2023 (June): NY Regents - United States History and Government (Framework)
By Sara Cowley
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Last updated 3 months ago
37 Questions
Note from the author:
From the New York State Education Department. The University of the State of New York REGENTS HIGH SCHOOL EXAMINATION UNITED STATES HISTORY AND GOVERNMENT (FRAMEWORK). Internet. Available from shttps://www.nysedregents.org/ushg-framework/623/us-62023-examw.pdf; accessed 9, July, 2023.
From the New York State Education Department. The University of the State of New York REGENTS HIGH SCHOOL EXAMINATION UNITED STATES HISTORY AND GOVERNMENT (FRAMEWORK). Internet. Available from shttps://www.nysedregents.org/ushg-framework/623/us-62023-examw.pdf; accessed 9, July, 2023.
Base your answers to questions 1 and 2 on the passage below and on your knowledge of social studies.
. . . Small islands not capable of protecting themselves, are the proper objects for kingdoms to take under their care; but there is something very absurd, in supposing a continent to be perpetually governed by an island. In no instance hath nature made the satellite larger than its primary planet, and as England and America, with respect to each other, reverses the common order of nature, it is evident they belong to different systems: England to Europe, America to itself. . . .
Source: Thomas Paine, Common Sense, 1776
Base your answers to questions 3 and 4 on the passage below and on your knowledge of social studies.
. . . This policy of supplying, by opposite and rival interests, the defect of better motives, might be traced through the whole system of human affairs, private as well as public. We see it particularly displayed in all the subordinate [lesser] distributions of power, where the constant aim is to divide and arrange the several offices in such a manner as that each may be a check on the other—that the private interest of every individual may be a sentinel [guard] over the public rights. These inventions of prudence cannot be less requisite [essential] in the distribution of the supreme powers of the State. . . .
Source: James Madison, Federalist No. 51, 1788
Base your answers to questions 5 and 6 on the passage below and on your knowledge of social studies.
. . . When the British and French both seized American vessels if they touched at the ports of the other, Jefferson decided to test one of his favorite doctrines—that war was both intolerable and unnecessary, and that the best weapon against both powers lay in economic sanctions. He got Congress to pass a series of five Embargo Acts, stringently forbidding U.S. trade with Britain and France not only overseas but even along the Canadian border. . . .
Source: Max Lerner, Wounded Titans: American Presidents and the Perils of Power, Arcade Publishing, 1996
Base your answers to questions 7 and 8 on the passage below and on your knowledge of social studies.
. . . Apprehension seems to exist among the people of the Southern States that by the accession [rise to power] of a Republican Administration their property and their peace and personal security are to be endangered. There has never been any reasonable cause for such apprehension. Indeed, the most ample evidence to the contrary has all the while existed and been open to their inspection. It is found in nearly all the published speeches of him who now addresses you. I do but quote from one of those speeches when I declare that—
I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so. . . .
Source: First Inaugural Address of Abraham Lincoln, March 4, 1861
Base your answers to questions 9 and 10 on the excerpt below and on your knowledge of social studies.
. . . Thus American development has exhibited not merely advance along a single line, but a return to primitive conditions on a continually advancing frontier line, and a new development for that area. American social development has been continually beginning over again on the frontier. This perennial rebirth, this fluidity of American life, this expansion westward with its new opportunities, its continuous touch with the simplicity of primitive society, furnish the forces dominating American character.
. . . Source: Frederick Jackson Turner, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History,” 1893
Base your answers to questions 11 and 12 on the passage below and on your knowledge of social studies.
. . . Private monopolies are indefensible and intolerable. They destroy competition, control the price of all material, and of the finished product, thus robbing both producer and consumer. They lessen the employment of labor, and arbitrarily fix the terms and conditions thereof; and deprive individual energy and small capital of their opportunity of betterment. . . .
Source: Democratic Party Platform of 1900
Base your answers to questions 17 and 18 on the passage below and on your knowledge of social studies.
. . . I think all men recognize that in time of war the citizen must surrender some rights for the common good which he is entitled to enjoy in time of peace. But, sir, the right to control their own government according to constitutional forms is not one of the rights that the citizens of this country are called upon to surrender in time of war. . . .
