7th Grade Social Studies First Semester Final Exam Study Guide
The US Constitution
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
What powers does Congress have?
How many Senators are there in the US Senate?
How many members are there in the House of Representatives?
A person elected President of the United States serves a term of how many years?
Congress cannot suspend a person’s right to the writ of habeas corpus. This protects a person from
what?
6. How often does Article I require the Congress to meet?
7. To be eligible to run for the House of Representatives a person must be how old?
8. Who is the person who presides over the U.S. House of Representatives?
9. The Vice President is the person who presides over the Senate. However, when the Vice President
is not present, who is the person who presides over the U.S. Senate?
10. How many District Courts are in the United States?
11. How many Circuit Court of Appeals are in the United States?
12. A judge appointed to the District, Circuit, or Supreme Court serves for how long?
13. What is the correct formula used to help determine the number electors in the Electoral College?
14. Judicial review, the power of the Supreme Court to say that laws are unconstitutional, was
established in 1803 in which case?
15. How does the Constitution define treason?
16. You will be given a number of scenarios, you will decide which of the Bill of Right applies to that
case.
The Civil War
17. The Kansas-Nebraska Act called for what?
18. What role did John Brown play in the slavery controversy?
19. What were the Confederate States of America?
20. Who was the President of the Confederacy?
21. Northerners were unhappy with the political outcome of which two people?
22. Why did Southern states decide to secede after the election of 1860?
23. Whose lawsuit to gain freedom was denied in a landmark Supreme Court decision?
24. What is a statement about a political party’s beliefs called?
25. The military strategy developed by Union general Winfield Scott to smother the South’s economy
and divide the Southern region was known as what?
26. Because of the South’s “main” crop and product in the world markets, Southerners referred to it as
what?
27. The Confederacy gained an outstanding leader when this man resigned from the U.S. Army to serve
in the Confederate forces of his native Virginia.
28. What was the first major battle of the Civil War?
29. Why was the North’s larger population an advantage in the Civil War?
30. What advance in technology made the Civil War much more deadly than earlier war
31. Describe military hygiene during the Civil War.
32. Why were northerners most eager to go to war?
33. What event triggered the fighting between the North and the South?
34. What strategy did the South have for fighting the war?
35. Which was a major complaint of President Lincoln about his commander in the east, General
George McClellan?
36. Where was the fort that Southern forces attacked at the start of the Civil War?
37. Why did Abraham Lincoln issue the Emancipation Proclamation?
38. What was the 54th Massachusetts regiment?
39. Who assassinated President Lincoln?
40. What did Stonewall Jackson’s death mean for the South?
41. Why did poor Southern whites complain that the Civil War was a “rich man’s war, but a poor
man’s fight”?
42. How did William Tecumseh Sherman’s conquest of Atlanta help President Lincoln?
43. Where was Abraham Lincoln assassinated?
Know the descriptions or definitions of the following words listed below:
a.
b.
c.
d.
e.
f.
Battle of Gettysburg
Ulysses S. Grant
Robert E. Lee
Siege of Vicksburg
William Tecumseh Sherman
Appomattox Court House
Reconstruction
a.
b.
c.
d.
e.
f.
black codes
Fourteenth Amendment
Freedmen’s Bureau
Andrew Johnson
Radical Republicans
Reconstruction
44. How did the Panic of 1873 affect the United States?
45. Which president took action against the Ku Klux Klan?
46. What did the 15th Amendment do?
47. What brought Reconstruction to an end in the South?
48. What divided the South into 5 military districts?
49. Which phrase best describes the 13th Amendment?
50. What did the House of Representatives do when President Johnson violated the Tenure of Office
Act?
51. What rumor spread among the former slaves?
52. Who led the Radical Republicans in Congress?
53. What are the black codes?
54. Did the Freedmen’s Bureau set up schools across the South to educate African Americans recently freed
from slavery?
55. Who was a secret group that deprived former slaves of their rights and attempted to restore white
control in the South?
Geography
56. What is the major mountain range on the east coast of the United States?
57. What type of map would be best if you were studying current weather conditions?
58. What type of map would you use if you wanted the best representation of the Earth?
59. What term is defined as the average number of people living an area?
60. What tool would you use to find the distance between two locations on a map?
61. What type of map distorts land masses?
62. What is the largest mountain range in North America?
63. What ocean is on the eastern coast of the United States?
64. What type of map shows state boundaries?
65. What term describes imaginary lines used to measure North/South of the equator?
66. What map tool would let you know which direction you were traveling?
Note: You will also be answering multiple choice questions about a map.