Social Studies Mixed Practice Test 4

(1) Labels such as monarchy or democracy tell us who rules. A second question is where power sits: how is it divided between the national government and regional governments such as states or provinces?

(2) In a unitary system, the central government holds the main power. It creates regional and local governments, decides what they may do, and can change or even abolish them. France and Japan are unitary states. Their regions run schools and roads, but only because the national government allows it.

(3) In a federal system, a constitution divides power between the national government and state governments. Each level has powers of its own, and neither can abolish the other. The United States, Canada, and Germany are federal systems.

(4) In a confederal system, or confederation, independent states join a loose alliance. The central government is weak and has only the powers the member states lend it. Under the Articles of Confederation (1781–1789), the U.S. Congress could not collect taxes directly; it could only ask the states for money. There was no national executive to enforce the laws and no national court system.

(5) These labels combine with the others. The United States is a federal representative democracy. Japan is a unitary constitutional monarchy.

James Madison, The Federalist No. 45 (1788). Some New Yorkers feared that the proposed national government would swallow up the states. Madison answered them in this essay.

(1) "The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite."

(2) "The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce; with which last the power of taxation will, for the most part, be connected."

(3) "The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State."

Word help: delegated = given, assigned; indefinite = not limited to a list; the former = the first one named (here, the federal powers); external objects = matters outside the country; commerce = trade; internal order = peace and good order inside the state.

Article I, Section 7 of the U.S. Constitution (1787)

(1) "Every Bill which shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate, shall, before it become a Law, be presented to the President of the United States; If he approve he shall sign it, but if not he shall return it, with his Objections to that House in which it shall have originated, who shall enter the Objections at large on their Journal, and proceed to reconsider it."

(2) "If after such Reconsideration two thirds of that House shall agree to pass the Bill, it shall be sent, together with the Objections, to the other House, by which it shall likewise be reconsidered, and if approved by two thirds of that House, it shall become a Law." …

(3) "If any Bill shall not be returned by the President within ten Days (Sundays excepted) after it shall have been presented to him, the Same shall be a Law, in like Manner as if he had signed it, unless the Congress by their Adjournment prevent its Return, in which Case it shall not be a Law."

Word help: originated = started; objections = reasons for disapproving; journal = official written record; adjournment = ending a session or meeting.

The Constitution sets the basic rules for federal elections and offices. Some rules come from the original document of 1787; others were added by amendments.

(1) Article I, Section 2 (House of Representatives): "No Person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained to the Age of twenty five Years, and been seven Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State in which he shall be chosen."

(2) Article I, Section 4 (running elections): "The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators." ("Chusing" is an old spelling of "choosing.")

(3) Article II, Section 1 (President): "No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States."

(4) Seventeenth Amendment (1913): "The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, elected by the people thereof, for six years; and each Senator shall have one vote."

(5) Twentieth Amendment, Section 1 (1933): "The terms of the President and Vice President shall end at noon on the 20th day of January, and the terms of Senators and Representatives at noon on the 3d day of January, of the years in which such terms would have ended if this article had not been ratified; and the terms of their successors shall then begin."

(6) Twenty-second Amendment, Section 1 (1951): "No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once."

(1) Around 1450, pepper, cloves, nutmeg and cinnamon from India and the Spice Islands reached Europe by a long chain of traders. The map shows this older route as Route A. Asian and Arab merchants carried spices across the Indian Ocean and up the Red Sea. In the Egyptian port of Alexandria, merchants from Venice bought the spices and shipped them across the Mediterranean Sea. Venice then sold them to buyers all over Europe. Each trader along the way added a profit to the price.

(2) Portugal looked for a way around this chain. In 1497 Vasco da Gama's fleet sailed from Lisbon, around the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of Africa, and across the Indian Ocean, reaching Calicut, India, in 1498. This is Route B. Portuguese ships could now load pepper in India and carry it straight home.

(3) The new route was long and dangerous. Voyages around Africa took many months, and storms and disease killed many sailors. Even so, Lisbon became a major spice market in the early 1500s, and for a time Venice's spice trade suffered.

(1) Egypt gets almost no rain. Most of the country is desert. Yet one of the world's longest-lasting civilizations grew up there, because of a single river. The Nile flows north from the highlands of East Africa to the Mediterranean Sea.

(2) Every summer, heavy rains far to the south made the Nile rise and spill over its banks. When the water went down in the fall, it left behind a layer of dark, rich mud called silt. Egyptians called their farmland Kemet, "the black land," after this soil. They called the desert Deshret, "the red land."

