The BIG day has finally arrived! The 2026 APUSH exam will begin in a few hours!

Good luck to all of my in-person and Substack students. I’m confident you’ll earn excellent scores. Special good luck to Mr. Chmiel’s FSCA students! GOOOO APUSH Students!!!

On March 31, 1776, Abigail Adams wrote a celebrated letter to her husband John, who was then serving as a Massachusetts representative to the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia. Keenly aware that the delegates from all Thirteen Colonies were on the brink of composing a Declaration of Independence, Abigail urged John to “Remember the Ladies and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands.”

Abigail’s famous request underscored the fact that colonial authorities had treated women as second-class citizens. Her letter demonstrated that colonial women were keenly aware of the discrepancy between their subordinate legal status and republican ideal of equality. However, traditional expectations about women’s legal rights and customary roles were deeply entrenched. Given this mindset, it is not surprising that John Adams dismissed his wife’s plea by replying, “As to your extraordinary code of laws, I cannot but laugh…We know better than to repeal our Masculine systems.”

Republican Motherhood

As John Adams confidently predicted, America’s new Constitution did not lead to an expansion of women’s legal rights. American women still could not form contracts, buy or sell property, serve on juries, or vote. Given these restrictions, what should be the role of women in a new republic dedicated to the principles of liberty and equality?

Although the subordinate legal position of American women remained unchanged, the new republic still required well-informed citizens and virtuous public officials who would prioritize the public good over their own interests. This need helped give rise to a new ideal for American wives that historians now call Republican Motherhood.

According to its advocates, republican mothers had the responsibility to become exemplary parents who would raise their children to uphold the ideals of the new American republic. Women would thus play a vital and respected role in shaping America’s moral character. Catherine Beecher unhesitantly forecast, “Let the women of a country be virtuous and intelligent, and the men will certainly be the same.”

New opportunities and roles

Republican motherhood both reinforced and expanded women’s traditional role. The concept gave motherhood a new dignity and importance. At the same time, it also placed a new emphasis upon increased educational opportunities for the nation’s republican mothers. If mothers were to become “caretakers of the Republic,” it logically followed that they would need more options to learn about government, history, and philosophy.

During the early 1800s, communities in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states opened several academic schools for young women. This eventually enabled women to become teachers. The commitment to recognize women as teachers and “moral guardians” led directly to the emergence of educated women who would play leading roles in the abolition and temperance movements.

So why should you remember Republican Motherhood? APUSH test writers expect students to know that formidable legal and cultural barriers circumscribed women’s lives during the early Republic. Although women remained excluded from the nation’s political life, Republican Motherhood provided the intellectual foundation for the women’s rights movement that emerged following the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848.

Subscribe now

Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater published The Conscience of a Conservative in 1960. At first glance, a slender 123- page book by a little-known senator from a seemingly remote Southwestern state appeared insignificant. But looks were deceiving. The Conscience of a Conservative became a massive best-seller that sold 3.5 million copies and transformed Goldwater into a leader in the Republican Party.

The Conscience of a Conservative provided a concise but forceful statement of conservative beliefs. Goldwater countered the prevailing liberal consensus by lambasting expensive New Deal programs. Instead, he forthrightly called for a dramatically reduced federal government that only performed tasks specifically enumerated by the Constitution. Goldwater’s manifesto also embraced economic principles based on lower taxes and minimal government regulations.

The Election of 1964

Goldwater’s cogent arguments resonated among citizens disillusioned with liberal policies. “We just wanted the government to get off our backs and out of our pockets,” explained one Arizona supporter. A California housewife spoke for many when she said, “I felt like someone was finally talking to me and not at me. I went out and organized my entire neighborhood for Goldwater.”

The California housewife joined an army of Republican activists who successfully helped Goldwater become the party’s 1964 presidential nominee. The election featured a historic choice between liberal and conservative candidates. The Democratic nominee, President Lyndon Johnson or Texas, ran on a liberal platform promising to wage war on poverty, extend medical care to the elderly, and support a landmark voting rights bill. In contrast, Goldwater ran on a conservative platform promising to cut taxes, shrink the federal government, and restore American military strength.

The election appeared to produce definitive results. Johnson won 61 percent of the vote and crushed Goldwater in the Electoral College. LBJ’s overwhelming victory served to usher in a new age of liberal dominance and conservative retreat. However, an unexpected combination of Sunbelt conservatives, Christian evangelicals, and blue-collar workers forged an increasingly powerful political coalition that revived the Republican Party.

Discontented Sunbelt Conservatives

Political commentators noted that both President Johnson and Senator Goldwater hailed from states in a region they named the Sunbelt. The coincidence was not a surprise. The Sunbelt comprised portions of a booming region of 16 states stretching from North Carolina through Florida and Texas to Arizona and southern California.

A number of factors combined to make the Sunbelt America’s fastest growing region. Affordable air-conditioning cooled homes and offices during the region’s hot summers. Low taxes and weak labor unions attracted businesses. And finally, the federal government awarded Sunbelt states a host of defense and space contracts. For example, Florida and Texas became centers of huge aerospace complexes.

The historic migration of people and businesses translated into growing political power. As their population increased, Sunbelt states claimed more seats in the House of Representatives and thus more votes in the Electoral College. In the 1960 presidential election, California, Texas, and Florida had a total of 66 electoral votes. Twenty years later, these three states commanded 88 electoral votes.

The prosperous suburbs surrounding Los Angeles, Phoenix, Dallas, and Atlanta quickly became conservative strongholds. White middle-class suburbanites opposed Great Society programs. Instead, they embraced Goldwater’s conservative philosophy favoring reductions in expensive government welfare programs and burdensome business regulations. The Sunbelt conservatives formed what historian Lisa McGirr called “the ground forces of the conservative revival.”

Alarmed Christian Evangelicals

The 1960s and 1970s produced a number of social and cultural changes that alarmed Christian evangelicals. Hippies experimented with drugs and celebrated premarital sex. Feminists challenged traditional family roles and enthusiastically endorsed the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). At the same time, the newly vocal gay community demanded recognition and equal civil rights.

Outraged Christian evangelicals did not limit their opposition to hippies, feminists, and gays; they also directed special outrage at liberal Supreme Court decisions. Rulings prohibiting officially sponsored prayer and Bible readings in public schools deeply offended devout Christians who believed these activities played an important role in the development of moral values. The Supreme Court’s 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade legalizing abortion aroused outrage among both Protestants and Catholics who defended the unborn infant’s right to life.

Sexual permissiveness, the ERA, school prayer, and abortion galvanized a determined group of conservative Christians known as the Religious Right. This movement became a significant political force when Jerry Falwell, a Baptist minister and popular religious broadcaster from Lynchburg, Virginia, founded the Moral Majority. Launched in 1979, the organization advanced a “pro-life, pro-family, pro-morality, and pro-American” agenda. The Moral Majority’s four million members and two million donors played a key role in mobilizing evangelical Christians into a powerful political force.

Discontented Blue-Collar Workers

During the 1970s, millions of Americans watched All in the Family, a humorous but culturally relevant television program about a working-class family living in Queens, New York. Most episodes revolved around the outspoken views of Archie Bunker, a World War II veteran who worked as a foreman on a loading dock. Although he was a fictional character, Archie’s frustrations accurately reflected the growing discontent among America’s blue-collar workers.

Beginning with the New Deal, working-class voters formed a core group of the Democratic Party coalition. However, during the late 1970s slowing wage growth, rising prices, and growing tax burdens threatened their standard of living. At the same time, court-ordered busing of school children to achieve racial balance fueled a rising sense of resentment.

