AP U.S. History · Unit 7 · 1890–1945

Conflict in the Early 20th Century (1890–1945): every key term you need (+ practice quiz)

123 flashcard terms for AP U.S. History Unit 7, written to match the course framework. Study them here, then drill them as interactive flashcards, or test yourself with the 27-question quiz — free, no account needed.

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New Imperialism — American Style: By the 1890s, expansionists argued America needed overseas markets, naval bases, and a share of empire — justified by Mahan's sea power, Social Darwinism, and missionary duty.
Alfred Thayer Mahan: His 'Influence of Sea Power upon History' (1890) argued national greatness required a great navy, bases, and colonies — the imperialists' bible.
Spanish-American War (1898): A 'splendid little war' over Cuba: the Maine's explosion and yellow journalism pushed McKinley to war; the U.S. crushed Spain in ten weeks.
Yellow Journalism: Hearst's and Pulitzer's sensationalist papers inflamed opinion over Spanish atrocities in Cuba — 'You furnish the pictures, I'll furnish the war.'
USS Maine: The battleship's explosion in Havana harbor (Feb 1898) — probably accidental — became the war cry 'Remember the Maine!'
Treaty of Paris (1898): Spain ceded the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Guam; Cuba became nominally independent. America acquired an overseas empire.
Philippine-American War (1899–1902): Filipinos under Aguinaldo fought U.S. annexation in a brutal guerrilla war costing far more lives than the war with Spain.
Anti-Imperialist League: Twain, Carnegie, and others argued empire betrayed the Declaration's principles — consent of the governed doesn't stop at the water's edge.
Platt Amendment (1901): Made Cuba a U.S. protectorate: no foreign treaties without approval, U.S. right to intervene, and the Guantánamo naval base.
Open Door Policy (1899): Hay's notes asking powers to respect equal trade access in China — protecting American commerce without a colony.
Panama Canal: TR backed Panama's secession from Colombia (1903) and built the canal — engineering triumph and symbol of U.S. power politics.
Roosevelt Corollary (1904): TR's addition to the Monroe Doctrine: the U.S. would exercise 'international police power' in the Caribbean — intervention as doctrine.
Dollar Diplomacy & Moral Diplomacy: Taft promoted U.S. investment as influence; Wilson preached democratic ideals — yet both intervened repeatedly in Latin America.
Progressivism: A broad middle-class reform movement (1900–1917) using government to tame industrialism: ending corruption, regulating business, protecting workers and consumers.
Muckrakers: Investigative journalists — Tarbell (Standard Oil), Steffens (city bosses), Sinclair (The Jungle) — whose exposés fueled reform.
The Jungle (1906): Upton Sinclair's meatpacking exposé aimed at the workers' plight but hit the public's stomach — producing the Meat Inspection and Pure Food and Drug Acts.
Democratizing Reforms: Initiative, referendum, recall, direct primaries, the secret ballot, and the 17th Amendment (direct election of senators) — power returned to voters.
Robert La Follette: Wisconsin's progressive governor whose 'Wisconsin Idea' made his state a 'laboratory of democracy' — regulation, primaries, expert commissions.

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Triangle Shirtwaist Fire (1911): 146 garment workers, mostly young immigrant women, died behind locked doors — galvanizing workplace safety laws and labor reform.
Muller v. Oregon (1908): Upheld limits on women's working hours using the 'Brandeis Brief's' social evidence — protective legislation with paternalist strings.
TR's Square Deal: The 'three C's': control of corporations, consumer protection, conservation. TR distinguished 'good' and 'bad' trusts and busted the worst (Northern Securities).
Coal Strike of 1902: TR forced arbitration on mine owners — the first time Washington acted as neutral broker rather than strikebreaker.
Conservation Movement: TR set aside ~230 million acres — national forests, parks, monuments — with Pinchot's 'wise use' conservation vs. Muir's preservationism.
Hepburn Act (1906): Gave the ICC real power to set railroad rates — regulation with teeth at last.
Taft's Presidency: Busted more trusts than TR but alienated progressives (Payne-Aldrich Tariff, Ballinger-Pinchot affair) — splitting the Republican Party.
Election of 1912: Four-way race: Wilson (New Freedom) beat TR (Bull Moose 'New Nationalism'), Taft, and Debs (Socialist) — a referendum on Progressivism's meaning.
New Nationalism vs. New Freedom: TR: accept big business, regulate it with big government. Wilson: break up concentrated power to restore competition.
Wilson's Reforms: Underwood Tariff (with the income tax, 16th Amendment), Federal Reserve Act (1913), Clayton Antitrust Act, and the Federal Trade Commission.
Federal Reserve Act (1913): Created a central banking system to manage currency and credit — the Progressive era's most enduring economic reform.
16th & 17th Amendments (1913): Income tax and direct election of senators — Populist demands become constitutional law.
Woman Suffrage — 19th Amendment (1920): After decades of organizing — NAWSA's state campaigns (Catt's 'Winning Plan') and Alice Paul's militant pickets — women won the vote.
18th Amendment & Prohibition (1920): The 'noble experiment' banned alcohol — a Progressive-moralist triumph that bred speakeasies, bootlegging, and organized crime until repeal (21st, 1933).
Progressive Blind Spot — Race: Most Progressives ignored or worsened racial injustice; Wilson segregated the federal government. Black reformers built their own movement — the NAACP (1909).
W.E.B. Du Bois & the NAACP: Du Bois demanded full equality now, countering Booker T. Washington; the NAACP fought Jim Crow in courts and print (The Crisis).
WWI — U.S. Neutrality (1914–17): Wilson proclaimed neutrality, but trade and loans tied America to the Allies while German U-boats made neutrality deadly.
Lusitania (1915): A U-boat sank the British liner, killing 128 Americans — turning opinion against Germany.

