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AP US History — Practice Questions flashcards

6 of 60 questions free to study here · 9 topics · the whole deck is built into Willys

Multiple-choice practice questions, one best answer each, on all nine periods from contact to 9/11, many built on short primary-source quotations.

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Practice deck · part of AP US History · written against: College Board AP US History Course and Exam Description (nine periods). Updated 2026-10-10.

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  1. Historians estimate that within a few generations after 1492, many Native American populations fell by well over half. Which factor contributed most to this decline?

    A) Epidemic diseases such as smallpox carried from Europe
    B) Famine after Native farmers abandoned maize for wheat
    C) Mass transport of Native captives to labor in Europe
    D) Warfare among Native nations over the European fur trade
    A) Epidemic diseases such as smallpox carried from Europe

    As part of the Columbian Exchange, Old World diseases struck populations with no prior exposure and caused far more deaths than any other factor. Warfare and forced labor added to the losses but were not the main cause.
    Period 1 › Contact and Conquest
  2. Which consequence of the French and Indian War (1754–1763) did the most to change relations between Britain and its North American colonies?

    A) Spain took over the British colony of Georgia
    B) France kept permanent control of the Ohio River valley
    C) Britain's war debt led Parliament to tax the colonies
    D) Britain gave the colonies elected seats in Parliament
    C) Britain's war debt led Parliament to tax the colonies

    Britain won the war but faced a huge debt and a vast territory to defend, so Parliament ended salutary neglect with new taxes and enforcement. France lost its mainland North American empire in the 1763 Treaty of Paris.
    Period 3 › Road to Revolution
  3. In Marbury v. Madison (1803), Chief Justice John Marshall ruled that part of the Judiciary Act of 1789 conflicted with the Constitution. What was the decision's most important long-term effect?

    A) It enlarged the Court's original jurisdiction by statute
    B) It established the Court's power of judicial review
    C) It required the president to deliver all commissions
    D) It confirmed that states could nullify federal laws
    B) It established the Court's power of judicial review

    By striking down part of a federal law, Marshall established judicial review while refusing to order Marbury's commission delivered, so Jefferson had nothing to defy. The ruling actually narrowed, not enlarged, the Court's original jurisdiction under the statute.
    Period 4 › Early Republic
  4. "The man who dies thus rich dies disgraced." —Andrew Carnegie, "Wealth," 1889

    Carnegie's view in this essay differed from strict Social Darwinism mainly in arguing which of the following?

    A) Competition among businesses was harmful to society
    B) Workers should own the factories in which they labored
    C) Government should redistribute wealth through income taxes
    D) The rich had a duty to use their fortunes for public good
    D) The rich had a duty to use their fortunes for public good

    In the Gospel of Wealth, Carnegie accepted that the fittest rose to the top but held that the rich were trustees obliged to give their fortunes away, for example to libraries. He also praised heavy taxes on large estates at death, but the essay proposed no income tax.
    Period 6 › Industry and Labor
  5. "I aimed at the public's heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach." —Upton Sinclair, 1906, on the response to his novel The Jungle

    Which federal action is most directly connected to the public reaction Sinclair described?

    A) The Meat Inspection Act
    B) The Sherman Antitrust Act
    C) The Seventeenth Amendment
    D) The Federal Reserve Act
    A) The Meat Inspection Act

    Readers were more disgusted by the novel's scenes of Chicago packinghouses than moved by its workers' plight, and Congress passed the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act in 1906. The Sherman Act dated from 1890.
    Period 7 › Progressive Era
  6. "In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem." —Ronald Reagan, first inaugural address, 1981

    This statement most directly reflected which change in American politics?

    A) A conservative challenge to the federal role since the New Deal
    B) Growing public support for Great Society antipoverty programs
    C) Bipartisan support for Keynesian deficit spending during recessions
    D) A revival of Progressive Era campaigns against large trusts
    A) A conservative challenge to the federal role since the New Deal

    Reagan united the New Right behind tax cuts, deregulation and cuts to domestic programs, rejecting the liberal consensus that had expanded federal power from the New Deal through the Great Society. Keynesian tools had been discredited by 1970s stagflation.
    Period 9 › Reagan to 9/11

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More AP US History decks

Periods 1–5 (1491–1877)Periods 6–9 (1865–present)

← All AP US History decks, with the study guide and topic outline.

About these cards

Review status: Second-reader reviewed, with corrections applied.

Checked against:

  • Topic outline follows the College Board AP U.S. History Course and Exam Description (effective Fall 2026), Periods 1–9 (outline only; no course or exam text reproduced).
  • Facts follow this folder's two study decks, which were checked against the reference below and the National Archives' Milestone Documents collection (public domain); reference only, no text copied.
  • OpenStax U.S. History, consulted as a reference; no text copied.
  • Dates and holdings cross-checked with Library of Congress primary-source guides and Oyez case summaries; quoted stimuli are brief excerpts from public-domain documents, speeches and court opinions, and paraphrased stimuli are marked as such.
  • Shays's Rebellion, Worcester v. Georgia, Fifteenth Amendment and Carnegie cards also checked against the Journals of the Continental Congress (October 1786), the Supreme Court's opinions in Worcester v. Georgia (1832) and Guinn v. United States (1915) as printed in the U.S. Reports (Library of Congress), and Carnegie's essay "Wealth" (North American Review, June 1889) (public domain; reference only).

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