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Descriptive Statements:
- Demonstrate knowledge of important social, economic, political, and cultural features of major Native American peoples of the precontact period.
- Examine major events and developments related to the European exploration of North America, including the objectives of various explorers, the consequences of key expeditions and settlements, and competition and conflict between European colonial powers.
- Analyze coexistence and conflict between Europeans, African Americans, and Native Americans, including the varied cultural perspectives of each group.
- Compare similarities and differences between the New England, mid-Atlantic, and southern colonies, as well as similarities and differences between English, French, and Spanish colonies, including reasons for migration to North America, ethnic diversity, and patterns of social and economic development.
- Examine major conflicts of the colonial period, including Bacon's Rebellion, King William's War, King George's War, and the French and Indian War.
- Analyze major economic, social, political, and cultural developments in the colonies, including the influence of the triangular trade on colonial economic development, the growth of slavery, the role of colonial assemblies and the emergence of representative government, the Great Awakening and the evolution of religious freedom, and economic and political relations with Great Britain.
- Demonstrate knowledge of important individuals who influenced colonial development, such as John Smith, John Winthrop, Roger Williams, Anne Hutchinson, William Penn, James Oglethorpe, and Chief Pontiac.
- Analyze how various groups contributed to the emergence of a distinct American society, such as the Puritans, the Baptists, the Quakers, women, colonial merchants, African Americans, and Native Americans.
- Recognize chronological relationships between major events and developments of the colonial period.
Sample Item:
One important difference between Virginia and Massachusetts during the late seventeenth century was that colonists in Virginia:
- governed themselves through a representative assembly.
- permitted the practices of slavery and indentured servitude.
- relied heavily on the production of cash crops for export to Europe.
- engaged frequently in armed conflicts with Native Americans.
Correct Response and Explanation (Show Correct ResponseHide Correct Response)
C. This question requires the examinee to compare similarities and differences between the New England, mid-Atlantic, and southern colonies. Unlike the more diversified but less prosperous economy of late seventeenth-century New England, in which trade, fishing, and general agriculture all had an important share, Virginia's economy relied heavily on the sale of a single crop, tobacco, in European markets.
Descriptive Statements:
- Analyze the causes of the American Revolution, including the influence of Enlightenment thought on Americans, changes in British imperial policy following the French and Indian War, arguments over the rights of English people, the Stamp Act crisis and the Townshend Acts, the Boston Tea Party and the Intolerable Acts, and efforts to achieve colonial cooperation.
- Examine major events, developments, and consequences of the Revolutionary War, including American and British strategies, the roles and perspectives of various groups during the war, major battles of the conflict, economic issues arising out of the Revolution, and the effects of the Revolution on various social groups.
- Demonstrate knowledge of major principles and ideas contained in key political documents of the American Revolution and early national period, including the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, the Northwest Ordinance, the Federalist Papers, and the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights.
- Analyze the evolution of national and state government during and after the Revolution, including arguments over the Articles of Confederation, the creation of state constitutions, differences between Federalists and Anti-Federalists, Shays's Rebellion, major debates and compromises at the Constitutional Convention, and the struggle for ratification of the Constitution.
- Demonstrate knowledge of major figures of the Revolutionary era and early national period, such as George Washington, Samuel Adams, Thomas Paine, Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, Abigail Adams, Daniel Boone, Alexander Hamilton, and Thomas Jefferson.
- Analyze major events and developments during the presidential administrations of George Washington and John Adams, including the emergence of political parties, the Whiskey Rebellion, Hamilton's fiscal program, Washington's Farewell Address, relations with European nations, the Alien and Sedition Acts, and the presidential election of 1800.
- Recognize chronological relationships between major events and developments in U.S. history during the period.
Sample Item:
The French and Indian War most contributed to growing tensions between Great Britain and its North American colonies during the 1760s by:
- prompting royal governors to increase the size of colonial militias.
- provoking calls for the reorganization of colonial governments.
- hindering economic development in British North America.
- increasing Great Britain's already sizable national debt.
Correct Response and Explanation (Show Correct ResponseHide Correct Response)
D. This question requires the examinee to analyze the causes of the American Revolution. Although Great Britain eventually prevailed in the French and Indian War, the cost was substantial. The various taxes that Parliament imposed after the war in an effort to reduce the national debt provoked first intermittent and then sustained resistance in the colonies and led ultimately to open rebellion against the Crown.
Descriptive Statements:
- Analyze events and developments related to westward expansion, including major territorial acquisitions, government-sponsored exploration of the West, factors encouraging migration, economic motives and ideological and religious justifications, the challenges faced by settlers, and the impact of westward settlement and growth on Native American peoples.
