AP US History vocabulary list

From A+ Club Lesson Planner & Study Guide

US History and AP US History Running Vocabulary List: Terms, Concepts, Names and Events

Note: see Talk page for to do list and suggestions

General terms to know for US History[edit | edit source]

  • abolitionism
  • aristocratic
  • authority
  • blue collar v. white collar
  • cession
  • chain migration
  • class warfare
  • ''de facto'' v. ''de jure''
  • delegate (as noun and verb)
  • direct tax
  • disenfranchised
  • dissent
  • domestic
  • duties
  • emancipation
  • embargo
  • equity
  • excise tax
  • federal
  • franchise
  • hegemony/hegomonic
  • imperialism
  • indemnity
  • infringe / infringement
  • intolerance
  • laissez-faire
  • legitimacy
  • mercantilism
  • nativism
  • nullify / nullification
  • Old World v. New World
  • political
  • political expediency
  • popular sovereignty
  • precedent
  • prohibition
  • "Republican motherhood"
  • state
  • states rights
  • segregation
  • socialism
  • sovereignty
  • suffrage
  • tariff
  • temperance movement
  • unalienable
  • unintended consequence
  • United States
  • western expansion

Wars timeline[edit | edit source]

  • wars are the effect or cause of change
  • knowing wars and their dates and geography provides context and points of comparison

Major Wars[edit | edit source]

  • French-Indian War, 1754-1768:
  • American Revolution, 1764-1783
  • American Revolutionary War, 1775-1781
  • War of 1812, 1812-1815
  • Mexican-American War, 1846-1848
  • Civil War, 1861-1865
  • Spanish-American War, 1898
  • Philipine Insurgeny, 1899-1902
  • World War I (U.S.), 1917-1918
  • White Russian War, 1917
  • Wolrd War II (U.S.) 1941-1945
  • Korean War, 1950-1953
  • Vietman War, 1959-1975
  • Vietnam, U.S. ground war: 1965-1972
  • Gulf War, 1990-1991
  • War on Terror, 2001-2021
  • Afghanistan War, 2001-2021
  • Iraq War, 2003-2011
  • Iraqi Insurgency, 2003-2006

Colonial Wars[edit | edit source]

  • Anglow-Powhatan Wars (1610-1646)
  • Jamestown Massacre, 1622
  • Pequot War (1634-1638)
  • King Philip's War, 1675-1678 | Metaomb's War
  • King William's War, 1689-1897
  • Queen Anne's War, 1702-1713
  • Anglow-Powhatan Wars (1610-1646)

British Colonial Era Frontier / Indian Wars[edit | edit source]

These wars were generally over lands, trade resources, tribal-disputes, or European disputes

  • Beaver Wars, 1609-1701
  • Chickawaw Wars, 1721-1763
  • Dummer's War, 1722-25
  • Pontiac's War, 1763-1766
  • Lord Dunmore's War, 1774

US Indian Wars[edit | edit source]

Slave Revolts[edit | edit source]

  • New York Slave Revolt of 1712
  • Stono Rebellion, 1739
  • Nat Turner's Rebellion, 1826

Frontier Wars[edit | edit source]

  • Bacon's Rebellion 1676
  • Regulator Insurrection, 1766-1771
  • Whiskey Rebellion, 1791-1794
  • Fries's Rebellion, 1799-1800

Minor Wars or US Military actions[edit | edit source]

  • Quasi-War, 1798-1800
  • First Barbary War, 1801-1805
  • Second Barbary War, 1815
  • Panama Revolution, 1903
  • Russian White Revolution, Vladistok, 1918
  • Berlin Airlift, 1946 << date?
  • Greece, 1948
  • Iran, 1950s
  • Grenada, 1980s
  • Panama, 1990 < confirm
  • Syria, 2010-12
  • Libya, 2012

Important non-American Wars[edit | edit source]

