AP US HISTORY

ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS

What did “America” look like when Europeans got here?

What were the Natives like in Mesoamerica, Southwest, Mississippi Valley?

What were American Indian Cultures like when the Europeans got here?

If Columbus didn’t do squat, why is he still so important 1492

• Columbian Exchange

What did Spain want in America?

What did France want in America?

How did the British develop in the North, Mid Atlantic and the South?

Why did the South start to use slaves rather than indentured servants?

Were people in the colonies that came here for religious tolerance, religiously intolerant?

Did anyone revolt? Bacon, Glorious, Pueblo, Stono

Where did all the people come from?

Where did trade take place?

Who lived in the back country?

How did plantations develop?

What was the Great Awakening? Why was everyone asleep?

What did Colonists think of America before the Revolution?

How did the French and Indian War lead to the Revolution?

What angered the American Colonists enough to start a war?

What happened in the Revolution?

What did the first government look like?

How did we get a new Constitution?

What do Washington and Hamilton do when they start the new gov’t?

How do we get the Federalists and the Republicans?

What is Republican Motherhood? Is it a complement?

What is the significance of Jefferson’s presidency?

What started the expansion into the trans Appalachian west?

What made slavery grow in the US? Were there any free African American communities?

What were the consequences of the War of 1812

What do we mean by a national market economy?

How does industrialization change the US?

What was the response to new immigration in the US?

What social classes were in the South?

What is meant by Jacksonian Democracy and how did it change things?

How do we end up with the two party system for good?

Fighting during Jackson: Judicial Federalism, Bank War, Tariff of Abominations, States rights

What is Jacksonian Democracy and how does it change things?

Why did we need a Second Great Awakening?

What were some of the first social reforms?

What is the cult of domesticity?

Were the utopian communities utopian?

When did we get so good at literature?

How were Native Americans systematically moved West?

Why did people move West?

What was the progress of territorial expansion?

What were the steps in the Mexican American War?

What were the arguments for and against slavery?

What were the effects of the Compromise of 1850 and Kansas Neb Act?

How did we end up with the Republican Party?

What were the steps leading to secession?

What were the strategies of the two sides, mobilization?

How are the slaves freed?

What were the social, economic, and political effects of the war?

What were the differences between presidential and congressional reconstruction?

What was going on in the South during Reconstruction?

How did African Americans fit into Reconstruction?

What was the Compromise of 1877 and did Reconstruction work?

How does sharecropping and crop lien work?

What are Jim Crow Laws and Black Codes

How do Railroads lead the movement West?

Who went West?

How do the Native Americans get ripped off….again?

What were the Gospel of Wealth and Social Darwinism?

How were industries first organized?

What were the aims of the first labor unions?