Answer Key for Practice Test 4

Section I: Multiple-Choice Questions
1. B	30. D
2. A	31. C
3. B	32. A
4. C	33. c
5. B	34. C
6. E	35. E
7. B	36. B
8. B	37. A
9. C	38. E
10. B	39. A
11. A	40. B
12. D	41. A
13. C	42. E
14. A	43. B
15. D	44. C
16. A	45. D
17. D	46. D
18. C	47. B
19. A	48. D
20. A	49. A
21. A	50. E
22. D	51. C
23. E	52. D
24. C	53. D
25. A	54. E
26. B	55. D
27. B	56. D
28. C	57. B
29. D	58. A
59. B	70. E
60. C	71. A
61. C	72. D
62. C	73. C
63. C	74. C
64. D	75. C
65. B	76. A
66. A	77. D
67. E	78. B
68. D	79. B
69. C	80. B

Answers and Explanations for Practice Test 4

Section I: Multiple-Choice Questions

1. B. Stalin demanded a second front, i.e, an invasion of Western Europe, almost as soon as Germany attacked the Soviet Union in June 1941. The repeated postponements of the cross-Channel invasion until June 1944 did strain the wartime alliance.

2. A. Desperate for sailors to man their warships during the Napoleonic Wars. British vessels stopped American ships on the pretext of searching for British deserters, and often took American sailors who allegedly fit that description.

3. B. The mother country theoretically benefited from being the exclusive supplier of manufactured goods to its colonies. Colonists, however, resented high prices, and resorted to smuggling. Spain. England, and France endorsed mercantilism and passed laws to enforce the policy, but colonial officials often accepted bribes to ignore the enforcement.

4. C. This is from President Eisenhower’s 1961 Farewell Address to the nation in which he warned about the dangers of the “military-industrial complex.”

5. B. The Supreme Court ruled on a series of cases involving the Civil Rights Act of 1875 and found that the federal government had no jurisdiction to protect social rights as opposed to civil rights.

6. E. The Tenth Amendment was included to counterbalance the strong federal government established under the Constitution, and provides that powers not delegated to the United States or denied to the states, are reserved to the states or the people.

7. B. Since traffic down the Mississippi River was controlled by Spain at the time, free navigation was not in the power of Great Britain to grant to the United States.

8. B. In the midst of a major revolution, Mexico had tense relations with the United States, especially concerning the U.S. occupation of Vera Cruz. Germany’s proposal, revealed by the British to the United States, played a major part in Wilson’s decision to declare war on Germany.

9. C. Intended as a means of assimilating Native Americans into the dominant society by allotting farms to individual families, the Dawes Act negatively affected tribes by failing to provide for their posterity, subverting their cultural heritage, and opening tribal land to white speculators and settlers.

10. B. The creation of land-grant colleges, including six black colleges in the South, by the Morrill Act of 1862 clearly did expand education. It was also during this period that women’s colleges—Vassar (1861) and Smith (1871)—were founded.

11. A. After the Confederates fired on Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861, Lincoln proclaimed a state of insurrection. The Upper South, including Virginia, North Carolina, Arkansas, and Tennessee, then joined the Confederacy.

12. D. Kennedy used the allegation that the Soviet Union had more intercontinental ballistic missiles than the United States to bolster his image as a cold warrior.

13. C. The War of the Spanish Succession (1702-1713), fought between England and France over English concerns that Louis XIV would control Spain through his half-French grandson Philip V, was fought during the reign of Queen Anne.

14. A. Between 1629 and 1635, more than 20,000 Puritans, including entire families, left England for the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

15. D. At its height the French empire controlled the Mississippi Valley, the Great Lakes, and eastern Canada. Great Britain saw this as an effort to curtail its own expansion in North America.

16. A. Republicans after the Civil War attempted to blame the Democratic party for starting it. Although the charge was untrue, Republicans managed to create an image that linked Democrats to the Confederacy. Another slogan the Republicans used was “Vote as you shot.”

17. D. Margaret Sanger was the leader of the movement to win acceptance for birth control in the early 20th century.

18. C. Democrats favored a low tariff to enable working-class consumers to afford imported products. The progressive income tax made up for low tariffs. Since the 1930s, however, the growth of government programs and bureaucracy has made the income tax a source of controversy among Americans who seek reduced government spending and tax relief.

