APUSH CRAM GUIDE

FULL EXAM · ALL PERIODS · ESSAYS INCLUDED · YOU GOT THIS

P1 1491–1607 P2 1607–1754 P3 1754–1800 P4 1800–1848

P5 1844–1877 P6 1865–1898 P7 1890–1945 P8 1945–1980

P9 1980–PRESENT ESSAYS

1 Contact & Conquest 1491–1607

KEY EVENTS BIG IDEAS

▸ 1492 — Columbus reaches ▸ Columbian Exchange:

Americas, sparks disease kills ~90% of
Columbian Exchange Native populations

▸ Spanish conquistadors ▸ Native societies were

(Cortés, Pizarro) topple diverse & complex before
Aztec & Inca empires contact

▸ Encomienda system: ▸ European motives: God,

forced Native labor for Glory, Gold
Spanish settlers
▸ Spanish "Black Legend" —
▸ Bartolomé de las Casas brutality toward Natives
defends Native rights
▸ Different colonizers =
▸ French & Dutch focus on different relationships
fur trade; British on with Natives
settlement
 APUSH THESIS ANGLE

European colonization fundamentally disrupted existing Native societies

through disease, forced labor, and displacement — but Native peoples were
not passive victims; they adapted, resisted, and negotiated strategically.

2 Colonial America 1607–1754

KEY EVENTS & PEOPLE COLONIAL REGIONS

▸ 1607 — Jamestown (VA) ▸ New England: Puritan

founded; tobacco saves theocracy, small farms,
colony town meetings

▸ 1619 — House of ▸ Middle Colonies: diverse,

Burgesses + first enslaved tolerant, breadbasket (NY,
Africans arrive PA, NJ)

▸ 1620 — Mayflower ▸ Southern: plantation

Compact; Plymouth economy, indentured
Colony servants → enslaved labor

▸ 1676 — Bacon's Rebellion ▸ Headright system

(poor whites vs. elite; shift attracted settlers to
to African slavery) Virginia

▸ 1692 — Salem Witch Trials ▸ Navigation Acts — Britain

controls colonial trade
▸ 1730s–40s — Great (mercantilism)
Awakening (Whitefield,
Edwards)

▸ Metacom's War / King

Philip's War (1675–76)
 SLAVERY DEVELOPS

▸ Bacon's Rebellion showed danger of poor whites → planters shift to

enslaved Africans as more controllable labor force

▸ Slave codes legally defined Africans as property (Virginia 1705)

▸ Middle Passage: brutal transatlantic crossing; ~15% death rate

▸ Stono Rebellion (1739) — major slave uprising in SC; colonists tighten

slave codes

3 Revolution & New Nation 1754–1800

ROAD TO REVOLUTION REVOLUTION & FOUNDING

 ▸ French & Indian War ▸ Declaration of
(1754–63) — Britain in Independence (1776) —
massive debt Locke's natural rights

▸ Proclamation of 1763 — ▸ Turning point: Saratoga

colonists can't go west; (1777) → France joins
colonists furious Americans

▸ Stamp Act, Townshend ▸ Articles of Confederation

Acts, Tea Act — "taxation — too weak (Shays'
without representation" Rebellion shows it)

▸ Boston Massacre (1770), ▸ Constitutional Convention

Boston Tea Party (1773) (1787) — Great
Compromise, 3/5
▸ Intolerable Acts → First Compromise
Continental Congress
(1774) ▸ Federalists vs. Anti-
Federalists — Bill of Rights
▸ Lexington & Concord added 1791
(1775) — shots fired
▸ Washington's Farewell:
avoid factions &
entangling alliances

ENLIGHTENMENT IDEAS EARLY REPUBLIC ISSUES

▸ Locke: natural rights (life,

liberty, property)

▸ Montesquieu: separation
of powers

▸ Republicanism: civic
virtue, rule of law

▸ Revolution didn't free

enslaved people —
contradiction baked in
 ▸ Hamilton's financial plan:
national bank, debt
assumption

▸ XYZ Affair → Quasi-War

with France

▸ Alien & Sedition Acts;

Kentucky & Virginia
Resolutions (nullification
idea)

