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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. Trade that takes place between states. Under the US Constitution - the power to regulate interstate commerce is delegated to the Congress.






2. The belief that the United States should not be involved in world affairs.






3. A company that developed in the early 1600s in England wherein a group of investors pooled their money to finance exploration of the new World. The investor would receive a portion of the profits resulting from the exploration of the New World based






4. Art and literature that seek to depict the commonplace in a plausible and direct manner.






5. A program providing health insurance and health care for people over the age of 65.






6. The study of the environment.






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






8. A tax placed on imports; its purpose is to make domestic goods cheaper to keep out foreign goods.






9. The political position advocated by Jerry Falwell - Pat Robertson - and other conservative Republicans emphasizing a life of religious observance along with no drugs - no divorce - no abortions - no homosexuality - no working mothers - and no sex bef






10. Derisive term for US foreign policy in the early 20th century designed to protect the investments of US corporations in Latin America.






11. 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.






12. Techniques used in industry to produce large quantities of goods using interchangeable parts and moving assembly lines. Elements of mass production were developed in the 19th century; the process was perfected by Henry Ford in the 1910s.






13. The traditions - language - and modes of behavior of the field hands who lived together in slave quarters. They practiced many forms of resistance to the wills of their masters - told each other African-derived tales - sand spirituals - and practiced






14. A conference attended by leaders of two or more nations.






15. The process of acquiring new territories






16. A strong feeling of pride in and devotion to one's nation. For people under the control of a foreign power - nationalism is expressed as a desire that one's nation should become a free and independent country. For people who already live in an indepe






17. An invention of the 1870's - barbed wire enabled farmers to enclose land and prevent the long cattle drives that cowboys conducted.






18. 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.






19. A slave owner in early Virginia or Maryland; later - according to the census - a man who owned 20 or more slaves.






20. President Roosevelt's (FDR) attempt in 1936 to push a judicial reform bill through Congress that would allow him to appoint six new Supreme Court justices sympathetic to his New Deal.






21. A political philosophy that promotes solving social issues through cooperation with private agencies rather than through direct government programs. It also stresses the personal responsibility and accountability as keys to success.






22. 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






23. A term used to describe the ability of people to move within the social framework of a society. If the social system provides opportunities for a person born into a lower social class to move to an upper one - or vice versa - a characteristic of the






24. 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






25. The killing of African Americans - usually by hanging - carried out by white mobs primarily in the Southern states.






26. 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 separation of powers.






27. 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






28. 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






29. The building of canals - railroads - and turnpikes at state or federal expense. These were part of the American Plan - which became an important part of the Whig program of the 1830s. Internal improvements were also supported by the National Republic






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






31. The political and social conviction that only white Protestant Americans deserved civil rights and employment. Nativists tried to prevent the Irish and the new immigrants of the 1880's-1920's from becoming citizens or entering the country. The Know-N






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






33. 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.






34. 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.






35. The name used by the administration of John F. Kennedy to describe its proposed programs for the nation.






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






37. The political position that opposes abortion.






38. A list - circulated among potential employers - of alleged "troublemakers" not to be hired.






39. 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






40. A grouping of nations where each one pledges mutual support to the others. This support is usually defensive in nature. The formation of alliances was a nunderlying cause of WWI.






41. A term coined in the 1950s to describe illegal or undesirable behavior by teenagers.






42. An economic system in which the production and distribution of goods is determined by individual consumer preference. It is characterized by the free-enterprise system - competition - profit motive - and pricing based on the laws of supply and demand






43. The joining together of companies engaged in similar business practices to create a virtual monopoly.






44. A machine that separates seeds from the cotton. The short-staple cotton that grew inland in the South's Black Belt could be cleaned profitably only with the cotton gin. The invention of the cotton gin allowed cotton cultivation to spread - enabling s






45. Historiography is the study of how history is written. Historians in the 1950s-consensus historians-in general argued that America was the world's great democracy that only did good in the world and had no conflicts at home. Largely due to the effort






46. A policy developed by the Spanish in the 1500s in which the Spanish settlers in the New World were permitted to use Native American labor if the settlers promised to attempt to Christianize them. It led to the exploitation of the Native Americans






47. The reaction of some whites to the Civil Rights Movement and the urban riots of the 1960s. The formerly solidly Democratic South started voting Republican following the gains of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s - and many whites sent their kids






48. 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.






49. A policy in which one people or a group within a nation attempts to destroy people whose ethnic background differs from theirs.






50. The political act of leaving the Union. The Southern states formed their own country during 1860-1861 after they seceded from the United States.