19. A. The Marshall Plan was a massive program of economic aid to rebuild the economies of Western Europe after World War II. The U.S. was prepared to help the Soviet Union and the countries under its control in Eastern Europe, but the aid was refused.

20. A. Population has increased significantly in California. Arizona, Nevada, Texas, and Florida, whereas it has declined or failed to grow in the Upper Midwest and New England states.

21. A. Given the yearly cost in tribute payments, insults to the American flag, and no indication that such treatment would not continue, President Jefferson supported action against the Barbary States.

22. D. The statement was made by Patrick Henry at the Virginia Convention (1788) to ratify the Constitution and sums up key Antifederalist concerns.

23. E. A plunge in tobacco prices began in 1660 and lasted a half century. Planters made up for their losses through rents, lending money, and raising cattle for export. Poor whites suffered poverty and exploitation.

24. C. The Dominion of New England included New York, New Jersey, and various New England colonies. Its creation in 1686 by James II reflected his desire to exercise greater control over the colonies. When the king was deposed by the Glorious Revolution in 1688 that colonies that had been part of the Dominion received separate charters.

25. A. The Treaty of Greenville (1795) ended for about twenty years the conflict over land in the Ohio Valley between American settlers and Native Americans.

26. B. The more cars Ford built, the lower the per-unit cost, and Ford passed this saving on to consumers by charging lower prices for his vehicles.

27. B. Taken from the title of a novel written by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner, the “Gilded Age” denoted an era of government corruption centering on the administration of President Ulysses S. Grant. Also during this time, lack of business regulation enabled aggressive entrepreneurs to gain wealth through unethical and controversial tactics such as stock manipulation and monopolies.

28. C. While certainly advanced by the Supreme Court decisions in the Civil Rights Cases (1883) and Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), segregation was the result of laws passed by the state legislatures in the South to separate the blacks and whites in everything from schools to public places. The legislation is collectively known as Jim Crow laws.

29. D. Hoover created the President’s Emergency Committee for Employment (PECE) to act as a clearing house for local volunteer agencies offering suggestions for employment. The PECE did little to ease the unemployment crisis.

30. D. Ralph Nader’s Unsafe at Any Speed (1965) was specifically an attack on the safety of the Chevrolet Corvair, and generally on the lack of concern of the automobile industry with safety, reliability, and fuel economy.

31. C. The electoral commission set up by Congress awarded the electoral votes of Louisiana, Florida, and South Carolina to Hayes. Since that gave him a majority in the Electoral College (185/184), there was not constitutional reason for the election to go to the House.

32. A. When farmers in western Pennsylvania refused to pay the excise tax on whiskey and rioted against tax officials in July 1794, Washington ordered the militias of several states to move against the rebels.

33. C. You should be familiar with the idea of “taking the Fifth,” which is the constitutional protection against self-incrimination.

34. C. The moon landing is the only event among the possible choices that took place in in 1969. The King assassination and Tet occurred in 1968 while the shootings at Kent State were in 1970 and Watergate happened in 1972.

35. E. The Civil War amendments—Thirteenth (1865), Fourteenth (1868), and Fifteenth (1870)—dealt with the status of newly freed slaves. Although the amendments played a role in the readmission process, they did not provide for readmission.

36. B. Conviction required a two-thirds vote of the Senate. The Senate was one vote short of conviction.

37. A. During the Civil War. Russia demonstrated friendship towards the Union, sent Russian ships on a good-will mission to the United States, and praised the Emancipation Proclamation which followed on Tsar Alexander II’s freeing of the serfs.

38. E. Improvements in transportation, ranging from steam locomotives to electric subway systems, allowed middle class and even the poor to live miles from work.

39. A. The Insurgents included Republicans from midwestern states who favored progressive legislation regarding federal expenditures, the labor movement, and reform of the political process.

40. B. The Harlem Renaissance was a flowering of African-American literature and art during the 1920s. If you don’t know that Claude McKay was one of the leading black poets of the time, you should get the right answer through the process of elimination.

41. A. The ever-present threat of selling a slave’s wife or children was an effective way of maintaining control over slaves.

