United States History II Test Questions
Course Introduction
United States History II explores the major political, social, economic, and cultural developments in the United States from the end of the Civil War to the present. The course examines Reconstruction, industrialization, urbanization, the Progressive Era, both World Wars, the Great Depression, the Civil Rights Movement, the Cold War, and recent historical events. Students will analyze key primary and secondary sources to understand how historical forces have shaped American society, institutions, and identities, and to develop skills in critical thinking, research, and historical interpretation.
Recommended Textbook
American Pageant Volume 2 16th Edition by
David M. Kennedy
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20 Chapters
2630 Verified Questions
2630 Flashcards
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Page 2
Chapter 1: The Ordeal of Reconstruction, 1865-1877
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105 Verified Questions
105 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) The Fourteenth Amendment guaranteed
A) citizenship and civil rights to freed slaves.
B) land for former slaves.
C) voting rights for former Confederates who had previously served in the U.S. Army.
D) freed slaves the right to vote.
E) education to former slaves.
Answer: A
Q2) Congress objected to the readmission of Southern states to the Union under Johnson's plan because
A) the states had adopted Black Codes that limited the civil rights of freed slaves.
B) the states had been readmitted without consultation with Congress.
C) many former Confederates were elected to high political office in those states.
D) it feared that the restored South would be stronger than ever in national politics.
E) they feared that the South would just secede again if it didn't get its way.
Answer: A, B, C, D
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3
Chapter 2: Political Paralysis in the Gilded Age, 1869-1896
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147 Verified Questions
147 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) The 1884 presidential election contest between James G. Blaine and Grover Cleveland was noted for
A) its emphasis on policy differences on economic and social issues.
B) low voter turnout.
C) its viciously personal attacks between the two candidates.
D) a landslide victory for the reform-minded Republicans.
E) its absence of geographic sectionalism in the respective popular support of each candidate.
Answer: C
Q2) At the end of Reconstruction, Southern whites disenfranchised African Americans using
A) literacy requirements.
B) poll taxes.
C) onerous and intimidating voter registration laws.
D) lynching
E) All of these choices are correct.
Answer: E
Q3) Farmers' Alliance
Answer: Answers will vary.
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Page 4
Chapter 3: Industry Comes of Age, 1865-1900
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157 Verified Questions
157 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) The Knights of Labor was weakened by
A) its refusal to endorse social reform and the eight-hour day.
B) stiff competition from the National Labor Union.
C) its association in the public mind with the Haymarket riot.
D) its inclusion of both skilled and unskilled workers.
E) an unrealistic dream that all nineteenth-century American workers would eventually become producers.
Answer: C, D
Q2) Although they were commonly called "Social Darwinists," advocates of economic, national, or racial "survival of the fittest" ideas actually drew less on biologist Charles Darwin than on
A) English philosopher Herbert Spencer and Yale professor William Graham Sumner.
B) German philosophers like G.W.F. Hegel and Friedrich Nietzsche.
C) American literary figures like Jack London and Theodore Dreiser.
D) European scientists like Gregor Mendel and Louis Pasteur.
E) racist theorists like Arthur Gobineau and Houston Stewart Chamberlain.
Answer: A
Q3) consumer goods
Answer: Answers will vary.
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Page 5
Chapter 4: America Moves to the City, 1865-1900
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154 Verified Questions
154 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) Henry James
Q2) Victoria Woodhull
Q3) William Randolph Hearst
Q4) In the late nineteenth century, orthodox Protestant churches were being challenged by
A) the theories of Charles Darwin.
B) the mounting emphasis on materialism.
C) fundamentalist insistence on a literal interpretation of the Bible.
D) the social doctrines of Catholicism and Judaism.
E) African Americans' rejection of Christianity.
Q5) land-grant colleges
Q6) Why did sensational journalism and scandal-mongering expand, even as Americans' levels of education and cultural achievement increased?
Q7) Following the conclusion of the Civil War,
A) Americans had less free time.
B) America developed a universal disapproval and dislike of cruel and violent sports like boxing.
C) Americans became less involved in physical sports and games.
D) Americansincreasinglyshared a common and standardized popular culture.
E) minstrel shows lost their popularity in the South.
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1865-1896
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161 Verified Questions
161 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) James B. Hickok
Q2) William Hope Harvey
Q3) "16 to 1"
Q4) If you had lived in the 1880s as a white farmer on the Great Plains, what would you have proposed as a solution to the Indian problem? What would have been your view on concentration, the Dawes Severalty Act, and the savagery of Indian warfare?
Q5) In the last decades of the nineteenth century, the volume of agricultural goods ____, and the price received for these goods ____.
