Topic Quiz: United States History

Question 1 of 10 · The Cold War

Hot spot
The Korean War (1950–1953)
Schematic map of the Korean War, 1950–1953 (not to scale). The Korean peninsula extends south from China; the Yalu River forms the border between China and North Korea at the top of the map. A dashed line across the middle of the peninsula marks the 38th parallel, with North Korea and its capital Pyongyang above it and South Korea, Seoul and the port of Inchon (on the west coast near Seoul) below it. A shaded area in the far southeast corner around the port of Pusan marks the Pusan Perimeter, held by UN and South Korean forces in August and September 1950. A red arrow from the Yellow Sea to Inchon shows the Inchon landing of September 1950. The Yellow Sea is to the west, the Sea of Japan (East Sea) to the east, and Japan to the southeast. The Korean War, 1950–1953 (schematic map) CHINA Yalu River 38th parallel NORTH KOREA SOUTH KOREA Pyongyang Seoul Inchon Pusan Inchon landing, Sept. 1950 Yellow Sea Sea of Japan (East Sea) JAPAN Pusan Perimeter, Aug.–Sept. 1950

(1) At the end of World War II, Korea was divided at the 38th parallel (a line of latitude). The Soviet Union backed a communist government in the north, and the United States backed a non-communist government in the south.

(2) On June 25, 1950, North Korea's army invaded South Korea. The United Nations Security Council called on member nations to help South Korea. The Soviet Union, which could have vetoed this action, was boycotting the Security Council at the time, so its delegate was not there to vote. President Harry S. Truman sent U.S. forces, which fought under a UN command led by General Douglas MacArthur. By August, North Korean troops had pushed UN and South Korean forces into a small area around the port of Pusan in the southeast.

(3) In September 1950, MacArthur landed troops by sea at Inchon, near Seoul, far behind North Korean lines. UN forces then pushed north across the 38th parallel toward the Yalu River, the border with China. Communist China warned that it would not accept enemy troops on its border. In late 1950, hundreds of thousands of Chinese soldiers entered the war and drove UN forces back to the south.

(4) The fighting then settled into a bloody stalemate near the 38th parallel. MacArthur publicly called for attacking China itself, but Truman wanted to keep the war limited and avoid a wider war with China and the Soviet Union. In April 1951, Truman removed MacArthur from command. Truman did not use atomic weapons in Korea.

(5) An armistice (cease-fire) signed in July 1953 ended the fighting. The border stayed near the 38th parallel, with a demilitarized zone between the two Koreas. No peace treaty was ever signed. About 36,000 Americans died in the war.

Use the map and text in "The Korean War (1950–1953)."

Click the area where UN and South Korean forces were trapped in August 1950.

Click on the figure to mark your answer (or focus it and use the arrow keys).

Schematic map of the Korean War, 1950–1953 (not to scale). The Korean peninsula extends south from China; the Yalu River forms the border between China and North Korea at the top of the map. A dashed line across the middle of the peninsula marks the 38th parallel, with North Korea and its capital Pyongyang above it and South Korea, Seoul and the port of Inchon (on the west coast near Seoul) below it. A shaded area in the far southeast corner around the port of Pusan marks the Pusan Perimeter, held by UN and South Korean forces in August and September 1950. A red arrow from the Yellow Sea to Inchon shows the Inchon landing of September 1950. The Yellow Sea is to the west, the Sea of Japan (East Sea) to the east, and Japan to the southeast. The Korean War, 1950–1953 (schematic map) CHINA Yalu River 38th parallel NORTH KOREA SOUTH KOREA Pyongyang Seoul Inchon Pusan Inchon landing, Sept. 1950 Yellow Sea Sea of Japan (East Sea) JAPAN Pusan Perimeter, Aug.–Sept. 1950
Hint

Paragraph 2 names a port. Find it on the map and look at the legend.

Question 2 of 10 · American foreign policy since 9/11

New Challenges After the Wars

(1) Under a 2008 agreement between the U.S. and Iraqi governments, the last U.S. troops left Iraq in December 2011. In June 2014, a terrorist group called the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), which had grown out of al Qaeda in Iraq, captured Mosul, Iraq's second-largest city, along with large areas of Syria.

(2) In August 2014, the United States began airstrikes against ISIS in Iraq, and in September it expanded them to Syria. The United States led an international coalition and sent military advisers to help Iraqi and Kurdish forces, rather than large numbers of U.S. ground combat troops. By March 2019, ISIS had lost the last territory it controlled. In October 2019, a U.S. special operations raid in Syria killed the ISIS leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

(3) Diplomacy also played a role. In July 2015, the United States, five other world powers and Iran reached the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), an agreement that limited Iran's nuclear program in exchange for relief from economic sanctions. In May 2018, President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the agreement, arguing that it did not do enough to stop Iran's nuclear and missile programs. Supporters of the agreement argued that it was working.

(4) In February 2020, the United States and the Taliban signed an agreement in Doha, Qatar, that set a timeline for the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan.

