APUSH Vocabulary
The following vocabulary are recommended for students to be able to utilize as evidence in both essays
and short answer questions. Students should be familiar with the Who, What, Where, When, and
Historical Significance of each term. Historical Significance is the most important part as it displays the
analysis in your writing. These are your “because” statements. This list of words serves as “examples”
that could be used to examine the Key Concepts as outlined in the APUSH Curriculum Framework.
Ex. John Rolfe was historically significant because he is credited with rescuing the Virginia Colony
economically with the introduction of tobacco as its first substantial cash-crop. In addition, his
marriage to Pocahontas of the Powhatan Tribe brought a temporary peace between the Virginia
settlers and the native tribes of the Chesapeake region.
Units 1-2 (1491-1754)
Columbian Exchange
Encomienda System
maize
Joint-Stock Company
John Rolfe
Mayflower Compact
Headright System
House of Burgesses
Bacon’s Rebellion
Roger Williams/City Upon a Hill
Anne Hutchinson
King Philip’s War
Spanish, French, Dutch, and English Colonization (Similarities/Differences)
Chesapeake, Middle, & New England Colonies (Similarities/Differences) Mercantilism
Puritanism v. Anglicanism (with colonial regions)
Pueblo Revolt indentured servant
Great Awakening
The Enlightenment
Navigations Acts
Triangular Trade/Middle Passage
Chattel Slavery
Slave resistance
Unit 3 (1754-1800)
Seven Year’s War (French and Indian War)
Proclamation of 1763
Albany Congress
Salutary Neglect
Thomas Paine’s Common Sense
Republican motherhood
Northwest Ordinance of 1787
Stamp Act
Declaration of Independence
Pontiac’s Rebellion
Intolerable Acts
Continental Congress
Articles of Confederation (strengths & weaknesses)
Northwest Territory
Battle of Fallen Timbers
Constitutional Convention (compromises, slave trade, Anti-Feds. v. Feds, Federalist Papers, Bill of Rights)
Presidential precedents
Jay’s Treaty
1st Political Parties
Neutrality Proclamation
Treaty of San Lorenzo (Pinckney’s Treaty)
Washington’s Farewell Address
Unit 4 (1800-1848)
Marbury v. Madison/Marshall Court
Louisiana Purchase
Chesapeake-Leopard Affair
Embargo Act of 1807
War of 1812
Clay’s American System
Antebellum Social Reformers
Second Great Awakening
Transcendentalism
slave family structures
Market Revolution
Abolitionism
Universal Male Suffrage
Seneca Falls Convention
Interchangeable parts
Textile Machinery/Steam Engines
entrepreneurs
Canals/Railroads/National Roads
Lowell Factory System “King Cotton” (southern expansion)
Missouri Compromise 1820
Monroe Doctrine
Jacksonian Democracy (2nd Party System)
“Old” Immigrants (Irish/German)
American Indian Removal
National Bank Wars
Unit 5 (1844-1877)
Manifest Destiny
Mexican American War
Treaty of Guadeloupe-Hidalgo
Wilmot Proviso
Immigration (Irish/German)
Nativism
Abolitionism
The Liberator/William L. Garrison
Slavery as “Positive Good” (southern perspective)
Free-Soil Party
F. Douglass
Compromise of 1850
Popular Sovereignty
Dred Scott Case
2nd Party System Ends
Republican Party
Secession
Treaty of Kanagawa
Civil War (pre-Emancipation Proc.)
Civil War (post-Emancipation Proc.)
Kansas-Nebraska Act
States’ rights
Gettysburg Address
John Brown
Northern Advantages to South
13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments (know these)
women’s rights
Radical Republicans
Reconstruction
Sharecropping
segregation
redeemers
Black codes
Freedmen’s Bureau
Compromise of 1877
Unit 6 (1865-1898)
Transcontinental RR
Telegraph/Telephone
Horizontal v. Vertical Integration
Homestead Act
corporate consolidations (trusts/monopolies)
Laissez-faire policy
“New Immigration” (Eastern/Southern Europe) child labor
Industrialization
“New South”
Farming Technology
People’s (Populist) Party
Urbanization
political party machines
middle-class
Leisure Time
Gospel of Wealth (Carnegie)
Social Darwinism
Dawes Severalty Act
Western boomtowns
Battle of Wounded Knee
Plessy v. Ferguson
Booker T. Washington
Jane Addams
Jim Crow Laws
“Cross of Gold” Speech
American Federation of Labor (AFL)
American Bison
2nd Treaty of Fort Laramie
Assimilationist policies
Settlement Houses
Social Gospel
W.E.B. Du Bois
Chinese Exclusion Act
Homestead Strike
Unit 7 (1890-1945)
Muckrakers
Women’s Suffrage
Progressive Era Reformers
prohibition
Preservationists (J. Muir) v. conservationists (T. Roosevelt)
National Park System
Spanish-American War
Anti-Imperialist League
Philippines (nationalist movement)
F. Turner’s Frontier Thesis
Immigration Restrictions
Great Migration
Mexican Migration (WWI)
Women in the workforce
Segregation
Mass Media
Consumerism Harlem Renaissance
Scopes Monkey Trial
Isolationism
Red Scare
Modernists v. Traditionalists
American Expeditionary Forces (WWI) Treaty of Versailles
New Deal (FDR)
Social Security Act
Dust Bowl
Govt. New Deal v. Supreme Court New Deal (constitutionality) Pearl Harbor
Democratic Party (A.A., Working Class, ethnic groups)
Japanese internment
Allied cooperation
WWII/End of Depression
island hopping (Pacific)
women and minorities on home front
D-Day Invasion
atomic bombs
Korematsu v. United States
Unit 8 (1945-1980)
Cold War
Containment Policy
Korean War
Berlin Airlift
Marshall Plan
Truman Doctrine
2nd Red Scare
McCarthyism
House Un-American Activities (HUAC)
Massive Retaliation
Military Industrial Complex
Domino Theory
Students for a Democratic Society (SDS)
Martin Luther King (SCLC)
NATO
Brinksmanship
Vietnam War
Counter-Culture Movement
“New-Left”
Free-Speech Movement
Desegregation of armed services
Brown v. Board of Education
Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committees (SNCC) “Sit-Ins” (Greensboro, NC)
Montgomery Bus Boycott
Central Intelligence Agency (Middle-East intervention)
War Power Act 1973
War on Poverty
Chicano Movement (C. Chavez)
Great Society
American Indian Movement (AIM)
Civil Rights Act 1964
Voting Rights Act 1965
Berger Court Cases
Environmental Protection Agency
Sun Belt
Gay Rights Movement
Neoconservative
Three Mile Island
Warren Court Cases
Rachel Carson Baby Boom
“Levittowns”/Suburbanization Immigrants post-1965 Conformity 1950s
Feminist Movement
Sexual Revolution
evangelical church growth
ERA
Unit 9 (1980-Present)
Moral Majority
Supply-Side Economics/”Reaganomics”
Perestroika
Glasnost
Iran-Contra Affair
Operation Desert Storm
Sandra Day O’Connor
North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)
Persian Gulf War
World Trade Organization (WTO)
9/11/2001
Osama Bin Laden
The Great Recession
Tea Party
Arab Spring
Immigration (SE Asia)
AIDS
Americans with Disabilities Act
European Union (EU)
Immigration (Latin America)
Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI)
War in Afghanistan
Affordable Care Act