AP US History study guide

Native American societies before contact, European exploration, and the first encounters between worlds.

What you need to know

American peoples before 1492

By 1491, the Americas were home to millions of people in diverse societies. The Aztec and Inca empires were large, organized, and urban; in North America, the Pueblo peoples built settled agricultural villages, the Iroquois formed confederacies, and Great Plains groups followed bison.

Agriculture shaped life everywhere: corn (maize) was a staple in Mesoamerica and much of North America. Settlement patterns followed resources and climate, from the cliff dwellings of the Southwest to the fishing and trading villages of the Northeast coast.

European motives and the Columbian Exchange

Europeans came for God, glory, and gold. Spain sponsored Columbus in 1492 seeking a western route to Asia; the result was a permanent link between the hemispheres. Spain then conquered the Aztec and Inca empires with the aid of disease, alliances, and steel, extracting silver and establishing an empire.

The Columbian Exchange moved crops, animals, people, and disease between the hemispheres. Europeans gained corn, potatoes, and tomatoes; the Americas gained horses, cattle, and (tragically) smallpox and other diseases that devastated native populations by up to 90% in some regions.

The Spanish and their rivals

Spain created a vast colonial structure in Mexico and Peru, forcing native labor through the encomienda system and extracting wealth for the crown. Missions pushed Christianity into borderlands like Florida and New Mexico.

By 1600 other Europeans were arriving: France traded furs in Canada, the Dutch began trading along the Hudson, and England planted its first permanent colonies at Jamestown (1607) shortly after this period ends. Native peoples responded with resistance, adaptation, and alliance-building.

Key terms

• Columbian Exchange — The transatlantic exchange of plants, animals, people, and disease after 1492.
• Encomienda system — A Spanish labor system granting colonists control over native labor.
• Maize — Corn, the staple crop of many American agricultural societies.
• Iroquois Confederacy — A political alliance of northeastern Native American nations.
• Pueblo peoples — Southwestern native groups who built settled agricultural villages.
• Conquistadors — Spanish conquerors of the Aztec and Inca empires.
• Smallpox — A European disease that devastated Native American populations.
• Mercantilism — The economic theory that colonies exist to enrich the mother country.

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The growth of English colonies, regional differences, and the labor systems that built the Atlantic world.

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The Chesapeake and New England

Virginia's Jamestown survived disease and starvation and grew tobacco, which drove demand for labor. Labor began with indentured servants (Bacon's Rebellion in 1676 exposed their grievances) and shifted to enslaved Africans, who were legally defined as lifetime property in Virginia law by the 1660s.

New England developed around religious communities. Plymouth (1620) and Massachusetts Bay (1630) were settled by Puritans seeking religious freedom; their town-based societies emphasized family, church, and education. The Salem witch trials (1692) revealed the tensions within that tightly knit world.

The Middle and Southern colonies

The middle colonies — New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware — were diverse and commercial, with Philadelphia and New York as major ports. Pennsylvania's Quaker founder William Penn welcomed religious toleration and fair treatment of Native Americans.

The southern colonies — Maryland, Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia — relied on staple crops. Carolina produced rice worked by enslaved labor; Georgia began as a debtor colony. The plantation economy concentrated wealth in a small planter elite and created a large enslaved population.

The Atlantic economy

The colonies were part of a commercial Atlantic world governed by mercantilism. The Navigation Acts required colonial trade to flow through English ships and ports, binding the colonies economically to the mother country.

The transatlantic slave trade connected Africa, Europe, and the Americas in a triangular trade. Millions of Africans were forcibly transported to work in the Americas. This created profitable but deeply brutal systems, while the colonies developed self-government through assemblies that increasingly asserted their rights.

