Chapter1 Geographical Features and Natural Resources
1.In area, the United States is the 4th largest country in the world.
2.The Midwest in the US refers to the region around the Great Lakes and the upper Mississippi Valley.
3.The Backbone of North America refers to the Rocky Mountains
4.Death Valley is on the western edge of the Great Basin.
5.The Great Plains might have a dust storm in summer.
6.The western part of Washington State has the highest rainfall in the US.
7.The US primary suppliers of foreign oil are the following countries except Japan
8.The US largest open-pit copper-mining center is in Utah.
1. The United States is bordered on the north by Canada, on the south by Mexico and the Guff of Mexico, on the east by the Atlantic Ocean, and on the west by the Pacific Ocean.
2. The large territory of the continental US is divided into three basic areas:
A. the Atlantic seacoast west to the Appalachians
B. the Mississippi River Basin
C. the Rockies west to the Pacific
3. The Middle Atlantic States are the most densely populated region in the US, where the land is flat and fertile.
4. The Central Valley of California is a highly productive area, which produced enormous amounts of fruits and vegetables.
5. Most production of oil and natural gas in the US comes from offshore areas of Louisiana and Texas, and from onshore areas of Texas, Oklahoma and California. Her big consumption of energy now has made America insufficient in oil supply. The US reliance of foreign oil has reminded consistently in the 40% ranges.
6. The United States has little trouble caused by the shortage of fresh water. Farmlands in the US making up about 12% of the arable lands in the world, and they are among the richest and most productive.
Chapter 2 American Population
1.The over 3 million of early Americans in 1790 were mostly of British ancestry.
2.About 700,000 immigrants were legally received by the US each year during the 1980s.
3.The official racial segregation continued to be the law of the US until 195
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4.American Indians now mainly live in the South.
5.The majority of American Hispanics are from the following countries except Spain.
6.The West now leads in percentage increase in population.
7.According to the 1994 US census, the second most populous state in the US is Taxes.
8.The trend in migration from cities to suburbs now prevailed in all regions except the South.
1.The United States is the third most populous nation in the world.
2.Prior to 1875 anyone from any country could enter the US freely and take up permanent residence there. Later the US Congress passed laws restricting immigration on the basis of morality, race, and national origin. The 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act reaffirmed national origin as the chief criterion for eligibility and established a preferential system for skilled workers and for relatives of the US citizens. For many years the US restricted to total number of immigrants to 270,000 each year, although the real immigrants numbered much greater than the limit. The 1990 Immigration Act limits the total number of immigrants to 700,000 from 1992 to 1995 and 675,000 thereafter.
3.The first blacks arrived in Jamestown in 1619 as indentured servants, but soon[ after 1619 they were brought to colonies as slaves. The blacks were formally freed in1863, but continued to suffer the institutionalized segregation for about a century. Today many blacks still live in the South, some have entered the middle class, but one-third of all black families still live below the poverty line.
4.The Chinese-Americans have proved to be industrious and intelligent. They are now viewed as a “model minority” in the US. According to the 2010 US census, there were about 3.8 million Chinese-Americans living in the US. The figure was more than twice what it was in 1990.
Chapter 3 Discovery and Colonization of the New World
1. The ancestors of the present American Indians came from Asia.
2.“The ambition for the vast lands”is not correct to explain the reasons for the sudden daring exploration of the unknown in the mid-15th century.
3. On his voyage of 1492, Columbus expected to reach India.
4. Vasco da Gama discovered the route to India.
5. John Cabot was sent by the English King to explore the new way to the east.
6. New York was not founded first by the English.
7. The breadbasket colonies include the following ones except Virginia. (New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland)
8. The last one of the 13 colonies was Georgia, which was established in 1733.
1. In 1488 Bartholomew Diaz, sailing under the Portuguese flag, went to the Cape of Good Hope at the southern Africa. In 1492 Christopher Columbus, financed by rulers of Spain sailed west across the Atlantic Ocean and discovered the islands of the Caribbean. He was convinced that he had found the continent of Asia.
