Advanced Placement United States History
Assessment Index for the Americans Reading Study Guide
AY 2015-2016
Chapter 5 (pp. 59-68)
1. Identify the two laws enacted by the Confederation Congress intended to manage western lands, and distinguish between them.
2. Explain three key weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation.
3. Explain why and how Shays’ Rebellion influenced changes to the central government.
4. Identify and explain two of the compromises reached at the Constitutional Convention.
5. Explain how the Electoral College system was a compromise (what two competing interests did it balance?).
6. Explain three key issues on which the Federalists and Anti-Federalists disagreed.
Chapter 6 (84-98)
1. Explain President Washington’s foreign policy with respect to European powers like Spain, Britain and France.
2. Explain three key differences between the political views of Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton.
3. Why did some states feel justified in refusing to obey the Alien and Sedition Acts? (6.2)
4. What were two reasons that American wanted war with Great Britain by 1812? (6.4)
5. What were three significant results of the War of 1812 for the United States? (6.4)
6. Explain the key continuities and changes (departures, precedents, patterns) in US foreign policy from 1789 to 1801.
Chapter 7 (pp. 99-111)
1. Explain two sources and two consequences of sectionalism in the U.S. prior to 1850?
2. Explain two ways that Chief Justice John Marshall used the Supreme Court to boost federal power in the early 1800s?
3. How did Henry Clay’s American System help strengthen the nation’s sense of unity? (7.1)
4. What was the purpose of the Monroe Doctrine? (7.2)
5. Explain two specific ways that President Jackson showed his commitment to the Common Man once he was in office?
6. Why did South Carolina threaten to leave the Union in 1832? (7.4)
Chapter 8 (pp.112-125)
1. Describe three of the social reform movements that began during the 1830s.
2. Explain the relationship between the Second Great Awakening, transcendentalism, and reform.
3. Distinguish between the goals and methods of William Lloyd Garrison, David Walker and Frederick Douglass.
4. What inferences about the antebellum period can you draw from the adoption of the “gag rule” in 1836?
5. How was the women’s suffrage movement related to the abolition movement?
6. How are the economic and technological developments of the early 19th century related to the Commonwealth v. Hunt decision?
Chapter 9 (pp. 126-140)
1. Explain 2 ways that technological and commercial innovations in the first half of the 19th century fostered a “market revolution.”
2. Explain two specific reasons or justifications for Manifest Destiny.
3. Explain three reasons that Texans desired, then demanded, independence from Mexico in 1835.
4. Explain why the nine-year debate over Texas annexation was so contentious, and the factors led to its resolution in 1845.
5. Explain what group of Americans opposed a war with Mexico through 1846 and why they opposed it.
6. Explain two important outcomes of the Mexican War?
Chapter 10 (pp.141-153)
1. Why did California’s application for admission to the Unites States trigger a crisis in 1850?
2. Explain two specific ways that Northern abolitionists responded to the new Fugitive Slave Law.
3. Explain why Kansas became the focus of the slavery debate in the mid-1850s?
4. How and why did Lincoln’s election as President in 1860 trigger Southern secession?
5. How did the Dred Scott Decision change the slavery debate in 1857?
6. Explain what a “nativist” is, and what events or developments in the 1840s-1860s encouraged this feeling.
Chapter 11 (pp. 154-169)
1. Explain the “Anaconda Plan” and briefly evaluate its effectiveness.
2. How did the Emancipation Proclamation change or enlarge the Union war aims?
3. Name two key military turning points in the Civil War and explain why they were turning points.
4. Why did Great Britain remain neutral during the Civil War? (11.1)
5. Why was Lincoln’s suspension of the writ of habeas corpus a war-time necessity?
6. By mid-1865, how had the war altered the relationship between the federal government and the states?