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






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






3. A skilled worker who had learned a trade from a master as an apprentice. Shoemakers - bakers - blacksmiths. and carpenters were artisans.






4. The 19th and early 20th century movement to limit or outlaw the drinking of alcoholic beverages. The movement achieved its ultimate success with the passage of the 18th Amendment-or Prohibition- which went into effect in 1920.






5. 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.






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






7. The principal that the Supreme Court has the power to review laws passed by Congress and actions taken by the president to determine whether or not they are consistent with the Constitution. The Supreme Court can declare a law or presidential action






8. A form of nonviolent protest used by antiwar and antisegregation activists. Protesters would take over buildings - camp out in front of administration offices - or sit at lunch counters and demand to be served on an integrated basis. The first sit-in






9. Agreements employers forced potential employees to sign in which the employees agreed not to join unions or go on strike.






10. Derogatory term used by the labor movement to describe workers who cross picket lines






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






12. 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






13. The practice of buying stock on credit. People pay a small percentage of the price of the stock - hoping that it will go up in value and that they can use money from the sale to pay the balance they owe. This practice contributed to the stock market






14. Popular music genre - with roots in African American rhythm and blues and "doo-wop." It developed in the 1950s and was popularized by Elvis Presley.






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






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






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






18. 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.






19. 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






20. Progressive-era reform that created a mechanism for voters to approve or reject legislation placed on the ballot. It was designed to weaken the power of entrenched political machines.






21. The name used by the administration of President Lyndon B. Johnson to describe its domestic programs.






22. 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






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






24. 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.






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






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






27. A practice used in colonial America in which a person entered into a contract for a specified period of time with another in exchange for the payment of his or her passage to the New World. The indentured servant was sometimes promised some land afte






28. People who illegally manufactured - sold - or transported alcoholic beverages during the Prohibition period.






29. Lincoln's contention that the Union pre-existed the Constitution because it began with the Articles of Association in 1774-since the states had signed on to that document - the Union could not be broken. He discussed this theory in his first inaugura






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






31. 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






32. Sensationalist - lurid - and often falsified accounts of events printed by newspapers and magazines to attract readers.






33. 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






34. 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






35. 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






36. The political events of the 1960s divided the country in many ways. There were pro-Vietnam hawks and anti-Vietnam doves - those who supported the counterculture of liberated sex and drugs and those who did not - those who favored American involvement






37. 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.






38. 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.






39. The study of the environment.






40. 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.






41. The idea that machinery eliminates the need for human employment-that the development of new machine-based methods of work can lead to workers' losing their jobs.






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






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






44. 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






45. 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.






46. Large corporations created by the consolidation of competing companies to form a monopoly or near monopoly.






47. 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






48. The practice of paying for goods at regular intervals - usually with interest added to the balance - associated with consumption in the 1920s.






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