In the 1680s, James II tried to unify royal control of the northern colonies by creating
which of the following?
A) Board of Trade
B) Dominion of New England
C) Office of Colonial Administration
D) Dominion of North America
What important fight against the institutional foundations of segregation was brought
on by the actions of Rosa Parks?
A) the integration of Central High School in Little Rock
B) the Montgomery, Alabama bus boycott
C) the march on Washington
D) the Selma to Montgomery march
In 1786, the U.S. cotton economy could best be described as __________.
A) prosperous across the South
B) highly industrialized
C) confined to a few islands off the Carolina coast
D) the new booming sector in Chesapeake agriculture
Manufacturing in the antebellum South was __________.
A) discouraged by the lack of raw materials
B) impossible because of the shortage of water power
C) virtually nonexistent because of the lack of northern investment
D) discouraged by southern society
What was one of the outcomes of the Lewis and Clark expedition?
A) It led to the construction of military outposts.
B) It brought Protestantism to the Native Americans
C) It drove the Spanish out of Oregon
D) It established official relations with Native American tribes
What happened to farm income during the Great War?
A) It dropped.
B) It increased slightly.
C) It rose dramatically.
D) It failed to keep up with inflation.
What was the impact of the economic trends of the 1980s and the policies of the
Reagan administration?
A) Wealthy Americans benefited disproportionately.
B) Sagging “rust belt” industries in the Northeast were revitalized.
C) The share of the national wealth for the poorest Americans was increased.
D) New wealth was brought to low-skilled or semi-skilled workers.
Tecumseh’s brother, Tenskwatawa (or “The Prophet”), __________.
A) called upon Native Americans to farm and copy the ways of whites
B) was a spy for General William Henry Harrison
C) declared Native Americans should reject white ways, clothes, and liquor
D) was paid by the French to disrupt American settlement of the Ohio River Valley
Which of the following best describes the Democratic Convention of 1924?
A) After several rounds of voting, the party decided on the Catholic New York
Governor Al Smith.
B) Due to his strong connections to the party leadership, Wilson’s former Secretary of
the Treasury William G. McAdoo won the nomination handily.
C) In the hopes of peeling off Republican voters, Democrats chose the cousin of
Republican hero Theodore RooseveltFranklin D. Roosevelt.
D) The badly divided party took 103 votes and days of dealing and politicking to agree
on corporate lawyer John W. Davis.
Which of the following did Lyndon B. Johnson consider his specialty?
A) foreign affairs
B) social welfare legislation
C) civil rights reform
D) bipartisanship
The view that the universe is based on impersonal, scientific laws that govern the
behavior of all matter, animate and inanimate, was basic to the __________.
A) Great Awakening
B) Puritans
C) Enlightenment
D) Quakers
Which of the following best describes the relationship between President Theodore
Roosevelt and the chairman of the board of U.S. Steel?
A) intimate
B) hostile
C) corrupt
D) a gentlemen’s agreement
Although forced to surrender in 1754 to French troops constructing Fort Duquesne, the
young Virginian who emerged as a hero to fellow colonists was __________.
A) Patrick Henry
B) George Washington
C) James Madison
D) Thomas Jefferson
Who was the apparent winner of the election of 1876, with 203 electoral votes and a
quarter of a million more popular votes than his opponent?
A) James G. Blaine
B) Samuel J. Tilden
C) Rutherford B. Hayes
D) Horace Greeley
On what issue had Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas disagreed early on?
A) the nullification crisis
B) the importance of railroads
C) the value of western land
D) the Mexican War
Why did France decide to aid the United States in its war for independence?
A) It never got over its defeat at the hands of the British in the Seven Years’ War.
B) The French were ardent supporters of democratic movements ever since the French
Revolution.
C) A significant number of French citizens lived in England’s North American colonies.
D) The United States offered France its most valuable Caribbean sugar colonies in
return.
What was the reason for the duel between Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton?
A) Hamilton had campaigned against Burr when he ran for governor of New York and
then continued to cast aspersions on Burr’s character.
B) Burr had opposed Hamilton’s financial program.
C) Burr had refused to withdraw from the election of 1800, which forced Hamilton to
support Jefferson against his better judgment.
D) Burr claimed that Hamilton had an affair with his wife.
Military action early in the Civil War seemed to indicate that __________ were
superior.
A) northern generals
B) southern generals
C) northern enlisted men
D) southern enlisted men
What was the public reaction to the Compromise of 1850?
A) Violent antislavery riots condemned it in the North.
B) Abolitionists were quite pleased with its steps towards gradual emancipation.
C) Mass meetings throughout the country were held to support it.
