What was President Richard Nixon’s principal plan for ending the American
commitment in the Vietnam conflict?
A) threatening to invade China unless the North Vietnamese forces withdrew
B) withdrawing American troops unilaterally
C) ordering a naval blockade of the port of Haiphong
D) building up the South Vietnamese army in order to withdraw American troops
What was a major obstacle for John Kennedy in the 1960 presidential race?
A) his Episcopalianism
B) his liberal civil rights record
C) his Catholicism
D) his criticism of the Cold War
As part of the social reforms accompanying the Revolution, all states which still had
them abolished __________.
A) primogeniture and entail
B) property qualifications for voters
C) public taxes to support religion
D) slavery and apprenticeship
What triggered the oil crisis of 1973?
A) Nixon’s trip to China
B) Nixon’s policy of dtente with the Soviet Union
C) Nixon’s support for Israel in the Yom Kippur War
D) Nixon’s ousting of the Shah of Iran
What happened when Roosevelt made his “quarantine speech” of October 1937?
A) Congress agreed and repealed the Neutrality Act of 1937.
B) Congress agreed and decided the United States should join the League of Nations.
C) A strong isolationist reaction from the public forced Roosevelt to back down.
D) Public opinion rallied behind Roosevelt and pressured Congress to move away from
neutrality and isolationism.
What were the repressive measures that the Federalists passed primarily to smash their
Republican opponents?
A) Judiciary Acts of 1801
B) Militia and Quartering Acts
C) Alien and Sedition Acts
D) Kentucky and Virginia Resolves
Which of the following best describes the American strategy in Vietnam?
A) Kill as many enemies as possible.
B) Secure the coast lines for safe maritime traffic.
C) Capture Hanoi and control North Vietnam.
D) Secure as much territory as possible with as few casualties as possible.
Who called for the end of the executions of Salem’s “witches” because “it were better
that ten witches should escape, than that one innocent person should be condemned”?
A) William Phips
B) Mary Phips
C) Increase Mather
D) Cotton Mather
Between 1606 and 1622, the London Company, which established the Virginia Colony,
__________.
A) was one of the most profitable trading companies ever established
B) sent out thousands of settlers, more than half of whom died
C) invested very little money in the project but guided it effectively
D) populated the colony with convicts and paupers
Why was Prohibition a typical progressive reform?
A) It was strongly supported in rural America.
B) It was favored by German and Italian immigrants.
C) It was backed by the working class.
D) It was designed to frustrate “the interests.”
Vassar College holds the distinction of __________.
A) establishing the first modern graduate school
B) admitting the first woman to college
C) being the first college for women
D) being the first coeducational, racially integrated college
The Puritans justified laws requiring church attendance and establishing the death
penalty for blaspheming a parent on the grounds that they __________.
A) followed the early Christian practices described in the New Testament
B) were based on government’s role as a civil covenant designed to police and maintain
social order
C) were intended to create a society that promoted individual religious liberty
D) needed to restore order because of rampant crime in the colony
Where did progressives attempt their first political reforms?
A) in the Senate
B) in cities
C) in the South
D) in the House of Representatives
Which of the following was the most horrible response to change?
A) the campaign for birth control
B) the intimidation of the red scare
C) the hypocrisy of Prohibition
D) the revival of the Ku Klux Klan
What was Lincoln referring to when he spoke of a “pernicious abstraction”?
A) the seizure of the Trent
B) the percentage of southerners required to take a loyalty oath
C) Copperhead activities in the Ohio River Valley
D) the Southern claim to have seceded from the Union
Which of the following was a leading magazine editor and crusading reformer of the
early twentieth century?
A) Eugene V. Debs
B) S. S. McClure
C) Theodore Roosevelt
D) E. A. Ross
Before 1882, Americans restricted __________ from immigrating to the United States.
A) almost no one
B) Irish Catholics
C) the Japanese
D) political revolutionaries
In response to the new waves of immigrants, in 1986 Congress __________.
A) realized that poverty in the immigrants’ homelands drove them to flee to the United
States and greatly increased foreign aid and economic development to those countries
B) insisted that all new immigrants prove they were financially independent
C) offered amnesty to long-term illegal immigrants and penalized employers who hired
illegal immigrants in the future
D) denied federal benefits to illegal immigrants and their children, even if their children
were born in the United States and were citizens
What role did Great Britain play in the Civil War?
