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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 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






2. A legislature composed of two houses. The US Congress - composed of the Senate and the House of Representatives - is an example.






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






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






5. 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






6. 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.






7. 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






8. 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.






9. 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.






10. 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






11. 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






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






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






14. 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






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






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






17. The policy practiced by the European nations prior to WWII wherein they made concessions to aggressive nations-particularly - Hitler's Germany-in hopes of satisfying the demands of that nation and ending further aggression.






18. 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.






19. 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.






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






21. 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.






22. 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.






23. 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






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






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






27. 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.






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






29. A policy of empire building in which a nation conquers other nations with an aim toward increasing its power and controlling those nations. This was a cause of WWI.






30. 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






31. 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






32. The political idea that the West should be free of slavery. In 1846 - David Wilmot wrote the proviso that there "shall be no slavery or involuntary servitude in any territory acquired from Mexico -" which galvanized the antislavery forces in Congress






33. 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






34. 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.






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






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






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






38. 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






39. A belief in the ability of people to achieve success in difficult times by calling on their own abilities and resources without the interference of the government. Herbert Hoover subscribed to this notion; it affected the development of governmental






40. Progressive political reform in the early 1900s that enabled voters to introduce legislation.






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






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






43. Anti-communism crusade of the 1950s led by Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy. It was characterized by irresponsible accusations and smear campaigns.






44. 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.






45. The idea that the Constitution was created by the states and so the states could dissolve it. This was advocated first by Madison and Jefferson in 1798 in the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions and later by Robert Y Hayne in his debate with Daniel Web






46. 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






47. 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






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






49. 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






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