Key terms

• Mercantilism — The theory that a nation's wealth depends on favorable trade balances and colonies that serve the mother country.
• Navigation Acts — English laws requiring colonial trade to use English ships and ports.
• Indentured servant — A laborer who worked a fixed term (often 4–7 years) in exchange for passage to America.
• Bacon's Rebellion — The 1676 Virginia uprising against the colonial elite by frontiersmen and indentured servants.
• Headright system — A Virginia policy granting land to those who paid for immigrants' passage.
• Puritans — English religious reformers who founded Massachusetts Bay and other New England colonies.
• Middle Passage — The brutal Atlantic voyage of enslaved Africans to the Americas.
• Triangular trade — The Atlantic trade network linking Europe, Africa, and the Americas.
• Joint-stock company — A business where investors pool capital, used to fund colonies like Jamestown.

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The road to revolution, the War for Independence, and the founding of the new republic.

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The coming of the Revolution

The French and Indian War (1754–1763) pitted Britain against France over the Ohio Valley. Britain won but doubled its debt and tightened control over the colonies, passing taxes like the Stamp Act (1765) and Townshend Acts to raise revenue.

Colonists responded with protest, boycotts, and the argument of 'no taxation without representation.' The Boston Tea Party (1773) met a harsh British response — the Intolerable Acts — which united the colonies and led to the First Continental Congress.

The war and independence

The Revolution began at Lexington and Concord in April 1775. The Declaration of Independence (July 4, 1776), mostly by Thomas Jefferson, grounded independence in natural rights: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

American victory came from leadership (Washington), French alliance (after Saratoga, 1777), and British war-weariness. The Treaty of Paris (1783) recognized American independence and set generous boundaries.

Building the republic

The Articles of Confederation created a weak central government. Shays's Rebellion (1786–87) exposed its limits and pushed leaders to a Constitutional Convention (1787).

The Constitution balanced large and small states (Great Compromise), power among branches (checks and balances), and federal and state power (federalism). Ratification followed a fight between Federalists and Anti-Federalists, resolved partly by the promise of a Bill of Rights (1791).

In the 1790s, Hamilton and Jefferson clashed over the national bank, tariffs, and federal power, creating the first party system. Washington's Farewell Address warned against foreign entanglements and faction.

Key terms

• Stamp Act — The 1765 British tax on printed materials that sparked colonial protest.
• No taxation without representation — The colonial argument that Parliament could not tax them without representation.
• Intolerable Acts — The harsh British laws passed after the Boston Tea Party.
• Declaration of Independence — The 1776 document declaring the colonies independent, based on natural rights.
• Treaty of Paris (1783) — The treaty that ended the Revolution and recognized American independence.
• Articles of Confederation — The first, weak national government of the United States.
• Shays's Rebellion — A 1786–87 farmer uprising that revealed the Articles' weakness.
• Great Compromise — The Constitutional agreement creating a bicameral Congress (House + Senate).
• Federalism — The division of power between national and state governments.
• Bill of Rights — The first ten amendments protecting individual liberties.
• Federalists — Supporters of the Constitution and a stronger national government.
• Anti-Federalists — Opponents of the Constitution who wanted stronger state power and a Bill of Rights.

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Democracy expands, the market revolution transforms daily life, and the nation debates slavery and expansion.

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The age of Jefferson and Jackson

Jefferson's election (1800) was the first party transition of power. His Louisiana Purchase (1803) doubled the nation's size, and Lewis and Clark mapped the new territory.

Andrew Jackson's presidency (1829–1837) expanded democracy for white men through expanded suffrage but concentrated power in the executive. His Indian Removal Act (1830) forced southeastern nations westward along the Trail of Tears.

The Market Revolution

New transportation — roads, canals (Erie Canal, 1825), steamboats, and railroads — tied regions into a national market. Factories grew in the Northeast, and interchangeable parts and the cotton gin transformed production and agriculture.

Industrialization reshaped labor: free workers in mills and workshops, while the South's economy expanded on cotton worked by enslaved labor, increasingly demanded by textile factories at home and abroad.

Reform and sectionalism

The Second Great Awakening spurred reform movements: temperance, women's rights (Seneca Falls Convention, 1848), public education, prison reform, and a powerful abolitionist movement led by figures like William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass.

