Main content
Course: AP®︎/College US History > Unit 10
Lesson 1: AP®︎ US History worked examples- AP US History periods and themes
- AP US History multiple choice example 1
- AP US History multiple choice example 2
- AP US History short answer example 1
- AP US History short answer example 2
- AP US History DBQ example 1
- AP US History DBQ example 2
- AP US History DBQ example 3
- AP US History DBQ example 4
- AP US History long essay example 1
- AP US History long essay example 2
- AP US History long essay example 3
- Preparing for the AP US History Exam (5/4/2016)
- AP US History Exam Prep Session (5/1/2017)
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Preparing for the AP US History Exam (5/4/2016)
Taking the AP US History exam soon? Sal and our US History expert, Kim, will take you through the skills you’ll need to succeed, and they’ll answer your questions live. Check out our AP US History resources: http://khan.co/APHistoryToolkit. Created by Kimberly Kutz.
Want to join the conversation?
- I took AP World History last year, and my teacher told our class the graders were more sparing on points for general ideas rather than giving solid specifics since it was a large period of time. Are graders for the APUSH test a little more 'strict' in a way and expect more specificity since it's only about 600 years of history?(11 votes)
- From the author:I believe that graders are always looking for specific evidence! Students will do much better to say something like "Colonial resistance to British taxation, such as riots brought on by the Stamp Act and the Townshend Acts, demonstrated American conceptions of direct representation" rather than "The American colonists said 'No taxation without representation.'"(14 votes)
- What was the Watergate incident?(5 votes)
- KhanAcademy can explain it much better than me. Here's a link to their article about it:
https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/us-history/postwarera/1970s-america/a/watergate
In a nutshell, a security guard in D.C.'s Watergate office caught 5 men sneaking inside. After a while, it was found that they had ties to the C.I.A. and were trying to wiretap the telephones there to spy on George McGovern's presidential campaign. Eventually it was found that the burglars were in close with Nixon. Again, the article that KhanAcademy has supplied is very informative, and I suggest you read it. :)(9 votes)
- I love how Kim breaks everything down.(7 votes)
- At48:43, Kim says that Woodrow Wilson was the first democrat to be elected since the end of the civil war. What about Grover Cleveland?(3 votes)
- Is there a place what does other country's history's?
like Japanese's history or more on Mexico's history?(3 votes) - Does the thesis need to pick a side and then also provide a complexity thesis and refute that? for all essays(3 votes)
- I know this changes from year to year, but what would be a good score on the multiple choice section? So far, I've taken 2 practice exams (and despite a lot of studying) I got the same score both times. Any tips/suggestions for studying?(3 votes)
- what would be a good tip in memorizing pieces of evidence that are to be used in writing LEQs or DBQs?(2 votes)
- This is more a tip for writing it but i think its still helpful;)
Whenever you aren't sure of a date, its always better to estimate the decade than to write nothing.(2 votes)
- What is AP short for? (as in AP US History)(1 vote)
- i have a Question
how long does it take for your to write the leasons(2 votes)
Video transcript
- Hi, this Sal of the Khan Academy. And you know, we've always
had a lot of content on Khan Academy for the various AP tests. And we've actually been building out a lot for American History. So I'm here with Kim, who's our history or American History fellow. And what do you bring
to the table here, Kim? Did we just find you on the street? - No, actually. So I used to teach college
history for a number of years, and last year I actually
graded the AP US History exam, so I have a pretty good insight into what the graders are looking for when you're looking at the test. - And what we're hoping to do, we did an AP review for
calculus a couple of days ago and it seemed to be really successful. So we thought it would do today. But this is still a
little bit groundbreaking and we're still figuring it out, just in terms of how to
do these live streams. So give us your feedback,
give us your questions on the comment thread below this. But this is pretty exciting. I think you're part of the
first ever live streaming AP American History review session in like, all of history. (laughs) - So this is a historic event. - That will one day make our timeline of major points of American history, the live stream. So what are we... I guess there's a bunch of
ways we could tackle this. We have some stuff here. It looks like you've made a timeline of all of American history. - Yes, this is my beautiful timeline. - And so maybe we could first go through just a quick overview of it, just so everyone here,
including myself, has context. And then, you've put
together a pretty neat... I would say kind of high-level study guide that has the different periods as well as the different themes that the AP American History test. - So we've uploaded a
screenshot of this to Facebook so you can take a look at it yourself. But basically what we're doing here is taking kind of the thousand-yard
view of American history and examining these themes
like migration and labor over time, to kind of give you a sense of how things are moving that will help you build intuition about what's going on
in a particular moment in American history. - And not only will this help, I think, everyone understand the
layers of American history, but these are often just called out on the essay portion of the exam. Or even the multiple choice. - Yeah, absolutely. So this will kind of build
that backbone for you, so that when you're sitting down to answer an essay question, sitting down to write a
multiple choice question, you can say, "Oh, what was going on "in American culture in the early 1900s? "Oh yeah, this was the jazz age. "This was a period of internationalism." - Awesome, awesome. Well, I know people
are watching from home. They probably can't read this while I'm just holding it up like this, but you, it's available for download. We'll make that more
obvious, if it's not already. So let's get started. Let's do a walkthrough of what, 400... No, 600 years of history. - Yeah, it's 600, and
that's not counting-- - And we're gonna do it multiple times. We're gonna try to do it
seven times in an hour. - Yeah, so that's not
counting 15,000 years ago, when people actually crossed
the Bering land bridge into the continental North America. So we're kind of skipping forward in time to say there were many native peoples who were living on the
American continent in 1492, which was this moment of contact between Europeans and Native Americans. - You have it right there. And then we see that you have the contact, but then what's the
significance of Jamestown? Why does this make this timeline? - Right. So the first kind of
100 years of settlement on the North American continent is like the Spanish, they're trying to just mine
things, there's traders. So these are people who
are taking resources from the New World and
bringing it back to the old. They have no intention of staying. It's when we get to
Jamestown and Plymouth Rock and Massachusetts Bay, this is when English settlers are coming to what will be the United States and planning on living there. - I see. So this is your first, Roanoke and all this was
the first permanent-- - First permanent settlement-- - First permanent settlement. - [Kim] In what would
be the United States. - And that's a little after 1600, it was 1608 or something like that. And then, and then you get to kind of the formation of the country. What was going on in this, this really 200 year period? - So that's kind of what we
would call the colonial period. And this is when there
are various colonies. We've got Massachusetts and Virginia and Georgia and Pennsylvania, who are all pretty much
doing their own thing. And they're mostly focused on
trade and farming, commerce. And they don't really see themselves as being even really part of a nation, or really anything other
than British subjects who are on the wrong side of an ocean. It's kind of in this mid-1700s period when the British Empire
starts really paying attention to the colonies. They're saying, "Wait a minute, "aren't you supposed to be
helping us out economically? "Why aren't we taxing you more?" - Why did they start paying attention? Just, they got big enough and
there was enough people there and their economies were
large enough to matter? - Yeah, that and there's an
economic depression in England. They have a lot of debt
they wanna pay off. So they look across the ocean and say, "We have a lot of people over there "that we could be making
more money off of." And for the American colonists who are very used to British
power being super hands-off, this is not okay with them at all. - They didn't want that money just to kind of provide benefits
to the English citizens. This was during an age of empire, where they're competing with
the French and the Spanish. - So there's this Seven Years War, also known as the French and Indian War, where the American
colonists and the British are fighting against the French and their Native American allies. And this, eventually the British succeed and the colonists succeed, but now England's in a lot of debt. They wanna tax the colonists