A) increased; decreased
B) decreased; increased
C) increased; also increased
D) decreased; also decreased
E) increased; stayed the same.
Q6) What do you think was the major technological innovation that influenced life on the Great Plains frontier? Why?
Q7) Nez Percé
Q8) Battle of Little Bighorn
Q9) Pullman Strike
Page 7
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Page 8
Chapter 6: Empire and Expansion, 1890-1909
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161 Verified Questions
161 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) A major factor in the shift in American foreign policy toward imperialism in the late nineteenth century was the
A) need to justify substantially decreased expenditures including the reduction of the navy.
B) desire for more farmland.
C) construction of an American-built isthmian canal between the Atlantic Ocean and Pacific Ocean.
D) closing of the frontier.
E) need for overseas markets for increased industrial and agricultural production.
Q2) San Francisco school crisis
Q3) When they first arrived in the US, Puerto Ricans worked in all of the following positions except
A) Arizona cotton fields.
B) New Jersey soup factories.
C) Utah mines.
D) New York garment and cigar factories.
E) Georgia farms.
Q4) insurrectos
Q5) John Philip Sousa
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Chapter 7: Progressivism and the Republican Roosevelt, 1901-1912
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142 Verified Questions
142 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) Progressivism
A) was closely tied to the feminist movement and women's causes.
B) offered little to the growing women's movement.
C) supported better treatment of women but not women's suffrage.
D) saw racial issues as more important than women's issues.
E) reflected the opinions and views of white working-class women and men on how to achieve social and political reforms.
Q2) While president, Theodore Roosevelt
A) enhanced the power and prestige of the presidency.
B) damaged the power and prestige of the presidency and enhanced the power and prestige of Congress and the Supreme Court.
C) relied more on insider political skills than on public opinion.
D) was highly popular with the business community.
E) held rigidly to ideological principles.
Q3) Frances Willard
Q4) Henry Demarest Lloyd
Q5) "white slave" traffic
Q6) muckrakers
Q7) Thorstein Veblen
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Chapter 8: Wilsonian Progressivism in Peace and War,
1913-1920
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144 Verified Questions
144 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) Compare the issues and candidates in the presidential elections of 1912 and 1916. Account for Wilson's victory in each case.
Q2) When Woodrow Wilson became president in 1912, the most serious shortcoming in the country's financial structure was that
A) federal paper money was not backed by sound gold or silver.
B) heavy state and federal regulation of big business and trusts that handicapped the development of business in America.
C) the banking system was too heavily regulated by the federal government.
D) the U.S. dollar was rigidly tied to gold.
E) money for lending was inelastic and heavily concentrated in New York City.
Q3) ____ Locate the North Sea.
Q4) The two major battles of World War I in which United States forces engaged the Central Powers in 1918 were
A) Ypres and the Ardennes Forest.
B) Verdun and the Somme.
C) Gallipoli and Locarno.
D) Jutland and Trafalgar.
E) St. Mihiel and the Meuse-Argonne Offensive.
Q5) War Industries Board
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Chapter 9: American Life in the Roaring Twenties
1920 1929
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145 Verified Questions
145 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) Henry Ford
Q2) Marcus Garvey
Q3) The Birth of a Nation
Q4) Top gangster Al Capone was finally convicted and sent to prison for the crime of
A) murder.
B) income tax evasion.
C) kidnapping.
D) conspiracy to violate the prohibition laws.
E) running criminal prostitution rings.
Q5) In response to the need to develop greater and greater mass markets for their products, American business in the 1920s relied especially on the new techniques of A) developing a large range of product variation.
B) price competition.
C) direct selling through catalogs and door-to-door solicitation.
D) consumer advertising.
E) government-backed guarantees of product performance.
Q6) D.W. Griffith
Q7) Margaret Sanger
Q8) modernism
Page 12
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Chapter 10: The Politics of Boom and Bust 1920 1932
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105 Verified Questions
105 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) John W. Davis
Q2) At the 1921-1922 Washington Conference, the major signatories (the United States, Japan, Great Britain, France, and Italy) agreed to the terms of the Five Power Naval Treaty which
A) limited the size of their naval forces.
B) fortifed their Far East possessions.
C) preserved the status quo in the Pacific.
D) abandoned the Open Door policy in China.
E) prevented Japanese expansion in Asia.
Q3) Nine-Power Treaty
Q4) When elected to the presidency in 1928, Herbert Hoover
A) was militantly antiunion and against big government.
B) brought little administrative talent or experience to the job.
C) understood that his major challenge was to find a solution to the Great Depression.
D) combined small-town values with wide experience in modern corporate America.
E) had been a successful governor of California.
