AMERICAN HISTORY AND SOCIETY

- COURSE INFORMATION AND EXAM QUESTIONS -

MARKING SYSTEM
Attendance and participation 10 points up to 3 absences – 10 points
3–5 absences – 7 points
5–7 absences – 5 points
more than 7 absences – 0 points
Midterm test 1 20 points 2 questions from units 1–8
Midterm test 2 20 points 2 questions from units 9–16
Midterm test 3 20 points 2 questions from units 17–24
Exam (written) 20 points 2 questions from units 25–33
Presentation (optional) 10 points 15-minute presentation on a topic related
to American history chosen in
consultation with the professor
*All midterm tests can be taken during exam periods.
* Benefit for regular attendance: Students who attend classes regularly (up to 3 absences)
and make a presentation are exempt from one of the midterm tests or the written exam
(according to their own choice).

TEXTBOOK: Bryn O’Callaghan, An Illustrated History of the USA

EXAM QUESTIONS
MIDTERM TEST 1
Unit 1: The first Americans
1. How did Christopher Columbus discover America?
2. Who were the first Americans? Describe how they came to America.
3. The Pueblo and the Apache.
4. The Iroquois.
5. The Sioux.
6. Indians from the Northwest.
Unit 2: Explorers from Europe
1. Vikings in America.
2. Why is America called America?
3. Spanish explorers in America.
4. English and French explorers in America.
Unit 3: Virginian beginnings
1. The Jamestown settlement.
2. Captain John Smith and Pocahontas.
3. The Virginia Company.
4. Which problems did Virginian settlers face? How were they solved?
5. The House of Burgesses and its importance.
6. The beginning of slavery in America.

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Unit 4: Puritan New England
1. Who were the Pilgrims?
2. Explain the religious situation in Europe that made the Pilgrims go to America.
3. Explain where the Pilgrims went after they left England and describe their journey to
America.
4. Puritan colonies in Massachusetts.
5. Roger Williams and Rhode Island.
6. William Penn and Pennsylvania.
Unit 5: Colonial life in America
1. Describe the three groups of colonies along the Atlantic coast of North America.
2. Frontier life in colonial America.
3. Cities and trade in colonial America.
4. Daniel Boone and the Wilderness Road.
5. Governors and assemblies in colonial America.
Unit 6: The roots of revolution
1. The French and Indian War.
2. British-American relations after the French and Indian War.
3. The Stamp Act.
4. The Boston Massacre.
5. Boston Tea Party and the First Continental Congress.
Unit 7: Fighting for Independence
1. How did the American War of Independence begin?
2. The Second Continental Congress and the Declaration of Independence.
3. Who was Thomas Paine?
4. Describe the course of the American Revolution.
Unit 8: Forming the new nation
1. Describe the problems that the United States faced after the War of Independence.
2. The Constitutional Convention.
3. Explain the system of government as set out in the Constitution of the United States.
4. Ratification of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
5. George Washington and the Whiskey Rebellion.
6. John Marshall and the power of judicial review.

MIDTERM TEST 2
Unit 9: Years of growth
1. Relations between Amerindians and white settlers and the Indian Removal Act.
2. The Cherokees and the Trail of Tears.
3. Andrew Jackson.
4. Describe how new western territories were organized for settlement.
5. The War of 1812.
Unit 10: West to the Pacific
1. The Louisiana Purchase.
2. The settling of Oregon.
3. Explain the concept of “manifest destiny”.
4. Mexican-American War.
Unit 11: North and South
1. Attitudes towards slavery in North and South and the Missouri compromise.
2. Arguments between North and South over import duties and the states’ rights doctrine.
3. The Fugitive Slave Act and the Underground Railroad.
4. Bleeding Kansas.
5. The Dred Scott decision.

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 6. Explain how the Republican Party was formed and how Abraham Lincoln became
President.
7. Harper’s Ferry and the formation of the Confederacy.
8. Harriet Tubman.
Unit 12: The Civil War
1. The beginning of the Civil War.
2. What advantages and disadvantages did the North and the South have at the beginning of
the Civil War?
3. The course of the Civil War in Virginia.
4. The course of the Civil War in the Mississippi valley.
5. The Emancipation Proclamation.
6. The battle of Gettysburg.
7. The end and effects of the Civil War.
Unit 13: Reconstruction
1. The assassination of President Lincoln.
2. Lincoln and Johnson’s plans for reuniting the nation and Black Codes.
3. Opposition to the Black Codes in the US Congress.
4. Explain the course of Reconstruction, its end and legacy.
5. The position of black people after the end of Reconstruction.
Unit 14: Miners, railroads and cattlemen
1. The gold rush.
2. The Great Plains and the closing of the frontier.
3. The first railroads.
4. Cowboys and cattle trails.
Unit 15: Farming the Great Plains
1. The Homestead Act and settling the Great Plains.
2. What difficulties did homesteaders face and how were they overcome?
3. “Range wars”: homesteaders vs. cattlemen.
4. The problem of overproduction and farmers’ political engagement.
Unit 16: The Amerindians’ last stand
1. What did Amerindians do when white people started settling the American West? Explain
what happened with the treaties they signed with the government in Washington.
2. Why was the buffalo important for Amerindians and what happened to it?
3. How were Amerindians made to live on reservations? What happened at the Little Big
Horn?
4. The Ghost Dance movement and the Wounded Knee massacre.
5. Amerindians in the 20th century.