to make up that debt, and the colonists are saying,
"Oh, we already helped enough. "We actually provided some
manpower to do this fighting." So that's when they start really rebelling against British taxation. - And not to dig too deep,
we're trying to do it fast, but I always find it funny, you know, Seven Years War,
what I learned in American history like oh, the Seven Years War, or the French and Indian
War, but as you say the Seven Years War it's
part of a larger theater, it wasn't just in the US. - This is a global war and
it's hard for us to see this but this these empires all over the world who are competing for
territory and resources so this is just one small
part of a much larger war over empire. - And then that kind
of tensions build and-- - Revolution! (laughs) As far as revolutions go,
the American Revolution is maybe a boring one, right? This is a revolution over taxes. - I've seen some very
non-boring memes about it. - But it's got this sort
of very revolutionary idea of these enlightenment thinkers. - Oh I see 'cause you're
saying with economic but then there's
principles underlying that. - Right, so the principles
of consent of the govern is where government draws its power instead of absolute monarchy, this is kind of the
birth of true democracy in the United States. It is going to really
spread throughout the world, the ideas from the
revolution go many places in the world. And it's a successful revolution and I mean it is unique and it inspires the French Revolution in
certain ways and so now you have, and revolution,
1776 you have the Declaration of Independence
but it isn't until the late 1780s that you
have the constitution as we know it. - Right, and the constitution is kind of the blueprint
of American government. So before that there was the
articles of confederation which was a very weak government system. They had just fought against
this tyrannical power abroad and they were saying alright,
well we're gonna make sure that we don't have a central government that is going to be tyrannical at home. Unfortunately that meant
that their government couldn't do anything so the constitution is kind of this amendment saying okay, we are going to organize our
government into a judicial, executive, and legislative branch. - It was completely a redo. - It was completely a redo. And they basically built
the system of government with its checks and balances
that we still have today. - Yeah, and so this new
country, pretty close to the turn of the century,
now we get into the 1800s. - Yeah, and so the 1800s
for the United States is really this period of
expansion both sort of expansion of markets,
expansion of technology, and literal territorial expansion. So early on there's
kind of the War of 1812 which we call maybe revolution part two. British leave us alone,
really, we meant it. Followed by-- - What was it? The British were, they were
back, what was the factor that brought them back? - Oh, well they never
really left, actually. (laughs) - They were in Canada. - Yeah they're in Canada,
they're in the Great Lakes, and what really led the United States to declare war on England
is the impressment of American soldiers which
are sailors which meant that British ships, the most
powerful Navy in the world, would be stopping American
ships and saying hey, all you Americans, you
must be British sailors who jumped ship, you belong to us now. So the American government
declares war and they kind of get this final go ahead
saying alright, England, get out of our affairs. - Okay, so US wins again. - Yes. - And as we're expanding territorially there's kind of tensions
building in line with that expansion. - Yeah, and the tension here
is the existence of slavery. Slavery started in the United
States back in the 1620s so this was kind of the-- - Shortly after Jamestown. - Yeah, shortly after Jamestown. So enslaved people from
African and the West Indies are being brought to what
will become the United States and later the United States
as laborers for cash crops. So they are working in cotton fields, they're working on tobacco. And even though the
American Revolution is built on this idea of all
men are created equal-- - Should draw a parallel line
to show this roughly here. I mean all this is slavery. - Yep. They just really did not
solve the problem of slavery. So to get the cooperation
of the southern states at the time of the revolution,
they kind of punted on this issue of slavery and
they continue throughout-- - The founding documents
are very principled on people being equal and
life, liberty, all of that, but yes, it was kind of like
okay, we'll not dig in too deep on what that means right
now, just so we're unified. - Exactly. - But as we added territory, why did that somehow exacerbate the issue? As we added territory? - The problem would be kind
of the balance of power in between the north and the
south so the early stages in the United States and we can take a look
at our map if you want. - If we can do this. - Aha, alright, this is a beautiful map that I colored myself. (laughing) That's right. So when the United States was founded, so here are the 13 colonies there in red and then with the treaty
of Britain at the end of the American Revolution
we get all this territory. - These were already British territories. Britain hangs out up here. - [Kim] Right. And way over there. But then as the 19th century wears on, first Jefferson acquires
a whole bunch of territory in 1803 in the Louisiana Purchase. - I always found that
interesting because it's often billed as like deal of
the century but Napoleon was in charge of France,
he's fighting these wars, and his navy was kind of being defeated. He's like well I can't
protect that anyway. - Yeah. So he sells it off and he
gets a whole bunch of money to help pay for his wars
over on the other continent. So we've got this whole
bunch of land and then with the Mexican War all of this land. And so you can see it kind of
goes right over the boundary where slavery existed in the south and this is kind of the
line of slavery here. - We have a lot of videos
on this on Khan Academy if people wanna dig deeper into is. - Yes, we do. And then this is the free area up here. So they had managed to
keep their representation in the federal government
relatively equal, so they had 11 states that were free, 11 states that permitted slavery, and then as new states started to form out of these territories, that might upset the apple cart, upset the balance of power so they just kind of. - Because if there were
more free states in congress they might be more likely
to abolish slavery. - Or in general pass laws
that would be more beneficial to people who weren't
part of the slave economy. - And this wasn't even just, I mean I'm sure there
were people on both sides on like a principle level
like slavery is good or bad, it was also an economic, I
remember you told me once Lincoln's father was kind
of put out of business because he couldn't compete
with the plantations. - Exactly. Right, so there are many
white people who are living in the north, who are living
in what's now the midwest who they didn't have any
real moral opposition to slavery, what they wanted
was to be able to move out to this area and not have
to compete with someone maybe moving from here with
100 slaves who he doesn't have to pay. How is this guy gonna be able
to sell his grain for less than someone who's got free labor? - Yeah so you have this,
most of this is the 1800s, this is the 1800s, Manifest Destiny. - Right, this is the era
of Manifest Destiny so these tensions really
continue as they're trying to balance power and then in the course of the 1850s there are
more moral arguments about slavery, the
abolitionists are saying slavery is evil, slavery
is wrong, they're right, we've got to end it now, it doesn't matter what's happening over here. All slavery needs to go. And then there are sort
of apologists for slavery in the south who are
saying you know, slavery is a good thing, we've done
so much for these people and so there's this true clash. - There's a video you
uploaded where you did an AP American History, they had a passage from one of these apologists. So this isn't you making it up, this was actually a quote from one of these people. Fascinating, fascinating. So this is the 1800s. And also it's worth noting
that the American Indians were also kind of being pushed
back at this time period. - Right and the 1800s are a rotten century for Native Americans, maybe not as rotten as kind of this period of
great death from disease that's happening really early in contact but this is a time when
Native American lands just continue to shrink
and shrink and shrink and even Native Americans
who followed the rules, they assimilated, they
converted to Christianity, found that they were still
forced out into further and further Western lands. Because whites wanted those lands. - In this broader world
context that also was where the US started going from
this kind of agrarian because the Industrial
Revolution it was kind of and economic power that can start to rival the powers of Europe. - Yeah and I think that's
sort of a good takeaway for the era after the Civil War so we have this great
conflict of the Civil War. - Powderkeg ignites right there. - And 1861 to 1865 and
the North, the free part of the United States
