APUSH notes are only useful if they're compressed. A textbook chapter runs 40 pages; the exam wants you to hold the essence of that chapter in your head. This article is a compressed set of notes, unit by unit, that you can revise from directly in the last few weeks before the exam.
Use it as a checklist: For each unit, can you explain the events listed in 2-3 sentences? If not, that's where to dig in with your textbook or Cognito's APUSH notes.
Unit 1 (1491-1607): Contact and exchange
Diverse Native societies before Columbus: Puebloan agriculturalists in the Southwest, Mississippian mound-builders, Iroquois confederacies, Northwest fishing peoples. Columbus reaches the Caribbean in 1492. Columbian Exchange transfers crops (maize, potato, tomato out; wheat, sugar, coffee in), animals (horse, cattle, pig) and diseases (smallpox, measles) between hemispheres. Spanish encomienda system exploits Native labor; Spanish colonies develop a racial caste (casta) system (mestizo, mulatto). Native population collapses by 80-90% in Spanish America within a century.
Unit 2 (1607-1754): Colonial regions
Jamestown (1607) survives tobacco boom under John Rolfe. Plymouth (1620) and Massachusetts Bay (1630) settled by Puritans; Mayflower Compact establishes self-government. Chesapeake and Southern colonies build plantation economy: Indentured servitude gives way to chattel slavery after Bacon's Rebellion (1676) exposes risks of poor-white and enslaved-Black alliances. Middle Colonies (Pennsylvania, New York) diverse and commercial. New England towns run on Congregational church and town meetings. First Great Awakening (1730s-40s) with Whitefield and Edwards spreads emotional evangelical religion across colonies. Enlightenment ideas (Locke, natural rights) circulate among educated colonists. Salutary neglect: Britain leaves colonies largely self-governing until 1760s.
Unit 3 (1754-1800): Revolution and republic
French and Indian War (1754-63) ends salutary neglect; Britain taxes colonies to pay war debt. Stamp Act (1765), Townshend (1767), Tea Act (1773) provoke escalating protest. Boston Tea Party (1773), Intolerable Acts (1774), First Continental Congress (1774). Lexington and Concord (April 1775). Declaration of Independence (July 1776). War runs to 1783 (Treaty of Paris). Articles of Confederation (1781) too weak (no taxing power, no executive). Constitutional Convention (1787): Great Compromise (bicameral legislature), Three-Fifths Compromise. Federalist Papers 10 and 51 defend the Constitution. Bill of Rights (1791). Washington's presidency: Hamilton's financial system (Bank of the US, assumption of state debts, tariff), Whiskey Rebellion (1794), Jay Treaty. Adams' Alien and Sedition Acts (1798) provoke Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions. Election of 1800: Jefferson defeats Adams, first peaceful transfer of power between rival parties.
Unit 4 (1800-1848): Market revolution and reform
Jefferson: Louisiana Purchase (1803), Embargo Act (1807). War of 1812 with Britain; Hartford Convention exposes Federalist weakness. Era of Good Feelings under Monroe; Missouri Compromise (1820) admits Missouri as slave state, Maine as free, bans slavery north of 36-30 in Louisiana Territory. Market revolution: Erie Canal (1825), railroads, textile mills in New England (Lowell system). Jacksonian era: Expanded white male suffrage (largely through state reforms in the 1810s-20s), Indian Removal Act (1830), Trail of Tears, nullification crisis with South Carolina (1832-33), Bank War (Second Bank of US destroyed). Second Great Awakening fuels reform movements: Abolition (Garrison, Douglass, Grimke sisters), women's rights (Seneca Falls Convention 1848 with Declaration of Sentiments), temperance, education (Horace Mann), asylum reform (Dorothea Dix). Transcendentalism (Emerson, Thoreau).
Unit 5 (1844-1877): Civil War and Reconstruction
Manifest destiny: Texas annexation (1845), Mexican-American War (1846-48), Wilmot Proviso attempts to ban slavery in new territories. Compromise of 1850: California free, Fugitive Slave Act, popular sovereignty for territories. Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854) repeals Missouri Compromise, triggers Bleeding Kansas. Dred Scott (1857) rules Congress can't ban slavery in territories. John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry (1859). Lincoln elected (1860), 7 states secede before inauguration. Civil War (1861-65): Anaconda Plan, Antietam (Sept 1862) enables Emancipation Proclamation (Jan 1863), Gettysburg and Vicksburg (July 1863) turn tide, Sherman's March, Appomattox (April 1865), Lincoln assassination. Reconstruction: Presidential (Johnson lenient; Southern states pass Black Codes, 1865-66), Radical (14th Amendment 1868 grants birthright citizenship, 15th 1870 protects Black male suffrage, Reconstruction Acts, military occupation), Redemption (KKK violence, sharecropping, Democratic "Redeemer" governments). Compromise of 1877 ends federal troops in South.