  • Thirty Years War, 1618-1648
  • Anglo-Spanish War, 1625-1630
  • English Civil War, 1642-1644
  • Anglo-Dutch War, 1652-1654
  • Anglo-Spanish Wars, 1654-1660, 1665-1667
  • Pueblo Revolt, 1680
  • French Revolution, 1789-1795
  • Haitian Revolution, 1791-1804
  • Napoleonic Wars, 1803-1815
  • Russo-Japanese War, 1904-1905
  • Mexican Revolution, 1910-1920
  • Russian Revolution, 1917
  • World War I, 1914-1918
  • Japanese Invasion of Manchuria, 1931-32:
  • World War II, 1939-1945
  • Suez Crisis, 1957 <<confirm


American Revolution flowcharts[edit | edit source]

Origins[edit | edit source]

British & Colonial responses[edit | edit source]

Cyle of Escalation[edit | edit source]

Repeal of Stamp Act to Boston Massacre[edit | edit source]

Repeal Townsend Acts to Boston Tea Party[edit | edit source]

Intolerable Acts to Colonial Organization[edit | edit source]

War[edit | edit source]

Vocabulary, Terms, and Periods[edit | edit source]

Colonial Periods[edit | edit source]

Pre-Columbian[edit | edit source]

  • Algonquian
  • Hopewell tradition
  • indigenous
  • Iroquois
  • Mississippian period/ culture
  • reciprocal relations
  • Woodland Period


Age of Exploration[edit | edit source]

  • caravel
  • Henry Hudson
  • conquistador
  • St. Lawrence River

Spanish colonialism[edit | edit source]

  • asiento
  • De Las Casas
  • encomienda
  • Florida (or Spanish Florida)
  • hacienda
  • Mit'a (Inca) system
  • New Laws of 1542
  • Pueblo Revolt
  • repartimiento
  • Saint Augustine

Sepúlveda

  • Spanish social heirarchies (terms)
  • Treaty of Tordesillas

Dutch and French colonialism[edit | edit source]

  • Beaver War
  • ''couriers de bois''
  • New Amsterdam
  • New France

African Slave trade[edit | edit source]

  • Middle Passage
  • Olaudah Equiano
  • seasoning camps
  • triangle trade


English colonial periods[edit | edit source]

Note:

  • Britain held colonial possessions in the Caribbean region, as well as the thirteen colonies
  • following smaller wars and the worldwide French-Indian War (Seven Years War), Britain sequentially took France's Canadian possessions as well as its landholdings between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River.
  • Levels of British control of the colonies rose and fell according to domestic British politics and its international priorities.
  • The American Revolution was largely the result of the excercise of direct control of colonial affairs that followed the French-Indian War.

Colonial political, economic and social[edit | edit source]

Types of Colonies[edit | edit source]

  • Corporate Charter
  • Proprietary Colony
  • Royal Colony

Colony Characteristics[edit | edit source]

  • Maryland
  • Massachussets Bay Colony
  • Pennsylvania
  • Virginia

British colonial period terms & events[edit | edit source]

    Appalachian Mountains
  • Bacon’s Rebellion
  • the Great Awakening
  • headright system
  • House of Burgesses
  • indentured servitude
  • Jamestown
  • John Rolfe
  • John Smith
  • Joint Stock Compnany
  • Jonathan Edwards
  • King Philip’s War, 1675-1678
  • Lord Baltimore
  • "Lost Colony"
  • Massachusetts Bay Colony
  • migration push/ pull factors
  • Native American & English relations
  • Navigation Acts, 1663, 1673, 1696
  • New England town meetings
  • Pequot War, 1636-37
  • Puritan
  • Queen Anne's War, 1702-1713
  • salutary neglect
  • slave codes
  • William Penn
  • yoeman


American Revolution[edit | edit source]