Which action described in "New Challenges After the Wars" is an example of the United States using diplomacy rather than military force?

Answer choices
Hint

Diplomacy means negotiating with other governments. Which choice was negotiated?

Question 3 of 10 · Revolutionary and early republic periods

A Growing Union, 1790–1830

Source 1 — Chart

Bar chart of the number of states in the Union at each census year: 1790, 13 states; 1800, 16 states; 1810, 17 states; 1820, 23 states; 1830, 24 states. Number of States in the Union, 1790–1830 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 Number of states Census year 13 1790 16 1800 17 1810 23 1820 24 1830

Source 2 — Background

(1) After independence, Americans moved west quickly. New states joined the Union on equal terms with the original thirteen, following rules first set out in the Northwest Ordinance of 1787.

(2) The Louisiana Purchase (1803) doubled the size of the nation, but before 1820 only one state, Louisiana (1812), was formed from it.

(3) During the War of 1812, many Native nations in the Great Lakes region fought alongside Britain, hoping to stop American settlement. The Shawnee leader Tecumseh was killed in battle in 1813. After the war ended in 1815, Britain stopped supporting Native resistance south of the Great Lakes, and settlers poured into the Ohio and Mississippi valleys. In the South, cotton planting spread west rapidly, and enslaved people were forced to move with it.

(4) States admitted from 1812 to 1821: Louisiana (1812, slave), Indiana (1816, free), Mississippi (1817, slave), Illinois (1818, free), Alabama (1819, slave), Maine (1820, free), and Missouri (1821, slave).

(5) By the end of 1819 the Union had 11 free states and 11 slave states. When Missouri asked to join as a slave state, Congress argued bitterly, because its admission would upset this balance in the Senate. The Missouri Compromise (1820) admitted Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state, and it banned slavery in the rest of the Louisiana Purchase north of latitude 36°30′.

Use Source 1. How many states joined the Union between the 1800 census and the 1810 census?

Answer choices
Hint

Read the value at the top of the 1800 bar and the 1810 bar, then subtract.

Question 4 of 10 · Civil War and Reconstruction

South Carolina and Lincoln on the Eve of War (1860–1861)

Source 1 — South Carolina, "Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union," adopted December 24, 1860

South Carolina seceded on December 20, 1860, about six weeks after Abraham Lincoln won the presidential election. Four days later its convention adopted this explanation.

(1) … an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations …

(2) … they have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery; they have permitted open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property of the citizens of other States. …

(3) A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared that "Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free," and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction.

Word help: eloign (an old legal word) means to carry away or remove.

Source 2 — Abraham Lincoln, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1861

By the time Lincoln took office, seven states had seceded.

(4) … I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so. …

(5) … I hold that in contemplation of universal law and of the Constitution the Union of these States is perpetual. …

(6) In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The Government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the Government, while I shall have the most solemn one to "preserve, protect, and defend it."

(7) I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. …

According to paragraph 3 of Source 1, why did South Carolina's leaders see Lincoln's election as a threat?

Answer choices
Hint

Paragraph 3 gives two facts about how Lincoln was elected and what he had said. Look for both.

Question 5 of 10 · Civil rights

Brown II and Little Rock (1955–1957)

In Brown v. Board of Education (May 17, 1954), the Supreme Court ruled that segregated public schools violated the Fourteenth Amendment. But the Court did not say how or when schools had to change. After hearing more arguments, it issued a second decision, often called Brown II*, on May 31, 1955. Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote both opinions.*

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1955)

(1) School authorities have the primary responsibility for elucidating, assessing, and solving these problems; courts will have to consider whether the action of school authorities constitutes good faith implementation of the governing constitutional principles. …

(2) … But it should go without saying that the vitality of these constitutional principles cannot be allowed to yield simply because of disagreement with them. …

(3) The judgments below, except that in the Delaware case, are accordingly reversed and the cases are remanded to the District Courts to take such proceedings and enter such orders and decrees consistent with this opinion as are necessary and proper to admit to public schools on a racially nondiscriminatory basis with all deliberate speed the parties to these cases.

Word help: remanded = sent back to a lower court; vitality = strength or force.

What happened next

(4) Many Southern politicians promised "massive resistance" to school integration. In September 1957, Arkansas governor Orval Faubus used the state's National Guard to keep nine Black students from entering Central High School in Little Rock. President Dwight D. Eisenhower then sent soldiers of the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division and placed the Arkansas National Guard under federal command. The soldiers escorted the students, who became known as the Little Rock Nine, into the school.

(5) Progress remained slow. Ten years after the first Brown decision, most Black students in the South still attended schools that were all Black.

How does Brown II (1955) relate to the first Brown v. Board of Education decision (1954)?

Answer choices
Hint

The headnote tells what the 1954 decision did not say. What does paragraph 3 of the 1955 decision add?