As the 1980 presidential election approached, real-life Archie Bunkers felt increasingly alienated from Democratic Party policies and candidates. They searched for a new leader who promised to roll back expensive social welfare programs, support traditional family values, and restore economic confidence.

The Election of Ronald Reagan

During the fall of 1980, millions of concerned Americans felt squeezed by double-digit inflation, crippling mortgage rates, and an unemployment rate of nearly eight percent. Overseas, months of futile negotiations by the Carter administration failed to persuade the Iranian government to release 53 American hostages. Opinion polls reported that less than 25 percent of the American people approved of President Carter’s leadership. For many, it seemed as if America had lost its way.

Sensing victory, the Republicans nominated Ronald Reagan as their presidential candidate. A one-time movie actor, television host, and two-term governor of California, Reagan refused to listen to dire forecasts predicting an increasingly dismal future. “There are those in our land,” he declared, “who would have us believe that the United States, like other great civilizations of the past, has reached the zenith of its power.” Reagan then confidently insisted, “I don’t believe that.”

During the presidential campaign, Reagan repeatedly asked the American people to answer one question: “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?” On election day, a resurgent coalition of conservative Republican voters answered no. Reagan and his running mate, George H.W. Bush, won a convincing victory. A prominent Goldwater supporter quipped, “Goldwater won in 1964; it just took until 1980 to count the ballots.”

So why should you remember the rise of the Conservative Movement from 1960 to 1980. This topic generated a DBQ in 2015 and set of multiple-choice questions on almost every subsequent APUSH exam. Although the prompts vary, the questions all ask students to know that conservatives and their evangelical allies defended traditional family values, supported free market economic policies, opposed Great Society programs, and helped elect Ronald Reagan in 1980.

Chicago’s traffic jams, frigid temperatures, and piles of snow left Tom Garrison feeling frustrated. He remembered thinking, “There has to be a place where the sky isn’t the color of a wet sidewalk.” Garrison’s search for a better place to live with a “vast blue sky” took him to Phoenix, Arizona.

Garrison wasn’t alone. Between 1950 and 1980, millions of Americans moved from Rust Belt cities like Chicago to Sunbelt cities like Phoenix. As you can see in our map, the Sunbelt includes portions of 16 states from southern North Carolina through Florida and Texas to Arizona and southern California.

The Refrigerator Revolution

Before the 1950s, the intense heat and humidity of the South and the hot arid deserts of the Southwest deterred large-scale settlements in these regions For example, in 1950, the population of Phoenix was just 106,818. At that time, it was the 99^th largest city in the United States.

Air conditioning changed everything. The widespread adoption of central air conditioning transformed Phoenix from a desert outpost into a booming metropolis. One new resident recalled that “people thought we were crazy to move to a place where the temperature hits 110 degrees. But by the mid-1970s, we had ‘refrigerated air.’ You’d dash from your air-conditioned car into your air-conditioned office and then go home to a chilled living room.” He concluded that, “the heat had become a novelty rather than a threat. We traded shoveling snow for staying indoors in July – it seemed like a fair swap.”

The “fair swap” convinced a wave of migrants to move to Arizona. By 1980, Phoenix boasted a population of 789,704 making it America’s 9^th largest city. Phoenix was not an isolated example of population growth in the Sunbelt. Between 1950 and 1980 the population of Florida soared from 2.77 million to 9.74 million while the population of Texas doubled from 7.71 million to 14.22 million.

Defense and High-Tech Jobs

During the Cold War the federal government poured billions of dollars into the economies of the Sunbelt states. The region’s vast open spaces made it ideal for year-round training. As a result, aerospace and defense contractors like Lockheed and Boeing built massive plants. In addition, high-tech companies like Motorola and Intel also opened major facilities.

“A middle-class guy could live like a king”

Affordable housing also contributed to the appeal of living in the Sunbelt cities and suburbs. For example, a migrant from San Francisco marveled at his family’s ability to purchase a ranch-style house in Scottsdale, Arizona “for a price that would have barely gotten us a studio apartment back in San Francisco.” He enthusiastically encouraged others to move to a place “where a middle-class guy could live like a king on a modest paycheck.”

Retirement communities

A combination of Social Security checks and generous pensions enabled more and more people to retire in Florida and Arizona. Soon massive retirement communities sprang up in both states.

So why should you remember the rise of the Sunbelt. College Board APUSH test writers have used LEQ and SAQ free-response questions to underscore the importance of the mass migration of people to the Sunbelt. For example, students should know that air conditioning provides an example of a technological innovation that changed American society in the period between 1950 and 2000. In addition, APUSH students should be able to compare the mass migration to the Sunbelt with the mass migration of African American to cities in the Midwest and Northeast.

Subscribe now

Is it possible for an event that didn’t happen to have major consequences and become part of a frequent set of APUSH exam questions? Surprisingly, the answer is yes! Let me explain:

In early August 1964, U.S. Navy warships and South Vietnamese gunboats began conducting intelligence gathering operations in the Gulf of Tonkin along the coast of North Vietnam. On August 4^th, two American destroyers reported that small but swift North Vietnamese torpedo boats fired at them. The U.S. warships took evasive actions while wildly firing in all directions. The commander of one of the destroyers soon radioed that there had been no actual visual sightings of enemy ships. He tentatively concluded that the alleged contact may have been due to a combination of an unusually dark night and “freak weather” conditions that adversely affected the ship’s sonar and radar.

Although what happened remained unclear, President Johnson told a nationally televised audience that “hostile actions against United States ships” forced him to respond to North Vietnamese aggression. Even as he spoke, 64 Crusader jets struck 4 North Vietnamese patrol boat bases and a major oil storage depot. President Johnson assured the American public that his swift military action had been “limited and fitting” and that the United States would “seek no wider war.”

The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution

The next day, Johnson asked Congress to pass a resolution authorizing him to take “all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression.” Congress and the American public were not told about the secret raids on North Vietnam or the new evidence that an attack may not have occurred. Unaware of this information, the House unanimously supported the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution while only two senators opposed it.

Johnson’s deft handling of the Gulf of Tonkin affair seemed to be a major political success. The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution sent a clear signal to North Vietnam that America would defend South Vietnam. Opinion polls showed that 72 percent of the public supported LBJ’s forceful but measured actions. Very few people listened when Senator Wayne Morse warned, “We are in effect giving the President warmaking powers in the absence of a declaration of war. I believe this to be a historic mistake.”

A “blank check”

The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution gave President Johnson a “blank check” to fight a full-scale war without a formal Congressional declaration of war. In March 1965 he took the fateful step of ordering the first U.S. Marines to land in South Vietnam. By the end of the year, 180,000 additional combat soldiers poured into the country.

Johnson’s dramatic escalation transformed a localized guerrilla conflict into a massive, years-long military commitment. By the end of 1967, about 500,000 American soldiers guarded South Vietnam’s cities and patrolled its rice paddies. Search-and-destroy missions killed over 200,000 enemy soldiers but left one-fourth of the people in South Vietnam homeless. Known as the Viet Cong, the South Vietnamese communists struck back with deadly ambushes and hidden booby traps. About 16,000 American soldiers lost their lives between 1965 and 1967.

Credibility Gap

The rising American casualties contradicted the Johnson administration’s optimistic reports. Public skepticism about the war created a widening “credibility gap.” The gap deepened as evidence surfaced that the August 4^th “attack” in the Gulf of Tonkin probably did not occur. An ever growing number of people concluded that the war had in fact been launched on a lie.