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Unit 6 (1865-1898): Gilded Age
Transcontinental railroad completed 1869. Industrial giants: Carnegie (steel, vertical integration), Rockefeller (Standard Oil, horizontal integration and trusts), Morgan (finance), Vanderbilt (railroads). Immigration surges from Southern and Eastern Europe; Chinese Exclusion Act (1882). Labor conflict: Great Railroad Strike (1877), Haymarket (1886), Homestead (1892), Pullman (1894). Knights of Labor, then AFL under Gompers. Urbanization; Jane Addams' Hull House. West: Homestead Act (1862), Dawes Act (1887) breaks up tribal lands, Wounded Knee Massacre (1890) marks end of armed Native resistance. The 1890 Census declares the frontier line closed; Turner's frontier thesis (1893) argues for its significance. Populist movement: Farmers' Alliance, Omaha Platform (1892) calling for free silver, income tax, direct election of senators. 1896 election: Bryan (Democrat-Populist) vs McKinley (Republican); McKinley wins, gold standard preserved.
Unit 7 (1890-1945): Progressives, wars, New Deal
Spanish-American War (1898): Cuba, Puerto Rico, Philippines. Anti-Imperialist League opposes. Progressive Era (1890-1920): Muckrakers (Sinclair, Tarbell, Riis), Theodore Roosevelt's Square Deal (Meat Inspection Act, Pure Food and Drug Act, trust-busting), Wilson's New Freedom (Federal Reserve, Clayton Antitrust). Constitutional amendments: 16th (income tax), 17th (direct election of senators), 18th (Prohibition), 19th (women's suffrage). WWI (1917-18): Lusitania, Zimmermann Telegram, Wilson's Fourteen Points, Treaty of Versailles rejected by Senate. Red Scare, immigration restrictions (1921, 1924 Quota Acts). 1920s: Harlem Renaissance, jazz, automobile, Scopes Trial (1925), stock market bubble. Great Depression: Black Tuesday (Oct 1929), Hoover's limited response, Bonus Army (1932). FDR's New Deal: Bank Holiday, Emergency Banking Act, AAA, NRA, CCC, TVA, Social Security Act (1935), Wagner Act (1935). Court-packing plan (1937) fails. WWII: Pearl Harbor (Dec 1941), Japanese internment (Korematsu), D-Day (1944), atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (Aug 1945).
Unit 8 (1945-1980): Cold War and civil rights
Containment: Truman Doctrine (1947), Marshall Plan (1948), NATO (1949), Korean War (1950-53). McCarthy hearings, HUAC, Rosenbergs. Eisenhower era: Interstate Highway Act (1956), Sputnik (1957), U-2 incident. Postwar suburbanization (Levittown), baby boom, consumer culture. Civil rights: Brown v. Board (1954), Montgomery bus boycott (1955-56), Little Rock (1957), sit-ins (1960), Freedom Rides (1961), March on Washington (1963), Civil Rights Act (1964), Selma and Voting Rights Act (1965), MLK assassination (1968). Kennedy: Bay of Pigs (1961), Cuban Missile Crisis (1962). LBJ's Great Society: Medicare, Medicaid, War on Poverty, Immigration Act of 1965. Vietnam: Gulf of Tonkin (1964), Tet Offensive (1968), Nixon's Vietnamization, fall of Saigon (1975). Nixon: China opening (1972), detente, Watergate (1972-74), resignation. 1970s: Stagflation, oil crises (1973, 1979), Iran hostage crisis. Second-wave feminism (Friedan, Roe v. Wade 1973), environmentalism (EPA 1970), Latino and Native American movements.
Unit 9 (1980-Present): Conservative era
Reagan (1981-89): Tax cuts (Economic Recovery Tax Act 1981), defense buildup, deregulation, air traffic controller strike broken. Iran-Contra affair. Cold War ends: Gorbachev's reforms, Berlin Wall falls (1989), USSR dissolves (1991). Bush 41: Gulf War (1991). Clinton: NAFTA (1994), welfare reform (1996), impeachment (1998), budget surplus. Rise of internet and tech boom (1990s). Bush 43: 9/11 attacks (2001), Afghanistan War, Iraq War (2003), No Child Left Behind. 2008 financial crisis. Obama: Affordable Care Act (2010), first Black president, Great Recession recovery. Increasing political polarization through the 2010s. The exam's short-answer questions cover events through 2001, so detailed knowledge of later events is less likely to be tested.
Read these notes as a first pass, then close the page and try to reproduce each unit's summary in your own words on paper. Comparing what you wrote to the notes above tells you exactly which unit you need to spend the next study session on.
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