Evaluate the extent to which the growth of civil rights activism contributed to the changes in government actions from 1940 to 1980.

African Americans and middle-class white women became activists in civil rights movements that brought significant changes to government action during the 1950s, 60s, and 70s. Both groups used legal cases and nonviolent demonstrations to galvanize public support for watershed government actions. However, both groups also experienced disappointing setbacks.

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Evaluate the extent to which migration influenced the western United States from 1820 to 1898.

In the early 1800s most Americans knew very little about the land and people between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains. The public assumed that savage Indian tribes occupied a region the Walt Whitman described as “vast, trackless spaces.” Most Americans seemed content to leave the region to the roaming tribes of Indians and the vast herds of buffalo. But a series of events caused this view to dramatically change. The appeal of Manifest Destiny, the discovery of gold in California, the passage of the Homestead Act, and the construction of transcontinental railroads sparked a series of migrations that transformed the population and economy of the western United States.

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Evaluate the extent to which debates over slavery in the period 1830 to 1860 led the United States into the Civil War. (2019)

The period from 1830 to 1860 witnessed a series of historic debates over the morality, economic impact, and political consequences of slavery. Although moral and economic issues were important, the debates failure to resolve political issues led the United States into a bloody Civil War.

The Missouri Compromise of 1820 defused the political crisis over the status of slavery in the Louisiana Territory. The compromise resolved the immediate problems by maintaining a sectional balance of power in the Senate and by forbidding slavery north of the 36 – 30 line. However, the Missouri Compromise debates did not address the underlying cultural and economic differences between a Southern plantation economy that depended on slave labor and a Northern commercial economy that relied on free labor. As a result, increasingly contentious debates over the moral, economic, and political consequences of slavery repeatedly threatened to disrupt national unity.

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Evaluate the extent to which ideas of self-government influenced American colonial reactions to British imperial authority in the period 1754 to 1776. (2019)

Ideas of self-government played a decisive role in shaping colonial reaction to British imperial authority. Republican ideas based on the natural rights of the people provided revolutionary leaders with a language of liberty that expressed their growing opposition to British taxes. A commitment to self-government also overcame the opposition of Loyalists who valued tradition and allegiance to the Crown.

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