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SAT Subject Test: U.S. History

Subjects : sat, history
Instructions:
  • Answer 50 questions in 15 minutes.
  • If you are not ready to take this test, you can study here.
  • Match each statement with the correct term.
  • Don't refresh. All questions and answers are randomly picked and ordered every time you load a test.

This is a study tool. The 3 wrong answers for each question are randomly chosen from answers to other questions. So, you might find at times the answers obvious, but you will see it re-enforces your understanding as you take the test each time.
1. Issued on August 14 - 1941 during a meeting between President Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. The charter outlined the ideal postwar world - condemned military aggression - asserted the right to national self-determination - a






2. A series of raids coordinated by Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer. Throughout 1910 - police and federal marshals raided the homes of suspected radicals and the headquarters of radical organizations in thirty-two cities. The raids resulted in more






3. Issued in 1941 in response to German submarine attacks on American ships in the Atlantic ocean. The order authorized naval patrols to fire on any Axis ships found between the US and Iceland.






4. Began when Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in August 1990. In January 1991 - the US attacked Iraqi troops - supply lines - and bases. In late February - US ground troops launched an attack on Kuwait City - successfully driving out Hussein'






5. The series of French and American naval conflicts occuring between 1798 and 1800.






6. Advocated isolationism and opposed FDR's reelection in 1940. Committee members urged neutrality - claiming that the US could stand alone regardless of Hitler's advances in Europe.






7. A series of twelve letters published by John Dickinson. The letters denounced the Townsend Duties by demonstrating that many ot the arguments employed against the Stamp Act were valid against the Townsend Duties as well. The letters inspired anti-Bri






8. Also the Compromise of 1820. Resolved the conflict surrounding the admission of Missouri to the Union as either a slave or free state. The compromise made Missouri a slave state - admitted Maine as a free state - and prohibited slavery in the remaind






9. A prominent transcendentalist writer. Two of his most famous writings are Civil Disobediance (1849) and Walden (1854). He advocatd living life according to one's conscience - removed from materialism and repressive social codes.






10. A protest against the 1773 Tea Act - which allowed Britain to use the profits from selling tea to pay the salaries of royal governers. In December 1773 - Samuel Adams gathered Boston residents and warned them of the consequences of the Tea Act. Follo






11. A fiction writer who gained popularity in the 1840s for his horrific tales. He published many famous stories - including "The Raven" (1844) and "The Cask of Amontillado" (1846).






12. The stock market crash of October 24 - 1929. After a decade of great prosperity - on this day the market dropped in value by an astonishing 9 percent - kicking off the Great Depression.






13. The final German offensive in Western Europe - lasting from December 16 - 1944 - to January 16 - 1945. Hitler amassed his last reserves against Allied troops in France. Germany made a substantial dent in the Allied front line - but the Allies recover






14. A political group active in aiding the leftist forces in the Spanish Civil War. Prominent American intellectuals and writers - including Ernest Hemingway and John Dos Passos - joined the group.






15. A prominant publisher who bought the New York Journal in the late 1890s. His paper - along with Joseph Pulitzer's New York World - engaged in yellow journalism - printing sensational reports of Spanish activities in Cuba in order to win a circulation






16. Led by future president William Henry Harrison - US forces defeated Shawnee forces in this battle in 1811. The US victory lessed the Native American threat in Ohio and Indiana.






17. A leader of the Sons of Liberty. He suggested the formation of the Committees of Correspondence and fought for colonial rights throughout New England. He is credited with provoking the Boston Tea Party.






18. Passed by Congress in 1882 amid a wave of anti-immigrant sentiment among American workers. The act banned Chinese immigration for ten years.






19. US Cold War policy - developed in the 1960s - that acknowledged that both the US and the Soviet Union had enough nuclear weaponry to destroy each other many times over. This policy hoped to prevent outright war with the SU on the premise that any att






20. Ronald Reagan's economic philosophy which held that a capitalist system free from taxation and government involvement would be most productive. Reagan believed that the prosperity of the rich upper class would "trickle down" to the poor.






21. Constructed by the USSR and completed in August 1961 to prevent East Berliners from fleeing to West Berlin. The wall cemented the poltical split of Berlin between the communist and authoritarian Eastand the capitalist and democratic West. The wall wa






22. A moderate Democrat with support from both the North and South who served as president of the US from 1857 to 1861. He could not stem the tide of sectional conflict that eventually erupted into Civil War.






23. During McCarthyism - provided the congressional forum in which many hearings about suspected communists in the government took place.






