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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 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






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






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 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.






5. 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.






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






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






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






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






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






11. Perfected by Samuel F. B. Morse in 1844 - the telegraph allowed for communications over long distances by tapping out coded messages to be carried over wires.






12. The study of the environment.






13. 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






14. The promotion of products in various media. Modern advertising - employing psychology - expert testimony - and other innovations developed in the 1920s.






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






16. 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






17. 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






18. 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.






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






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






21. 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






22. 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.






23. 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






24. 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.






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






26. 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.






27. Blacks who had been freed from slavery or were not born slaves. They lived in the cities and countryside in both the North and the South. In 1860 - there were about 500 -000 free blacks evenly distributed between the North and the South.






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






29. 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






30. A type of adjustable-rate mortgage - often requiring no down payment - offered to customers with risky credit ratings. The lending institution makes money by steadily increasing interest payments.






31. A tax on imports (goods coming into a country). Tariffs were advocated by Alexander Hamilton in 1792 and favored by the supporters of the American System to pay for internal improvements and protect US industry. Tariffs were often a main issue in Jac






32. 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






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 belief the the US should not be involved in world affairs.






35. The political position that opposes abortion.






36. 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






37. 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.






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






39. A type of coal - noted for being hard and clean burning.






40. 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.






41. 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.






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






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






44. 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






45. Derisive term for Northerners who went to the South during Reconstruction to promote reform or to profit from it.






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






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






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






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






50. 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