Hawks versus Doves

When President Johnon escalated the war about two thirds of the public approved his decision. “I don’t like being over here,” wrote one marine, “But I am doing a job that must be done. Supporters of the war agreed. Known as “hawks”, they argued that America was fighting a just cause to defend the freedom of South Vietnam. Without American help, South Vietnam would fall and the communists would eventually take over Southeast Asia.

When the war did not quickly end, a growing number of people began to question America’s involvement in Vietnam. Known as “doves,” these critics argued the United States could not win a guerrilla war in Asia. The tragic loss of life was too great. Instead of saving South Vietnam, American bombs were destroying it. The dollars spent in Vietnam would be better spent funding Great Society programs.

The increasingly bitter debate between the hawks and doves polarized American society. A deeply ambivalent housewife expressed the public’s frustrations when she told an interviewer, “I want to get out, but I don’t want to give up.”

So why should you remember the causes and consequences of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. The resolution set in motion a series of far-reaching military, political, and social consequences. APUSH test writers expect students to know that America became involved in Vietnam to fulfill its commitment to contain communist expansion. Multiple-choice questions often use political cartoons to illustrate the growing public debate between hawks and doves over the merits and rationale for the Vietnam War. Short-answer questions expect students to know that the Vietnam War led to massive anti-war protests. A series of prompts by the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) express the disillusionment of a growing number of young Americans with the Vietnam War.

Subscribe now

World War II left Western Europe in ruins. Winston Churchill warned that Europe had become “a rubble heap, a charnel house, a breeding ground of pestilence and hate.” Churchill’s grim assessment accurately described a continent that only a few years before had dominated the globe. Economic weakness threatened political instability making Europe vulnerable to Soviet influence. For example, the Communist Party enjoyed growing support among unemployed workers in France and Italy.

The Marshall Plan

Secretary of State George Marshall recognized the crisis and convinced President Truman that the United States had to act quickly. Speaking at Harvard University in June 1947, he proposed a bold plan to offer massive economic aid to help reconstruct Europe.

The Marshall Plan committed $13 billion (the equivalent of $200 billion in 2026) to help rebuild 16 Western European countries. The desperately needed funds helped these nations stage a remarkable economic recovery. Within four years, industrial production within the region reached a level 41 percent higher than it had been on the eve of World War II. The Marshall Plan thus achieved its twin goals of rebuilding Western Europe and containing Communism.

The Berlin Blockade

Although the Marshall Plan proved to be a great success, it did not reduce tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union. In 1948 the city of Berlin suddenly became the focus of the first great test of wills between the rival superpowers.

At the end of World War II, the Allies divided Germany into separate occupation zones that became known as West and East Germany. As Germany’s largest city and former capital, Berlin had a tremendous political and psychological significance. The Allies recognized this fact when they divided Berlin into four separate zones controlled by the United States, Britain, France, and the Soviet Union. However, the city of Berlin lay 110 miles inside East Germany.

Stalin increasingly viewed the presence of the Western powers in Berlin as an unacceptable obstacle to his plan to dominate East Germany. On June 24, 1948, he ordered troops to blockade all the roads, rail lines, and canals linking the city to West Germany. Stalin knew that the vulnerable and now isolated city only had a 30-day supply of food to feed its population of 2.2 million people. He believed the blockade would convincingly demonstrate that the United States had neither the power nor the will to support Berlin.

“We’re going to stay, period!”

President Truman understood that the Berlin Blockade represented a direct challenge to America’s new policy of containment. He rejected the options of ordering a discreet withdrawal or using military force to provoke a direct confrontation. Recognizing that the Berlin Blockade represented a crucial test of American resolve, Truman forcefully declared, “We are going to stay, period!”

The Berlin Airlift

Truman surprised Stalin by choosing to supply West Berlin by air. Although this risky strategy avoided a military confrontation, it required a massive and unprecedented airlift to supply the 4,500 tons of food, coal, and medicine the people of West Berlin needed every day.

The Berlin Airlift proved to be an inspiring success. American, British, and French aviators flew 277,804 missions and delivered 2.3 million tons of supplies in just 321 days. In addition, American pilots raised the spirits of West Berlin children by parachuting thousands of toys and candy bars.

Stalin soon realized he had been outwitted. The constant roar of planes over Berlin provided a vivid demonstration of American determination. The crisis changed the relationship between Germany and the Western Allies from that of occupiers and occupied to partners in a joint struggle to defend the Free World. Faced with these strategic and psychological realities, Stalin lifted the blockade on May 12, 1949.

The airlift underscored Berlin’s importance as a visible symbol of the Cold War in Europe. In 1961, the Soviets surrounded the city with a 28-mile concrete wall, designed to prevent East Germans from escaping to freedom in West Berlin. The Berlin Wall quickly became the supreme symbol of the Iron Curtain in Europe.

Rival Alliances

The Berlin Airlift convinced American leaders of the need to organize an alliance to protect Western Europe against possible Soviet aggression. On April 4, 1949, ten European countries joined the United States and Canada to sign the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The pact operated on the principle of COLLECTIVE SERCURITY. Article 5 stipulated “an armed attack against one or more of the signatories in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all.”

America’s decision to join a peacetime alliance based on collective security marked a decisive break from the country’s long-standing isolationist past. The Truman administration thus positioned the United States as a superpower, ready to accept its global responsibilities.

The Soviet Union did not view NATO as a defensive alliance. Instead, its leaders criticized NATO as an example of how American’s demand for new markets and additional raw materials turned it into an expansionist power, threatening Soviet security. In 1955, the Soviets responded by forming a rival military alliance with their Eastern European satellites called the Warsaw Pact. Two hostile military alliances now confronted each other across a tense and divided Europe.

So why should you remember Cold War events in Europe between 1947 and 1950. The Marshall Plan, Berlin Airlift, and NATO have all generated sets of multiple-choice questions. In addition, pivotal Cold War events in Europe are key parts of SAQ and LEQ questions asking students to interpret the origins of the Cold War.

THE COLD WAR and CONTAINMENT

The defeat of Germany and Japan left the United States and the Soviet Union as the world’s two remaining great powers. Americans optimistically hoped that peace would mean a world in which democracy and freedom would prevail. “We really believed in our hearts,” one White House advisor later recalled, “that this was the dawn of the new day we had all been praying for and talking about for so many years.” Yet within a short time this hopeful spirit vanished and the United States and the Soviet Union became bitter rivals in a prolonged period of economic and political rivalry known as the Cold War.

“A blue piece of paper”

Russian dictator Joseph Stalin did not limit Soviet expansion to dominating Eastern Europe. In early 1947, the lengthening shadow of Soviet pressure threatened to undermine the independence of Greece and Turkey. Conditions were particularly perilous in Greece, where a civil war raged between Communist insurgents and supporters of the pro-Western Greek government. Alarming reports from Greece warned that the government faced imminent collapse.

The already desperate situation in Greece became even worse when the British ambassador to the United States delivered an urgent “blue piece of paper.” The formal message informed the Truman administration that Great Britain could no longer afford to give aid to Greece and Turkey. An American official correctly appraised the historic significance of the British message when he noted, “Great Britain within the hour handed the job of world leadership with all its burden and all its glory to the United States.”

George Kennan and Containment

Stalin’s aggressive support for Communist insurgents in Greece did not surprise George Kennan. A leading U.S. State Department expert on Russian history, he believed that Soviet hostility toward the capitalist nations would remain a constant factor for years to come. In an influential Long Telegram and subsequent essay published in Foreign Affairs, Kennan argued that Communist ideology led Soviet leaders to believe that “the outside world was hostile and that it was their duty eventually to overthrow the political forces beyond their borders.”

