Founding Principles
This founding document created a weak central government that lacked a national executive or judiciary.
What are the Articles of Confederation?
This piece of land, acquired in 1803 from France, effectively doubled the size of the United States.
What is the Louisiana Purchase?
This was a policy or practice used, particularly in the South, to disenfranchise African Americans by making voter registration difficult.
What is a Literacy Test?
This secret 1917 communication from Germany to Mexico proposed a military alliance against the U.S., fueling anti-German sentiment and pushing the U.S. toward WWI.
What is the Zimmerman Telegram?
This Civil War-era amendment abolished slavery throughout the United States.
What is the 13th Amendment?
This Enlightenment philosopher influenced the Declaration of Independence with his ideas of a Social Contract and Natural Rights (Life, Liberty, and Property).
Who is John Locke?
James K. Polk's inaugural address strongly advocated for this belief that the U.S. was destined to expand across the continent.
What is Manifest Destiny?
This mass movement saw six million African Americans leave the rural South for the Northeast, Midwest, and West, seeking better economic opportunities and escaping segregation.
What is the Great Migration?
This anti-communist event refers to the fear of communism and radical dissent following WWI, which led to the controversial Palmer Raids.
What is the First Red Scare?
This amendment guarantees freedom of Religion, Assembly, Press, Petition, and Speech (RAPPS).
What is the 1st Amendment?
Charles de Montesquieu advocated for this system to prevent tyranny, corresponding to the legislative, executive, and judicial branches.
What is the Separation of Powers?
This 1793 invention by Eli Whitney made short-staple cotton profitable, tragically leading to a dramatic rise in the demand for enslaved labor.
What is the Cotton Gin?
This cartoon symbol was famously used to depict Standard Oil and its widespread reach and monopolistic power over other industries and politics during the Gilded Age.
What is the Octopus?
This ideology was used to justify U.S. Imperialism by arguing that a "fitter" or superior nation had the right to govern "less advanced nations".
What is Social Darwinism?
This 1896 Supreme Court ruling upheld segregation by establishing the "separate but equal" doctrine, making segregation the law of the land until its reversal.
What is Plessy v. Ferguson?
According to Federalist No. 84, Alexander Hamilton argued this was not necessary because the proposed Constitution only delegated specific powers to the federal government.
What is a Bill of Rights?
This 1857 Supreme Court ruling declared that an enslaved person was not a citizen and that Congress had no power to prohibit slavery in the territories.
What is Dred Scott v. Sandford?
The 16th Amendment (1913) implemented this new source of federal revenue, reducing the government's reliance on tariffs.
What is the Federal Income Tax?
This event in October 1962, triggered by the discovery of Soviet missile sites in Cuba, is considered the closest the world has ever come to a nuclear war.
What is the Cuban Missile Crisis?
This landmark 1954 Supreme Court case ruled that state-sponsored segregation of public schools was unconstitutional, overturning "separate but equal".
What is Brown v. Board of Education?
The Tenth Amendment establishes this principle by reserving powers not delegated to the federal government to the states or the people.
What is Federalism?
The Compromise of 1877 is widely seen as marking the end of this era because it led to the withdrawal of federal troops from the South.
What is the Reconstruction Era?
This series of programs and reforms (e.g., CCC, TVA) was implemented by FDR to combat the devastating effects of the Great Depression.
What is the New Deal?
This 1973 Resolution was passed by Congress to limit the President's power to commit military forces by requiring Congressional approval after 60 days.
What is the War Powers Resolution (or War Powers Act)?
The 15th, 19th, and 26th Amendments all focus on guaranteeing this fundamental right.
What are Voting Rights?