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SAT Subject Test: U.S. History Vocab

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. The series of violent reactions to police brutality - poor living conditions - assassinations - and high unemployment from 1964-1968. The National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (Kerner Commission) called them a reaction to the rising expecta






2. Philosophical movement - with deep roots in the United States - which holds that truth emerges from experimentation and experience rather than from abstract theory. it is associated with William James and John Dewey.






3. The first wave was in the 1830s through the early 20th century when the radicals Elizabeth Cady Stanton - Susan B. Anthony - and Lucretia Mott advocated equality - employment - education - and suffrage. The second wave - which advocated these same id






4. A method of mass production whereby the products are moved from worker to worker - with each person performing a small - repetitive task on the product and sending it to the next for a different task until the finished item is assembled. In the 18th






5. Opposition to communism. Extreme anti-communism was manifested in the "Red Scare" of the 1920s and McCarthyism of the 1950s.






6. Teenagers - as an identifiable social group - emerged in the 1950s. Teenagers were seen both as a problematic - rebellious group - as well as a target for new products and cultural offerings.






7. Laws passed in the Southern states immediately after the Civil War to restrict the movements and limit the rights of African Americans.






8. A system of government in which the power to rule comes from the people.






9. The idea that each member of the British Parliament represented all British subjects - regardless of location.






10. Residential communities near large urban centers. Although suburbs existed in the 19th century - they became a widespread social phenomenon in the 1950s.






11. Large plantation-type farm established by the Dutch along the Hudson River in the 1600s.






12. Political party organizations that run cities and are often associated with corruption and undemocratic practices. The most notorious example was New York's Tammary Hall Democratic club of the Gilded age.






13. The economic state in which prices are rising (inflation) and unemployment is high - producing stagnation of growth.






14. The Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s was called the "Second Reconstruction" because the first Reconstruction in the 1860s and 1870s had not brought equality for blacks.






15. The policy of supplying government support for corporations when they are in severe financial trouble. The Chrysler Corporation - for example - got a $1.5 billion bailout in 1980 - and the savings and loan banks received at least $159 billion during






16. The movement to form labor organizations that represent every worker in a single industry - regardless of his or her level of skill.






17. The term denoting the ongoing military battle of the US and its allies against terrorism - first used by George W. Bush when addressing a joint session of Congress following the terrorist attacks on September 11 - 2001.






18. The political position that claimed that we could have won the Vietnam War if we had declared war - put in more troops - had a more unified country - or given our generals free reign to fight. These positions are called revisionist because the consen






19. The system built into the US Constitution in which the three branches of government (legislative - executive - and judicial) have separate and equal powers that are limited and dependent upon each other. It is also called checks and balances.






20. The movement to form labor organizations made up of skilled wokrers within a particular field.






21. A land policy developed in the 1600s in Virginia and Maryland designed to encourage settlement in the New World. It promised 50 acres to any person who paid his own passage to the New World. It also promised an additional 50 acres to any person who p






22. The process of acquiring new territories






23. 1) The political theory that the people hold the fundamental power in a democracy 2) The proposal by Steven Douglas in the 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act stating that the people of the territory of Kansas and Nebraska could decide though their representati






24. A legislature composed of only one house or chamber.






25. Middle-class reform movement of the first decades of the 20th century which sought to widen political participation - eradicate corruption - and apply scientific and technological expertise to social ills.






26. A term used to describe an investment with a reward that can be great-if the investment is successful. It contributed to the stock market crash of 1929.






27. The railroad route connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans that was completed in 1869.






28. Found in the 10th Amendment - it provides that any powers not specifically given to the central government or specifically denied to the state governments by the Constitution are powers that the states are granted. For example - the power to develop






29. An organization and discussion method employed by feminists in the late 1960s and early 1970s in which women would exchange experiences of discrimination - read radical analyses of oppression - and develop an understanding that the patriarchal or som






30. The Eisenhower-era theory that one communist country would infiltrate or influence its neighbors - supporting insurrection there and causing them to become communist too. They would fall like a series of dominoes standing close together. Kennedy - Jo






31. The practice of victorious candidates distributing government jobs to friends and supporters rather than to the most qualified people. Andre Jackson gave his supporters the spoils of victory - whereas John Quincy Adams by and large did not.






32. Reading tests required in some Southern states before people were allowed to register to vote. They were mainly intended to prevent African Americans from voting.






33. Cattle handlers who drove large herds across the southern Great Plains. The era of the cowboy lasted from 1870 to the late 1880s.






34. Bundles of subprime mortgages that are traded like stocks.






35. Critical term for the owners of the big business of the Gilded Age who accumulated great wealth and power.






36. Motion pictures with sound. The Jazz Singer (1927) was the first movie to use sound in a significant way.






37. Provisions in the voting laws in Southern states following Reconstruction designed to allow whites who could not pass literacy tests to vote. The grandfather clause gave the right to vote to people whose grandfathers had been eligible to vote-a provi






38. The formal or official approval for a constitution or amendment.






39. A country whose affairs are partly controlled by a stronger country. The US established several protectorates - such as Cuba - in the 20th century.






40. A person who believes in the broad interpretation of the US Constitution; that is - that the Constitution does not have to be interpreted word by word. Alexander Hamilton supported this idea.






41. A policy of empire building in which a nation conquers other nations with an aim toward increasing its power and controlling those nations. This was a cause of WWI.






42. A term used to describe a person who believes that the Consitution must be interpreted word by word. Thomas Jefferson believed in strict construction of the Constitution.






43. Worker organization formed to press for workplace demands - such as better wages and safer working conditions.






44. The political advocacy of black-owned businesses and independent black political action. Stokely Carmichael first used the term in a position paper for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in 1965.






45. The condition when all male adults in a democracy are granted the right to vote.






46. A political system dominated by two parties. Voters reluctance to support third parties reinforces the two-party system. The first two-party system - dating back to the 1970s - included the Federalist and Republican Parties. The current two-party sys






47. Powers given to the national/federal government that are specifically stated in the Constitution. They are found in Article I Section 8 of the Constitution and may also be known as expressed or enumerated powers.






48. Labor in which the worker can leave whenever he or she wishes (as opposed to slave labor). Wage labor or work for pay is free labor.






49. This clause - found in the last paragraph of Article I Section 8 of the US Constitution - allows Congress to make laws not specifically delegated to it by the Constitution but that may be "necessary and proper" to carry out its delegated powers. (Als






50. A body of advisers to a head of state. The US president's cabinet consists of the heads of the various departments plus other advisers.