AP US History flashcards

32 cards. Read the term and the definition here. The deck at the top of this page is optional.

Columbian Exchange

The transatlantic transfer beginning in 1492 of crops, livestock, and diseases between the Americas and Afro-Eurasia; smallpox devastated Indigenous populations while maize and potatoes transformed European diets.

Encomienda system

Spanish colonial labor grant of 1503 giving colonists the right to Indigenous labor in exchange for supposed protection and Christian instruction; it became a brutal forced-labor system criticized by Bartolomé de las Casas.

Casta system

Spanish colonial hierarchy ranking peninsulares born in Spain above criollos of Spanish descent born in the Americas, then mestizos, Indigenous peoples, and enslaved Africans, encoding race into legal and social status.

Treaty of Tordesillas (1494)

Papal-brokered agreement dividing newly claimed non-European lands between Spain and Portugal along an Atlantic meridian, giving Portugal its claim to Brazil and Spain most of the Americas.

Bacon's Rebellion (1676)

Virginia uprising of frontier settlers and indentured servants led by Nathaniel Bacon against Governor Berkeley; afterward planters increasingly replaced indentured servants with enslaved Africans to prevent a unified laboring class.

House of Burgesses

First elected representative assembly in colonial America, established in Virginia in 1619; it set a precedent for self-government and lawmaking by colonial landowners.

Navigation Acts

Series of English laws from 1651 to 1673 requiring that colonial trade be carried in English ships and that enumerated goods be sold only to England, enforcing mercantilism and colonial dependence.

Great Awakening

Religious revival wave of the 1730s and 1740s led by Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield that split churches, promoted new denominations, and encouraged ordinary colonists to question established authority.

Proclamation of 1763

British order barring colonial settlement west of the Appalachian Mountains after the French and Indian War; colonists resented it, and it strained relations with the crown and with Indigenous nations.

Shays' Rebellion

1786–1787 Massachusetts uprising of indebted farmers that exposed the Articles of Confederation's inability to raise troops or taxes, strengthening calls for a stronger federal Constitution.

Great Compromise

1787 Constitutional Convention agreement creating a bicameral Congress with population-based representation in the House and equal state representation in the Senate, resolving the large-versus-small state dispute.

Alien and Sedition Acts

1798 Federalist laws lengthening naturalization, allowing deportation of suspected subversives, and criminalizing criticism of the government; Democratic-Republicans answered with the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions.

Marbury v. Madison

1803 Supreme Court decision by Chief Justice Marshall establishing judicial review, the power of courts to strike down laws violating the Constitution, after Marbury's commission was withheld.

Missouri Compromise

1820 agreement admitting Missouri as a slave state and Maine as free, and banning slavery north of the 36°30′ line in the Louisiana Purchase territory, temporarily balancing free and slave states.

Indian Removal Act

1830 law authorizing President Jackson to exchange western lands for Indigenous homelands in the Southeast; it led to the Trail of Tears and was challenged in Worcester v. Georgia.

Wilmot Proviso

1846 proposal to ban slavery in any territory acquired from Mexico; though it never passed, it sharpened sectional conflict and fueled the free-soil movement.

Compromise of 1850

Package admitting California as free, organizing Utah and New Mexico under popular sovereignty, and enacting a stricter Fugitive Slave Act, which inflamed Northern opinion.

Dred Scott decision

1857 Supreme Court ruling that Black Americans could not be citizens and that Congress could not ban slavery in the territories, nullifying the Missouri Compromise and energizing Republicans.

Fourteenth Amendment

1868 amendment granting citizenship and equal protection and due process to formerly enslaved people and barring former Confederates from office; it became the basis for later civil rights rulings.

Dawes Act

1887 law breaking up tribal lands into individual allotments to assimilate Native Americans, which eroded tribal sovereignty and resulted in Native loss of roughly two-thirds of reservation land.

Chinese Exclusion Act

1882 federal law suspending Chinese labor immigration and barring Chinese immigrants from naturalization, the first major U.S. restriction targeting a specific nationality; it lasted until 1943.

Populist Party

1890s agrarian party demanding free silver, a graduated income tax, and government regulation of railroads; it fused with Democrats in 1896 behind William Jennings Bryan and lost to McKinley.

Espionage and Sedition Acts

1917–1918 laws criminalizing interference with the war effort and disloyal speech; they suppressed dissent and were upheld in Schenck v. United States, which created the clear-and-present-danger test.

New Deal

1933–1939 programs of the Roosevelt administration including Social Security, the Wagner Act, and job programs, expanding federal responsibility for economic welfare and reshaping the Democratic coalition.

Korematsu v. United States

1944 decision upholding Japanese American internment during World War II; it was later widely repudiated and formally limited, becoming a symbol of wartime civil liberties violations.

Harlem Renaissance

1920s flowering of African American literature, music, and art centered in Harlem, associated with Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston, which asserted Black cultural pride and influenced national culture.

Containment

Cold War strategy of limiting Soviet expansion through economic and military aid, embodied in the Truman Doctrine, Marshall Plan, and NATO, and justifying U.S. interventions in Korea and Vietnam.

Brown v. Board of Education

1954 unanimous Supreme Court ruling that racial segregation in public schools violated the Fourteenth Amendment, overturning Plessy's separate-but-equal doctrine and sparking massive resistance in the South.

Voting Rights Act

1965 law banning literacy tests and authorizing federal oversight of elections in jurisdictions with histories of discrimination, sharply increasing Black voter registration in the South.

Reaganomics

1980s supply-side economic policy of large tax cuts, deregulation, and reduced social spending; inflation fell but deficits and income inequality grew, and the national debt rose substantially.

NAFTA

1994 trade agreement eliminating most tariffs among the United States, Canada, and Mexico; supporters cited lower prices and growth, while critics blamed manufacturing job losses and labor abuses.

USA PATRIOT Act

2001 law passed after the September 11 attacks expanding surveillance and law-enforcement powers; it raised enduring debates over privacy and civil liberties and was later partly revised.