CLEP History of the United States II flashcards

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

Pendleton Civil Service Act

1883 law creating a merit-based federal civil service commission after President Garfield's assassination, replacing much of the patronage spoils system with competitive examinations.

Fourteenth Amendment

1868 amendment granting citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in the United States and guaranteeing due process and equal protection, the basis for later civil rights rulings.

Sherman Antitrust Act

1890 federal law prohibiting monopolies and restraints of trade; enforced sparingly at first, it became the foundation of twentieth-century antitrust prosecution.

Social Security Act

1935 New Deal law creating old-age pensions, unemployment insurance, and aid to dependent children, establishing the framework of the American welfare state.

Voting Rights Act of 1965

Federal law authorizing federal supervision of elections in areas with histories of discrimination, enforcing the Fifteenth Amendment and sharply increasing Black voter registration in the South.

Baker v. Carr

1962 Supreme Court decision holding that legislative redistricting is a justiciable issue, allowing federal courts to enforce the 'one person, one vote' principle.

Twenty-Sixth Amendment

1971 amendment lowering the voting age to eighteen in all federal, state, and local elections, ratified during the Vietnam War era.

Great Migration

Movement of millions of African Americans from the rural South to northern and western cities between roughly 1915 and 1970, reshaping urban politics, labor, and culture.

Chinese Exclusion Act

1882 law barring Chinese laborers from immigrating to the United States, the first major federal restriction aimed at a single nationality; it was repealed in 1943.

Hull House

Chicago settlement house founded by Jane Addams in 1889 that offered education, childcare, and social services to immigrant neighbors, a model of the settlement movement.

GI Bill

1944 law providing veterans with college tuition, low-interest loans, and unemployment benefits, fueling postwar higher education and suburban homeownership.

Title IX

1972 federal law prohibiting sex discrimination in federally funded education programs, expanding women's athletics and academic opportunities.

Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965

Law abolishing national-origin quotas and shifting immigration priorities toward family reunification and job skills, greatly increasing arrivals from Asia and Latin America.

Transcontinental Railroad

Rail line completed in 1869 at Promontory Summit, Utah, linking eastern and western networks and spurring national markets and western settlement.

Federal Reserve Act

1913 law creating the Federal Reserve System, a central bank with regional reserve banks empowered to regulate credit and stabilize the banking system.

Smoot-Hawley Tariff

1930 law raising duties on hundreds of imports; foreign nations retaliated, and most historians judge that it worsened the Great Depression.

Glass-Steagall Act

1933 banking law separating commercial from investment banking and creating the FDIC to insure deposits, a response to the bank failures of the early Depression.

Bretton Woods

1944 conference establishing the International Monetary Fund and World Bank and pegging currencies to the dollar, itself convertible to gold at thirty-five dollars an ounce.

Stagflation

1970s condition of high inflation combined with high unemployment and slow growth, which challenged Keynesian policy assumptions until the Federal Reserve's tight money ended it.

Gospel of Wealth

Andrew Carnegie's 1889 essay arguing that wealthy industrialists should administer surplus wealth for public benefit through philanthropy rather than through charity or indulgence.

Social Darwinism

Late nineteenth-century idea applying 'survival of the fittest' to society, used by some to justify laissez-faire economics and to oppose labor and social reform.

Harlem Renaissance

1920s flowering of African American literature, music, and visual art centered in Harlem, associated with Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, and Claude McKay.

Scopes Trial

1925 Tennessee prosecution of a teacher for teaching evolution, which dramatized the conflict between religious fundamentalism and modernism before a national press.

Muckrakers

Early twentieth-century investigative journalists such as Upton Sinclair, Ida Tarbell, and Lincoln Steffens who exposed corruption and abuses, prompting Progressive Era reform legislation.

Beat Generation

1950s writers including Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg who rejected conformity and celebrated spontaneity, foreshadowing the counterculture of the following decade.

Open Door Notes

1899-1900 American diplomatic notes urging equal commercial access to China among the powers, intended to preserve Chinese markets without territorial colonization.

Roosevelt Corollary

1904 addition to the Monroe Doctrine asserting a US right to intervene in Latin American states to maintain order, justifying Caribbean interventions and 'dollar diplomacy.'

Zimmermann Telegram

1917 intercepted German message proposing a Mexico-Germany alliance against the United States; its publication helped move American opinion toward entering World War I.

Lend-Lease Act

1941 law allowing the United States to supply arms and materiel to Britain and other Allies, moving policy away from strict neutrality before Pearl Harbor.

Marshall Plan

1948 program of American economic aid to rebuild Western Europe, designed to prevent communist gains and stabilize markets within the containment strategy.

Gulf of Tonkin Resolution

1964 congressional measure authorizing military action in Southeast Asia after reported attacks on US ships, serving as the legal basis for escalating the Vietnam War.

Camp David Accords

1978 agreements brokered by President Carter between Egypt and Israel that led to their 1979 peace treaty, the first Arab recognition of Israel.