D) Defenders of slavery praised it for preserving the balance between free and slave
states in the Senate.
What most influenced American attitudes towards the two sides in the Great War?
A) German propaganda
B) conflicts over freedom of the seas
C) British propaganda
D) Wilson’s militarism
What was George W. Bush’s response to the financial crisis in the final months of his
presidency?
A) to refuse the use federal funds to assist private banks
B) to support a $700 billion dollar bailout of banks by buying up toxic mortgage
bundles
C) incredibly restrained; he did not want to act because of his lame duck status
D) to support a modest bailout of homeowners affected by the crisis
Which of the following best characterizes Nathaniel Hawthorne’s, The Scarlet Letter?
A) It is a grim but sympathetic analysis of the consequences of adultery.
B) It offers compelling lessons on individualism through a survival narrative.
C) It compellingly rejects romanticism in favor of an even darker nihilism.
D) It glorifies individual resistance to social and sexual mores.
Why did many of the delegates to the Constitutional Convention consider the Roman
republic an important model?
A) They admired its efficiency and durability.
B) They aspired to reproduce its democratic principles and high level of civilization.
C) They respected the coexistence of slavery and citizenship in the Roman republic.
D) They feared the Roman republic’s demise into tyranny and invasion by barbarians.
Who pioneered methods for educating deaf people and opened a school for deaf
students in 1817?
A) Thomas Gallaudet
B) Lyman Beecher
C) Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe
D) Charles Fourier
What was the unifying principle of the Whig party?
A) support of Henry Clay as a political leader
B) opposition to “King Andrew” Jackson
C) desire to return to property qualifications for voting and holding office
D) rejection of strong government
The American disciple of Herbert Spencer, Edward L. Youmans, believed which of the
following about society?
A) It is best understood using Aristotle’s philosophical framework.
B) it is an impersonal set of institutions and can be easily changed.
C) It is an orderly, rule-governed system in which change is not necessary.
D) It is changed only by the force of evolution, which moves with cosmic slowness.
When Columbus landed in America, the chief reason that he thought he had landed in
“the Indies” was __________.
A) the ease with which the natives understood his language
B) his discovery of the place of the Grand Khan
C) his firm belief that he had sailed far enough westward to reach them
D) the plants there were similar to those in Asia
During the Great War, who were most often suspected of disloyalty?
A) German Americans
B) Chinese Americans
C) Italian Americans
D) Japanese Americans
Who was the leading publisher of magazines directed at average citizens in the 1860s
and 1870s?
A) William Dean Howells
B) Edward W. Bok
C) Frank Leslie
D) William Randolph Hearst
How many Americans die every year from gun violence?
A) 800
B) 3,400
C) 14,000
D) 30,000
FDR spoke for the hopes of many for a better post-war world when he identified the
nation’s war goal as which of the following?
A) “making the world safe for democracy”
B) the “Four Freedoms”
C) creating one world under God
D) making “peace in our time”
Why did the Anasazi of the Colorado Plateau begin the construction of trenches and
homes about 2500 bp?
A) They embraced corn cultivation.
B) They adapted to a changing climate.
C) They sought better protection against enemy tribes.
D) They had learned the use of tools that made these activities possible.
By 1820, the interstate slave trade in the South was __________.
A) totally and effectively outlawed by the states
B) a legal and well-organized business
C) prohibited by the Constitution
D) outlawed by the Missouri Compromise
Republican attempts to impeach Federalist judges resulted in which of the following?
A) removal of twelve judges, largely on the grounds of political disagreements
B) Supreme Court ruling that judges were not subject to impeachment
C) failure to remove Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase
D) complete failure to remove any of the judges
Compare the effect of competition on railroads with that of competition on steel.
What new technologies and innovations aided the modernization of American cities in
the late or at the turn of the century?
How did the factory promote the formation of a new working class?
Why did so Americans look for so many different utopian solutions to social changes
between the 1820s and the 1850s?
How did industrialization change the lives of Northern working people?
Explain the role of the Supreme Court in the nation’s economy in the early nineteenth
century.
What impact did the New Deal have on the lives of African American and women?
Why did Southerners organize secession in the wake of Abraham Lincoln’s election?
Why did the nation’s elite react with such alarm to Shays’s Rebellion? Explain.
Compare the colonial societies of New France and New Spain.
Compare the style and work of Mark Twain and Henry James.
Explain the causes of the Great Depression.
How did Woodrow Wilson’s ambitions for world peace fare at the peace treaty
negotiations of Versailles?
What impact did the law and order movement have on Americans in the 1980s and
1990s?
How did the work of Charles Darwin affect the disciplines of law and history?
Explain why the Spanish established a colonial empire in the Americas.