Free practice final
US History practice final (free, with answers)
A typical US History survey final asks you to identify key people, laws and court cases and to explain the causes and consequences of major events, from the colonial era through the Cold War and the civil rights movement. Answer each question from memory before opening the answer, then use the explanation to connect the fact to the larger story.
Topics
- Colonial America
- Revolution and Constitution
- The Early Republic
- Slavery and Sectional Conflict
- Civil War and Reconstruction
- Industrialization and the Progressive Era
- The World Wars and the Depression
- The Cold War and Civil Rights
15 questions
Try each one before you open its answer.
1. Which was a major effect of the religious revivals of the 1730s and 1740s known as the First Great Awakening?
- A It made the Church of England the official church of every colony
- B It challenged the authority of established ministers and encouraged the growth of new churches
- C It brought an end to slavery in the northern colonies
- D It led most colonists to reject emotional preaching in favor of strict Enlightenment rationalism
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Answer: B. It challenged the authority of established ministers and encouraged the growth of new churches
Revivalists such as Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield stressed personal conversion and emotional preaching, and many colonists broke with ministers who opposed the revivals. Congregations split, and dissenting groups such as the Baptists grew, adding to the religious diversity of the colonies.
2. How did the outcome of the French and Indian War (1754–1763) contribute to tension between Britain and its American colonies?
- A Britain, deep in debt from the war, began taxing the colonies directly and kept troops in North America
- B France took control of the land between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River
- C Parliament gave the colonies seats in the House of Commons, which angered British voters
- D Britain withdrew its army and left the colonies to defend themselves
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Answer: A. Britain, deep in debt from the war, began taxing the colonies directly and kept troops in North America
Britain won the war and took France's claims east of the Mississippi, but it was left with a huge debt and decided the colonies should help pay for their own defense. The Proclamation of 1763, which limited settlement west of the Appalachians, and new taxes such as the Sugar Act (1764) and the Stamp Act (1765) set off colonial protests that led toward revolution.
3. Which was a major weakness of the national government under the Articles of Confederation?
- A The president could veto any law passed by Congress
- B Representation in Congress was based on population, which gave the large states control
- C A national supreme court could overturn any state law
- D Congress could not levy taxes and had to ask the states for money
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Answer: D. Congress could not levy taxes and had to ask the states for money
The Articles created a one-house Congress in which each state had one vote, with no separate executive and no national court system. Without the power to tax or to regulate trade between the states, Congress struggled to pay its debts, and unrest such as Shays' Rebellion (1786–1787) strengthened calls for a stronger national government.
4. At the Constitutional Convention of 1787, what agreement settled the dispute between large and small states by creating a House of Representatives based on population and a Senate with equal representation for every state?
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Answer: The Great Compromise, also called the Connecticut Compromise
Large states backed the Virginia Plan, which based representation on population, while small states backed the New Jersey Plan, which gave each state an equal vote. Connecticut delegates Roger Sherman and Oliver Ellsworth proposed combining the two in a two-house Congress.
5. Why is the Supreme Court case Marbury v. Madison (1803) significant?
- A It upheld Congress's power to charter a national bank
- B It declared the Alien and Sedition Acts unconstitutional
- C It established the Court's power to strike down a federal law as unconstitutional
- D It confirmed that Congress could regulate interstate commerce, including steamboat traffic
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Answer: C. It established the Court's power to strike down a federal law as unconstitutional
Chief Justice John Marshall ruled that part of the Judiciary Act of 1789 conflicted with the Constitution and was therefore void, which established the principle of judicial review. The national bank and steamboat rulings were McCulloch v. Maryland (1819) and Gibbons v. Ogden (1824), and the Court never struck down the Alien and Sedition Acts.
6. Why did the Kansas–Nebraska Act of 1854 intensify the conflict over slavery?
- A It let settlers decide the slavery question by popular sovereignty, opening land that the Missouri Compromise had closed to slavery
- B It admitted California to the Union as a free state
- C It banned slavery in every territory west of the Mississippi River
- D It created a stronger federal law for capturing and returning people who had escaped slavery
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Answer: A. It let settlers decide the slavery question by popular sovereignty, opening land that the Missouri Compromise had closed to slavery
The act, sponsored by Senator Stephen Douglas, organized the Kansas and Nebraska territories and left slavery to a vote of their settlers, repealing the Missouri Compromise ban on slavery north of 36°30′ in that region. Violence between proslavery and antislavery settlers in "Bleeding Kansas" followed, and opposition to the act helped create the Republican Party. The admission of California and the stronger fugitive slave law were parts of the Compromise of 1850.