More than all, the citizen and his representative in Congress in time of war must maintain his right of free speech. More than in times of peace it is necessary that the channels for free public discussion of governmental policies shall be open and unclogged. . . .
Source: Senator Robert M. La Follette, Free Speech in Wartime, October 6, 1917
Base your answers to questions 25 and 26 on the excerpt below and on your knowledge of social studies.
SECTION 1. This joint resolution may be cited as the “War Powers Resolution”.
PURPOSE AND POLICY
SEC. 2. (a) It is the purpose of this joint resolution to fulfill the intent of the framers of the Constitution of the United States and insure that the collective judgment of both the Congress and the President will apply to the introduction of United States Armed Forces into hostilities, or into situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances, and to the continued use of such forces in hostilities or in such situations. . . .
(c) The constitutional powers of the President as Commander-in-Chief to introduce United States Armed Forces into hostilities, or into situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances, are exercised only pursuant to (1) a declaration of war, (2) specific statutory authorization, or (3) a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces. . . .
Source: War Powers Resolution, 1973
SEQ Set 1 Directions (Question 29)
Read and analyze the following documents before writing your short essay. Both documents are in this text space.
Document 1
. . . There would be meat that had tumbled out on the floor, in the dirt and sawdust, where the workers had tramped and spit uncounted billions of consumption [tuberculosis] germs. There would be meat stored in great piles in rooms; and the water from leaky roofs would drip over it, and thousands of rats would race about on it. It was too dark in these storage places to see well, but a man could run his hand over these piles of meat and sweep off handfuls of the dried dung of rats. These rats were nuisances, and the packers would put poisoned bread out for them; they would die, and then rats, bread, and meat would go into the hoppers together. This is no fairy story and no joke; the meat would be shoveled into carts, and the man who did the shoveling would not trouble to lift out a rat even when he saw one—there were things that went into the sausage in comparison with which a poisoned rat was a tidbit. There was no place for the men to wash their hands before they ate their dinner, and so they made a practice of washing them in the water that was to be ladled into the sausage. There were the butt-ends of smoked meat, and the scraps of corned beef, and all the odds and ends of the waste of the plants, that would be dumped into old barrels in the cellar and left there. Under the system of rigid economy which the packers enforced, there were some jobs that it only paid to do once in a long time, and among these was the cleaning out of the waste barrels. Every spring they did it; and in the barrels would be dirt and rust and old nails and stale water—and cartload after cartload of it would be taken up and dumped into the hoppers with fresh meat, and sent out to the public’s breakfast. Some of it they would make into “smoked” sausage—but as the smoking took time, and was therefore expensive, they would call upon their chemistry department, and preserve it with borax and color it with gelatin to make it brown. All of their sausage came out of the same bowl, but when they came to wrap it they would stamp some of it “special,” and for this they would charge two cents more a pound. . . .
Source: Upton Sinclair, The Jungle, February 1906
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Document 2
The Secretary [of Agriculture] shall cause to be made, by experts in sanitation or by other competent inspectors, such inspection of all slaughtering, meat canning, salting, packing, rendering, or similar establishments in which amenable species are slaughtered and the meat and meat food products thereof are prepared for commerce as may be necessary to inform himself concerning the sanitary conditions of the same, and to prescribe the rules and regulations of sanitation under which such establishments shall be maintained; and where the sanitary conditions of any such establishment are such that the meat or meat food products are rendered adulterated [contaminated], he shall refuse to allow said meat or meat food products to be labeled, marked, stamped or tagged as “inspected and passed.”
Source: Meat Inspection Act, June 30, 1906, as amended in 1967 and 2005
SEQ Set 2 Directions (Question 30):
Read and analyze the following documents before writing your short essay. Both documents are in this space.
Document 1
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Document 2
The following is an excerpt of Captain Thomas Preston’s testimony in the trial of British soldiers involved in the Boston Massacre, 1770:
. . .In my way there I saw the people in great commotion, and heard them use the most cruel and horrid threats against the troops. In a few minutes after I reached the guard, about 100 people passed it, and went towards the custom house where the King’s money is lodged.