Expansion deepened the slavery debate. The Missouri Compromise (1820) and the annexation of Texas, followed by the Mexican-American War (1846–1848), raised the question of whether new territories would be free or slave.

Key terms

• Louisiana Purchase — Jefferson's 1803 purchase from France that doubled the nation's size.
• Lewis and Clark — Explorers who mapped the Louisiana territory to the Pacific.
• Indian Removal Act (1830) — Jackson's law forcing southeastern tribes west of the Mississippi.
• Trail of Tears — The forced removal of Native Americans, marked by great suffering and death.
• Market Revolution — The 1800s boom in transportation, factories, and national trade.
• Erie Canal — The 1825 waterway linking the Great Lakes to the Hudson River.
• Cotton gin — Eli Whitney's invention that made cotton processing faster and boosted slavery's expansion.
• Second Great Awakening — A religious revival that fueled 19th-century reform movements.
• Seneca Falls Convention — The 1848 women's rights convention that issued a Declaration of Sentiments.
• Abolitionism — The movement to end slavery.
• Missouri Compromise (1820) — An agreement balancing free and slave states along the 36°30′ line.
• Mexican-American War — The 1846–48 war through which the US gained the Southwest.

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Sectional crisis, the Civil War, and Reconstruction — the nation's greatest test.

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The road to war

Expansion reignited the slavery question. The Compromise of 1850, the Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854), and the Dred Scott decision (1857) each inflamed rather than settled it. Bleeding Kansas turned the territory into a battlefield.

Lincoln's election in 1860, on a platform opposing the extension of slavery, prompted Southern secession. The Confederacy formed and attacked Fort Sumter in April 1861, beginning the Civil War.

The Civil War (1861–1865)

The North's advantages were industrial production, railroads, manpower, and a navy; the South's were strong leadership and a defensive war. Union strategy (Anaconda Plan) blockaded the South, split it at the Mississippi, and later applied total war under Grant and Sherman.

The war became a war against slavery: the Emancipation Proclamation (1863) freed enslaved people in rebellious areas, and the 13th Amendment (1865) abolished slavery nationwide. More than 600,000 soldiers died — the deadliest conflict in American history.

Reconstruction (1865–1877)

Reconstruction debated how to reunite the nation and define freedom for four million freed people. The 13th, 14th (citizenship and equal protection), and 15th (voting regardless of race) Amendments reshaped the Constitution.

Federal troops protected Southern Republican governments and Black political participation during Radical Reconstruction. But the Compromise of 1877 ended it: troops withdrew, and Southern states imposed Jim Crow laws, sharecropping, and segregation, undoing much of the promise of freedom.

Key terms

• Compromise of 1850 — A package admitting California as free and strengthening the Fugitive Slave Act.
• Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854) — The law letting territories choose slavery by popular sovereignty, sparking Bleeding Kansas.
• Dred Scott decision (1857) — The Supreme Court ruling that enslaved people were property and not citizens.
• Popular sovereignty — Letting settlers of a territory vote on whether to allow slavery.
• Secession — The withdrawal of Southern states from the Union.
• Emancipation Proclamation (1863) — Lincoln's order freeing enslaved people in Confederate territories.
• Anaconda Plan — The Union strategy of blockade, river control, and divide-and-conquer.
• 13th Amendment — Abolished slavery (1865).
• 14th Amendment — Granted citizenship and equal protection under the law (1868).
• 15th Amendment — Guaranteed voting rights regardless of race (1870).
• Sharecropping — A post-war labor system that trapped freed people in debt and poverty.
• Compromise of 1877 — The deal ending Reconstruction by withdrawing federal troops.

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Industrialization transforms America: big business, labor, cities, the West, and immigration.

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The rise of big business

Railroads knit the nation together and created the first giant corporations. Figures like Andrew Carnegie (steel), John D. Rockefeller (oil), and J.P. Morgan (finance) built industrial empires through economies of scale, vertical and horizontal integration, and trusts.

Critics attacked monopolies for crushing competition, and Congress responded with the Interstate Commerce Act (1887) and the Sherman Antitrust Act (1890).