Given the antagonism between communism and capitalism, Kennan urged the United States to adopt a policy of “long-term, patient but firm, and vigorous containment of Soviet expansive tendencies.” By CONTAINMENT, Kennan meant adopting a strategic policy of blocking the expansion of Soviet military power and Communist ideology.

The Truman Doctrine

President Truman agreed with Kennan’s argument that an unbridgeable ideological chasm divided the United States and the Soviet Union. He therefore accepted America’s responsibility to contain Soviet expansion. On March 12, 1947, Truman asked a joint session of Congress for $400 million in economic aid and military assistance for Greece and Turkey.

Truman did not stop with a request for money. The United States, he declared, could survive only in a world in which freedom flourished. He then articulated what came to be known as the Truman Doctrine: “I believe it must be the policy of the United States to support free people who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or outside pressures.”

Congress overwhelmingly approved Truman’s request for economic aid to Greece and Turkey. American aid then played a vital role in helping these two countries successfully resist Soviet pressure.

A fateful turning point

The Truman Doctrine marked a fateful turning point in American history. After the First World War, America withdrew into isolationism, leaving Europe to contend with its own problems. As the leader of the Free World, the United States now recognized its responsibility to protect Europe, defend freedom, and use its power to limit the spread of Soviet influence. “The free people of the world look to us for support in maintaining their freedom,” declared Truman. “If we falter in our leadership, we may endanger the peace of the world.”

The drawing that introduces this essay provides a striking visual representation of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. Dressed in a suit of golden armor, the American warrior defends individual freedom against a rival red Soviet warrior who represents dictatorship and absolute conformity.

So why should you remember the Cold War, Truman Doctrine, and containment? The commitment to containment dominated American foreign policy from 1947 to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The term containment plays a prominent part in the answer of at least a dozen multiple-choice questions. It also plays a role in LEQ questions asking students to analyze changes in American foreign policy from 1945 to 1991.

Subscribe now

The first day at a new job is always exciting and even a bit frightening. This was especially true for 28-year-old Lillian Hatcher as she began her job as a riveter at the vast Willow Run aircraft factory outside Detroit. She later remembered, “I had never seen anything so large in my life. It was a city under one roof. When I walked in the noise was deafening. The riveting hammers sounded like machine guns.

The scale of the Willow Run assembly line overwhelmed everyone. Over 60 football fields could fit into the 3.5 million-square foot room. Built to mass produce B-24 Liberator bombers, the assembly line stretched for over one mile.

The arsenal of democracy needed women

President Roosevelt promised America’s allies that the United States would become the “arsenal of democracy.” Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, America’s mighty industries roared to life producing weapons to fight the Axis powers.

Approximately 16 million Americans served in the U.S. Armed Forces during World War II. This massive mobilization represented 12 percent of the U.S. population. Munition factories like Willow Run urgently called upon women to take the place of men fighting overseas.

Rosie the Riveter to the rescue

World War II created an unprecedented opportunity for American women to fill jobs vacated by men drafted into the armed forces. The iconic “Rose the Riveter” poster featured a woman named Rose Will Monroe who worked on the Willow Run assembly line.

The marketing campaign worked. More than 5 million women entered the labor force. Like Lillian Hatcher, one -third of these women took jobs in previously all-male defense plants.

Pride in mastering “men’s work”

Before World War II, America’s female workforce consisted primarily of young single women performing “pink collar” jobs such as teaching, nursing, and supporting office clerical operations. The women who worked in defense plants didn’t just build Liberator bombers, Sherman tanks, and Liberty ships; they also challenged traditional assumptions about what comprised “women’s work.”

The new female workers proved they could perform “men’s work.” They surprised their foremen by successfully operating giant overhead cranes, joining the links in a tank, and cleaning blast furnaces. Women enjoyed their independence and took pride in contributing to the war effort. “We were good at what we did,” recalled one shipyard worker. “There was a special feeling, I think, among the women, that we were part of this wonderful effort of building a ship.”

Working in defense industries also meant earning higher wages. For example, a female shipbuilder in Mobile, Alabama could earn $37.00 a week. The same worker would earn $21.00 as a salesclerk and just $14.00 as a waitress. The experience of earning wages, learning valuable new skills, and contributing to the war effort created a feeling one wartime female worker enthusiastically called, “a taste of freedom.”

Foreshadowing the future

World War II did not alter the widespread belief that women defense workers were performing a temporary role. When the atomic bomb abruptly ended the war, many women lost their jobs to returning male veterans.

The “taste of freedom” earned in World War II would not be forgotten. The war served as a vehicle for accelerating the ongoing process of increasing the female participation in the labor force. World War II thus foreshadowed the dramatic expansion of women’s workforce participation that accompanied the second wave of feminism in the 1960s and 1970s.

So why should you remember Women and World War II? This is one of the most frequently tested topics on the APUSH exam. It has generated one SAQ, four sets of multiple-choice questions, and been a part of 3 DBQs! These questions focus on two key trends: First, World War II promoted enhanced opportunities for women by opening jobs previously held by men. And second, the wartime jobs challenged traditional assumptions about the proper roles for women in American society.

Subscribe now

TOBACCO and SLAVERY in COLONIAL VIRGINIA

PART III

WILLIAM BYRD II

RECONCILED SLAVERY and LIBERTY

I would like to begin this essay by introducing you to William Byrd II. Byrd was 50 years old in 1724 when he sat for this handsome portrait. At that time, he was one of the wealthiest and most influential planters in colonial Virginia. The artist portrayed Byrd as a supremely confident planter who was in full control of himself, his family, and his slaves.

Westover

Byrd lived in Westover; a gracious plantation located along the banks of the James River midway between Jamestown and Richmond. Vessels regularly tied up at the plantation’s docks to deliver elegant furniture, stylish clothes, and other prized manufactured goods from England. The vessels then returned to London with cargoes of tobacco.

Byrd was a highly cultivated gentleman. His classical education at a private school in England included lessons in Greek and Latin along with readings in French, Italian, and Hebrew. As a scholar with wide-ranging interests, Byrd amassed a personal library with over 3,500 books.

A secret diary

In addition to reading his books, Byrd wrote a secret diary. As a result, we know a great deal about his daily activities and attitudes towards the world around him. Byrd began a typical day by reading passages from the Bible along with verses from Homer’s Odyssey and other Greek classics. His afternoon included playing billiards with distinguished guests and then eating a hearty dinner. Byrd ended his day by thanking God for his good health and good fortune.

Byrd’s prayers did not include thoughts for the hundreds of enslaved Africans who labored in Westover’s tobacco fields and docks. Sections from his secret diary indicate that Byrd viewed enslaved Africans as his personal property. In striking passages that are painful to read, Byrd describes how he punished his slaves with whippings and by forcing them to drink their own urine. How did a cultured gentleman like William Byrd II reconcile owning slaves with his proud belief that Virginia was a land of liberty?

A society with slaves

Byrd was just 2 years old when Bacon’s Rebellion erupted across Virginia’s Tidewater region. At that time, Virginia was still a society in which white indentured servants outnumbered enslaved Africans by 5 to 1. Slavery was thus not yet an integral part of Virginia’s rapidly growing plantation economy.

A slave society

Bacon’s Rebellion alarmed Virginia’s wealthy tobacco planters. They recognized that their reliance on indentured servants poured a large number of indentured servants into a society with limited opportunities for advancement.

By the early 1700s, Byrd and other planters concluded that investing in enslaved Africans was more economical and less dangerous than investing in indentured servants. As a result, the percentage of enslaved Africans in Virginia steadily increased. By 1750, enslaved Africans comprised 43 percent of Virginia’s total population. As a result, Virginia transformed from a colony where slavery existed to a colony dominated by its economic commitment to slavery.