▸ Election of 1800 —
"Revolution of 1800,"
peaceful transfer of power

4 Democracy & Expansion 1800–1848

KEY EVENTS JACKSONIAN DEMOCRACY

 ▸ Louisiana Purchase (1803) ▸ Expanded white male
— doubles US size suffrage (no property
requirement)
▸ Marbury v. Madison (1803)
— judicial review ▸ Jackson: "common man"
established vs. elite; but also brutal
toward Natives
▸ War of 1812 — nationalism
surges; "Era of Good ▸ Spoils system — rewarded
Feelings" political allies with jobs

▸ Missouri Compromise ▸ Killed the National Bank;

(1820) — 36°30' line Whigs formed in
opposition
▸ Monroe Doctrine (1823) —
Western Hemisphere off- ▸ Market Revolution: canals,
limits to Europe railroads, factories —
North industrializes
▸ Indian Removal Act (1830)
→ Trail of Tears

▸ Nullification Crisis (1832)

— SC vs. tariff; Jackson
holds union

▸ Mexican-American War
(1846–48) — gains TX, CA,
SW

REFORM MOVEMENTS & MANIFEST DESTINY

▸ Second Great Awakening fuels reform: abolition, temperance,

women's rights

▸ Seneca Falls Convention (1848) — Declaration of Sentiments

(women's rights)

▸ Frederick Douglass — escaped slave, abolitionist, orator

▸ Manifest Destiny: God-given right to expand west; justifies

displacement of Natives & conquest of Mexico

▸ Wilmot Proviso — debate: should slavery expand into new

 ▸ Wilmot Proviso — debate: should slavery expand into new
territories?

5 Civil War Era 1844–1877

CAUSES OF CIVIL WAR CIVIL WAR

▸ Compromise of 1850 + ▸ Emancipation

Fugitive Slave Act Proclamation (1863) —
frees slaves in rebel
▸ Kansas-Nebraska Act states; war = moral
(1854) — "Bleeding crusade
Kansas," popular
sovereignty ▸ Gettysburg (1863) —
turning point in the East
▸ Dred Scott v. Sandford
(1857) — enslaved people ▸ 13th Amendment (1865) —
not citizens; Congress abolishes slavery
can't ban slavery in
territories ▸ Union advantages:
industry, railroads,
▸ John Brown's Raid on population, navy
Harpers Ferry (1859)
▸ Confederate advantages:
▸ Lincoln elected 1860 → defensive war, strong
Southern states secede military leadership

▸ Fort Sumter (1861) — war

begins

RECONSTRUCTION WHY RECONSTRUCTION

"FAILED"
▸ 14th Amendment —
birthright citizenship, ▸ KKK violence intimidated
 birthright citizenship, ▸ KKK violence intimidated
equal protection Black voters

▸ 15th Amendment — Black ▸ Northern "reform fatigue"

men can vote — attention shifted to
industrialization
▸ Freedmen's Bureau —
education, jobs for freed ▸ Supreme Court gutted
people Civil Rights Act (1883)

▸ Radical Republicans vs. ▸ Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)

Johnson's lenient plan — "separate but equal"
(Jim Crow era)
▸ Compromise of 1877 —
Hayes becomes president;
federal troops leave South

▸ Sharecropping & Black

Codes re-establish near-
slavery conditions

6 Gilded Age 1865–1898

INDUSTRIALIZATION LABOR & IMMIGRATION

 ▸ Railroads unite the nation; ▸ Knights of Labor →
Transcontinental RR (1869) American Federation of
Labor (Gompers)
▸ Robber Barons: Carnegie
(steel), Rockefeller (oil), J.P. ▸ Homestead Strike (1892),
Morgan (banking) Pullman Strike (1894) —
crushed by government
▸ Vertical & horizontal
integration, trusts, ▸ New immigrants from S/E
monopolies Europe (Italian, Jewish,
Slavic) — faced
▸ Sherman Antitrust Act discrimination
(1890) — first attempt to
regulate monopolies ▸ Chinese Exclusion Act
(1882) — first major
▸ Laissez-faire capitalism; immigration restriction
Social Darwinism justifies
inequality ▸ Tenements, sweatshops,
child labor

WEST & FARMERS POLITICS & CULTURE

▸ Homestead Act (1862) — ▸ Gilded Age = political

free land draws settlers corruption (Tammany Hall,
spoils system)
▸ Native Plains peoples
decimated: Battle of Little ▸ Pendleton Civil Service
Bighorn (1876), Wounded Act (1883) — merit-based
Knee (1890) federal jobs