2. The South Africa was discovered by Amerigo Vespucci who showed the land he arrived in was a new continent. Before long the land was named America after his name.
3. Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement, was founded in 1607. In 1620, Pilgrims and others arrived in Plymouth, Massachusetts. They drew up “Mayflower Compact”
4. By 1775, the 13 colonies in North America could be classified as the following three kinds. Specify how the governors were chosen in each.
a. Royal: appointed by the English King
b. Proprietary: chosen by proprietors
c. Self-governing: elected by residents
5. Because the New England colonies were difficult of farming, they become a center for fishing and shipbuilding. The middle colonies were known as the breadbasket, which produced wheat and potatoes as the major staple. The southern colonies developed a plantation system. The main crop in the South was tobacco. Much later, cotton became important crop.
Chapter 4 American Revolution
1. There was a great change in policy towards the 13 colonies after 1763.
2. The Stamp Act of 1765 first set a large scale of opposition in the colonies.
3. The Tea Act of 1773 was passed by the British Parliament in order to help the British East India Company.
4. The First Continental Congress was attended by the representatives from all the colonies except Georgia.
5. The first shot of the American War of Independence was fired in Lexington.
6. Thomas Paine’s Common Sense urged the American colonists to declare their in dependence.
7. The principal author of the Declaration of Independence was Thomas Jefferson.
8. The victory at Saratoga was considered as the turning point of the War of Independence.
1. During the colonial days the English ruling class did everything they could to control the development of the colonial economy. The colonies in North America were supposed to complement and not compete with English industry.
2. Within the five years from 1763 to 1767 after the war with France, the British government adopted several measures to extract more money from colonies. The Sugar Act of 1764 and the Stamp Act of 1765, for example, laid taxes on certain imports and numerous articles in America to help pay for the costs of British government in the colonies.
3. The Sons of Liberty was formed in 1765 to organize the opposition to the Stamp Act. They favored to take violent action to the stamp collectors.
4. The first Continental Congress was held in Philadelphia in Sep.1774. The majority of the representatives still favor to take peaceful means to settle the quarrel with the British. They agreed to refuse to buy English goods, hoping in this way to force the British government to give in to their demands. This united action could be called boycott.
5. The Declaration of Independence was signed on July 4, 177
6. Karl Marx once called it “the first declaration of the rights of the individual”.
6. The American War of Independence lasted 7 years. The fighting was actually ended in 1781, but the final treaty between Britain and the United States was signed in Paris in 1783. The boundaries of the United States were fixed roughly from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mississippi River on the west and from the Great Lakes on the north to Spanish Florida on the south. The direct social change brought about by the American Revolution was the emancipation of slaves who fought against the British.
Chapter 5 the Confederation and the Constitution
1. The confederation created in 1781 was a very loose union of states.
2. James Madison was called the Father of the US Constitution.
3. The Constitution was frames on the following ideals except that the new government should impose its authority on the people through states.
4. Those who supported the Constitution and preferred a strong national government were called Federalists.
5. Nine States were needed to ratify the Constitution.
6. “They spell out the people’s right” is incorrect to comment on the Federalist Papers.
7. The amendment of the Constitution requires the approval of at least three-fourths of the states.
8. When the Second War of Independence broke out in 1812, the US president was James Madison.
1. Under the Articles of Confederation the national government consisted of only a legislature; it had no separate executive and judicial divisions. The state government was left the exclusive powers to regulate commerce and to tax their citizens.
2. The Constitutional Convention was held in Philadelphia in 1787. Fifty-five delegates from all states except Rhode Island attended the opening session. The president of the convention was George Washington.
3. The Antifederalists opposed the constitution and preferred a more decentralized federal system of government.
4. George Washington was elected unanimously as the first US President in 1788. The first Vice-President was John Adams, and the first Secretary of Treasury was Alexander Hamilton, and the first Secretary of State was Thomas Jefferson.
5. the most glorious achievement of Jefferson as President was the Louisiana Purchase, which was about 828,000 square miles. This Purchase doubled the area of the then United States.