Legal support

Slavery could not become a atable and enduring institution without legal support, In 1705, the Virginia General Assembly enacted a series of laws that codified slavery as a system of race-based, inherited, and perpetual bondage. The law further established a system of harsh punishments designed to enforce strict racial boundaries. For example, ministers who performed an interracial marriage were fined 10,000 pounds of tobacco.

A contradiction

Byrd and other leading Virginians boasted that their colony was a “Land of Liberty” where republican rights and self-government flourished. Yet at the same time they contradicted this belief by denying legal rights to 40 percent of the colony’s population.

Byrd and his contemporaries did not see a contradiction between owning slaves and proclaiming republican principles. They viewed slavey as an economic necessity. Tobacco cultivation required a large supply of inexpensive laborers. The enslaved Africans proved to be a profitable and essential economic investment.

A lack of moral outrage

The majority of white families in Virginia did not own slaves. However, few if any, questioned human bondage as morally unacceptable. Slavery and racism soon became inseparably intertwined in Virginia. Impoverished farmers and wealthy planters like William Byrd found a shared identity in a rigid social hierarchy in which every white person was superior to every black person. The lack of moral outrage enabled slavery to grow and endure.

So why should you remember William Byrd II? Byrd’s career and views provide a vivid illustration that can help you respond to free-response questions asking you to analyze the causes of the development of the institution of slavery in Virginia in the eighteenth century. It can also provide concrete evidence for short-answer questions asking you to describe similarities and differences between the economies that developed in Virginia, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania.

Subscribe now

TOBACCO and SLAVERY in COLONIAL VIRGINIA

PART II

BACON’S REBELLION

A sudden breakdown of law and order in Jamestown deeply alarmed William Sherwood. As a wealthy planter and a member of Virginia’s House of Burgesses, he felt compelled to file a report to the King’s Privy Council in London. Sherwood blamed the violence on a previously unknown rebel leader named Nathaniel Bacon and a “rabble” composed of “a good number of indigent and dissatisfied persons.”

As an established landowner, Sherwood opposed policies that would favor the interests of former indentured servants. He feared that Bacon and his followers would enact “their own laws” and upend Virginia’s existing social order.

Frustrated small farmers

Sherwood and other wealthy planters had legitimate reasons to be worried about rebellious former indentured servants. Once they earned their freedom, indentured servants became independent small farmers. But falling tobacco prices, rising taxes, and dwindling opportunities to purchase fertile land along navigable streams left them feeling frustrated and embittered.

The long list of grievances fueled a growing anger directed at Virginia Governor William Berkeley and wealthy planters like William Sherwood. For example, Berkeley used his annual 1,000-pound salary to finance the construction of a magnificent plantation filled with expensive imported furniture. His lavish lifestyle callously ignored impoverished indentured servants who lived in humble cabins while spending four years of their working lives to pay the 6-pound cost of a transatlantic voyage from London to Virginia.

Bacon’s Rebellion

In the spring of 1676, Nathaniel Bacon took advantage of popular discontent to lead a rebellion against Governor Berkeley. The painting introducing this post depicts Bacon leading his followers into Jamestown. When Berkeley rejected Bacon’s demands for lower taxes and more aggressive political reforms, Bacon and 600-armed followers burned down Jamestown and then destroyed 1.5 million pounds of tobacco.

Known as Bacon’s Rebellion, the insurrection unexpectedly ended when Bacon suddenly died from dysentery. His death demoralized the leaderless rebels and enabled Governor Berkeley to crush the uprising. The vindictive governor then executed 23 of the “outlaws.”

Fateful consequences

Although Bacon’s Rebellion proved to be brief, it had enduring and fateful consequences. The sudden burst of violence exposed long-simmering tensions between the wealthy planters and their struggling former indentured servants.

Bacon’s Rebellion persuaded frightened planters to begin replacing unruly and potentially violent indentured servants with more easily controlled slaves imported from Africa. Bacon’s Rebellion thus marked the beginning of the fateful process of creating a permanent enslaved African labor force.

So why should you remember Bacon’s Rebellion? APUSH test writers expect students to have a firm understanding of the origins of slavery in Virginia. Bacon’s Rebellion marked the beginning of a pivotal shift in Virginia’s labor force and social structure.

Subscribe now

TOBACCO and SLAVERY in COLONIAL VIRGINA

PART I

JOHN ROLFE SAVED JAMESTOWN

In early 1623, Richard Frethorne sent this urgent message to his parents describing the desperate conditions he faced in the Jamestown colony: “There is nothing to be gotten here but sickness and death.” Frethorne concluded by begging his father, “do not forget me, but have mercy and pity my miserable case.”

Frethorne died shortly after sending this letter. His tragic fate was typical of the early settlers in the Jamestown. During the colony’s first 15 years, disease, malnutrition, and conflicts with the Native Americans claimed the lives of as many as 80 percent of the first 10,000 colonists.

An uncertain beginning

The Virginia Company founded Jamestown as a joint-stock venture to make a profit for its investors. But Jamestown began as an unprofitable disaster. Rather than cultivate corn, the first colonists spent their time in a futile search for gold and silver. As a result, the colony teetered on the brink of collapse.

John Rolfe and the “Golden Leaf”

Jamestown’s struggling colonists desperately needed a cash crop. John Rolfe saved the colony when he learned how to cultivate a sweet form of tobacco. The new variety thrived in Virginia’s long growing season and rich Tidewater soil.

Tobacco quickly commanded a seemingly inexhaustible market in England and in Europe. Jamestown’s “Golden Leaf” sold for about 5 to 10 times as much as it cost planters to produce. Given this financial incentive, tobacco production soared from just 2,000 pounds in 1624 to 1,200,000 pounds in 1629.

A labor-intensive crop

Tobacco is a labor-intensive crop. Each step from planting seeds to loading barrels of cured leaves onto cargo ships required exhausting manual labor. Grueling tasks included weeding the area around each plant, removing worms, and topping off the plants to promote the growth of lower leaves.

Indentured servants

At first, tobacco planters relied upon indentured servants like Richard Frethorne. Thousands of hungry and homeless young men and women faced a bleak future in England. Too poor to afford the 6-pound cost of a transatlantic voyage, they became indentured servants who agreed to work on tobacco plantations for 4 to 7 years in return for their passage to Virginia.

The push of unemployment in England combined with the pull of opportunity in Virgina to draw a large number of indentured servants to Tidewater tobacco plantations. During the17th century, indentured servants comprised about 90,000 of the 120,000 people who journeyed to Virginia.

The first African slaves

Planters began the limited purchase of African slaves in 1619. However, enslaved Africans were a very expensive investment. Few laborers, either indentured servants or enslaved Africans, survived more than five years in Virginia’s harsh working and living conditions. As a result, in 1650 enslaved Africans comprised just 2 percent of Virginia’s population. But unforeseen events would cause this figure to dramatically increase.

So why should you remember the role of indentured servants and tobacco in colonial Jamestown? Indentured servants were an important but often forgotten factor in Jamestown’s early history. For example, they can be used to illustrate an important population movement during the seventeenth century. In addition, one APUSH passage used an excerpt from Richard Frethorne’s letter as a prompt to highlight the need for inexpensive labor and the growing tension between independent farmers and their indentured servants.

Subscribe now

I’d like to begin this essay by asking you to think outside the box. Let’s pretend that the voters have just elected you President of the United States. Your landslide victory includes two-thirds majorities in both houses of Congress. How would you use your political mandate? What vision would you have for America?

