1. Mid Term Exam Review Session

2. Test Format This test will employ multiple choice, true/false, and short answer questions. It will also include essay questions. Answer an essay question with a 3-4 paragraph, well-organized and well- reasoned response (Organize your essay as follows: 1) Introduction—state your argument or thesis, 2) support your argument with evidence in the essay’s Main Body, 3) restate your argument on the basis of your evidence in your Conclusion. Materials needed: pen or pencil and exam book or lined paper

3. 1. Discovery, Conquest, Encounter While one of the major goals of Spain in colonizing the Western Hemisphere was converting the native peoples to Christianity, how did its colonists treat the Indians? When the English arrived in the New World, how did they view the Native Americans? What kind of society did the Puritans set up in Massachusetts Bay Colony? How was the institution of African slavery justified by Virginia colonists?

4. 2. Intellectual and Political Revolutions A) What did Tom Paine have to say about the question of American independence in Common Sense? How did Jefferson justify it in the Declaration of Independence? B) What was Jefferson’s attitude toward African-Americans, and how did free blacks feel about this attitude? How did prominent leaders like George Washington view our first national government? How did women and Native Americans view themselves in the new nation’s society?

5. 3. The Federalist Papers A) How did the authors of the Federalist Papers view the question of establishing an effective national government? What was Madison’s argument regarding the proper size of a republic in Federalist 10? What advantages did Hamilton think a stronger national government would offer in matters of public policy? B) Why did Madison feel that self-interest and ambition would make the new government both safe and effective? What was the Three-Fifths Compromise, and what does it tell you about attitudes toward the question of slavery at the time? How did the Federalists view political parties?

6. 4. Progress, Freedom, Slavery What did Alexis de Tocqueville consider to be the defining characteristic of American society? How did he feel slavery affected black Americans? What did the Industrial Revolution do to America’s working class? What was Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Transcendentalism perhaps the ultimate expression of? What two reform movements had an almost symbiotic relationship during the antebellum period? How did the Southern aristocracy originally justify secession?

7. 5. Expansion and Ethnic Transformation A) What was an increasingly popular belief in the years after the Civil War? How did Booker T. Washington think African-Americans should improve their status in American society? Why did Frederick Jackson Turner consider the frontier to have played such a vital role in American history? What did Helen Hunt Jackson feel was the most significant factor in the history of US/Native American relations? B) According to Jacob Riis, what was especially troubling about extreme urban poverty in the Gilded Age? What was the primary goal of women’s rights activists during this period? How did some Americans view the consequences of the massive immigration that occurred during this period, and how did others respond? How did W.E.B. DuBois think African-Americans should achieve racial equality?

8. 6. Who Were the Progressives? What did the reformers who came to known as Progressives consider to be the key issues of the day? Who did mainstream historians consider to be the leaders of the Progressive movement, and who do revisionist historians consider to be prominent? How do mainstream and revisionist historians differ about the goals of the Progressives? Looking at Nevada during the Progressive era, would you say that the state was in the vanguard of the reform movement, and why or why not?

9. Essay Questions (2 of 4) 1. Do you think that the influence of the Enlightenment and that of the British government would make the eventual United States government responsive to its society, and if so, how in particular? 2. Imagine yourself to be a moderately successful merchant in the United States of the 1780s. Do you find the arguments made by the authors of The Federalist Papers a convincing reason to support ratification of the Constitution? If so, which arguments in particular? 3. From the colonial period through the Civil War, Americans saw financial success and promoting reform as going hand-in-hand, while they are usually considered to be incompatible in the modern era. Why didn’t pre-Civil War Americans see gaining wealth and promoting reform as being mutually exclusive? 4. Do you think that the Populist and Progressive movements were effective answers to the problems faced by American society in the late 19 th and early 20 th centuries, and why (or why not)?