Practice causation, comparison and continuity/change across the U.S. history survey.
AP-aligned investigation practice, not a complete Course and Exam Description crosswalk, authorized AP course, exam simulator or credit award. Additional required content, original-source study and current exam-format practice remain necessary. AP history short-answer and long-essay formats change for May 2027; use the current official specifications. Course update, 25 October 2026: six shared investigations and new allotment, Chinese-exclusion, Pullman labor, senatorial reform and Social Security investigations now join the later U.S. history sequence. They count in this course’s current lesson total, so its completion fraction can change. Existing lesson completions, drafts, attempts and project submissions are retained; this update does not revoke them. The college History II path expands from four to fifteen investigations. This is still developing survey coverage: broader industrial labor history, western expansion and Indigenous sovereignty, broader immigration history, Progressive reform, the New Deal, world wars, postwar social change and recent history require further dedicated depth.
Preparation and direct entry
Read contextualized historical sources and form an evidence-based paragraph.
Open any unit directly; use inquiry units for targeted support.
Later U.S. history sequence: use each broad period investigation for context, then the linked focused cases for evidence. Some cases compare dates across periods; their placement is thematic, not a claim that all events occurred in one year.
Immigration and exclusion: map the 1882 act by provision. Separate entry, return documentation and naturalization, then distinguish what the statute establishes from what requires affected people’s records.
Allotment and sovereignty: classify records by administrative stage, compare the original statutory exception with later Cherokee history, and distinguish land tenure from political authority.
Industrial labor: map the Pullman company’s employer/landlord roles, the union network and distinct government responses. Keep the fictional budget calculation separate from observed historical earnings.
Migration and industry: build a population-change calculation and a three-source exhibit plan. Distinguish migration from births/deaths and connect employment, housing and cultural expression without assigning every migrant the same experience.
Progressive reform: analyze Berryman’s deadlock cartoon, compare senatorial selection rules and distinguish advocacy, ratification, elections and access to voting.
New Deal institutions: compare assistance and insurance, test the 1937 payroll cap and exclusions, and distinguish enactment, amendment, adjudication and payment.
War and rights: compare the 1919 and 1969 speech cases. Keep wartime prosecution, school expression and later incitement doctrine separate; an unfamiliar case tests which analogy actually fits.
Cold War and citizenship: connect Truman’s requested assistance, the Cuban crisis commitments, court holdings and movement organizing. Keep proposal, ruling, implementation and lived access in separate evidence columns; do not infer results from an announcement.
Carry one revised claim from these cases into your existing course project. Record source IDs, event dates, source dates, a competing explanation and missing evidence. Shared investigations retain prior attempts; revisiting through this course is practice, not a new unseen assessment.
Open any lesson. Recaps explain assumed concepts without locking access.
0/50 lessons completed · 0 marked skipped. Skips do not reduce this course's completion denominator or award understanding. Shared lesson work is reused across paths; project evidence belongs to this course.
Lesson sequence
Each linked investigation opens on its own page. Your selected course stays with you as you move between lessons.
Foreign policy combines diagnoses, instruments and predicted consequences. A presidential speech directly supports claims about what its speaker proposed and argued; evaluating the diagnosis or the result requires additional evidence.
A crisis bargain can connect reciprocal assurances and observable steps. Each party may frame its actions differently, and a public message may omit other negotiations. Analyze what is offered, conditional, claimed and verifiable.
Cumulative projectSaved workspace · human review remains separate
CUMULATIVE PROJECT
A document-based citizenship argument
Develop a thesis using at least four identified sources from two periods, contextualize the argument and explain why source purpose or audience affects its use. Add timed practice using the current official format.
Evidence and review criteria
The question names a place, period and population, and the chronology is accurate.
Claims use identified evidence; source creator, purpose, context and limits are explained.
The explanation tests an alternative and distinguishes association, causation and value judgment.
Different experiences are represented without fabricating missing testimony or treating a group as uniform.
The artifact includes citations, accessible text descriptions and a visible revision after new evidence.
The argument distinguishes formal legal status from practical enforcement.
Use your lesson captures and citations. This saved workspace supports a reviewer; it does not automatically grade your writing or certify proficiency.