prevails so slavery is over and there's this kind of brief period in the South where African Americans have guaranteed civil rights, basically. They've got a military there
protecting their civil rights. And then at the end of
Reconstruction in 1877, the North kind of gives
up on protecting them and so that starts the era of Jim Crow. - It's kind of an occupied
territory until that point. - Yeah. - And so this is where you
have Jim Crow beginning. And what is Jim Crow? You always hear that word, I mean. - So Jim Crow was a-- - [Sal] Is there an E at the end? - No, just crow like the bird. It was a system of segregation
so de jour segregation or segregation by law that
said that it was legal for whites and blacks to
be in separate places. So this is the idea of separate
but equal that comes up in the late 19th century saying
that it is perfectly fine to send black children
only to black schools, it's perfectly fine to send white children only to white schools. - This is developing and then
there's barriers to voting and things like that and
that continues all the way to the--
- The 1950s, 1960s. - Maybe I'll do Jim Crow in
a slightly different color but that continues all
the way until you know. - [Kim] Yeah. - Something like that, that's
Jim Crow right over there. And as you said, this
coincides with the Industrial Revolution, the US really
getting its footing as, maybe people didn't realize it, but it was quietly becoming a world power. - Exactly, and part of that is-- - [Sal] Or a power, it wasn't
like on the world stage yet. - Right. So the North went to all
this industrial production to win the Civil War and
then they have all these factories, what are
they gonna do with them? They're gonna build stuff. Specifically steel for
railroads and so really by 1900 the United States is the world's leading industrial power. We make more stuff than anybody else. - And then that gives us, and
we start flexing that power a little bit, you get
the Spanish American War right at around the same time, going into the turn of the century. - And that's a war, an
imperial war against Spain which the United States
is basically looking to flex its muscles saying
we've got this big navy, we're super wealthy,
we've got great industry, let's let everybody know we're in power. - What was the given cause
and what is the actual cause? - The given cause was
that the Spanish in Cuba were oppressing the
Cubans who were rebelling against Spanish rule and
then when the United States sent a ship down there to
protect American interests, that ship, the USS Maine
exploded in Havana Harbor. It was probably a boiler
malfunction, but the United States said oh no, they totally blew it up, the Spanish sabotaged our
ship so they went to war, they won easily I would say. - Explosions on ships are
often used to justify war. Only to later be found. Gulf of Tonkin Revolution later on. - So yeah after this the United
States becomes an empire, they have islands in the Pacific, islands in the Caribbean and
those islands are pretty much-- - Part of the Philippines. - Yeah. And there's no path to
statehood for those islands. The United States has never
before taken territory, they never expected the
people who lived there to become citizens. - And that to some degree is almost the definition of empire. - Exactly. - It's when you have control over people who are not formal members of your nation. - Right, and contrast that
with the American Revolution, right? How much did the people
in the United States, what would be the United States, like having a power across
the ocean in charge of them? Not at all. So it's quite a turnaround
for the United States to take on that role as
the power across the ocean to a people that isn't self-governing. - Yep, yep. And so now we go, this is
kind of more modern times, and this is where, just as
a reminder, Khan Academy has a lot of content on modern times. You've done a lot on the civil rights, I've worked on the world
wars, so for anyone who wants deeper context here, go there. We actually have a lot on
the revolutionary period. - Yeah, we heard a lot from
students when we started this project saying my
teacher is trying so hard but she can't get past 1945
or my teacher slowed down, we never got past Vietnam
and so what we did was say let's start there. So if that's a place where you're feeling less confident, Khan Academy
has a ton of material in that period just to help
students who are struggling with the later stages of American history. - It's videos, it's
exercises, it's articles. We actually have a few
overview videos of all of American history too,
we're kind of making one as we speak right now live. So we go into World War One
which that wasn't really an American war. - Not really, the United
States only gets involved really late in 1917 and
that's because the Germans continued to attack US
ships in the Atlantic. - Yeah the Lusitania famously. But this was, I mean this is
kind when the US is like wow, they can tip the balance. - Yeah, it shows that they're
a real player on the world stage and someone like Woodrow
Wilson tries to negotiate what would become the League of Nations, the first international
organization for keeping the peace. - Which clearly does not work out. - Doesn't work. And the United States never joins it because there's sort of
this isolationist streak. A lot of people said oh
man, we should not have gotten involved in World War One and we don't want to get
involved in another war if we commit to being part of one of these international peacekeeping organizations. - The US is still kind of not
fully wants to be out there, the world's policeman so to speak. - Yeah, and I mean they have
an ocean in between them, a lot of those problems,
which has worked out pretty well for them up until this point. You have the space to develop
without having to fight wars all the time. - Absolutely, absolutely. And so we go into that post war period and while you describe
the '20s right before we get into the stock market crash. - Well the '20s are kind
of this era of consumerism right, this is when we've got all sorts of cool new gadgets like radios and cars and people are buying them on credit so there's this massive
expansion of American consumerism and also American dabbling
in the stock market. That was not something
that an ordinary person did before the 1920s. It seemed like a really
fun game right up until it didn't seem like a fun game at all. - Until it crashed and you get the crash and then we're in the Depression. The Great Depression. - Yeah, so the Great Depression. - It wasn't the first depression,
we talk a lot about it, it's the most recent great depression. - Yeah. The economics of the United
States since the development of American economy have
always kind of been on this 20 year cycle of boom and
bust and there are a whole bunch of other panic
of 1837, panic of 1819, panic of, there's a panic every 20 years when there's a bubble that
bursts but no bubble burst as badly as the bubble of the 1920s. - Great Depression, and
what effect did that have on the country? It was just a bad time
and we got out of it, or has it somehow changed the fabric of? - Oh yeah, I mean this
was really the birth of the federal government having an idea that they have a responsibility
for citizens's welfare. Right, I mean for most
of American history, the biggest influence the
federal government had on your life was the post office. That's the only time you
saw the federal government. - Which is one of the themes
we'll talk more about. The US has always been very
much a, both an individualistic but also kind of states have a lot of, it's very decentralized. - Yes. - People have been very suspicious of the central government. - So really that's it, the post office, until the Civil War when
Lincoln expands a lot of federal power and institutes the draft for the first time but it wasn't
until the Great Depression that the federal government
said it's up to us to make sure that our citizens aren't
starving in the street. It's up to us to make
sure that when you're old you can still live well
when you're not able to work anymore, so that's kind
of the expansion of what we call the social welfare state. - And FDR shows up and he's kind of, people talk about Keynesien economics. - Yeah. - He uses it on a massive
scale, building dams and some of it was actually to
provide energy and all this but also the theory is
to jumpstart the economy, to utilize all that excess
capacity to get the, and that kind of starts
how you've got FDR but then it really the Depression ends with-- - With World War Two. - Yeah clearly we weren't
all done in Europe with World War One. - No, and World War Two, the United States had continued to be very isolationist throughout the 1930s,
their idea was we've got enough problems so they really
tried not to get involved in World War Two as it
was beginning in Europe but then in 1941 the
Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and so the United States
joined this world war. - It was already going, the
Japanese had invaded China in the late '30s or
actually in the early '30s and then you have the
Germans had invaded Poland well before the US joined in the war. - And the Germans and
the Japanese are allies so after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor the Germans actually
proactively declared war on the United States. We might not actually have
gone into the war with Germany had not the ally of Japan
already declared war on us. - Yeah, and it's unlikely
to be deeply covered on the AP History exam,
