STAAR Social Studies Grade 8
One hundred eight questions on colonization, the founding of the United States, westward growth, and the Civil War and Reconstruction.
These questions are original. This is not an official STAAR test, and FreeExam is not affiliated with the Texas Education Agency.
1.English settlers began building Jamestown in Virginia in 1607. Why is that town a turning point in the English story in North America?
2.The Virginia Company, a group of investors in London, paid for the Jamestown voyage. What did those investors expect the colony to do?
3.John Rolfe's tobacco found buyers in England, and Virginia's farms spread along the rivers. What labor need grew with that crop?
4.In 1619, property-owning colonists in Virginia elected representatives to the House of Burgesses. What new practice did that assembly start?
5.A ship carried about twenty Africans into Virginia in 1619. What did Virginia law do to African labor over the rest of that century?
6.The Pilgrims who settled Plymouth in 1620 had already broken with the Church of England. What were they seeking on this side of the Atlantic?
7.The Mayflower landed outside the Virginia Company's territory. Before the men went ashore in 1620, what did they agree to do?
8.Puritans founded Massachusetts Bay in 1630. How did their reason for coming differ from the Virginia Company's?
9.New England had thin, rocky soil, long winters, and deep harbors. Which kind of work fit that coast better than large plantations?
10.King Charles II granted William Penn, a Quaker, a charter for Pennsylvania in 1681. What set Penn's colony apart from Massachusetts Bay?
11.New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania sit on wide river valleys with good soil. Why did other colonists call this region the breadbasket?
12.The coastal South had a long growing season, wide rivers, and tidewater fields. What economy took shape there before the Revolution?
13.The Calvert family, the Lords Baltimore, planned Maryland in the 1630s. Which English people was the colony especially meant to shelter?
14.James Oglethorpe and a board of trustees started Georgia in 1733. What military job did Britain want this new colony to do?
15.By the 1760s, each of the thirteen colonies had an elected assembly. Why did royal governors have to bargain with those bodies?
16.British mercantilists judged a country's strength by trade and stores of gold. Under that view, what was a colony supposed to do for England?
17.New France had far fewer settlers than the English colonies on the Atlantic coast. What tie shaped French relations with many Native nations?
18.From 1754 to 1763, Britain and France fought over the Ohio valley and other North American land. What do American histories usually call that war?
19.Peace in 1763 followed Britain's victory over France in North America. Which lands did Britain take from that victory?
20.The French and Indian War left Britain deeply in debt, with a larger empire to guard. What did Parliament do next that angered many colonists?
21.In 1763 the king drew a line along the Appalachian Mountains. What order did that proclamation give settlers?
22.The Stamp Act of 1765 put a tax on printed paper such as newspapers, pamphlets, and legal documents. Why did colonial assemblies call the tax unjust?
23.In 1767 the Townshend duties taxed imports such as glass, paper, paint, lead, and tea. What was Parliament trying to prove as well as raise money?
24.The Tea Act of 1773 let the British East India Company sell tea at a lower price. Why did many colonists still refuse to buy it?
25.Parliament answered the Boston Tea Party with laws colonists called the Coercive Acts, or Intolerable Acts. What did those laws do to Massachusetts?
26.In April 1775, British troops marched from Boston toward Concord to seize stored arms. What started on the green at Lexington and on the road back?
27.Colonial writers leaned on an idea from the English thinker John Locke when they challenged British rule. What is that idea of natural rights?
28.In the years before independence, colonial leaders listed concrete complaints about how Britain was ruling them. Which complaint was on that list?
29.On July 4, 1776, the Continental Congress approved a public statement that the colonies were free states. What did that vote change about the war?
30.British general John Burgoyne surrendered his army at Saratoga in 1777. Why did that American victory change the war abroad?
31.In 1781 a French fleet held Chesapeake Bay while American and French troops surrounded a British army in Virginia. What happened at Yorktown?
32.The Treaty of Paris in 1783 ended the Revolutionary War. Which boundary did Britain accept for the new country?
33.The Articles of Confederation, ratified in 1781, were the country's first frame of government. What national offices did that frame leave out?
34.Congress under the Articles had war debts to pay. Why did it struggle to raise the money?
35.Two states on the same river each charged a fee on the other's goods. Why could the Articles government not stop the feud?