7. Which 1857 Supreme Court decision held that Black Americans could not be citizens of the United States and that Congress had no power to ban slavery in the federal territories?
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Answer: Dred Scott v. Sandford
Chief Justice Roger Taney's majority opinion also declared the Missouri Compromise's ban on slavery unconstitutional. The ruling outraged many Northerners and deepened the sectional crisis, and its holding on citizenship was overturned by a constitutional amendment after the Civil War.
8. Which statement accurately describes the Emancipation Proclamation, which took effect on January 1, 1863?
- A It abolished slavery everywhere in the United States
- B It declared enslaved people free in areas still in rebellion, but it did not apply to the slave states that stayed in the Union
- C It granted citizenship and voting rights to formerly enslaved men
- D It was issued before the war to persuade Southern states not to secede
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Answer: B. It declared enslaved people free in areas still in rebellion, but it did not apply to the slave states that stayed in the Union
Lincoln issued it as a war measure under his authority as commander in chief, so it covered only areas in rebellion, not loyal slave states such as Kentucky and Maryland. It also announced that Black men would be accepted into the Union army and navy, and slavery was abolished nationwide by the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865.
9. Which constitutional amendment, ratified in 1868, made all persons born or naturalized in the United States citizens and barred states from denying any person the equal protection of the laws?
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Answer: The Fourteenth Amendment
Under the Reconstruction Acts of 1867, former Confederate states had to ratify it to regain representation in Congress. Its citizenship, due process and equal protection clauses became the basis for many later civil rights decisions of the Supreme Court.
10. Upton Sinclair's novel The Jungle (1906) contributed most directly to which reform?
- A The Sherman Antitrust Act
- B The Nineteenth Amendment
- C The Interstate Commerce Act
- D The Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act
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Answer: D. The Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act
Sinclair's description of filthy conditions in Chicago's meatpacking plants shocked readers, and President Theodore Roosevelt signed both laws in 1906. Sinclair had mainly hoped to expose the treatment of workers, but the public reacted most to the threat to its food.
11. Which 1882 federal law suspended the immigration of Chinese laborers to the United States?
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Answer: The Chinese Exclusion Act
It responded to anti-Chinese agitation, especially on the West Coast, and marked a turning point toward federal restriction of immigration by nationality. Congress extended it and later made it permanent, and it was not repealed until 1943.
12. Which developments most directly led the United States to declare war on Germany in April 1917?
- A Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor
- B The explosion of the battleship Maine in Havana harbor
- C Germany's resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare and the Zimmermann Telegram
- D Germany's invasion of Poland
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Answer: C. Germany's resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare and the Zimmermann Telegram
In early 1917 Germany announced that its submarines would sink ships without warning, including American ones, and a decoded German message, the Zimmermann Telegram, proposed an alliance with Mexico against the United States. President Woodrow Wilson then asked Congress for a declaration of war. The other choices belong to 1941, 1898 and 1939.
13. Which 1935 New Deal law created federal old-age pensions and a system of unemployment insurance?
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Answer: The Social Security Act
Signed by Franklin D. Roosevelt, it paid for retirement benefits through payroll taxes on workers and employers and set up unemployment insurance run jointly with the states. It remains one of the most lasting programs of the New Deal.
14. The Truman Doctrine of 1947, which promised aid to Greece and Turkey, was an early statement of which Cold War policy?
- A Containment of Soviet influence
- B Isolationism
- C Détente
- D Dollar diplomacy
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Answer: A. Containment of Soviet influence
Truman asked Congress for aid to help Greece and Turkey resist communist pressure, pledging US support for free peoples resisting subjugation. That goal of stopping the spread of Soviet influence, known as containment, guided US policy for decades. Détente was the easing of tensions in the 1970s, and dollar diplomacy was a policy of the years before World War I.
15. What did the Supreme Court decide in Brown v. Board of Education (1954)?
- A That "separate but equal" public facilities were constitutional
- B That discrimination in hotels, restaurants and theaters was illegal
- C That literacy tests for voting were unconstitutional
- D That state laws segregating public schools by race violated the Constitution
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Answer: D. That state laws segregating public schools by race violated the Constitution
In a unanimous opinion by Chief Justice Earl Warren, the Court held that separate schools are inherently unequal and violate the guarantee of equal protection, overturning the "separate but equal" doctrine of Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) in public education. Discrimination in public accommodations was outlawed later, by the Civil Rights Act of 1964.