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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. 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.






2. 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






3. An economic system in which a colony exists for the good of the mother country. The colony's role is to provide raw materials for the mother country (especially products that the mother country cannot produce itself) and serve as a market for the goo






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






5. 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






6. 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






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






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






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






10. 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.






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






12. The exodus of white - middle-class families from cities to suburbia following WWII due to the migration of African Americans to urban centers.






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






14. 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






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






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






18. 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






19. 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.






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






22. 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.






23. 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






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






25. 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






26. 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






27. A list of persons - often secretly circulated - who are disapproved of and are to be denied employment or other benefits.






28. 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






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






30. 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






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






32. 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






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






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






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






36. 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.






37. Those who were pro-Vietnam war in the 1960s.






38. The political position that opposes abortion.






39. Illegal bars and saloons that operated during Prohibition.






40. 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.






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






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






43. 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






44. 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






45. 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.






46. An element of President Truman's 1947 Federal Employees Loyalty and Security Program - which was designed to weed out communists and other "subversives" from government employment.






47. A global pact initiated in 1997 and put into force in 2005 designed to reduce greenhouse emissions to levels that would avoid climate change. The United States is not one of the 187 nations who have ratified the pact.






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






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






50. 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