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Zimmermann Telegram & U-Boats (1917): Germany's resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare plus its offer of U.S. territory to Mexico pushed Wilson to war in April 1917.
'Make the World Safe for Democracy': Wilson framed the war as a crusade for liberal ideals — self-determination and a new world order — not conquest.
War Industries Board & Home Front: Federal agencies mobilized the economy: production boards, food conservation ('Meatless Mondays'), rail nationalization — a preview of big government.
Committee on Public Information: Creel's propaganda machine sold the war with posters, 'Four-Minute Men,' and anti-German hysteria (sauerkraut became 'liberty cabbage').
Espionage & Sedition Acts (1917–18): Criminalized antiwar speech; Debs was jailed for a speech. Schenck v. U.S. (1919) upheld convictions under the 'clear and present danger' test.
Great Migration: Hundreds of thousands of Black Southerners moved to Northern industrial cities during the war — remaking American demography, politics, and culture.
Fourteen Points & League of Nations: Wilson's peace program — open diplomacy, self-determination, and a League to prevent war — was gutted at Versailles except the League itself.
Treaty Fight (1919–20): Lodge's reservations vs. Wilson's refusal to compromise; the Senate rejected the treaty, and America never joined the League.
Red Scare (1919–20): Postwar strikes, bombs, and Bolshevik fear brought the Palmer Raids — thousands arrested, aliens deported, civil liberties trampled.
Red Summer (1919): Race riots in Chicago and two dozen cities as Black veterans and migrants met white violence — the war for democracy denied at home.
1920s Prosperity & Consumerism: Assembly-line abundance: cars (Ford's Model T), radios, movies, advertising, and installment credit created modern consumer culture.
Henry Ford & the Assembly Line: Mass production cut the Model T's price to reach ordinary buyers — and the $5 day tied workers to the consumer economy.
Republican 'Normalcy': Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover: tax cuts, high tariffs, and business-friendly government — 'The business of America is business.'
Teapot Dome Scandal: Harding's Interior Secretary sold naval oil reserves for bribes — the era's byword for corruption.
Immigration Quotas (1921, 1924): The National Origins Act slashed and skewed immigration against southern/eastern Europeans and barred Asians — nativism written into law.
Ku Klux Klan Revival: The 1920s Klan — anti-Black, anti-Catholic, anti-Jewish, anti-immigrant — claimed millions of members before scandal deflated it.
Scopes Trial (1925): Tennessee's evolution trial — Darrow vs. Bryan — dramatized the clash of modern science and religious fundamentalism.
Harlem Renaissance: The flowering of Black literature, music, and thought — Hughes, Hurston, Ellington — proclaiming the 'New Negro.'