(3) Farmers planted wheat and barley in the wet silt as soon as the flood went down. They dug canals and basins to hold the water and carry it to their fields. To plan the work, Egyptians created a calendar of 365 days. It divided the year into three seasons named for the river: the flood, the growing time, and the harvest.

(4) The land around the river also protected Egypt. Wide deserts lay to the east and west, and few armies could cross them. Inside these natural walls, the Nile served as a highway. Boats floated north with the current and sailed south, because the wind usually blows from the north.

(5) Good harvests produced more food than farmers needed. This surplus fed people who did not farm, such as priests, scribes who kept records, and the thousands of workers who built the pyramids for the pharaohs.

The Partition of India

(1) For nearly 200 years, Britain ruled the Indian subcontinent. Hindus and Muslims, the two largest religious groups, had lived side by side in many regions for centuries. As independence approached after World War II, the Muslim League, led by Muhammad Ali Jinnah, demanded a separate state for Muslims. Its leaders feared that Muslims would be a powerless minority in a country with a Hindu majority.

(2) In 1947, Britain divided the colony into two independent countries: India, with a Hindu majority, and Pakistan, with a Muslim majority. Pakistan was made of two separate pieces of land, West Pakistan and East Pakistan, about 1,000 miles apart on opposite sides of India. A British lawyer, Cyril Radcliffe, who had never been to India before, was given about five weeks to draw the new borders.

(3) The final borders were announced only after independence. Millions of people suddenly found themselves on the "wrong" side. In one of the largest migrations in history, more than 10 million people crossed the new borders — Hindus and Sikhs moving to India, Muslims moving to Pakistan. Violence broke out, and hundreds of thousands of people were killed.

(4) The border region of Kashmir, claimed by both countries, has led to wars and tension ever since. In 1971, East Pakistan broke away and became the independent country of Bangladesh.

A Nation Without a State

(5) The Kurds are an ethnic group of tens of millions of people with their own language and culture. Most live in a mountainous region where the borders of Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Syria meet — an area many Kurds call Kurdistan.

(6) After World War I, the victorious Allies divided the lands of the defeated Ottoman Empire. The Treaty of Sèvres (1920) included a plan that could have led to a Kurdish state. But Turkish nationalists rejected that treaty, and the Treaty of Lausanne (1923), which replaced it, made no provision for a Kurdish state. Kurds became minorities in several countries, and many have struggled for self-rule ever since. Today, Kurds in Iraq have their own regional government, but there is no independent Kurdish country.

The first ten amendments to the Constitution, called the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791.

(1) Amendment I. Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

(2) Amendment IV. The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Horace Greeley, a New York newspaper editor, publicly criticized President Lincoln for moving too slowly against slavery. Lincoln answered in a public letter dated August 22, 1862.

(1) My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union …

(2) I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men every where could be free.

(3) Editor's note: One month later, on September 22, 1862, Lincoln issued a preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. It warned that enslaved people in areas still in rebellion on January 1, 1863, would be declared free.

In May 1830, Congress passed the Indian Removal Act, which let the president trade land west of the Mississippi River for Native lands in the East. In December 1830, President Andrew Jackson defended the policy in his annual message to Congress. (His words reflect the prejudices of his time.) Over the next decade, tens of thousands of Cherokee, Muscogee (Creek), Choctaw, Chickasaw and Seminole people were forced west; thousands died on the journeys known as the Trail of Tears.

(1) It gives me pleasure to announce to Congress that the benevolent policy of the Government, steadily pursued for nearly thirty years, in relation to the removal of the Indians beyond the white settlements is approaching to a happy consummation. …

(2) It will place a dense and civilized population in large tracts of country now occupied by a few savage hunters. … It will separate the Indians from immediate contact with settlements of whites; free them from the power of the States; enable them to pursue happiness in their own way and under their own rude institutions …

In August 1961, communist East Germany built the Berlin Wall to stop its citizens from escaping to West Berlin. Two U.S. presidents later gave famous speeches in West Berlin, close to the wall.

Source A — President John F. Kennedy, June 26, 1963

(1) There are some who say that communism is the wave of the future. Let them come to Berlin. …

(2) Freedom has many difficulties and democracy is not perfect, but we have never had to put a wall up to keep our people in, to prevent them from leaving us.

Source B — President Ronald Reagan, June 12, 1987

By 1987, the Soviet leader, General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev, had begun reforms that loosened some government controls in the Soviet Union. Reagan spoke in front of the Brandenburg Gate, a historic gateway that stood just behind the wall on the East German side.

(3) General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!

The wall was opened on November 9, 1989, and Germany was reunited in 1990.