APUSH Practice Exam #1

Thirty-five MCQs pertaining to the time period 1491 to 1945

The APUSH practice exam appearing below consists of thirty-five multiple-choice questions.

All thirty-five questions pertain to the time period 1491 to 1945 (aka P1-P7), with questions 1–13 found in the 2020 CED and questions 14–35 found in the 2017 CED.

My students will take this practice exam in mid-March. They will have thirty-five minutes to complete.

Those who correctly answer 26 (75%) of the thirty-five questions within thirty-five minutes will earn at least a 4 on the May Exam, I’m predicting.

This should prove especially true for those students willing to take a very close look at the questions they answered incorrectly and at the questions they answered correctly by only way of a wild-guess.

The Practice Exam

Questions 1–4 refer to the following excerpt.

“May it . . . please your most excellent Majesty, that it may be declared . . . in this present parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same, That the said colonies and plantations in America have been, are, and of right ought to be, subordinate unto, and dependent upon the imperial crown and parliament of Great Britain; . . . and [they] of right ought to have, full power and authority to make laws and statutes of sufficient force and validity to bind the colonies and people of America, subjects of the crown of Great Britain, in all cases whatsoever.”

* The Declaratory Act, passed by the British Parliament in 1766

Q1:
Which of the following contributed most directly to the enactment of the law in the excerpt?

• A. The increasing divergence between colonial and British culture in the 1700s
• B. Debates over how Britain’s colonies should bear the cost of the Seven Years’ War (French and Indian War)
• C. The drafting of a declaration of independence for Britain’s colonies in North America
• D. Conflicts between colonists and British army leaders over recognizing Native American sovereignty

Q2:
The actions described in the excerpt most immediately led to

• A. Parliament strengthening its approach to generating new tax revenue in the North American colonies
• B. major and sometimes violent conflicts emerging between the various colonial regions
• C. a colonial convention to call for independence from Britain
• D. Britain delegating greater authority to colonial assemblies

Q3:
Which of the following was the American colonists’ immediate response to the attempts of the British Parliament to enforce the claims made in the excerpt?

• A. They acceded to Parliament’s authority to regulate colonial commerce.
• B. They denied the power of the British king over the colonies.
• C. They sought an alliance with France against Great Britain.
• D. They initiated boycotts of imported British goods.

Q4:
Debates over the claims of the British Parliament in the excerpt most directly contributed to which of the following later characteristics of the United States government?

• A. The reservation of some governmental powers for the states
• B. The enforcement of term limits for the president
• C. The establishment of taxation power in Congress.
• D. The practice of judicial review by the Supreme Court

Questions 5–7 refer to the following excerpt.

“The Erie Canal poured into New York City [wealth] far exceeding that which its early friends predicted. . . . In the city, merchants, bankers, warehousemen, [and] shippers . . . seized the opportunity to perfect and specialize their services, fostering round after round of business innovations that within a decade of the opening of the Erie Canal had made New York by far the best place in America to engage in commerce. . . .”

“Even before its economic benefits were realized fully, rival seaports with hopes of tapping interior trade began to imagine dreadful prospects of permanent eclipse. Whatever spirit of mutual good feeling and national welfare once greeted [internal improvements] now disappeared behind desperate efforts in cities . . . to create for themselves a westward connection.”

* John Lauritz Larson, historian, Internal Improvement: National Public Works and the Promise of Popular Government in the Early United States, 2015

Q5:
The excerpt best illustrates which of the following developments?

• A. The extension of commerce with Native Americans
• B. The expansion of access to markets
• C. The growth in the internal slave trade
• D. The increase in semi-subsistence agricultural production

Q6:
Which of the following developments in the early nineteenth century could best be used as evidence to support the argument in the second paragraph of the excerpt?

• A. The opposition of some political leaders to providing federal funds for public works
• B. The failure of some infrastructure projects to recover their costs
• C. The recruitment of immigrant laborers to work on new transportation projects
• D. The rise of a regional economy based on the production and export of cotton

Q7:
Which of the following later developments had an effect most similar to that described in the excerpt?

• A. The invention of the mechanical reaper in the 1830s
• B. The annexation of Texas in the 1840s
• C. The growth of political party competition in the 1850s
• D. The completion of the first transcontinental railroad in the 1860s

Questions 8–10 refer to the following excerpt.

“The normal condition of all the territory of the United States is that of freedom. That as our Republican fathers, when they had abolished slavery in all our national [western] territory, ordained that ‘no person should be deprived of life, liberty or property, without due process of law,’ it becomes our duty by legislation, whenever such legislation is necessary, to maintain this provision of the Constitution against all attempts to violate it; and we deny the authority of Congress, of a territorial legislature, or of any individuals, to give legal existence to slavery in any territory of the United States.”