36.Leaders who wanted to give Congress a small tax on imports failed under the Articles. What rule made a change so hard to pass?
37.In 1786 and 1787, Massachusetts farmers led by Daniel Shays shut courts to stop judges from seizing farms for debt. What weakness did the uprising expose?
38.The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 organized land north of the Ohio River. Which rules did it set for that territory?
39.Delegates from twelve states met in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787 to revise the Articles. What did they produce instead?
40.James Madison's Virginia Plan set the terms of the fight at the convention. How would seats in Congress have been assigned under that plan?
41.William Paterson answered Madison with the New Jersey Plan. What were the smaller states trying to protect?
42.Roger Sherman of Connecticut offered a deal known as the Great Compromise. How did it settle the fight between large and small states?
43.Southern delegates wanted enslaved people counted when House seats were assigned. Northern delegates objected, because those people could not vote. What bargain went into the Constitution?
44.Anti-Federalists such as George Mason and Patrick Henry fought ratification of the Constitution as written. What did they demand be added?
45.During ratification, supporters described the coming amendments as a list of freedoms. What job were those amendments written to do?
46.The First Amendment lists limits on Congress. Which set of freedoms does it protect?
47.The Tenth Amendment talks about powers the Constitution does not give to the United States and does not forbid to the states. Where do those powers stay?
48.The Constitution never uses the word cabinet. What practice did Washington start when he staffed the executive branch?
49.Washington could have stayed in office longer. What precedent did he set when he left in 1797?
50.France, the old ally from the Revolution, went to war with Britain in the 1790s. What policy did Washington choose?
51.Washington's farewell message in 1796 warned citizens about two habits he thought could harm the Union. What were they?
52.Farmers in western Pennsylvania resisted a federal tax on whiskey in 1794. How was Washington's response different from the national response to Shays' Rebellion?
53.Alexander Hamilton wanted a national bank and federal assumption of state war debts. Why did Thomas Jefferson oppose the bank?
54.In 1800 the presidency passed from John Adams and the Federalists to Thomas Jefferson and the Democratic-Republicans. Why is that transfer treated as a precedent?
55.Marbury v. Madison, decided in 1803, is remembered for a power the Court claimed. What is that power, called judicial review?
56.In 1803 American envoys bought the Louisiana territory, including New Orleans. Which country sold it, and for about how much?
57.What geographic change did the Louisiana Purchase make for the United States?
58.Jefferson sent Meriwether Lewis and William Clark west after the purchase. What was the Corps of Discovery asked to do from 1804 to 1806?
59.Britain was fighting Napoleon's France and was short of sailors. What did British captains do to American ships that helped cause the War of 1812?
60.Impressment was not the only grievance behind the War of 1812. What else pushed War Hawks in Congress toward a fight with Britain?
61.The Treaty of Ghent, signed in December 1814, ended the War of 1812. What did it do to the map?
62.Missouri's request to enter as a slave state in 1820 threatened to tip the Senate. How did the Missouri Compromise answer that crisis?
63.Eli Whitney's cotton gin, invented in 1793, pulled seeds from short-staple cotton much faster than fingers could. What result did that machine have in the South?
64.New York finished the Erie Canal in 1825, linking the Great Lakes to the Hudson River. How did that ditch change inland trade?
65.By Andrew Jackson's election in 1828, many states had rewritten their voting rules. Who made up most of the new voters?
66.Congress passed the Indian Removal Act in 1830, and President Jackson signed it. What did the law authorize him to do?
67.In Worcester v. Georgia (1832), the Supreme Court ruled on Georgia's claim to govern Cherokee land. What did the Court decide?
68.In 1835 a minority of Cherokee leaders signed the Treaty of New Echota. Why did most of the Cherokee Nation reject it?
69.In 1838 and 1839, United States troops forced Cherokee families from their homes in the Southeast to Indian Territory. What happened on the journey called the Trail of Tears?
70.In the 1840s, writers gave a name to the belief that the United States was meant to spread to the Pacific. What was that belief called, and what did supporters use it to defend?
71.Britain and the United States both claimed the Oregon Country. How did the Oregon Treaty of 1846 divide it?
72.Texas broke away from Mexico in 1836 and existed as its own republic, with slavery legal. What did the United States do in 1845?
