Short Answer Essays (Roughly 1.5 to 2 paragraphs for complete response.)

1. In the 1790s, Federalists and Jeffersonians (Democratic Republicans) debated the nature of the new national government under the Constitution. On what specific issues was this argument conducted?
2. What was the Whiskey Rebellion? What were its causes, course, and repercussions?
3. Explain either James Madison’s or Alexander Hamilton’s role in establishing a sound foundation for the new government begun in 1789.
4. Describe the role loyalists played in the American Revolution.
5. Explore the implications of the American Revolution for black Americans (both slave and free). What did they hope the revolution might do for them? Why?
6. Describe the war between the colonists themselves that commenced with the beginning of Revolutionary War hostilities in 1775, and got worse during the Southern Campaign.
7. What was the purpose of the Stamp Act?
8. Describe the regulator movements. Where did they occur? Why? What do they indicate about the nature of government and rules for the colonial backcountry/West?
9. Examine the colonial response to the Coercive (Intolerable) Acts of 1774.
10. Examine the founding of the Georgia colony. What were the goals of the founders? The successes of the colonists? The failures of both?
11. Compare and contrast the development of the “old South” (both upper and lower) versus the middle-Atlantic region during the eighteenth century.
12. Examine Bacon’s Rebellion. What were its causes, course, and results?
13. In what ways were the North American colonies most alike in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries?
14. In what ways were the North American colonies most different in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries?
15. How could Englishmen, crossing the Atlantic at roughly the same time, end up creating such radically different societies in the Chesapeake, the West Indies, and New England?
16. Examine the early Jamestown settlement. What were the problems and successes there?
17. Why, despite the French alliance, did the United States nearly lose their Revolutionary War between 1779 and 1781?

 

Long Answer: (Roughly 2.5 + paragraphs for complete response.)

1. Describe the political warfare between the Federalists and their opponents, the Jeffersonians, during the 1790s. What larger argument about democracy was going on beneath their conflict?
2. Discuss the presidency of George Washington and include examples of both his domestic and foreign policies.
3. Explore the impact of the American Revolution on both women and black Americans (both free and slave). What role did they play in the war? What effect did independence have on them?
4. Explain the development of British imperial policy following the French and Indian War (or, “7 Years War”), from roughly 1763 to 1773.
5. Describe the response of the colonists to the British imperial policy from 1763 to 1773.
6. Describe the Enlightenment and its impact and reception in North America.
7. Explore the English Acts of Trade and the Navigation Acts in the mid-seventeenth century. What were their goals, and how successful were they?
8. Discuss the various differences and similarities across the English colonies in the early 1700s. Then describe the four unifying trends of colonial life that existed across all 13 colonies, despite any other differences between them.
9. Examine the theory of mercantilism. How did this policy shape the British imperial system (of which the colonies were a part)? How effective was England’s mercantilist system at reaching its goals?