1. C Indentured servitude promised freedom and a parcel of land to those who survived its seven-year term of service. Fewer than half did; most indentured servants worked in the fields performing grueling labor, and many died as a result. Indentured servitude was available only to the English, and nearly 100,000 took advantage of it.
2. A The Mayflower Compact states that government derives its power from the consent of the governed, not from divine mandate. This distinguishes government under the Mayflower Compact from the monarchial government the Pilgrims left behind in England.
3. D Virginia, one of the earliest colonies, developed around the tobacco trade; tobacco was the colonies’ first important cash crop. Choice (A), cotton, did not become a major export until the early nineteenth century, when the invention of the cotton gin made large-scale cotton farming practical.
4. B During the colonial era, the British subscribed to the economic theory of mercantilism, which held that a favorable balance of trade and control of hard currency were the keys to economic power. Ultimately, the theory of capitalism, famously championed by Adam Smith, supplanted mercantilism as the predominant economic theory of the West.
5. C During the Age of Salutary Neglect, Britain regarded the colonies primarily as a market for exports and a resource of raw materials. England imposed numerous import and export restrictions on the colonies in an effort to maintain its monopoly on colonial markets. The colonists, naturally, tried to smuggle cheaper goods into the country and smuggled products out of the country in order to sell them. The British established their own military-style courts—called vice-admiralty courts—to enforce trade laws because they knew the colonists themselves would not.
6. C The Stono Uprising was an early slave rebellion (1739) in which African slaves rose against their oppressors. The Stono Uprising is sometimes referred to as the Cato Rebellion.
7. D The vast majority of colonists lived in rural areas. By 1750 roughly 5 percent of the colonial population resided in cities. Philadelphia, Boston, Williamsburg, Baltimore, and Boston were the most important cities of the era; all were built around ports.
8. D The purpose of America’s first colleges was to train homegrown clergy so that the colonies would no longer have to import its clergy from England. The four oldest extant colonial universities—Harvard, William & Mary, Yale, and Princeton—were all originally affiliated with specific Protestant faiths.
9. A Provided the colonies continued to buy British goods and to supply the British with raw materials, England did not care how the colonies governed themselves. England did impose its will (through the vice-admiralty courts) when the colonies attempted to shirk their economic responsibilities but otherwise took a laissez-faire approach. As a result, the colonies developed a tradition of independence that contributed to their eventual rebellion against the Crown.
1. D Benjamin Franklin developed the Albany Plan, a first stab at a united colonial government empowered to collect taxes and raise a military. Although the delegations to Albany signed off on the plan, none of the colonial legislatures would have anything to do with it; they were uninterested in ceding any powers, even in the interest of strengthening the colonies as a whole. Franklin responded with his famous “Join or Die” cartoon, which showed the colonies as a snake cut into segments, each representing a colony.
2. D 1763, the year the Treaty of Paris ended the French and Indian War, is often considered to be a major turning point in British-colonial relations, as it marked the end of Britain’s policy of salutary neglect. Beginning with the Proclamation of 1763, the colonists began to feel England tightening the screws. The passage of the Sugar and Stamp Acts set off a chain of new restrictions that set the colonists on the road to revolution. Although you no doubt know the phrase “No taxation without representation!” the colonists did not actually want to send colonial representatives to sit in the British Parliament in London. Rather, as the resolutions of the Stamp Act Congress make clear, they believed that only their own colonial legislatures had the power to tax them. They initially understood that they were British subjects and that Parliament had the right to enact mercantilist restrictions to regulate trade. However, they soon voiced their concern that there was a significant difference between taxation and legislation.
3. A In the run-up to the Revolutionary War, colonists complained that Parliament had no business taxing them because the colonists lacked representation in the legislature. Their slogan, “No taxation without representation!” neatly summed up their argument (and it was catchy too!). The British responded with the theory of virtual representation, which stated that the colonists were represented in Parliament because members of Parliament represent all British citizens, not just the voters who elected them. Like most political debates, this one reeked of disingenuousness on both sides. The colonists knew that any delegation they sent to Parliament would be essentially powerless; what they really wanted was the right to set their own taxes, not a representative in the legislature. The British knew full well that their MPs did not give a tinker’s damn about the colonists or their interests; what they wanted was for the colonists to shut up and pay their taxes.
