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]

*** UNDER CONSTRUCTION ***

Origins[edit | edit source]

Laws to regulate and raise revenue[edit | edit source]

Enforcement and Colonial responses[edit | edit source]

  Section: Revolutinary War
   1774: First Continential Congress
   1775: Paine's "Comon Sense"
   1776: Declaration of Independence

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 period[edit | edit source]

Note that Britain held colonial possessions in the Caribbean region, as well as the thirteen colonies; following small 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.


  • Appalachian Mountains


  • Bacon’s Rebellion
  • Lord Baltimore
  • term
  • term

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

Maryland| proprietary colony Massachussets Bay Colony Pennsylvania Virginia colonies

  • the Great Awakening
  • headright system
  • House of Burgesses
  • indentured servitude
  • Jamestown
  • John Rolfe
  • John Smith
  • Join Stock Compnany
  • Jonathan Edwards
  • King Philip’s War
  • "Lost Colony"
  • Massachusetts Bay Colony
  • miration push/ pull factors
  • Native American-European interactions, including disease, treatment of
  • Navigation Acts
  • New England town meetings
  • Pequot War
  • Puritan
  • Queen Anne's War
  • salutary neglect
  • slave codes
  • types of colonies: proprietary, royal, corporate charter
  • Yoeman
  • William Penn



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|"First Red Scare" 1919, caused by anarchist and socialist protests and terrorism (mailing bombs); the success of the Russian communist revolution heightened these fears, as did teh 1920 "Wall Street Bombing" which kille d40 people}}
  • 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