Which statement regarding the 1980 Republican nominee, Ronald Reagan, is true?
A) He was seriously limited by his age during the 1980 campaign.
B) He was never a serious contender for the presidential nomination before 1980.
C) He was a New Deal Democrat before World War II.
D) He was a political newcomer without much charisma.
By 1830, the black population in __________ exceeded the white population.
A) Georgia
B) Virginia
C) Mississippi
D) Alabama
Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn __________.
A) offered a sympathetic portrait of a slave
B) defied realist conceptions of the time
C) embedded religious messages in adventure tales
D) challenged Northern arrogance with a witty Southern character
What was the name of the organization of reformed drunkards that focused on
reclaiming alcoholics from the gutter?
A) Cold Water Society
B) Women’s Christian Temperance Union
C) Prohibition Party
D) Washingtonians
Why did New England women leave the textile factories in the 1830s?
A) They were replaced by New England men.
B) They were replaced by cheaper poor white southern textile workers.
C) The factories left to use slave labor in Southern states.
D) Textile factories hired new European immigrant labor.
Private donors, including industrialist Andrew Carnegie, donated millions of dollars to
help __________.
A) build public libraries
B) stimulate new women’s colleges
C) underwrite collections of American art
D) promote public appreciation of symphonic music
Slavery of blacks in the British colonies was __________.
A) unique, since no other colonial nation had ever enslaved blacks
B) simply copied from the institution of slavery already existing in England
C) restricted to the southern colonies
D) firmly established by laws in Virginia and Maryland as early as 1660
The Marshall Plan provided which of the following?
A) aid for a coalition government in China
B) funding for the organization of NATO
C) massive economic assistance for Europe
D) logistics for the Berlin airlift
The future director of the United States Geological Service, __________, advocated a
system for dealing with the semiarid conditions of western lands.
A) John Wesley Powell
B) Othniel C. Marsh
C) Mark Hopkins
D) Thomas Fitzpatrick
The North came to the brink of war with Great Britain when __________.
A) British navy vessels helped maintain a Confederate blockade of Northern ports
B) British vessels violently broke through the Union’s blockade
C) British Navy vessels resumed the impressment of Union navy sailors
D) British wharfs built powerful cruisers and ironclad “rams” for the Confederate navy
The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution became embroiled in a debate over
which of the following?
A) the rights of black men and those of black women
B) the property of former slaveholders and the rights of poor whites
C) the rights of African Americans and those of white northern women
D) the representation of Republicans and Democrats
In the War of 1812, the most effective American action against British shipping was by
which of the following?
A) U.S. frigates
B) navies of the individual states
C) pirates in the Caribbean
D) privateering merchantmen
What was the new literary style of the 1870s and 1880s that often examined social
problems such as slum conditions and portrayed people of every social class?
A) romanticism
B) pragmatism
C) realism
D) neo-classicism
Why did the Pure Food and Drug Act pass Congress without difficulty?
A) It came on the heels of the Meat Inspection Act.
B) Roosevelt was as popular among Democrats as he was among Republicans.
C) Roosevelt threatened the public release of The Jungle if Congress did not comply.
D) The nation’s meatpackers had lobbied for it in order to restore public trust in them.
Wendell Willkie’s best-selling book, One World, was evidence of which of the
following?
A) naive optimism about atomic weapons
B) the resurgence of isolationism
C) fears of Soviet communism after World War II
D) the disappearance of isolationism
Henry George, author of Progress and Poverty, was an advocate of which of the
following?
A) Marxism
B) laissez-faire economics
C) social Darwinism
D) the single tax
Why did the Soviet Union close off all surface access to Berlin from the west?
A) The United Stated had started to build up military installations in the western part of
the city.
B) U.S and West German agitators had repeatedly scaled the wall that divided the city.
C) A failed exchange of spies at the city’s notorious “Checkpoint Charlie” had
convinced the Soviets to starve West Berlin into submission.
D) Western European nations had announced plans for a single West German Republic.
Where did sleeping sickness and malaria foster isolation from outside cultural
influences?
A) South America
B) Southeast Asia
C) Persia
D) tropical Africa
The 1944 GI Bill of Rights gave __________.
A) soldiers absolute freedom of speech
B) veterans guaranteed jobs with the federal government
C) women the right to join the armed forces
D) veterans subsidies for education or opening a small business
Which of the following most accurately describes the English government’s position on
the meaning of sovereignty?