42. E. Agriculture was the one sector of the economy that did not share in the prosperity of the 1920s. The conservative philosophy of Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon left no room for federal aid to American farmers.

43. B. Between 1689 and 1763, four major wars were fought between Britain and France. During that time British settlement and population increased enormously, whereas France never was able to attract French settlers in significant numbers to Canada.

44. C. The population in California, grown to over 200,000 in just two years as a consequence of the Gold Rush, wanted a fast and efficient connection to the east. The southern route would bypass the difficulty of crossing the Sierra Nevada Range.

45. D. Since former indentured servants played a prominent role in the rebellion, Tidewater planters decided that slave labor would prove more reliable and less dangerous.

46. D. When Great Britain and Venezuela disputed the boundary between Venezuela and British Guiana, the United States held the view that the Monroe Doctrine empowered it to deal with European nations. Great Britain accepted the principle; a few years later an international tribunal settled the dispute.

47. B. The Knights of Labor reached out to all workers, including unskilled, African Americans, and women.

48. D. The Creel Committee, also known as the Committee on Public Information, certainly contributed to the anti-German hysteria in the United States during World War I but did not in fact reflect the limitations on civil liberties the other choices did.

49. A. Kennedy found it difficult to get his domestic program through Congress, but, following the Bay of Pigs invasion, had a number of foreign policy accomplishments, including handling the Cuban missile crisis and the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.

50. E. Hamilton actually served as George Washington's secretary of the treasury. The position had originally been called the Superintendent of Finances under the Continental Congress.

51. C. Minstrel shows had white performers in black face, who portrayed African Americans as lazy and stupid.

52. D. The Federalist-dominated Congress enacted laws, which included extending the naturalization period for citizenship to fourteen years and making criticism of the federal government a libelous offense, aimed at Republican critics of the Adams administration.

53. D. In contrast to Virginia where the early colonists were single men. New England was settled by family groups. From the beginning, the Pilgrims and Puritans came with their wives and children.

54. E. Between 1660 and 1704. the goods designated as enumerated articles by the British actually expanded to include rice, pitch, tar, turpentine, and masts.

55. D. The Senate’s rejection of the Treaty of Versailles did not signal an American retreat into isolationism. The United States was actively involved in reaching arms control agreements with Japan and other major powers as well as in the attempt to find a solution to the twin problems of war debts and reparations.

56. D. The explosion that sank the Maine occurred within the ship. Stories of Cuban revolutionaries and Spanish militants are conjectural.

57. B. The Populist party abandoned a broad platform of reform objectives to support Bryan’s position on remonetizing silver. They nominated Democrat Bryan as their own candidate; when Bryan lost to McKinley, the Populists were left without a platform, candidate, or silver.

58. A. Originally from Virginia, Wilson accepted segregation in American society.

59. B. The key method of shifting power to the states was revenue sharing, which provided grants to state and local government without federal strings attached.

60. C. Irish peasants relied on the potato crop as a basic supply of food. They raised wheat to pay for the rent. When a blight destroyed the crop in a succession of years, the Irish could eat the wheat and lose their land, or starve in order to stay on it. A million Irish people starved to death; a million emigrated.

61. C. Jackson’s hatred of the Bank of the United States, and its use by his enemies as an election issue in 1832, resulted in his veto of the Bank’s charter renewal. He then bled the Bank of its deposits by placing federal money in state-chartered banks and making withdrawals of operating funds from the Bank of the United States.

62. C. The colonists considered and rejected the idea that the colonial legislatures could approve internal taxes, and the Continental Congress was not even created. The British concept of virtual representation pointed out that there were citizens in Great Britain that did not have the right to vote for members of Parliament, but that Parliament did represent their interests as well.

63. C. In Miranda v Arizona the Supreme Court held that a person who is arrested must be informed by the police of his constitutional right to remain silent and the consequences of not remaining silent. The decision provided for the famous Miranda warning.

64. D. Cyrus McCormick’s mechanical reaper reduced the number of men needed for wheat harvests from fifty in a work crew to two, creating a surprlus labor force that would find employment in factory work.

65. B. The Supreme Court argued that since railroads crossed state lines, states could not regulate interstate commerce.

66. A. The Spanish-American War in its action phase lasted about three months, ended in less than a year, and won recognition of the United States as a world power. The U.S. also acquired the Philippines, Guam, and Puerto Rico from Spain.

