U.S. Intellectual and Cultural History - SAT Subject Test in United States History

Prior to King Phillip’s War there had been little existence of an American identity, one distinct from British. In the early seventeenth century, colonies had been established primarily as a means of shipping religious dissidents three thousand miles away, where they could not affect English heterodoxy. The colonists tended to see themselves as religiously separate, but culturally and nationally identical to the British; however, in King Phillip’s War the colonists were provided with very little assistance by the British Empire. Forced to fight and die together, the war fostered a new identity, an American identity that would continue to build, particularly in New England, for the next hundred years.

“Letters from a Pennsylvania Farmer” was, in fact, written by a lawyer in opposition to the British imposition of the Townshend Acts. The tract argued that the British government did have ultimate authority over the external affairs of the colonies, but that the colonies had the right to internal government. It declared that taxes made solely for the purpose of raising revenue for the Empire were abhorrent and against the British legal system. The tract was widely read and encouraged anti-British feeling throughout the colonies.

In early 1692, many town in the northern part of Massachusetts colony underwent a mass hysteria where various townspeople accused others of being practicing witches. Such accusations had a long history in European culture, and were well established in the colonists' own deeply held Calvinism. Witchcraft was a capital offense, and the ensuing trials became more convoluted by recent changes and disputes over Royal authority in the colony. In all, hundreds were accused and convicted, with dozens being executed in a variety of manners. This was also the last instance of a widespread witch trial, and made royal authority finally preeminent in Massachusetts.

Yellow journalism was a product of the rivalry between William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal and Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World. Both papers printed exaggerations and false news reports to sell more papers. The sinking of the battleship U.S.S. Maine near Cuba was portrayed by Hearst’s newspaper as an attack by Spanish forces fighting Cuban rebels. This propaganda engendered support for American efforts to send armed forces to Cuba, leading to the Spanish-American War.

One of the primary causes of the Spanish-American War, were sensationalized accounts of news events, for example the sinking of the USS Maine. These accounts provided by The New York Journal and New York World, owned respectively by William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer, focused on the implied responsibility of the Spanish government for the sinking of the ship, even though most of the evidence supported that it had been an accident. Whilst it is true that the editors championed Imperialistic responses and the use of photos engendered a strong visceral response among the United States’ population, the most significant contribution was the so called “Yellow Journalism” that sensationalized detail and often completely fabricated facts when evidence did not exist to support the claims being made. The American public, already angered by Spanish involvement in Cuba, became increasingly more supportive of war.

Sputnik was the first satellite launched into orbit around the Earth. It was launched in 1957, twelve years before America would put a man on the moon, representing a major point of discomfort for many Americans who suddenly felt as if the US was falling behind the Soviet Union. Shortly after Sputnik was launched, the US space program was greatly expanded and significant resources were put into education for scientists and engineers. In 1961, John F. Kennedy initiated the Apollo Program with the intention of putting a man on the moon by 1971.

James Meredith was the student whose integration of the University of Mississippi inspired riots that eventually led President Kennedy to deploy federal forces to Oxford, Mississippi in an effort to keep the peace. Meredith enrolled in the University of Mississippi after being inspired by President Kennedy himself, as well as a desire and belief in his right to attend the most prestigious educational institution in his home state.

Harlem would become overwhelmingly African-American during this time. This is because of the large numbers of African-Americans moving north from the southern states. This large influx of people, many of which concentrated themselves into this neighborhood of New York, led to a confluence of different thoughts and ideas. This meant that artists and thinkers of the time had an audience to play to and work with in forging a new identity.

While African-Americans faced many disadvantages while living in the southern states in this period, religious restrictions were not one of them. The south has many historic African-American churches that were and are well attended with little issue. While the Civil Rights Movement brought much ire to these institutions from radical elements of the segregationist population, at this point in history they were still largely sanctuaries from such issues.

The end of the First World War brought with it a change in American attitude. This major foreign entanglement made the American people desire to focus more on the issues at home. The American public no longer wanted to deal with the issues of foreign nations, but with building the communities of the United States and tackling pressing issues within those communities.

Like most of what was happening in American society at the time, the Great Depression brought the Harlem Renaissance to a halt. This down swing in fortune brought the hope and optimism that fueled the Harlem Renaissance to a stop. This new reality meant that the people of the Renaissance could no longer support themselves financially through the arts and this meant the movement would end with them.

Simply put, the people who brought about the Renaissance, artists and writers, could not keep writing and creating art because no one could afford to pay them for their works anymore. The depression meant that these people had to move on to other way of making a living, thus taking the wind out of the sails of the movement.

Embittered by his experience with the Continental Army, General Benedict Arnold schemed to deliver the American fort of West Point to the British. Today, his name remains tarnished in the USA for his actions.

Jonathan Edwards was a Christian minister and theologian whose religious traditions were rooted in the Enlightenment and Puritanism. He was one of the driving forces behind the First Great Awakening in America in the 1730s and 1740s. The First Great Awakening was a religious movement that swept through Europe and North America in the middle decades of the Eighteenth Century – it emphasized personal communion with faith and moved religious observation away from devoted adherence to ceremony and scripture.

Calvin and Luther were both Christian reformers in sixteenth century Europe who were primarily responsible for dividing Christianity into Catholic and Protestant branches. Dwight L. Moody was a notable religious figure during the Third Great Awakening in the nineteenth century. John Winthrop was a leading figure in the settlement of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

The Iroquois are a Native American tribe found outside of the mesoamerican time period and geography.

Entry into the early Puritan church in the seventeenth-century American colonies required that the user be baptized and undergo a “full religious experience,” but the church began to decline rapidly in membership as the children and grand-children of the first generation Puritans were excluded from the full religious community. In an attempt to counter this trend, the Puritan church passed the Half-Way Covenant to allow for the baptism of children of the holders of the Covenant. The idea was that these children would still reap the social and moral lessons of the Puritan church and then later in life would come to experience the “born again” moment and become full members.

The writings of Thomas Paine, the Anglo-American revolutionary, inspired Americans to seek independence from Britain before their Revolutionary War.

Benjamin Franklin, one of the Founding Fathers, never served in the army.

The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were both written at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.