"the Spanish fell like ravening wolves upon the fold." - Bartolome de las Casas, A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies, published 1552. What was his purpose in writing it?

Within a century of contact, the Indigenous population of central Mexico fell by roughly ninety percent. What accounts for most of that collapse?

Compare the Eastern Woodlands peoples with the peoples of the Great Basin before European contact. Which difference is accurate?

"covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil body politic" - the Mayflower Compact, signed aboard ship off Cape Cod in November 1620. What immediate problem did the signers write it to solve?

Virginia adopted the headright system in 1618, granting fifty acres to anyone who paid the passage of a laborer to the colony. What brought that policy about?

New England was settled largely by families arriving in organized town groups; the Chesapeake drew mostly young single men bound as indentured servants. Which consequence followed?

In 1676 Nathaniel Bacon's followers, many of them former servants, burned Jamestown. Over the following decades Virginia's labor force shifted from indentured servants to enslaved Africans. What persisted across that shift?

"Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." - the Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776. What work does that sentence do in the document?

"It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world." - George Washington's Farewell Address, published September 19, 1796. What situation prompted that advice?

After 1763 Britain barred colonial settlement west of the Appalachian crest. What brought that line about?

The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions of 1798 and 1799, drafted secretly by Jefferson and Madison, argued that states could judge the constitutionality of federal law. What produced them?

Under the Articles of Confederation, Congress had to requisition money from the states and hope they paid; under the Constitution it did not. Which change explains that?

The 1787 Constitution counted three fifths of enslaved people toward representation and barred Congress from ending the slave trade before 1808. Comparing 1787 with 1808, what changed and what stayed the same?

Between 1777 and 1804 every state north of Delaware provided for ending slavery, most of them gradually. No southern state did. Across the same span, what did NOT change?

"It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is." - Chief Justice John Marshall, Marbury v. Madison, 1803. What did the Court claim for itself there?

"We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal." - Declaration of Sentiments, Seneca Falls convention, July 1848. What point of view does that wording argue from?

After Eli Whitney's cotton gin came into use in the 1790s, short-staple cotton spread across the Deep South. What followed from that spread by the 1830s?

The Erie Canal opened in 1825, linking the Hudson River to Lake Erie. What resulted from it?

Henry Clay's American System called for a protective tariff, a national bank and federally funded roads and canals. Southern planters largely opposed it. Which difference of interest explains that split?

In the 1830s and 1840s Whigs and Democrats divided over the federal government's role in the economy. Which statement captures the difference?

In Worcester v. Georgia (1832) the Supreme Court held that Georgia's laws had no force in Cherokee territory. The Cherokee were removed west anyway in 1838. What does the pair show?

"This Fourth of July is yours, not mine." - Frederick Douglass, address to the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society, July 5, 1852. Whom was he addressing, and to what end?

"A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free." - Abraham Lincoln, Springfield, June 16, 1858. What was the occasion?

"With malice toward none, with charity for all... to bind up the nation's wounds." - Abraham Lincoln, second inaugural address, March 4, 1865. What was his purpose in closing that way?

The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 organized both territories on the principle of popular sovereignty. What followed directly from that design?

The Wilmot Proviso of 1846 would have barred slavery from any territory taken from Mexico. It passed the House repeatedly but never the Senate. What explains that split result?

The Emancipation Proclamation took effect January 1, 1863; the Thirteenth Amendment was ratified in December 1865. How did their reach differ?

The Fifteenth Amendment (1870) barred denying the vote on account of race. By 1900 most Black men in the South could not vote, though the amendment was still in force. What accounts for that?

"The man who dies thus rich dies disgraced." - Andrew Carnegie, "Wealth," North American Review, June 1889. What argument was he making about great fortunes?

"The fruits of the toil of millions are boldly stolen to build up colossal fortunes for a few." - Omaha Platform of the People's Party, July 4, 1892. Whom was that platform written to mobilize?

Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882, the first federal law to bar a national group from immigrating. What brought it about?

In November 1883 American railroads adopted four standard time zones on their own authority, decades before any act of Congress. What made that necessary?

The Knights of Labor organized skilled and unskilled workers together and pressed for broad reform; the American Federation of Labor organized craft unions around wages and hours. How did their strategies differ?

Compare the European immigration of the 1850s with that of the 1890s. Which statement gives the difference accurately?

The Dawes Act of 1887 divided tribal land into individual allotments. By 1934 tribes held roughly a third of the acreage they had held in 1887. What changed and what persisted?

"The world must be made safe for democracy." - Woodrow Wilson, asking Congress to declare war on Germany, April 2, 1917. What was he doing with that line?

"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself - nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror." - Franklin Roosevelt, first inaugural address, March 4, 1933. What situation was he speaking into?

"Yesterday, December 7, 1941 - a date which will live in infamy - the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked." - Franklin Roosevelt to Congress, December 8, 1941. What was the speech for?

Between 1916 and 1930 roughly one and a half million Black southerners moved to northern and midwestern cities. What opened the jobs that drew them north?

The National Labor Relations Act of 1935 guaranteed the right to organize and required employers to bargain with a union their workers chose. What followed in the decade after?

The 1933 New Deal measures aimed largely at immediate relief and recovery; the 1935 measures created lasting programs. Which pairing shows that shift?

Women entered wartime industry in large numbers in 1917-1918 and again in 1942-1945, and in both cases most left those jobs when the war ended. Given that repeated pattern, what had changed between the two wars?

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." - Martin Luther King Jr., "Letter from Birmingham Jail," April 16, 1963. Whom was the letter answering?

The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 committed federal money to about 41,000 miles of interstate highway. What followed from it over the next two decades?

The Truman Doctrine of 1947 pledged support to Greece and Turkey; the Marshall Plan of 1948 sent economic aid across Western Europe. How did the two instruments differ?

The New Deal created Social Security in 1935; the Great Society added Medicare and Medicaid in 1965. What persisted from one to the other, and what was new?

The United States fought in Korea from 1950 under Truman and in Vietnam through the 1960s under Johnson. What stayed constant across the two, and what differed?

"In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem." - Ronald Reagan, first inaugural address, January 20, 1981. What crisis was he pointing to?

In December 1987 Reagan and Gorbachev signed the INF Treaty eliminating a whole class of missiles; in 1991 the Soviet Union dissolved. Comparing 1980 with 1995, what changed for American foreign policy?

Manufacturing employed about a fifth of American workers in 1980 and under a tenth by 2015, while total employment grew. Where did most of the new jobs come from?