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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. Lincoln's Civil War policy of treating runaway slaves as enemy war property. He accepted the slaves as a way to hurt the Southern cause. They were freed and employed as aides to the Union army until Lincoln started recruiting black troops after the E






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






3. Agricultural labor system in the South following the era of slavery wherein a sharecropper could farm a piece of land in return for giving the landowner a share - usually half - of the crop.






4. Umbrella term for biological - chemical - and nuclear weapons designed to kill large numbers of people.






5. 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.






6. Organizations - such as the underground press - Students for a Democratic Society and its offshoots - and women's groups (like the Red Stockings) - that were interested in social change but uninterested in the debates over whether to support Russia a






7. 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






8. A defiant act of the colonies against the British government and its tea trade agreement with East India - which was causing colonial tea merchants to go bankrupt. Protesters dumped an entire shipment of tea into the Boston Harbor.






9. 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






10. A policy of empire building in which a nation conquers other nations or territories with the goal of increasing its power and expanding the area it controls. This was a cause of WWI.






11. Illegal bars and saloons that operated during Prohibition.






12. Derisive term for white Southerners who cooperated with the Reconstruction governments.






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






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






15. A type of colony controlled by the king. The crown chose the governor to run the colony.






16. The policy used by the British before the War of 1812 wherein the British stopped US vessels and removed sailors from them to be used on British naval vessels. it was also used to a limited extent by the French during this same period. It was one of






17. 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.






18. An increase in number - volume - scope. In reference to the Vietnam War - it refers to the increase in the number of troops and the intensity of involvement by the United States.






19. Tax paid by those wishing to vote in several Southern states after Reconstruction. It was designed to limit political participation by African Americans.






20. Journalists of the Progressive era who exposed urban poverty - unsafe working conditions - political corruption - and other social ills.






21. The political position advocating sending free blacks to Liberia in Africa to reduce the number of them in the country-the more blacks that were freed - the fewer there would be in America. It was seen as a way of alleviating the danger of slave insu






22. 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






23. Laws enacted in many states based on religious bans of personal behavior deemed immoral; for example - law prohibiting the sale of alcohol on Sundays.






24. 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.






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






26. A type of democracy in which the people vote on the actions of the government - rather than electing representatives.






27. 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.






28. The post-WWII US policy that sought to prevent the spread of communism.






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






30. 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.






31. Coins or gold and silver money - also called "hard money."






32. The characteristic of a federal system of government in which power is distributed between central and local governments. This distribution of power usually is established through some outside source - often a constitution - as is the case in the Uni






33. 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.






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






35. 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






36. A type of government characterized by a loose alliance of states leading to a weak central government and strong state governments. This was the type of government that existed under the Articles of Confederation.






37. The power of the president to reject legislation. The US Congress can override a veto by the US president if it can pass the legislation by a two-thirds majority.






38. 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






39. The practice of granting the firstborn son the right to all the inheritance of the parent's estate - rather than subdividing it and giving portions to all offspring.






40. 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






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






42. The series of laws designed to create separation between the races. These were by and large Southern state laws made constitutional by the Supreme Court decision Plessy. v Ferguson in 1896.






43. A form of educational protest at universities. The practice began in 1965 at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor - when professors and students analyzed US foreign policy and debated with each other and-only in the earlier days of the war-with go






44. George W. Bush's belief in the propriety of using unilateral preemptive military strikes-essentially a preventive war- to fight terrorism.






45. 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






46. A program providing health care for the needy (people who lived below the poverty level) who were not covered by Medicare.






47. 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






48. 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.






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






50. A prosecutor chosen by a panel of three judges (appointed by the attorney general) to investigate wrongdoing in the executive branch. Established after the Watergate Scandal - the role was designed to prevent conflict of interest within the executive