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AP®

Topics 11-21

This outline is intended as a guide for students preparing to take the AP U.S History Exam. The outline is not intended in any way to be prescriptive of what AP students must study. It is illustrative only of topics that might appear in any one edition of the exam.

Note: The AP U.S. History topic outline contains 33 topics; topics 11-21 are outlined below.

  1. Territorial Expansion and Sectional Crisis
  2. Creating an American Culture
  3. The 1850's: Decade of Crisis
  4. Civil War
  5. Reconstruction to 1877
  6. New South and the Last West
  7. Industrialization and Corporate Consolidation
  8. Urban Society
  9. Intellectual and Cultural Movements
  10. National Politics, 1877-1896: The Gilded Age
  11. Foreign Policy, 1865-1914

11. Territorial Expansion and Sectional Crisis

  1. Manifest Destiny and mission
  2. Texas annexation, the Oregon boundary, and California
  3. James K. Polk and the Mexican War; slavery and the Wilmot Proviso
  4. Later expansionist efforts

12. Creating an American Culture

  1. Cultural nationalism
  2. Education reform/professionalism
  3. Religion; revivalism
  4. Utopian experiments: Mormons, Oneida Community
  5. Transcendentalists
  6. National literature, art, architecture
  7. Reform crusades
    1. Feminism; roles of women in the nineteenth century
    2. Abolitionism
    3. Temperance
    4. Criminals and the insane

13. The 1850's: Decade of Crisis

  1. Compromise of 1850
  2. Fugitive Slave Act and Uncle Tom's Cabin
  3. Kansas-Nebraska Act and realignment of parties
    1. Demise of the Whig Party
    2. Emergence of the Republican Party
  4. Dred Scott decision and Lecompton crisis
  5. Lincoln-Douglas debates, 1858
  6. John Brown's raid
  7. The election of 1860; Abraham Lincoln
  8. The secession crisis

14. Civil War

  1. The Union
    1. Mobilization and finance
    2. Civil liberties
    3. Election of 1864
  2. The South
    1. Confederate constitution
    2. Mobilization and finance
    3. States' rights and the Confederacy
  3. Foreign affairs and diplomacy
  4. Military strategy, campaigns, and battles
  5. The abolition of slavery
    1. Confiscation Acts
    2. Emancipation Proclamation
    3. Freedmen's Bureau
    4. Thirteenth Amendment
  6. Effects of war on society
    1. Inflation and public debt
    2. Role of women
    3. Devastation of the South
    4. Changing labor patterns

15. Reconstruction to 1877

  1. Presidential plans: Lincoln and Johnson
  2. Radical (congressional) plans
    1. Civil rights and the Fourteenth Amendment
    2. Military reconstruction
    3. Impeachment of Johnson
    4. African American suffrage: the Fifteenth Amendment
  3. Southern state governments: problems, achievements, weaknesses
  4. Compromise of 1877 and the end of Reconstruction

16. New South and the Last West

  1. Politics in the New South
    1. The Redeemers
    2. Whites and African Americans in the New South
    3. Subordination of freed slaves: Jim Crow
  2. Southern economy; colonial status of the South
    1. Sharecropping
    2. Industrial stirrings
  3. Cattle kingdom
    1. Open-range ranching
    2. Day of the cowboy
  4. Building the Western railroad
  5. Subordination of American Indians: dispersal of tribes
  6. Farming the plains; problems in agriculture
  7. Mining bonanza

17. Industrialization and Corporate Consolidation

  1. Industrial growth: railroads, iron, coal, electricity, steel, oil, banks
  2. Laissez-faire conservatisme
    1. Gospel of Wealth
    2. Myth of the "self-made man"
    3. Social Darwinism; survival of the fittest
    4. Social critics and dissenters
  3. Effects of technological development on worker/work-place
  4. Union movement
    1. Knights of Labor and American Federation of Labor
    2. Haymarket, Homestead, and Pullman

18. Urban Society

  1. Lure of the city
  2. Immigration
  3. City problems
    1. Slums
    2. Machine politics
  4. Awakening conscience; reforms
    1. Social legislation
    2. Settlement houses: Jane Addams and Lillian Wald
    3. Structural reforms in government

19. Intellectual and Cultural Movements

  1. Education
    1. Colleges and universities
    2. Scientific advances
  2. Professionalism and the social sciences
  3. Realism in literature and art
  4. Mass culture
    1. Use of leisure
    2. Publishing and journalism

20. National Politics, 1877-1896: The Gilded Age

  1. A conservative presidency
  2. Issues
    1. Tariff controversy
    2. Railroad regulation
    3. Trusts
  3. Agrarian discontent
  4. Crisis of 1890s
    1. Populism
    2. Silver question
    3. Election of 1896: McKinley versus Bryan

21. Foreign Policy, 1865-1914

  1. Seward and the purchase of Alaska
  2. The new imperialism
    1. Blaine and Latin America
    2. International Darwinism: missionaries, politicians, and naval expansionists
    3. Spanish-American War
      1. Cuban independence
      2. Debate on Philippines
  3. The Far East: John Hay and the Open Door
  4. Theodore Roosevelt
    1. The Panama Canal
    2. Roosevelt Corollary
    3. Far East
  5. Taft and dollar diplomacy
  6. Wilson and moral diplomacy

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