4. A A recent DBQ on the AP Exam asked to what extent the colonists had developed a sense of unity by the eve of the Revolution. One could certainly argue that most colonists considered themselves to be loyal British subjects even after fighting had begun in Lexington and Concord in April 1775. Many historians view the Declaration of Independence, written in July 1776, as propaganda to convince those still loyal to England to fight for their independence. At the start of the French and Indian War, Benjamin Franklin had proposed the Albany Plan of Union, which was rejected by the colonists in favor of maintaining individual colonial sovereignty. The Stamp Act Congress of 1765 is historically significant because it marks the beginning of colonial unity and resistance against the British.
5. B Much of the American Declaration of Independence is derived from the writings of John Locke, particularly his Two Treatises of Government, published in 1690, in which he challenged the theory of divine right of kings and put forth what is known as social contract theory. Both Locke and Rousseau believed that man was born free, but it was Rousseau who argued that “Man must be forced to be free” and submit to the “General Will.”
6. D The Articles of Confederation had intentionally created a weak central government, granting Congress few regulatory powers so as to avoid recreating an American Parliament. Shays’s Rebellion threatened the survival of the newly established republic because the farmers in western Massachusetts were rebelling against their state government for the very same reason the colonists had rebelled against England—taxes. Under the Articles of Confederation, Congress could neither raise nor support a federal militia, so when Massachusetts requested federal assistance in squelching Daniel Shays and his farmer friends, no help was available. Had this question been about the Whiskey Rebellion during George Washington’s administration, (A) would have been the correct answer. Choice (A) also demonstrates the difference between the limited power of the federal government under the Articles of Confederation and the stronger federal government established by the Constitution. Choice (C) is not correct, although excessive taxation was certainly one of the major causes of the American Revolution and subsequent rebellions. It is interesting to note that we did not have a federal income tax until the Sixteenth Amendment was ratified in the early twentieth century.
7. B The Articles of Confederation were established to provide a limited framework to organize the states under a single banner. However, they had very little power (purposefully) so that each state could decide its own legislation and government. States were expected to establish taxation and Congress under the Articles of Confederation was not allowed to set up taxes (eliminating I). Furthermore, the whole purpose of the Articles of Confederation was to provide a legal document to enforce states rights, not undermine them (eliminating III). The Articles of Confederation did, however, provide a framework for how the United States government would represent the states in foreign diplomatic matters such as treaties (making II correct).
8. C Washington’s presidency was all about establishing precedents. He was extremely conscious of this fact and proceeded cautiously throughout his two terms, aware that future presidents would follow his example. Thus, he rarely used his presidential veto, hoping to encourage future executives to accommodate the legislature on most matters. He didn’t want the Congress to have complete control over the executive branch, though; he believed in the system of checks and balances. Thus, when the House of Representatives demanded all of Washington’s papers regarding negotiations for the unpopular Jay Treaty, Washington refused. He reasoned that the papers were none of the House’s business because only the Senate—with whom Washington did share the papers—is required to ratify treaties. His action established the precedent of executive privilege, a nebulous executive right to protect sensitive information and executive privacy. The right is occasionally invoked by the executive and almost as frequently challenged by the legislature, with the two typically working out a solution of compromise before the matter can reach the courts.
9. D The French and Indian War gave the British unchecked control over North America and a huge war debt. Searching for ways to repay the debt, the British sought greater contributions from, and subsequently greater control over, its American colonies. The Age of Salutary Neglect, an era during which the British basically allowed the colonies to govern themselves, was over.
10. D The strict constructionist interpretation of the Constitution is that Congress may use only those powers specifically enumerated in the Constitution. Other powers, regardless of how necessary they may be to national interests, are prohibited. The broad constructionist interpretation, in contrast, holds that Congress has numerous implied powers. For example, Congress has the power to print money, borrow money, and collect taxes; thus, the Constitution implies that Congress has the power to create a bank, the proper instrument for exercising these powers.
1. D John Marshall was not the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, but he certainly was the man most responsible for giving the Court its teeth and much of the power it wields today. Marbury v. Madison was Marshall’s first significant decision and established the principle of judicial review, which enables the Court to declare a federal or state law unconstitutional. Choice (C), McCulloch v. Maryland, was another landmark decision of the Marshall Court; this case dealt with the Second Bank of the United States and established the principle of federal supremacy. And it is important to note that while Marshall was an important federalist, he did not establish the principle.
