C's

Question 1

John Cabot

Answer 1

In 1497, sponsored by the king of England in search of a Northwest Passage, he became the first European since the Viking voyages more than four centuries earlier to reach the mainland of North America, which he claimed for England

Question 2

John C. Calhoun

Answer 2

A South Carolina Representative in the House, a South Carolina Senator, Vice President in the Adams administration, and Secretary of State in the Tyler administration

Question 3

California

Answer 3

A former Spanish territory that essentially lost ties to any government after the Mexicans gained independence from Spain in 1821 and paid little attention to it; California experienced substantial immigration of Americans, especially in the 1830s and beyond; along with New Mexico and Mexico, its status in relation to American expansion and the issue of slavery became a source of concern by American politicians

Question 4

California Trail

Answer 4

A branch from the Oregon Trail that turned southwest in the Rockies and crossed Nevada along the Humboldt River

Question 5

Carolina

Answer 5

A proprietary colony including all land south of Virginia and north of Spanish Florida that the king of England granted in 1663 to eight loyal noblemen who planned for it an ultimately unworkable hierarchical - almost feudal - society

Question 6

Carpetbaggers

Answer 6

The Southern name for Northerners who came to the South to participate in Reconstruction governments

Question 7

Jacques Cartier

Answer 7

Authorized by the king of France, he led three expeditions (1534-1542) to the area of the St. Lawrence River as far as Montreal, which he believed might be the Northwest Passage

Question 8

Cerror Gordo

Answer 8

What has been called “the most important single battle of the [Mexican-American] war,” in which General Winfield Scott soundly defeated a superior Mexican force in a seemingly impregnable position, after which he went on to win several more battles and enter Mexico City

Question 9

Charles River Bridge vs Warren Bridge

Answer 9

An 1837 case whose decision was delivered by Andrew Jackson’s new Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Roger Taney, who ruled that a state could abrogate a grant of monopoly if that original grant had ceased to be in the best interests of the community

Question 10

Chattel

Answer 10

Lifelong slaves whose status was inherited by their children

Question 11

Chesapeake Colonies

Answer 11

Colonies that had less stable societies than those of New England, partly because of the large number of indentured servants, who were disproportionately men, and had short lifespans as a result of mistreatment by their masters

Question 12

“Chesapeake - Leopard” Affair

Answer 12

The 1807 incident in which the British ship H.M.S. “Leopard” stopped the U.S.S. “Chesapeake” off the coast of Virginia, and four alleged British deserters were taken off the ship

Question 13

Christmas night 1776

Answer 13

The night on which General George Washington and his small army, which was melting away as demoralized soldiers deserted, boldly crossed the Delaware River and defeated the Hessians at Trenton

Question 14

“Civil Disobedience”

Answer 14

An essay written by Henry David Thoreau, who was jailed for his refusal to pay his taxes in protest of the Mexican-American War

Question 15

Civil War

Answer 15

The bloody conflict (1850-1860) between the North and the South

Question 16

Henry Clay

Answer 16

Speaker of the House of Representatives who formulated a package that both the House and the Senate could accept regarding the admission of Missouri as a state in the Union

Question 17

Coercive Acts

Answer 17

The British Parliament’s response to the 1773 incident in which Bostonians, who were thinly disguised as Indians, boarded British Royal Navy ships and threw the ships’ cargo, tea, into Boston Harbor

Question 18

“Common Sense”

Answer 18

A pamphlet written by Thomas Paine that called for the immediate independence of the American colonies

Question 19

Compromise of 1850

Answer 19

Henry Clay’s eight-part proposal intended to lessen the ongoing friction between the North and the South

Question 20

Compromise of 1877

Answer 20

An agreement whereby Rutherford Hayes promised to show consideration for Southern interests, end Reconstruction, and withdraw the remaining federal troops from the South in exchange for Democratic acquiescence in his election

Question 21

Concord

Answer 21

The Massachusetts town in which General Thomas Gage led 700 British troops on a 1775 mission to find and destroy a reported stockpile of colonial arms and ammunition, sparking the Battles of Lexington and Concord, beginning the American War of Independence