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The 'New Woman' & Flappers: Shorter skirts, the vote, jobs, and birth-control advocacy (Sanger) marked contested changes in women's roles.
Sacco & Vanzetti: Italian anarchists executed (1927) on disputed evidence — a symbol of nativist injustice.
Crash of 1929: October's stock collapse exposed the era's weaknesses: speculation, margin debt, overproduction, weak banks, and maldistributed income.
Causes of the Great Depression: Underconsumption, farm crisis, shaky banking, gold-standard rigidity, tariffs (Smoot-Hawley), and global debt tangles turned a crash into catastrophe.
Hoover's Response: Voluntarism, public works, and the RFC — more than predecessors, far less than needed; 'Hoovervilles' named the failure.
Bonus Army (1932): Veterans demanding early bonuses were driven from Washington by the army — a public-relations disaster sealing Hoover's fate.
FDR & the New Deal: Roosevelt's 'bold, persistent experimentation': relief, recovery, and reform — remaking the federal government's role in American life.
The Hundred Days (1933): A torrent of legislation: bank holiday and the Emergency Banking Act, FDIC (Glass-Steagall), AAA, CCC, TVA, NIRA.
Relief, Recovery, Reform: The New Deal's three R's: jobs and aid now (CCC, WPA), restarting the economy (NRA, AAA), preventing recurrence (FDIC, SEC, Social Security).
WPA & CCC: Work relief on a vast scale — roads, schools, parks, art, and reforestation — employing millions and leaving a physical legacy.
Social Security Act (1935): Old-age pensions, unemployment insurance, and aid to dependent children — the American welfare state's foundation.
Wagner Act (1935): Guaranteed workers' rights to organize and bargain collectively — labor's Magna Carta, fueling CIO industrial unionism.
New Deal Critics: Right: 'socialism' (Liberty League). Left: not enough — Huey Long's Share Our Wealth, Townsend's pensions, Father Coughlin's radio populism.
Court-Packing Fight (1937): After the Court struck down the NRA and AAA, FDR tried to add justices — losing the battle but winning a Court that upheld the New Deal.
New Deal Coalition: FDR united urban workers, immigrants, farmers, white Southerners, and (newly) Black voters — the Democratic majority for a generation.
New Deal & Race: Programs often excluded or segregated Black workers (domestic/farm labor exemptions), yet relief and symbolism shifted Black voters to FDR; Eleanor Roosevelt championed civil rights.
Dust Bowl & Okies: Drought and plowed-up plains produced black blizzards; hundreds of thousands (Steinbeck's 'Okies') fled to California.
Isolationism & Neutrality Acts: Depression-era America legislated against entanglement — arms embargoes and 'cash and carry' — as fascism advanced.

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From Neutrality to Arsenal (1939–41): FDR edged toward the Allies: cash-and-carry arms, destroyers-for-bases, Lend-Lease (1941), and an undeclared Atlantic naval war.
Pearl Harbor (Dec 7, 1941): Japan's surprise attack killed 2,400 and sank the battle line — uniting America for total war; Germany declared war days later.
WWII Home Front: War production ended the Depression: full employment, rationing, war bonds, women in industry ('Rosie the Riveter'), and vast migration to war-plant cities.
Double V Campaign: Black Americans fought for victory abroad and at home; A. Philip Randolph's march threat won FEPC (1941) against defense-industry discrimination.
Japanese American Incarceration: Executive Order 9066 removed ~120,000 people (two-thirds citizens) to camps; Korematsu (1944) upheld it — a grave civil-liberties failure later formally apologized for.
Bracero Program & Zoot Suit Riots: Mexican labor was recruited for fields and rails, while anti-Mexican violence in LA (1943) exposed home-front racial tensions.
D-Day & Island-Hopping: Normandy (June 6, 1944) opened the European second front; in the Pacific, the U.S. leapfrogged toward Japan from Midway (1942) onward.
Manhattan Project & Hiroshima: The secret bomb program culminated at Hiroshima and Nagasaki (Aug 1945); Japan surrendered — and the atomic age began.
WWII's Consequences: America emerged the world's economic and military superpower — with the UN, the bomb, a transformed home front, and a rising expectation of rights.
Annexation of Hawaii (1898): American planters had toppled Queen Liliuokalani (1893); war with Spain gave annexationists their moment — Pearl Harbor's future base secured.
Insular Cases (1901): The Court ruled the Constitution does not fully 'follow the flag' — colonial subjects held rights Congress chose to grant.
Great White Fleet: TR sent the battle fleet around the world (1907–09) — sea power as advertisement.
Gentlemen's Agreement (1907–08): Japan restricted emigration in exchange for ending San Francisco's school segregation of Japanese children — racism managed by diplomacy.
Panama Canal's Cost: Engineering triumph over malaria and yellow fever (Gorgas's sanitation) — and a diplomatic wound in Latin America lasting decades.
Initiative, Referendum, Recall: Direct-democracy tools letting voters propose laws, veto laws, and remove officials — Oregon led the way.
Australian (Secret) Ballot: Government-printed secret ballots replaced party tickets — cutting vote-buying and boss surveillance.
Ida Tarbell: Her methodical History of the Standard Oil Company (1904) dissected Rockefeller's methods — muckraking as forensic accounting.
Lincoln Steffens: 'The Shame of the Cities' exposed the machine-business alliance corrupting urban government.