Review examples and quality criteria
These are authored teaching examples for practicing review, not calibrated scoring standards. Apply your course’s specific rubric above. Different conclusions can be defensible when evidence supports them; factual and numerical errors still require correction.
Claim needing revision
The author lived then, so the account proves what everyone thought.
More defensible reasoning
The account supports a claim about this author’s stated position in this setting. Its audience and purpose may shape what is emphasized. Compare a contemporaneous source from a different position before extending the claim to a wider population.
Why the revision helps
The revision preserves the primary source’s value while restricting the population claim. A stronger completed response would name the actual author, date, audience and contrasting passage.
Assess the artifact, with assistance recorded separately
Criterion
Developing evidence
Supported evidence
Well-substantiated evidence
Question and context
A broad topic or undefined population.
A focused question, time/place and relevant definitions.
A justified scope with context that changes the interpretation.
Sources and claims
Names a source but does not connect its contents to a claim.
Cites specific records and explains provenance and relevance.
Weighs limitations, corroboration and meaningful disagreement.
Mechanism and analysis
Gives a conclusion with missing steps or unclear units.
Shows a valid causal chain, calculation or interpretation.
Tests a credible alternative and explains sensitivity or uncertainty.
Transfer and revision
Repeats the worked answer despite changed facts.
Adapts the reasoning to the unfamiliar case.
Explains why the change matters and what evidence would reverse the conclusion.
Use “missing” when no relevant evidence is supplied. Do not average these descriptions into an automatic pass score. Record whether the learner followed an example, used guidance or worked independently, and review quality separately.
Locate one specific claim and its supporting source or calculation.
Check the context, units and intermediate reasoning.
Identify one plausible alternative and the evidence that distinguishes it.
Ask for a revision or an unfamiliar application; explain the reason for the request.
The saved project remains a draft or a local submission. This page does not record instructor certification or infer understanding from response length.
Separate application casesVersioned evidence · earlier work remains intact
Apply your reasoning to a separate case
These versioned cases add distinct evidence to the portfolio. Earlier drafts and local submissions remain intact. Write your explanation before revealing review notes when you want to retain a pre-feedback attempt.
Use this packet for a fresh written application. All records below are original fictional teaching materials. They test reasoning under stated conditions and do not establish actual historical or population facts. Your original course-project draft remains separate.
Record rule
Citation ID: social:independent:us-early:v1-rule
Fictional historical-methods packet set in 1868: an invented state rule says residents meeting its stipulated voting-eligibility criteria may register without a property test. For this exercise, accept the register's 1,000-person eligible population. The rule is not a quotation or summary of any real state's law.
County records list 1,000 residents meeting those stated criteria; 600 appear on the register. Of 200 residents living more than 10 miles from the office, 60 are registered. Eligibility categories and distances are assumed accurate for this exercise.
An 1869 petition by unregistered residents describes offices open only during working hours. The petition cannot represent residents who did not sign. No information on enforcement of federal law, racial exclusions or other legal restrictions is supplied.
This case is shared across paths that use it. Revisiting it in another course retains drafts and known review-note exposure; it is not a new unseen assessment.
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NEW APPLICATION · VERSION 1
Migration, wages and competing accounts
Use this packet for a fresh written application. All records below are original fictional teaching materials. They test reasoning under stated conditions and do not establish actual historical or population facts. Your original course-project draft remains separate.
Record wages
Citation ID: social:independent:us-later:v1-wages
Fictional city study, 1910–1920: average daily manufacturing pay rises from 2 to 3 currency units; the local living-cost index rises from 100 to 140. Hours and employment composition are not supplied.
A recruitment leaflet promises higher pay. One migrant's letter reports better earnings but costly housing. Both are invented teaching accounts representing different purposes, not quotations from historical people.
A later audit finds the 1920 pay sample excludes laid-off workers and domestic workers. City employment totals are unavailable.
This case is shared across paths that use it. Revisiting it in another course retains drafts and known review-note exposure; it is not a new unseen assessment.
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NEW APPLICATION · VERSION 1
What changed in the location of political authority?
Use this packet for a fresh written application. These records are editorial paraphrases of identified historical primary documents, not quotations or fictional observations. Compare their purposes, dates and institutional settings; the linked transcripts provide fuller context. Written provisions alone do not establish actual practice. Your original course-project draft remains separate.