Q5) McNary-Haugen Bill
Q6) Robert La Follette
Q7) "Ohio Gang"
Page 14
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Chapter 11: The Great Depression and the New Deal
1933 1939
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118 Verified Questions
118 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) Alfred M. Landon
Q2) The Works Progress Administration was a major ____ program of the New Deal; the Public Works Administration was a long-range ____ program; and the Social Security Act was a major ____ program.
A) relief; recovery; reform
B) reform; recovery; relief
C) recovery; relief; reform
D) relief; reform; recovery
E) reform; relief; recovery
Q3) Social Security Act
Q4) John Steinbeck
Q5) The Glass-Steagall Act
A) took the United States off the gold standard.
B) empowered President Roosevelt to close all banks temporarily.
C) created the Securities and Exchange Commission to regulate the stock exchange.
D) permitted commercial banks to engage in Wall Street financial dealings.
E) created the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to insure individual bank deposits.
Q6) Harold Ickes
Page 15
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Chapter 12: Franklin D Roosevelt and the Shadow of War
1933 1941
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104 Verified Questions
104 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) It is a common observation that American foreign policy often reflects domestic politics. In what way did domestic considerations influence the Roosevelt administration's recognition of the Soviet Union, adoption of a Good Neighbor policy, and extension of independence to the Philippines?
Q2) When Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, the United States
A) promised aid to the Soviets but did not deliver.
B) refused to provide any military or economic assistance.
C) gave only nonmilitary aid to Russia.
D) made lend-lease aid available to the Soviets.
E) sent U.S. ships to Soviet naval bases.
Q3) Shortly after Adolf Hitler signed a nonaggression pact with the Soviet Union in August 1939
A) Britain and France signed a similar agreement.
B) the Soviets attacked China.
C) Germany invaded Poland and started World War II.
D) Italy signed a similar agreement with the Soviets.
E) the Germans invaded Finland.
Q4) Wendell Willkie
Q5) Neutrality Acts of 1935, 1936, and 1937
Q6) fascism Page 16
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Page 17
Chapter 13: America in World War II 1941 1945
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106 Verified Questions
106 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) Harry S Truman
Q2) Battle of the Bulge
Q3) Korematsu v. United States
Q4) The minority group most adversely affected by Washington's wartime policies was A) German Americans.
B) blacks.
C) Japanese Americans.
D) American communists.
E) Italian Americans.
Q5) Thomas E. Dewey
Q6) Erwin Rommel
Q7) Douglas MacArthur
Q8) African Americans did all of the following during World War II except A) fight in integrated combat units.
B) rally behind the slogan "Double V" (victory over dictators abroad and racism at home).
C) move north and west in large numbers.
D) form a militant organization called the Congress of Racial Equality.
E) serve in the Army Air Corps.
Q9) Albert Einstein Page 18
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Page 19
Chapter 14: The Cold War Begins 1945-1952
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154 Verified Questions
154 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) Dean Acheson
Q2) The immediate crisis that prompted the announcement of the Truman Doctrine was related to the threat of a communist takeover in
A) Iran.
B) Greece and Turkey.
C) Communist China.
D) Czechoslovakia.
E) West Germany.
Q3) Much of the Sunbelt's new prosperity was based on its A) tremendous influx of money from the federal government.
B) policy of high state taxes.
C) regulated economic growth.
D) cooperative effort rather than unbridled individualism.
E) high levels of union membership.
Q4) Why were so many Americans anxious about the economic future of the nation at the conclusion of World War II? How would your level of anxiety about the economic future of the nation and your personal economic security vary if you were a woman, a veteran, a union member, and African American? Why did these fears, in many cases but not all, prove groundless?
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Chapter 15: American Zenith 1952-1963
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181 Verified Questions
181 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was an outgrowth of the A) antiwar movement of the 1960s.
B) black power movement of the 1960s.
C) ban-the-bomb movement of the 1950s.
D) Civil Rights Act of 1957.
E) sit-in movement launched by young southern blacks.
Q2) Checkers speech
Q3) Southern Christian Leadership Conference
Q4) John Updike
Q5) rock 'n' roll
Q6) How might a play like Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman be said to reflect the questions that many social critics were asking about mass American culture in the 1950s?
Q7) The Eisenhower-promoted public works project that was far larger and more expensive than anything in Roosevelt's New Deal was the
A) interstate highway system.
B) Grand Coulee dam project.
C) urban public subway and light rail project.
D) airport construction program.
E) public housing system.
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Chapter 16: The Stormy Sixties 1963-1973
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168 Verified Questions
168 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) Evaluate the impact of the Warren Court on American life. Cite specific cases that "reflected [the Supreme Court's] deep concern for the individual, no matter how lowly."