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Northern Securities Case (1904): TR's suit dissolved Morgan's railroad holding company — the 'trust-buster' label earned.
Pure Food and Drug & Meat Inspection Acts (1906): Federal consumer protection born of The Jungle — labels, inspections, and the FDA's origins.
Ballinger-Pinchot Affair (1910): A conservation scandal that split Taft from Roosevelt's progressives — prelude to the 1912 rupture.
Payne-Aldrich Tariff (1909): Taft's signature on a barely-reduced tariff enraged progressives — 'the best bill the party ever passed,' he claimed, disastrously.
Bull Moose Party (1912): TR's Progressive Party — New Nationalism, social insurance, women's suffrage — the most successful third party ever (27%).
Federal Trade Commission (1914): Wilson's watchdog against 'unfair trade practices' — regulation by expert commission.
Clayton Antitrust Act (1914): Strengthened Sherman and exempted labor unions from antitrust — 'labor's Magna Carta,' Gompers oversold.
Birth of a Nation (1915): Griffith's Klan-glorifying epic — screened at Wilson's White House — fueled the second Klan and NAACP protest.
Pancho Villa & the Mexican Intervention: Wilson's 'moral diplomacy' brought occupation of Veracruz (1914) and Pershing's futile chase of Villa (1916) — interventionism under idealist colors.
Selective Service Act (1917): The WWI draft registered 24 million men — conscription as the modern state's wartime norm.
Harlem Hellfighters: The Black 369th Infantry fought under French command with distinction — honored abroad, segregated at home.
Wartime Woman Suffrage Push: Women's war service plus Alice Paul's picketing ('Kaiser Wilson') forced Wilson's conversion — the 19th Amendment followed.
Spanish Flu (1918–19): The influenza pandemic killed ~675,000 Americans — war's shadow catastrophe, long under-remembered.
Palmer Raids (1919–20): Attorney General Palmer's mass arrests and deportations of radicals — J. Edgar Hoover's career launched, civil liberties trampled.
Marcus Garvey & the UNIA: Garvey's Black nationalism — pride, separatism, the Black Star Line — built the era's largest Black mass movement before his deportation.
Washington Naval Conference (1921–22): Great-power battleship limits (5:5:3) — disarmament diplomacy in the isolationist decade.
Kellogg-Briand Pact (1928): Sixty nations 'outlawed' war — idealism without enforcement, soon mocked by the 1930s.
Dawes Plan (1924): American loans propped German reparations payments to the Allies, who repaid U.S. war debts — a circular flow the Depression snapped.

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Hoover-Stimson Doctrine (1932): Refusal to recognize Japan's conquest of Manchuria — protest without power.
Good Neighbor Policy: FDR renounced intervention in Latin America — Pan-American solidarity as war approached.
Court-Packing's Aftermath: After 1937 the Court upheld Wagner and Social Security — the 'constitutional revolution' entrenching the New Deal state.
Keynesianism Arrives: The 1937–38 'Roosevelt recession' after budget-balancing converted many to deliberate deficit spending — economics' New Deal legacy.
Indian Reorganization Act (1934): The 'Indian New Deal' ended allotment and restored tribal self-government — Collier's partial reversal of Dawes.
Scottsboro Boys (1931): Nine Black teenagers falsely convicted in Alabama; Communist and NAACP defenses made them an international cause and produced key due-process rulings.
Frances Perkins: FDR's Labor Secretary — the first woman in the cabinet, architect of Social Security and fair labor standards.
Eleanor Roosevelt: The activist First Lady — the New Deal's conscience on race and poverty, later the UN Declaration of Human Rights' champion.
Fair Labor Standards Act (1938): The federal minimum wage, 40-hour week, and child-labor ban — the New Deal's last major reform.
America First Committee: Isolationism's mass organization (Lindbergh its star) fighting intervention until Pearl Harbor dissolved it overnight.
Atlantic Charter (1941): FDR and Churchill's war aims before U.S. entry — self-determination, free trade, collective security — the UN's seed.
Rosie the Riveter: The poster symbol of women war workers — six million strong, riveting bombers and building ships.
GI Bill (1944): Education, home loans, and unemployment support for veterans — the postwar middle class's charter (unevenly delivered to Black veterans).
Yalta Conference (1945): FDR, Churchill, Stalin planned the endgame — UN agreed, Germany zoned, Poland's 'free elections' promised and betrayed.
Holocaust & American Response: The murder of six million Jews; U.S. immigration barriers (the St. Louis turned away) and late rescue efforts remain a moral reckoning.

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