Question 6 of 10 · World War I and World War II

Timeline: From World War I to World War II
Timeline from 1914 to 1945 with ten events in order: 1914: World War I begins in Europe; 1917: U.S. enters World War I; 1919: Treaty of Versailles signed; 1929: Stock market crash; 1933: New Deal begins; 1939: Germany invades Poland; Mar. 1941: Lend-Lease Act passed; Dec. 1941: Attack on Pearl Harbor; 1944: D-Day landings in France; 1945: Germany, then Japan, surrender. From World War I to World War II, 1914–1945 1914 World War I begins in Europe 1917 U.S. enters World War I 1919 Treaty of Versailles signed 1929 Stock market crash 1933 New Deal begins 1939 Germany invades Poland Mar. 1941 Lend-Lease Act passed Dec. 1941 Attack on Pearl Harbor 1944 D-Day landings in France 1945 Germany, then Japan, surrender

(1) The timeline shows ten events between the start of World War I in 1914 and the end of World War II in 1945.

Use the timeline "From World War I to World War II, 1914–1945."

Which pair of events from the timeline shows a correct cause-and-effect relationship?

Answer choices
Hint

A cause must come before its effect. Check the order of each pair on the timeline first.

Question 7 of 10 · Key historical documents

Select all
More Protections in the Bill of Rights (1791)

These amendments are part of the Bill of Rights, ratified in 1791. Spelling follows the original.

(1) Amendment V. … nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

(2) Amendment VI. In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.

(3) Amendment VIII. Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

(4) Amendment X. The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

(5) Editor's note: Jeopardy means danger; being "twice put in jeopardy" (double jeopardy) means being tried a second time for the same crime after a verdict. Bail is money paid so an accused person can leave jail while waiting for trial. Counsel means a lawyer. Delegated means handed over.

According to Amendment VI (paragraph 2), which rights does an accused person have in a criminal case? Select all that apply.

Select all that apply.

Answer choices
Hint

Only paragraph 2 counts. Some options are real rights found in other paragraphs of the excerpt.

Question 8 of 10 · Key historical documents

Amendments That Expanded Freedom (1865–1920)

(1) Thirteenth Amendment, Section 1 (ratified 1865). Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

(2) Fifteenth Amendment, Section 1 (ratified 1870). The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude …

(3) Nineteenth Amendment (ratified 1920). The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.

(4) Editor's note: Involuntary servitude means forced labor. Abridged means cut back or limited. After Reconstruction ended in 1877, many Southern states adopted poll taxes (fees to vote), literacy tests, and other rules. These rules did not mention race, but officials used them to keep most Black citizens from voting. The Twenty-fourth Amendment (1964) banned poll taxes in federal elections, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 suspended literacy tests in areas with a history of discrimination.

Which conclusion about the Thirteenth Amendment is best supported by its exact wording in paragraph 1?

Answer choices
Hint

Look for a phrase that begins with "except." Exceptions limit what a law covers.

Question 9 of 10 · European settlement and population of the Americas

The Chinese Exclusion Act (1882)

Thousands of Chinese immigrants came to California beginning with the Gold Rush of 1849, and many later helped build the Central Pacific Railroad. During a hard economic depression in the 1870s, some white workers and politicians blamed Chinese laborers for low wages and lost jobs. In 1882, Congress passed the following law, and President Chester A. Arthur signed it on May 6.

(1) Whereas in the opinion of the Government of the United States the coming of Chinese laborers to this country endangers the good order of certain localities within the territory thereof: Therefore,

(2) Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That from and after the expiration of ninety days next after the passage of this act, and until the expiration of ten years next after the passage of this act, the coming of Chinese laborers to the United States be, and the same is hereby, suspended …

(3) Section 14: That hereafter no State court or court of the United States shall admit Chinese to citizenship …

The ban was extended in 1892 and made permanent in 1902. Congress repealed it in 1943, when China was a U.S. ally in World War II.

Which statement best evaluates the reason given in paragraph 1 of the Chinese Exclusion Act?

Answer choices
Hint

Look closely at the first words of paragraph 1. Then ask: does the excerpt give any proof?

Question 10 of 10 · Revolutionary and early republic periods

Two Presidents on Unity (1796 and 1801)

Source 1 — George Washington, Farewell Address, 1796

(1) Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party generally. …

(2) It serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. …

(3) Observe good faith and justice towards all nations; cultivate peace and harmony with all. …

Source 2 — Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1801

(4) … Let us, then, fellow-citizens, unite with one heart and one mind. … But every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle. We have called by different names brethren of the same principle. We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists. …

(5) … peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none; …

Note: In the 1790s two political parties formed: the Federalists, led by Alexander Hamilton and John Adams, and the Democratic-Republicans (often called Republicans), led by Jefferson and James Madison. "Party" means a political party. "Public councils" are lawmaking bodies, and "enfeeble" means weaken. "Brethren" means brothers. The election of 1800 was bitter, and Jefferson defeated Adams. It was the first time power in the national government passed peacefully from one party to another.

How does Jefferson's statement in paragraph 5 compare with Washington's advice in paragraph 3?

Answer choices
Hint

Both men mention "all nations." Then look at what Jefferson adds at the end of his phrase.