▸ Dawes Act (1887) — tried ▸ Social Gospel — churches

to "Americanize" Natives address poverty
by breaking up
reservations ▸ Settlement houses — Jane
Addams' Hull House
▸ Populist Party — farmers (Chicago)
vs. railroads & banks; want
silver coinage ▸ Booker T. Washington vs.
W.E.B. Du Bois — debate
▸ William Jennings Bryan on Black advancement
"Cross of Gold" speech
(1896)
 (1896)

7 Progressivism, WWI & WWII 1890–1945

PROGRESSIVE ERA WWI & 1920S

▸ Muckrakers: Upton Sinclair ▸ US enters WWI 1917 —

(The Jungle), Ida Tarbell Zimmermann Telegram,
(Standard Oil) unrestricted submarine
warfare
▸ 16th Amendment —
federal income tax ▸ Wilson's 14 Points; Senate
rejects League of Nations
▸ 17th Amendment — direct (isolationism)
election of senators
▸ Red Scare (1919–20) —
▸ 18th Amendment — fear of communism;
Prohibition (1919) Palmer Raids

▸ 19th Amendment — ▸ Harlem Renaissance —

women's suffrage (1920) Black cultural explosion
(Langston Hughes, jazz)
▸ TR's Square Deal:
conservation, consumer ▸ Roaring Twenties —
protection, corporate consumerism, flappers,
regulation Model T, radio

▸ Wilson's New Freedom: ▸ Immigration Acts (1921,

Federal Reserve Act, 1924) — strict quotas;
Clayton Antitrust Act nativism

GREAT DEPRESSION & NEW WWII

DEAL
▸ Neutrality Acts (1930s) —
 ▸ Neutrality Acts (1930s) —
▸ Stock market crash (1929) US avoids war; Lend-
→ unemployment hits Lease helps Allies
~25%
▸ Pearl Harbor (Dec 7, 1941)
▸ Hoover's response = too → US enters war
little, too late
▸ Japanese American
▸ FDR's New Deal: relief, internment — Executive
recovery, reform — FDIC, Order 9066 (Korematsu v.
Social Security, CCC, PWA US)

▸ New Deal didn't end ▸ D-Day (June 6, 1944) —

Depression — WWII did Normandy invasion

▸ Critics: Huey Long (too ▸ Atomic bombs on

little redistribution), Hiroshima & Nagasaki
conservatives (too much (Aug 1945)
government)
▸ Holocaust — US slow to
respond to refugee crisis

▸ Women & minorities in

workforce — "Double V"
campaign

8 Cold War & Civil Rights 1945–1980

COLD WAR CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT

 ▸ Truman Doctrine (1947) — ▸ Brown v. Board of Ed
contain communism (1954) — overturns Plessy;
everywhere school desegregation

▸ Marshall Plan — rebuild ▸ Montgomery Bus Boycott

Europe to prevent (1955–56) — MLK rises
communism
▸ Little Rock Crisis (1957) —
▸ NATO (1949), Korean War Eisenhower sends troops
(1950–53)
▸ Sit-ins, Freedom Riders,
▸ McCarthyism — March on Washington
communist "witch hunt" in (1963)
US
▸ Civil Rights Act (1964) —
▸ Eisenhower: military- bans discrimination
industrial complex
warning ▸ Voting Rights Act (1965)

▸ Cuban Missile Crisis ▸ Malcolm X, Black Power,

(1962) — closest to Black Panthers — more
nuclear war militant wing

▸ Vietnam War — escalation ▸ MLK assassinated 1968

under LBJ; Nixon's
Vietnamization; falls 1975

▸ Détente under Nixon —

SALT I, opens China

GREAT SOCIETY & SOCIAL NIXON & CRISIS OF

CHANGE CONFIDENCE

▸ Watergate scandal —
Nixon resigns (1974)

▸ War Powers Act (1973) —

Congress checks
presidential war power

▸ Oil embargo (1973) —

stagflation, energy crisis
 ▸ Carter era — Iran hostage
crisis, malaise speech

▸ Trust in government hits

historic lows

▸ LBJ's Great Society:

Medicare, Medicaid,
federal education funding

▸ Immigration Act (1965) —

ends national-origins
quotas

▸ Feminist movement —
Betty Friedan (Feminine
Mystique), NOW, Roe v.
Wade (1973)

