Take Home Midterm due Monday, October 14, 9:50 am

US History for International Students Fall 2013

Take-Home Midterm

Please write on 5 questions or topics. Spend 10 minutes on each. You have a total of 50 minutes to complete the exam. 

Questions that are lined out below were eliminated during our review session. Please do not answer questions that are lined out.

Closed book and closed note. You may use your books and notes to study before taking the exam, but once you begin the 50-minute exam period, you are on your honor to complete the exam without books or notes. Any hint of cheating will have consequences.

  

Please email your responses to me at pandrews@ndnu.edu no later than 9:50 am on Monday, October 14.

Because this is a take-home midterm, we will not meet for a class session on Monday.

The "non-written" portion of the midterm will take place on Wednesday, October 16 and will be based on your written responses.

1) Describe the civilizations of Native Americans prior to European contact. What common assumptions, or stereotypes, are challenged by our textbook?

2) Who were the first Europeans to arrive in what later became the United States? Where did they come from and what were their motives for migrating to the “new world”?

3) What was the difference between indentured servitude and slavery as it was practiced in the early years of North American colonization?

4) What was the role of Enlightenment ideas in the development of the American Revolution?

5) How did life change for Americans after the revolution? For whom did it change and for whom did it remain much the same?

6) What was the purpose of having a “separation of powers” in the new government of the United States?

7) What was the three-fifths clause?

8) Describe some of the first challenges of the new government once the Constitution had been ratified.

9) Describe the development of political parties in the United States through the antebellum period.

10) What was the significance of the Monroe Doctrine?

11) How did new processes of industrial production change the lives of people in the United States?

12) What were some of the responses of Americans to the challenges of industrialization?

13) Discuss the early history of anti-intellectualism in US politics.

14) Describe one of the religious sects unique to the United States.

15) How did the railroad boom of the mid-1800s affect growth and migration patterns in the United States?

16) Discuss one aspect of popular health, culture or entertainment in mid-19^th Century America.

17) Why and how did the “peculiar institution” of slavery become entrenched in the South?

18) What was “nativism”?

19) Describe the notion of “manifest destiny.” What were its effects on European expansion on the North American continent?

20) Why is it ironic that 21^st century Texans and other Americans try so hard to prevent Mexicans from crossing the border into the United States?