* Republican Party platform, 1860

Q8:
Which of the following best serves as evidence for the claim that “our Republican fathers . . . had abolished slavery in all our national territory”?

• A. The ban on the trans-Atlantic slave trade implemented in 1808
• B. The relationship of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson to slavery
• C. The provisions of the Northwest Ordinance regarding slavery
• D. The agreement to count three-fifths of enslaved people for representation in Congress

Q9:
The ideas expressed in the excerpt were most directly influenced by the

• A. nativist movement
• B. free-soil movement
• C. Texas independence movement
• D. temperance movement

Q10:
Republicans asserted that political leaders could not “give legal existence to slavery in any territory of the United States” in order to express opposition against the

• A. idea of popular sovereignty exemplified by the Kansas-Nebraska Act
• B. removal of American Indians from their homelands
• C. recruitment of laborers for Northern factories
• D. application of California for statehood

Questions 11–13 refer to the following image from the 1940s.

Copyright © Boeing. All Rights Reserved

Q11:
The image most directly reflects which of the following developments during the early 1940s?

• A. The wartime repression of civil liberties
• B. The emergence of the United States as a world power
• C. The limited access to consumer goods during wartime
• D. The wartime mobilization of United States society

Q12:
The image was most likely intended to promote

• A. popular support for federal civil rights legislation to end discrimination
• B. the belief that women should have rights equal to those of men
• C. the movement of women into jobs traditionally held by men
• D. access to union membership for all workers regardless of race or gender

Q13:
Production activities like those depicted in the image most directly contributed to

• A. calls to limit arms and naval destroyers for the major world powers
• B. critical wartime provisioning for the Allies that led to victory
• C. efforts to rebuild Western Europe’s postwar economy
• D. concerns about the political influence of the military-industrial complex

Questions 14–16 refer to the graph below.

United States Census Bureau

Q14:
Which of the following was a significant cause of the trend from 1843 to 1854 shown in the graph?

• A. Active encouragement of migration by the United States government
• B. Economic and political difficulties in Germany and Ireland
• C. Incentives offered by United States companies looking to hire skilled migrants
• D. Adoption of free trade policies by European governments

Q15:
Which of the following was a direct effect of the trend in immigration after 1845 shown on the graph?

• A. An increase in sectional tensions
• B. A major economic downturn
• C. An upsurge in nativist sentiment
• D. The collapse of the second-party system

Q16:
The main trend shown in the graph was most directly associated with which of the following processes occurring in the United States at the time?

• A. The convergence of European and American cultures
• B. The emergence of an industrialized economy
• C. The displacement of American Indians from the Southeast
• D. The resurgence of evangelical Protestantism

Questions 17–19 refer to the exerpt below.

“The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world. “He has never permitted her to exercise her inalienable right to the elective franchise. “He has compelled her to submit to laws, in the formation of which she had no voice. . . . “Having deprived her of this first right of a citizen, the elective franchise, thereby leaving her without representation in the halls of legislation, he has oppressed her on all sides. . . . “He has taken from her all right in property, even to the wages she earns.”

* Seneca Falls Convention, Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions, 1848

Q17:
The ideas expressed in the excerpt most directly challenged the prevailing ideal in the early nineteenth century that

• A. women should enjoy full and equal rights with men
• B. women should focus on the home and the domestic sphere
• C. the ability of women to earn wages was a positive development
• D. women should educate their children about the rights and responsibilities of citizenship

Q18:
Which of the following developments in the second half of the nineteenth century best represented the continuation of the ideas expressed in the declaration?

• A. The formation of voluntary organizations and reform efforts
• B. Women’s support for the Social Gospel
• C. Support for outlawing the production and sale of alcohol
• D. A movement focused on religious revivals and personal conversion

Q19:
Many supporters of the declaration in 1848 broke ranks with which of the following groups by the 1870s?

• A. Social Darwinists
• B. Supporters of Southern secession and states’ rights
• C. Supporters of the Fifteenth Amendment
• D. Isolationists

Questions 20 and 21 refer to the excerpt below.

“Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of Independence, 1776

Q20:
The excerpt was written in response to the

• A. British government’s attempt to assert greater control over the North American colonies
• B. British government’s failure to protect colonists from attacks by American Indians
• C. colonial governments’ failures to implement mercantilist policies
• D. colonial governments’ attempts to extend political rights to new groups

Q21:
The ideas about government expressed in the excerpt are most consistent with which of the following?

• A. The concept of hereditary rights and privileges
• B. The belief in Manifest Destiny
• C. The principle of religious freedom
• D. The ideas of the Enlightenment

Questions 22 and 23 refer to the excerpt below.

