AP United States History, AP exams, 10–17%

Unit 5: Period 5, 1844–1877

Period 5 moves from Manifest Destiny and the crisis over slavery in the territories through the Civil War and Reconstruction. Causation is the dominant reasoning skill: the exam wants a chain from expansion to sectional breakdown to war to constitutional change. Reconstruction's achievements and its collapse are heavily tested.

Position: 5 of 9 units
Published weighting: 10–17% in the official framework
Topics covered: 7 topics in this guide

What is covered

Topics inside this unit.

These topics describe the scope students most often review for this part of AP United States History. Treat them as a study checklist rather than an exhaustive list of what a single exam form can sample.

Manifest Destiny and westward expansion: Texas annexation, Oregon, and the war with Mexico, plus the consequences of expansion for Native and Mexican peoples.
The crisis over slavery in the territories: The Compromise of 1850, Kansas-Nebraska Act, Dred Scott decision, and the collapse of the second party system.
Secession and the coming of war: The election of 1860, southern justifications for secession, and the failure of last-minute compromise.
The Civil War: military and home fronts: Turning points, resource and manpower advantages, and the wartime experiences of soldiers and civilians.
Emancipation and Union war aims: Contraband policy, the Emancipation Proclamation, Black military service, and the Thirteenth Amendment.
Reconstruction governments and constitutional change: Presidential and congressional Reconstruction, the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, and Black political participation.
The end of Reconstruction: White supremacist violence, sharecropping, northern retreat, and the Compromise of 1877.

Study tips

How to practice Period 5.

Section-specific guidance that follows from how this material is usually tested.

Build a single causal chain from 1844 to 1861 with about eight links and recite it without notes.
Learn the Reconstruction amendments by exact content; imprecise summaries lose evidence points.
Practice a DBQ on the extent of change during Reconstruction, since sourcing and complexity are easy to earn there.

Where this fits

Unit 5: Period 5, 1844–1877 is 5 of 9 units in the AP United States History guide, and it carries a published weighting of 10–17% in the official framework. Use the full guide to balance it against everything else you have to review.

Back to the AP United States History guide Official exam information

Sample Period 5 questions

Practice questions, not yet expert-reviewed

Original practice questions written to the published framework for this section. No expert has reviewed them, and they are not taken from any official exam. Try each one before you open the answer.

Question 1Foundational
Which 1848 treaty ended the war with Mexico and transferred California and most of the present-day Southwest to the United States?
1. AThe Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
2. BThe Gadsden Purchase
3. CThe Adams-Onís Treaty
4. DThe Treaty of Ghent
Show answer
Answer: A. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
The treaty ended the war, fixed the Rio Grande as the Texas boundary, and transferred the Mexican Cession in return for a payment of fifteen million dollars. The Gadsden Purchase is the tempting distractor because it also moved Mexican land to the United States, but it came in 1853 and covered only a strip of what is now southern Arizona and New Mexico.
Key insight: Territory won from Mexico immediately reopened the question of slavery in the territories and started the road to secession.
Question 2Foundational
Which document, issued on January 1, 1863, declared enslaved people in areas still in rebellion against the United States to be free?
1. AThe Thirteenth Amendment
2. BThe Emancipation Proclamation
3. CThe Gettysburg Address
4. DThe Freedmen's Bureau Act
Show answer
Answer: B. The Emancipation Proclamation
Lincoln issued the proclamation as a war measure, so it reached territory under Confederate control rather than the loyal border states, and it authorized the enlistment of Black soldiers in the Union army. The Thirteenth Amendment is the tempting distractor because it is what actually abolished slavery everywhere, and it was not ratified until December 1865.
Key insight: Emancipation was a process driven by enslaved people, soldiers, and Congress, not a single stroke of the pen.
Question 3Intermediate
Which 1854 law let settlers in two new territories decide the question of slavery for themselves and so repealed the Missouri Compromise restriction?
1. AThe Compromise of 1850
2. BThe Wilmot Proviso
3. CThe Kansas-Nebraska Act
4. DThe Fugitive Slave Act
Show answer
Answer: C. The Kansas-Nebraska Act
Stephen Douglas organized Kansas and Nebraska under popular sovereignty, which voided the 1820 ban on slavery north of latitude 36 degrees 30 minutes and set off violence in Kansas and the founding of the Republican Party. The Compromise of 1850 is the tempting distractor because it also used popular sovereignty, but it applied to the Mexican Cession and left the Missouri line in place.
Key insight: Every legislative attempt to settle slavery in the territories widened the conflict instead of closing it.
Question 4Intermediate
Which Reconstruction amendment made all persons born in the United States citizens and required the states to provide equal protection of the laws?
1. AThe Thirteenth Amendment
2. BThe Fourteenth Amendment
3. CThe Fifteenth Amendment
4. DThe Sixteenth Amendment
Show answer
Answer: B. The Fourteenth Amendment
Ratified in 1868, the Fourteenth Amendment wrote birthright citizenship, due process, and equal protection into the Constitution and became the basis for a century of later civil rights litigation. The Fifteenth Amendment is the tempting distractor, but it addressed voting, barring denial of the vote on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.
Key insight: Learn the three Reconstruction amendments by exact content: freedom, citizenship and equal protection, then voting.
Question 5Advanced
Which labor arrangement became the dominant way freedpeople worked land in the postwar South, paying landowners with a portion of each harvest?
1. AWage labor in textile mills
2. BSharecropping
3. CHomesteading on federal land
4. DIndentured servitude
Show answer
Answer: B. Sharecropping
Lacking land of their own, most freedpeople farmed plots owned by others in exchange for a share of the crop, and credit advanced by merchants at high interest often left families in debt from one year to the next. Wage labor is the tempting distractor because some freedpeople did earn wages, but planters were short of cash and preferred to pay in crop shares, which kept labor tied to the land.
Key insight: Emancipation ended legal slavery without redistributing land, and that gap shaped southern poverty for generations.

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Unit 5: Period 5, 1844–1877