but these were major things for the US. 'Cause a lot of people cite reparations and the Treaty of Versailles
and Germany kind of so you have a demagogue
like Hitler comes to power and tries to kind of get
that German pride going and builds this war machine. That has got awfully close, scarily close. So then World War Two
ends and how is the US relative to the rest of the
world after World War Two? - Well the United States kind of comes out of World War Two, remember
they were on the other side of an ocean so they're
pretty much the only nation in the world whose industrial capacity is still functioning, right? The United States didn't get
bombed during World War Two. - Yeah, the other great industrial powers, talking about Germany,
England, or UK, France, Japan. They got, their factories were destroyed. - Yeah, it's gonna take them
a long time to rebuild from that so the United States
really emerges as the world's preeminent industrial power,
they're supplying stuff to everyone. And then they're in sort
of a political standoff with the Soviet Union over
basically what economic and political form the world should take. - Yeah, you have (mumbles)
create this economic world order 'cause they're
competing against communism and they want that to win,
anyone who's aligned with them has a better economy
and then obviously also like a political and military escalation and then that goes all the
way until Vietnam which is, what's notable about Vietnam here? It was I guess you could
say the hottest part of the Cold War. - [Kim] Yeah definitely. - Although maybe some of
the things of the '60s, Bay of Pigs and Cuban Missile
Crisis got pretty hot. - So the Cold War never
involves an actual war between the United States and Russia. They never actually are fighting against each other directly. Instead it involves a bunch of proxy wars or wars where the United
States is supporting one side, usually the side that is
associated with capitalism, and the USSR is supporting the other side that is associated with communism. So there's this sort of nationalist fight we call it, sort of a civil war in Vietnam where northern Vietnam which was communist wanted to unite all of
Vietnam under communism and south Vietnam had
the United States' help in kind of staving that off. - And it's fascinating how
history all interweaves because Vietnam was a French
colony, during World War Two the French get overrun by
the British and then so the Japanese overrun and
so you're left with that and so there's kind of a power
vacuum after World War Two and so you have these different
powers try to take hold but then you have communist
China to the north and the US and you have
(mumbles) containment and we have a lot, once
again, of content on this. You put Nixon resigning,
why is that notable? We only list about 15 or 20 things here, why is that, in 400 years
of American history? - Maybe it doesn't deserve
to be there, I don't know, but I just say Nixon
was the last president during Vietnam and he says he's
gonna get the United States out of Vietnam-- - And this was when both
parties, Vietnam, Kennedy, who's a democrat starts getting involved, then you have Johnson really escalates. - Right, I mean being
pro-communist was not a political position in the United States. So both democrats and
republicans were for a strong Cold War presence. - And then Nixon comes
in and everyone's saying that they wanna take us
out, it's not a popular war, especially later on but
then they can't help but getting further and further sucked in. - Pretty much. So Nixon presides over this,
the war is kind of winding down and then it comes out that
Nixon has kind of worked to undermine the democratic
process by spying on his-- - The famous Watergate. - Yeah, Watergate incident. Yeah, so this was real
kind of a black mark on American democracy. - But not the first. Sometimes we think modern
times, things in politics have gotten ugly and all
that but as you (mumbles)-- - Politics has always been that way. - Politics has always been ugly. So then we go, the Cold War ends, that's definitely a big deal. Fall of communism. - Yeah so the end of
the 1980s, early 1990s, the Soviet Union collapses and you can kind of debate
how much the United States played a role in that,
most historians think that it wasn't very much. - It was economic, some
would argue this arms race that Reagan helped
accelerate really broke, our economy could somehow
survive that better than the Soviet economy could. - Well capitalism clearly
provided a better way of life than communism, but the
Soviet Union kind of fell apart under the
weight of its own problems so by 1991, the United States
is the world's remaining superpower. - And that's essentially
the world we live in today where you don't have
this kind of two powers, you have the United
States is the superpower and you have the smaller
conflicts and frankly more complex in a lot
of ways, fascinating. So, actually our timer is, went to sleep. We are on time. - [Kim] Alright so we still
have about half an hour left. - So that was cool. Let's talk a little about
some of these themes here. We'll probably touch on stuff
we already talked about, but just to reinforce it. So these are the themes
that come from the AP. - [Kim] Exactly. - It's like these layers
of American history. So the first one is
American national identity. So we talked a lot about that. - Yes, exactly, and this
kind of what does it mean to be an American? Who is an American and how
does that change over time? - Over here it's Native Americans. - Exactly. - And then, and you have
explorers kind of showing up for discovery or looking for gold. - Yeah and none of them are
thinking I'm an American now! They're thinking I'm Spanish
and I'm gonna go home with all my gold and live like a king. - Yeah, and then you have English settlers and why would you want to get on a boat and go 3,000 miles and
live in forests and place? - I mean, for some people it was money. For other people-- - Economic land, if you're kind of a serf, essentially a serf in England. - Yeah, England has a real
overpopulation problem at this time period so there
is a lot of poverty there. This, getting land. - Also religious freedom. Pilgrims and whoever
else they wanted to come and these people tended to be
more conservative religiously. They were somewhat ostracized in England. - Yes, yes, so this is the
Puritans that we're talking about and this is a branch of
Protestant Christianity which is very strict. So they are, they're
not popular in England because the Anglican church-- - [Sal] Is not as strict. - Was in the ascendency
associated with the royal family so they can either be
persecuted in England or they can just give
up and go to a new world and make a society that
fits with their standards. - And so that's starting
to be, you start having the settlements, English
settlements in the current US, and then but at this
point people in the 1700s people consider themselves
English citizens. - They consider themselves
English citizens or maybe Pennsylvanians
or South Carolinians. They don't have a strong
American identity. - And then as we go through the Revolution now the identity starts building. - Right and so they have
this sort of common cause against the British Empire
saying oh maybe we need to join or die, right,
as Ben Franklin wrote, and kind of develop an American spirit that will help defeat the British and make the United States free. - But to be clear, as
we already highlighted, even at this point it was white males. - Right, and not just white
males but wealthy white males who own land. This is who an American citizen is. When Jefferson is considering
who do I want to vote in this new republic, he's
not thinking everybody. He's thinking the wealthiest,
best educated landowners who have that specific stake
in the American nation. - I think we talk a lot
about things like slavery but women weren't participants in this. I would have put that on your timeline. We'll do that. When do women vote? - Women don't vote until 1920. - Yes! You see? - I'm sorry, it was more
important than Nixon resigning. So this is, this is World
War One so somewhere right about there. - Here someplace. This is a long time. That's not even 100 years ago. - [Kim] I know. - So anyway, back to this. So right here it's, white, landowning men was a lot of maybe what
some of the founding fathers were thinking, not all
of them but some of them. But then it starts getting
a little bit broader. - Yeah, so if you think about
American national identity in this first part of the 19th century, I think you can think
about it first as democracy expanding because by the
time Jackson is president in the 1820s, 1830s,
the American electorate expanded to all white men. You you didn't have to own property, you could be anyone who fits
the bill of white and male and cast a vote. But there's also kind of this
growing sectional identity, right, if you're thinking about yourself as an American, you're
probably thinking of yourself also as a northerner or a southerner. - [Sal] So early 1800s. - Very strong sort of sectional division as far as identity goes. - [Sal] And does that
change with the Civil War? - Sort of, I mean the
version of America where slavery is illegal prevails so I think that's part of the national
identity at that point. - Yeah, starts to shift, at least on paper African Americans are allowed to vote, African American males
are allowed to vote. - Yes, and this is another
moment for women's rights because the 15th amendment
grants the right to vote to African American men and