6. The War of 1812 is also called the Second War of Independence. This war lasted three years and ended in another American victory. An important result of the war was the strengthening of national unity and patriotism. And it was after this war that the US was able to make the change of a semi-colonial economy into a really independent national economy.
Chapter 6 American Expansion and the Civil War
1. The Monroe Doctrine had the following features or ideas except Latin America for Europeans.
2. The US continental expansion was almost complete by 1848.
3. Cotton became the most profitable crop in the South mainly because of the Whitney’s cotton gin.
4. In 1854, the Republican Party was founded by some abolitionists.
5. In his inaugural address in 1861, Lincoln showed clearly that he would not abolish slavery immediately but to preserve the Union.
6. “It immediately freed all slaves living in the United States” about the Emancipation Proclamation is not accurate.
7. the most important advantage the North had over the South in the Civil War was its industrial superiority.
8. An advantage the South had over the North was its superior military leadership.
1. The essence of the Monroe Doctrine was “America for Americans” which later became the cornerstone of the US foreign policy.
2. The US expansion to the west may be treated in three stages;
A. the settlement of the region between seaboard states and the Mississippi River
B. the settlement of the Louisiana Territory
c. the occupation of the far Southwest.
3. The great majority of dwellers in Louisiana Territory were the descendants of the French pioneers. They settled mainly in two cities: St. Louis and New Orleans.
4. Oregon Territory was settled between Britain and the United States in 1846. Its boundary on the north was fixed at the forty-ninth parallel of north latitude.
5. Under Missouri Compromise, Missouri was admitted as a slave state, but the balance of political power maintained by admission of Maine as a free state. In addition, slavery was to be prohibited in the rest of Louisiana Territory north of the line36°30’ parallel.
6. In 1862, the federal government took two revolutionary measures: (1) Homestead Act and (2) Emancipation proclamation.
7. In July 1863 came the turning point of the war at Gettysburg. Here the Confederate army under the general Robert E. Lee was defeated. The battlefield was made a national cemetery, where Lincoln gave his famous speech, the Gettysburg Address, on November 19, 1863.
8. In 1865, the Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution was adopted, which abolished slavery throughout the United States.
Chapter 7 Reconstruction and the Birth of US Imperialism
1. The first US president who faced impeachment proceedings was Andrew Johnson.
2. The radical Reconstruction was ended under the President Rutherford B. Hays
3. Gold was discovered in California in 1848.
4. The first transcontinental railroad in the US was completed in 1869.
5. Telephone was invented in 1876 by Alexander D. Bell.
6. The value of manufactured goods in the US was worth twice as that of her agricultural products by 1900.
7. The first imperialist war, the US—Spanish War, broke out in 1898.
8. After the US—Spanish War, the US acquired all the following areas except Cuba (Puerto Rico, Guam, the Philippines)
1. The Reconstruction Acts divided all the former Confederate states, except Tennessee, into five military districts and each was put under the control of a Northern army officer. The officer had the power to keep order and to enforce martial law if necessary.
2. During the Reconstruction period many Northerners moved to the south .Whatever their motives, these Northerners came to be called carpetbaggers because they were said to have brought all their belongings to the South in a small, cheap suitcase made out of a carpet like material.
3. During the Reconstruction the Southern whites who supported the radical reconstruction and joined the Republican Party were called scalawags. They were considered as traitors by the Southern Democrats.
4. The KKK, founded in Tennessee in 1866, was a secret society for restoring white supremacy and driving blacks out of politics.
5. During Theodore Roosevelt’s presidency the US got control of Panama Canal.
Chapter 8 World War I and the Depression
1. By the beginning of the 20th century the country that took the first place in economy in Europe was Germany.
2. When the First World War began, President Wilson immediately called upon the American people to observe strict neutrality.
3. The US joined the First World War in 1917.
4. Wilson’s Fourteen Points did not include the point of creation of an international peacekeeping force.
5. “Only the rich could afford new consumer goods” about the US in 1920s is not true.
6. In responding to the Depression, President Hoover thou ght that the basic role of the Government was to “create conditions favorable to the development of private enterprises”.