Labor and the West

Workers faced long hours, low wages, and dangerous conditions. Labor organized through the Knights of Labor, the AFL (craft unions), and industrial unions like the IWW; famous actions included the Great Railroad Strike of 1877, Haymarket, and Homestead.

The West was transformed by railroads, mining, and cattle ranching. The Homestead Act (1862) drew settlers, while the US military, railroads, and the destruction of the bison confined Native Americans to reservations. The Ghost Dance and Wounded Knee (1890) marked the end of armed resistance.

Cities and immigration

Millions of immigrants — first from northern and western Europe, then from southern and eastern Europe and Asia — filled growing cities. They faced prejudice and worked low-wage jobs, while nativists pushed restrictions like the Chinese Exclusion Act (1882).

Urban life was transformed by skyscrapers, electric transit, and tenements. Reformers like Jane Addams (Hull House) responded to poverty, while political machines like Tammany Hall traded services for votes.

Key terms

• Vertical integration — Controlling every step of production, from raw materials to finished goods.
• Horizontal integration — Controlling all competitors in one industry.
• Trust — A legal arrangement letting one board control many companies.
• Sherman Antitrust Act (1890) — The first federal law against monopolies.
• Knights of Labor — An early, inclusive labor union.
• American Federation of Labor (AFL) — A craft-union federation led by Samuel Gompers.
• Homestead Act (1862) — The law offering cheap land to settlers of the West.
• Reservation system — The federal policy confining Native Americans to designated lands.
• Chinese Exclusion Act (1882) — The first federal law restricting immigration, barring Chinese laborers.
• Nativism — Hostility toward immigrants by native-born Americans.
• Gilded Age — The post-Civil War era of rapid industrial growth and glaring inequality.
• Political machine — An urban party organization trading services for votes.

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Progressivism, America's rise to world power, the Roaring Twenties, the Depression, and World War II.

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Progressivism and empire

Progressives attacked corruption and inequality through reforms: antitrust action, the 16th–19th Amendments (income tax, direct election of senators, Prohibition, women's suffrage), and reforms in cities, food safety, and labor. Muckrakers exposed abuses.

The US became a world power: the Spanish-American War (1898) brought Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines; the Panama Canal (1914) connected the oceans. The US entered World War I in 1917 and Wilson proposed the League of Nations.

The 1920s and the Depression

The Roaring Twenties brought the Red Scare, mass consumption, the automobile, radio, and the Harlem Renaissance — a flourishing of Black culture. But prosperity was uneven, and farm and labor unrest simmered.

The stock market crash of 1929 triggered the Great Depression. FDR's New Deal responded with relief, recovery, and reform: the AAA, NRA, WPA, Social Security, and the Tennessee Valley Authority, expanding the federal government's role permanently.

World War II

After Pearl Harbor (1941), the US joined the Allies against the Axis. The home front mobilized industry (Rosie the Riveter), rationing, and the internment of Japanese Americans.

The US-led invasions of North Africa and Europe (D-Day, 1944), and island campaigns in the Pacific, defeated the Axis. The atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (1945) ended the war, inaugurating the nuclear age and the Cold War.

Key terms

• Progressive Era — The early-1900s reform movement against corruption and inequality.
• Muckrakers — Investigative journalists who exposed corruption and abuse.
• 19th Amendment — Guaranteed women's suffrage (1920).
• Spanish-American War (1898) — The war that made the US a colonial power in the Caribbean and Pacific.
• Panama Canal — The US-built waterway connecting the Atlantic and Pacific (1914).
• Harlem Renaissance — The 1920s flourishing of Black literature, music, and art.
• Great Depression — The severe 1930s economic collapse following the 1929 crash.
• New Deal — FDR's program of relief, recovery, and reform.
• Social Security Act (1935) — The New Deal law creating old-age pensions and unemployment insurance.
• Pearl Harbor — The 1941 Japanese attack that brought the US into World War II.
• Japanese American internment — The wartime imprisonment of Japanese Americans without trial.
• Manhattan Project — The secret US program that built the atomic bomb.

