Part B: Short-Answer Questions
There are four short-answer questions on the exam. Students answer Question 1 and
Question 2. They then choose to answer either Question 3 or Question 4. Note that the short-
answer questions do not require students to develop and support a thesis statement.
“[W]e have in [United States history] a recurrence of the process of evolution in each
western area reached in the process of expansion. us 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. is
perennial rebirth, this uidity 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. e true point of view in the history of this nation
is not the Atlantic coast, it is the Great West. . . . In this advance, the frontier is the outer
edge of the wave—the meeting point between savagery and civilization.”
Frederick Jackson Turner, historian, “e Signicance of the
Frontier in American History,” 1893
“[T]he history of the West is a study of a place undergoing conquest and never fully escaping
its consequences. . . . Deemphasize the frontier and its supposed end, conceive of the West
as a place and not a process, and Western American history has a new look. First, the
American West was an important meeting ground, the point where Indian America, Latin
America, Anglo-America, Afro-America, and Asia intersected. . . . Second, the workings
of conquest tied these diverse groups into the same story. Happily or not, minorities and
majorities occupied a common ground. Conquest basically involved the drawing of lines on
a map, the denition and allocation of ownership (personal, tribal, corporate, state, federal,
and international), and the evolution of land from matter to property.”
Patricia Nelson Limerick, historian, e Legacy of Conquest:
e Unbroken Past of the American West, 1987
1. Using the excerpts above, answer (a), (b), and (c).
(A) Briey describe ONE major dierence between Turner’s and Limerick’s historical
interpretations of the West.
(B) Briey explain how ONE specic historical event or development during the
period 1865 to 1898 that is not explicitly mentioned in the excerpts could be used
to support Turner’s interpretation.
(C) Briey explain how ONE specic historical event or development during the
period 1865 to 1898 that is not explicitly mentioned in the excerpts could be used
to support Limerick’s interpretation.
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© 2017 The College Board
AP United States History Practice Exam
Section I, Part B
26