“The system of quotas . . . was the first major pillar of the Immigration Act of 1924. The second provided for the exclusion of persons ineligible to citizenship. . . . Ineligibility to citizenship and exclusion applied to the peoples of all the nations of East and South Asia. Nearly all Asians had already been excluded from immigration. . . . The exclusion of persons ineligible to citizenship in 1924 . . . completed Asiatic exclusion. . . . Moreover, it codified the principle of racial exclusion into the main body of American immigration and naturalization law.”

Mae M. Ngai, historian, Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America, 2004

Q22:
The Immigration Act of 1924 most directly reflected

• A. cultural tensions between scientific modernism and religious fundamentalism in the 1920s
• B. conflicts arising from the migration of African Americans to urban centers in the North
• C. the emergence of an increasingly national culture in the 1920s shaped by art, cinema, and mass media
• D. Social tensions emerging from the First World War

Q23:
Which of the following evidence would best support Ngai’s argument in the excerpt?

• A. Census data showing the changing percentages of the foreign-born population from 1920 to 1930
• B. Narratives describing the challenges of immigrant family life in the 1920s
• C. Diplomatic correspondence reflecting the increasing isolationism of United States foreign policy in the 1920s and 1930s
• D. Census data revealing the Great Migration of African Americans to cities in the North and West in the 1920s

Questions 24–26 refer to the late-nineteenth-century photograph below by journalist Jacob Riis.

© Bettmann/CORBIS

Q24:
Conditions like those shown in the image contributed most directly to which of the following?

• A. The passage of laws restricting immigration to the United State
• B. An increase in Progressive reform activity
• C. A decline in efforts to Americanize immigrants
• D. The weakening of labor unions such as the American Federation of Labor

Q25:
The conditions shown in the image depict which of the following trends in the late nineteenth century?

• A. The growing gap between wealthy people and people living in poverty
• B. The rise of the settlement house and Populist movements
• C. The increased corruption in urban politics
• D. The migration of African Americans to the North

Q26:
Advocates for individuals such as those shown in the image would have most likely agreed with which of the following perspectives?

• A. The Supreme Court’s decision in Plessy v. Ferguson was justified.
• B. Capitalism, free of government regulation, would improve social conditions.
• C. Both wealth and poverty are the products of natural selection.
• D. Government should act to eliminate the worst abuses of industrial society

Questions 27 and 28 refer to the excerpt below.

“Excepting only Yosemite, Hetch Hetchy is the most attractive and wonderful valley within the bounds of the great Yosemite National Park and the best of all the camp grounds. People are now flocking to it in ever-increasing numbers for health and recreation of body and mind. Though the walls are less sublime in height than those of Yosemite, its groves, gardens, and broad, spacious meadows are more beautiful and picturesque. . . . Last year in October I visited the valley with Mr. William Keith, the artist. He wandered about from view to view, enchanted, made thirty-eight sketches, and enthusiastically declared that in varied picturesque beauty Hetch Hetchy greatly surpassed Yosemite. It is one of God’s best gifts, and ought to be faithfully guarded.”

John Muir, Century Magazine, 1909

Q27:
Which of the following aspects of Muir’s description expresses a major change in Americans’ views of the natural environment?

• A. The idea that wilderness areas are worthy subjects for artistic works
• B. The idea that wilderness areas serve as evidence of divine creation
• C. The idea that government should preserve wilderness areas in a natural state
• D. The idea that mountainous scenery is more picturesque and beautiful than flat terrain

Q28:
Muir’s ideas are most directly a reaction to the

• A. increasing usage and exploitation of western landscapes
• B. increase in urban populations, including immigrant workers attracted by a growing industrial economy
• C. westward migration of groups seeking religious refuge
• D. opening of a new frontier in recently annexed territory

Questions 29–32 refer to the excerpt below.

“[H]istory and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican government. . . . Excessive partiality for one foreign nation and excessive dislike of another cause those whom they actuate to see danger only on one side and serve to veil and even second the arts of influence on the other. . . . The great rule of conduct for us, in regard to foreign nations, is in extending our commercial relations to have with them as little political connection as possible. So far as we have already formed engagements, let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith. Here let us stop. Europe has a set of primary interests which to us have none, or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns.”

George Washington, Farewell Address, 1796

Q29:
The concerns expressed by Washington were a response to the

• A. debate over the proper treatment of American Indian tribes in the trans-Appalachian West
• B. dispute over the possibility of annexing Canada from Great Britain
• C. controversy regarding support for the revolutionary government of France
• D. conflict with Great Britain over the treatment of American Loyalists

Q30:
The ideas expressed in Washington’s address most strongly influenced which United States foreign policy decision in the twentieth century?

• A. The establishment of the United Nations in 1945
• B. The formation of the NATO alliance between the United States and Western Europe in 1949
• C. The refusal to join the League of Nations in 1919
• D. The oil embargo against Japan in 1941

Q31:
Which of the following groups most strongly opposed Washington’s point of view in the address?

