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AP US History review: key concepts

AP US History review cards from 1491 to today: colonies, revolution, Constitution, expansion, Civil War, industry, reform, Cold War and thinking skills.

42 cards7 topicsAbout 15 minutes a roundAP United States History style course content (survey of US history from 1491 to the present)

Independent study material written by StudyBrix. AP and SAT are trademarks of College Board and ACT is a trademark of ACT, Inc.; neither organisation is involved with or has reviewed this deck.

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About this deck

This deck is for students preparing for an AP United States History style exam, and for Canadian students who want a clear survey of American history for university courses. It runs in chronological periods from contact in 1491 through colonization, the Revolution and Constitution, the early republic, expansion and sectional conflict, the Civil War and Reconstruction, industrialization, the Progressive Era, the Depression and world wars, the Cold War and civil rights movement, and the late twentieth century. A final group covers historical thinking skills used in written answers.

No special background is needed, but a rough timeline helps. Before you begin, sketch the periods on a single page so each card has a place to land. The example on each card adds a date, a cause or a consequence; try to say how the item connects to something before or after it.

To study, group cards by theme as well as period: for example, pull every card about federal power, westward expansion or rights movements and put them in order. History essays reward causation and comparison, so practise one sentence that links each card to a broader development.

Common mistakes: memorizing dates without knowing why an event mattered; confusing similar items such as the Missouri Compromise and the Compromise of 1850, or the Kansas-Nebraska Act and the Dred Scott decision; and writing a thesis that only restates the prompt. A strong claim takes a position and can be supported with specific evidence. Avoid presenting any period as having a single cause or a single point of view.

Before you start: None beyond general reading skills; a basic sense of world geography helps.

All 42 cards

Cover the definitions with a sheet of paper and test yourself, or use the study modes above.

Contact and colonies (1491 to 1754)

Columbian Exchange: The transfer of crops, animals, people and diseases between the Americas and Afro-Eurasia after 1492.Example: Maize and potatoes spread to Europe; horses and smallpox came to the Americas, with devastating disease losses for Indigenous peoples.
Encomienda system: Spanish colonial grant giving settlers the labour and tribute of Indigenous people in a territory, in theory in exchange for protection and religious instruction.Example: Critics such as Bartolome de las Casas condemned its abuses in the 1500s.
Headright system: A Chesapeake land policy granting acres to anyone who paid for a migrant's passage, which encouraged indentured servitude.Example: Virginia planters gained land by importing servants to grow tobacco.
Mercantilism: Economic theory that colonies exist to enrich the home country by supplying raw materials and buying its manufactured goods.Example: The Navigation Acts required certain colonial goods to be shipped through English ports.
First Great Awakening: A wave of emotional Protestant revivalism in the 1730s and 1740s that challenged established churches and encouraged individual religious experience.Example: Preachers like George Whitefield drew huge crowds across the colonies.

Revolution and new nation (1754 to 1800)

French and Indian War: The 1754 to 1763 North American part of the Seven Years' War; Britain won French Canada but was left with large debts.Example: To pay those debts Parliament began taxing the colonies directly.
Proclamation of 1763: British order banning colonial settlement west of the Appalachian Mountains to reduce conflict with Indigenous nations.Example: Colonists who had fought for western land resented the limit.
Stamp Act of 1765: A direct British tax on printed paper in the colonies; it sparked protests over taxation without representation and was repealed in 1766.Example: The Stamp Act Congress brought delegates from nine colonies together.
Common Sense: Thomas Paine's 1776 pamphlet that argued in plain language for independence and against monarchy.Example: It sold widely and helped push opinion toward the Declaration of Independence.
Articles of Confederation: The first US national framework (in force 1781), with a weak central government that could not tax or regulate trade.Example: Shays' Rebellion (1786 to 1787) convinced many leaders a stronger government was needed.
Great Compromise: Constitutional Convention deal creating a House based on population and a Senate with equal representation for each state.Example: It balanced the Virginia Plan favoured by large states and the New Jersey Plan favoured by small states.
Federalists and Anti-Federalists: Supporters and opponents of ratifying the 1787 Constitution; opponents feared central power and demanded protections for individual liberties.Example: Their pressure led to the Bill of Rights, ratified in 1791.
Hamilton's financial plan: Program to have the federal government assume state debts, create a national bank and use tariffs to build credit and manufacturing.Example: Jefferson and Madison argued the bank was unconstitutional, helping form the first party system.

