53 Frequently Tested AP® US History Terms & Concepts Flashcards

AP® US History review narrows down all of the course into must-know terms. It’s the perfect way to study for concepts, events, phrases, central gures, ideas, and more that commonly show up on the exam and the AP® US History document-based questions.

Under the Encomienda System, a Spanish conquistador was given the labor of a number of __ living in the area.

Native Americans

__ are businesses owned by shareholders that invested in exploration and colonization.

Joint-stock companies

The __ Indians are known for their apartment-like structures made of adobe and mud.

Pueblo

The __ was a Spanish slavery system that laid the foundation for slavery in the Americas.

Asiento System

In 1586, English settlers landed at __ just off the coast of North Carolina, but the colony was later found deserted.

Roanoke Island

The __ was the first form of legislative power to appear in the colonies and foreshadowed many of the future powers outlined in the Constitution.

House of Burgesses

__ argues that trade generates wealth and is stimulated by the accumulation of pro table balances, which a government should encourage by means of protectionism.

Mercantilism

A __ is a crop grown for cash instead of subsistence.

cash crop

The __ trade route refers to the route taken by trade ships from Africa, to the New World, and back to Europe.

triangular

In order from oldest to youngest the colonies were settled first in __, then New York, Massachusetts, Maryland, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Delaware, North Carolina, South Carolina, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Georgia.

Virginia

The __ refers directly to the first ten amendments to the Constitution, guaranteeing things like freedom of speech and religion.

Bill of Rights

The __ began as a scuffle between colonist settlers and British soldiers, but the propaganda that rose around it whipped the colonies into a frenzy.

Boston Massacre

The __ was the final straw in a series of events that led to the American Revolution and was a protest of Parliament’s Tea Act of 1773.

Boston Tea Party

__ is a political framework that separates power into a three-way system, preventing one portion of government from gaining dominance over the other two.

Checks and balances

The __ established the three-branch system that the United States government has come to depend on.

U.S Constitution

Written by Thomas Jefferson and approved by the Continental Congress in 1776, this seminal document embraced the official formation of a new nation.

Declaration of Independence

The __ were a group of colonists who lived in Colonial America that were unhappy with the practices of the British Crown.

Sons of Liberty

The __ was put into law by Thomas Jefferson in 1807, and it essentially prohibited American ships from trading in all foreign ports.

Embargo Act

The __ often appears on the APUSH exam in questions involving the acceleration of American self-determination.

War of 1812

At the __, the Federalist Party met to discuss their grievances concerning the ongoing War of 1812 and the political problems arising from the federal government’s increasing demonstration of power and authority.

Hartford Convention

The __ was known as the Tariff of Abominations to the American South.

Tariff of 1828

The __ was a social ideology that, above all, characterized women as subservient to men.

cult of domesticity

Enacted by President James Monroe in December 1823, the __ warned European nations that the United States would not tolerate further colonization or puppet monarchs.

Monroe Doctrine

__ established the doctrine of judicial review, which is when the US Supreme Court reviews the constitutional validity of a legislative act.

Marbury v. Madison

The __ freed all slaves in the states that were rebelling during the Civil War.

Emancipation Proclamation

A component of the Compromise of 1850, the __ required that fugitive (runaway) slaves be returned to their owners even if they were in a free state.

Fugitive Slave Act

The __ played an integral role in forcing the nation into Civil War and was passed as a means to preserve the balance of power in Congress between slave and free states.

Missouri Compromise

Passed in 1854, the __ gave what’s called popular sovereignty to states.

Kansas-Nebraska Act

The Battle of __ sealed the Union’s victory, with Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendering to Union General Ulysses S. Grant.

Appomattox Court House

The period of time between 1870 and 1900 in the United States is often called the __ thanks to heavy industrial and economic growth.

Gilded Age

Perhaps the most influential economic theory to arise from the Gilded Age, __ emphasized a free market that would produce the best and most efficient solutions to economic and social problems on its own, without much government intervention.

laissez-faire economics

__ was an influential banker and businessman who bought and reorganized companies, dominating Wall Street and American nance throughout the 19th century.

JP Morgan

JP Morgan, __, and Andrew Carnegie are considered the triumvirate of 19th-century American wealth and business.

John D. Rockefeller

__ is an act of joining or consolidating with one’s competitors to create a monopoly.

Horizontal Integration

__ is when a single entity controls the entire process of a product, from the raw materials to distribution.

Vertical integration

Enacted in 1890, the __ was the first federal action designed to thwart monopolies, which had, by then, grown too powerful and too in uential.

Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890

__ attempted to modernize the South’s economy and to diversify southern agriculture by adding new industries and trading methods.

New southerners

The __ made the outright declaration that if a European power tried to intervene in the affairs of North or South America, then the United States would exercise military forces to keep Europe out.

Roosevelt Corollary

__ refers to how Theodore Roosevelt dealt with encounters between Europe and the edgling nations that had begun to sprout in South America from former colonies with a peaceful but un appable strength.

Speak Softly, and Carry a Big Stick

The __ was the physical manifestation of the American dream of Manifest Destiny.

Transcontinental Railroad

In President Wilson’s __, he described the type of world he hoped to build, a world of free trade between all nations, open navigation of the seas, and the formation of the precursor to the United Nations, the League of Nations.

14 points

The __ was the worst economic crisis of the 1930’s, and one of the worst economic collapses of world history.

Great Depression

The __ was the scientific project undertaken by the United States to create the first atomic weapon led by J. Robert Oppenheimer.

Manhattan Project

As WWII concluded, the Allied leaders met at the __ and determined Germany’s fate.

Potsdam Conference

The __ can be unpacked as the first instance of religion versus science in the United States public education system.

Scopes Monkey Trial

The __ occurred in 1961 and the United States faced embarrassment on the international stage, forced to grant Cuba’s new political system legitimacy.

Bay of Pigs

The __ marked the height of tension during the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union and brought the world close to nuclear annihilation.

Cuban Missile Crisis

The __ marked a period of fear-mongering and repression against those who professed even the slightest sympathy for Communists.

Red Scare

On May 4, 1970, 4 students protesting the Vietnam War were shot and killed by the National Guard at the ____.

Kent State Massacre

During the 1960s through the 1980s, the United States attempted to strategically unravel the Soviet Union while simultaneously easing tensions between the two superpowers in a process called __.

Détente

__ was a concept that dominated United States legislation and the national consciousness from the 1950’s to the 1980’s and centered around the belief that if one country fell to Communism, then surrounding nations would follow suit.

Domino Theory

After more than 40 years of Cold War, the USSR nally agreed to call it quits, and decided to tear down the __ at the urging of United States President Ronald Reagan.

Berlin Wall

On __, 19 members of the Islamic extremist group al Qaeda hijacked four airplanes and carried out suicide attacks against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and an attempted attack on the White House in the United States.

September 11, 2001

Passed in 2010, the __ demanded households with incomes above $250,000 to pay higher taxes as a means to bring about health care reform.

Affordable Care Act