Practice Flashcards: US History Units 1-9

Vocabulary flashcards covering the geographical, social, and political development of the United States from 1491 to the era of globalization.

Environments that allowed Native American tribes to farm and build large permanent settlements before European contact.

Fertile river valleys (Mississippi region)

Harsher environments where Native American groups relied on hunting and followed migrating animals.

Great Plains

Colonies characterized by rocky soil, small farms, fishing, and trade, centered around close-knit Puritan communities.

New England Colonies

Diverse and tolerant colonies known as the "breadbasket" for growing cash crops like wheat in fertile land.

Middle Colonies

Colonies with a plantation economy based on tobacco, rice, and enslaved African labor with a strict social hierarchy.

Southern Colonies

An $1787$ policy that created a process for admitting new states and banned slavery in the Northwest Territory.

Northwest Ordinance

Movement between $1787$ and the early $1800\text{s}$ that caused conflict with Native Americans and increased tensions over slavery expansion.

Westward migration

An economic system that increased sectional conflict as Southerners pushed to expand slavery into new territories.

Cotton economy

A region that opposed the expansion of slavery and used its larger population and transportation network to defeat the Confederacy.

Industrial North

A region that depended heavily on cotton and enslaved labor, contributing to the outbreak of the Civil War.

Agricultural South

Individuals who feared immigrants would take jobs, lower wages, and change American culture, leading to discrimination.

Nativists

Foreign policy beliefs that remained strong after World War I until the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Isolationist ideas

The attack that ultimately established the United States as a major global power following entry into World War II.

Pearl Harbor

An ideological conflict between the capitalist United States and the communist Soviet Union involving military and economic competition.

Cold War

A process of increasing international trade, technology, and economic connections that expanded the role of the United States in the world.

Globalization