67. E. Although the movement to restrict immigration did raise the issue of white slavery, the fact is that most immigrants were not women. The other claims listed in the choices were key arguments raised by groups such as the Immigration Restriction League.

68. D. The Neutrality Act of 1939 reflected the changing attitudes toward events in Europe after the outbreak of the war in September 1939. The cash-and-carry provisions were intended to assist Great Britain. The ban on travel and loans and the extension of the arms embargo to civil wars were elements of the neutrality legislation passed between 1935 and 1937.

69. C. Although the Supreme Court called for integration under the Brown decision “with all deliberate speed,” it never provided a timetable or examined methods of achieving its goal. When the question of ending segregation based on housing patterns rose in the Northern states, busing students from one school to another was a logical but highly disruptive approach.

70. E. The compromise set a precedent in the admission of states to the Union, one free balanced by one slave state, that lasted until 1850.

71. A. The Era of Good Feelings began with the defeat of the Federalists in the election of 1816 that begin a short-lived period of the Republican party when national sentiment seemed strong. Nationalism was expressed in Henry Clay’s American system and the decisions of the Supreme Court under John Marshall that strengthened the power of the federal government.

72. D. In retaliation against the Stamp Act and Townshend duties, colonists successfully organized a boycott that compelled British merchants to urge Parliament to revoke the tax laws.

73. C. In 1798, both the Kentucky and Virginia legislatures passed resolutions nullifying the Alien and Sedition Acts that had been passed by the Federalist controlled Congress. They based action on the claim that when a law broke the compact made between the states and the federal government that law could be declared null and void.

74. C. MAD is an acronym for mutually assured destruction, a concept of nuclear deterrence during the Cold War. It was based on the premise that neither the United States nor the Soviet Union would use nuclear weapons because each could destroy the other many times over.

75. C. In the 1820s, state constitutions were amended to remove property requirements for voters. As a result, the 1828 popular vote was triple that of 1824.

76. A. The KKK intimidated, threatened, and committed violence against blacks in an effort to make them a permanently subservient population.

77. D. The Platt Amendment denied full independence to Cuba, prewar promises notwithstanding. The United States retained the right to intervene in Cuban domestic issues, including political unrest or policies deemed contrary to U.S. interests.

78. B. Fall was convicted of taking a bribe in what became known as the Teapot Dome scandal.

79. B. Barton said that Jesus “sold” the Christian faith in a manner that strongly resembled the success of advertising agencies to convince consumers to buy products.

80. B. The term “stagflation” was a combination of the idea of a stagnant economy, indicated by rising unemployment rates, and inflation or rapidly rising prices. It was an unusual economic situation that the Nixon administration found difficult to deal with.

Section II: Essay Questions

Part A

Student DBQ Essay

Many of the founding fathers—Southerners like Madison, Jefferson, and Washington included—were opposed to slavery on moral grounds. Despite the notions of freedom and equality that the American Revolution emphasized, the new country accepted slavery, even if somewhat reluctantly, because of the political realities of the time.

While the leaders of Virginia agreed not to import or purchase slaves from the West Indies or Africa (Document D), the 1774 Non-Importation Agreement was intended as a blow against British economic interests not an attack against slavery. In evaluating the attitude toward slavery at this time, it is more important to point out that the Declaration of Independence as originally drafted by Thomas Jefferson included an attack against King George III for spreading slavery to the Western Hemisphere. This language was dropped from the Declaration of Independence as adopted by the Continental Congress because of the opposition of Georgia and South Carolina. Although Blacks were allowed to serve in the Continental Army, this was permitted only after the British promised freedom to slaves who joined the Loyalist cause. When the states had the opportunity to take action on slavery, only Vermont abolished slavery completely; Pennsylvania’s 1780 law, although clearly a positive step, was a half measure (Document C).

After the revolution, there is ample evidence that both the leaders of the new nation and Congress wanted to do something about slavery. George Washington personally wanted the abolition of the slavery, but felt this could only be accomplished through legislative action (Document G). Madison, apparently, put less faith in Congress doing something than in returning freed slaves to Africa. He suggests that the establishment of an African colony would encourage slaveowners to free their slaves.

