The Three Branches
These are the three branches of the federal government.
What are the legislative, executive, and the judicial?
This is the supreme law of the land.
What is the United States Constitution?
These people lived in America before the Europeans arrived.
Who are the Indians/Native Americans/American Indians?
"A house divided against itself cannot stand."
Who is Abraham Lincoln?
The Erie Canal was a road made out of water that connected Lake Erie by Buffalo, New York to this river.
What is the Hudson River?
This is the system that stops one branch from getting more powerful than the other branches.
What is checks and balances?
These first three words of the Constitution remind us that Americans rule themselves through self-government.
What is "We the People"?
DAILY DOUBLE
The Transcontinental Railroad joined the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroad tracks into one continuous railroad track. This item was used to mark the place where the two tracks met.
"If you don't like the way my supporters acted at my inauguration party, perhaps you'd like to challenge me to a duel?"
Who is Andrew Jackson?
Right before the Civil War, our country experienced a period when people where more loyal to their states than the country as a whole. Such a fractured feeling of disunion is called this.
What is sectionalism?
The number of Supreme Court justices has changed over the years. Currently, there are this many serving on the court.
What is nine?
This is something added on to the end of the Constitution.
What is an amendment?
This is the Territory that the United States bought from France to double the size of our country in 1803.
What is the Louisiana Purchase?
“Now if it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the ends of justice and MINGLE MY BLOOD FURTHER WITH THE BLOOD OF MY CHILDREN... so LET IT BE DONE.”
Who is John Brown?
Abraham Lincoln only won 39.9% of the popular vote in the election of 1860. But he still won the presidency because presidents are elected not with popular votes but with these.
What are electoral votes?
The president has 15 departments that help him run the federal government. Alexander Hamilton was the head of this one.
What is the Treasury Department? (He was Secretary of the Treasury.)
This Founding Father was a famous writer and printer, so he helped Thomas Jefferson write the Declaration of Indpendence.
Who is Benjamin Franklin?
This woman saved a portrait of George Washington from destruction when the British set the White House on Fire in 1814.
Who is Dolley Madison?
"Well, I may have run for president five times and lost, but my compromises kept us out of war for forty years. Even my last name suggests that I knew how to stretch!"
Who is Henry Clay?
Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote this famous book about the life of a slave, based upon the true story of a freedman named Josiah Henson.
What is Uncle Tom's Cabin?
The legislative branch is divided into two parts. Please name them and give the number of people serving in each part.
What is the House of Representatives (435 members) and the Senate (100 members)?
The Declaration of Independence names three rights that all Americans have. Name them.
What are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?
The first official shot of the Civil War was fired at Fort Sumter in 1860. This is the number of deaths that resulted from this first fighting.
What is two: one union soldier who died in a salute to the American flag and one Confederate mule.
"Mr. Sumner, I have read your speech twice over carefully. It is a libel on South Carolina, and Mr. Butler, who is a relative of mine." CRACK!
Who is Preston Brooks?
The Indian Removal Act called for the removal of Native Americans from the east coast to land west of the Mississippi River. What tragic event in 1838-1839 did this lead to and what Native Americans were involved?
What are the Trail of Tears and the Cherokee Indians?