American History ReviewCivil War and Cold War 2012

Why was the election of 1848 significant?

The Free-Soilers diverted enough votes from the Democrats to let Taylor win

Free-Soil party, in U.S. history, political party that came into existence in 1847–48 chiefly because of rising opposition to the extension of slavery

All of the following were components of the Compromise of 1850 except

(A) A new Fugitive Slave Law was passed

(B) Slavery was banned in Washington, D.C.

(C) Popular sovereignty would determine the future of slavery in the territories

(D) California was admitted as a free state

All of the following steeled Northern public opinion against the South except

(A) The Kansas-Nebraska Act (B) The Wilmot Proviso (C) Uncle Tom’s Cabin (D) The Fugitive Slave Law

The Wilmot Proviso, one of the major events leading to the Civil War, would have banned slavery in any territory to be acquired from Mexico in the Mexican War

Why did the Kansas-Nebraska Act anger Americans in the North?

It effectively repealed the Missouri Compromise

Who were the “border ruffians”?

Proslavery Missourians who rushed to Kansas after Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act

Why did Stephen Douglas push the Kansas-Nebraska Act through Congress in 1854?

A) He wanted a northern transcontinental railroad to terminate in Chicago

(B) He wanted to resolve the slavery debate

(C) He wanted to increase his stature within the Democratic Party

(D) All of the above

What did Lincoln do in his first inaugural address?

Professed his friendship for the South and said he would ignore South Carolina’s illegal secession

What did John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry demonstrate?

That Northern and Southern opinions on slavery were irreconcilable

What did Harriet Tubman and other Underground Railroad “conductors” defy?

The Fugitive Slave Law

Why were the Lincoln-Douglas debates significant in Lincoln’s political career?

They boosted him to national prominence

Which of the following was one reason the border states were so important to the Union?

They would have doubled Confederate manufacturing capabilities had they seceded

Lincoln was different from Davis in that he

Had a knack for understanding and using public opinion to his advantage

Why was Britain not as dependent on Southern cotton as the Confederacy had believed?

Cotton could also be obtained from Egypt and India

What did the Emancipation Proclamation do?

Freed slaves in secessionist states

The Union victory at Antietam was significant because

(A) It convinced Britain not to forge an alliance with the South

(B) It gave Lincoln the opportunity to fire George McClellan

(C) It gave Lincoln the opportunity to issue the Emancipation Proclamation

(D) All of the above

The Battles of Gettysburg and Vicksburg

Were the major turning point in the war

Which of the following actions by Lincoln violated the Constitution?

A) His order of a naval blockade of the South

(B) His increase of the size of the U.S. Army

(C) His authorization of illegal voting methods in the border states

(D) All of the above

Why did Lincoln suspend the writ of habeas corpus?

To enable Confederate sympathizers to be arrested without being formally charged

The Confederacy collapsed at the end of the war for all of the following reasons except

Massive slave uprisings

Lincoln’s primary objective during the war was

To restore the Union

Who won the presidential election of 1864?

Abraham Lincoln

What was the first state to secede during the civil war?

South Carolina

COLD WAR QUESTIONS Joseph McCarthy’s political influence

waned after The Army-McCarthy hearings

What did the Montgomery G.I. Bill do?

Gave money to World War II veterans to go to school

America’s postwar economic prosperity was the result of all of the following except

The creation of the World Bank

Truman fired General MacArthur for

Publicly criticizing Truman

What was the Marshall Plan intended to do?

Rebuild war-ravaged Europe

The imaginary line of secrecy and mistrust that separated the USSR and Eastern Europe from the West was known as

The iron curtain

The United States and the USSR distrusted each other after World War II for all of the following reasons except

The United States and Great Britain had wanted to assassinate Stalin during the war

In which U.S. presidential election did television first play a major role?

1960

Kennedy’s doctrine of “flexible response”

Allowed foreign policy officials to use a range of strategies to fight Communists abroad, depending on the crisis

Eisenhower cut many federally funded government programs in order to curb what he called

“Creeping socialism”

The fall of the French garrison at Dien Bien Phu in 1954 prompted

Eisenhower to funnel U.S. funds into fighting Communist-leaning North Vietnamese

Which Kennedy initiative hoped to thwart Communist insurgents in Latin America by reducing income inequality in the region?

The Alliance for Progress

All of the following were consequences of the Cuban missile crisis except

A) The USSR removed its nuclear warheads from Cuba

(B) The United States removed its nuclear warheads from Turkey

(C) Kennedy authorized the Bay of Pigs invasion

(D) Khrushchev was removed from power in the USSR

The United States and the USSR came closest to nuclear war during the

Cuban missile crisis

What did Kennedy’s New Frontier program seek to do?

Increase social welfare spending

The belief that the United States had to prevent the USSR from expanding and Communism from spreading was known as

Containment

Why did the USSR vehemently oppose the Marshall Plan?

It feared invasion from a newly industrialized Germany

What did Republicans in the House of Representatives create in order to hunt for Communist spies?

HUAC Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC)

The Warsaw Pact was signed because….

To create an Eastern bloc alliance to counter NATO

The leader of nationalist, Communist forces in Vietnam in the 1950s was

Ho Chi Minh

Who constituted the bulk of the Bay of Pigs invasion force?

Cuban exiles and expatriates

Cuban leader Fidel Castro allowed the USSR to place nuclear missiles in Cuba after

The Bay of Pigs invasion

The Cold War was fought between the United States and

USSR