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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. 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.






2. 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






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






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






5. Hit and run tactics combined with hiding and ambushing the enemy. The soldier would live off the land and population in an area so that he or she need not carry many supplies. The Americans learned this from the Indians in colonial times and used it






6. 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.






7. 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.






8. The conflict between the Soviet Union and the United States from the end of WWII until the collapse of the Soviet Union (1991). It was characterized by harsh rhetoric - technological rivalry - an arms buildup - and proxy wars in developing countries.






9. 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






10. 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






11. 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






12. The result of a general shift in society in the 1920s characterized by a greater emphasis on purchasing goods.






13. Cotton that grew inland in the Black Belt of the South - an area characterized by its dark soil. Short-staple cotton could not be grown profitably until the cotton gin was invented.






14. 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






15. 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.






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






17. The joining together of companies to control all aspects of the production process of an item - from the mining or growing of materials through production and distribution of the final product.






18. A type of economic system in which the state controls the production and distribution of certain products that it deems necessary for the good of the people.






19. 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






20. 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






21. Illegal bars and saloons that operated during Prohibition.






22. Also called "applied Christianity -" this reform movement - driven by Christian teachings - sought to relieve the suffering of the poor.






23. The British policy of the 17th century in which the British were lax in the enforcement of laws in the colonies - thereby allowing the colonies to develop without much interference from the British government. After the French and Indian War - this p






24. Those who were against the Vietnam War in the 1960s.






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






26. 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.






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






28. The organizations and events in the 20th century that collectively pressured federal - state - and local governments and businesses to grant equal rights to blacks and other minorities.






29. An economic system in which the state controls the production and distribution of certain products deemed necessary for the good of the people






30. 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






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






32. The generation of children born between the end of WWII and 1964.






33. 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






34. The movement to end slavery. There were many points of view on the subject. Immediate abolitionism advocated ending slavery everywhere and refusing to cooperate with the political process (William Lloyd Garrison). Political abolitionism advocated an






35. 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.






36. 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






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






38. The exodus of white - middle-class families from cities to suburbia following WWII - partially caused by the migration of African Americans to urban centers.






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






40. Government policy of noninterference in business practices and in individuals economic affairs; literally translated as "to let do."






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






42. Technique of the labor movement in the 1930s that entailed stopping work but not leaving the factory floor - as owners were not able to hire replacement workers so long as the workers occupied the shop floor.






43. An agricultural system in which farm workers supply their own tools - rent land - and have more control over their work than agrarian wage workers.






44. 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






45. A tax that is added onto the price of goods produced - sold - or distributed within a country; for example - sales tax.






46. Trade that takes place within the boundaries of a state. Under the US Constitution - the power to regulate intrastate commerce is delegated to the states.






47. 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






48. The political belief that America's obvious future was to "o'er spread the continent -" in the words of John O'Sullivan in 1846. A corollary was that Americans would bring democracy to the "ignorant and inferior" peoples of the West. The Mexican War






49. 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






50. 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