2. B The Louisiana Purchase grew out of the government’s efforts to purchase New Orleans from the French; President Jefferson wanted control of the city because it sits at the mouth of the Mississippi River, an essential trade route. Jefferson sent James Monroe to France to negotiate the sale. The French, desperate for cash and nearly as desperate to divest themselves of New World holdings, offered to sell the entire massive Louisiana Territory, giving the United States control of both banks of the Mississippi River (as well as a tremendous amount of western land). As a result, American traders could travel the length of the river unimpeded, and trade subsequently boomed. Many of the incorrect answers to this question are anachronistic; the date of the purchase was too early for there to be “numerous French factories” in the territory, as in (C), or to allow for “the immediate completion of the transcontinental railroad,” as in (D).
3. A The War of 1812 was very unpopular with New England Federalists who called the war “Mr. Madison’s War.” The economic policies of Jefferson and Madison disrupted trade, and as a result, were detrimental to New England merchants and shippers. Consequently, a group of New England Federalists met in Hartford, Connecticut in 1814 to articulate a list of grievances against the Democratic-Republicans and their policies. While some men suggested secession, others suggested amending the Constitution to protect New England’s commercial interests against what they perceived to be a dangerous, growing threat from the agrarian, Republican South. Because we “defeated” the British in what is often termed the Second War for Independence, the Federalists were seen as big babies and ultimately discredited. With the election of James Monroe in 1816, the United States had entered the Era of Good Feelings, a relatively brief period when there was only one political party—the Republicans. Although the War of 1812 damaged New England commerce initially, in the long run, the Embargo Act of 1807 and the War of 1812 forced Americans to be less dependent on British goods and indirectly stimulated the growth of industry in antebellum New England.
4. A The election of 1824 is one of the more infamous elections in American political history and exposes one of the unanticipated flaws in the Electoral College system. Because of the winner-take-all system of awarding electoral votes in most states, it is possible for a candidate to actually win the popular vote nationwide but lose the election. According to the Constitution, a candidate must win a majority, not a plurality, of electoral votes to win the presidential election. If no one candidate receives the requisite majority, the election is “thrown into the House,” and the House of Representatives chooses the president from among the top three candidates. In the event this occurs, each state casts only one vote. Because there were five candidates running for president in 1824, it was almost impossible for anyone to receive a majority. Realizing that he did not have enough support to win the presidency, Henry Clay threw his support to John Quincy Adams in exchange for Adams’s promise to make Clay his secretary of state. Jackson believed he lost the election because of this “corrupt bargain.”
5. D The tariff in question here is the infamous Tariff of Abominations, so named by the Southern states that protested that this protective tariff benefited the New England manufacturers at the expense of cotton exporters in the South. The enactment of the Tariff of 1828 led to the nullification crisis a few years later when South Carolina declared the tariff null and void. (A similar situation had occurred in 1798 when Jefferson and Madison penned the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions in protest against the Alien and Sedition Acts.) In the case of Marbury v. Madison, Marshall had argued that only the Supreme Court could rule a law to be unconstitutional, not individual states. Eventually, a compromise tariff was brokered, and the crisis was resolved. Nevertheless, the nullification crisis during Andrew Jackson’s administration exposed the increasing tension of economic sectionalism that would propel the nation to civil war 30 years later.
6. A Andrew Jackson generally sided with the states on the issue of states’ rights, preferring to limit the powers of the federal government to only those he perceived to be essential. He also favored his Western constituency to the power elite of the Northeast, whom he regarded with suspicion. Thus, Jackson scuttled the Second National Bank, a large federal program championed by Northeastern bankers, and the American System, a large public works program.
7. B The Cherokee were considered part of the “Five Civilized Tribes” living in the South, having established a republic in the state of Georgia. Unfortunately the discovery of gold within the Cherokee nation’s borders was the catalyst for the tribe’s forced relocation. Georgian citizens wanted to enforce the Indian Removal Act in order to have access to the territory. Although the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Cherokees, President Andrew Jackson did not comply with the decision. States’ rights were an important issue during Jackson’s presidency, and he did not want to intervene on behalf of the Cherokee nation.
8. D Brook Farm, the Oneida Community, and New Harmony were all utopian communities that arose during the antebellum period in response to what some people perceived to be the ill effects of a growing commercial society.
1. D A trick question; Texas was annexed by the United States in 1845, prior to the start of the Mexican-American War. All the other territories mentioned in the answer choices came to the United States as a result of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the war.
2. D The term “Bleeding Kansas” refers to the battle in Kansas between pro-slavery and abolitionist forces. The doctrine of popular sovereignty had created the circumstances that led to the gruesome conflict; it left the slave status of each territory up to its residents, to be decided at the time when the territory was ready to write a constitution and apply for statehood. Both sides wanted Kansas badly, and both sent representatives into the territory to form governments. President Pierce recognized the pro-slavery government, but abolitionist forces cried “foul” and continued their fight to establish Kansas as a free state. More than 200 people died in the resulting skirmishes.
