Midterm Exam — Instructions

Overview

This is the scored midterm for U.S. History to 1877. It checks the first half of the course, Weeks 1 to 7, from the worlds before contact through the new republic's first parties. It covers course Objectives 1 to 5. They are historical thinking on dated documents; the Americas before contact, exploration, colonization, and the Columbian Exchange; and colonial society and the making of slavery in law. They also include the Revolution and the ideas of the Declaration, and the Constitution and the politics of the new republic.

The midterm has 25 questions, and every question counts the same. Most of them, 20 in all, ask you to select exactly one option. Three ask you to select every option that applies, and two ask you to judge a statement true or false. Every passage a question asks you to read is printed in the question, with its document named, and every year is written in full. Nothing depends on a picture, a map, or a color.

Each question asks for a skill you have already practiced in the weekly quizzes, lecture tutorials, and Primary Source Workshops. You tell a primary source from a secondary one for a stated question. You source a document by its author or origin, its type, its date, and the archive that keeps it. You match a pinned fragment to the document it comes from, put dated events in order, or keep apart two ideas the course names as easy to confuse. Nothing on the midterm comes from outside Weeks 1 to 7.

Coverage and scope

The syllabus sets the midterm's scope as Objectives 1 to 5 as taught in Weeks 1 to 7. The form you will sit draws all 25 of its questions from the Weeks 1 to 7 question bank. Here is what the drawn form holds, objective by objective, with the weeks its questions come from and the skills those weeks taught:

• Historical thinking (Objective 1, 6 questions): 3 from Week 1, 1 from Week 2, 1 from Week 3, and 1 from Week 5. Review primary against secondary sources, always for a stated question. Review sourcing: who made a document, when, what type it is, and which archive keeps the text, including whether you are reading a translation. Review the line between a claim that shows what a source says and a claim that goes beyond it. Review the habit of dating a document from its own text and of naming its type from the roster.
• The Americas, exploration, and colonization (Objective 2, 3 questions): 2 from Week 1 and 1 from Week 2. From Week 1, review the societies of the Americas before contact, European motives for exploration, contact against conquest, the Columbian Exchange running in both directions, and the contact-era years. From Week 2, review the colonies compared, the charter and the covenant of the early 1600s, and the survey years that open the English colonies.
• Colonial society and slavery (Objective 3, 6 questions): all 6 from Week 3. Review indentured servitude against slavery for life: how each status worked, and how and when colonial law built the second. Review the Atlantic slave trade and the Middle Passage, and how to sort a source on slavery as primary or secondary for a stated question. Review the Carolina frame of government: what it gave enslavers, what its pinned fragment says, and how the roster records its origin.
• The Revolution (Objective 4, 8 questions): 3 from Week 4 and 5 from Week 5. From Week 4, review the war with France and the peace that closed it, taxation and representation, and the congress that protested the stamp tax, kept apart from the First Continental Congress. From Week 5, review the Declaration as Congress's public statement of independence and its grievances, close-read for what it claims and whom it leaves out. Review, too, the peace settlement with Britain at the war's end and the order of the founding documents.
• The Constitution and the new republic (Objective 5, 2 questions): 1 from Week 6 and 1 from Week 7. From Week 6, review the ratification debate and how the roster sources its documents. From Week 7, review Washington's and Jefferson's addresses and the dates that set the founding documents apart.

By week, the 25 questions come out like this:

Week 3 holds the most questions of any single week, 7 of the 25, and 6 of them check colonial society and slavery. Put real review time there: servitude against slavery, when and how colonial law built slavery as a status, sorting a source on slavery, and how to source the Carolina frame. Week 5 comes next with 6, and Week 1 has 5. The Revolution carries the most questions of any objective, 8, across Weeks 4 and 5. Historical thinking and colonial society have 6 each, the Americas and colonization has 3, and the Constitution and the new republic has 2. By difficulty, 11 questions are easy, 11 are medium, and 3 are hard.

Week 8 adds no question to the midterm. Its review of the one distinction each week asks for covers the same Weeks 1 to 7 material. Its one new topic, the first federal census of 1790 read as a numeric primary source, is taught and practiced in the Week 8 chapter, lecture, practice set, and discussion; no midterm question comes from it.

These notes map the skills the midterm checks. The questions themselves are drawn from the course's question bank and are not listed here.

Instructions

• Attempts: one. The midterm is a single scored attempt.
• Time limit: there is no time limit. Take the time you need, as long as you submit before the exam closes.
• Window: the midterm opens in the Week 8 module and closes at the due time your instructor sets. Start early enough to finish comfortably inside that window.
• Navigation: the questions appear one at a time, and once you move on you cannot go back to an earlier question. Settle each one before you move to the next.
• Materials: every passage, document name, and year a question needs is printed in the question. Scratch paper helps for putting years in order or working out a gap between two years. The syllabus sets no rule on notes or other materials, so follow what your instructor announces before the midterm opens.
• After you submit: Canvas shows your score. The keyed choices stay hidden so the midterm stays fair for every student.

Academic integrity

The midterm is an individual, scored assessment, and it is closed to AI. Do not use a chatbot or any other AI tool while you take it. The course syllabus closes the midterm to AI and requires it to be entirely your own work. The reason it gives: the midterm confirms that you personally can identify a source, date and order events, and match a document, a person, or a measure to its significance. The syllabus also names using AI on the midterm as one of the three violations that matter most in this course. Beyond what the syllabus says, take the midterm without help from another person, and keep its questions to yourself during and after your attempt so it stays fair for everyone.

The honest way to prepare is open to you. The study guide, the practice exam, and the exam-prep tutorial rehearse the same skills with fresh variants, and nothing on them appears on the midterm word for word.

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