73.After annexation, the United States and Mexico still disagreed about the southern edge of Texas. Where did each government place that line?
74.The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the Mexican-American War in 1848. What did the United States gain?
75.Representative David Wilmot proposed banning slavery in any land taken from Mexico. What happened to the Wilmot Proviso?
76.In January 1848, workers at a mill on the American River found gold. What political problem did the rush of 1849 create in Congress?
77.Henry Clay proposed, and Stephen Douglas helped pass, the Compromise of 1850 as separate bills. Which pair of terms was part of that package?
78.The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 required federal help in returning people who had escaped slavery. Why did many northerners come to hate it?
79.Stephen Douglas's Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 let settlers vote on slavery in those territories. What older bargain did the act discard?
80.After the Kansas-Nebraska Act, supporters and opponents of slavery both rushed into Kansas. What happened there in the mid-1850s?
81.Dred Scott sued for freedom because he had lived on free soil. What did the Supreme Court hold in 1857?
82.In October 1859, John Brown and a small band seized the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, then in Virginia. What did Brown hope would follow?
83.Abraham Lincoln, the Republican candidate, won the presidency in 1860 in a four-way race. What was his party's stance on slavery in that campaign?
84.Which state left the Union first after Lincoln's election, and in what month?
85.In February 1861 the seceded states formed a government at Montgomery, Alabama. Whom did they choose as president of the Confederate States of America?
86.Confederate guns fired on Fort Sumter, a United States fort in Charleston harbor, in April 1861. What did Lincoln do after the fort surrendered?
87.Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri allowed slavery and still stayed in the United States. Why did Lincoln treat these border states as vital?
88.At the start of the Civil War the two sides were not equal in resources. What advantage did the Union have?
89.The Confederacy had fewer factories and fewer free workers than the Union. What advantage did it have when the war began?
90.General Winfield Scott urged a long-war strategy that newspapers nicknamed the Anaconda Plan. What was the idea?
91.The Battle of Antietam, on September 17, 1862, was the bloodiest single day of the war. How did Lincoln use Lee's retreat afterward?
92.The Emancipation Proclamation took effect on January 1, 1863. Where did its text say enslaved people were free?
93.In July 1863 the Union won two campaigns far apart. What did Gettysburg and Vicksburg each do?
94.On April 9, 1865, Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to Ulysses S. Grant. Where did they meet, and what did the surrender signal?
95.On the night of April 14, 1865, John Wilkes Booth shot Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theatre. Lincoln died the next morning. Who became president?
96.The Thirteenth Amendment was ratified in December 1865. What did it do that the Emancipation Proclamation had not done?
97.The Fourteenth Amendment, ratified in 1868, answered a Supreme Court ruling and the laws southern states passed after the war. What does it say about citizenship and state power?
98.The Fifteenth Amendment was ratified in 1870. What voting rule did it add, and what did it leave untouched?
99.Congress created the Freedmen's Bureau in March 1865, with General Oliver O. Howard at its head. What help did the bureau actually provide?
100.In 1865 and 1866, legislatures in the former Confederacy passed Black Codes. What were those laws written to do?
101.After the war, many freed families farmed land they did not own and paid the owner with part of the harvest. Why did sharecropping often trap them in debt?
102.In January 1865, General Sherman's Special Field Orders No. 15 set aside abandoned coastal land in South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida for freed families, in plots of about forty acres. What happened to most of that land?
103.The Reconstruction Acts of 1867 put most of the former Confederacy under military rule. What did a state have to do to regain a normal place in Congress?
104.The House impeached President Andrew Johnson in 1868. What was the charge that defined the trial, and what did the Senate decide?
105.In February 1870, Mississippi sent Hiram Revels to Washington. Why was his seating in Congress a landmark of Reconstruction?
106.The Ku Klux Klan, formed in Tennessee in 1866, and similar groups used violence across the South during Reconstruction. What was the aim of that violence?
107.The 1876 election between Republican Rutherford B. Hayes and Democrat Samuel Tilden turned on disputed electoral votes from several southern states. What settlement, called the Compromise of 1877, came out of that fight?
108.When the last federal troops left the South in 1877, what happened to the Reconstruction governments that those troops had protected?