The first permanent English settlement in North America was founded in 1607 beside a river in Virginia by a joint-stock company hoping to make a profit. What was that settlement called?

In November 1620 the Mayflower's passengers landed far north of the land their patent covered. Before going ashore, the male passengers signed an agreement to make and obey their own laws. Why did they draw it up?

Tobacco planting in the Chesapeake needed large amounts of year-round labor. After about 1660 planters increasingly bought enslaved Africans instead of hiring indentured servants. What best explains that shift?

Which British measure, issued at the end of the French and Indian War, forbade colonial settlement west of the Appalachian Mountains?

Which 1765 act of Parliament taxed the colonists directly by requiring a revenue stamp on newspapers, legal documents, licenses and playing cards?

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?

The Declaration of Independence says governments derive 'their just powers from the consent of the governed.' Which idea does that line express?

Under the Articles of Confederation, Congress could ask the states for money but could not tax them and could not quickly raise an army. What did Shays's Rebellion of 1786-87 convince many leaders of?

At the 1787 convention in Philadelphia, delegates settled the quarrel between large and small states by giving each state equal representation in one chamber and representation by population in the other. What is that agreement called?

Anti-Federalists opposed ratifying the Constitution in 1787-88, warning that the new central government could trample individual liberties. What concession helped win ratification?

In 1803 the Supreme Court refused to enforce part of the Judiciary Act of 1789 because it conflicted with the Constitution. What power did the Court establish for itself?

In 1803 Jefferson sent envoys to France to buy New Orleans, and they came back having bought the whole Louisiana Territory. Why did the United States want New Orleans so badly?

Which political party was founded in 1854 to oppose the spread of slavery into the western territories and elected its first president in 1860?

Which president signed the Indian Removal Act of 1830, under which southeastern nations were forced west of the Mississippi River?

Who worked with Lucretia Mott to organize the 1848 women's rights convention at Seneca Falls, New York, and drafted its Declaration of Sentiments?

The treaty that ended the war with Mexico in 1848 handed California and the rest of the Southwest to the United States. Why did that gain sharpen conflict between North and South?

The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 let settlers in those territories vote on whether to allow slavery, in land where federal law had barred it since 1820. What happened in Kansas as a result?

In 1857 the Supreme Court held that a man who had been enslaved could not sue because Black Americans were not citizens, and that Congress had no power to bar slavery from a federal territory. What did the second holding do?

The Emancipation Proclamation took effect on January 1, 1863. Which enslaved people did it declare free?

Which Union general captured Vicksburg in July 1863 after a long siege, giving the Union control of the Mississippi River?

Which amendment, ratified in 1868, made all persons born in the United States citizens and forbade any state to deny any person the equal protection of the laws?

The disputed presidential election of 1876 was settled by a bargain that made Rutherford B. Hayes president. What did that bargain mean for the South?

Which event in South Dakota in December 1890, in which US soldiers killed roughly 250 Lakota, is generally taken to mark the end of armed Native resistance on the Plains?

Andrew Carnegie bought the iron ore fields, coal mines, ships and rail lines that supplied his steel mills, so he owned every stage of production. What is that business strategy called?

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

During the Pullman strike of 1894 the federal government obtained a court injunction ordering strikers back to work and sent troops to keep the mail trains moving. What does that show about federal power in the period?

Which federal law of 1882 barred laborers of one nationality from entering the United States, the first US law to exclude a group by national origin?

At the 1896 Democratic convention William Jennings Bryan attacked the gold standard, telling delegates, 'You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.' Whose demand was he voicing?

Upton Sinclair's 1906 novel The Jungle described filthy conditions inside Chicago meatpacking plants and horrified readers. What followed that same year?

Which amendment, ratified in 1920, forbade the United States or any state to deny the right to vote on account of sex?

After defeating Spain in 1898 the United States annexed the Philippines instead of granting independence, then fought a war lasting years against Filipinos who resisted. What did that show about US policy?

Early in 1917 Germany resumed unrestricted submarine warfare, and British intelligence intercepted a German telegram secretly proposing an alliance with Mexico. What did these events lead to in April 1917?

Immigration laws passed in 1921 and 1924 set national origin quotas that sharply cut arrivals from southern and eastern Europe. What attitude did those quotas reflect?

Prohibition was written into the Constitution by the Eighteenth Amendment. Which amendment repealed it in 1933?

Which poet, author of 'The Negro Speaks of Rivers,' was a leading writer of the Harlem Renaissance in 1920s New York?

In the late 1920s many Americans bought stock on margin, paying only part of the price and borrowing the rest from a broker. Why did that practice make the crash of October 1929 worse?

Which New Deal program put unemployed young men to work planting trees, fighting fires, and building trails and shelters in parks?

In March 1941 Congress let the president lend or lease war supplies to Britain while the United States was still officially neutral. What did that policy represent?

On June 6, 1944 Allied forces stormed ashore in the largest amphibious landing in history, opening a second front against Germany in Western Europe. In which country did they land?

In 1942 the federal government removed about 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry, most of them United States citizens, from the West Coast to inland camps. How was that justified at the time?

On August 6, 1945 a United States bomber dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, and a second fell on Nagasaki three days later. What happened within weeks?

On March 12, 1947 President Truman told Congress that US policy must be 'to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures.' What policy did that statement launch?

Which military alliance did the United States, Canada and ten Western European nations create in 1949, pledging that an attack on one member would be treated as an attack on all?

Which 1954 Supreme Court decision held that separate public schools for Black and white children are inherently unequal, overturning the doctrine of Plessy v. Ferguson?

After marchers demanding the vote were beaten by state troopers in Selma, Alabama in March 1965, Congress passed a law suspending literacy tests and sending federal examiners to register voters. Which law was it?

In October 1962 American reconnaissance flights found Soviet nuclear missile sites being built in Cuba, and Kennedy ordered a naval quarantine of the island. How was the crisis settled?

In January 1968 communist forces attacked cities across South Vietnam and were driven back with heavy losses. Why is the Tet Offensive still counted a setback for the United States?

A 1972 break-in at Democratic Party headquarters and the cover-up that followed drove which president to resign in August 1974?

Which event of 1989, followed by German reunification the next year, came to symbolize the collapse of communist control in Eastern Europe?

After the attacks of September 11, 2001, Congress broadened federal surveillance powers and then combined agencies such as the Coast Guard, customs and border enforcement into a new cabinet department. Which department was it?