LBJ and the Great Society

As 1965 began, President Lyndon Baines Johnson faced this exact same situation. His overwhelming victory in the 1964 election gave him an opportunity to build what LBJ called “the Great Society.” Johnson eloquently summarized his vision for the Great Society when he told Congress: “I do not want to be the President who built empires…I want to be the President who educated young children…who helped to feed the hungry…who helped the poor find their way…”

Like the New Deal programs, Johnson’s Great Society proposed to use the power of the federal government to fight poverty and unemployment. In a widely read book entitled The Other America, the social critic Michael Harrington argued that about one-fifth of the nation’s families were mired in what he called “a culture of poverty.” Shocked by Harrington’s compelling anecdotes and statistical evidence, LBJ declared an “unconditional War on Poverty.”

The Great Society also included far-reaching legislation to address a number of pressing problems. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 abolished literacy tests and enforced the voting rights of African Americans. The Immigration Act of 1965 abolished the system of quotas instituted by the National Origins Act of 1924. The Social Security Amendment of 1965 created Medicare and Medicaid providing health insurance for elderly and poor Americans. And finally, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 provided over one billion dollars in federal aid to help school systems purchase textbooks and new library materials.

The New Deal and the Great Society

Both the New Deal and the Great Society expanded the power and reach of the federal government. Both programs expanded the social welfare net by addressing poverty and unemployment. And finally, both the New Deal and the Great Society supported the arts, encouraged housing construction, helped the elderly, and instituted government sponsored employment programs.

The New Deal responded to an economic depression while the Great Society was enacted during a period of economic prosperity. The New Deal reflected the racism of the Jim Crow segregation era by failing to directly address the denial of civil rights to African Americans. In contrast, the Great Society included landmark legislation protecting the civil liberties and voting rights of African Americans. While both programs fought poverty, the Great Society included programs for providing preschool education for disadvantaged children.

The Great Society and the Vietnam War

The rising cost of the Vietnam War undermined financing for Great Society programs. For example, in 1968 the United States spent $322, 000 to kill each enemy soldier. At the same time, Great Society programs received just $53.00 for each underprivileged American.

So why should you remember the Great Society? The Great Society is playing a significant role in recent free-response questions. For example, you should be able to compare the similarities and differences between the Great Society and the New Deal. In addition, the Great Society can be incorporated into an LEQ asking how the United States responded to economic changes from 1960 to 2000 and a DBQ asking about the role of the federal government in the US economy from 1932 to 1980. It is important to stress that you do not have to memorize several Great Society programs. Instead, focus on the War on Poverty as your primary example of a Great Society program.

Subscribe now

On a splendid autumn morning in late October 1825, Governor DeWitt Clinton of New York boarded a brightly decorated canal boat in Buffalo, New York. Named the Seneca Chief, the boat then did something many had said was impossible. It glided down the just opened Erie Canal and headed east to Albany.

“The Wedding of the Waters”

The Seneca Chief left Buffalo at 10:00 am. At that moment a crew fired a loud cannon. A few miles away a second cannoneer heard the boom and fired his gun. In this way, the message that the Seneca Chief had begun its momentous voyage reached New York City in just 80 minutes. The line of cannoneers then sent the same booming message back to Buffalo to let Governor Clinton know that New York City had received the historic message and was preparing for his triumphant arrival

A long line of ships and cheering passengers greeted Governor Clinton’s flotilla when it reached New York City. The climax of his historic 10-day journey occurred at Sandy Hook where the Atlantic Ocean meets New York harbor. Governor Clinton proudly poured two kegs filled with water from Lake Erie into the ocean’s salty waves. This “Wedding of the Waters” symbolized the joining together of the waters of the Great Lakes with those of the Atlantic Ocean.

An unprecedented engineering feat

Governor Clinton had good reasons to celebrate the opening of the Erie Canal. The inland waterway represented a stunning engineering accomplishment. Engineers and workers built 83 locks, constructed over 300 short bridges, and hacked a passageway through dense forests. Awed visitors hailed the canal as one of the wonders of the world.

The changing math of American commerce

The Erie Canal represented more than a feat of American engineering ingenuity; it also had a dramatic effect on the American economy, Before the canal opened, the Appalachian Mountains formed a geographic barrier that forced farmers and merchants in the Old Northwest to send their products to market by way of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers to New Orleans and from there to the East Coast. The Erie Canal reduced the cost of shipping goods between Buffalo and New York City by 90 percent.

New York becomes the “Empire State”

The Erie Canal reduced the trip from Buffalo to New York City from 20 days to just under a week. The canal’s success soon transformed New York State into America’s “Empire State” as inland cities such as Rochester, Syracuse, and Utica grew and prospered.

No city benefited more from the Erie Canal than New York City. The massive profits from the canal trade fueled the city’s spectacular financial prosperity. Located along Wall Street, the New York Stock Exchange soon became the center of American corporate finance.

The Market Revolution

During the early 1800s, most Americans bought or bartered goods from friends or neighbors in a local economy. The Erie Canal sparked a market revolution by enabling merchants and farmers to reach consumers in a rapidly expanding regional markets. The market revolution created especially close commercial ties between the Midwest and the Northeast.

The Erie Canal’s spectacular success inspired a decade-long mania for building canals that witnessed the construction of about 3,000 miles of inland waterways. But the era of canal building proved to be short-lived as steamships and railroads provided new and faster ways of transporting people and goods across increasingly national markets.

So why should you remember the Erie Canal? The Erie Canal touches a number of frequently tested topics. Fo example, its success played a role in debates about government funding of internal improvements. The Erie Canal also played an especially important role in how the market revolution changed American society from 1820 to 1855.

Subscribe now

Americans cherish the Declaration of Independence as a historic landmark and as a proclamation of political principles. The core of the Declaration lies in its famous second sentence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” In a recent book, historian and popular biographer Walter Isaacson describes this opening statement as “the greatest sentence ever written.” Isaacson has a point. Jefferson’s powerful sentence acts as a philosophical argument for, and justification of, the American Revolution.

“An expression of the American mind”

Jefferson later explained that he did not attempt to create original political principles. Instead, he intended the Declaration’s opening sentence to be “an expression of the American mind.” At that time, Enlightenment ideas of reason and natural rights shaped the intellectual minds of Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and other founders of the American republic.

The Enlightenment was an eighteenth-century intellectual movement led by a group of English and French thinkers and writers. Ships carried their books and essays throughout the Atlantic world. The British North American colonies formed a key part of this trans-Atlantic print network. Taken together, Enlightenment writers in Europe and America formed a cosmopolitan “republic of letters.”

“We”

We is the first word in Jefferson’s famous statement and it is also the first word in the U.S. Constitution. This is not an accident. Enlightened thinkers opposed monarchical governments based upon the divine right of kings. Instead, they based America’s new government upon a social contract in which government derives its just powers from the consent of the governed.

“Self-evident truths”

Enlightened thinkers lived in European countries plagued by intolerance, bigotry, and superstition. In contrast, the Enlightenment stressed reason as a way for rational humans to understand an individual’s place in the world.

“Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”

Human reason could discover natural laws such as gravity that regulated the universe. At the same time it could also promote laws regulating human society. This led Jefferson to conclude that “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” are specific “inalienable” natural rights. These common rights became a unifying creed that inspired and unified a diverse people to demand and then fight for independence.

