Founding Era
The British policy of taxing the colonies to pay off French and Indian War debts directly caused this colonial rallying cry against Parliament.
What is "No taxation without representation"?
This 19th-century belief that America was divinely ordained to expand from coast to coast resulted in the displacement of Native Americans and war with Mexico.
What is Manifest Destiny?
The 1860 election of this Republican president served as the immediate cause for South Carolina and other Southern states to secede from the Union.
Who was Abraham Lincoln?
Rapid industrialization and the rise of factory jobs caused a massive wave of this process, defined as the population shift from rural areas to cities.
What is urbanization?
The 1929 stock market crash combined with severe overproduction and banking panics caused this prolonged economic downturn.
What is the Great Depression?
The number of multiple choice questions on the exam.
Shays' Rebellion exposed the severe weaknesses of this first American governing document, causing colonial leaders to meet in Philadelphia to write a new Constitution.
What are the Articles of Confederation?
Thomas Jefferson’s purchase of this territory from France in 1803 effectively doubled the size of the United States and secured control of the Mississippi River.
What is the Louisiana Purchase?
This Supreme Court ruling stated that enslaved people were property, not citizens, which effectively caused the Missouri Compromise to be declared unconstitutional and inflamed sectional tensions.
What is the Dred Scott v. Sandford decision?
To fight against low wages, unsafe working conditions, and long hours, workers formed these organizations to utilize collective bargaining.
What are labor unions?
The surprise Japanese attack on this Hawaiian naval base on December 7, 1941, caused the United States to abandon its isolationist stance and enter WWII.
What is Pearl Harbor?
All three written responses (SEQs and Essay) must have this.
What is Historical Context/Circumstances?
To prevent a tyrannical central government, the Framers included this system—influenced by Montesquieu—ensuring no single branch of government could dominate the others.
What are checks and balances? (Or separation of powers)
The passage of the Indian Removal Act of 1830 by Andrew Jackson directly caused this tragic, forced migration of the Cherokee nation westward.
What is the Trail of Tears?
Issued by Lincoln after the Battle of Antietam, this document altered the purpose of the Civil War by making the abolition of slavery an official Union war goal.
What is the Emancipation Proclamation?
The Supreme Court’s ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson established the "separate but equal" doctrine, which legally caused the expansion of this system in the South.
What is legal segregation, or Jim Crow Era
Geopolitical tensions and distrust between the democratic United States and the communist Soviet Union following WWII caused this decades-long era of global confrontation.
What is the Cold War?
This is the focus of SEQ 2.
A deep distrust of direct popular democracy and a compromise between large and small states caused the Framers to create this system for choosing the President.
What is the Electoral College?
The 1845 annexation of Texas and a border dispute along the Rio Grande directly caused the outbreak of this war, which ultimately forced Mexico to cede its northern territories to the United States.
What is the Mexican-American War?
The passage of these three "Reconstruction Amendments" directly resulted in the constitutional abolition of slavery, citizenship rights, and voting rights for African American men.
What are the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments?
Shocking publications like Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle caused the federal government to step away from Laissez-Faire and pass laws like this 1906 consumer protection act.
What is the Pure Food and Drug Act (FDA)? (Or Meat Inspection Act)
The landmark Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education overturned Plessy, directly causing the forced desegregation of these public institutions.
What are public schools?
The main task of the civic literacy essay.
What is analyze the impact of efforts to address an issue?
To cause the Anti-Federalists to finally ratify the Constitution, the Federalists agreed to add this crucial feature to protect individual liberties.
What is the Bill of Rights?
The construction and 1825 completion of this New York waterway caused NYC to become the nation's premier economic port by linking the Great Lakes to the Atlantic Ocean.
What is the Erie Canal?
The Compromise of 1877 resulted in the removal of federal troops from the South, which directly caused the end of this era and the rise of Jim Crow laws.
What is Reconstruction?
Political corruption by urban political machines (like Tammany Hall) and corporate monopolies directly caused the rise of this reform movement aimed at cleaning up American society.
What is the Progressive Movement?
The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution gave President Lyndon B. Johnson authorization to escalate U.S. military involvement in this Southeast Asian conflict without a formal declaration of war.
What is the Vietnam War?
To earn full credit on the Civic Literacy Essay, the grading rubric strictly requires students to include this type of information, which cannot be found anywhere within the provided document packet.
What is outside information (or prior knowledge)?