7. The agricultural Adjustment Act was an attempt to deal with the farmers’ problem of overproduction.
8. “It reduced the commodity prices by limiting production and devaluing the dollar” is not right to comment on the New Deal.
1. The First World War was waged between two groups of imperialist powers: the Allies and the Central European Power.
2. The direct cause that made the US declare war on Germany in 1917was the Germany’s unlimited campaign.
3. The major triumph for Wilson at the Paris Peace Conference was the formation of the League of Nations.
4. The United States didn’t join the League of Nations because the US Senate refused to approve the Treaty of Versailles.
5. Three major treaties were concluded at the Washington Conference:
(1) The Four-Power Treaty, respecting the status quo in the Pacific.
(2) The Five-Power Treaty, on naval arms apportionment.
(3) The Nine-Power Treaty, guaranteeing the independence and integrity of China in appearance, but actually a public international affirmation of the Open Door policy.
6. The Nineteenth Amendment to the US Constitution was adopted in 1920, which granted women the right to vote.
7. The Great Depression started with the sudden collapse of the Stock Market in New York in October, 1929. This economic distress extended to Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia and South America.
Chapter 9 American During and After World War II
1. Between 1935 and 1939, American foreign policy included all of the following except active intervention to prevent aggression.
2. The US formally entered the Second World War in 1941.
3. Normandy Landing took place on June 6, 194
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4. At Yalta Conference, in Feb. 1945 did Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin agree to call a conference of all the United Nations in San Francisco in April 194
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5. The post-World War II program of economic assistance to Western Europe was known as Marshall Plan.
6. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., advocated the philosophy of nonviolence.
7. Thousands of American soldiers were sent to Vietnam under the President Lyndon B. Johnson.
8. The formal diplomatic relation at the ambassadorial rank between China and the US was established under the President Carter.
1. The cash-and-carry policy allowed US citizens to sell certain no prohibited goods to belligerent nations as long as those
goods were not transported on American ships.
2. Lend-Lease Act enabled any country whose defense the President considered vital to that of the US to receive arms and other equipment and supplies by sale, transfer, exchange, or lease. F.D. Roosevelt explained the Act would make the US the arsenal of world democracy.
3. Civil rights involve government protection of individuals against discrimination based on their race,religion nation origin, gender, age, and other factors. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was honored for his effort to fight discrimination. In 1964, he won the Nobel Prize for peace.
4. Star Wars program was proposed by President Reagan in 1983. The program seeks to construct a defensive “shield” against incoming missiles. The shield would be made of laser and electronic devices that would destroy such missiles launched to attack the US.
5. In 1990, President Bush ordered Operation Desert Storm to punish Iraq, more than 200000 US troops were sent to Saudi Arabia, and the US navy blocked all oil exports from Iraq and all imports except food.
6. Under Clinton, the US enjoyed an economic growth for nine consecutive years. This phenomenon, hardly seen before, has been termed the “new economy” by some. The fundamental reason for it is that American economic structure went through essential changes because of the promotion of scientific and technological progress.
Chapter 10 the Federal System and Congress
1. The power of the state in the US is actually from both B and C. (the state constitution, the US Constitution)
2. The supreme law of the United States includes all the above three.
3. The terms of the senator and representative are six and two years respectively.
4.”The 17th Amendment (1913)” provided for the direct election of senators.
5. Certain presidential appointments must be approved by a majority vote in the Senate.
6. All revenue or tax bills must be originated in the House.
7. The Speaker of the House is second in line in presidential succession.
8. In the House, the power to decide when the full House will hear the bill is vested in the Rules Committee.
1. Federalism means the division of powers by a constitution between the central government and state government. It operates only on two levels, the national and the states. Units of government within a state enjoy no independent existence.
2. Separation of powers in the United States means not only allocating legislative power to Congress, executive power to President and judicial power to the Supreme Court, but also giving each branch constitutional and political independence and checks and balances that ensure each of the three branches a sufficient role in the actions of the others.