▸ Counterculture — antiwar
protests, Woodstock,
hippies

▸ Environmental movement
— Silent Spring, EPA
(1970), Earth Day

9 Reagan to Present 1980–Present

REAGAN REVOLUTION POST-COLD WAR & 9/11

 ▸ Reaganomics: tax cuts, ▸ Gulf War (1991) — Bush Sr.
deregulation, trickle-down drives Iraq from Kuwait
economics
▸ Clinton: NAFTA, budget
▸ Cold War escalation → surplus, welfare reform,
Soviet collapse (1991) impeachment

▸ Iran-Contra scandal ▸ 9/11 (2001) → War on

Terror: Afghanistan, Iraq
▸ War on Drugs — War (2003)
mandatory minimums,
mass incarceration surge ▸ PATRIOT Act —
surveillance vs. civil
▸ Religious right / Moral liberties debate
Majority rises
▸ Hurricane Katrina (2005)
— government failure
exposed

▸ 2008 financial crisis —

bank bailouts, Great
Recession

KEY TRENDS (PERIOD 9)

▸ Globalization — outsourcing, deindustrialization, income inequality

grows

▸ Technology revolution — internet economy, social media

▸ Political polarization intensifies

▸ Obama (2008) — first Black president; ACA (Obamacare)

▸ Debates over immigration, LGBTQ+ rights, gun control, racial justice

continue
E s s ay S u r v i va l G u i d e
DBQ — DOCUMENT BASED QUESTION

Structure: Intro (thesis) → 3–4 body paragraphs → Conclusion. You have

~60 min.

Thesis: Must make a historically defensible claim that responds to the

prompt. Not just "there were many factors" — make an argument.

Contextualization: 1 paragraph BEFORE your main argument

describing the broader historical context (at least ~4 sentences).

Evidence: Use at least 3 docs as evidence. Aim for 6 for the higher
point.

Sourcing (HAPP): For 3 docs, explain Historical situation, Audience,

Purpose, or Point of view — and WHY it matters for the argument.

Complexity: Show nuance — corroboration, contradiction, change

over time, different scales (local/national/global).

LEQ — LONG ESSAY QUESTION

Structure: Thesis → Contextualization → 2–3 body paragraphs →

Conclusion. ~40 min.

Pick one of three prompts (usually different time periods)

Choose the period you know best — don't overthink it

Must use specific evidence (names, dates, events) not vague

generalities

Demonstrate a historical reasoning skill

skill: causation, comparison, or
continuity & change over time (CCOT)

Complexity point: acknowledge counterarguments or show how

change was uneven
SAQ — SHORT ANSWER QUESTION

Format: 3 parts (a, b, c). 3–4 sentences each. ~40 min for all 4 SAQs.

No thesis needed — just directly answer each part

Be specific: use names, dates, examples

Read the question carefully — answer exactly what's asked

THE APUSH THESIS FORMULA

A strong APUSH thesis = CLAIM + REASONING

REASONING. Try this template:

"Although [counterargument / complexity], [your argument]

because [reason 1], [reason 2], and [reason 3]."

Example: "Although the New Deal provided critical relief during the Great
Depression, it ultimately failed to restore full economic prosperity
because it lacked sufficient federal spending, excluded key minority
groups, and faced significant conservative resistance."

TOP 10 THEMES THAT KEEP SHOWING UP

American Identity — who counts as "American"? (always contested)

Slavery & Race — foundational contradiction in a nation "founded on

freedom"

Federal vs. State power — runs from Constitution to Civil War to New
Deal to today

Expansion & its costs — Manifest Destiny, imperialism, displacement

of Natives

Immigration & nativism — waves of arrivals + waves of backlash

Labor & capitalism — workers vs. owners; regulation debates

Reform movements — linked to religious revivals (Great Awakenings)

US role in the world — isolationism vs. interventionism

Civil liberties in wartime — rights restricted in every major war

Continuity vs. Change — the AP loves asking whether something

really changed or just looked different

LAST-MINUTE TIPS
MCQ: eliminate 2 answers first, then choose. Trust your gut.

Write your thesis FIRST — even if you revise it later, it anchors you.

Contextualization must be before your main argument (not just a

throwaway line).

If you blank on a doc's sourcing: "The author's purpose as [role] writing

to [audience] is to [persuade/inform/etc.], which means this source
[overstates/downplays/etc.] ___."

Drink water. Write big. You already know more than you think.

GOOD LUCK TOMORROW