U.S. History
U.S. History tests chronological and thematic knowledge from colonial settlement through the present, with heavy weight on constitutional development, sectional conflict, reform movements, and the United States' changing role in the world. Questions frequently ask you to place a document or law in its era and explain its consequences.
Core anchors
- Colonial era: regional economies (New England commerce and family farms, Chesapeake tobacco and indentured servitude, later the Carolina rice and slavery complex); salutary neglect; the Great Awakening.
- Revolution and Constitution: Enlightenment arguments in the Declaration; Articles of Confederation weaknesses; the 1787 compromises (Great Compromise, Three-Fifths, slave trade to 1808); Federalist–Antifederalist debate; Bill of Rights.
- Antebellum and Civil War: market revolution, westward expansion, Missouri Compromise (1820), Compromise of 1850, Kansas–Nebraska, secession.
- Reconstruction: Thirteenth (slavery abolished), Fourteenth (citizenship, due process, equal protection), Fifteenth (voting regardless of race) Amendments; Freedmen's Bureau; Black Codes; 1877 withdrawal.
- Gilded Age through New Deal: industrialization, immigration, Populism, Progressivism, World War I, Depression, Social Security Act (1935), Wagner Act.
- Post-1945: Cold War containment, suburbanization, civil rights litigation and legislation (Brown 1954, Civil Rights Act 1964, Voting Rights Act 1965), Vietnam, modern conservatism.
Worked example
A question asks which amendment supports applying the Bill of Rights against a state. Reasoning: the First Amendment begins "Congress shall make no law," addressing the federal government only. The Fourteenth Amendment's due process clause became the vehicle for selective incorporation through twentieth-century rulings. Naming the Fourteenth, not the First, is the point being tested.
Traps that cost marks
- Mixing up amendment numbers, or dating Reconstruction's end to the war rather than to 1877.
- Treating regions or parties as monolithic.
- Confusing a Supreme Court holding with its later use (Dred Scott, Plessy, Brown).