3. B The Emancipation Proclamation did not free all the slaves. Instead, it freed only those slaves in rebel territories not controlled by the Union. In other words, it was completely unenforceable; it immediately took effect only in those places where Union forces had no power to act, but it ultimately had a significant impact as Union troops took over Confederate territory. The Emancipation Proclamation had a huge symbolic effect, though, as it clearly cast the Civil War as a war against slavery. Free blacks and escaped slaves rushed to join the cause; nearly 200,000 joined the Union army as a consequence of the Emancipation Proclamation.
4. D Many historians argue that Andrew Johnson was neither the man nor the politician that Lincoln was. Johnson locked horns with the Radical Republicans in Congress over several issues pertaining to Reconstruction. Johnson had vetoed the Tenure of Office Act, which required a president to obtain Senate approval before firing an appointed official. The Senate argued that if it had the power to confirm nominations, it should also be allowed to have a say in the event a president wanted to fire someone. Congress overrode Johnson’s veto; Johnson fired his secretary of state, the Radical Republican Henry Stanton; and the House of Representatives impeached the President of the United States for the first time in American history. Johnson was acquitted, however, by one vote in the Senate and thus remained in office to finish his term.
5. B The election of 1876 is another one of the disputed elections in American political history. Although Samuel J. Tilden, then Governor of New York, won the popular vote nationwide, there were several states that contested the results of the election. Consequently, a special bipartisan commission was set up to determine the outcome of the election. In what became known as the “Compromise of 1877,” Rutherford B. Hayes won the presidential election by a margin of one single electoral vote. Hayes had promised to remove federal troops still stationed in the South after the Civil War, thus ending military reconstruction.
6. A Remember that most slaves had no job skills and could neither read nor write. They had no money and nowhere to go when slavery was abolished. Some slaves took off in search of their scattered families, but most stayed exactly where they were and worked as tenant farmers or sharecroppers.
Under the new wage-labor system, plantations were subdivided into smaller farms of thirty to fifty acres, which were then leased to freedmen under a one-year contract. Tenants would work a piece of land and turn over 50 percent of their crops to the landlord. Often, other expenses, such as rent for a run-down shack or over-priced groceries, available only through the landowner, would be deducted from whatever was produced. One of the services initially provided by the Freedmen’s Bureau was to help freed slaves who could neither read nor write understand the contracts they were about to sign. The system of sharecropping persisted well into the twentieth century, keeping many blacks in positions of poverty and degradation.
Choice (C) is incorrect for reasons stated above. The Great Migration of Southern blacks into Northern cities did not take place until World War I, long after Reconstruction. Choice (D) is incorrect because Chinese immigrants were used to construct our nation’s railroad system, much of which had been completed by the end of the Civil War.
7. D The Know-Nothings were a nativist group formed in response to the growing concentration of immigrants—particularly Italian and Irish Catholics—in Eastern cities. The party grew out of a number of secret societies whose members were instructed to tell outsiders nothing, hence the party’s name: When asked anything about their groups, Know-Nothings would respond, “I know nothing.” Their program included a 25-year residency requirement for citizenship; they also wanted to restrict all public offices to only those who were native-born Americans. By 1855 they had changed their name to the American Party, and in 1856 they fielded a presidential candidate (former president Millard Fillmore). Within a few years the party had disbanded, destroyed by their disagreements over slavery. Most Northern Know-Nothings joined the Republican party.
8. C The Free-Soil Party was created in the mid-1840s and was more like a faction or interest group than a political party. However, unlike a faction, it developed a political platform and nominated a candidate (Martin Van Buren) for the presidential election of 1844. The Free-Soil party attracted anti-slavery “Conscience” Whigs, former members of the Liberty party, and pro-Wilmot Proviso Democrats. The Wilmot Proviso was rejected by Congress but suggested that there be no slavery in any territory acquired from Mexico. Free-Soilers were opposed to the extension of slavery into the new territories. Remember: The Constitution protected slavery where it already existed, but many people believed Congress could prevent the further spread of slavery as the United States acquired new land. Although the Free-Soil party did not exist for long, its major principles were adopted by the new Republican party, which was formed in 1854 and was opposed to the extension of slavery into the new territories.
