FORMAT OF THE AP U.S. HISTORY EXAM
Each AP U.S. History Examination is three hours and ten minutes in length and has both a multiple choice and a free-response section. Fifty-five minutes are allotted for Part I, the multiple choice section, which contains 80 questions and accounts for 50 percent of the composite score. Part II, the free-response section, consists of a required 15-minute reading period, a required document-based question for which 45 minutes are recommended, and an essay section in which students select one question from each of two groups of questions. Thirty-five minutes are allotted for each of the essays. The DBQ and the two additional essays account for 50 percent of the composite score.
BREAKDOWN BY FIELD OF U.S. HISTORY
Topics on the test are broken down in the following thirds.
1/3 Political institutions
1/3 Social and Economic Change
1/3 Behavior and Public Policy, Diplomacy and International Relations,
and Intellectual and Cultural Development
Time periods are covered as follows
1/6 of the test is through 1789
1/2 of the test is 1790-1914
1/3 of the test is 1915-present
GUIDE FOR TOPICS
1. Use this guide to determine areas you need to review more than others.
2. Generate a list of themes and terms for each topic. Your old history notes can really help here. Dig into a good textbook for areas not emphasized in class. But remember, you've learned a lot that will prepare you for this test. You're more likely to do well on areas you review well than areas you have to learn anew at the last minute. Make what you've already done work for you. Read your old essays and papers. Do lots of practice on multiple choice questions to add breadth to the areas reviewed.
3. Consider the historiography (various historical interpretations) that you may have been introduced to in your courses. You need to think in terms of interpretations and dynamics of change to develop strong theses for your essays. All your work on thesis paragraph writing at St. Stephen's will help you on this test. Essays are graded quickly. Your thesis must convince the grader that you are a creditable writer. You need to convey that you have a strong concept and know facts to back it up in the thesis.
Guide for test coverage:
1. Discovery and Settlement of the New World, 1492-1650
A. Europe in the sixteenth century
B. Spanish, English, and French Exploration
C.First English Settlement
1. Jamestown
2. Plymouth
D. Spanish and French settlement
E. American Indians
2. American and the British Empire, 1650-1754
A. The Chesapeake
B. New England
C Restoration colonies
D. Mercantilism; the Dominion of New England
E. Origins of Slavery
3. Colonial Society in the Mid-Eighteenth Century
A. Social Structure
1. Family
2. Farm and town life; the economy
B. Culture
1. Great Awakening
2. The American mind
3. "Folkways"
C. New immigrants
4. Road to Revolution, 1754-1776
A. Anglo-French rivalries and Seven Years' War
B. Imperial reorganization of 1763
1. Stamp Act
2. Declaratory Act
3. Townshend Acts
4. Boston Tea Party
C. Philosophy of the American Revolution
5. The American Revolution, 1775-1783
A. Continental Congress
B. Declaration of Independence
C. The war
1. French alliance
2. War and society; Loyalists
3. War economy
D. Articles of Confederation
E. Peace of Paris
F. Creating state governments
1. Political organization
2. Social reform: women, slavery
6. Constitution and New Republic, 1776-1800
A. Philadelphia Convention: drafting the Constitution
B. Federalists v. Anti-Federalists
C. Bill of Rights
D. Washington's presidency
1. Hamilton's financial program
2. Foreign and domestic difficulties
3. Beginnings of political parties
E. John Adams' presidency
1. Alien and Sedition Acts
2. XYZ affair
3. Election of 1800
7. The Age of Jefferson, 1800-816
A. Jefferson's presidency
1. Louisiana Purchase
2. Burr conspiracy
3. The Supreme Court under John Marshall
4. Neutral rights, impressment, embargo
B. Madison
C. War of 1812
1. Causes
2. Invasion of Canada
3. Hartford Convention
4. Conduct of war
5. Treaty of Ghent
6 New Orleans
8. Nationalism and Economic Expansion
A. Monroe, Era of Good Feelings
B. Panic of 1819
C. Settlement of the West
D. Missouri Compromise
E. Foreign affairs: Canada, Florida, the Monroe Doctrine
F. Election of 1824: End of Virginia dynasty
G. Economic revolution
1. Early railroads and canals
2. Expansion of business
a. Beginnings of factory system
b. Early labor movement; women
c. Social mobility
3. The cotton revolution in the South
4. Commercial agriculture
9. Sectionalism
A. The South
1. Cotton Kingdom
2. Southern trade and industry
3. Southern society and culture
a. Gradations of white society
b. Nature of slavery: "peculiar institution"
c. The and of the South