The resolution before Congress in 1784 that would have prohibited slavery in the western lands (Document E) was eventually incorporated into the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. While limiting the spread of slavery was one thing, the drafting of the Constitution and the debates over ratification showed that doing more was politically impossible.

Even though slavery per se is not mentioned in the Constitution, the issue was central to the debate. The so-called Three-Fifths Compromise counted slaves as three-fifths of a person for purposes of determining representation in the Congress. Congress was prohibited from making any law against the slave trade until 1808, and a provision was included for the return of runaway slaves. That the slave trade was allowed to continue was a controversial point. Opponents of slavery like James Wilson of Pennsylvania and Madison of Virginia tried to put the best face on the provision by arguing that it might eventually lead to the abolition of slavery; they assumed that Congress would end the importation of slaves in 1808. Governor Randolph, on the other hand, tried to persuade the delegates to the Virginia ratifying convention that no one believed the limitation on the slave trade to be a threat to slavery as an institution (Document B). The most telling point, however, was made by Wilson. He recognizes that the language was a necessary compromise. “It was all that could be obtained.” (Document F) The slaveholding states, probably Georgia and South Carolina, would not have gone along with immediate end to the slave trade. Their opposition would have been enough to scuttle the Constitutional Convention. Political expediency ruled.

Reader's Comments

This essay provides an excellent model of how to balance a content narrative with the documentation needed to support it. The position taken by the student is clearly stated at the beginning and end of the essay. Nowhere in the essay does the student succumb to the temptation of using the documents as a “laundry list”; the student uses the documents, not the other way around. Note also that the student quotes only minimally from the documents, spending the writing time to better advantage by placing the documents in support of the narrative. Judicious selection of documents helped make a strong argument for the essay’s thesis. Considerable “outside” information makes the essay stronger and its tone convincingly authoritative.

Possible student score: 9

Part В

Question 2 Student Essay

Jay’s Treaty (1795), Pickney’s Treaty (1795) , and Washington’s Farewell Address (1796) pertain to the relations between the United States and the major European powers, particularly Great Britain, France, and Spain. While the treaties dealt with specific foreign policy questions, the Farewell Address attempted to outline where the long term interests of the new nation lay in the world arena.

Despite the terms of the Treaty of Paris, British troops continued to be stationed in the Northwest Territory. To this longstanding point of contention, two new issues surfaced in the wake of the war between Great Britain and France: British seizure of American ships trading with French colonies in the Caribbean and the impressment of American sailors on the pretext that they were in fact British citizens. While the British were concerned that the United States would side with France in the European war, this possibility did not make Britain willing resolve all the problems between the two countries. Through Jay’s Treaty, named after Chief Justice John Jay who negotiated the agreement, the British finally agreed to withdraw its troops from American soil (by 1796) and granted the United States limited rights to trade with the British West Indies. The British refused to budge on the definition of neutral rights or end impressment. Although there was considerable opposition to the treaty (the Senate ratified it by one vote), the fact is that the treaty gave the United States undisputed control over the Northwest Territory.

The British evacuation combined with the Treaty of Greenville (1795), through which Native American tribes conceded lands north of the Ohio River, opened the region up to American settlement.

Pickney’s Treaty also ended a dispute that had simmered since the end of the American Revolution. The Treaty of Paris recognized the Mississippi River as the western boundary of the United States and gave the United States the right to navigate the river to its source, i.e., the port of New Orleans. The Spanish, who controlled the Louisiana territory, repeatedly had challenged these American claims. The attempt to resolve the issues in 1785 through the Jay-Gardoqui Treaty ended in failure. In 1795, with Spain about to switch its allegiance from Great Britain to France, time was right for an agreement. Pickney’s Treaty (formally known as the Treaty of San Lorenzo) established the thirty-first parallel as the boundary between Spanish Florida and the Southwest Territory of the United States, gave Americans full access to the Mississippi River, and allowed for the deposit of goods in New Orleans. The agreement was seen as a major diplomatic coup for the United States.