Editorial paraphrase of the Continental Congress Declaration of Independence, 4 July 1776, opening and conclusion: legitimate government rests on consent, and the colonies assert independence from the British Crown. This is a public justification of separation, not a detailed plan for allocating domestic governing powers.
Editorial paraphrase of the Articles of Confederation, Articles II, V and VIII: states retain powers not expressly delegated; each state has one congressional vote; common expenses are supplied through state taxation under the stated allocation rule. Congress adopted the Articles on 15 November 1777; they came into force on 1 March 1781.
Editorial paraphrase of the Constitutional Convention’s 1787 Constitution, Article I, sections 1–3 and 8: legislative authority is divided between House and Senate; each state has two senators, originally selected by state legislatures; Congress receives taxation and commerce powers. The original text is not the present amended text. Its House apportionment rule counted enslaved people at three fifths, enhancing slaveholding states’ representation relative to counting only free people, without granting enslaved people voting rights.
This case is shared across paths that use it. Revisiting it in another course retains drafts and known review-note exposure; it is not a new unseen assessment.
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NEW APPLICATION · VERSION 1
Ohio statehood: reconcile the records and dates
Use this packet for a fresh written application. These records are attributed editorial summaries of institutional historical accounts, not primary-document transcriptions. Each record identifies its source and limits. References may discuss or reproduce underlying documents, but those full documents are not supplied by a summary. Separate historical events from later interpretation and investigate source dependence. Your original course-project draft remains separate.
Editorial summary of the National Archives overview: a census schedule transmitted to Congress in December 1801 reported about 45,000 inhabitants; supporters anticipated growth toward 60,000. These are rounded historical figures as described by the archive, not a voter roll or an exact series measuring growth.
Editorial summary of the National Archives overview: the enabling act became law April 30, 1802; Ohio’s constitution was adopted November 29, 1802; a congressional act of February 19, 1803 recognized that Ohio had become a state. These actions have different functions. The reference identifies underlying documents; this packet supplies summaries, not full transcriptions.
Editorial summary of the Senate Historical Office timeline: the February 19, 1803 act effectively admitted Ohio. In 1953 Congress established March 1, 1803 as the statehood date, corresponding to the first meeting of the state legislature. The modern timeline is a retrospective account, not a document authored in 1803.
This case is shared across paths that use it. Revisiting it in another course retains drafts and known review-note exposure; it is not a new unseen assessment.
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NEW APPLICATION · VERSION 1
Audit a franchise reform and participation claim
Use this packet for a fresh written application. All records below are original fictional teaching materials. They test reasoning under stated conditions and do not establish actual historical or population facts. Your original course-project draft remains separate.
Original fictional Riverton charter, 1842: voters must be citizens aged at least 21, resident in their district for two continuous years, and have paid the town levy for the current year. Outlying-district residents must additionally have held a freehold continuously during the preceding twelve months with a value of at least 100 credits after debts and charges on it. These rules describe this invented jurisdiction only; they are not an actual U.S. constitution or a reconstruction of New York law.
Fictional amendment adopted in 1848: the town-levy payment requirement is removed for central-ward residents only. All qualifications for outlying-district residents and the remaining central-ward qualifications are retained. The packet provides no earlier or later amendment.
Four fictional 1849 application files: A is an outlying resident with an estate valued at 140 credits, charges of 35, and ten months of continuous possession. B is an outlying resident with value 140, charges 45, and eighteen months of possession. C is a central-ward resident who has not paid the town levy. D is an outlying resident with value 140, charges not recorded, and eighteen months of possession. All four satisfy the stated citizenship, age and residence requirements; A, B and D have paid the levy. Values and charges are unchanged throughout the stated possession periods. No administrative decisions or ballots for these four applicants are supplied. These application files are separate from the registered cohort in the next records.
A separate complete official register for one 1849 election lists 120 eligible central-ward residents and 40 eligible outlying-district residents. For the arithmetic tasks, take these registered eligible cohorts as fixed. This is an administrative classification, not a count of all adults or proof that every eligibility decision was correct. It is not the four-person application sample.
