Foundations & Revolution
Enlightenment thinkers influenced American ideas by arguing that all people are born with fundamental rights that no government should take away. What are these called?
What are Natural Rights?
To prevent any single person or group from getting total control of the federal government, the Constitution splits authority into three separate branches. What is this concept called?
What is Separation of Powers (or Checks and Balances)?
What was the main idea behind Manifest Destiny in the mid-1800s?
What is expanding the U.S. to the Pacific Ocean?
What primary economic difference caused the North and South to develop differently prior to the Civil War?
What is Northern industry vs. Southern agriculture?
The period of rebuilding the South and readmitting former Confederate states into the Union after the Civil War is known as ____.
What is Reconstruction?
Thomas Paine wrote a famous pamphlet to convince everyday colonists that America should break away from Great Britain. What was its title?
What is Common Sense?
During the Constitutional Convention, how did the "Great Compromise" resolve the disagreement over representation in Congress?
What is a two-house legislature (Senate = equal, House = population)?
Which piece of agricultural technology, originally invented by Eli Whitney, unintentionally expanded slavery in the American South?
What is the Cotton Gin?
What was the main goal of the Union's "Anaconda Plan"?
What is to blockade Southern ports and take the Mississippi River?
This Constitutional Amendment officially abolished slavery across the entire United States.
What is the 13th Amendment?
The American victory at the Battle of Saratoga was considered a major turning point in the Revolutionary War because it helped the US win over what ally?
What is France?
Why were the Anti-Federalists initially against ratifying the new U.S. Constitution?
What is it lacked a Bill of Rights?
This forced 1830s journey relocated thousands of Native Americans, including the Cherokee, to land west of the Mississippi River.
What is the Trail of Tears?
Issued by Lincoln in 1863, this executive order declared that all enslaved people in Confederate states were free.
What is the Emancipation Proclamation?
This Constitutional Amendment guaranteed equal protection under the law and citizenship to anyone born in the U.S.
What is the 14th Amendment?
Shays' Rebellion in 1786 was a major event because it showed that America's first government (under the Articles of Confederation) was:
A) Too strict with its laws
B) Too weak to maintain order or collect taxes
C) Giving too much power to the President
What is B) Too weak to maintain order or collect taxes?
he principle of Judicial Review established that the Supreme Court has the power to:
A) Veto laws passed by Congress
B) Declare laws unconstitutional
C) Fire members of the Cabinet
What is B) Declare laws unconstitutional?
The U.S. gained a massive amount of land in the Southwest (including California) after winning which conflict?
A) The War of 1812
B) The Mexican-American War
C) The Spanish-American War
What is B) The Mexican-American War?
This 3-day battle in Pennsylvania in 1863 was considered the major turning point of the war in favor of the Union.
What is the Battle of Gettysburg?
Laws passed by Southern states right after the war to restrict African Americans' freedoms were called...
What are Black Codes?
British policies after the French and Indian War angered American colonists primarily because Parliament did which of the following?
A) Taxed the colonies without giving them representation in Parliament
B) Forced colonists to speak French
C) Banned all trade with other countries
What is A) Taxed the colonies without giving them representation in Parliament?
Early political parties formed in the 1790s largely because Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson disagreed over:
A) Expanding west to the Pacific
B) How powerful the federal government should be
C) Moving the national capital to New York
What is B) How powerful the federal government should be?
Issued in 1823, this U.S. policy warned European nations to stay out of the affairs of the Western Hemisphere.
What is the Monroe Doctrine?
General Robert E. Lee surrendered his Confederate army to Ulysses S. Grant at this Virginia location in April 1865.
What is Appomattox Court House?
This system trapped landless Black and white farmers in cycles of debt by forcing them to work land in exchange for a portion of crops.
What is Sharecropping?