24. Head of the Manhatten Project - the secret American operation to develop the atomic bomb.






25. Smugglers of alcohol into the US during the Prohibition Era (1920-1933) - often from Canada or the West Indies.






26. Head of the FBI from 1924 until his death in 1972. He aggressively intestigated suspected subversives during the Cold War.






27. The increase of available paper money and bank credit - leading to higher prices and less valuable currency.






28. Negotiated by President Carter - these were signed by Israel's leader - Menachem Begin - and Egypt's leader - Anwar el-Sadat - on March 26 - 1979. The treaty - however - fell apart when Sadat was assassinated by Islamic fundamentalists in 1981.






29. Signed in 1975 by Gerald Ford - Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev - and the leaders of thirty-one other states in a promise to solidify European boundaries - respect human rights - and permit freedom of travel.






30. A series of investigations in 1987 exposed evidence that the US had been selling arms to the anti-American government in Iran and using the profits from these sales to secretly and illegally finance the Contras in Nicaragua. (The Contras were a rebel






31. An English explorer sponsered by the Dutch East India Company. In 1609 - he sailed up the river that now bears his name - nearly reaching present-day Albany. His explorations gave the Dutch territorial claims to the Hudson Bay region.






32. Theory of trade which stresses that a nation's economic strenght depends on exporting more than it imports. Britain's use of this policy manifested itself in the triangular trade and in a series of laws - such as the Navigation Acts (1651-1673) - aim






33. An influential American writer in the early nineteenth century. His novels - The Pioneers (1823) - The Last of the Mohicans (1826) - and others - employed distinctly American themes.






34. Longtime government employee who - in 1948 - was accused by Time editor Whitaker Chambers of spying for the USSR. After a series of highly publicized hearings and trials - he was convicted of perjury in 1950 and sentenced to five years imprisonment -






35. Nonconformist writers such as Allan Ginsberg - the author of Howl (1956) - and Jack Kerouac - who penned On the Road (1957). They rejected uniform middle-class culture and sought to overturn the sexual and social conservatism of the period.






36. The centerpiece of a congressional effort to restrict union activity. The act - passed in 1947 - banned certain union practices and allowed the president to call for an eighty-day cooling off period to delay strikes thought to pose risks to national






37. A Frenchman who explored the Great Lakes and established the first French colony in North America at Quebec in 1608.






38. Primarily concerned with international espionage and information gathering. In the 1950s - this organization became heavily involved in many civil struggles in the Third World - supporting groups likely to cooperate with the US rather than the USSR.






39. Major American author in the 1930s. His novels depict simple - rural lives. His most famous work is The Grapes of Wrath (1939).






40. Trials of Nazi war criminals that began in November 1945. More than 200 defendants were indicted in the thirteen trials. All but thirty-eight of them were convicted of conspiring to wage aggressive war and of mistreating prisoners of war and inhabita






41. In 1676 - Nathaniel Bacon - a Virginia planter - accused the royal governer of failing to provide poorer farmers protection from raiding tribes. In response - Bacon led 300 settlers against local Native Americans - and then burned and looted Jamestow

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42. During World War II - this alliance included Germany - Italy - and Japan. The three powers signed the Tripartite Pact in September 1940.






43. Defined the process by which new states could be admitted into the Union from the Northwest Territory. The ordinace forbade slavery in the territory but allowed citizens to vote on the legality of slavery once statehood had been established.






44. One of the best known writers of the 1920s' "lost generation." An expatriate - he produced a number of famous works during the 1920s - including The Sun Also Rises (1926) and A Farewell to Arms (1929). A member of the Popular Front - he fought in the






45. Passed in March 1941. Allowed the president to lend or lease supplies to any nation deemed "vital to the defense of the US -" such as Britain - and was a key move in support ot the Allied cause before the US formally entered World War II. Was extende






46. In March 1770 - a crowd of colonists protested against Boston customs agents and the Townsend Duties. Violence flared and five colonists were killed.






47. Created in 1933 as part of FDR's New Deal - this organization pumped money into the economy by employing the destitute in conservation and other projects.






48. The first ten amendments of the Constitution - which guarantee the civil rights of American citizens. Drafted by anti-federalists - including James Madison - to protect individuals from the tyranny they felt the Constitution might permit.






49. Writer who satirized political leaders and American society in the 1920s. His magazine American Mercury served as the journalistic counterpart to the postwar disillusionment of the "lost generation."






50. Germany and Austria-Hungary during World War I. This coalition fought against the Allies (Great Britain - France - Italy). In 1917 - the US joined the war effort against them.