Specimen Exam Paper 1

Answer THREE questions in THREE hours

1. “The Constitution of 1787 was designed to keep power out of the hands of the masses.” Discuss.
2. What were the causes of the War of 1812?
3. What was the effect of slavery on southern white society?
3. Who supported Andrew Jackson and why?
4. Why was territorial expansion so important to antebellum Americans?
5. In what ways did the Market Revolution transform American society?
6. “Without the Second Great Awakening Abolitionism would not have developed.” Do you agree?
7. What did the Republican Party stand for EITHER between 1856 and 1865 OR between 1865 and 1880?
8. Why did Southern states secede when and how they did?
9. Why did the North win the Civil War?
10. “Reconstruction was hampered by the constitutional conservatism of almost all the leading Republicans.” Do you agree?
11. Account for the intensity of conflict between capital and labour between about 1870 and 1900.
12. How, if at all, did white Americans' views of Native Americans change between the 1780s and the 1900s?
13. Who were the "Robber Barons" and did they deserve their reputation for greed?
14. What was Populism?
15. What did Progressivism achieve?


Specimen Exam Paper 2

Answer THREE questions in THREE hours

1.Assess the achievements and failures of the Antifederalists between 1787 and 1800.
2. In what ways did the ‘Market Revolution’ alter the lives of Americans in the early republic?
3. How and to what extent was slave culture influenced by white society?
4. Was the ‘pro-slavery ideology’ developed in the South in the antebellum period the product or the cause of northern abolitionism?
5. ‘Whigs and Democrats were clearly differentiated on the basis of ideology, but not on the basis of social class.’ Discuss.
6. Account for the rise of reform movements in the Northern states in the mid-nineteenth century.
7. Describe and explain the political realignments of the 1850s.
8. Examine the significance of the Dred Scott decision for American society and politics.
9. “A new birth of freedom.” What did Abraham Lincoln mean by this phrase?
10. What was radical about “radical Reconstruction”?
11. How was the dispossession of the Plains Indians in the 1860s and 70s justified?
12. Why were "Jim Crow" laws introduced when they were?
13. ‘All has been lost except office or the hope of it.’ (JAMES BRYCE) How effectively do comments such as this capture the reality of politics during as the ‘Gilded Age’ (the 1870s and 80s)?
14. What were the political effects of the Depression of the 1890s?
15. When and how did the United States become a nation?