Early republic and expansion (1800 to 1848)

Marbury v. Madison: 1803 Supreme Court decision that established judicial review, the power of courts to strike down laws that conflict with the Constitution.Example: Chief Justice John Marshall used it to strengthen the judiciary.
Louisiana Purchase: The 1803 purchase of a vast territory from France that roughly doubled the size of the United States.Example: Jefferson accepted it despite doubts about whether the Constitution allowed it.
Market Revolution: Early nineteenth-century shift toward commercial farming, factories and national markets, driven by canals, railroads and new technology.Example: The Erie Canal (1825) cut shipping costs between the Great Lakes and New York City.
Missouri Compromise: 1820 agreement admitting Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state, and banning slavery in the rest of the Louisiana territory north of 36 degrees 30 minutes.Example: It kept the balance of free and slave states in the Senate for a time.
Monroe Doctrine: 1823 statement warning European powers against new colonization or intervention in the Western Hemisphere.Example: Later presidents cited it to justify US involvement in Latin America.
Indian Removal Act: 1830 law authorizing the forced relocation of southeastern Indigenous nations to land west of the Mississippi.Example: The Cherokee removal of 1838 to 1839 is known as the Trail of Tears.
Second Great Awakening: Religious revival of the early 1800s that stressed personal salvation and fuelled reform movements such as temperance and abolition.Example: Revivals were so frequent in western New York that it was called the burned-over district.
Seneca Falls Convention: 1848 meeting in New York that launched the organized women's rights movement in the US.Example: Its Declaration of Sentiments, modelled on the Declaration of Independence, called for women's suffrage.

Sectional crisis and Reconstruction (1844 to 1877)

Manifest Destiny: Mid-1800s belief that the United States was meant to expand across the continent.Example: It was used to justify the annexation of Texas and the Mexican-American War (1846 to 1848).
Compromise of 1850: Package that admitted California as a free state and passed a stricter Fugitive Slave Act, among other measures.Example: Enforcement of the fugitive slave law angered many Northerners.
Kansas-Nebraska Act: 1854 law letting settlers in those territories decide on slavery by popular sovereignty, effectively repealing the 36 degrees 30 minutes line.Example: Violence in Bleeding Kansas followed, and the Republican Party formed in opposition.
Dred Scott v. Sandford: 1857 Supreme Court ruling that Black Americans were not citizens and that Congress could not ban slavery in the territories.Example: It deepened sectional anger in the years before the Civil War.
Emancipation Proclamation: Lincoln's 1863 order declaring enslaved people in Confederate-held areas free, turning the war into a fight against slavery.Example: It also opened the way for Black men to enlist in the Union Army.
Reconstruction Amendments: The 13th (abolished slavery), 14th (citizenship and equal protection) and 15th (voting regardless of race) Amendments, ratified 1865 to 1870.Example: Later Jim Crow laws and voter suppression undercut the 14th and 15th in practice.
Compromise of 1877: Political deal that settled the disputed 1876 election for Rutherford B. Hayes, after which federal troops were withdrawn from the South.Example: Its result is often taken as the end of Reconstruction.

Industry, reform and world wars (1865 to 1945)

Vertical and horizontal integration: Strategies of Gilded Age business: controlling every stage of production, or buying out competitors in the same stage.Example: Carnegie owned mines and railroads for steel (vertical); Rockefeller bought rival refineries (horizontal).
Populist Party: 1890s farmers' party that demanded free coinage of silver, a graduated income tax and government regulation or ownership of railroads.Example: Its 1892 Omaha Platform shaped later Progressive reforms.
Plessy v. Ferguson: 1896 Supreme Court decision that upheld racial segregation under the separate but equal doctrine.Example: It stood until Brown v. Board of Education in 1954.
Progressive Era: Reform period around 1890 to 1920 aimed at curbing corporate power, ending political corruption and improving social conditions.Example: The 17th Amendment (direct election of senators) and 19th Amendment (women's suffrage, 1920) date from it.
New Deal: Franklin Roosevelt's 1930s programs of relief, recovery and reform in response to the Great Depression.Example: Social Security (1935) and federal deposit insurance were lasting results.
Japanese American incarceration: Forced removal of about 120 000 people of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast to camps under Executive Order 9066 (1942).Example: Korematsu v. United States (1944) upheld it; the US formally apologized in 1988.

Cold War to present (1945 onward)

Containment and the Truman Doctrine: Postwar policy of stopping the spread of Soviet communism; in 1947 Truman pledged aid to nations resisting it.Example: Aid to Greece and Turkey was the first application; the Marshall Plan followed.
Brown v. Board of Education: 1954 Supreme Court ruling that segregated public schools were unconstitutional.Example: Resistance led to crises such as Little Rock in 1957, where federal troops escorted Black students.
Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act: 1964 law banning discrimination in public accommodations and employment, and 1965 law banning discriminatory voting practices such as literacy tests.Example: Both followed years of protest including the 1963 March on Washington and the Selma marches.
Reagan-era conservatism: 1980s movement favouring tax cuts, deregulation, a military buildup and reduced federal social spending.Example: The Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981 sharply cut income tax rates.

Historical thinking skills

Contextualization: Placing a source or event within the broader circumstances of its time and place to explain it.Example: Situate a 1919 strike within postwar inflation and the first Red Scare.
Causation: Explaining the reasons for an event and its effects, and distinguishing long-term causes from immediate triggers.Example: Long-term: sectional disputes over slavery; immediate: the 1860 election and secession.
Continuity and change over time: Analysing what stayed the same and what shifted across a period, and why.Example: Women's legal status changed with the 19th Amendment, but workplace inequality continued.
Sourcing a document: Analysing a document's point of view, purpose, audience and historical situation to judge how it can be used as evidence.Example: A planter's letter defending slavery is evidence of his interests, not a neutral description.