Which settlement, founded in Virginia in 1607 by a joint-stock company of investors, became the first permanent English settlement in North America?

Before going ashore in 1620, the men aboard a ship blown off course agreed to 'combine ourselves together into a civil body politic' and to obey the laws they would make. Which document is this?

Which pamphlet, published anonymously in January 1776, argued in plain language that hereditary monarchy was absurd and urged the colonies to separate from Britain?

At the Constitutional Convention the delegates agreed to count three-fifths of a state's enslaved population. Counted toward what?

The Navigation Acts required that sugar, tobacco and other listed colonial goods be shipped only to England and carried in English ships. What were these rules meant to do?

The American victory at Saratoga in October 1777 forced the surrender of a British army that had marched south from Canada. What was its most important consequence?

One plan at the Constitutional Convention based representation in both houses on population; a rival plan gave every state an equal vote. How was the quarrel settled?

Anti-Federalists opposed ratifying the Constitution partly because it listed no protections for individual liberties. What did supporters of ratification do to answer that objection?

From which country did the United States buy the Louisiana Territory in 1803, roughly doubling the size of the nation?

Which 1830 law authorized the president to negotiate the removal of eastern American Indian nations to land west of the Mississippi River?

Which order, effective January 1, 1863, declared enslaved people free in the areas still in rebellion against the United States?

Which amendment, ratified in 1870, barred the states from denying the vote on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude?

In 1803 the Supreme Court refused to enforce part of the Judiciary Act of 1789, holding that Congress had exceeded what the Constitution allowed. Which power did the Court claim for itself?

In 1823 President Monroe told Congress that the American continents were 'henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers.' What was he claiming?

South Carolina declared the tariffs of 1828 and 1832 null and void inside the state and threatened to secede if they were collected. What constitutional claim was the state making?

The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 let the settlers of those territories vote on whether to permit slavery. Why did the law inflame the sectional crisis?

The surrender of Vicksburg on July 4, 1863 gave the Union control of the whole Mississippi River. What did that accomplish for Union strategy?

After the Civil War many freedmen worked a landowner's plot for a share of the crop, buying seed, tools and food on credit at the owner's store. What was the usual result?

The first transcontinental railroad was finished in 1869 when the Union Pacific and Central Pacific lines met at Promontory Summit. In which future state did they meet?

Which 1890 federal law declared illegal 'every contract, combination... or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce among the several States'?

Which New York facility, opened in 1892, became the chief inspection station for European immigrants entering the United States?

The Bessemer process blasted air through molten iron to burn out impurities, making steel cheap for the first time. What did that make possible?

The Populist platform adopted at Omaha in 1892 demanded free coinage of silver, a graduated income tax and the direct election of senators. Whose grievances did the party speak for?

Upton Sinclair's 1906 novel The Jungle described filthy conditions in Chicago's meatpacking plants and shocked the reading public. Which federal response followed that same year?

The treaty ending the 1898 war with Spain gave the United States Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines. Why did that outcome trouble many Americans?

In 1899 and 1900 Secretary of State John Hay asked the powers holding spheres of influence in China to keep its ports open to the trade of every nation. What was the United States after?

In 1917 British intelligence handed the United States a decoded German message offering Mexico an alliance and the recovery of Texas, New Mexico and Arizona. What is it called?

Which amendment, ratified in August 1920, forbade the states to deny the vote on account of sex?

On December 7, 1941 Japanese carrier aircraft struck an American naval base, and Congress declared war the next day. Where was the base?

Which 1935 law created old-age pensions paid for by payroll taxes and set up unemployment insurance administered with the states?

On June 6, 1944 Allied troops landed on five beaches in Normandy in the largest amphibious invasion ever attempted. What was the landing meant to open?

Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points called for a general association of nations to keep the peace, but the Senate refused to ratify the Treaty of Versailles. What followed?

In 1919 and 1920 the attorney general ordered mass raids on suspected radicals, and hundreds of foreign-born people were deported without trial. What fear drove those raids?

During the 1920s the writers Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston and musicians such as Duke Ellington made one New York neighborhood the center of a Black cultural flowering. What is the movement called?

Through the 1920s investors bought stock on margin, putting down a fraction of the price and borrowing the rest from their brokers. Why did the practice deepen the crash of 1929?

The Civilian Conservation Corps hired unemployed young men to plant trees, check erosion and build park facilities, sending most of their pay home to their families. Which New Deal aim does it best show?

In March 1941, months before the United States entered the war, Congress let the president supply arms to any nation whose defense he judged vital to American security. Which law was this?

Executive Order 9066 removed more than 110,000 people of Japanese ancestry, most of them American citizens, from the West Coast to inland camps. How did the Supreme Court rule on the exclusion in 1944?

Which program sent about thirteen billion dollars of American aid to rebuild the economies of Western Europe between 1948 and 1952?

In which 1954 case did the Supreme Court hold that 'separate educational facilities are inherently unequal,' overturning Plessy v. Ferguson for public schools?

Which law barred discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin in employment and in public accommodations such as hotels and restaurants?

In November 1989 border guards opened the crossings and crowds began breaking apart a wall that had divided a city since 1961. Which city?

After the attacks of September 11, 2001, Congress created a new cabinet department to draw the agencies guarding the country against terrorism into one place. Which department?

Asking Congress for aid to Greece and Turkey in 1947, Truman said it 'must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures.' Which policy is this?

In October 1962 American reconnaissance flights found Soviet missile sites under construction in Cuba, and Kennedy ordered a naval quarantine of the island. How did the crisis end?

The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 paid for more than forty thousand miles of interstate highway. Which change in postwar American life did it speed up?

For more than a year after Rosa Parks was arrested in December 1955, Black residents of Montgomery, Alabama walked or shared rides rather than use the city buses. What finally ended the boycott?

After reported attacks on American destroyers in August 1964, Congress authorized the president to take 'all necessary measures' to repel attacks on United States forces in Southeast Asia. What did that allow?

In 1973 OPEC cut off oil shipments to the United States, and for the rest of the decade prices climbed while unemployment stayed high and growth stalled. What did economists name this combination?

Tape recordings that the Supreme Court ordered released in July 1974 showed that President Nixon had helped conceal the break-in at Democratic headquarters. What did he do the next month?