• A. Democratic-Republicans
• B. New England merchants
• C. Southern plantation owners
• D. Federalists

Q32:
Most historians would argue that the recommendations of Washington’s address ceased to have a significant influence on United States foreign policy as a result of

• A. westward expansion in the nineteenth century
• B. support for Cuban revolutionaries in the Spanish-American War
• C. Woodrow Wilson’s support for international democratic principles during the First World War
• D. involvement in the Second World War

Questions 33–35 refer to the excerpt below.

“The colonizers brought along plants and animals new to the Americas, some by design and others by accident. Determined to farm in a European manner, the colonists introduced their domesticated livestock—honeybees, pigs, horses, mules, sheep, and cattle—and their domesticated plants, including wheat, barley, rye, oats, grasses, and grapevines. But the colonists also inadvertently carried pathogens, weeds, and rats. . . . In sum, the remaking of the Americas was a team effort by a set of interdependent species led and partially managed (but never fully controlled) by European people.”

Alan Taylor, historian, American Colonies, 2001

Q33:
The export of New World crops to the Old World transformed European society mostly by

• A. improving diets and thereby stimulating population growth
• B. encouraging enclosure of open lands and pushing workers off of farms
• C. promoting greater exploration of the interior of the American continents
• D. fostering conflicts among major powers over access to new food supplies

Q34:
The patterns described in the excerpt most directly foreshadowed which of the following developments?

• A. The spread of maize cultivation northward from present-day Mexico into the American Southwest
• B. The population decline in Native American societies
• C. The gradual shift of European economies from feudalism to capitalism
• D. The emergence of racially mixed populations in the Americas

Q35:
The trends described by Taylor most directly illustrate which of the following major historical developments in the Atlantic world?

• A. The growth of mercantile empires that stretched across the Atlantic
• B. The increasing 46nglicization of the English colonies
• C. The phenomenon known as the Columbian Exchange
• D. The rise of the trans-Atlantic slave trade

The Answer Key

1. B
2. A
3. D
4. C
5. B
6. D
7. D
8. C
9. B
10. A
11. D
12. C
13. B
14. B
15. C
16. B
17. B
18. A
19. C
20. A
21. D
22. D
23. A
24. B
25. A
26. D
27. C
28. A
29. C
30. C
31. A
32. D
33. A
34. B
35. C

Sidenote #1

Click here to view APUSH Practice Exam #2. This practice exam consists of another thirty-five MCQs pertaining to the time period 1491 to 1945, with questions 1–32 found in the 2020 CED and questions 33–35 found in the 2014 CED. (work in progress — to post later in March)

Sidenote #2

In the past three years, my students most often missed the following:

Q4
Debates over the claims of the British Parliament in the excerpt most directly contributed to which of the following later characteristics of the United States government?

• A. The reservation of some governmental powers for the states
• B. The enforcement of term limits for the president
• C. The establishment of taxation power in Congress.
• D. The practice of judicial review by the Supreme Court

Q6:
Which of the following developments in the early nineteenth century could best be used as evidence to support the argument in the second paragraph of the excerpt?

• A. The opposition of some political leaders to providing federal funds for public works
• B. The failure of some infrastructure projects to recover their costs
• C. The recruitment of immigrant laborers to work on new transportation projects
• D. The rise of a regional economy based on the production and export of cotton

Q8
Which of the following best serves as evidence for the claim that “our Republican fathers . . . had abolished slavery in all our national territory”?

• A. The ban on the trans-Atlantic slave trade implemented in 1808
• B. The relationship of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson to slavery
• C. The provisions of the Northwest Ordinance regarding slavery
• D. The agreement to count three-fifths of enslaved people for representation in Congress

Q22
The Immigration Act of 1924 most directly reflected

• A. cultural tensions between scientific modernism and religious fundamentalism in the 1920s
• B. conflicts arising from the migration of African Americans to urban centers in the North
• C. the emergence of an increasingly national culture in the 1920s shaped by art, cinema, and mass media
• D. Social tensions emerging from the First World War

Q23
Which of the following evidence would best support Ngai’s argument in the excerpt?

• A. Census data showing the changing percentages of the foreign-born population from 1920 to 1930
• B. Narratives describing the challenges of immigrant family life in the 1920s
• C. Diplomatic correspondence reflecting the increasing isolationism of United States foreign policy in the 1920s and 1930s
• D. Census data revealing the Great Migration of African Americans to cities in the North and West in the 1920s

Sidenote #3

This blog post is only being shared with the students I teach and tutor, the teachers belonging to the APUSH Online Teacher Community (OTC), and the teachers who have requested access to my APUSH P1-P9 slideshows, tests, word banks, and SAQs.