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Credit Sprint's Guide to Social and Cultural History for CLEP® U.S. History

About 45% of each CLEP® U.S. History exam

Both CLEP® History of the United States exams give heavy weight to social developments (about 25%) and cultural and intellectual developments (about 20%): religion and reform, immigration and migration, family and gender, race and slavery, art and ideas. Political and economic history are only part of the picture, so learn the people and movements as well as the laws.

What you need to know

  • Religion and reform: the Great Awakenings, Puritan society, abolition, temperance, women's rights and the Social Gospel.
  • Race and slavery: the growth of slavery, slave resistance, free Black communities, Reconstruction, Jim Crow and the civil rights movement.
  • Immigration and migration: colonial settlers, the Irish and German waves, the new immigration after 1880, the Great Migration and restriction laws.
  • Gender and family: republican motherhood, the cult of domesticity, suffrage, women in wartime and the women's movement.
  • Culture and ideas: the Enlightenment, Transcendentalism, realism, the Harlem Renaissance, mass culture, counterculture and modern conservatism.
  • Native American history: contact, removal, the Dawes Act, boarding schools, the American Indian Movement and tribal sovereignty.

Practice questions

1. The Columbian Exchange is best defined as the
  1. agreement that split newly found lands between Spain and Portugal
  2. movement of crops, animals and diseases between hemispheres
  3. system that granted Spanish settlers the labor of native villages
  4. trade in finished goods between England and its American colonies
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movement of crops, animals and diseases between hemispheres. After 1492, plants, animals, people and microbes crossed the Atlantic in both directions, reshaping life in the Americas, Europe and Africa.

2. What was the most devastating effect of the Columbian Exchange on Native American societies?
  1. The arrival of horses ended farming across the Plains and Southwest
  2. A sudden boom in population from new European crops and livestock
  3. Epidemics such as smallpox killed a large share of the population
  4. Native governments adopted the printing press and wrote new laws
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Epidemics such as smallpox killed a large share of the population. Native peoples had no prior exposure to Old World diseases, so epidemics caused catastrophic losses that weakened societies and aided conquest.

3. The Spanish encomienda system gave colonists the right to
  1. own the ships that carried silver to Spain from the colonies
  2. demand labor and tribute from a group of native people
  3. share in the profits of a company financed by many investors
  4. claim exemption from all taxes owed to the Spanish crown
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demand labor and tribute from a group of native people. Encomenderos received work and goods from native communities in return for supposedly protecting and instructing them, which often led to abuse.

4. Bartolome de las Casas is best known for
  1. leading the army that conquered the Aztec capital
  2. founding the first lasting English colony in Virginia
  3. arguing that natives were naturally fit for enslavement
  4. denouncing Spanish cruelty toward Native Americans
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denouncing Spanish cruelty toward Native Americans. The friar and former encomendero campaigned for reforms, and his writings fueled the Black Legend about Spanish brutality.

5. Hernan Cortes was able to defeat the Aztec empire largely because
  1. native enemies of the Aztecs allied with him
  2. the Aztec emperor accepted Spanish rule without any resistance
  3. Cortes arrived with an army of tens of thousands of Spanish soldiers
  4. the Aztecs had no cities, organized armies or capital to defend
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native enemies of the Aztecs allied with him. Subject peoples resentful of Aztec tribute joined the Spanish, and disease devastated the capital during the siege.

6. Spain established missions in places like Florida and New Mexico primarily to
  1. provide land for Protestant refugees fleeing persecution in Europe
  2. escape the authority of the pope and the Spanish crown together
  3. convert native people and bind them to Spanish rule
  4. trade freely with English merchants who were visiting the coast
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convert native people and bind them to Spanish rule. Missions taught Catholicism, organized native labor and extended Spanish authority across frontier regions.