Q 01/05

What was the XYZ Affair of 1797-1798?

A) French agents demanded bribes from US envoys

B) A spy ring selling US naval secrets

C) A trade dispute between the US and Spain

D) Forged diplomatic letters from Britain

Answer · why

A) French agents demanded bribes from US envoys

French agents demanded bribes from US envoys, and when the envoys' dispatches were published, the uproar led to the undeclared Quasi-War.

Q 02/05

What was the purpose of the Freedmen's Bureau, established in 1865?

A) Recruit Black soldiers for the Union

B) Aid formerly enslaved people and refugees

C) Enforce the Fugitive Slave Act

D) Resettle freed people in Africa

Answer · why

B) Aid formerly enslaved people and refugees

Aid formerly enslaved people and refugees was its mission, and its agents also performed marriages for freed couples whose unions slavery had never ma...

Q 03/05

The Compromise of 1877 ended Reconstruction because President Hayes did what?

A) Admitted California as a free state

B) Granted citizenship to freed people

C) Signed the South's Jim Crow laws

D) Withdrew the last federal troops from the South

Answer · why

D) Withdrew the last federal troops from the South

Withdrew the last federal troops from the South, historians largely agree: Hayes pulled the soldiers guarding the last Republican statehouses, and Dem...

Q 04/05

What was the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution (1964)?

A) A peace treaty ending the Korean War

B) A UN resolution condemning North Vietnam

C) Congress's grant of war powers to Johnson

D) An agreement dividing Vietnam at the 17th parallel

Answer · why

C) Congress's grant of war powers to Johnson

Congress's grant of war powers to Johnson followed alleged attacks on US Navy ships; with no declaration of war, he used it to escalate the Vietnam Wa...

Q 05/05

What were the 1917 Espionage Act and 1918 Sedition Act used to do?

A) Draft men into the Army

B) Silence critics of the war

C) Seize German-owned businesses

D) Create the FBI

Answer · why

B) Silence critics of the war

Silence critics of the war was their use: Socialist Eugene V. Debs got a ten-year sentence for an anti-war speech and ran for president from his priso...