they were already making an amendment to the constitution so a lot of women's rights activists
said alright, let's add women's rights to the 15th amendment and they didn't get it. - Fascinating. And so then we get, so we're
getting to this period, African Americans become
more citizens although it depends on where they live and probably their economic situation
and things like that. And so what is kind of, we
talked about the European immigration in this period up
here being primarily English, when does it start becoming
from other parts of Europe? - Well we would start kind of around 1840 which is the Irish potato
famine so there are just thousands upon thousands
of Irish people who have given up in Ireland, they can't eat and so they're coming to the United States for a new way of life. There are also political revolutions, the revolutions of 1848
in Europe that are driving lots of other Europeans,
especially Germans to the United States. So that kind of goes on
into the 1870s, 1880s, and then we have a huge
wave of immigration from southern and eastern
Europe so this is in Italy, in Russia. - And what is that
roughly, that's at the-- - That's at the end of the
19th century so 1880s, 1890s. - And this coincides with
the industrialization-- - [Kim] Exactly, so
they're looking for jobs. - And you read these
books like Upton Sinclair and all these books that are they're working in the
factories maybe under suboptimal conditions and
but they're coming here for a better life. - Yeah and I think one
thing that's interesting about this is because we have
a definition of whiteness today that is very much
based on skin color right. You look white, you're white. But they had a much different
idea of who was white, who was an American
citizen because originally they thought Irish people
were really considered not white enough and then
later on they say oh, okay well someone from Italy,
someone from Russia, they're too different from
Anglo Saxons to be considered white so even though they
have some political rights, they can vote, they're
not really considered part of the American
body politic like someone whose ancestry is English might be. Not really until I
would say World War Two. - Yeah, even in the 20th
century it was a big deal, it was a big deal John
F. Kennedy was Catholic. - Right, absolutely, 'cause
he's got this Irish background. - Irish or the Catholics
were Irish or Italians and so this was a big deal
that he was not Protestant. - Yeah and there's strong
ethnic communities too. This is why you have little
Italy and Polish brotherhoods as these ethnic groups
grew in American cities and then starting around World War Two these men all kind of get
sent to the war together, they develop more bonds,
and after World War Two-- - Including African Americans,
I mean African Americans fought in the Civil, fought
in the Revolutionary War. - [Kim] Yeah, absolutely. - But it becomes, people
start to identify as a nation of Americans versus language,
I mean English is the language but around ethnicity. - Yeah and I mean if there's one thing that brings people together,
it's having a common enemy. (laughs) So the idea we're
American, we're not German, we're not Japanese, these
ideas really coalesce in World War Two to
bring national identity more about being from the United States then having a specific racial identity. - And so now you have after World War One in the '20s the women become participants at least as voters, it takes
a little while for them to get positions of power. - Exactly. - But one position of power
maybe might happen soon. But that's when they get
involved and so kind of those trends wouldn't you say
they kind of go through World War Two? - Exactly. - Then how would you
say that they've changed since then? - Well I think the civil rights movement is one of the most
important sort of political and cultural movements to
come out of World War Two which is, think about being
an African American soldier in World War Two and you're in France and having to listen to
someone say the United States is the location where democracy is true and every man is created
equal and you're thinking yeah, that's not been my experience. - Or if you're a second or
third generation Japanese, your grandfather immigrated from Japan to help build the railroads
and your family's in an internment camp while you're fighting or something like that. - Exactly. So a lot of African
American veterans come home and they say alright, we
listened to all this propaganda abroad, I think if we learned anything it's how important voting is so they really begin the
civil rights movement which is a national movement in the south and the north to first
secure voting rights for African Americans
and then they're sort of a more generalized
movement for housing rights and poverty that kind of
work toward a more inclusive idea of American citizenship. - And it's really
interesting because, I mean, this is not gonna be on the
AP American History exam but it's always worth
citing, I always point it out because there weren't a
lot of other non-white people here then, for example
people from South Asia or and that was (mumbles) for all of us because if that didn't
happen then you would have had segregation, I mean,
across more broadly. - And the civil rights
movement also inspires future social reform movements
so late '60s and '70s there's the women's rights
movement that said women shouldn't just be able to vote, they should also be able to
hold the same jobs as men and be paid equally or
the LGBTQ movements, also patterned on civil
rights saying we're gonna use the same tactics of
protest and advertisement of what's going on to try to
change our social position. - And you have figures
like Martin Luther King inspired by Gandhi whose
revolutionary in India during the lead up to World War Two. So let's go through more of these themes. Politics and power. - Alright, this one is a
little bit more specific I would say, just because
we're talking about maybe who gets to rule, who is in power. So I would say this early period here it's all about the Spanish. The Spanish set up this
system of slavery basically to try to extract wealth
from the New World. - The best political tool up
here was probably the gun. (laughs) - I would say probably the
microbe would be the best political tool. And then there's kind of
I would say a different, again between the north and the south, for what political power looked like. In the north they kind of set
up a very democratic system. They're small farmers,
they're living in small towns, they have town hall meetings
and they kind of decide things pretty democratically. I mean there's religion
and religion plays a really central role in what's
important and who gets power in the north, but in the
south there's the system of slavery and so there
are these land owners who have thousands of acres
of land and they really hold all the wealth
and the political power so even the democratic
institutions of the south like the Virginia House of
Burgesses are based on the wealth generated by slavery. - Fascinating. And that continues obviously
power, we talked about it, into the Civil War. - Yeah and we can also
talk about the democratic and the political parties
that arise in the early part of the United States. - [Sal] So what were the political parties in the early part? - So at first-- - And Washington warned
us against parties. - Yeah, Washington was not
a fan of political parties. - That's strange, most of us love them. (laughing) What could be better
than a two party system. - This is gonna be terrible
'cause it's just gonna make us yell at each other all the time and he was not wrong about that. But the original parties
were divided on this concept of whether power should
be centralized in the United States or whether
it should be diffused to the states so the
Federalist party was all about central power, they wanted
a strong central government, they wanted a national bank,
they wanted lots of development and then the Anti-Federalists
or we often call them Democratic Republicans, were
kind of the opposite of that. They wanted the states to
have most of the power, they wanted a pretty
small central government and we mostly associate the
Federalists with Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, and
then the Anti-Federalists, their real standard bearer
was Thomas Jefferson. - And if anyone has extra
time while they're preparing, I highly recommend the John Quincy Adams, what is it like a six or seven part-- - Oh John Adams, yeah. - John Adams, yeah, it's not
Quincy Adams, John Adams. - Yeah, that's a great miniseries. - It's very inspiring. - So we start out with the Federalists, with John Adams and then in 1800, I think this is one of the most important political dates of the United States. March 3rd, I think that's
the right day, 1800. Do you know what happened? - March 3rd, 1800,
that's, so what you have Jefferson versus, no I don't,
what happened that day? - Nothing. Nothing happened because
there was a peaceful transfer of power from one
political party to another. It was basically unheard of. Can you imagine
voluntarily giving up power in this sort of monarchistic world? - Yes, as recent nation-building
experiments have shown, that doesn't happen peacefully normally. - It's hard to do. Yeah so the Anti-Federalists
are pretty much more or less in power up until the slavery
debate becomes even bigger and then the Federalists kind of die off because they were against the war of 1812. Nobody likes a hater so the
