AP US History vocabulary list

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

• 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

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

Major Wars

• 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

• Anglow-Powhatan Wars (1610-1646)

• Beaver Wars, 1609-1701 (French/Dutch)
• 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

• Yamasee War, 1715-1717

• Chickasaw Wars, 1721-1763

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• Dummer's War, 1722-25
• Pontiac's War, 1763-1766
• Lord Dunmore's War, 1774

American settlers or frontier wars

• Bacon's Rebellion 1676

• Regulator Insurrection, 1766-1771

• Whiskey Rebellion, 1791-1794

• Fries's Rebellion, 1799-1800

US Indian Wars

• Creek War (Tecumhsah)
• Seminole Wars
• see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Indian_Wars

Slave Revolts

• New York Slave Revolt of 1712

• Stono Rebellion, 1739

• Nat Turner's Rebellion, 1826

Minor Wars or US Military actions

• 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

• 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

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_United_States

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Vocabulary, Terms, and Periods

Pre-Columbian

• Algonquian

• Hopewell tradition

• indigenous

• Iroquois

• Iroquois Confederacy

• Mississippian period/ culture

• Mound Builders

• reciprocal relations

• Woodland Period

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Colonial Periods

Age of Exploration

• caravel

• Henry Hudson

• conquistador

• St. Lawrence River

Spanish colonialism

• asiento

• De Las Casas

• encomienda

• Florida (or Spanish Florida)

• hacienda

• Mit'a (Inca)

• New Laws of 1542

• Pueblo Revolt

• repartimiento

• Saint Augustine

• Sepúlveda

• Spanish social heirarchies (terms)

• Treaty of Tordesillas

Dutch and French colonialism

• Beaver War

• ''couriers de bois''

• fur trade

• New Amsterdam

• New France

African slave trade

• Middle Passage

• Olaudah Equiano

• seasoning camps

• triangle trade

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English colonial periods

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.

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Colonial political, economic and social

Types of Colonies

• Corporate Charter
• Proprietary Colony
• Royal Colony

Colony Characteristics

• Maryland
• Massachussets Bay Colony
• Pennsylvania
• Virginia

British colonial period terms & events

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

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French Indian War

Notes:

• 1754-1763
• the immediate cause of the war was the growing presence of English colonials across the Appalachian Mountains and into the Ohio Valley
  • the French and their indian allies opposed these settlements
  • a site of considerable contention was Fort Duquesne at present-day Pittsburg, as the location was at the confluuence of two major rivers leading into the Ohio River
• sparked by an unsuccessful British and colonial attacks on French forts in Pennsylvania
• in 1753, George Washington 1753 delivered a message to the French at another Fort in Pennsylvania demanding French evacuation from the region
• on July 3, 1754, as a colonel in the Virginia Militia, Washington led an attack upon the French Ford Necessity; he lost and had to surrender
• British regular Army, along with colonial militias (and including Washington), reorganized and attacked another French fort, Fort Duquesne on Sept. 14, 1758, and also lost
  • there were 500 French and Indian soldiers
  • and 400 British regulars and 350 colonial militia
• the British eventually took Ft. Dusquesne in 1758 (renaming it Ft. Pitt), and the focus of the war moved toward Canada and the St. Lawrence River waterways, particularly the French city Quebec.

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French-Indian War terms

• Albany Conference, 1754

• Albany Plan

Annus Mirabilis of 1759

• Fort Duquesne

• Proclamation of 1763

• Treaty of Paris of 1783

• William Pitt

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American Revolution

• ABC Boards

• Admiralty Court

• Boston Massacre

• Boston Tea Party

• Circulatory Letter

• Committees of Correspondence

• Common Sense

• Declaration of Independence

• Enlightenment philosophers

• First Continental Congress

• ''Gaspee'' affair

• John Locke

Letters from a Pennsylvania Farmer|by John Dickinson}}

• Lexington/Concord

• Loyalist

• Montesquieu

• natural rights

• Patriot

• Revolutionary flags

• Battle of Saratoga

• social contract theory

• Sons of Liberty

• Stamp Act Congress

• Thomas Paine

• Valley Forge

• Yorktown

• Continental Congresses

Writs of Assistance|}}

British Laws & Regulations

• Coercive Acts

• Intolerable Acts

• Navigation Acts

• Olive Branch Petition

• Quartering Act

• Stamp Act

• Sugar Act

• Townsend Acts

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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

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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

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Antebellum period

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

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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

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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

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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

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Reconstruction

• 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

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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

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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

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First half 20th Century

Labor

• craft union

• American Federation of Labor (AFL)

• Eugene Debs (155-1926)

• industrial union

• industrial union

• Industrial Workers of the World (IWW)

• Samuel Gompers (1850-1924)

• term

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Progressive Era

• "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

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World War I era

WWI

Notes:

• Bolsheviks

• Espionage (1917) and Sedition (1918) Acts

• "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

• Trading with the Enemy Act of 1917 (TWEA)

• War bonds
• War Industries Board
• Zimmerman Note

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WWI aftermath

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

post-WWI & 1920s

• "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

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1920s

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

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Great Depression & FDR

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

FDR & New Deal

• 100 Days
• 20th Amendment
• 21st Amendment
• Brain Trust

• Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO, started 1938)

• fireside chats
• Harry Hopkins
• NRA
• "New Deal"
• Francis Perkins
• Social Security
• Supreme Court

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World War II

pre-WWII

• 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

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WWII

• "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

End of WWII

• 22nd amendment
• Nuremburg Trials
• United Nations

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Latter-half 20th Century

Notes:

• WWII was the last conflict entered by official Declaration of War by Congress
  • all other post-WWII "wars" have been without actual declaration of war
  • the U.S. has entered most of these wars through a combination of Executive Action and Congressional approval, either for a military action or funding thereof
• a key component of post-WWII US History for students to grapple with is the dramatic change to worldwide involvement and/or adventurism and the various justifications for them
  • students should understand American "hegemony" and reaons for American worlwdide dominance and the extent to which it may be considered economic, political cultural imperialism

Early Cold War Foreign Affairs

• 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

• 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

• Truman v. Gen. MacArthur
• Chinese Revolution

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Cold War diplomacy

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

Eisenhower period

• 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

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Domestic US Cold War

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

Kennedy

• 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

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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

• 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

• 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

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

post-Nixon

• Fall of Saigon
• Cambodian genocide
• Pol Pot

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post-WWII Domestic U.S

1950s culture

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

Civil Rights

• “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

• 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

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

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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

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