  • ABC Boards
  • Admiralty Court
  • Albany Conference
  • Boston Massacre
  • Boston Tea Party
  • Common Sense
  • Declaration of Independence
  • Enlightenment philosophers
  • First Continental Congress
  • Fort Duquesne
  • Gadsden flag
  • French and Indian War
  • John Locke
  • Lexington/Concord
  • Loyalist
  • Montesquieu
  • natural rights
  • Navigation Acts
  • Patrior
  • Proclamation of 1763
  • Saratoga
  • social contract theory
  • Sons of Liberty
  • Stamp Act
  • Stamp Act Congress
  • Sugar Act
  • Thomas Paine
  • Townsend Acts
  • Treaty of Paris of 1783
  • Valley Forge
  • Yorktown
  • Continental Congress/es


Early Republic[edit | edit source]

Articles of Confederation Period[edit | edit source]

  • Articles of Confederation
  • Shay’s Rebellion
  • confederation
  • sovereignty
  • supermajority
  • unicameral

U.S. Constitution[edit | edit source]

  • 3/5ths Compromise
  • amendment process
  • anti-Federalists
  • bicameral
  • Bill of Rights
  • checks and balances
  • Connecticut Compromise
  • Constitution
  • elastic clause
  • electoral college
  • Federalists
  • Federalism
  • Federalist no. 10
  • Federalist no. 51
  • Federalist Papers
  • Federalists
  • George Washington
  • Great Compromise
  • impeachment
  • James Madison
  • New Jersey Plan
  • Northwest Ordinance
  • preamble
  • preamble to the Constitution
  • ratification
  • separation of powers
  • strict vs. loose interpretation
  • unwritten Constitution
  • Virginia Plan


Early Republic[edit | edit source]

  • 12th Amendment
  • American System
  • Cabinet
  • Democratic-Republicans
  • election of 1800
  • Era of Good Feelings
  • Federalists
  • George Washington
  • Hamilton
  • impressment
  • Jefferson
  • John Marshall
  • Louisiana Purchase
  • Marbury v. Madison
  • McColluch v. Maryland
  • Monroe Doctrine
  • Mossouri Compromise
  • National Bank
  • nullification
  • political parties
  • Republican motherhood
  • Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions
  • War of 1812
  • Whiskey Rebellion


Antebellum period[edit | edit source]

Jacksonian period[edit | edit source]

  • John Quincy Adams
  • Bank War
  • Corrupt Bargain
  • Force Bill
  • Henry Clay
  • Jacksonian democracy
  • Indian Removal Act
  • Nullification Crisis
  • Petticoat affair
  • Postal Service
  • Panic of 1837
  • Second Party System
  • spoils system
  • Tariff of 1833
  • Trail of Tears
  • Daniel Webster
  • Worcester v. Georgia



Antebellum[edit | edit source]

Social reform[edit | edit source]

  • cult of domesticity
  • Declaration of Sentiments
  • emancipation
  • Ralph Waldo Emerson
  • Second Great Awakening
  • Seneca Falls Convention
  • suffrage
  • transcendentalism
  • Uncle Tom’s Cabin


Antebellum[edit | edit source]

  • Compromise of 1850
  • Dred Scott decision
  • Gadsden Purchase
  • Gold Rush of 1849
  • Kansas-Nebraska Act
  • manifest destiny
  • Mexican American War
  • popular sovereignty
  • sectionalism
  • Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo


Latter 19th Century[edit | edit source]

Civil War[edit | edit source]

  • 1860 Election
  • Anaconda Plan
  • Appomattox
  • Emancipation Proclamation
  • Ft. Sumter
  • Gettysburg
  • Gettysburg Address
  • Lincoln’s pre-war stance on slavery
  • Sherman’s March
  • U.S. Grant


Reconstruction[edit | edit source]

