Chapter 25
Just like with Practice Test 1 (Chapters 22 and 23), when you get through with the multiple-choice questions in the first half of Practice Test 2, don’t come running for the answer sheet in this chapter. No peeking until the whole practice test is done! If you haven’t finished Practice Test 2, stop reading this chapter right now and go back to Chapter 24!
Keep moving on through the DBQ and regular essays, just like the test was the real thing. Pretty soon, it will be.
For general tips about scoring and how to handle questions, see Chapters 4, 5, and 6.
Section I: Multiple-Choice
1. (B). It’s the cotton. But, as it turned out, Britain was willing to go without a few shirts to avoid helping slavery.
2. (B). They were fighting for their Southern white pride against the Yankees.
3. (A). Hatred and fear of the slave power overcame the profit motive.
4. (B). Slaves sometimes fought against an overwhelmingly brutal system.
5. (C). If you don’t know about Uncle Tom’s Cabin, maybe you haven’t been paying close enough attention. The other answers are smart-aleck choices.
6. (B). The Spanish were all about finding gold, but they never looked along the American River in their former possession of California.
7. (C). Popular sovereignty actually means that the people rule, but the most important issue folks were arguing about before the Civil War was to keep or free slaves.
8. (D). With the Fugitive Slave Act, the North had to help the South recapture slaves, something most of the North hated.
9. (A). John Brown was an extremely militant abolitionist, certainly no compromiser or diplomat.
10. (B). This is an example of a wrong trend question. In wrong trend questions, all of the answers except the correct one follow one pattern. Because only one answer can be right, if you can find one choice that shows a different trend, it’s often correct. Of course, you have to know something about history to spot a wrong trend.
11. (A). Buchanan may have done better not to show up at all.
12. (C). Lincoln barely slipped into office.
13. (D). This is an example of a question you can logic out. Toss out the unimportant choices: musicals, train races, TV. That leaves airplanes and ships, which gives you a pretty good shot at guessing correctly even if you don’t remember the Monitor and the Merrimack.
14. (D). Sometimes it’s important to stand for principle.
15. (A). Gettysburg is one of the most famous battles in the Civil War, largely because the North’s victory was a huge turning point in the conflict.
16. (A). It took a lot of deaths to free the slaves.
17. (A). A labor leader opposes fortunes that rob workers.
18. (A). Answers (C), (D), and (E) are from the wrong time period, and the North never asked that the South pay it back. That leaves (A).
19. (E). Tough cowboys were nice to women.
20. (E). Borderline-smart-aleck wrong answers: the freed slaves never made great economic progress, no one had landslide victories in the late 1800s, and completely honest government was rare.
21. (D). Withdrawing the federal troops that were protecting the blacks was the deal the Republicans made to hang on to power.
22. (D). When occupying troops withdraw, the people they’ve been protecting suffer.
23. (D). If you like the eight-hour workday, thank the unions.
24. (E). Most scientists, religious organizations, and Christians accepted Darwin’s theory as just another way God may work in the world. A minority became upset and believed Darwin’s theory threatened their faith.
25. (B). Land in the West wasn’t cheap or easy to work.
26. (D). The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) insured individual deposits and gave people the confidence to leave their money in the bank.
27. (B). Jim Crow was the name of a popular minstrel character. The Jim Crow laws restricted the rights of black people.
28. (A). The Pendleton Act cleaned up most corruption in government hiring, leaving only fundraising as a form of shady influence.
29. (C). The Populists never won a battle, but they eventually won the war.
30. (B). The industrial states were doing very well financially, thank you.
31. (D). You need to know basic background information about minorities.
32. (D). You also need to know the high points of the women’s rights movement.
33. (E). It took 400 years from the landing of Columbus until the last American Indians lost their right to roam a natural world.
34. (E). The Americans finished settling the West around 1890.
35. (D). The U.S. saw how much fun England was having and wanted some of the world for itself. The Spanish-American War was America’s attempt to build a small empire and “save” Spanish colonies by taking them over.
36. (B). It was a business agreement that the Hawaiians didn’t fight.
37. (D). Like lots of people, these leaders thought loving freedom and building empires didn’t work together.
38. (C). These struggles and a lot more started in the 1960s. Note that this question is out of chronological order; the real AP will have the multiple-choice time periods completely scrambled.
39. (B). Teddy Roosevelt was a Progressive Republican.
40. (B). Teddy said that the U.S. would keep Latin America tidy — no Europeans allowed.
41. (C). Women and working people never gave up.
42. (D). They raked up the muck of scandal so everyone could live in a cleaner barnyard.
43. (A). It was “Tricky Dick” Nixon. This is another out-of-time-order question to keep your mind flexible.
44. (D). The Progressives were as middle class as a mortgage payment.
45. (D). Teddy Roosevelt started the magnificent legacy of national parks.