A) Parliament was sovereign over the external affairs of the colonies; the crown was
sovereign over Parliament and the colonies’ internal affairs.
B) Sovereignty was indivisible and rested ultimately with Parliament.
C) Parliament was sovereign over the colonies’ external affairs; the colonial legislatures
were sovereign over their internal affairs.
D) Sovereignty was indivisible and rested exclusively with the king.
Among middle-class families, children came to be seen increasingly as which of the
following?
A) seething cauldrons of original sin
B) innocent and morally superior
C) perversely willful
D) future workers
Johns Hopkins, Jonas Clark, and John D. Rockefeller were all __________.
A) wealthy founders of new universities
B) social scientists influenced by Darwinism
C) advocates of realism in painting
D) naturalistic novelists
Which of the following was perhaps the most serious weakness of the Agricultural
Adjustment Act?
A) allowing destruction of crops and livestock
B) failing to assist tenant farmers and sharecroppers
C) encouraging overproduction of basic commodities
D) promoting rural migration to urban centers
Why did many workers in the late nineteenth century support protective tariffs?
A) They were nationalists at heart and wanted to consume domestic products over
foreign ones.
B) They had little hope that the government would put the tariff revenue to any useful
purpose.
C) They worried that cheap competition would pressure their employers to lower prices
and thus their wages.
D) They wanted to see the United States become a leader in exports and build a trade
surplus.
What triggered the growth of cities in West Africa?
A) the trans-Atlantic slave trade
B) the gold-mining industry
C) cotton cultivation
D) the trans-Sahara trade
The Anaconda Plan was a design to __________.
A) put a siege on New Orleans
B) capture Florida and assault the Confederacy from the rear
C) break up the alliance between the Confederacy and Great Britain
D) gain control of the Mississippi River for the Union
What made ranching in the American West so profitable?
A) The soil was very fertile.
B) The grasslands were very thickly grown.
C) Western beef was superior to any other beef on the market.
D) The rising demand for beef in the nation’s cities pushed up prices.
The Louisiana Purchase furthered weakened the power of __________.
A) Napoleon
B) the Republicans
C) the Federalists
D) Thomas Jefferson
According to the Kentucky and Virginia Resolves, a law of Congress could be declared
unconstitutional by which of the following?
A) the president
B) constitutional conventions in two-thirds of the states
C) one-third of the states acting in common
D) any individual state
Although slavery was the root cause of secession, __________.
A) it was not the cause of the North’s resistance to secession
B) there existed a strong national consensus that slavery was a reliable institution
C) it proved an even stronger incentive for the North to engage in war against the South
D) it was not related to the question of union
Why did the U.S. government seize the coal mines in 1943?
A) The Roosevelt administration feared communist agitation among the United Mine
Workers.
B) The United Mine Workers had gone to strike over wages and working conditions.
C) The mine operators had refused to allow conscientious objectors work in the mines.
D) The Roosevelt administration was convinced that the mines would be operated more
efficiently under government oversight.
Compare and contrast the experiences of ranchers and farmers in the trans-Mississippi
West.
How did the Compromise of 1850 appease Northerners? How did it appease
Southerners?
Why did Abraham Lincoln issue the Emancipation Proclamation at the time that he did?
What motivated advocates of the Social Gospel, and what did they do?
Explain how the institution of slavery shaped southern economic development between
the 1820s and 1850s.
What caused the downfall of Lyndon B. Johnson in 1968?
Assess the failures and successes of John Quincy Adams’ presidency.
What prompted the rising tensions among the sections on the eve of the Civil War?
Assess the successes and failures of the United States in the War of 1812, both in
diplomacy and on the battlefield.
How did notions of political and national identity in the American colonies differ from
those of Europe?
How did Woodrow Wilson’s progressivism differ from that offered in Theodore
Roosevelt’s program of New Nationalism?
What did Lyndon B. Johnson hope to achieve with the Great Society?
What problems will the nation face with the aging of the baby boomers?
Compare and contrast the life and work of Henry David Thoreau with that of Herman
Melville.
How did the western frontier contribute to the coming of the War of 1812?
What explains the stalemate and lack of Union progress in 1862?
Why did the political conflict between Parliament and colonists escalate into violence?
How has the recent past surprised Americans with positive developments?
Describe the state of national politics between 1876 and 1896.
Why did Jefferson call for the passage of the Embargo Act in 1807?