The complete central-ward return records 84 distinct registered people whose ballots were accepted. The surviving outlying scan contains 20 entries: 18 distinct registered people plus two exact duplicate copies of entries already counted. Seventeen of those eighteen people have accepted ballots; the remaining person has a final rejection recorded, not an unresolved provisional ballot. A missing final page concerns six other named eligible outlying residents, distinct from the eighteen. Each of those six could have either one accepted ballot or none; their outcomes are unknown. A complete clerk’s certificate says the other sixteen eligible outlying residents did not vote. No person can cast more than one accepted ballot in this exercise.
A fictional editor reports printing 400 copies of an appeal to participate and expects two readers per copy. No delivery list, reader survey or names are supplied. The report states an expectation, not a measured count of distinct readers. No record links newsletter exposure with an accepted ballot.
An exhibit draft says: “The 1848 amendment abolished every qualification for all residents. Every applicant with a 140-credit estate qualified. Outlying turnout was exactly 20/40 = 50%, and all missing entries were nonvoters. The newsletter reached 800 distinct voters and caused participation to increase.” No earlier election returns, total adult population count, causal comparison or additional records support these statements.
This case is shared across paths that use it. Revisiting it in another course retains drafts and known review-note exposure; it is not a new unseen assessment.
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NEW APPLICATION · VERSION 1
Emancipation, compensation and documentary proof in Washington
Use this packet for a fresh written application. This packet combines explicitly labeled primary-document paraphrases and a secondary historical account. These are not verbatim transcriptions or fictional observations. Use each record’s source label, distinguish the historical document from the later reconstruction, and consult the linked originals for fuller context. Your original course-project draft remains separate.
Primary-document paraphrase: Congress’s D.C. slave-trade act, approved 20 September 1850, section 1, restricted bringing enslaved people into the District for sale or depot storage for later sale elsewhere, from 1 January 1851. Its freedom consequence applied to importation contrary to the act by the owner or with the owner’s authority or consent. This is not a general emancipation provision for everyone already enslaved in the District.
Primary-document paraphrase: section 1 of the D.C. Emancipation Act, approved 16 April 1862, freed people held to service or labor in the District by reason of African descent. It prohibited slavery and involuntary servitude there from passage, retaining an exception for crime after due conviction. This paraphrase preserves the territorial scope and exception; it is not a national abolition enactment.
Primary-document paraphrase of the April 1862 act, sections 2–4: loyal former claimants could submit compensation petitions within ninety days. Commissioners investigated the claims and reported awards; Treasury payment followed the prescribed process, with an additional delay/procedure for conflicting claims. This record supplies rules, not a particular payment receipt.
Primary-document paraphrase of the April 1862 act, sections 9–10: owners or claimants were to file identifying schedules, with failure affecting their compensation claim. The court clerk was to issue a certificate on demand and payment of the specified fee, stating that the named person had been set free by the act. A certificate documented statutory freedom; its issue date is not automatically the date freedom began.
Primary-document paraphrase of the April 1862 act, section 11: funds were appropriated to assist free people of African descent residing in the District, including people liberated by the act, who desired to emigrate to Haiti, Liberia or another foreign destination chosen by the president. This selected provision is voluntary in wording; its practical operation needs further evidence.
Secondary account: Damani Davis, National Archives Prologue, Spring 2010, describes Alice Addison and family appearing with the Soffells on 6 October 1862. The families sought different things: the Addisons wanted an official freedom record, while their former enslavers sought compensation after missing the deadline. The account reports the Addisons had left on 13 April, fearing forced removal to Africa, and returned on 28 September. This is a historian’s reconstruction from records, not a verbatim Addison testimony or a payment receipt. The packet does not reproduce a final ruling on this family’s eligibility or an issued certificate.
This case is shared across paths that use it. Revisiting it in another course retains drafts and known review-note exposure; it is not a new unseen assessment.
Learn
Record rule
Citation ID:
social:independent:us-early:v1-ruleFictional historical-methods packet set in 1868: an invented state rule says residents meeting its stipulated voting-eligibility criteria may register without a property test. For this exercise, accept the register's 1,000-person eligible population. The rule is not a quotation or summary of any real state's law.