9. D In the election of 1848, the Democrats realized that their party was crumbling because its members could not agree on whether to allow slavery in the Western territories. They sought a policy to appease both abolitionists and slaveholders; the result of that search was the concept of popular sovereignty. By allowing the settlers to decide the slave status of an area, popular sovereignty took some pressure off Congress, which was growing increasingly divided over the issue. It also took pressure off the political parties, which were coming apart due to the irreconcilable regional differences of their members. Henry Clay invoked the notion of popular sovereignty in the Compromise of 1850, but the compromise contained a purposefully ambiguous interpretation of what popular sovereignty meant. While the ambiguous wording was necessary to make the Compromise of 1850 possible, it also made future disagreements over the issue inevitable.
10. C The Reconstruction Act of 1867, Congress’s plan for the rehabilitation of the South, was much harsher than President Johnson’s plan. Johnson, like Lincoln (who began planning the method for readmitting Southern states before his assassination), wanted a reconciliatory plan that punished only the most prominent leaders of the secession. Radical Republicans in Congress wanted something much tougher, and Johnson’s plan was so lenient (in the first postwar Congress, Johnson’s plan would have allowed the former president of the Confederacy to take a seat in Senate) that it drove many moderates into the radicals’ camp. The result was the Reconstruction Act, a punitive measure that imposed a number of strict requirements on Southern states as preconditions for their readmission to the Union. Choices (A), (B), and (D) list all of those preconditions; the fact that Congress did not impose any requirements such as the one described in (C) pretty much doomed postwar Southern blacks to poverty.
1. D The scalawags were white Southerners who supported Republican policies during Reconstruction. Carpetbaggers were Northerners who traveled south to exploit the turmoil following the Civil War for their own political gain. The Redeemers were white Democrats who were determined to get revenge on the Republicans for imposing their radical policies of Reconstruction on Southern states and thus hoped to “redeem” the South.
2. A If you remember that the Supreme Court of the late nineteenth century was extremely conservative and extremely pro-business—and you should remember that, because it’s important—you should have been able to eliminate (B) and (D) immediately. If you remember the profound impact of such decisions as Plessy v. Ferguson—and you should also remember that—you could have eliminated (C).
3. D “Vertical integration” is another name for monopoly. Monopolies ran rampant in the late 1800s; the government did little to prevent them, and the courts actively encouraged them. Of the incorrect answers, (C) refers to assembly line production, and (A) and (B) are just made up.
4. C James A. Garfield’s presidency is remembered for one thing: Garfield’s assassination at the hands of a disgruntled office seeker. His assassin, Charles Guiteau, was actually a mentally disturbed individual who imagined himself an important player in Garfield’s electoral success. Guiteau convinced himself that he deserved a big fat government job as a reward for his efforts, and when he received none he retaliated by shooting Garfield. Garfield’s successor, Chester Arthur, signed the Pendleton Act, which replaced the spoils system Guiteau had hoped to exploit with a merit-based system for selecting civil servants.
5. C Although one might certainly make a valid claim that labor unions were necessary during the late nineteenth century when working conditions were dangerous, unsanitary, and exploitative, unions were very unpopular because they were associated with political radicalism and violence. The Haymarket incident began as a mass meeting organized by anarchists, held in Haymarket Square in Chicago in 1886 in sympathy and protest of events related to striking workers at the McCormick Harvester Company plant nearby. When police tried to break up the meeting, someone threw a bomb into the crowd, leaving seven policemen dead and several wounded. This incident convinced the American public that unions were dangerous and ultimately led to the decline of the Knights of Labor.
6. D If you can’t immediately identify the correct answer to this one, use common sense to eliminate incorrect answers. Japan is a huge nation relative to Hawaii; its economy couldn’t realistically depend on trade with the island, so eliminate (A). Choice (B) contradicts one of the main themes of the period—the Age of Imperialism, when every Western power, including the United States, was gathering colonies in the East. Would the United States have ceded Hawaii to Japan during that period? Unlikely, and much less likely still that the AP Exam would ask about an anomalous agreement. Choice (C) suggests Japan was a bastion of democracy in the late nineteenth century; in fact, it was ruled by an emperor.
7. D Historians describe the immigrants who came to the United States before the Civil War as “old immigrants.” These men and women came predominantly from countries in northwestern Europe. For the most part, they were Protestants and spoke English and easily became part of the melting pot we call America. Following the Civil War, however, the “new immigrants” came predominantly from nations in southeastern Europe, including Russians, Italians, and Poles. Many of these people were Catholics and Jews and were culturally very different from most Americans by that point. These new immigrants were not easily assimilated. They tended to settle amongst themselves in ethnic neighborhoods in major cities like New York and Chicago where there was a demand for unskilled labor in the numerous factories of these big cities.