  • 13th, 14th, 15th Amendments
  • black codes
  • Compromise of 1877
  • 40 acres and a mule
  • Freedman’s Bureau
  • grandfather clause
  • homestead
  • Jim Crow laws
  • land grant
  • literacy tests
  • Morill Land-Grant Act (1862)
  • Plessy v. Ferguson
  • poll taxes
  • Radical Republicans
  • Reconstruction Act of 1867
  • Reconstruction programs:
    • Lincoln's plan
    • Johnson's program
    • Congressional program


Post-Reconstruction[edit | edit source]

Economic & Political[edit | edit source]

  • Andrew Carnegie
  • Battle of Wounded Knee
  • bimetallism
  • Chinese Exclusion Act
  • Dawes Act /assimilation
  • Gentlemen’s Agreement
  • Great Migration
  • Homestead Act of 1862
  • laissez-faire capitalism
  • melting pot
  • monopoly
  • nativism
  • Nelson Rockefeller
  • political bosses
  • political machine
  • Populist Party
  • robber barons
  • Sand Creek Massacre
  • Sherman Anti-trust Act
  • social Darwinism
  • Standard Oil
  • transcontinental railroad
  • U.S. Steel


Imperialism[edit | edit source]

  • Battle of Manila
  • “Big Stick Policy”
  • Cuba
  • de Lôme Letter,
  • imperialism
  • William McKinley
  • Open Door Policy
  • Panama Canal
  • Roosevelt Corollary
  • Spanish-American War
  • yellow journalism
  • USS Maine


First half 20th Century[edit | edit source]

Labor[edit | edit source]

  • American Federation of Labor (AFL)
  • Samuel Gompers


Progressive Era[edit | edit source]

  • "Square Deal”
  • 16th, 17th, 18th, 19th Amendments
  • Bull Moose Party
  • Elkins Act (1903)
  • Eugene V. Debs
  • Direct democracy
  • Federal Reserve Act (1913)
  • Gifford Pinchot
  • Hepburn Act
  • initiative
  • Jacob Riis
  • Jane Addams
  • Meat Inspection Act
  • muckrakers
  • New Freedom
  • New Nationalism
  • Newlands Act of 1902
  • Progressive Party
  • Progressives / progressivism
  • Pure Food and Drug Act
  • recall
  • referendum
  • Rule of Reason
  • Settlement houses
  • socialism
  • Square Deal
  • Upton Sinclair
  • Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt
  • "Three Cs": Conservation, Corporate law, Consumer protections
  • William Howard Taft


World War I era[edit | edit source]

WWI[edit | edit source]

  • Bolsheviks
  • Espionage and Sedition Acts (1917)
  • "He kept us out of the war" (1916)
  • Jones Act (1916)
  • Liberty Loans
  • Lusitania sinking (1915)
  • Pancho Villa (1914)
  • Russian Revolution
  • Sussex Pledge (1916)
  • U-Boats
  • War bonds
  • War Industries Board
  • Zimmerman Note


WWI aftermath[edit | edit source]

  • Collective Security
  • Depression of 1920-1921
  • Fourteen Points
  • League of Nations
  • Senate Foreign Relations Committee
  • Treaty of Versailles

post-WWI & 1920s[edit | edit source]

  • "America First"
  • Black Tuesday
  • Court-packing scheme
  • deficit spending
  • Dust Bowl
  • Harlem Renaissance
  • Hoover
  • Immigration Act of 1924
  • League of Nations
  • Lusitania/Zimmerman Note
  • National Origins Act
  • New Deal
  • Palmer Raids
  • Proclamation of Neutrality
  • prohibition
  • pump-priming
  • Red Scare
  • Return to ‘normalcy’
  • Roarding Twenties
  • Sacco and Vanzetti
  • Scopes Trial
  • Teapot Dome Scandal
  • Wilsonianism


1920s[edit | edit source]

  • automobiles
  • consumerism
  • credit
  • Bathtub gin
  • Harlem Renaissance
  • Jazz Age
  • Klu Klux Klan
  • Margin buying
  • radio
  • refrigerators
  • Scopes "Monkey" Trial