Q2) "silent majority"
Q3) "hawks" and "doves"
Q4) Voting Rights Act of 1965
Q5) Assess President Nixon's strategy of Vietnamization. Do you think that it was the best way to end the war? Why or why not?
Q6) President Nixon's policy of Vietnamization of the war in Vietnam called for
A) a gradual handover of the ground war to the South Vietnamese.
B) a full-scale conventional invasion of North Vietnam.
C) reorganization of the American army in Vietnam into antiguerrilla units.
D) an end to all American military and economic aid to South Vietnam.
E) a new emphasis on the aerial bombing of North Vietnam.
Q7) Operation Rolling Thunder
Q8) Griswold v. Connecticut(1965)
Q9) Free Speech Movement
Q10) Why was Richard M. Nixon, with his "loser's image," able to win the presidential election of 1968? What issues and events worked to his advantage?
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Chapter 17: Challenges to the Postwar Order 1973-1980
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83 Verified Questions
83 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) Was defeat of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) a major setback for feminism? Why or why not?
Q2) Congressman Gerald Ford had become vice president of the United States when
A) Nelson Rockefeller resigned the vice presidency to become governor of New York.
B) Spiro Agnew resigned on corruption charges and Nixon appointed Ford under the Twenty-Fifth Amendment.
C) he was selected to replace Spiro Agnew as Nixon's vice president in the 1972 campaign.
D) Nixon was impeached and Congress needed to select a new president.
E) the Twenty-Fifth Amendment made the Speaker of the House vice president in case of potential impeachment.
Q3) Saturday Night Massacre
Q4) On which of the following issues did most second wave feminists agree?
A) Marriage
B) How much to expect from the government, capitalism, and men
C) Pornography
D) Abortion rights
E) Maternity leaves and special protections for women in the workplace
Q5) Title IX
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Chapter 18: The Resurgence of Conservatism 1980-1992
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120 Verified Questions
120 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) One of the more disturbing trends that became apparent in the 1990s was
A) a movement toward more equitable income distribution.
B) a decline in median household incomes and a squeeze on the middle class.
C) an increasing number of working class Americans now moving into the middle class.
D) a dramatic drop in home ownership and mortgage lending.
E) the solidification of the welfare state.
Q2) Why was the United States more successful in dealing with the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe than with China after the end of the Cold War? Why did President George H.W. Bush refuse to punish China after it brutally crushed the prodemocracy movement? Do you agree or disagree with President Bush's approach to relations with China after it crushed the prodemocracy movement? Why or why not?
Q3) Do you agree or disagree with the following statement? "The greatest success of the conservative movement came in reversing the previously liberal direction of the Supreme Court." Explain your answer.
Q4) ____ Kuwait
Q5) What were the successes and failures of Ronald Reagan's supply-side economics (Reaganomics)?
Q6) Grenada
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Chapter 19: America Confronts the Post-Cold War Era,
1992-2000
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87 Verified Questions
87 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) In what ways did the Clinton administration reinforce the negative public views of government and politics first nourished in Vietnam and Watergate eras?
Q2) Among the biggest trends for white collar workers at the start of the twenty-first century was
A) the continued outsourcing of financial service and engineering jobs to other countries.
B) declining salary rates across the board.
C) increased opportunities to relocate internationally.
D) jobs requiring a higher level of education than in the past.
E) work days that have inched up from eight to ten or even twelve hours a day.
Q3) Reform party
Q4) The two articles of impeachment passed by the House of Representatives against President Clinton charged him with
A) foreign policy deception and misuse of the Central Intelligence Agency.
B) malfeasance of funds and defiance of Congressional spending restrictions.
C) perjury and obstruction of justice.
D) adultery and misuse of federal office facilities.
E) bribery and jury tampering.
Q5) postmodernism
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88 Verified Questions
88 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) The deployment of an additional thirty thousand soldiers in Afghanistan and the implementation of a new counterinsurgency strategy by American armed forces in the country during President Obama's first term
A) secured the country from terrorists.
B) produced no political progress in forging an agreement with the Taliban in Afghanistan.
C) was overwhelmingly opposed on a bipartisan basis in Congress, which attempted to force a withdrawal of these troops.
D) undercut and contradicted the president's declaration that he would begin withdrawing American troops from Afghanistan in 2011.
E) None of these choices are correct.
Q2) How did the U.S. domestic reaction to the "war on terror" compare with similar responses to World War I, World War II, and the Cold War? In which of these conflicts were there greater threats to America's tradition of civil liberties, and why?
Q3) Al Qaeda
Q4) Colin Powell
Q5) American Relief and Recovery Act
Q6) Tea Party
Page 26
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