Whig party kind of takes over. - What are the Whigs? I always read, but what do
they represent, the Whigs? - The Whigs, Abraham
Lincoln was a Whig before he became a Republican, and
the Whigs were pretty much for development, they were
pro railroad, pro canal. - And who were the Whigs going against? - They're going against
the Jacksonian Democrats who are kind of the heirs
to the Anti-Federalists. So just as Jefferson had
only imagined democracy for wealthy white landowners
and then Jackson said there should be universal
white male suffrage, his version of this sort
of anti centralized power. - So if I was a business
owner in this period I'd probably be a Whig. - Probably be a Whig, if
you were a small farmer out in the West you'd
probably be a Democrat. - And in terms of the slavery issue? - The Whigs were generally anti-slavery, they were often sort of northeasterners, they were generally very religious, and then Jacksonian Democrats
were generally pro-slavery. - And so when do we get into
our modern period of parties? - Well I would say that
this Democratic party is still the Democratic
party that we have today. And as we've gone through
the years and we've changed different issues, what
they stand for changes. And then in the late 1850s
the Republican party was born. And the Republican party
was an anti-slavery party, the Whigs kind of fell
apart in the late 1840s I think is correct and were
replaced by the Republicans who had many of the same
values but were specifically anti-slavery. - Yeah this was more,
these were sympathetic to the anti-slavery, this
was almost formed around anti-slavery. - Exactly, yeah. - And Lincoln gets elected as the first Republican president. - Right, Lincoln is the
first Republican president. - And so that was the spark,
as we've done in several videos where we talk about it together. - And so the Republicans
pretty much stay in power up until World War One, that's
when Wilson gets elected. He's the first Democrat
to serve, I believe, in between the Civil
War and World War One. So that's a long period. And as you know this is
the business interest party which is gonna do very well in this time of industrialization. - Okay, so in this period
of industrialization that's the Gilded Age, that's
when you have the Carnegies and so that period, you see
this swing back and forth in American history. - [Kim] Yeah, exactly. - This goes back to this
politics and power theme. - [Kim] Right. That sometimes it's the
Jacksonian Democrats, the everyman, very
populist, and then it's-- - [Kim] Oh, 10 minutes left. - We can go a little over. (laughing) We're having so much fun. - We're trying to go fast. - You have these swings
between kind of the common man and more populist movements
and maybe more business interests or economic growth. - Yeah sometimes they'll say
the system isn't democratic enough and then they'll
say maybe the system's a little too democratic
so the Republicans, except for this moment
with Wilson, are in power until the stock market
crash and this is a big hit for business. - Yeah and then you have
FDR come in who maybe defines the modern Democratic
party in a lot of ways. - Yeah, exactly, this is the New Deal, this period of increased government, work towards social
welfare and the Democrats who want to spend money
on social problems, on social movements in general, they pretty much stay
in power until Nixon. So there's a 30 year
period where the Democrats are really defining US politics. - It seems like something
in the air right now, it's fun to connect it,
you seem like you have what parties stand for
transitioning a little bit right now. - Yeah and I mean after
that we generally think of the modern era as
being more conservative than this era that came before it. This is the time when labor
unions are really strong and the government is
spending a lot of money on social programs and kind
of starting in the 1980s there's been a little
bit of a walk away from-- - You have a little bit of a
flip flop between the parties. Where you have the Republicans
are a little bit more sympathetic to, or the
civil rights movement gets a little more
sympathy from the Johnsons of the world, from the Democrats. - Yeah this is a little
bit confusing because there is a sort of a
flip flop of the parties, especially the Democratic
party which used to be the party of slavery. - The business of economic
growth and business, that's kind of consistent
with the founding of the Republican party. - Right, but the Democrats
really used to be the party of slavery and
later the party of Jim Crow but with the Great Depression and later the civil rights movement,
the Democrats said if we want to get the
economy back on track we're really gonna need
to use this federal money and later said we should continue to-- - And gave a lot of power
to the federal government. Just going back to that
whole states rights, I mean FDR expansion of
the federal government too which was, fascinating, we
have many videos on this. We could do a couple things, we could do more of
these or we could tackle more questions, do you want to do that? - What do you all think? - [Boy] So there have been a
couple interesting questions that have come up. - Okay. - [Boy] First is that a couple of students are nervous about the
long essay questions. - Oh, okay. (mumbling) - [Sal] Repeat the question. - Sure, the question is how do we approach the long essay and just
synthesis as a general skill? And we have a sample long essay question if you want us to work on through that. - Yeah. (mumbling) We're not going to write
it, we will speak to what could be written. This one right here? - Yeah, the revolution one. Alright, let's tape this one up. And you're gonna have
to use your own council on migration and culture in society. - Yes, well we're gonna
make this available and I suggest everyone
to take a look at these, Kim's done an incredible job
here 'cause this really talks about all of the major themes
and these actually would be really good points to even
bring up in the essay portion so really encourage you to
take a good look at this. - Yeah, and I'm around you know, I answer questions on Khan
Academy, I answer questions on YouTube and Facebook
so yeah if you have any other questions for
us just let me know. - Awesome, so let's read this. Some historians have argued
that the American Revolution was not revolutionary in nature. Support, modify, or
refute this interpretation providing specific evidence
to justify your answer. So what would you do
Kim, when you see that? You have this blank space to fill up. - So I think all of the essay questions are kind of gonna be like
this, do you support, modify, or refute this interpretation? So we have three ways
we could go with this. We can say support it,
the American Revolution was not revolutionary. We could say refute it-- - I wanna refute it. - Yeah, the American Revolution
was super revolutionary. Or refute would be like-- - Or modify. - This is yeah, this
is a terrible question, here's the right question. That's a little harder
to do, I don't know. I can't think of something
off the top of my head that would do that. - Yeah so support is like
yeah it wasn't revolutionary, modify was like it was
revolutionary in some respects but maybe not in other
respects, refute would be like no it was actually quite revolutionary. - Exactly, yeah. Does anyone have a pen? Like a marker, Sharpie? - But this is high level thinking. Just for you personally,
where do you fit on this? My gut when I read this like
no, it is revolutionary. - I would totally go the other way. - That's good. - Maybe I'm a negative Nancy. - Either one would be
okay as long as we back up our points well. - So yeah, I would say the question that they're asking for us is
is the society before 1776 very different than
the society after 1776? Or after 1783? So there are various things
that we could think about here. We could think about politics,
right, we've just been going through these themes
like is the political system different. We could think about society. Are social roles different? - [Sal] Economics. - Yeah we could think about economics. - [Sal] Geopolitics. - Yeah. - [Sal] Or military. - Yeah, so do all the
same things of those. Or culture would be another thing. - I don't know how you could think it wasn't revolutionary. (laughing) I mean let's break it out. Politics! - Politics. - I mean, England at
the time had some form, they had a parliament and stuff, but it was still they
had a king on their money but now you had Thomas
Payne and the rights of man and you have this little, this colony, and they're taking on the
most powerful military, and navy for sure, probably
military in the world and they're able to win. And it's all about rule by the individual and these ideas that they
resurfaced and a lot of ways perfected from the Greeks and the Romans. - Yes. - Come back, thousands of years later. Like what was it? Roughly 1500, 2,000 years later. - This is great because you're now doing the pro-revolutionary side. - Yes. - And I'm going to do the
anti-revolutionary side. I'm gonna say that the revolution wasn't that revolutionary politically because the same people who were in power in the United States before the revolution were the people who were in
power after the revolution. - Like right after the revolution. But I would make that argument that sure, the year after, but this revolution and just so you all know
we did not prepare this. - No.