They immediately surrounded the sentry posted there, and with clubs and other weapons threatened to execute their vengeance on him. I was soon informed by a townsman their intention was to carry off the soldier from his post and probably murder him: on which I desired him to return for further intelligence, and he soon came back and assured me he heard the mob declare they would murder him. This I feared might be a prelude to their plundering the King’s chest. . . .
On my asking the soldiers why they fired without orders, they said they heard the word fire and supposed it came from me. This might be the case as many of the mob called out fire, fire, but I assured the men that I gave no such order; that my words were, don’t fire, stop your firing. In short, it was scarcely possible for the soldiers to know who said fire, or don’t fire, or stop your firing.
On the people’s assembling again to take away the dead bodies, the soldiers supposing them coming to attack them, were making ready to fire again, which I prevented by striking up their firelocks with my hand. . . .
Source: Transcript of British Captain Thomas Preston’s testimony, from “The Boston Massacre, The British View, 1770,” EyeWitness to History, 2009
Civic Literacy Essay Part A
Document 1
In the years before the Civil War, American women began a campaign for the vote that lasted nearly seventy-five years. Their battle finally ended in 1920 when the Nineteenth Amendment prohibiting the denial of the right to vote “on account of sex” was adopted. Initially, suffrage was one of several reforms intended to end the significant legal, political, religious, and cultural discriminations against nineteenth-century women. In the 1840s and 1850s, activists targeted injustices ranging from child custody laws that favored fathers to prohibitions against women speaking in public, the denial of equal education, and the existence of a double sex standard. In language and vocabulary familiar to a generation whose parents had lived during the American Revolution and who remembered the Declaration of Independence, women at the 1848 Seneca Falls convention resolved, among other injustices, that “all laws which . . . place her in a position inferior to that of man are contrary to the great precept of nature and therefore of no force or authority.”
A necessary transaction in any democracy between the people and those to whom they delegate authority, suffrage emerged in the 1860s as both a powerful symbol of equality with men as well as an instrument of reform. Voting became the essential political utility by which women could achieve other improvements in their status. If women could vote, went the argument of this first generation of suffragists, they would end barriers at the state level that prevented married women from controlling their wages and attending state universities. If women could vote, given their acknowledged position as moral guardians of their homes, they would reform the corrupt practices of American politics. If women could vote, they would end unequal pay. . . .
Source: Jean H. Baker, ed., Introduction to Votes For Women: The Struggle for Suffrage Revisited, Oxford University Press, 2002
Civic Literacy Essay Part A
Document 2a
Lucy Haessler learned about the suffragette movement while attending meetings with her mother in Washington, DC, in the early 1900s.
. . . The suffragettes had a big headquarters in downtown Washington, almost across from the Supreme Court Building. My mother would take me up there on Saturdays when she volunteered to help out with mailings. I remember helping out by folding letters, licking envelopes, doing all sorts of things. The backbone of the suffrage movement was composed of well-to-do, middle-class women, both Republicans and Democrats. There weren’t many working-class women in the movement. Most of them were too busy working to get involved. The suffragettes organized pickets and marches and rallies. It wasn’t anything comparable to the violence that the British women were going through in their fight for suffrage. Those women were being arrested and beaten and jailed. Nothing like that happened here, but there was a lot of agitation. . . .
Source: Peter Jennings and Todd Brewster, The Century, Doubleday, 1998
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Civic Literacy Essay Part A
Document 2b
Civic Literacy Essay Part A
Document 3a
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Civic Literacy Essay Part A
Document 3b
From the inception of the woman suffrage movement through the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920, there were women and men who vigorously opposed it. Antisuffrage individuals and groups obstructed the enfranchisement of women for a multitude of reasons. Early antisuffragists of the late 1860s and 1870s were primarily concerned that the ballot would disrupt women’s domestic and maternal roles and create disharmony in the family. Horace Greeley, one of the most influential antisuffragists of this era, asserted that the vast majority of women had no interest in voting or in politics. In 1871, conservative domestic authority Catharine Beecher and the wives of General William Sherman and Admiral John Dahlgren delivered to Congress a petition containing 1,000 women’s signatures pleading with Congress to desist [refrain] from enacting a law enfranchising women. Beecher, in her book Woman Suffrage and Woman’s Profession, proclaimed that if women were given the vote, most would consider it an overwhelming burden that would cause them to shortchange their domestic duties. . . .