3. According to the Constitution, members of the House of Representatives must be25years old and must have been citizens for 7 years. Senators must be at least 30 and must have been citizens for 9 years.
4. The Vice President is officially the presiding officer and is called the president of the Senate. In fact he seldom appears in the Senate chamber in this role unless it appears that there might be tie vote in the Senate. In such instances, he casts the tiebreaking vote. To deal with day-to-day business, the Senate chooses the president pro tempore.
5. A senator who wants to delay action on a bill or kill it altogether may use a tactic called a filibuster. It can be cut off only through cloture.
6. Lobbying is part of the citizen’s right to petition government in the US. Now there are thousands of lobbyists in Washington D.C. Their influence in making the US policy is so great that some people call them “the third house”.
Chapter 11 The President and the Judiciary
1. The 22nd Amendment in following limits the President to two successive terms only.
2. The American President has all the following powers except declaring war on another country.
3. The president’s major appointments should be approved by the Senate.
4. “It requires the approval of Congress” is not correct to explain the executive agreement.
5. The President’s veto can be overridden by two-third votes in both houses.
6. The federal courts that regularly employ grand and petit juries are the district courts.
7. The highest authority of the Supreme Court is to interpret the US constitution.
8. The case involving copyright, trademark, counterfeiting, and bank robbery are usually first tried in the federal district courts.
1.By law any natural-born American citizen of and over 35 years of age and of being a resident within the United States for 14years can run for the President. The duly elected and duly qualified president-elect takes office on the20th of January following his election.
2.The war powers resolution (1973) requires the President to consult congress and withdraw troops after sixty days unless Congress specifically approves the continued deployment of troops.
3.A federal law gave President an item veto in 1996, which is an authority to reject specific sections of a bill without having to veto the entire bill.
4.The Supreme Court has the power to examine the bills passed by Congress and policies made by President, and declare them unconstitutional and thus abolish them. John Marshall, the most famous chief justice in American history called this power of interpretation judicial review
5.There are three federal court levels: 1) the district courts 2) the courts of appeal 3) the Supreme Court. All the judges of federal courts are appointed by President with the consent of the Senate. The state court system also has a hierarchy of three levels: 1) superior courts, 2) appellate courts, 3) a state supreme court. The state court judges are usually elected. The term of the country court judges is usually four years. And the judges in higher state courts usually sever eight or twelve years for one term
Chapter 12 Political Parties and Elections
1. The emblem of the Democratic Party is donkey.
2. The first Democratic President was Thomas Jefferson.
3. The first Republican President was Abraham Lincoln.
4. The only Democratic President who served two separate terms between the end of Civil War and 1912 was Grover Cleveland.
5. The presidential candidate of the major party is nominated at the national convention.
6. In the presidential election year the American voters vote on the Tues, after the 1st Mon.
7. The number of the presidential electors in each state is equal to the number of its senators and Representatives.
8. The American President is actually elected by presidential electors.
1. Two factions emerged during the ratification of the US Constitution. One group was called Federalists led by Alexander Hamilton. They favored business development, a strong national government, and a loose interpretation of the Constitution. Another group led by Thomas Jefferson was called Democratic-Republicans. They called for a society based on small farms, a relatively weak central government, and a strict interpretation of the Constitution. The roots of today’s Republican Party lie in the Federalists, while the Democrats can trace their beginnings back to Antifederalists or Democratic-Republicans.
2. In general, Democrats traditionally have supported workers and minorities, while the Republicans are known for known for their support of business and conservative positions on social issues.
3. Before 1971 the only state that gave 18-year-old the right to vote was Georgia; all other states set the age at 21. In 1971 the 26th Amendment to the Constitution lowered the voting age to 18.
4. The voting percentage now is very low in the United States. In general older people with more education and high income tend to vote, while the youth, especially aged 18 to 21, has the lowest voting percentage in the Unites States.
5. The candidate with the most votes in a state wins all of that state’s electoral votes. This is known as the “winner-take-all” principle. The candidate who wins the majority of the 538 Electoral College votes will be the US President in the next four years.。