(Laughing) - This is completely improv right now. But these ideas are what
allowed over the next few hundred years all of
this other stuff to happen. - You are making precisely
Gordon Wood's argument, just so you know. So you are like brainstorming
Gordon Wood right now. - Yeah well it's true! (laughing) - When I think of the revolution, the next day it might have not changed but this was the spark that-- - So this is like a long term thing. - And actually almost immediately you have the French Revolution which didn't immediately, it
became somewhat tyrannical with Napoleon and all of that,
actually even before Napoleon but it did spark this in modern times, this thread of democracy. What we now take for granted,
constitutional democracies, this was it! That's a revolution! - Alright well riddle
me this, Gordon Wood. How different was American
society after 1776 then it was before? - Well not right after. - Okay. - Not right after but once again because if the revolution didn't
happen then once again you wouldn't have been
able to have all of these, not only do you have a
democracy but this even goes to economics. If the revolution didn't happen you would have had the big power England have all of this extra industrial might and all of this extra agricultural land, but now you had an economic
power that was growing in the next 100 years
that was also a democracy. And so that combination
and so when you have a superpower here that's, it's imperfect, there's some parts that look
a little bit hypocritical but for the most part it
was true to the tenets and it became more and more true over time and it's continuing to. - Alright, so you're
saying in the long term these social values came to pass. I'm going to say in the short term, I mean how can you have a revolution that says all men are created equal, and still have slavery? Right? - It was definitely not,
revolutions are never, in fact by definition, you
can't point to a revolution that's like clean, that like
people storm the whatever and then they put the king out of rule and then the next day
everything's hunky dory. Revolutions are, I don't
know, you know more history than I do but from what I
know they're always messy and there's always a period
where people are fighting and a lot of the people
who had power before still have power but they start
an interesting conversation. - Yeah but does that
last for like 87 years? Four score and seven years of
slavery after the revolution. - I guess so, yes. (laughing) - Alright, how about economics? - Economics, economic revolution. That I would not say so much. - Alright, so that's not one for you. - For example if you were
to compare and that could be like a modifying, maybe
that's a point to bring up is in the 1800s economically
the US and England were in some ways very similar, they were part of the
Industrial Revolution, they were, so if they
were the same country, unclear if they were that
fundamentally different. - Alright. Well I'm going to take
the international view now and say in terms of
revolutions, if you compare the American Revolution
and the French Revolution, economically, I mean the French Revolution was a revolution of the people against the monarchy, against
the wealthiest people. Well, the United States doesn't change anybody's real-- - Yeah, you're right, I agree with you this was not an economic revolution. I mean, kind of there
were pocketbook issues of taxation and representation, but it was much more philosophic. It was economic for
everyone, it wasn't one class versus another class, while the French Revolution
was like textbook the classes fighting it out. - Well I think I'm winning right now so you're gonna need to
provide some geopolitical or cultural. - I think you're very biased. So let's see. Geographically, yeah it's unclear. I think by becoming a nation
the ideas of manifest destiny became, if you're part
of the British empire, you would have, the sun never
sets on the British empire, they were already in India,
they were already in Africa, or starting to be in Africa
especially in the 1800s and so there could have been an argument that it was just an extension
of this already vast empire. While here it's like this
notion of Manifest Destiny is much more of a nationalistic thing. - Right so it causes Manifest Destiny. So it's a big transformation
of the American body politic. - Yeah. - And I might make the opposite argument that the American Revolution was terrible for Native Americans, right? I mean the British were the major power that were defending the
rights of Native Americans. That's why in the War of
1812 the Native Americans are gonna ally with the British. - But wouldn't you argue
for better or for worse that would be an argument,
that was a change. - Yeah. - So put it on that. - So you could see it could go either way. - [Sal] And actually in a
certain way slavery probably would have ended sooner if
we stayed a British colony. - [Kim] I would say so because slavery was outlawed in England before it was outlawed
in the United States. - And so we're structuring,
there's multiple ways to structure it, how would the world have been different if
the revolution happened? Which is actually a fun thing-- - [Kim] Yeah, absolutely. (mumbling) - And just to obviously
if we were taking the test we wouldn't write it this
way, you'd write it out a little bit but these,
how does it get graded? You've graded these things. How does this get graded? - Yeah, well I would say
that what you want to do here is use each of these big
themes as your topic sentences so maybe if I were doing
something like this I might just right down
some possible things I could talk about right,
how does the economy change, how does the politics
change, and then makes notes and decide which side you
fall on and then use that as your thesis statement to say that oh, the American Revolution
was super revolutionary because none of these major social changes could have happened
down the line without it or the American Revolution
wasn't revolutionary at all because it changed nothing for actual people who lived there. See I'm still arguing for myself. - And I mean this is why
this framework is really valuable because right when I first saw it I was like man, maybe I could
write like a sentence on this but then when you start to
say okay, we could talk about national identity which is kind of culture and we could talk about politics in power, we could talk about work,
technology, and exchange in economics, we could talk
about culture of society, migration and settlement,
so you have this framework, and if you just know,
these are the dimensions I can talk about on pretty
much any essay statement. - [Kim] Exactly. - Then all of a sudden
you have a lot to write. - Yeah, consider these themes
whenever you're thinking about writing an essay
because they will kind of illuminate things for you
about where things are changing and where things are staying the same. - And the graders, unlike
you, are fairly impartial. (laughing) And they're not gonna-- - Right, because as long as you are making a strong argument and
you're providing evidence, then they know that you're,
think of them like a jury that you're trying to
convince if you're a lawyer. You are making an argument
and saying here's why I'm right and so what
they're interested is is are you convincing
them, not are you saying what I want you to say. - And how much do things like grammar and penmanship, you have
to be understandable? - Be understandable,
yeah, other than that. - Spelling, grammar, you don't ding. Be understandable but
the main is your ideas. - Yeah and I think when I took this exam more years ago than I care to remember. - I took it even more years ago. - I had this idea that
the graders were like oh, I'm looking for all the
things that they did wrong so I can mark them down,
but having graded it myself what I noticed was that we're
looking for opportunities to give people points, the