8. D The Ghost Dancers arose in the late 1800s when the sad fate awaiting the great Native American tribes of the era was becoming all too apparent. Wovoka, a Paiute Indian, started the Ghost Dance movement, which resembled a religious revival. It centered on a dance ritual that enabled participants to envision a brighter future, one in which whites no longer dominated North America. Wovoka preached unity among Native Americans and the rejection of white culture and its trappings, especially alcohol. He also preached the imminent end of the world, at which point the Indian dead would rise to reclaim the land that was rightfully theirs. Sioux Ghost Dancers believed in the power of “ghost shirts,” garments blessed by medicine men that were capable of stopping bullets. This belief led to a rise in Sioux militancy and ultimately contributed to their massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890.
9. D Waves of European immigration throughout the nineteenth century swelled cities’ populations. Governments of the time were nowhere near as activist as they are today, and only a very few provided even minimal services to immigrants as they accommodated themselves to their new homeland; ethnic communities and churches were expected to provide such services. A number of enterprising, unscrupulous men recognized in these immigrants the opportunity for great political power. Such men, known as political bosses, helped immigrants find homes and jobs and acquire citizenship and voting rights. In essence, these bosses created entire communities, then provided them with all sorts of services: food and loans for the poor, parks and protection for the community. In return, the communities were expected to provide loyal political support, which they did, originally out of loyalty, and later, as the machines became extremely powerful, out of both loyalty and fear. The bosses could then hand an election to a politician of their choice, in return for favors. Political machines filled a need, albeit in an expensive and unethical way. They fell from power when governments started to provide many of the services machines had provided.
10. D In the 1860s the government initiated its reservation policy by which Native Americans were granted (usually less desirable) portions of the lands they inhabited. The policy failed on many fronts, and by the 1880s the government was searching for a different tack. Congress struck on the Dawes Severalty Act, which offered individual Native Americans 160-acre plots in return for leaving their reservations; through this program Congress hoped to hasten the assimilation of Native Americans, whose cultures most congressmen held in contempt. The results were not good: Most American Indians preferred to remain among their tribes and did not accept the offer. Those who did accept usually ended up selling their land to whites, who often placed considerable pressure on them to do so.
1. D “Muckrakers” is a term Theodore Roosevelt coined to describe the investigative journalists of his day. They included Ida Tarbell, whose book on Standard Oil revealed corruption in the oil industry and big business in general; Upton Sinclair, whose stomach-turning account of the meatpacking industry drove public outcry for government regulation of food production (the Food and Drug Administration was created as a result of Sinclair’s book The Jungle); and Lincoln Steffens, whose The Shame of the Cities exposed many Americans to the extent of urban poverty and corruption in urban government. Muckrakers helped fuel the public outcry for government reform, the main goal of the Progressive movement.
2. B Conservative courts and pro-business administrations allowed the Sherman Antitrust Act to be used to restrain labor but rarely to restrain business. Theodore Roosevelt changed all that. With public support Roosevelt transformed the Sherman Antitrust Act into a tool with which to break up monopolies. He focused his attention on corrupt monopolies whose activities countered the public interest, leaving alone trusts that operated more or less honestly. His approach garnered broad public acclaim, earning him the nickname “the Trustbuster.”
3. B As a result of winning the Spanish-American War in 1898, the United States acquired Guam, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and for all intents and purposes, Cuba. (Although we had claimed we had no interest in acquiring Cuba and could empathize with its colonial status, having once been a colony ourselves, the Platt Amendment rendered the island a virtual colony of the United States.) The situation in the Philippines created intense debate between business interests that saw the enormous economic benefits to acquiring “stepping stones” to profitable Chinese trade, and those Americans who believed having colonies contradicted our fundamental democratic principles. Once we acquired overseas possessions, a question arose as to the rights and privileges of the native peoples living within the American Empire. In a series of Supreme Court cases known as the Insular Cases, the Court ruled that the “Constitution did not follow the flag,” and thus, colonial subjects were not entitled to the same rights as U.S. citizens living at home or abroad.
4. A This is a straight recall question. You either know what the Zimmermann telegram is or you don’t. If you know it, you’re going to get this question right. If you don’t, use process of elimination to get rid of anachronistic answers, as in (B), or answers that seem un-AP-like because they don’t reinforce important themes of U.S. history, as in (D). You should know, however, that the Zimmermann telegram was one of the reasons the United States entered World War I.