B. The North
1. Northeast industry
a. Labor
b. Immigration
c. Urban slums
2. Northwest agriculture
C. Westward expansion
1. Advance of agricultural frontier
2. Significance of the frontier
3. Life on the frontier; squatters
4. Removal of American Indians
10. Age of Jackson, 1828-1848
A. Democracy and the "common man"
1. Expansion of suffrage
2. Rotation in office
B. Second party system
1. Democratic Party
2. Whig Party
C. Internal improvements and states' rights: the Maysville
Road veto
D. The Nullification Crisis
1. Tariff Issue
2. The Union: Calhoun and Jackson
E. The Bank War: Jackson and Biddle
F. Martin Van Buren
1. Independent treasury system
2. Panic of 1837; "Van Ruin"
11. Territorial Expansion and Sectional Crisis
A. Manifest Destiny and mission
B. Texas annexation, the Oregon boundary, and California
C. James K. Polk and the Mexican War; slavery and the Wilmot Proviso
D. Later expansion efforts
12. Creating an American Culture
A. Cultural nationalism
B. Education reform/professionalism
C. Religion, revivalism
D. Utopian experiments: Mormons, Oneida Community
E. Transcendentalists
F. National literature, art, architecture
G. Reform crusades
1. Feminism; roles of women in the nineteenth century
2. Abolitionism
3. Temperance
4. Criminals and the insane
13. The 1850s. Decade of Crisis
A. Compromise of 1850
B. Fugitive Slave Act and Uncle Tom's Cabin
C. Kansas Nebraska Act and realignment of parties
1. Demise of the Whig Party
2. Emergence of the Republican Party
D. Dred Scott decision and the Lecompton crisis
E. Lincoln-Douglas debates, 1858
F. John Brown's raid
G. The election of 1860; Abraham Lincoln
H. The secession crisis
14. Civil War
A. The Union
1. Mobilization and finance
2. Civil liberties
3. Election of 1864
B. The South
1. Confederate constitution
2. Mobilization and finance
3. States' rights and the Confederacy
C. Foreign affairs and diplomacy
D. Military strategy, campaigns, and battles
E. The abolition of slavery
1. Confiscation Acts
2. Emancipation Proclamation
3. Freedman's Bureau
4. Thirteenth Amendment
F. Effects of war on society
1. Inflation and public debt
2. Role of women
3. Devastation of the South
4. Changing labor patterns
15. Reconstruction to 1877
A. Presidential plans: Lincoln and Johnson
B. Radical (congressional) plans
1. Civil rights and the 14th amendment
2. Military reconstruction
3. Impeachment of Johnson
4. African-American suffrage: the 15th Amendment
C. Southern state governments: problems, achievements, weaknesses
D. Compromise of 1877 and the end of Reconstruction
16. New South and Last West
A. Politics of the New South
1. The Redeemers
2. White and African Americans in the New South
3. Subordination of freed slaves: Jim Crow
B. Southern economy; colonial status of the South
1. Sharecropping
2. Industrial stirrings
C. Cattle kingdom
1. Open-range ranching
2. Day of the cowboy
D. Building the Western railroad
E. Subordination of American Indians: dispersal of tribes
F. Farming the plains; problems in agriculure
G. Mining bonanza
17. Industrialization and Corporate Consolidation
A. Industrial growth: railroads, iron, coal, electricity, steel,
oil, banks
B. Laissez-faire conservatism
1. Gospel of Wealth
2. Myth of "self-made man"
3. Social Darwinism; survival of the fittest
4. Social critics and dissenters
C. Effects of technological development on workers
D. Union movement
1. Knights of Labor and American Federation of Labor
2. Haymarket, Homestead, and Pullman
18. Urban Society
A. Lure of the city
B. Immigration
C. City problems
1. Slums
2. Machine politics
D. Awakening conscience; reforms
1. Social legislation
2. Settlement houses: Jane Addams and Lillian Wald
3. Structural reforms in government
19. Intellectual and Cultural Movements
A. Education
1. Colleges and universities
2. Scientific advances
B. Professionalism and the social sciences
C. Realism in literature and art
D. Mass culture
1. Use of leisure
2. Publishing and journalism
20. National Politics, 1877-1896: The Gilded Age
A. A conservative presidency
B. Issues
1. Tariff controversy
2. Railroad regulation
3. Trusts
C. Agrarian discontent
D. Crisis of the 1890s
1. Populism
2. Silver question
3. Election of 1896: McKinley versus Bryan
21. Foreign Policy, 1865-1914
A. Seward and purchase of Alaska
B. The new imperialism
1. Blaine and Latin America
2. International Darwinism: missionaries, politicians, and naval expansionists
3. Spanish-American War
a. Cuban independence
b. Debate on Philippines
C. The Far East: John Hay and the Open Door
D. Theodore Roosevelt
1. The Panama Canal
2. Roosevelt Corollary
3. Far East
E. Taft and Dollar Diplomacy
F. Wilson and Moral Diplomacy
22. Progressive Era
A. Origins of Progressivism
