Exam Study Notes

1491-1607: European Colonization

  • Europeans justified conquest due to perceived Native American deficiencies (technology, religion, language).
  • Spanish aimed to extract wealth and convert natives.
  • French focused on fur trade, respected Native religions.
  • Dutch prioritized profit, religious freedom, and press freedom.
  • Columbian Exchange: Smallpox decimated Native populations, leading to African slave trade.

1607-1754: Chesapeake Colonies

  • Joint-stock colonies relied on investment for profit.
  • Headright system: 50 acres per person brought over, led to large estates.
  • Indentured servants: poor Englishmen working for 5-10 years for land.
  • African slaves: Replaced indentured servants, especially in tobacco production.
  • Virginia House of Burgesses: First representative government, but limited.
  • Bacon’s Rebellion: Frustration over Native American policy, shift to slave labor.
  • Maryland Act of Toleration (1649): Religious freedom for Christians.

New York, Pennsylvania

  • New Amsterdam (Dutch): For-profit, religious and press freedom.
  • English takeover: Reduced freedoms, Charter of Liberties and Privileges (1683).
  • Pennsylvania (Quaker): Religious freedom, equality, fair Native relations.

New England Colonies

  • Puritans: Calvinists seeking religious purification.
  • Town organization: Self-governing, literacy emphasized.
  • Pequot War (1637) & King Philip’s War (1676): Conflicts over land expansion.
  • Massachusetts Bay Colony: Restrictions on speech, religion, behavior.
  • Dominion of New England: Consolidated colonies, later terminated.
  • Salem Witch Trials (1692): Extremes of religious fanaticism.
  • Plymouth: Pilgrims, Mayflower Compact.
  • Connecticut: Fundamental Orders (1639), first constitution.
  • Rhode Island: Religious freedom, separation of church and state.

Southern Colonies

  • Economic Basis: Plantation farming (tobacco, indigo, rice, cotton).
  • Labor System: Initially indentured servants, then African slaves.
  • Carolina: Enslavement/expulsion of Native Americans, Stono Rebellion (1739).
  • Georgia: Originally anti-slavery, later adopted slavery & liquor.

1754-1800: Enlightenment & Great Awakening

  • Enlightenment: Progress, freedom, reason, challenged traditional thought.
  • Locke: Natural rights, social contract.
  • Hobbes: Absolutist government.
  • Great Awakening: Religious revival, questioned social/political norms.
  • Whitefield: Calvinist, itinerant preacher.

Seven Years’ War & American Revolution

  • Seven Years’ War: British vs. French over Ohio River Valley.
  • Treaty of Paris (1763): Britain gained French land, Native Americans lost.
  • Albany Plan of Union: Failed attempt at colonial unification.
  • Navigation Acts: Regulated colonial trade, often ignored.
  • Proclamation of 1763: Limited westward expansion.
  • Stamp Act (1765): Direct tax on printed documents, led to “no taxation without representation”.
  • Townshend Acts: Taxed imports, intensified protests.
  • Boston Massacre (1770): Anti-British sentiment.
  • Boston Tea Party (1773): Protest against Tea Act.
  • Coercive Acts: Punished Massachusetts.
  • First Continental Congress: Boycott of British goods, Declaration of Colonial Rights and Grievances.
  • Thomas Paine's Common Sense: Advocated for independence.
  • Declaration of Independence: Formal declaration of independence from Britain.

Articles of Confederation & Constitution

  • Articles of Confederation: Weak central government, lacked taxation power.
  • Shays’ Rebellion: Exposed weaknesses of Articles.
  • Constitutional Convention (1787): Created U.S. Constitution.
  • Virginia Plan vs. New Jersey Plan: Representation debates.
  • Connecticut Compromise: Bicameral legislature.
  • Three-Fifths Compromise: Slaves counted as 3/5 for representation.
  • Federalist Papers: Supported ratification of Constitution.
  • Bill of Rights: Guaranteed individual rights, appeased Anti-Federalists.

Early Republic

  • Washington: First president, warned against factions and foreign entanglements.
  • Whiskey Rebellion: Federal authority established.
  • Adams: Second president, Alien and Sedition Acts.
  • Jefferson & Madison: Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions.

Federalists vs. Democratic Republicans

  • Federalists: Strong central government, broad interpretation of Constitution (Hamilton).
  • Democratic Republicans: Limited government, strict interpretation (Jefferson).

1800-1848: Industrial Revolution & Consequences

  • Industrial Revolution: Shift to mass production, interchangeable parts, American System of Manufacturing.
  • Market Revolution: Linking of Northern industries with Western/Southern farms.
  • Transportation Revolution: Canals, steamboats, railroads, telegraph.
  • Gibbons v. Ogden (1824): Federal law superior in interstate commerce.
  • Cult of Domesticity: Separate spheres for men (wage earners) and women (homemakers).

Slavery

  • Cotton Kingdom: Interdependent with Northern manufacturing.
  • Second Middle Passage: Transfer of slaves within US.
  • Proslavery arguments: White supremacy, biblical sanction, “positive good”.
  • Paternalism: Justification that slavery was for slaves' own good.

2nd Great Awakening

  • Reaction to industrial Rev: Emphasized hardwork, and individual success.
  • Influenced by Romanticism: Appreciation of spiritualim and natural world over rationalism.