5. C In the aftermath of World War I, President Wilson favored a peace that would promote openness in international affairs, free trade, and diplomacy. He also sought universal arms reductions and a mechanism for enforcing world peace, which was to be achieved through the League of Nations. He did not seek a punitive treaty that forced Germany to pay heavy reparations; the European allies, however, insisted. Wilson was able to negotiate very little of his Fourteen Points plan, but he remained optimistic that the League of Nations would eventually broker a fairer postwar peace. Unfortunately, Wilson’s hopes were never realized.
6. B The Ku Klux Klan evoked the execrable Southern traditions of racism and physical intimidation against the modern drive for expanded civil rights. The Scopes Monkey Trial pitted religion against the modern notion of evolution. The Emergency Quota Act of 1924 was passed to check immigration from non-western European countries; its champions felt the nation’s western European traditions were threatened by immigrants from Southern Europe, Eastern Europe, South America, and Asia. Prohibition pitted religion against modern licentiousness. The Teapot Dome Scandal, on the other hand, was just an example of good old-fashioned political corruption.
7. D Buying “on margin” allowed investors to buy stock with only a small amount of cash; the rest was borrowed from stockbrokers and banks against the presumed profits from subsequent stock sales. The system worked only as long as stock prices kept rising; once they started to fall, all hell broke loose. In response to market weakness in the fall of 1929, investors who had long believed the market was overvalued started to sell off their stocks, causing prices to drop. Noting the market downturn, stockbrokers demanded that clients repay margin loans and, when their clients couldn’t repay, dumped the stocks on the market in order to recoup some of their losses. The law of supply and demand sent stock prices spiraling uncontrollably downward. Over a period of two months, the market lost nearly half its value and many, many investors—including some of the nation’s biggest banks—were ruined.
8. D Roosevelt coined the phrase “Good Neighbor Policy” to reflect a shift in American attitudes toward Latin America. In the past, American intervention in the region had incited great resentment of the United States. Roosevelt announced a new U.S. commitment to autonomy throughout the hemisphere and showed his intentions by withdrawing U.S. troops from Nicaragua and Haiti. He later resisted sending troops to Cuba to quell a revolution.
9. A Americans were already predisposed to isolationism by nature before they heard the results of the Nye Commission’s investigations. They had been promised that World War I was “the war to end all wars.” Less than 20 years later, Europe was apparently on the verge of another big confrontation. The sentiment in the United States was, “Let them sort this out themselves.” Those feelings were strengthened when the Nye Commission revealed that many American munitions companies had violated an arms embargo in order to arm the nation’s enemies. It further revealed that U.S. banks had lobbied for entry into the war in order to protect more than $2 billion in loans to Britain and its allies. The report left Americans more cynical about the motives of its leaders and less susceptible to calls for intervention overseas.
10. A Fred Korematsu was among the more than 110,000 Japanese Americans ordered to relocate from the West Coast to internment camps during World War II. Korematsu refused, was arrested, and took his case all the way to the Supreme Court. The Court ruled that the government had not exceeded its power, noting that extraordinary times sometimes call for extraordinary measures; three of the nine justices dissented. History has not judged Roosevelt’s internment policy kindly. In 1998 Fred Korematsu was awarded the Presidential Medal of Honor.
1. D The Korean War didn’t begin until 1950.
2. C Fear of communist infiltration and subversion reached hysterical proportions in the post–World War II era, making all sorts of excessive responses to the communist threat not only possible but likely. Loyalty oaths were instituted by private companies, state governments, and even the federal government, based on the apparent belief that communist spies are capable of espionage but not of lying under oath. Blacklists banned suspected subversives from work in many industries, destroying the lives of many innocent people. Alger Hiss was accused of passing government secrets to the Soviet Union. He professed his innocence to his dying day, although Soviet files released in the post-Soviet era suggest his guilt. The Hiss case was front-page news. Richard Nixon played a prominent role in Hiss’s prosecution, thereby earning Nixon the national spotlight for the first time.
3. A The key to this question is the phrase “intensified Cold War rhetoric.” Words like “massive retaliation” didn’t exactly improve relations with the Soviet Union. While (B), containment, was the guiding principle of U.S. foreign policy throughout the Cold War, this question is asking something more specific. And although Dulles did forge many alliances with smaller nations (collective security), (A) is a better answer. Choice (C), summit diplomacy, was practiced by Reagan and Gorbachev, while the term “shuttle diplomacy,” (D), was applied to Henry Kissinger under Nixon.