1. Progressive attitudes and motives
2. Muckrackers
3. Social Gospel
B. Municipal, state, and national reforms
1. Political; suffrage
2. Social and economic regulation
C. Socialism; alternatives
D. Black America
1. Washington, Du Bois, and Garvey
2. Urban migration
3. Civil rights organizations
E. Women's role: family, work, education, unionization, and
suffrage
F. Roosevelt's Square Deal
1. Managing the trusts
2. Conservation
G. Taft
1. Pinchot-Ballinger controversy
2 Payne Aldrich Tariff
H. Wilson's New Freedom
1. Tariffs
2. Banking reform
3. Antitrust Act of 1914
23. The First World War
A. Problems of neutrality
1. Submarines
2. Economic ties
3. Psychological and ethnic ties
B. Preparedness and pacifism
C. Mobilization
1. Fighting the war
2. Financing the war
3. War boards
4. Propaganda, public opinion, civil liberties
D. Wilson's Fourteen Points
1. Treaty of Versailles
2. Ratification fight
E. Postwar demobilization
1. Red scare
2. Labor strife
24. New Era: The 1920s
A. Republican governments
1. Business creed
2. Harding scandals
B. Economic development
1. Prosperity and wealth
2. Farm and labor problems
C. New culture
1. Consumerism, automobile, radio, movies
2. Women, the family
3. Modern religion
4. Literature of alienation
5. Jazz age
6. Harlem Renaissance
D. Conflict of cultures
1. Prohibition, bootlegging
2. Nativism
3. KKK
4. Religious fundamentalism versus modernists
E. Myth of isolation
1. Replacing the League of Nations
2. Business and diplomacy
25. Depression, 1929-1933
A. Wall Street crash
B. Depression economy
C. Moods of despair
1. Agrarian unrest
2. Bonus march
D. Hoover Stimson diplomacy; Japan
26. New Deal
A. Franklin D. Roosevelt
1. Background, ideas
2. Philosophy of New Deal
B. 100 Days: "alphabet agencies"
C. Second New Deal
D. Critics, left and right
E. Rise of CIO; labor strikes
F. Supreme Court fight
G. Recession of 1938
H. American people in the Depression
1. Social values, women, ethnic groups
2. Indian Re-organization Act
3. Mexican-American deportation
4. The racial issue
27. Diplomacy in the 1930s
A. Good Neighbor Policy: Montevideo, Buenos Aires
B. London Economic Conference
C. Disarmament
D. Isolationism: neutrality legislation
E. Aggressors: Japan, Italy, and Germany
F. Appeasement
G. Rearmament; Blitzkrieg: Lend-Lease
H. Atlantic Charter
I. Pearl Harbor
28. The Second World War
A. Organizing for war
1. Mobilizing for production
2. Propaganda
3. Internment of Japanese Americans
B. The war in Europe, Africa, and the Mediterranean, D Day
C. The war in the Pacific: Hiroshima, Nagasaki
D. Diplomacy
1. War aims
2. War time conferences: Teheran, Yalta, Potsdam
E. Postwar atmosphere, the United Nations
29. Truman and the Cold War
A. Postwar domestic adjustments
B. The Taft-Hartley Act
C. Civil rights and the election of 1948
D. Containment in Europe and the Middle East
1. Truman Doctrine
2. Marshall Plan
3. Berlin Crisis
4. NATO
E. Revolution in China
F. Limited war: Korea, MacArthur
30. Eisenhower and Modern Republicanism
A. Domestic frustrations; McCarthyism
B. Civil Rights Movement
1. The Warren Court and Brown v. Board of Education
2. Montgomery bus boycott
3. Greensboro sit-in
C. John Foster Dulles's foreign policy
1. Crisis in Southeast Asia
2. Massive retaliation
3. Nationalism in Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Latin America
4. Khrushchev and Berlin
D. American People: homogenized society
1. Prosperity, economic consolidation
2. Consumer culture
3. Consensus of values
E. Space race
31. Kennedy's New Frontier; Johnson's Great Society
A. New domestic programs
1. Tax cut
2. War on poverty
3. Affirmative action
B. Civil rights and civil liberties
1. African Americans: political, cultural, and economic roles
2. The leadership of Martin Luther King, Jr.
3. Resurgence of feminism
4. The New Left and the Counterculture
5. Emergence of the Republican party in the South
6. The Supreme Court and the Miranda decision
C. Foreign Policy
1. Bay of Pigs
2. Cuban missile crisis
3. Vietnam quagmire
32. Nixon
A. Election of 1968
B. Nixon-Kissinger foreign policy
1. Vietnam: escalation and pull-out
2. China: restoring relations
3. Soviet Union: detente
C. New Federalism
D. Supreme Court and Roe v. Wade
E. Watergate
33. The United States since 1974
A. The New Right and the conservative social agenda
B. Ford and Rockefeller
C. Carter
1. Deregulation
2. Energy and inflation
3. Camp David accords
4. Iranian hostage crisis
D. Reagan
1. Tax cuts and budget deficits
2. Defense buildup
3. New disarmament treaties
4. Foreign crises: the Persian Gulf and Central America
E. Society
1. Old and new urban problems
2. Asian and Hispanic immigrants
3. Resurgent fundamentalism
4. African Americans and local, state, and national politics