46. (A). Republicans were in favor of the kind of government that helped them make money.
47. (A). The Fed doesn’t have cute checks or credit cards, but it moves the money behind them. The last three answer choices are red herrings designed to draw you off the path.
48. (E). Wilson was more evenhanded before World War I than Roosevelt was before World War II. Wilson really thought the U.S. could stay neutral; Roosevelt in his time didn’t believe that.
49. (A). Wilson had a dream of peace called the 14 Points.
50. (A). Women got the right to vote nationally after World War I.
51. (E). Wilson got what he could in the treaty, but the world wasn’t ready to police international peace.
52. (A). This good entertainment brought back a bad nightmare.
53. (D). The Republican presidents of the 1920s did as little as possible.
54. (C). FDR’s big line couldn’t have come at a better time.
55. (D). You have to know about evolution. All the other answer choices are red herrings.
56. (C). Hoover never met a business he didn’t like.
57. (A). FDR was the real deal, and that meant a New Deal.
58. (C). If an agency has as an acronym, chances are fair it started with FDR.
59. (C). You don’t need to be a culture vulture, but you should know the literary milestones.
60. (E). Despite early Republican efforts to kill it, Social Security is still very much part of the plans of most elderly people.
61. (E). The CIO formed to represent whole industries, including often-overlooked unskilled and minority workers.
62. (D). Beware the red herrings. If you know the historical background, you know the answer is supplies in World War II.
63. (A). Every other answer choice contains at least one enemy.
64. (C). After World War II, the U.S. woke up to the fact that freedom means integration.
65. (D). Russia did the vast majority of the European ground fighting in World War II.
66. (A). Before World War II, you could count the real democracies of the world on one hand.
67. (C). The bill helped change life in America.
68. (B). Maybe you’ve heard the shortened version of that name — the Soviet Union. Or maybe you’ve heard the Beatles’ song “Back in the U.S.S.R.”
69. (D). After World War II, the world started to go international with organizations like the United Nations and the IMF. Nobody wanted to see World War III.
70. (B). The Marshall Plan marshaled the forces of good to help battered Europe.
71. (C). Brown v. Board said separate isn’t equal.
72. (A). The U.S. jumped into the middle of two civil wars because one side was Communist.
73. (C). Reagan’s the one.
74. (B). LBJ all the way.
75. (A). Idealism from John F. Kennedy.
76. (E). Some of the other answer choices are fake; the ones that did happen weren’t close to 1962.
77. (D). Know your social movements.
78. (A). Ford had a bad act to follow.
79. (B). The First Amendment means officials can’t require prayer in schools.
80. (A). The WTO is all about getting the world to trade, trade, trade, which is what lower tariffs promote.
Section II: Free-Response Questions
The following sections give you sample information that you can utilize for your practice essays. Chapter 5 contains detailed guidance on how to write the DBQ response, and Chapter 6 gives you the lowdown on tackling the regular essays.
Part A: Document-Based Question
The DBQ asks you to discuss how WWII changed American life socially, economically, and politically. The following list gives you some sample PES facts you may want to include in your essay:
● When World War II started, civilian industry changed to wartime production.
● Standardization of wartime production led to more job opportunities for less-skilled workers.
● With more work available, consumer spending went up 20 percent even though production was down.
● People had to have ration coupons and money to buy most commodities. Gas limits were three gallons per week.
● War production was half of the economy. The U.S. outproduced all of its enemies put together.
● By the end of the war, everybody was paying federal income tax. Before the war, only 10 percent of the people paid the tax.
● Mexican workers replaced farmers off to war. Women replaced men on the assembly lines.
● Pay went up; unions organized but mostly didn’t strike. The CIO fought racism and sexism in union ranks.
● World War II ended the Depression, and almost everybody had a job
● Women worked as Rosie the Riveter in wartime industry and as government girls in federal agencies.
● A baby boom started right after the war; births went up by 30 percent.
● The federal Fair Employment Practices Committee was the most important aid up to that time for fair treatment of blacks and women on the job.
● Over 120,000 Japanese Americans were interned in camps.
● Celebrities from Humphrey Bogart to Donald Duck supported the war effort.
● The United States was really united to fight the good war.
Material (such as the following points) from at least some of the provided documents should show up in your DBQ essay, with the document letters in brackets.
● A: Starting at an equalized norm, the chart shows how the war benefited un-bombed U.S. consumers but hurt their enemies.
● B: This document shows new internationalism.
● C: Internationalism and the U.S. were in the world to stay.
● D: This poster shows the threat to U.S. families from the Nazis. The solution to this threat was to buy War Bonds to help finance the war effort.
● E: Japanese internment camps were all over the West, showing lingering suspicion of foreigners.
● F: Careful living on the home front meant the whole country was working together to support the armed forces in the field.
● G: This poster shows the allies working together as a powerful cannon blasting the enemy.
