APUSH Vocabulary

Key vocabulary terms for the AP US History exam.

The Gilded Age

The period from 1865 to 1898, marked by industrial growth and westward expansion.

Homestead Act

A U.S. federal law that promised 160 acres of public land to any citizen who would live on and cultivate it for five years

Urbanization

The growth of cities

Industrial capitalism

An economic system based on private ownership of capital and free markets.

Bessemer process

A cost-effective process for the mass production of steel.

Commodore Matthew Perry

Increased trade ties with Japan and Asia.

Manifest Destiny

Belief that the U.S. was destined to expand across the North American continent.

Mexican Cession

Territory gained by the U.S. after the Mexican-American War.

Ethnic enclaves

Communities established by immigrants with similar ethnic backgrounds.

Dawes Act

An act of Congress that attempted to assimilate Native Americans by dividing tribal lands into individual allotments.

Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo

Ended the Mexican-American War.

Jim Crow

A series of laws enacted in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by white Southern United States state and local governments to enforce racial segregation and disenfranchisement

Titans of Industry

Leaders in industries such as steel (Carnegie), oil (Rockefeller), finance (Morgan), and railroads (Vanderbilt).

Sherman Antitrust

U.S. legislation against monopolies

Freedmen's Bureau

A former United States federal government agency created during the Reconstruction era to provide food, housing, medical aid, establish schools and offer legal assistance to formerly enslaved people and poor white people in the South

Plessy v. Ferguson

Established the doctrine of 'separate but equal,' upholding segregation.

Assimilationism

An ideology aimed at assimilating immigrants and Native Americans into American culture.

Social Darwinism

The concept that individuals, groups, and peoples are subject to the same Darwinian laws of natural selection as plants and animals

Social Gospel

A social movement within Protestantism that applied Christian ethics to social problems, especially issues of social justice such as economic inequality, poverty, alcoholism, crime, racial tensions, slums, unclean environment, child labor, lack of unionization, poor schools, and the dangers of war.

Pendleton Act

A U.S. federal law that established a nonpartisan civil service system to reduce patronage and corruption in government hiring.

Imperialism and nationalism

The belief or desire of a government or people that a country should maintain a strong military capability and be prepared to use it aggressively to defend or promote national interests.

Isolationism

The action or state of keeping international affairs without political ties, commitments, or alliances.

Roaring 20s

A period of sustained economic prosperity and cultural flowering in the United States between the end of World War I in 1918 and the onset of the Great Depression in 1929

Rugged individualism

The assumption that individuals are independent and self-reliant and will overcome struggles through their own efforts

Great Depression

A severe worldwide economic depression that took place mostly during the 1930s, beginning in the United States.

New Deal

A series of domestic programs and policies enacted in the United States during the Great Depression.

Conservationism

The principle or aim of conserving land and natural resources.

Preservationism

The setting aside of land, as national parks or wilderness areas, for the purpose of protecting wildlife and natural resources and preventing further use or development in an area.

Hoovervilles

Shacks built by homeless people during the Great Depression, named after President Hoover.

Chinese Exclusion Act

A law passed in 1882 that prohibited all immigration of Chinese laborers.

Great Migration

Movement of African Americans from the rural South into Northern and Western cities during the early to mid 20th century.

Progressive Era

A period of widespread social activism and political reform across the United States, from the 1890s to 1920s..

Prohibition

A nationwide constitutional ban on the production, importation, transportation, and sale of alcoholic beverages in the United States from 1920 to 1933.

Fireside chats

A series of evening radio addresses given by Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) between 1933 and 1944.

Spanish Flu

An outbreak of influenza that spread around the world in 1918.

Flappers

A generation of young Western women in the 1920s who wore short skirts, bobbed their hair, listened to jazz, and flaunted their disdain for what was then considered acceptable behavior.

Red Scare

A period of intense anti-communism in the United States from 1917 to 1920.

Scopes Trial

A famous American legal case in 1925 in which a substitute high school teacher, John Scopes, was accused of violating Tennessee's Butler Act, which made it unlawful to teach human evolution in any state-funded school.

KKK

Several past and present American white supremacist terrorist hate group

Roe v. Wade

A landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court ruled that the right to privacy extended to a woman's decision to have an abortion

Equal Pay Act

A United States federal law prohibiting wage discrimination between men and women in the same establishment who perform jobs that require substantially equal skill, effort, and responsibility under similar working conditions

Title IX

A landmark piece of federal legislation in the United States that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in any federally funded education program or activity.

LBJ's Great Society

a set of domestic programs launched by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964–65 with the goal of eliminating poverty and racial injustice

Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)

An Act to establish a clear and comprehensive prohibition of discrimination on the basis of disability.

Affordable Care Act (2011)

An Act to increase the number of individuals with health insurance and reduce the costs of health insurance and health care.

Truman Doctrine/domino theory

A U.S. foreign policy doctrine adopted by President Harry Truman in 1947, operating on the principle that communist governments will eventually fall apart as long as they are prevented from expanding their influence

Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD)

Mutually Assured Destruction; is a doctrine of military strategy and national security policy in which a full-scale use of nuclear weapons by two or more opposing sides would cause the complete annihilation of both the attacker and the defender.

Beat Movement

A literary and intellectual subculture that began in the 1940s and extended into the 1960s

Post-war growth

A community based on economic prosperity, family life, and adherence to gender and racial hierarchies grew rapidly in the decades following World War II, as the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union developed.

Black nationalism

The political and social movement of the Black people of America during the 1960s, usually advocating separatist objectives and emphasizing racial pride and the creation of separate black political and cultural institutions.

United Farm Workers

A labor union formed in 1962 to seek higher wages and better working conditions for Mexican-American farm workers in California.

American Indian Movement (AIM)

Civil rights group organized to promote the interests of Native Americans.