Great Depression & FDR[edit | edit source]

  • Black Monday
  • Black Thursday
  • Hawley-Smoot Tariff
  • Hoovervilles

FDR & New Deal[edit | edit source]

  • 100 Days
  • 20th Amendment
  • 21st Amendment
  • fireside chats
  • NRA
  • "New Deal"
  • Social Security
  • Supreme Court

Roosevelt Administration/s[edit | edit source]

  • Brain Trust
  • Francis Perkins
  • Harry Hopkins


World War II[edit | edit source]

pre-WWII[edit | edit source]

  • A Philip Randolph
  • America First Committee
  • appeasement
  • Battle of Britain
  • “cash and carry”
  • election of 1940
  • isolationism
  • Lend-Lease Act
  • Lindburgh
  • Maginot Line
  • Munich Agreement
  • "Peace for our time"
  • Poland invasion
  • Sudetenland
  • U.S. Neutrality Acts
  • "war footing"
  • war preparations


WWII[edit | edit source]

  • "arsenal of democracy"
  • D-Day
  • Eastern Front
  • Hiroshima, Nagasaki
  • Homefront
  • Island Hopping
  • Japanese Internment Camps
  • Korematsu v. U.S.
  • Manhattan Project
  • mechanized warfare
  • propaganda
  • rationing
  • recycling
  • Rosie the Riviter
  • Truman’s decision
  • "Victory Gardens"
  • war bonds

Post-War plans/ conferences

  • Potsdam Conference
  • Tehran Conference
  • Yalta Conference

Post-WWII[edit | edit source]

  • 22nd amendment
  • Nuremburg Trials
  • United Nations


Latter-half 20th Century[edit | edit source]

Early Cold War Foreign Affairs[edit | edit source]

  • Berlin crisis / Berlin airlift
  • Bretton Woods Conference
  • capitalism
  • Chiang Kai-shek
  • China, loss of
  • communism
  • containment policy
  • George F. Kennan
  • Greek Civil War
  • ideology/ ideological
  • Iron Curtain / Iron Curtain speech
  • Israel/ Palestine
  • Long Telegram / Article “X”
  • Mao Zedong
  • Marshall Plan
  • NATO
  • NATO/Warsaw Pact
  • NSC-68
  • proxy war
  • SEATO
  • sphere/s of influence
  • Suez Canal Crisis
  • Truman Doctrine
  • Turkey
  • United Nations
  • UK sterling crisis
  • Warsaw Pact

Atomic age[edit | edit source]

  • atmospheric testing
  • atomic testing
  • bombers
  • A-bomb
  • Chinese bomb (Taiwan incident)
  • German scientists
  • H-bomb
  • brinkmanship
  • ICBM
  • Nike missile system
  • MAD/ mutually-assured destruction
  • anti-ballistic missile
  • nuclear shield

Korean War[edit | edit source]

  • Truman v. Gen. MacArthur
  • Chinese Revolution


Cold War diplomacy[edit | edit source]

  • East, the
  • hegemony / hegemonic power
  • nation-building
  • Palestine partition
  • Security Council
  • Third World
  • unaligned nations
  • United Nations
  • West, The

Eisenhower period[edit | edit source]

  • CIA
  • containment
  • containment in Asia
  • containment in Europe
  • containment in Latin America
  • containment in the Middle East
  • Cuba
  • Domino Theory
  • Dwight Eisenhower
  • Eisenhower Doctrine
  • HUAC Committee
  • Joseph McCarthy
  • Marshall Plan
  • McCarthyism
  • "military industrial complex" (1958/9?)
  • Suez crisis


Domestic US Cold War[edit | edit source]

  • Executive Order 9835
  • Second Red Scare
  • McCarthyism
  • HUAC
  • Hollywood 10
  • McCarren Act
  • Rosenbergs
  • Alger Hiss
  • Space Race

Kennedy[edit | edit source]