A) Strong public support in England for the North made no difference in British
policies.
B) Davis threatened to declare war if England delivered two ironclad rams built for the
Union.
C) England needed northern wheat more than it did southern cotton.
D) Great Britain strongly supported the Union in every way possible throughout the
war.
After the fall of the Soviet Union, a major cause of increased terrorism was the conflict
between which of the following?
A) Muslims and Christians in poor nations
B) religious fundamentalists of many faiths and modern secularism
C) military dictators and advocates of democracy
D) Israel and neighboring states
Which future American president was involved in open-range ranching?
A) Rutherford B. Hayes
B) Theodore Roosevelt
C) William H. Taft
D) William McKinley
What happened to American public education after 1870?
A) It finally stabilized after 40 years of enormous change.
B) It underwent a revolution in teaching methods that stressed strict discipline and rote
learning.
C) It was most forward-looking in the South.
D) It changed steadily in response to the many social and economic changes of the era.
The Teapot Dome scandal involved which of the following?
A) the illegal leasing of government-owned oil-rich properties in Wyoming to private
companies
B) an illegal mining operation in a National Park in Wyoming
C) an elaborate cover-up of one of Harding’s extramarital affair
D) the private misappropriation of government funds meant for the construction of
veterans hospitals
Which of the following is true under mandatory sentencing laws?
A) Juries are solely responsible for the imposition of criminal sentences.
B) Rehabilitation of criminals has become the most prominent issue in criminal justice.
C) The nation’s prison population has become significantly smaller.
D) Convicts are denied the possibility of early release.
Congress will “take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible to
any definition” if the “necessary and proper clause” is not literally interpreted. This was
the sentiment of __________.
A) Alexander Hamilton, favoring the Bill of Rights
B) Thomas Jefferson, opposing the National Bank
C) Alexander Hamilton, favoring the National Bank
D) Thomas Jefferson, opposing the Bill of Rights
In 1912 the breakup of the Republican Party produced an independent third party, the
Progressives, led by __________.
A) Louis Brandeis
B) William Howard Taft
C) Albert J. Beveridge
D) Theodore Roosevelt
How can archeologists tell that Cahokian society was characterized by sharp class
divisions?
A) They studied the earthen composition of the mounds.
B) They exhumed the giant palisade that divided and organized Cahokia.
C) They studied the garbage and graves of Cahokia.
D) They measured the skull sizes of Cahokian skeletons.
The Monroe Doctrine __________.
A) proclaimed President Monroe’s intention of intervening actively in Europe
B) followed precisely a suggestion made earlier by the British government
C) hoped to insulate the United States from involvement in European affairs
D) asserted American claims to all of the Oregon country
Why did railroad lines have such high fixed costs?
A) They consumed a lot of energy.
B) They were difficult to build.
C) They had to carry as much traffic as possible.
D) They cost in maintenance, interest, and taxes.
How did slavery warp southern whites?
A) by encouraging poor whites to migrate north
B) by allowing them too much leisure time
C) by causing basically decent people to commit countless petty cruelties
D) by encouraging southern slave owners to develop strong emotional bonds with
people that they treated as mere possessions
What is the basic concept underlying the ‘spoils system”?
A) Candidates must campaign viciously to ‘spoil” the chances of their opponents.
B) Party workers must be rewarded with political office after a successful campaign.
C) There is no need to take into account the wishes of the average voter.
D) Government positions should not be ‘spoiled” by turning them into political plums.
Measures towards the separation of church and state tended to be most pronounced in
places where __________.
A) slavery had been abolished during the revolution
B) citizens were by and large Catholic or not religious at all
C) the Anglican Church had dominated religious life
D) religious diversity ranged beyond Christianity and included Judaism and Islam
Pragmatism encouraged which of the following?
A) the use of theory
B) intellectualism
C) materialism
D) conventional morality
What distinguished the resistance of the Cherokee Indians from the fight Native
Americans put up against expulsion?
Compare and contrast the Knights of Labor with the American Federation Labor. Which
organization had made its peace with the new economy of industrial wage work?
Discuss the importance of the Fourteenth Amendment during Reconstruction.
Why did Barack Obama win the election of 2008?
What caused the breakup of the Republican Party during the Taft administration?
Explain the role currency politics played in the election of 1896.