In a very real sense, Washington’s Farewell Address set the tone of American foreign policy for the next century. Contrary to popular belief, Washington did not outline a strictly isolationist approach to world affairs. He warned Americans about the danger of “permanent alliances” and had in mind here the treaty with France signed during the American Revolution and still technically in effect. Washington had no problem with “temporary alliances” with other countries that might be necessary or beneficial to the United States in specific circumstances. More important than the distinction he drew between permanent and temporary alliances was his emphasis that the interests of the United States and the interests of European countries were fundamentally different. The idea that we see embodied in the Monroe Doctrine that the United States would not interfere in European affairs and that the European countries should not interfere in American (Western Hemisphere) affairs can be traced back to the Farewell Address.

Reader's Comments

This student clearly did the studying necessary to recall and understand the treaties and the Farewell Address and their meaning for American foreign policy. The essay flows effortlessly from one topic to the next, with attention to details that make the essay informative and authoritative. The concluding paragraph demonstrates a mature understanding of the significance of the Farewell Address. What is lacking here is a concluding statement bringing together the three choices in a comment about their impact on American foreign policy.

Possible student score: 8

Part B

Question 3 Student Essay

It is almost impossible to determine the validity of de Tocqueville’s assertion about the religiosity of the American people. His statement was an impression based on limited observation; he did not conduct a scientific poll of Americans’ religious beliefs; he did not do a comprehensive study of the number of Christian denominations in the country, and the level of church attendance in each or the degree to which members financially supported churches. What we can say is that de Tocqueville was writing at a time when the country was experiencing the tail end of the religious revival known as the Second Great Awakening.

The Second Great Awakening began along the frontier in the late 18th century, and then moved to the east by the 1830s. Among the most fertile areas for camp meetings and revivals organized by preachers like Charles Finney was western New York State. His emotional brand of Christianity that emphasized the individual road to salvation found considerable support in a part of the country that was undergoing significant social and economic change with the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution. There were so many “fire and brimstone” sermons given in western New York that the region became known as the “burned over district.”

The Second Great Awakening contributed to the growth of evangelical Christian denominations, particularly the Methodists and Baptists, in the decades before the Civil War. New religious groups also emerged. The Unitarians, for example, emphasized the “head” over the “heart,” i.e., the importance of reason versus emotion in religion. The “burned over districts” also supplied supporters of small sects such as the Shakers, and was the birthplace of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints, better known as the Mormons. The Mormons were founded by Joseph Smith in Palmyra, New York in 1830. They migrated to Ohio and then to Illinois, where violence and persecution because of their religious beliefs forced them to trek west and establish a settlement near the Great Salt Lake in Utah in 1847.

Reader's Comments

This essay has a very strong introduction that begins a convincing argument placing de Tocqueville’s statement in the context of its time, the period of the so-called Second Great Awakening. The student wisely stays clear of de Tocqueville the observer, noting that the statement was impressionistic at best and has no empirical evidence to support it. Instead, the student focuses on why de Tocqueville said it.

The paragraphs following provide an accurate summary of the religious fervor of the period. Unfortunately, the student forgets to bring de Tocqueville back at the conclusion of the essay. Given the religious excitement of the time, just how observant was de Tocqueville in making his statement, and was it valid after all?

Possible student score: 7

Part C

Question 4 Student Essay

In the election of 1912, former president Teddy Roosevelt, running as the candidate of the Progressive Party after loosing the Republican nomination to William Howard Taft, and the Democratic candidate Woodrow Wilson campaigned on different programs to address the issues facing the country. Roosevelt called his program, which he had first outlined in 1910, the New Nationalism while Wilson backed what he called the New Freedom.

The New Nationalism accepted both big government and big business. Roosevelt argued that busting up the trusts was less a priority than regulating business in the public interest. A strong federal government was necessary to control business but also to protect the interests of those who could not protect themselves—workers, women, and children. The Progressive party platform called for the 8-hour day, an end to child labor, and giving women the right to vote. The New Freedom was based on the premise that it was not enough to regulate monopolies — they had to be eliminated completely. Wilson criticized Roosevelt often during the campaign for his willingness to tolerate the trusts.

While he may have believed that a strong central government was necessary in the short term to restore competition in the business world, Wilson did not believe it was a permanent feature of American life. Indeed, he felt that many of the social issues that Roosevelt expected the Federal government to address were best left to the states and cities.

