Review Questions for US 2 Final Exam
Directions: Each night you should be working to be able to answer these questions without any notes. If you are able to do
this by the exam day you will probably do well on the exam. Each day in class you will be given a review quiz on the
questions you should be working on. I will NOT be taking these questions up for homework, it is your responsibility to get it
done and stay focused on studying for the final exam.
Questions 1 – 15 for 5/18 - Monday
1. Why was the period from about 1870 – 1900 called the Gilded Age?
2. What caused the problems between the plains people and “real” Americans?
3. How did southerners get trapped into sharecropping?
4. How are immigration, urbanization and industrialization all interrelated?
5. Who were Andrew Carnegie, J.P. Morgan, Cornelius Vanderbilt and John Rockefeller?
6. What is horizontal and vertical integration?
7. How did the immigration mix change after about 1885?
8. How did the Pendleton Civil Service Act change American politics?
9. How did the Dawes Severalty Act try to help the Natives?
10. Why did workers strike at the Homestead Steel factory and the Pullman Company?
11. Why was it hard to make money as a farmer in the years after the Civil War?
12. Why did getting rid of the Greenbacks cause deflation?
13. Who would have been a Gold Bug?
14. What did Bryan mean when he said “you shall not crucify mankind on a cross of gold?”
15. What was the Omaha Platform?
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Questions 15 – 32 for 5/ 19 - Tuesday
Why did we go to war with Spain in 1898?
What did we get from that war?
Why was overseas imperialism so controversial?
Why did we proclaim the Open Door Policy in China?
What do US intervention in the Boxer rebellions and the end of the Russo- Japanese War and the great
White Fleet tell us about America at the turn of the 20 th century?
How did the Platt Amendment place limits on the Teller Amendment?
How did we get permission to dig the Panama Canal?
Why did T. Roosevelt refer to them as “muckrakers?”
Who were Jacob Riis, Lincoln Steffens, Ida Tarbell, Ida Wells-Barnett, and Upton Sinclair?
How effective was the Sherman Anti-Trust Act?
What did the 16th Amendment do?
What did the 17th Amendment do?
What did the 18th Amendment do?
What did the 19th Amendment do?
What does the Federal Reserve Act do?
Why did the US get into the Great War (WWI)?
Why did we reject the Treaty of Versailles?
Questions 33 – 50 for 5/ 20 - Wednesday
In what ways was the 1920 election a repudiation of the whole Progressive Era?
What was the Tea Pot Dome scandal about?
What are Trickle Down Economics?
What did they mean by the lost generation?
Why did many artists and intellectuals go to Paris?
What does the Scopes Trial tell us about American society in the 1920’s?
What developments began to change rural isolation?
Despite being generally isolationist, what do the Washington Naval Conference and the Kellogg – Briand
Pact tell us about US foreign policy during the 20’s?
What impact Fordism and Taylorism have on the US economy?
42. What were the causes of the Great Depression?
43. How did Hoover’s RFC try to fix the economy?
44. How did the collapse of the Dawes Plan and the Smoot-Hawley Tariff help cause a world- wide economic
collapse?
45. Who lived in Hoovervilles?
46. What programs were part of the Hundred Days?
47. How do Keynesian economics work?
48. What was court packing?
49. Why did Germany start a war in Europe?
50. Why did Japan start a war in Asia?
Questions 51 - 65 for 5/ 21 - Thursday
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What was Lend Lease?
Why did the US get into WW II?
What was the significance of the Battle of Britain, the battle of Stalingrad, D-Day, Midway and coral Sea?
Who were the Big 3?
Who were the Axis?
How did the meeting at Yalta help bring on the Cold War?
How did the Manhattan Project bring an end to the war?
How did the Berlin Airlift set the tone for relations between the US and the USSR for the next 20 years?
What was the Truman Doctrine?
How did the GI Bill (Servicemen’s Readjustment Act) affect the US?
Why was the Marshall Plan a brilliant piece of legislation?
Why did the US become increasingly paranoid of the Soviet Union in 1949?
How did Senator Joseph McCarthy take advantage of that paranoia?
Why did Truman lose support from southern whites (Dixiecrats)?
Why did we get involved in Korea?
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Questions 66 – 96 for 5/22 - Friday
Why did we like Ike (Eisenhower)?
What was the significance of Brown v. School Board of Topeka, KS?
Why did so many leave the cities for the new suburbs?
How did the US economy change during the 1950’s?
What do Eisenhower’s actions in Iran, Cuba and the U-2 incident tell us about his foreign policy?
How has the Eisenhower Doctrine affected our relations with the middle east?
How did Ike get permission to build the Interstate system?
Why was Ike so reluctant to get involved in the issue of Civil Rights?
How did Sputnik affect US domestic politics?
Why did Ike warn us about the military industrial complex?
Why has Kennedy’s reputation exceeded his actual accomplishments as president?
How did the missile crisis come to an end?
Why did we get into a space race with the Russians?
Why did Kennedy push through the creation of the Peace Corps?
How was LBJ able to push both a Civil Rights bill and the Voting Rights Act?
What programs were part of Johnson’s Great Society?
Why did LBJ allow himself to be drawn into a civil war in Vietnam?
Why were they called long hot summers?
Why was the Vietnam War probably unwinnable?
What were the Pentagon Papers? (New York Times v. US)
How did Nixon reach out to the silent majority?
What was détente?
What was CREEP?
What is Title IX?
What is the EPA?
Why was stagflation so hard to fix?
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What was Nixon’s Southern strategy?
What caused the first energy crisis?
How did Watergate lead to Nixon’s resignation?
Why was Ford a one term president?
Why did we elect Jimmy Carter?
Questions 96 – 1128 for 5/ 26 - Tuesday
97. What evidence is there that Carter’s religious beliefs affected his foreign policy?
98. Why did Iran take US hostages?
99. How did Reagan and Volker finally fix the inflationary spiral?
100. Why did many working class Americans support Reagan?
101. What was Star Wars (SDI)?
102. How did the US win the Cold War?
103. Why have average wages in the US declined since 1973?
104. What impact did the Christian Right (moral majority) have on domestic politics?
105. Why did Reagan push supply side economic policies and deregulation?
106. What likely happened in the Iran-Contra scandal?
107. Why did we attack Iraq in 1991?
108. Why did we have to bail out the savings and loans?
109. What impact did the AIDS epidemic have on US society?
110. What has the impact of the Americans with Disabilities Act been?
111. Why did we elect Clinton in 1992?
112. Why did we give control of Congress to the Republicans in 1994?
113. What has the impact of the Contract With America been on domestic politics?
114. Why did Clinton pass what had been Republican policies like NAFTA, welfare “reform” and the Defense
of Marriage Act?
115. Why did the US get involved in the former Yugoslavia?
116. Why did the House impeach Bill Clinton in 1998?
117. Why was the 2000 election so controversial?
118. What has the significance of 9/11 been?
119. What did the Patriot Act do?
120. What has the impact of No Child Left Behind been?
121. Why did the US send troops to Iraq again in 2003?
122. Why are the US deficits out of control?
123. What was the significance of the 2008 presidential elections?
124. How has gerrymandering shaped modern American politics?
125. Why do Republicans hate Obamacare?
126. What has been responsible for the increased partisanship in US politics?
127. What are the beliefs of the Tea Party and why do Democrats and some Republicans distrust it?
128. What has been the impact of the Citizens United case on US politics?