.
D) Tilden challenged the Republican rival to a duel, but was refused
Both the “new” immigrants of the 1880s and the “old” Irish immigrants of the 1840s
were mostly which of the following?
A) factory workers
B) peasants
C) children
D) political refugees
Which of the following most accurately describes southern agriculture after the Civil
War?
A) Every adult male ex-slave was given forty acres and a mule.
B) Both output and productivity declined dramatically.
C) “Sharecropping” was outlawed.
D) Tobacco replaced cotton as the most valuable crop.
Who was the New York printer whose trial for seditious libel became one of the most
celebrated tests of freedom of the press in the history of journalism?
A) James Hamilton
B) John Peter Zenger
C) Benjamin Franklin
D) Jacob Leisler
Between 1941 and 1945, spending by the federal government was __________.
A) twice as much as in its entire previous history
B) paid for entirely by a greatly expanded income tax
C) almost exactly the same as New Deal expenditures from 1936 to 1940
D) paid for almost entirely by a national sales tax
According to the text, what can we “learn” from history?
A) the ability to predict the course of human events
B) insight into underlying forces that generate historical change
C) that the past is truly the past and the future is uncertain and unpredictable
D) how to tell when and where a major conflict will arise
American literature immediately following the Civil War is best described as which of
the following?
A) unrealistic, sentimental pandering to middle-class preconceptions
B) philosophic explorations of human nature
C) studies of the complexities of industrial society
D) realistic portrayals of the contemporary world
The Great Compromise settled the issue of representation in Congress by allowing
__________.
A) each state two senators and a number of representatives that depended on its
population
B) the large states to control the Senate and small states to control the House of
Representatives
C) the state legislatures to choose both houses of Congress
D) the voters to elect both houses of Congress
The “new” immigrants from eastern and southern Europe __________.
A) moved west as quickly as possible
B) usually came with some funds in reserve
C) could generally read and write English
D) settled in ethnic neighborhoods in the urban centers
Why did the United States move 50,000 soldiers to the Rio Grande in 1866?
A) The Johnson administration was worried that Mexican Revolution might spill over
to the United States.
B) Confederate rebels had unleashed a torrent of violence on freedmen in the region,
and the Union Army was supposed to quell this uprising.
C) The United States was pressuring France to withdraw from Mexico.
D) The Union Army was trying to block former Confederates from fleeing across the
Mexican border.
What was the American strategy in the Pacific to conquer only strategic islands called?
A) “claim-jumping”
B) the “domino theory”
C) “island hopping”
D) “containment”
Why did Westerners want a war against Britain?
A) They were tired of raids organized from nearby British forts.
B) They worried about the increasing power of thickly settled Canada to the North.
C) They were hoping that fertile lands in Canada would fall into their hands.
D) They knew of the gold deposits in the Minnesota territory and sought to wrest it
from the British.
How did white Southerners react to northern criticisms of slavery?
A) Whites in the “new” South of Mississippi and Alabama (outnumbered by slaves
three to one) feared criticisms of slavery might lead to rebellion.
B) A significant minority of pro-Unionist southerners agreed with the criticisms.
C) Most southerners continued to view slaves as always docile, happy, and childlike.
D) Radical South Carolinians considered any agitation against slavery a tyranny of the
majority.
The demonstrations at Kent State and Jackson State in which six students were killed
were a response to Nixon’s decision to do which of the following?
A) call up the National Guard to serve in Vietnam
B) invade Cambodia to attack North Vietnamese sanctuaries
C) double the number of American ground troops in South Vietnam
D) abolish student draft deferments
Who was the senator who initially organized the legislative program that became the
Compromise of 1850?
A) David Wilmot
B) Daniel Webster
C) Henry Clay
D) John C. Calhoun
The first railroad to begin operating in the United States was the __________ Railroad.
A) Boston and Worcester
B) Charleston-Hamburg
C) Baltimore and Ohio
D) New York and Erie
The consumer revolution of the early nineteenth century __________.
A) encouraged plain and simple living
B) was accompanied by the emulation of aristocratic manners
C) came at a time of economic stagnation and complacency
D) led to the violent rejection of anything that seemed cosmopolitan or luxurious
How did Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X of the Black Muslims urge solving racial
turmoil?
A) by practicing Christian nonviolence
B) by supporting the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Great Society
C) by rejecting white American society
D) by returning to Africa
Which of the following was a result of the 2008″2009 financial crisis?
A) a stock market crash greater than the Great Depression
B) double-digit inflation
C) lack of capital and mass layoffs
D) increased investment in mortgage securities
In the nineteenth century, Congress __________.
A) broke out in sectional rivalries when it came to economic policy
B) refused to debate economic issues
C) justified its extensive economic interventions on grounds of national security
D) demanded considerable economic policy interventions from state governments
A residential apartment building, common in New York in the late 1800s, that was built
on a tiny lot without consideration of proper lighting and ventilation was known as a
__________.
A) settlement house
B) halfway house
C) tenement
D) slum
The United States declared war on Japan after which event?
A) that nation’s capture of Manchuria
B) their rape of Nanjing in mainland China
C) the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor
D) the British defeat at Dunkirk
What strengths do you see in Hamilton’s economic plans, and what problems do you
recognize in them?
Explain the significance of canals in the economy of the early nineteenth century.
How did World War II change American society at home?
How did American society and culture undergo a process of “incorporation” in the late
nineteenth century?
Compare the costs and benefits American colonists derived from England’s mercantile
economic policy.
Discuss the foreign policy initiatives of Richard M. Nixon
How did Americans justify their own adventures in imperialism?
Compare and contrast the strengths of the Union and Confederacy on the eve of the
Civil War.
Explain why the struggle over taxes between colonists and Parliament revealed deeper
political differences.
Explain the significance of religion in the formation of the New England colonies.
Discuss the impact of religion on the development of New England’s colonies.
How did immigration in the United States change after 1965 and why?
How did the federal government infringe on citizens’ civil liberties during World War I?
Did the United States completely isolate itself from foreign affairs in the
1920s? Explain.
Identify the different causes for the collapse of authoritarian regimes in Eastern Europe
and the Soviet Union.
Explain the significance of “Custer’s Last Stand.”
How did the land ordinances under the Articles of Confederation shape the nation’s
future?
How did Henry Ford change not only Americans’ transportation but also society?
Assess Northern white attitudes toward the process of Reconstruction.
Why did Booker T. Washington propose a compromise at the Atlanta Exposition in
1896?