With the Republican vote split between Roosevelt and Taft, Wilson easily won the presidency in 1912 and quickly implemented key parts of the New Freedom program— tariffs were significantly reduced as a means of increasing competition, a new banking system was created, the Federal Reserve, to limit the influence of large Wall Street banks over interest rates and the country’s money supply, and uncompetitive business practices were outlawed through the Clayton Anti- Trust Act. The Clayton Act along with the creation of the Federal Trade Commission did little to eliminate the trusts, and were more clearly attempts at regulation. Wilson’s priorities also seemed to change as he moved into his second term.

While Wilson’s second term was dominated by World War I and the fight over ratification of the Treaty of Versailles, important pieces of domestic legislation were passed with the president’s support that were more in line with the New Nationalism than the New Freedom. These included low interest federal loans to farmers, the establishment of the 8-hour day for railroad workers across the country, and the Keating-Owen Child Labor Act that prohibited goods made by children under the age of 14 from being sold in interstate commerce. The new laws suggested had come to accept a larger role for the federal government than he had advocated during the campaign, recognizing as Roosevelt had that big government had become a fact of American political life.

Reader's Comments

This essay provides some excellent comparisons and contrasts between the New Nationalism and the New Freedom. It would have been strengthened considerably had the student clearly stated a thesis concerning the programs. The first paragraph merely identifies what is already given in the question. The essay does pick up steam in the remainder of the narrative, providing a clear understanding of what the two programs were and how they differed. The essay finishes with a very strong conclusion noting that not only did Wilson implement his program, he borrowed from Roosevelt in acknowledging the larger role of the federal government. The stylistic and grammatical errors are minimal enough not to detract from the essay.

Possible student score: 8

Part C

Question 5 Student Essay

With the authority of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution (August 1964) and justified by attacks on American military personnel, the Johnson administration began the build up of combat troops in Vietnam in March 1965. In addition to ground troops, an extensive bombing campaign known as Operation Rolling Thunder got underway. By the end of the year, there were close to 200.000 American troops in South Vietnam, and the troop level rose to almost 400,000 by 1966. 1965 marked a critical turning point in the war because the decision was made by the administration to “Americanize” the conflict in Southeast Asia.

1968 is a crucial year in the history of the Vietnam conflict for several reasons.

The North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong were able to launch major actions throughout the South in what became known as the Tet Offensive. American military commanders had been convinced that North Vietnam was on the verge of defeat before Tet. More important, the offensive convinced many Americans, including those in the media who had long supported the war, that the conflict in Vietnam was unwinnable. This noticeable shift in public opinion combined with the stronger than expected showing by Senator Eugene McCarthy in the New Hampshire primary convinced President Johnson not to run for a full second term. Johnson announced a limited halt to the bombing against North Vietnam and direct negotiations to end the war began in Paris in May 1968.

Vocal opposition to the war intensified and turned violent at the Democratic convention in 1968. The war was an important factor in the election of Richard Nixon.

By 1970, Nixon’s “secret plan” to end the war—which was to withdraw American ground troops and turn more and more of the fighting over to the South Vietnamese army—had significantly reduced U.S. involvement. Ironically, Nixon also expanded the war. He announced that American troops have moved into Cambodia to attack North Vietnamese bases. Nixon’s announcement of the move into Cambodia led directly to the most deadly confrontation of the anti-war movement when several demonstrators were killed by National Guard troops at Kent State University. The war continued to drag on for another three years.

Reader's Comments

The student has an unusual command of the specific details in the events of 1965, 1968, and 1970. However, less attention is paid to the question of why these years were significant as “critical turning points in American involvement in Southeast Asia.” The challenge for the student is to see the events in the broader context of the question, and to use that context as a thesis to justify the significance of those years. The last sentence of the first paragraph would serve better as a thesis statement for 1965. Instead, the reader must read through supportive details before getting to the main point. The idea is to capture the reader’s attention with a strong topic statement, then follow with the supporting information.

The second paragraph offers a stronger assessment since it begins with a promise to give the reasons why the year 1968 is significant. The final paragraph, however, basically summarizes the year’s events without really stating why 1970 would be more critical than 1971 or 1972. The essay doesn’t really end—it just leaves the war “to drag on for another three years.” The essay contains a high level of accurate content, but this is offset by a lack of focus on explaining the significance of the years.

Possible student score: 6