So why should you remember the Enlightenment? APUSH test writers expect students to know that Britain’s North American colonies formed an integral part of the trans-Atlantic economy. This trading system included a print network that spread Enlightenment books and ideas to leading colonial thinkers. You should also know that the Great Awakening and the Enlightenment offered contrasting sets of ideas. The Great Awakening stressed emotion as a way to understand the world. In contrast, the Enlightenment stress reason. Although they differed, both the Great Awakening and the Enlightenment undermined and challenged the authority of the British Crown. And finally, a knowledge of the Enlightenment will enable you to add complexity to LEQ and DBQ questions asking how ideas of self-government influenced American resistance to British imperial authority.

Subscribe now

On July 19, 1848, the 300 delegates seated inside the Wesley Chapel in Seneca Falls, New York listened intently to Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s address to America’s first women’s rights convention. Stanton surprised her listeners by forcefully declaring, “We now demand the right to vote.” She later formulated this demand into Resolution 9 in her proposed Declaration of Sentiments.: “Resolved that it is the duty of the women of this country to secure to themselves their sacred right to the elective franchise.”

“Thee will make us ridiculous!”

The delegates recognized the need for actions to address the legal inequalities that transformed America’s women into second class citizens. But many women genuinely feared that demanding the suffrage would invite public ridicule. It is important to remember that the firmly entrenched cult of domesticity relegated women to a role as guardians of the home. At that time there was even a taboo against women speaking in public. Stanton’s friend and close ally Lucretia Mott famously warned, “Why Lizzie, thee will make us ridiculous! We must go slowly.”

Frederick Douglass seizes the moment

Mott was right. The nation’s press, politicians, preachers, and husbands overwhelmingly viewed the demand for suffrage as an attack on the natural order of a male-dominated country. Frederick Douglass understood the urgency of the moment. Famed as in eloquent orator, the former slave and prominent abolitionist rose to address the convention. Douglass argued that the right to vote represented more than a symbolic action; it also would become a powerful tool to help women gain self-respect by ending sex-based legal discrimination.

Douglass’s eloquence swayed the convention allowing Resolution 9 to narrowly pass. The Seneca Falls Convention’s call for suffrage changed the trajectory of American history. By refusing to abandon Resolution 9, Stanton and Douglass transformed the convention from a local meeting about societal grievances into a revolutionary political movement.

A long but successful struggle

The women who attended the Seneca Falls Convention faced a long and at times frustrating struggle. However, their petitions and marches finally prevailed. Of the 100 women who signed the Senecas Falls Declaration of Sentiments, only two lived to see the 1920 passage of the Nineteenth Amendment granting women the suffrage.

So why should you remember the Seneca Falls Convention? APUSH test writers expect students to know that the historic meeting marked the beginning of the women’s rights movement in the United States. The demands in the Declaration of Sentiments formed the movement’s agenda into the twentieth century. In addition to providing answers to multiple-choice questions, the Seneca Falls Convention can be used as an example for LEQ questions about the Second Great Awakening and nineteenth century reform movements.

Subscribe now

On August 27, 1928, several hundred spectators crowded into a magnificent room in the French Foreign Office in Paris to watch a historic ceremony. Six huge klieg lights illuminated the scene so that the newly invented “talking movie” cameras could record that moment for a world eager for peace.

“Peace is proclaimed”

French Foreign Minister Aristide Briand, U.S. Secretary of State Frank B. Kellogg and representatives of thirteen other nations entered the room to sign a treaty outlawing war. Briand opened the ceremony with an eloquent speech in which he announced, “Peace is proclaimed.” As the representatives of former enemies listened, Briand solemnly dedicated the treaty to all of the soldiers who died in World War I.

After Briand’s speech, the German Foreign minister became the first official to sign the historic document. Next came Secretary of State Kellogg. Choked with emotion, Kellogg signed the treaty with a foot-long gold pen given to him by the citizens of the French seaport city of Le Harve. Within ten minutes, the remaining representatives added their signatures. Outside an enthusiastic crowd cheered.

Many people in the United States believed that the treaty truly marked a momentous event in world history. One senator called the Kellogg-Briand Pact “the most telling action ever taken in human history to abolish war.” Indeed, within a year, almost every nation in the world signed the agreement. Many hoped it would end the arms race and create an enduring safeguard for world peace.

Selective engagement

The Kellogg-Briand Pact illustrates the complex and often contradictory way the United States viewed its global role from 1919 to 1939. Although the Senate rejected Wilson’s idealistic hopes for the League of Nations, the Coolidge administration embraced the Kellogg-Briand Pact’s idealistic attempt at peacemaking. While deliberately staying out of European political entanglements, American financial loans played a key role in stimulating Germany’s post-war recovery.

The period of diplomatic selective engagement took a new turn following the onset of the Great Depression. The collapse of the United States economy led to a renewed disillusionment with Europe. Congress expressed America’s isolationist sentiment by passing a series of Neutrality Acts in 1935, 1937, and 1939. Designed to prevent American from being involved in rising international tensions, the Neutrality Acts prevented President Roosevelt from responded to the growing threat of Nazi Germany.

So why should you remember the Kellogg-Briand Pact. Although APUSH exams have yet to include a specific question about the Kellogg-Briand Pact, it offers a concrete example that can be used as part of either a DBQ or LEQ essay discussion on America’s role in the world from 1919 to 1939. Recent LEQ questions have specifically included this topic.

Subscribe now

Feminist leaders hoped that winning the suffrage would enable them to promote an agenda that included child and women’s labor laws, health and safety legislation, and municipal reform. However, they were unable to sustain the prewar enthusiasm for Progressive reforms.

World War I dealt a shattering blow to the confident Progressive belief that progress was inevitable. Instead of reform, American voters elected a Republican president who promised a return to “normalcy.” At the same time, America’s popular culture enthusiastically embraced consumer products and a new carefree lifestyle that became known as the Roaring Twenties. “The uncertainties of 1919 were over,” F. Scott Fitzgerald definitively observed. “ He then correctly predicted, “America was going on the greatest, gaudiest spree in history.”

A New Generation of Flappers

A new generation of young women called flappers provided the most publicized and controversial model of the new American woman. The name derived from the way fashionable young women allowed their galoshes to “flap” about their ankles.

Flappers ignored the feminist political agenda, choosing instead to focus on a lighthearted and flamboyant lifestyle. They unceremoniously discarded the ankles-to-neck layers of clothing worn by the older generation in favor of hemlines rising to their knees. The flapper look also included close-cut bobbed hair and heavy makeup. They further jolted their conservative elders by dancing the Charleston, joyriding in their boyfriends’ roadsters, smoking once-forbidden cigarettes, and drinking illegal liquor.

“Living in a different world”

The flapper’s daring clothing style, scandalous dances, and late-night parties inevitably drew condemnation from many members of the older generation. In 1922, a 19-year-old self-proclaimed flapper named Ellen Welles Page published a widely read essay defending the flapper lifestyle. Page argued that the flappers were a product of a post-war world that had seen too much tragedy to remain “stuffy.” She reminded adults that “we are the same girls that you were – only we are living in a different world.”

Page was right. A combination of labor-saving home inventions and mass marketing on radio was offering young women greater freedom and a dazzling array of new career opportunities. Page pleaded with parents to offer guidance rather than criticism as her generation struggled to navigate its way thru a “brave new world,”

“Ain’t we got fun?”

Flappers marked the appearance of America’s first distinctive youth culture. Magazines publicized the flapper’s willingness to experience new freedoms at the same time the growing movie industry glamorized high-spirited flappers such as Clara Bow, Hollywood’s first “It” girl.

Critics correctly predicted that the flapper phenomenon would prove to be fleeting. But America’s young people didn’t care. They went right on enjoying their happy carefree lifestyle singing, “In the meantime, in between time, ain’t we got fun?”