4. D You should be familiar with the important decisions of the Marshall Court (1801–1835) and the Warren Court (1953–1969). Marshall is remembered as a Federalist who strengthened the new federal government and encouraged economic development of the new nation. The Warren Court was an activist court, best remembered for increasing the rights of individuals, specifically the rights of the accused. (For example, the Gideon and Miranda cases were decided by the Warren Court.) According to the Constitution, only Congress can make laws, but in effect, many of the Warren decisions established social policy, which many conservative critics saw as “judicial legislation.”
5. D Kennedy’s victory in 1960 was by the tiniest of margins. He could not have won, or governed, without the support of Democrats in the South, many of whom opposed any federal strengthening of civil rights law. As a result, Kennedy had to tread carefully on the issue of African American civil rights, a cause he had supported forcefully during his campaign. He used the attorney general’s office to bring suits to force desegregation of Southern universities and appointed African Americans to prominent positions in his administration but made no effort at civil rights legislation until his final year in office. After Kennedy’s assassination, new President Lyndon Johnson invoked Kennedy’s memory and commitment to civil rights to force the Civil Rights Act of 1964 through Congress.
6. C The Republican candidate, Richard Nixon, was a former vice president. The Democratic candidate, Hubert Humphrey, was the current vice president and, before that, a longtime senator. Neither could have campaigned as a Washington outsider, and neither did. The Democrats were fractured over the war; the party was home to both aggressive cold warriors and the anti-war movement. Robert Kennedy was assassinated in June; many believe he would have won the nomination had he not been killed. George Wallace formed a third party and campaigned on states’ rights and segregation, siphoning off key votes in the South, where the Democrats had traditionally done well. Nixon’s only opposition in the Republican primaries came from Nelson D. Rockefeller, who campaigned halfheartedly, and Ronald Reagan, who, at the time, was seen as too extreme to ever win the presidency. Reagan never changed, but the country did.
7. B Gasoline and oil prices shot through the roof in the 1970s, affecting a wide range of industries that relied on the fuels to run. The result was widespread inflation throughout the decade.
8. D This is the event that started it all—the break-in to the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C., where the Democratic party had its national headquarters. All of the other choices became part of the cover-up and are known collectively as “Watergate,” which ultimately forced the resignation of Richard Nixon, the only President to resign in American history. Nixon resigned before he was impeached and was subsequently pardoned by Gerald Ford.
1. B Reagan believed in limited federal government. Part of his goal in lowering tax rates was to reduce the federal budget (thus federal programs). But Reagan was also a stalwart cold warrior who believed that military strength was the best check against the Soviet Union and communism in general. He campaigned vigorously for new weapons systems, including the Strategic Defense Initiative, a space-based, anti-missile system dubbed “Star Wars.”
2. A Though American relations with Russia remain uneasy, fears of Soviet expansion are a thing of the past; the Soviet Union ceased to exist in 1991, ending the Cold War.
3. B In 1981 Ronald Reagan, in a move supported by various groups across the political spectrum, made Sandra Day O’Connor the first woman to serve on the Supreme Court. All the other choices represent typically conservative policy decisions by Reagan.
4. D The drop in the stock market, which occurred in 1987, was not a contributing factor to the emergence of the New Right. All of the other factors did lead to this renewal of conservatism.
5. A There are several presidential doctrines you should know for this exam; for example, the Monroe Doctrine and the Truman Doctrine. In most cases these “doctrines” were delivered as speeches to Congress but became statements of U.S. foreign policy. Alarmed by the establishment of Soviet satellites in Eastern Europe and the potential Soviet threat to Greece and Turkey following World War II, Truman pledged his support to prevent the spread of communism in Europe (although he did not use those exact words). As a cold warrior, Ronald Reagan was committed to providing covert and overt assistance to anti-communist resistance movements, particularly in nations like Afghanistan and Nicaragua.
6. C This is a factoid question. President George H. W. Bush led the brief Persian Gulf War in 1990. Choice (B) is Carter and (D) is Reagan. Choice (A) is President Clinton.
7. D Liberal Democrats would have mixed feelings about war and free trade, so rule out (A). Welfare benefit reform was in fact designed to get young mothers off welfare, so this was not necessarily a boon to the Democrats. The most ambitious effort by the Clinton administration was to pass a universal health care bill, but this ultimately did not pass Congress.
8. C Another factoid question. This was President George H. W. Bush’s campaign promise (though the promise was not kept).