MIDTERM TEST 3
Unit 17: Inventors and industries
1. The Centennial Exposition.
2. The growth of American industry: coal, iron and railroads.
3. Robber barons and the power of the trusts.
4. Henry Ford and mass production.
Unit 18: The Golden Door
1. Immigration from western and northern Europe: 1840–1880.
2. Immigration from eastern and southern Europe: 1880–1925.
3. Ellis Island and life of immigrants in the new country.
4. Americans’ dislike for immigrants and anti-immigration laws.
Unit 19: Reformers and progressives
1. Life of workers at the beginning of the 20th century.

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 2. Opposition to labor unions.
3. How did muckrakers raise the awareness of Americans?
4. The Progressive movement.
5. Theodore Roosevelt.
6. Woodrow Wilson.
Unit 20: An American empire
1. Ideas about American colonialism in the second half of the 19th century.
2. Monroe’s Doctrine and Roosevelt’s Corollary.
3. The Spanish-American War.
4. Why did some Americans feel uneasy about the United States being a colonial power?
How did the US treat its colonies?
5. American treatment of Cuba after the Spanish-American War.
6. Dollar Diplomacy.
7. The Panama rebellion.
Unit 21: A war and a peace
1. American impartiality in the First World War: 1914–1917.
2. Explain why America declared war on Germany and describe the course of the First
World War from 1917 to 1919.
3. Wilson in Europe and the Versailles treaty.
4. Wilson’s League of Nations.
5. Wilson’s Fourteen Points.
Unit 22: The Roaring Twenties
1. American consumer society and high standard of living in the 1920s.
2. Not everyone lived well in the 1920s. Who faced poverty and why?
3. Al Capone and the bootleggers.
Unit 23: Crash and depression
1. Playing the market in the 1920s.
2. The Wall Street Crash, its causes and consequences.
3. Great Depression in the United States.
4. Hoover’s and Roosevelt’s plans for fighting against the Depression.
Unit 24: Roosevelt’s New Deal
1. Roosevelt’s Hundred Days and alphabet agencies and their effect on American economy.
2. Which laws and acts were passed as part of the New Deal?
3. What was Americans’ opinion of Roosevelt and how did the New Deal change their ideas
about the government?
4. How did the Second World War help the US end unemployment?

EXAM
Unit 25: The Arsenal of Democracy
1. Isolationists and Neutrality Act.
2. The beginning of WW2 and Roosevelt’s Lend Lease Plan.
3. Fighting in Asia from the beginning of WW2 to 1941.
4. Why did the United States join WW2 and how did it organize its economy in order to win
the war?
5. The course of WW2 in Europe from 1942 to the surrender of Germany.
6. The course of WW2 in the Pacific from 1942 to the surrender of Japan.
7. What happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki? What are the arguments for and against the
bombings?
Unit 26: Prosperity and problems
1. Prosperity in the United States after WW2: from Harry Truman to Lyndon Johnson.
2. Problems in the United States: from Lyndon Johnson to Ronald Reagan.

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 3. The McCarthy witch hunts.
4. The Watergate affair.
Unit 27: Black Americans
1. The Great Migration of African Americans.
2. Black Americans in World War 2.
3. The Civil Rights movement: 1954–1968.
4. Black Americans turn to violence: 1960s.
5. Black Americans turn to voting: 1970s and 1980s.
Unit 28: Cold War and Korea
1. Why and how did the Cold War begin?
2. The Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan.
3. The Korean War.
4. The birth of NATO.
Unit 29: A balance of terror
1. The policy of brinkmanship.
2. Nuclear arms race and “peaceful coexistence”.
3. The space race.
4. The Berlin Wall.
5. Crisis over Cuba.
Unit 30: The Vietnam years
1. How did the Vietnam War begin and why did Americans get involved?
2. The course of the war in Vietnam during President Lyndon Johnson.
3. Richard Nixon and the end of the war in Vietnam.
Unit 31: America’s back yard
1. Relations between the United States and Latin America before World War 2.
2. Relations between the United States and Latin America during and after World War 2.
3. Reagan and the Sandinistas.
4. American Hispanics.
5. Kennedy’s Peace Corps.
Unit 32: An end to Cold War?
1. Détente between the United States and the Soviet Union.
2. Détente between the United States and China.
3. Relations between the United States and the Soviet Union after 1979 and the end of the
Cold War.
4. Henry Kissinger.
Unit 33: The American century
1. Americanization of the world in the 20th century.