Question 22

Concurrent Majority

Answer 22

The concept that, according to John C. Calhoun in 1828, a federal law deemed harmful to the interests of an individual state could be declared null and void within that state; later, in 1836, Calhoun expanded this concept to extend to a dual presidency that would ensure that the South would be independent of Northern dominance and would forever keep majority rule at bay`

Question 23

Confederate States of America

Answer 23

The states that had seceded from the Union

Question 24

Connecticut

Answer 24

A colony founded by the Puritans who had slight religious disagreements with the leadership of Massachusetts

Question 25

Conquistadores

Answer 25

Independent Spanish adventurers who led the powerful Spanish army to conquer the Americas for Spain

Question 26

Conscription Act

Answer 26

An 1863 law that imposed a draft so that the Union could obtain adequate manpower for the huge armies that would be needed to defeat the South

Question 27

Constitution

Answer 27

The document written at the Constitutional Convention in 1787 and ratified in 1788 that sets forth the framework of the government of the United States

Question 28

Constitutional Convention

Answer 28

A 1787 meeting in Philadelphia of representatives of states, including James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, Gouverneur Morris, Robert Morris, John Dickinson, and Benjamin Franklin, and presided over by George Washington, whose purpose was to address the inadequacy of the Articles of Confederation

Question 29

Continentals

Answer 29

Paper money bills printed by the American Congress to finance the War of Independence

Question 30

Copperheads

Answer 30

Northerners who opposed the war and denounced Lincoln as a tyrant and would-be-dictator

Question 31

Lord Charles Cornwallis

Answer 31

The British General who first served under General William Howe and later continued the Southern Campaign

Question 32

Vasquez de Coronado

Answer 32

A Spanish conquistador who led an expedition (1540-1542) from Mexico, north across the Rio Grande, and through New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas; he and some of his men were the first Europeans to see the Grand Canyon

Question 33

Corrupt Bargain

Answer 33

The rallying cry of supporters of Andrew Jackson after the election of 1824, in which Jackson won 43 percent of the popular vote, but the four-way split among the candidates meant that he received only 38 percent of the electoral votes; under the provisions of the Twelfth Amendment, the top three candidates were voted on by the House of Representatives - leaving candidate Henry Clay out of the running, and he threw his support to John Quincy Adams, who appointed Clay as Secretary of State almost immediately upon becoming the new president

Question 34

Hernando Cortes

Answer 34

A Spanish conquistador who, in 1519, led a dramatic expedition against the Aztecs of Mexico that destroyed the Aztec empire and won enormous riches for Spain

Question 35

Cotton Kingdom

Answer 35

The lands in the Southwest, made up of Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas, that were ideal for the production of short-staple cotton

Question 36

Crackers

Answer 36

(also called “sandhillers”) in the second half of the nineteenth century, approximately a half-million white, underclass Southerners who lived on the edge of the agrarian economy in varying degrees of poverty- sometimes in squalor worse than slaves - and who occupied the barren soils of the red hills or sandy bottoms

Question 37

Credit Mobilier Scandal

Answer 37

A scheme in which officials of the Union Pacific Railroad used a dummy construction company called “Credit Mobilier” to skim off millions of dollars of the subsidies that the government was paying for the Union Pacific for building the transcontinental railroad and bribe many members of Congress

Question 38

Crime Against Kansas

Answer 38

A two-day speech made by Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts in which he not only denounced slavery, but also made degrading personal references to aged South Carolina Senator Andrew Butler, resulting in physical violence in the Senate

Question 39

Crime of ‘73

Answer 39

The name that supporters of inflation during the Panic of 1873 gave to Congress’s demonetization of silver

Question 40

Cult of Domesticity

Answer 40

A shift in family responsibilities in the 1860s in which the father was out of the home working, and the burden of childrearing fell more heavily on the mother

Question 41

Cultural Nationalism

Answer 41

A feeling by Jeffersonians that their young republic represented the “final stage” of civilization, the “last great hope of mankind”

Question 42

Currency Act of 1764

Answer 42

AA law, pushed through the British Parliament by Prime Minister George Greenville, that forbade any colonial attempts to issue currency not redeemable in gold or silver