Other early arguments that persisted throughout the woman suffrage movement included the following:
• Women have all the rights they need already;
• The ballot will degrade women by causing them to mingle in the “dirty,” corrupt world of politics;
• Women don’t need the vote because their husbands already vote for what is in women’s best interests; and
• Women don’t vote when they have the right to do so (an argument based on the occasional low voter turnouts in some municipal elections in states where women already had the vote). . . .
Source: Judith E. Harper, Susan B. Anthony: A Biographical Companion, ABC-CLIO Biographical Companion (adapted)
Civic Literacy Essay Part A
Document 4
. . . But it should not deceive us; this struggle was waged every bit as seriously as any struggle for equality, and we would do well to consider how women were able to do what men have rarely even tried, changing society in a positive and lasting way without violence and death. . . .
Like the now-celebrated civil rights movement, women suffrage records the recent and useful experiences of ordinary citizens forced to fight for their own rights against tremendous odds and social inequities.
Here are models of political leadership, of women organizers and administrators, activists and lobbyists. Here are the first women lawyers and doctors and ministers, the first women candidates, the first office-holders. Here are stories of achievement, of ingenious strategies and outrageous tactics used to outwit the opponents and make the most of limited resources. Here are new definitions and images of women in our national life which give a more accurate picture of the past and which help explain the way American women are treated today. . . .
The suffrage movement offers a unique window onto the emergence of women into American political life. This is where many of the intelligent, active, politically oriented women of the time, denied the right to participate directly in national politics, went. They put their energy into attacking social problems directly and organizing among themselves, locally and nationally, for their own rights. . . .
Source: Robert Cooney, “Taking a New Look at the Woman Suffrage Movement,” in The Feminist Movement, Nick Treanor, ed., Greenhaven Press, 2002
Civic Literacy Essay Part A
Document 5
. . . The lessons of the woman suffrage struggle deeply influenced later American social justice and advocacy [public interest] movements. The lobbying, public relations, and grassroots organizing techniques developed by the suffragists, as well as their use of nonviolent protests and civil disobedience, stood as a model for midcentury African American civil rights campaigners, anti–Vietnam War protest groups, and gay rights activists. No doubt the future will bring more causes, more necessary repairs to American democracy, and more need for passionate civic activism. . . .
Source: Elaine Weiss, The Woman’s Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote, Viking, 2018
Civic Literacy Essay Part A
Document 6a
Jeannette Rankin made history 100 years ago this year [1917] when she took office as the first female member of Congress. “I may be the first woman member of Congress, but I won’t be the last,” the Montana Republican predicted after winning election to the U.S. House of Representatives the year before.
Rankin was right: In the century since she began her service as a member of Congress, hundreds of women have followed in her footsteps. But women remain underrepresented in all major political offices and top business leadership positions in the United States. . . .
Source: Anna Brown, “Despite gains, women remain underrepresented among U.S. political and business leaders,” Pew Research Center, March 20, 2017 (adapted)
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Civic Literacy Essay Part A
Document 6b
Part B Civic Literacy Essay Question (37)
Directions: Write a well-organized essay that includes an introduction, several paragraphs, and a conclusion. Use evidence from at least four documents in the body of the essay. Support your response with relevant facts, examples, and details. Include additional outside information.
Historical Context: Expansion of Democracy—Woman’s Suffrage
Throughout United States history, many constitutional and civic issues have been debated by Americans. These debates have resulted in efforts by individuals, groups, and governments to address these issues. These efforts have achieved varying degrees of success. One of these constitutional and civic issues is woman’s suffrage.
Task: Using information from the documents and your knowledge of United States history, write an essay in which you
• Describe the historical circumstances surrounding this constitutional or civic issue
• Explain efforts by individuals, groups, and/or governments to address this constitutional or civic issue
• Discuss the impact of the efforts on the United States and/or on American society
Guidelines:
In your essay, be sure to
• Develop all aspects of the task
• Explain at least two efforts to address the issue
• Incorporate information from at least four documents
• Incorporate relevant outside information
• Support the theme with relevant facts, examples, and details
• Use a logical and clear plan of organization, including an introduction and a conclusion that are beyond a restatement of the theme