- Analyze the causes and consequences of economic growth during the period, including improvements in transportation, technological innovations, the spread of factory production, immigration and urbanization, the panics of 1819 and 1837, and the effect of industrialization on different regions and social groups.
- Examine major events and developments in U.S. foreign relations during the period, including the War of 1812, the Monroe Doctrine, and the Mexican War.
- Examine major political and constitutional developments of the period, including Jeffersonian Republicanism, John Marshall and the Supreme Court, the decline of the Federalist Party, the emergence of Jacksonian democracy, debates over the tariff and the national bank, the Nullification Crisis, and differences between the Democratic and Whig parties.
- Demonstrate knowledge of the removal of Eastern Native Americans to lands west of the Mississippi River and the resistance of Native Americans to forced resettlement.
- Analyze events and developments related to the spread of slavery during the period, including the role of slavery in southern society, forces encouraging the expansion of slavery, the emergence of a distinctive African American culture, slave resistance, the development of pro-slavery arguments, and the influence of slavery on national politics.
- Examine the origins and objectives of major reform movements of the period and the activities and achievements of key reformers, such as William Lloyd Garrison, the Grimké sisters, Sojourner Truth, Frances Wright, Robert Owen, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Horace Mann, and Dorothea Dix.
- Demonstrate knowledge of major literary, artistic, intellectual, and scientific developments of the period and the beginnings of a distinctly American literary and intellectual culture.
- Recognize chronological relationships between major events and developments in U.S. history during this period.
Sample Item:
In the decisions he wrote as chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, John Marshall made a major effort to:
- strengthen the authority of the central government.
- support the economic development of the nation.
- expand the personal liberties of U.S. citizens.
- increase popular participation in the political process.
Correct Response and Explanation (Show Correct ResponseHide Correct Response)
A. This question requires the examinee to examine major political and constitutional developments of the period from 1801 to 1850. A major effect of important decisions of the Marshall Court, such as McCulloch v. Maryland (1819) and Gibbons v. Ogden (1824), was to expand the "implied powers" of the federal government at the expense of the states.
Descriptive Statements:
- Analyze similarities and differences in the economies, cultures, and social structures of the North, South, and West in the period preceding the Civil War.
- Examine major political developments of the 1850s that contributed to the sectional polarization leading to the Civil War, including the Compromise of 1850, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the disruption of the second American party system, the Dred Scott decision, John Brown's raid at Harpers Ferry, and the presidential election of 1860.
- Analyze major events and developments of the Civil War, including the leadership provided by Abraham Lincoln, strategies adopted by Union and Confederate military leaders, major battles and diplomatic initiatives, wartime draft riots, the Emancipation Proclamation, and the election of 1864.
- Examine the roles and perspectives of various groups during the war, including immigrants, African Americans, women, Northern businessmen, antiwar Democrats, and Southern planters and farmers.
- Assess the costs and consequences of the Civil War, including human casualties and physical destruction, the impact of the war on African Americans and women, the response of former slaves to emancipation, the rise of sharecropping in the South, and the development of a one-party political system in the former Confederacy.
- Analyze key events and developments of the Reconstruction period, including alternative programs for Reconstruction; the assassination of Abraham Lincoln; conflict between President Johnson and Congress; the passage of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments; the establishment of the Freedman's Bureau; the programs of radical state governments in the South; Southern White resistance to Reconstruction; the role of the U.S. Supreme Court; and the Compromise of 1877.
- Examine major social, economic, and political developments during the Civil War and Reconstruction eras, including homestead and land grant legislation enacted by Congress during the war, the construction of the first transcontinental railroad, postwar conflict between the U.S. Army and Native Americans, and the woman suffrage movement.
- Demonstrate knowledge of significant figures of the Civil War and Reconstruction eras, such as Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Stephen A. Douglas, John Brown, Jefferson Davis, Ulysses S. Grant, William T. Sherman, Robert E. Lee, Clara Barton, Andrew Johnson, Thaddeus Stevens, and Charles Sumner.
- Recognize chronological relationships between major events and developments in U.S. history during this period.
Sample Item:
The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 contributed to the growing sectional conflicts that culminated in the Civil War by provoking national debate over which of the following issues?
- the emancipation of slaves in the northern states
- the prohibition of the internal slave trade
- the expansion of slavery into the western territories
- the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act
Correct Response and Explanation (Show Correct ResponseHide Correct Response)
C. This question requires the examinee to examine major developments of the 1850s that contributed to the sectional polarization leading to the Civil War. The Kansas-Nebraska Act provoked a storm of controversy by opening up the possibility of allowing slavery in western territories that had been declared free states as part of the Missouri Compromise 34 years earlier.
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