people who grade this exam they are AP US History teachers,
they are college teachers and they want you to
succeed so they're actually on your side. - So as much as time allows keep writing. - Yeah. - 'Cause there's a lot to write about. - And make sure you give context, make sure you say who's doing
something, when, and why, because for example if
you say what's one thing that the Europeans changed
about Native American culture and you respond, "disease,"
there's not enough there for you to say where was
the disease happening. - I actually don't know
the answer to this, when I took it I wrote it
out, but can you make a table? - Yeah, absolutely. - And write points on either
side and then refer to it? Is that recommended? - Yeah, that's totally recommended. You get 35 minutes to do this question and I would say absolutely use
the first five to 10 minutes just to make some notes and
an outline for yourself. - But even the table itself
could be part of your answer. Maybe not, okay. - They're looking for
the thesis statement. - They're looking for the thesis statement and the topic sentences. But definitely use something like this just to structure it. - Just to yeah, get
your thoughts in order. - Alright, we have a couple more. I think we're probably
close to out of time. - Are we over? - [Woman] You're over time. - We're over time? You want to do one multiple
choice just for kicks? - If you want to. - Let's do one multiple choice. - We're sticking around. - We're sticking around,
this is too important. - More US History for you. - I'm still worked up
about how you can not think that that was a revolution. - I'm just devil's advocate. - Yes. Alright we'll do this one
and then call it a day. - Put some tape over there. (laughing) Alright, you want to do this side? Okay so this is a typical
multiple choice question for the AP exam and all of these questions they have either a set
of quotes or a graph or a political cartoon so
they're never in the void, they're always asking you
to refer to something. So then they'll be like
two to four questions that are actually related to this. - [Sal] Okay so let's just try to do this. - Okay, so first let's
actually look at our graph. - [Sal] You look at the graph first? I read the question first. - [Kim] Okay, I will look at this graph while you're reading this question. - The pattern depicted on the graph, and I have not seen this question before so we're just gonna give
the raw how do you do it, let's see Sal get this wrong. The pattern depicted on the
graph from 1450 to 1800. Alright, that's the years here. Best serves as evidence
of which of the following? Now I'm gonna look at the graph before I look at the choices. - [Kim] Okay. - So let's see, number
of Africans transported to the New World between 1450 and 1900. - [Kim] Alright so those are our bounds. - And then we see very few
were transported prior to 1600. Which is consistent to
what you were saying, it wasn't being settled,
it was kind of exploration and trying to get riches and stuff. Then you have more in 1600 to 1700, you start having permanent settlements, referencing, I'm just thinking
what I just learned from you. - [Kim] Yeah, using the
logic of the context. - Yeah and then 1700s to 1800s you have a, that's the peak of influx
and this is the peak of, I'm guessing yeah, settlement,
creation of plantations, especially in the south,
and then it dies off here especially because, actually
before the Civil War the importation started to slow down and then after the Civil
War it was abolished so that's why you have this. Okay, so now I have, I think I've-- - [Kim] You've got the context, yeah. - So the pattern depicted on the graph from 1450 to 1800 best serves as evidence of which of the following? The replacement of indigenous
labor and indentured servitude by enslaved Africans
in New World colonies. That just doesn't feel right
because indigenous labor, we didn't even talk about indigenous labor as being a major. - [Kim] Oh yeah. - Let's see. - [Kim] One thing I
want to point out here-- - Oh, but indentured
servitude, that's interesting. - One thing I want to point
out here is that it says 1450 to 1800 and that
is not including this. - Let me get this wrong,
let me get this wrong. Don't help me too much. The development of
varied systems of racial categoration in the, now this doesn't refer to that at all, that's definitely, I can rule that out. I'll definitely rule that out. The effectiveness of the
abolitionist movement in Europe and the Americas. So that could speak to
this, but they're saying between 1450 and 1800. - [Kim] Right, so we are not even looking at this right now. - We're not even looking
at this so if you just look at that part you just
see this upward trend so that doesn't imply any effectiveness. So let's cross that one out. The susceptibility of enslaved populations to New World diseases. No, this doesn't say whether
people survive or not. We're just saying who's coming. So that's definitely not it, and so the thing that I
was about to rule out. (laughing) I was like indigenous
labor, and I'm thinking more Native American labor
which I'm not aware of being a major source of labor. - [Kim] In like Mexico
the Spanish used a lot of indigenous labor but
yeah, it wasn't as big. - Yeah, you're right, and
this is to the New World, I'm kind of US centric. But you're right, we do read
about indentured servitude, you get your trip to the New
World but you have to work for seven years et cetera, et cetera. But this is a good example
because this is one where A didn't jump out at me,
in fact when I first read A I'm like yeah, indigenous labor,
but then these other three were way more wrong. - Yes. - The chart had very
little to do with them. - Right and it's best serves as evidence, so even if you're like that's
maybe not the greatest thing, it's better than all the other choices. - So this is evidence that I'm doing this the first time. - [Kim] Yes. - Now I'm gonna do the other one. I'm in the AP American History. Which of the following
contributed most directly to the change in the number
of Africans transported to the New World after 1800? So now we're talking about
what contributed to the change when you see this downward delta. The emergence of a more industrial economy in Great Britain and the United States. So you're talking about Great Britain, we're talking about
transportation to the New, contributed mostly to change,
transported to the New World, so in Great Britain,
industrialization I guess you're less these large agricultural
plantations, okay, I'll think about it. The outlawing of the
international slave trade by Great Britain and the United States. That seems interesting. I'll kind of, I'll star that one. The increased resistance to
slavery within African nations. We didn't talk a lot about
that and I don't remember so this one doesn't seem too right. The influence of major
slave rebellions in Haiti and elsewhere. There were rebellions,
but that shouldn't impact the overall, so, and just having
a more industrial economy, you still have a very
agricultural country at the time. In the early 1800s. So that might have been more in the north and that's why frankly they
were more on the abolitionist side so yeah the outlawing of
the international slave trade, which makes sense. - [Kim] You're right. - I'm right, thank you. (laughing) Alright, well we're all
done, hopefully everyone enjoyed this. Any parting thoughts for the test takers? - Don't stress. The test is not designed for you to know every little fact. What it's designed to do
is to test your kind of historical reasoning,
do you have this general overall sense of what's going on and using that knowledge can you make a good guess? - I didn't guess, I deduced. - You, yes. - I deduced my answer. - Put on your (mumbles) hat. - This was a deduction. - Can you deduce the correct answer? So think about the large themes and don't sweat the details. - Thank you. - Thanks a lot.
- Good luck.