Expansion
The 19th-century belief that the United States was destined by God to expand its dominion across the entire North American continent.
What is Manifest Destiny?
This 1823 policy stated that further efforts by European nations to colonize land or interfere with states in the Americas would be viewed as acts of aggression.
What is the Monroe Doctrine?
The first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution, which protect individual liberties.
What is the Bill of Rights?
This 1954 Supreme Court decision ruled that "separate but equal" education was unconstitutional.
What is Brown v. Board of Education?
This inventor’s light bulb and power systems helped spark the Second Industrial Revolution.
Who is Thomas Edison?
This 1862 Act encouraged Western migration by providing settlers with 160 acres of public land in exchange for five years of residence.
What is the Homestead Act?
The post-WWII foreign policy strategy intended to prevent the spread of communism
What is Containment?
This President’s "New Deal" programs aimed to provide relief, recovery, and reform during the Great Depression.
Who is Franklin D. Roosevelt?
This amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1920, granted women the right to vote.
What is the 19th Amendment?
The decade known for its cultural shift, jazz music, and the "flapper" lifestyle, followed immediately by the Great Depression.
What are the Roaring Twenties?
This massive internal shift saw millions of African Americans move from the rural South to the urban North and West during the 20th century.
What is the Great Migration?
The "Splendid Little War" in 1898 that resulted in the U.S. acquiring Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines.
What is the Spanish-American War?
The system that ensures no single branch of government (Executive, Legislative, Judicial) becomes too powerful.
What are Checks and Balances?
The 1848 convention that is often cited as the formal beginning of the organized women's rights movement in the U.S.
What is the Seneca Falls Convention?
The primary author of the Declaration of Independence.
Who is Thomas Jefferson?
The 1848 treaty that ended the Mexican-American War and ceded vast territories, including California and New Mexico, to the U.S.
What is the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo?
This massive aid package was designed to help rebuild Western Europe after World War II to ensure economic and political stability.
What is the Marshall Plan?
This landmark Supreme Court case established the principle of "judicial review."
What is Marbury v. Madison?
This 1965 legislation aimed to overcome legal barriers at the state and local levels that prevented African Americans from exercising their right to vote.
What is the Voting Rights Act of 1965?
This 1863 executive order declared "that all persons held as slaves" within the rebellious states "are, and henceforward shall be free."
What is the Emancipation Proclamation?
This 1882 law was the first significant federal legislation to restrict immigration based on a specific nationality or ethnic group.
What is the Chinese Exclusion Act?
A period of geopolitical tension between the U.S. and the Soviet Union that lasted from roughly 1947 to 1991.
What is the Cold War?
The 1800s political philosophy that favored the "common man" and expanded voting rights for white males, named after the 7th President.
What is Jacksonian Democracy?
The 1896 Supreme Court case that legalized segregation under the "separate but equal" doctrine.
What is Plessy v. Ferguson?
This late-19th-century era was characterized by rapid economic growth but also significant social conflict and corruption.
What is the Gilded Age?