AP US HISTORY ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS
What did “America” look like when Europeans got here?
What were the Natives like in Mesoamerica, Southwest, Mississippi Valley?
What were American Indian Cultures like when the Europeans got here?
If Columbus didn’t do squat, why is he still so important 1492 Columbian Exchange
What did Spain want in America?
What did France want in America?
How did the British develop in the North, Mid Atlantic and the South?
Why did the South start to use slaves rather than indentured servants?
Were people in the colonies that came here for religious tolerance, religiously intolerant?
Did anyone revolt? Bacon, Glorious, Pueblo, Stono
Where did all the people come from?
Where did trade take place?
Who lived in the back country?
How did plantations develop?
What was the Great Awakening? Why was everyone asleep?
What did Colonists think of America before the Revolution?
How did the French and Indian War lead to the Revolution?
What angered the American Colonists enough to start a war?
What happened in the Revolution?
What did the first government look like?
How did we get a new Constitution?
What do Washington and Hamilton do when they start the new gov’t?
How do we get the Federalists and the Republicans?
What is Republican Motherhood? Is it a complement?
What is the significance of Jefferson’s presidency?
What started the expansion into the trans Appalachian west?
What made slavery grow in the US? Were there any free African American communities?
What were the consequences of the War of 1812
What do we mean by a national market economy?
How does industrialization change the US?
What was the response to new immigration in the US?
What social classes were in the South?
What is meant by Jacksonian Democracy and how did it change things?
How do we end up with the two party system for good?
Fighting during Jackson: Judicial Federalism, Bank War, Tariff of Abominations, States rights
What is Jacksonian Democracy and how does it change things?
Why did we need a Second Great Awakening?
What were some of the first social reforms?
What is the cult of domesticity?
Were the utopian communities utopian?
When did we get so good at literature?
How were Native Americans systematically moved West?
Why did people move West?
What was the progress of territorial expansion?
What were the steps in the Mexican American War?
What were the arguments for and against slavery?
What were the effects of the Compromise of 1850 and Kansas Neb Act?
How did we end up with the Republican Party?
What were the steps leading to secession?
What were the strategies of the two sides, mobilization?
How are the slaves freed?
What were the social, economic, and political effects of the war?
What were the differences between presidential and congressional reconstruction?
What was going on in the South during Reconstruction?
How did African Americans fit into Reconstruction?
What was the Compromise of 1877 and did Reconstruction work?
How does sharecropping and crop lien work?
What are Jim Crow Laws and Black Codes
How do Railroads lead the movement West?
Who went West?
How do the Native Americans get ripped off….again?
What were the Gospel of Wealth and Social Darwinism?
How were industries first organized?
What were the aims of the first labor unions?
How did life in the cities change at the turn of the Century?
Miners, rangers, ranchers, Native Americans competing for the West
How did environment effect life on the Great Plains?
What agrarian challenges led to the Populists which led to the Progressives?
What was done to make the US more democratic and less corrupt during the Progressive Era?
What were the goals of the Progressive Presidents?
How do women’s roles change in the early 1900s
What changes do the Great Migration make?
What Imperialistic advances do the US make in the early 20 th Century?
How does the US manage to stay neutral at the beginning of WWI?
What is it like during WWI?
What is Wilson’s struggle with the Treaty of Versailles?
Why are the 20s so great for business (w/Coolidge, Hoover, Harding?)
How did modernism (science, art entertainment) effect the 20s?
What push backs were there to modernism (nativism, prohibition, Fundamentalism)?
What were the gains for women and African Americans during the 20s?
What were the causes of the Great Depression
How did Hoover and FDR respond?
What were the programs of the New Deal?
How did labor unions make it during the New Deal?
What were some of the outcomes of the New Deal?
How did the US respond to militarism around the world (Germany, Italy, Japan)
How does FDR deal with neutrality?
What brings the US into the War?
How do we mobilize?
How do we fight on two fronts?
How does diplomacy figure into WWII?
How do atomic weapons change the war?
Migrations and demographic changes during the war?
What happens with Civil Rights and Civil Liberties?
How does it end?