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The Cold War, prosperity, the civil rights movement, the Great Society, and a decade of crisis.

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The Cold War at home and abroad

After WWII, the US and USSR competed for global influence. Containment policy (Truman Doctrine, Marshall Plan, NATO) aimed to stop Soviet expansion; the Korean War (1950–53) and later Vietnam tested it. The arms race and space race intensified the rivalry.

At home, the Red Scare produced McCarthyism, loyalty programs, and suspicion. The 1950s also brought suburbanization, the interstate highway system, and a postwar consumer boom.

The civil rights movement

The movement challenged segregation through courts, direct action, and legislation. Brown v. Board (1954) overturned segregated schools; the Montgomery bus boycott, sit-ins, and marches (Selma) pressured the nation.

Congress responded with the Civil Rights Act (1964), the Voting Rights Act (1965), and the Fair Housing Act (1968). Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X offered different strategies, and the movement's victories inspired other rights movements.

The Great Society and the 1960s

LBJ's Great Society expanded the welfare state: Medicare, Medicaid, Head Start, and the War on Poverty. The Supreme Court under Warren expanded rights in areas like criminal procedure.

The 1960s were turbulent: the Vietnam War divided the nation, protests and assassinations (Kennedy, King, Robert Kennedy) shook the country, and the counterculture challenged convention. Watergate (1972–74) led to Nixon's resignation and public distrust of government.

Key terms

• Containment — The US policy of preventing Soviet expansion.
• Truman Doctrine — The 1947 pledge to support nations resisting communism.
• Marshall Plan — US aid to rebuild Western Europe after WWII.
• NATO — The Western military alliance against the Soviet bloc.
• Korean War — The 1950–53 conflict testing containment in Asia.
• McCarthyism — Unfounded accusations of communist disloyalty in the early 1950s.
• Brown v. Board of Education — The 1954 ruling declaring school segregation unconstitutional.
• Civil Rights Act (1964) — The law banning discrimination in public life and employment.
• Voting Rights Act (1965) — The law protecting Black voting rights.
• Great Society — LBJ's program of expanded federal social welfare.
• Medicare — The federal health insurance program for the elderly (1965).
• Watergate — The 1970s scandal that forced Nixon's resignation.

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The conservative turn, the end of the Cold War, the information age, and 21st-century challenges.

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The Reagan era and the end of the Cold War

Ronald Reagan's presidency (1981–1989) promoted tax cuts, deregulation, and a strong anti-communist stance. His policies revived a conservative movement that reshaped politics for decades.

The Soviet Union collapsed by 1991, ending the Cold War. The US emerged as the sole superpower, and the 1990s brought a tech-driven economic boom and the Information Revolution.

The information age and 9/11

The internet, personal computers, and mobile phones transformed work, communication, and daily life. Globalization accelerated trade and production, with both economic benefits and outsourcing-related anxieties.

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 led to the War on Terror, including wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, new security measures (the Patriot Act, Department of Homeland Security), and debates over liberty versus security.

Challenges of the 21st century

The Great Recession of 2008 shook the economy, leading to bailouts and stimulus. Political polarization intensified, and demographic changes made the nation more diverse.

Ongoing issues include immigration policy, health care reform, climate change, and debates over the proper size of government. Debates over civil rights continue, now including questions of gender identity, voting access, and criminal justice reform.

Key terms

• Reagan Revolution — The conservative movement of tax cuts, deregulation, and anti-communism.
• Deregulation — Reducing government regulation of the economy.
• Cold War — The post-WWII rivalry between the US and the Soviet Union.
• Information Revolution — The late-20th-century transformation driven by computers and the internet.
• Globalization — The increasing interconnection of world economies and cultures.
• September 11, 2001 — The terrorist attacks that launched the War on Terror.
• War on Terror — The US campaign against terrorism after 9/11.
• Patriot Act — The post-9/11 law expanding surveillance and security powers.
• Great Recession — The severe 2007–2009 economic downturn.

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