  • Bay of Pigs Invasion
  • Berlin Wall
  • CIA activity under Kennedy
  • Cuban Missile Crisis
  • Domino Theory
  • Bay of Pigs
  • Hot-Line
  • Robert F. Kennedy
  • Limited Test Ban Treaty
  • quarantine v. blockade
  • Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty
  • Peace Corps


Vietnam War[edit | edit source]

  • French involvement, 1954-1955
  • US involvement, 1959-1973

Eisenhower period of Vietnam War[edit | edit source]

  • Dien Bien Phu

Kennedy period of Vietnam War[edit | edit source]

  • JFK
  • Robert McNamara
  • "Whiz Kids"
  • “flexible response”
  • advisors
  • Camelot
  • assassination

Johnson period of Vietnam War[edit | edit source]

  • bombing campaigns
  • escalation
  • Gulf of Tonkin Incident (1964)
  • Tet Offensive (1968)
  • Walter Cronkite
  • U.S. public opinion
  • Vietnamization
  • War Powers Acts
  • Gulf of Tonkin
  • Attrition
  • Hearts and Minds
  • Rolling Thunder
  • My Lai Massacre
  • Escalation

Nixon period of Vietnam War[edit | edit source]

  • China
  • Operation Linebacker II
  • Christmas bombings
  • "silent majority”
  • Paris Peace Accords
  • Bombing of Laos and Cambodia
  • Paris Peace Accords
  • opening of China
  • Kissinger
  • Pentagon Papers
  • White House protests

Vietnam War protest movements[edit | edit source]

  • draft, the
  • hippies
  • protests
  • Kent State
  • Jackson State

post-Nixon[edit | edit source]

  • Fall of Saigon
  • Cambodian genocide
  • Pol Pot


post-WWII Domestic U.S[edit | edit source]

1950s culture[edit | edit source]

  • baby boom
  • "Fair Deal" (1945-49)
  • suburbia
  • rock'n'roll
  • conformity
  • Interstate Highway Act

Civil Rights[edit | edit source]

  • “Little Rock Nine”
  • Brown v. Board of Education
  • civil disobedience
  • Civil Rights Act of 1964
  • Executive Order 9981
  • Jackie Robinson
  • Malcolm X
  • March on Washington
  • Martin Luther King, Jr.
  • Montgomery bus boycott
  • nonviolence
  • Voting Rights Act of 1965

Other Civil Rights and Political Movements[edit | edit source]

  • Silent Spring
  • Michael Harrington
  • Roe v. Wade
  • women’s liberation movement (NOW)
  • Cesar Chavez
  • Grapes Boycott
  • Chicano Movement
  • American Indian Movement (AIM)
  • Wounded Knee Incident


Johnson[edit | edit source]

  • Great Society
  • War on Poverty


1970s: Nixon, Ford & Carter[edit | edit source]

  • Watergate
  • pardoning of Nixon
  • stagflation
  • Afghanistan
  • Olympic boycott
  • Iranian hostage crisis
  • OPEC
  • oil embargo
  • Camp David Accords

Reagan era[edit | edit source]

  • Iran-Contra Affair
  • John Stockton
  • Landslide
  • Star Wars
  • "Reagan Revolution”
  • Reaganomics
  • Supply-side economics


End of the Cold War[edit | edit source]

  • George HW Bush
  • Military spending cuts
  • Gulf War
  • Bill Clinton
  • Peace Dividend
  • NAFTA
  • service sector economy
  • New Immigration
  • Haiti
  • Yugoslavia and Bosnia
  • Rwanda


21st Century[edit | edit source]

War on Terror[edit | edit source]

  • September 11th
  • Al Queda
  • Afghanistan War
  • Iraq
  • Patriot Act

Obama Administration[edit | edit source]

  • Great Recession
  • ISIS
  • Affordable Care Act
  • Obama Care
  • DREAM Act


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