AP US History vocabulary list

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

Colonial Periods

Colonial

• Bacon’s Rebellion
• headright system
• House of Burgesses
• indentured servitude
• Jamestown- general characteristics
• John Rolfe
• John Smith
• Jonathan Edwards
• King Philip’s War
• Massachusetts Bay – general characteristics
• Mercantilism
• Native American-European interactions, including disease, treatment of
• Navigation Acts
• New England town meetings
• Pequot War
• Puritans/intolerance
• Queen Anne's War
• Roanoke
• salutary neglect
• St. Augustine
• the Great Awakening
• William Penn

American Revolution

• Boston Massacre
• Boston Tea Party
• Common Sense
• Declaration of Independence
• Enlightenment philosophers
• First Continental Congress
• French and Indian War
• John Locke
• Lexington/Concord
• Montesquieu
• natural rights
• Navigation Acts
• Proclamation of 1763
• Saratoga
• social contract theory
• Thomas Paine
• Treaty of Paris of 1783 - provisions
• Valley Forge
• Yorktown
• Continental Congress/es

Early Republic

Articles of Confederation Period

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

U.S. Constitution

• 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

• 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

Jacksonian period

• 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

Social reform

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

Antebellum

• 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

Civil War

• 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

• 13th, 14th, 15th Amendments
• black codes
• Compromise of 1877
• 40 acres and a mule
• Freedman’s Bureau
• grandfather clause
• Jim Crow laws
• literacy tests
• Plessy v. Ferguson
• poll taxes
• Radical Republicans
• Reconstruction Act of 1867
• Reconstruction programs:
  • Lincoln's plans
  • Johnson's program
  • Congressional program

Post-Reconstruction

Economic & Political

• 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

• 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

Progressive Era

• "Square Deal”
• 16th, 17th, 18th, 19th Amendments
• Bull Moose Party
• Direct democracy
• initiative
• Jacob Riis
• Jane Addams
• Meat Inspection Act
• muckrakers
• Progressive Party
• Progressives / progressivism
• Pure Food and Drug Act
• recall
• referendum
• Rule of Reason
• Settlement houses
• socialism
• Upton Sinclair
• Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt
• William Howard Taft

World War I era

• 21st & 22nd Amendments
• Black Tuesday
• Court-packing scheme
• deficit spending
• Depression of 1920-1921
• Dust Bowl
• Harlem Renaissance
• Hoover
• Hoovervilles
• League of Nations
• Lusitania/Zimmerman Note
• National Origins Act
• New Deal
• Proclamation of Neutrality
• prohibition
• pump-priming
• Red Scare
• return to ‘normalcy’
• Sacco and Vanzetti
• Scopes Trial
• Social Security
• Supreme Court
• Teapot Dome Scandal
• Treaty of Versailles
  • US Senate opposition

Roosevelt Administrations

• Brain Trust
• Harry Hopkins
• Francis Perkins

World War II

Pre-WWII appeasement/ preparation

• A Philip Randolph
• America First Committee
• isolationisms
• Lindburgh
• Maginot Line
• "Peace in our time"
• “cash and carry”/Lend-Lease Act

WWII

• D-Day
• Eastern Front
• Hiroshima, Nagasaki
• Homefront
• Island Hopping
• Japanese Internment Camps
• Korematsu v. U.S.
• Manhattan Project
• mechanized warfare
• Nuremburg Trials
• Poland invasion
• Potsdam Conference
• Sudatenland invasion
• Tehran Conference
• Truman’s decision
• U.S. Neutrality Acts
• United Nations
• Yalta Conference

Latter half 20th Century

Early Cold War

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

Atomic age

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

Korean War

Cold War diplomacy

• United Nations
• unaligned nations
• third world
• nation-building

Eisenhower period

• containment
• Dwight Eisenhower
• HUAC Committee
• Joseph McCarthy
• Marshall Plan
• McCarthyism
• Suez crisis
• Eisenhower Doctrine
• containment in the Middle East
• containment in Latin America
• Cuba “Falls to communism”
• CIA

Domestic US Cold War

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

Kennedy

• Bay of Pigs Invasion
• Berlin Wall
• 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

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

Eisenhower period of Vietnam War

• Dien Bien Phu

Kennedy period of Vietnam War

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

Johnson period of Vietnam War

• Gulf of Tonkin Incident
• Tet Offensive
• Walter Cronkite
• U.S. Public support of the War
• Vietnamization
• War Powers Acts
• Gulf of Tonkin
• Attrition
• Hearts and Minds
• Rolling Thunder
• My Lai Massacre
• Escalation

Nixon period of Vietnam War

• 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

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

post-Nixon

• Fall of Saigon
• Cambodian genocide

post-WWII Domestic U.S>

• baby boom
• suburbia
• conformity
• Interstate Highway Act

Civil Rights

• “Little Rock Nine”
• Brown v. Board of Education
• civil disobedience
• Civil Rights Act of 1964
• desegregation (Truman, 1948)
• Jackie Robinson
• Malcolm X
• March on Washington
• Martin Luther King, Jr.
• Montgomery bus boycott
• nonviolence
• Voting Rights Act of 1965

Other Civil Rights Movements

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

Johnson

• Great Society
• War on Poverty

1970s: Nixon, Ford & Carter

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

Reagan era

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

End of the Cold War

• George HW Bush
• Gulf War
• Bill Clinton
• NAFTA
• service sector economy
• New Immigration
• Haiti
• Yugoslavia and Bosnia
• Rwanda

21st Century

War on Terror

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

Obama Administration

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