US History Semester Exam Study Guide
December 2013
1. What was an advantage the British had at the beginning of the American Revolution?
2. Why was Shay’s Rebellion significant?
3. President Washington urged ratification of the Bill of Rights to strengthen the rights of
individuals. Why did other politicians support ratification of the Bill of rights?
4. What is the concept of judicial review?
5. What was the settlement founded in the early 1600s by the English that was the most
important for the future United States?
6. Why is the case of Marbury v. Madison important?
7. What was the implication of the Supreme Court’s decision in Dred Scott v. Sanford?
8. To what did European contact with the Native Americans lead?
9. What advantages did the North hold at the beginning of the Civil War?
10. What successes did the Freedmen’s Bureau have during Reconstruction?
11. Why was Johnson impeached?
12. What was the purpose of the Black Codes?
13. What was the purpose behind President Lincoln’s “Ten Percent Plan?”
14. Why was the 15th amendment considered a truly radical part of Radical Reconstruction?
15. Who was the president of the Confederate States of America?
16. What event sparked the outbreak of the American Civil War?
17. What was the advantage that the South held at the beginning of the Civil War?
18. What is “Bleeding Kansas?”
19. What happened to slavery as a result of the development of the cotton gin?
20. What were the results of the Missouri Compromise?
21. What was the significance of the Emancipation Proclamation?
22. How did the South attempt to disenfranchise black voters?
23. What is the purpose of Jim Crow?
24. Why was the Battle of Wounded Knee significant?
25. Why were the buffalo nearly exterminated?
26. To assimilate Indians into American society, the Dawes Act did what?
27. What was one problem with the Homestead Act?
28. What was the first major farmers’ organization?
29. What was the original purpose of the Grange?
30. What was the significance of the Pullman Strike?
31. How did city bosses and their “machines” retain control of city governments despite their
reputations for greed and corruption?
32. With what problems were early twentieth-century Progressive reformers concerned?
33. What is considered the most significant outcome of the 1902 anthracite coal strike?
34. In what significant way did the Knights of Labor differ from the American Federation of
Labor?
35. What themes were common in the writings of the muckrakers and authors such as Upton
Sinclair?
36. The Progressive movement was most responsible for which development?
37. What was the main purpose of President Theodore Roosevelt’s Square Deal?
38. American novelist John Steinbeck noted, “We built America and the process made us
Americans—a new breed, rooted in all races, stained and tinted with all colors, a seeming
ethnic anarchy. Then, in a little, little time, we became more alike than we were
different—a new society; not great, but fitted by our very faults for greatness, E Pluribus
Unum.”
Steinbeck’s remark relates most closely to what concept?
39. What group was barred from membership to the Knights of Labor?
40. The people who found fault with the Captains of Industry mostly argued that these men
did what?
41. What was the single greatest factor helping to spur the amazing industrialization of the
post-Civil War years?
42. How did the new immigrants who came to the US after 1880 differ from the old
immigrants?
43. Define the Columbian Exchange.
44. Why was Thomas Jefferson conscience stricken about the purchase of the Louisiana
Territory from France?
45. What was the policy of the Jackson administration toward the eastern Indian tribes?
46. Who created trusts and was criticized as a robber baron while serving as head of the
Standard Oil Company?
47. What is vertical integration?
Constructed Response
48. In the view of Progressives, what was wrong with American society? What solutions did
they propose to address social problems? Be specific.