#short-answer

Use the image above and your knowledge of United States history to answer parts A, B, and C.

a) Explain the point of view reflected in the image regarding ONE of the following: • Migration • Technology • American Indians b) Explain how ONE element of the image expresses the point of view you identified in Part A. c) Explain how the point of view you identified in Part A helped to shape ONE specific United States government action between 1845 and 1900.

Answer parts a, b, and c. 

“[W]e have in [United States history] a recurrence of the process of evolution in each western area reached inthe process of expansion. Thus American development has exhibited not merely advance along a single line, but a return to primitive conditions on a continually advancing frontier line, and a new development for that area. American social development has been continually beginning over again on the frontier. This perennial rebirth, this fluidity of American life, this expansion westward with its new opportunities, its continuous touch with the simplicity of primitive society, furnish the forces dominating American character. The true point of view in the history of this nation is not the Atlantic coast, it is the Great West. . . . In this advance, the frontier is the outer edge of the wave —the meeting point between savagery and civilization.” — Frederick Jackson Turner, historian, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History,” 1893 

“[T]he history of the West is a study of a place undergoing conquest and never fully escaping its consequences.... Deemphasize the frontier and its supposed end, conceive of the West as a place and not a process, and Western American history has a new look. First, the American West was an important meeting ground, the point where Indian America, Latin America, Anglo-America, Afro-America, and Asia intersected. . . . Second, the workings of conquest tied these diverse groups into the same story. Happily or not, minorities and majorities occupied a common ground. Conquest basically involved the drawing of lines on a map, the definition and allocation of ownership (personal, tribal, corporate, state, federal, and international), and the evolution of land from matter to property.” — Patricia Nelson Limerick, historian, The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West, 1987

Using the excerpts above, answer parts a, b, and c. 

a) Briefly explain ONE major difference between Turner’s and Limerick’s interpretations. b) Briefly explain how someone supporting Turner’s interpretation could use ONE piece of evidence from the period between 1865 and 1898 not directly mentioned in the excerpt. c) Briefly explain how someone supporting Limerick’s interpretation could use ONE piece of evidence from the period between 1865 and 1898 not directly mentioned in the excerpt.

"The First Vote -- Drawn by A.R. Waud" Courtesy of Library of Congress

Short-Answer Question

Use the image above to answer parts a, b, and c.

a) Briefly explain the point of view expressed through the image about ONE of the following. • Emancipation • Citizenship • Political participation b) Briefly explain ONE outcome of the Civil War that led to the historical change depicted in the image. c) Briefly explain ONE way in which the historical change you explained in part b was challenged in the period between 1866 and 1896.

Using your knowledge of United States history, answer parts a and b. 

a) Briefly explain why ONE of the following periods best represents the beginning of a democracy in the UnitedStates. Provide at least ONE piece of evidence from the period to support your explanation. • Rise of political parties in the 1790s • Development of voluntary organizations to promote social reforms between the 1820s and the 1840s • Emergence of the Democrats and the Whigs as political parties in the 1830s b) Briefly explain why ONE of the other options is not as persuasive as the one you chose.

“Was there in fact an American Revolution at the end of the eighteenth century? Bythis, I mean a revolution involving sudden, decisive, and irreversible changes in social institutions, groups, and traditions, in addition to the war of liberation from England that we are more likely to celebrate. 

“Clearly, this is a question that generates much controversy. There are scholars whose answer to the question is strongly negative. Indeed, ever since Edmund Burke’s time there have been students to declare that revolution in any precise sense of the word did not take place—that in substance the American Revolution was no more than a group of Englishmen fighting on distant shores for traditionally English political rights against a government that had sought to exploit and tyrannize. According to this argument, it was a war of restitution and liberation, not revolution; the outcome, one set of political governors replacing another. This view is widespread in our time and is found as often among ideological conservatives as among liberals and radicals.” — Robert Nisbet, “Was There an American Revolution?” 2012 

Answer a, b, and c.

a) Briefly summarize the main point made in this passage. b) Provide one piece of specific evidence and explain how it supports the view presented in the second paragraph. c) Provide a second piece of specific evidence and explain how it counters the view presented in the second paragraph.

Regarding “the taxation of the Colonies, [t]here had been the old view that duties were imposed for the regulation of trade. There had been the recent view that they might be employed to raise a revenue, but [Lord] North seem[ed] to regard them as methods of rewarding or punishing the Mother country's naughty children.” 

— Hugh Edward Egerton, A Short History of British Colonial Policy, 1908 

The passage quoted above presents three possible interpretations of British colonial policy in the pre-Revolutionary War period. 

a) For each interpretation, provide an example of British policy that illustrates that view and explain briefly the impact that it had on the colonies.  b) Of the three interpretations presented, explain briefly which was the most significant in bringing on the Revolutionary War. 

The Bloody Massacre, an engraving by Paul Revere following the Boston Massacre,1770.

Short-Answer Question

Answer a, b, and c.

a) Briefly explain how the actual events of the Boston Massacre differ from the portrayal of those events in Paul Revere’s engraving. b) The portrayal of the Boston Massacre in Revere’s engraving represented the views of one set of colonists. Briefly explain how those colonists saw relations between Britain and the colonies developing between 1765 and 1770. c) Other colonists, the Loyalists, saw events differently. Briefly explain how those individuals saw relations between Britain and the colonies developing between 1765 and 1770.