● H: This document shows home front sacrifices but also optimism that problems are solvable.
● I: Wounds would slowly heal, and opportunities grew with victory.
● J: The GI Bill and changes in the economy in general were a tremendous boost for getting ahead in the new postwar United States.
Part B and Part C
In this section, I outline some points you may want to include in your essays over the prompts in Parts B and C. You don’t have to use all of these specific points, but make sure you have reasonable PES proof to support your thesis and analysis.
2. Changes from the 1890s to the 1910s
Public opinion: Literacy improved, and for the first time the public started to have informed opinions based on widespread reading. Newspapers and magazines in the 1900s started to feature muckraker exposes of scandals in housing, government, and food manufacturing.
Business: Teddy Roosevelt and the presidents who followed him broke up big businesses that used their corporate power to cheat consumers. Businesses continued to expand on the strength of product innovation rather than pure power. Some big businessmen like Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller gave money for the public good.
Environment: With the frontier closed, Teddy Roosevelt began the creation of a national system of public parks that became the model for the U.S. and the world.
International policy: The U.S. asserted itself more in world affairs as the 1890s drew to a close, with the Spanish-American War and increased U.S. interests in Asia.
3. U.S. participation in World War I
Military outcomes: The U.S. got to France just in time to keep the Germans from winning. Although only small numbers of U.S. troops got into the fighting, they encouraged the Allies and discouraged the Germans into surrendering. Because no international policing organization existed, the Germans rearmed for World War II.
Impact on the United States: Despite President Wilson’s idealistic 14 Points program for world peace, the U.S. withdrew into its isolationist shell after the war. Politicians refused to support Wilson’s plan for the League of Nations. The U.S. had been a hero, but came away more determined than ever to stick to its own business.
Impact on other countries: Britain and France were so worn out that they were willing to sell out most of Europe to Germany to avoid another war. Russia’s defeat in World War I paved the way for a Communist government. Hitler rose to save an impoverished Germany, which thought it had been stabbed in the back by giving up in World War I just when it had almost won. World War II was really World War I with a recess.
International trade: The U.S. never got paid for supplies sent to the Allies in World War I. When the U.S. economy collapsed at the end of the 1920s, the country slapped a record-high tariff on trade, which shut off any chance of working together with other nations to solve world economic problems.
4. Causes and effects of the Great Depression
1924 through 1929: Conservative Republican presidents let business do what it wanted. The stock market boomed; no one could see an end in sight for the new U.S. economy, which was based on consumer debt and high consumer spending. Republicans raised the tariff, making products more expensive. When the stock market crashed on Black Tuesday in 1929, it was the end of a long, profitable ride.
1930 through 1934: Republican President Hoover’s response to the crash was the Smoot-Hawley Tariff, the highest peacetime import taxes in U.S. history. Unemployment went from 9 percent in 1930 to 16 percent in 1931 and 25 percent in 1933. Following Republican trickle-down theory, Hoover started the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, which opponents called the millionaires’ welfare. Democratic President Franklin Roosevelt took over in 1933 and started passing New Deal programs to help ordinary people.
1935 through 1939: New Deal programs like the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Civilian Conservation Corps, the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, and the Works Administrations started to create jobs and restore hope. Other federal initiatives included TVA, FHA, SEC, NRA, and AAA. The greatest benefit for elderly people was the passage of Social Security in 1935.
1940 through 1945: New Deal programs cut unemployment in half from 25 percent to 12 percent. World War II took care of the rest of the Great Depression — by 1943, unemployment was almost nonexistent. Due in part to the economic safety net built by the Roosevelt administration, the U.S. came out of the War ready for further growth.
5. Conservative presidents take Progressive steps
Dwight Eisenhower: Eisenhower reluctantly used federal troops to enforce the school integration called for by Brown v. Board of Education. He set up a Civil Rights Commission to investigate discrimination. Eisenhower started the nationwide interstate highway system. Upon leaving office, he warned against the growing power of the military-industrial complex.
Richard Nixon: Nixon expanded welfare, Medicaid for the poor, and food stamps for the hungry. He created a new Supplemental Security Income program (SSI) for the disabled. Nixon started the Environmental Protection Agency, the Clean Air Act, and the Endangered Species Act.
Ronald Reagan: Reagan helped end the Cold War by continuing the long-established policies of opposition to Communist expansion that had been popular with both Democratic and Republican presidents before him. Reagan’s tax cuts benefited the rich and didn’t help the economy. He appointed the first woman to the Supreme Court and remained sunny and optimistic in troubled times.
George H. W. Bush: The elder Bush was president when the Berlin Wall fell, signaling the end of Communism as a major movement. He signed the START II treaty to limit nuclear weapons. Bush successfully kicked the invading Iraqis out of neighboring Kuwait but left Saddam Hussein in power. He also signed the Americans with Disabilities Act, which prohibited discrimination against the disabled.