So why should you remember the flappers? Cultural historians and APUSH test writers do not view flappers as a frivolous topic. Answers to recent SAQs and multiple-choice questions have emphasized that flappers signaled the beginning of a new and more active role for American women. Their youthful exuberance provided a model of independence that would inspire future generation of even more rebellious youth.

Subscribe now

In 1890, New York City provided visible evidence of the triumphs and tragedies created by the industrial revolution transforming American society. Wealthy captains of industry lived in extravagant mansions lining Fifth Avenue. Preoccupied with enjoying their lavish lifestyle, they had little knowledge of the growing concentration of immigrants living in the city’s Lower East Side. Their lack of awareness changed when Jacob Riis published his eye-opening book How the Other Half Lives.

Riis understood how poverty’s sharp edge created a sense of overwhelming despair. After immigrating from Denmark in 1870, Riis lived in one of New York City’s dark, overcrowded tenement buildings. Unwilling to accept defeat, he taught himself how to use the recent invention of flash photography. As a police reporter for the New York Tribune, Riis filed frequent reports about life in the city’s Lower East Side.

Riis used his pioneering photographic skills to reveal the reality of conditions “more terrible than words can tell.” His black-and-white images captured the daily grind of poverty in tenements, streets, and alleys he described as “the evil offspring of public neglect and private greed.” Riis’s poignant photographs of children like the one featured in this post, opened New Yorker’s eyes to a world they had previously ignored.

In 1890, Riis compiled his photographs and graphic commentaries into an influential book titled How the Other Half Lives. This powerful work galvanized a new generation of Progressive reformers to demand more rigorous building inspections and slum clearance projects. For example, Riis’s book directly spurred new sanitation, lighting, and safety laws.

How the Other Half Lives did more than change laws in New York City. By showcasing the grim realities of immigrant life, Riis helped spark the beginning of the Muckraker movement in America journalism. Soon other reform-minded authors exposed unsanitary conditions in food-processing plants, examples of corporate greed, and corruption by political bosses.

So why should you remember Jacob Riis and How the Other Half Lives? APUSH multiple-choice questions have featured passages and photographs from Riis’s book. Test writers expect APUSH students to know that industrialization, urbanization, and immigration combined to create the conditions documented by Riis. They particularly emphasize the key point that Riis’s compelling images contributed to an increase in Progressive reform activity while also fueling the rise of muckraking journalism.

The end of World War I did not bring a return to tolerance. The nativism unleashed by the war reached a new high in a short but intense Red Scare. In November 1917, Bolsheviks led by Vladimir Lenin seized power in Russia and promptly created a communist dictatorship. The revolutionary upheaval in Russia alarmed many Americans who believed that communist sympathizers and other radicals secretly planned to undermine the United States government.

Strikes and Bombs

A sudden postwar recession unsettled Americans as prices rose more than 15 percent, 100,000 businesses declared bankruptcy, and 5 million workers lost their jobs. The recession triggered an unprecedented wave of 3,600 strikes as over 4 million workers walked off their jobs.

The press demonized the strikes as “crimes against society,” “conspiracies against the government,” and most ominously “plots to establish communism.” The wave of strikes coincided with a sudden outbreak of anarchist violence. In April 1919, alert postal workers discovered and defused over thirty bombs addressed to leading businessmen and politicians. Just two months later, eight bombs exploded in eight cities, suggesting a nationwide conspiracy. One of the bombs damaged the façade of Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer’s home in Washington.

The Palmer Raids

Known as the Red Scare, the nationwide fear of radicals prompted Palmer to act. Although no more than one-tenth of one percent of adult Americans belonged to the domestic communist movement, Palmer launched a massive roundup of aliens and alleged communists.

One January 2, 1920, agents of the Department of Justice arrested some 5,000 suspects in a dozen cities across America. The Palmer Raids violated civil liberties as government agents broke into private homes, clubs, coffee shops, and union offices without arrest warrant. Although the Department of Justice released most of those arrested, they nonetheless deported about 500 aliens without bearings or trials.

Back to “Normalcy?”

The Palmer Raids seemed to mark the end of the Red Scare. During the 1920 presidential campaign, the Republican candidate Warren G. Harding promised voters a “return to normalcy.” Harding’s landslide victory appeared to usher in a beginning of peace and prosperity.

Historian Burl L. Noggle argues that in fact the Red Scare “never really ended.” He points out that intolerance and nativism remained deeply rooted and enduring characteristics of American society during the Roaring Twenties. For example, the revived Ku Klux Klan, the Sacco and Vanzetti trial, and the enactment of strict immigration quotas all substantiate his view that fear and suspicion continued to affect American life.

So why should you remember the First Red Scare? APUSH test writers often ask students to interpret political cartoons depicting anarchists and other aspects of the First Red Scare. In addition, be prepared for short-answer questions asking you to compare and contrast the First Red Scare with the Second Red Scare during the early 1950s.

Subscribe now

The post-World War II economic boom did not encourage a renewal of women’s rights activism. Instead, magazines, movies, and television programs glamorized romantic love and celebrated marriage. Encouraged by the mass media, men and women married at an early age. During the 1950s the average age of marriage for American women dropped to just 20.3. By 1960, almost 75 percent of all women between the ages of 20 and 24 were married.

The marriage boom triggered a postwar baby boom. The 1950s witnessed a tidal wave of 40 million births. These children formed the nucleus of a huge baby boom generation that totaled 76 million births from 1946 through 1964.

A Revived Cult of Domesticity

The young families populated suburbs that quickly became havens for a revived cult of domesticity. The mass media reinforced and idealized the traditional gender roles in which men commuted to work while women stayed home and raised their children. For example, in the popular TV program Leave it to Beaver, June Cleaver is a middle-class housewife devoted to her family. When her two boys arrive home from school, June greets them with milk and cookies while she prepares dinner in her spotless kitchen. A special issue of Life magazine featured “happy homemakers” like June Cleaver who were dedicated to their husbands and children.

Betty Friedan: “Is this all?”

The “happy homemakers featured in Life magazine did not include Betty Friedan. A middle-class mother of three, Friedan discovered that many of her college-educated peers felt unfulfilled by the endless routines of housework and raising children. Although they lived in comfortable suburbs, these women felt bored and dissatisfied with their lives.

Friedan expressed this sense of frustration in her book The Feminine Mystique. Published in 1963, The Feminine Mystique challenged the culture of domesticity that had prevailed since the end of World War II. It exposed the previously unspoken sense of dissatisfaction felt by suburban housewives who spent their days buying groceries, cooking meals, and chauffeuring their children. Friedan opened her book by describing these routines and then asking a “silent question” that women had been afraid to ask – “Is this all?”

The Feminine Mystique became an instant best seller. It inspired many readers to reevaluate the belief that women should derive fulfillment exclusively through domesticity Historians credit The Feminine Mystique with launching a second wave of feminine activism.

The National Organization for Women (NOW)

Betty Friedan understood “that it was not enough to write a book…there had to be organization and there had to be a movement.” In 1966, Friedan and other women activists formed the National Organization for Women (NOW) “to bring women into full participation in the mainstream of American society now.”

NOW injected new energy into the long-dormant women’s movement. Led by Friedan, NOW focused on working within the political system to achieve an ambitious agenda of equal rights for women that included ending male only colleges, demanding equal pay for equal work, and calling upon companies to provide affordable childcare.

So why should you remember Betty Friedan and the origins of second wave feminism? DBQ and LEQ questions have devoted particular attention to civil rights activism from 1940 to 1980. Betty Friedan played a significant role in the women’s rights movement during this period. The Feminist Mystique and NOW can both be used as evidence for arguments evaluating the causes and consequences of movements for social change during the 1960s and 1970s.