AP U.S. History · Unit 7 · 1890–1945

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

158 flashcard terms for AP U.S. History Unit 7, written to match the course framework. Read them here, drill them as flashcards, or take the 53-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.
Roosevelt Corollary (1904): Extended the Monroe Doctrine to claim a US right to intervene in Latin American nations to preempt European debt collection.
Insular Cases: Court rulings that the Constitution did not fully 'follow the flag' — territories like Puerto Rico could be held without full rights.
Anti-Imperialist League: Coalition (Twain, Carnegie, Bryan) opposing annexation of the Philippines on republican, racial, and economic grounds.

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Muckrakers: Investigative journalists (Tarbell, Sinclair, Riis, Steffens) whose exposes built support for Progressive regulation.
Hepburn Act (1906): Empowered the ICC to set maximum railroad rates — an example of TR's regulatory Square Deal.
New Nationalism vs. New Freedom: TR accepted big business regulated by a strong state; Wilson wanted to break up concentrations and restore competition.
Clayton Antitrust Act (1914): Strengthened Sherman and exempted unions from antitrust prosecution — Gompers called it labor's 'Magna Carta.'
Schenck v. United States (1919): Holmes's 'clear and present danger' test upheld Espionage Act convictions, limiting wartime speech.
Great Migration: Movement of over a million Black southerners to northern cities during and after WWI, driven by war jobs and Jim Crow.
National Origins Act (1924): Quotas based on 1890 census sharply cut southern/eastern European immigration and barred Asians entirely.
Scopes Trial (1925): Symbolized the clash between fundamentalism and modernism; Bryan vs. Darrow over evolution in Tennessee schools.
Bonus Army (1932): WWI veterans demanding early bonus payment were dispersed by MacArthur's troops, damaging Hoover's image.
Court-Packing Plan (1937): FDR's proposal to add justices after the Court struck down NRA and AAA; failed and cost him political capital, though the Court shifted.
Wagner Act (1935): Guaranteed collective bargaining and created the NLRB — the legal foundation for the CIO's growth.
Lend-Lease (1941): Allowed the US to supply Allies without payment, effectively ending neutrality before Pearl Harbor.
Korematsu v. United States (1944): Upheld Japanese American internment as wartime necessity; widely regarded as a grave civil-liberties failure.
Executive Order 8802: FDR banned discrimination in defense industries after A. Philip Randolph threatened a march on Washington.
Wisconsin Idea: Governor La Follettes use of university experts to draft regulation and tax policy, a model of professional expertise applied to state government.
Teller and Platt Amendments: Congress disclaimed annexation of Cuba in 1898 but then required Cuba to accept limits on treaties and debt and to lease Guantanamo, creating a protectorate in practice.
Philippine-American War: A three-year counterinsurgency against Aguinaldo's forces killed far more Filipinos than the war with Spain and forced Americans to debate empire directly.
Open Door Notes: Hay's circulars asserted equal commercial access to China without territorial acquisition, defining an American imperialism centered on markets rather than colonies.

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Dollar Diplomacy: Taft encouraged American bank loans to Latin American and Asian governments to gain influence, with marines available when repayment or stability faltered.
Sixteenth and Seventeenth Amendments: The federal income tax and direct election of senators shifted revenue toward wealth and made the Senate answerable to voters rather than state legislatures.
Initiative, Referendum, and Recall: Direct-democracy devices adopted mainly in western states so voters could bypass legislatures captured by railroads and other corporate interests.
War Industries Board: Baruch's agency coordinated production, priorities, and prices during World War I, giving business and government experience in centralized economic planning.
Eighteenth and Nineteenth Amendments: Prohibition and woman suffrage were both wartime-accelerated reforms; one collapsed within fourteen years while the other permanently expanded the electorate.
Sacco and Vanzetti Case: The disputed conviction and execution of two Italian anarchists became a symbol of nativism and hostility toward radicals in the 1920s.
Espionage and Sedition Acts: Wartime laws punishing interference with the draft and disloyal speech produced convictions including Debs's, and the Schenck and Abrams cases that shaped free-speech doctrine.
Fourteen Points and Article X: Wilson's program of open diplomacy and self-determination foundered on Senate objection to the League covenant's collective security clause.
Red Scare and Palmer Raids: Postwar fear of Bolshevism produced mass arrests and deportations of radicals and immigrants without warrants, linking labor unrest to foreign subversion.
Tennessee Valley Authority: A federal corporation building dams for flood control, electricity, and regional development, denounced by critics as socialism and defended as public power.
Installment Buying and Mass Consumption: Consumer credit and national advertising sustained 1920s prosperity while masking weak farm income and inequality that made the economy fragile.
Dust Bowl: Drought plus decades of deep plowing of southern Plains grassland produced catastrophic erosion, displacing tenant families westward and prompting soil conservation programs.
Wagner-Steagall Housing Act (1937): Created the United States Housing Authority to fund slum clearance and public housing, embedding federal responsibility for shelter in the New Deal state.
Bracero Program (1942): A wartime agreement importing Mexican contract farm labor, meeting shortages while creating long-term patterns of migration and labor exploitation.

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