American History Flashcards

Flashcards for American History 11 Final Examination Review Guide 2024-2025

Ho Chi Minh

Vietnamese Communist revolutionary leader.

Domino Theory

The belief that if one country falls to Communism, neighboring countries will also fall.

Viet Cong

South Vietnamese communists.

Gulf of Tonkin Resolution

Authorized President Johnson to take any measures necessary to retaliate and promote international peace and security in Southeast Asia.

Tet Offensive

A series of surprise attacks by the Vietcong and North Vietnamese forces during the Vietnamese New Year (Tet).

My Lai Massacre

Massacre of unarmed South Vietnamese civilians by U.S. troops in March 1968.

Headright System

A system of land grants used to attract colonists to Virginia.

Mercantilism

Economic policy where colonies exist to benefit the mother country.

Navigation Acts

British laws restricting colonial trade.

Bacon’s Rebellion

An armed rebellion in 1676 by Virginia settlers led by Nathaniel Bacon against the rule of Governor William Berkeley.

Salutary Neglect

British policy of avoiding strict enforcement of parliamentary laws meant to keep the American colonies obedient to England.

Stamp Act Congress (1765)

Meeting of representatives from several colonies to protest the Stamp Act.

Townshend Acts (1767)

A series of British acts of Parliament passed in 1767 relating to the British colonies in North America.

Intolerable (Coercive) Acts (1774)

A series of laws passed by the British Parliament in 1774 relating to Britain's colonies in North America.

Battle of Saratoga

Turning point of the Revolutionary War, convinced France to support the Americans.

Transatlantic Slave Trade

The transportation of enslaved Africans to the Americas.

Middle Passage

The sea journey undertaken by slave ships from West Africa to the West Indies.

Manifest Destiny

Belief that the United States was destined to expand across North America.

Wilmot Proviso

Proposed but failed to ban slavery in territory acquired from Mexico.

Free Soil Party

A short-lived political party in the United States active in the 1848 and 1852 presidential elections promoting free soil.

Missouri Compromise (1820)

An effort to balance the number of slave states and free states.

Compromise of 1850

Package of five separate bills passed by the United States Congress in September 1850 that defused a four-year political confrontation between slave and free states.

Fugitive Slave Law

Part of the Compromise of 1850, required the return of runaway slaves.

Popular Sovereignty

The concept that political power rests with the people who can create, alter, and abolish government.

Kansas – Nebraska Act

Allowed popular sovereignty in Kansas and Nebraska, leading to Bleeding Kansas.

Bleeding Kansas

A series of violent civil confrontations in Kansas Territory, United States, between 1854 and 1861 which emerged from a political and ideological debate over the legality of slavery in the proposed state of Kansas.

Dred Scott Decision

Supreme Court ruling that African Americans were not citizens and that slavery could not be prohibited in US territories.

Harper’s Ferry

Site of John Brown’s raid, an attempt to start a slave rebellion.

Fort Sumter

Attack on this fort initiated the Civil War.

Anaconda Plan

Union military strategy to blockade the South and cut off its supplies.

Emancipation Proclamation

Issued by Lincoln, declaring slaves free in Confederate territories.

Gettysburg

Turning point of the Civil War, a Union victory.

Vicksburg

Siege of Vicksburg (May 18 – July 4, 1863) was the final military action in the Vicksburg campaign of the American Civil War.

Sherman’s March to the Sea

Sherman's troops marched from Atlanta to Savannah and destroyed anything of military value in their path.

Freedman’s Bureau

Established in 1865 by Congress to help former black slaves and poor whites in the South in the aftermath of the U.S. Civil War (1861-65).

Black Codes

Laws passed by Southern states to restrict the rights of African Americans.

Ku Klux Klan (KKK)

Secret society organized in the South after the Civil War to reassert white supremacy by means of violence.

13th Amendment

Abolished slavery.

14th Amendment

Guaranteed citizenship and equal protection under the law.

15th Amendment

Guaranteed the right to vote regardless of race.

Compromise of 1877

Ended Reconstruction.

Monroe Doctrine

Principle of U.S. policy that any intervention by external powers in the politics of the Americas is a potentially hostile act against the U.S..

Roosevelt Corollary

Addition to the Monroe Doctrine asserting America's right to intervene in the affairs of Latin American countries.

Dollar Diplomacy

Taft's policy of using American investment to promote American foreign policy goals.

Zimmerman Telegram

A secret diplomatic communication issued from the German Foreign Office in January 1917 that proposed a military alliance between Germany and Mexico if the United States entered World War I against Germany.

Fourteen Points

Woodrow Wilson's plan for peace after World War I.

League of Nations

An international organization established after World War I under the provisions of the Treaty of Versailles.

Espionage Act

United States federal law passed on June 15, 1917, shortly after the U.S. entry into World War I.

Sedition Act

Extended the Espionage Act of 1917 to cover a broader range of offenses, notably speech and the expression of opinion that cast the government or the war effort in a negative light.

Teapot Dome Scandal

A bribery scandal involving the administration of United States President Warren G. Harding from 1921 to 1923.

Stock Market Crash / Black Tuesday

A major American stock market crash that occurred in the autumn of 1929.

The New Deal

A series of programs and projects undertaken by President Franklin D. Roosevelt between 1933 and 1939 with the goal of restoring prosperity to Americans.

Glass Steagall Act

A law passed in 1933 that separated commercial from investment banking and created the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.

Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC)

Independent agency of the U.S. government that protects the funds depositors place in banks and savings associations.

Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC)

A public work relief program in the United States for unemployed men during the Great Depression.

Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA)

United States federal law of the New Deal era designed to boost agricultural prices by reducing surpluses.

Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA)

A federally owned corporation in the United States created by congressional charter in May 1933 to provide navigation, flood control, electricity generation, fertilizer manufacturing, and economic development to the Tennessee Valley.

Works Progress Administration (WPA)

Employed millions of job-seekers (mostly unskilled men) to carry out public works projects, including the construction of public buildings and roads.

Wagner Act

New Deal reform passed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1935, it was instrumental in preventing employers from interfering with workers' unions and protests in the private sector.

Social Security Act

An act to provide for the general welfare by establishing a system of Federal old-age benefits, and by enabling the several States to make more adequate provision for aged persons, blind persons, dependent and crippled children, maternal and child welfare, public health, and the administration of their unemployment compensation laws.

Appeasement

A diplomatic policy aimed at avoiding war by making concessions to an aggressive power.

Lend Lease Act

An act to further promote the defense of the United States, and for other purposes.

Pearl Harbor

Was a surprise military strike by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service upon the United States against the naval base at Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, Territory of Hawaii, just before 08:00 on Sunday morning, December 7, 1941.

Operation Overlord

The codename for the Battle of Normandy, the Allied operation that launched the successful invasion of German-occupied Western Europe during World War II.

Executive Order 9066

Ordered all Japanese Americans on the West Coast to be relocated to internment camps.

Bush Doctrine

Refers to various interrelated foreign policy principles of the 43rd President of the United States, George W. Bush.

War on Terrorism

Refers to the American-led global counterterrorism campaign launched in response to the September 11 attacks.

Operation Enduring Freedom

The U.S. military's official name for the Global War on Terrorism.

Axis of Evil

Used by U.S. President George W. Bush in his State of the Union address on January 29, 2002, and often repeated throughout his presidency, to describe foreign governments that, during his administration, sponsored terrorism, sought weapons of mass destruction, or both.

The Patriot Act

The Patriot Act is legislation passed in 2001 in response to the September 11 terrorist attacks.