Supreme Court Cases

  • Marbury v. Madison (1803): Judicial review.
  • McCulloch v. Maryland (1819): Federal law trumps state law.

Jefferson Presidency

  • Louisiana Purchase (1803): Doubled U.S. size.
  • Embargo Act of 1807: Devastated American economy.

War of 1812

  • Causes: British impressment, Native American conflicts.
  • Hartford Convention: Federalist opposition, death of Federalist Party.
  • Treaty of Ghent (1814): Ended war, status quo ante bellum.

Era of Good Feelings

  • Monroe presidency: Supposedly unified under Democratic-Republicans.
  • Missouri Compromise (1820): Admitted Missouri (slave) and Maine (free), 36°30’ line.
  • Monroe Doctrine (1823): American dominance in Western Hemisphere.

Panic of 1819

  • First major recession.
  • End of Property Qualifications for voting

Jacksonian Era

  • Jackson: Strong executive, opposed federal intervention.
  • Indian Removal Act (1830): Forced relocation of Native Americans.
  • Worcester v. Georgia (1832): Cherokee sovereignty.
  • Nullification Crisis (1832): South Carolina vs. federal tariff.
  • Panic of 1837: Economic crisis due to banking practices.

Political Parties

  • Democrats (Jackson): Limited government, states’ rights.
  • Whigs (Clay): Federal intervention, national bank, internal improvements.

1844-1877: Antebellum Reform & Civil War

  • Reform Movements: Inspired by religion/secularism, aimed at social improvement.
  • Mormonism, Shakers, New Harmony, Temperance.
  • Transcendentalism: Emerson, Thoreau.
  • Abolitionism: Immediate emancipation, equality.

Manifest Destiny

  • Belief in American expansion.
  • Mexican War (1846-1848): Annexation of Texas, Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (California).
  • Free Soil Party- Opposed the expansion of slavery in western territories.
  • Compromise of 1850: Addmitted California as a free state

Road to Civil War

  • Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854): Popular sovereignty, repealed Missouri Compromise.
  • Republican Party: Opposed slavery’s expansion.
  • Dred Scott Decision (1857): Denied citizenship to blacks, Congress could not ban slavery in territories.
  • Lincoln-Douglas Debates (1858): Highlighted slavery debate.
  • Lincoln Elected 1860: Led to Southern Secession.

The Civil War

  • Emancipation Proclamation 1863: Freed slaves in Confederate states

Reconstruction

  • Lincoln’s Plan: Reunion > Punishing South.
  • Johnson Reconstruction Plan: Similar to Lincoln, but barred many of former Southern elite from participating in government.
  • Black Codes: Restricted freedmen’s rights.
  • 13th, 14th, 15th Amendments: Abolished slavery, granted citizenship/equal protection, suffrage.
  • Sharecropping: Replaced slavery, often kept farmers in debt.
  • Compromise of 1877: Ended Reconstruction, Democrats regained control of the South.

1865-1898: The Gilded Age

  • Industrialization: Mass production, technological advancements.
  • Rockefeller & Carnegie: Faces of American industrial capitalism.
    Labor and Unions: Knights of Labor, AFL
  • Haymarket Square Riot: Crushed union credibility.
  • "New South": Jim Crow Laws, Plessy v. Ferguson
  • New West:
  • Transcontinental Railroad.
  • Native population devastated.
  • Homestead/Morrill Land-Grant Acts.
  • Dawes Severalty Act (1887)

Gilded Age Politics

  • Interstate Commerce Act (1887)
  • McKinley Tariff (1890)
    *W.E.B. Du Bois: NAACP.
    *Farmers' Alliance: Free silver.
    Populist Party: graduated income tax and government ownership of railroads. William Jennings Bryan. Susan B. Anthony

1890-1945: Imperialism and Progressivism

*Spanish-American War:

  • U.S.S. Maine
  • Platt Amendment
  • Roosevelt Corollary

The Progressive Era

  • Open Door Policy
  • 16th Amendment
  • 17th Amendment
    *18th Amendment - Prohibition
    *19th Amendment - Women's Suffrage.
    *Roosevelt- Square Deal.

World War 1

  • Causes: Lusitania, Zimmerman Telegram.
  • Reduced civil liberties
  • Wilson's Fourteen Points.

The Roaring Twenties

  • Harlem Renaissance: jazz, new consumerism.
  • Resurging Nativism: KKK, Sacco and Vanzetti.
  • Scopes trial (1925).

Great Depression + New Deal

  • Causes: Stock market crash, bank failures
  • Hawley-Smoot Tariff, Hoovervilles.
  • First/Second New Deal + Keynes economics.
  • New Deal Coalition.

World War 2

  • Pearl Harbor (1941).
  • Korematsu v. US 1944.
  • Atomic bombs on Japanese Civilians(1945)
  • United Nations.

1945-1980: Cold War

  • Cold War.
  • Truman Doctrine: Containment
  • Marshall Plan.
  • NATO/ WARSAW Pact.
    *Korean War.
  • Cuban MIssile Crisis.

Domestic Policy

Sen McCarthy.
The Vietnam War
LBJ Great Society
The Counter-Culture movement.
The Civil Rights Movement
Brown v Board.
CIVIL RIGHTS ACT 1964.
*25,4, Equal Rights.