Theodore Roosevelt (or “Teddy” as he more is more commonly known) formed the “Bull Moose” Party. Without going into needlessly complicated detail, the BMP was the result of a fracturing of the Republican Party among the supporters of Taft (the sitting president) and those who preferred Teddy’s more progressive stance. The party came to be known as the “Bull Moose” Party when Teddy somewhat famously said he felt “as strong as a bull moose.” Since the Republicans fractured, the Democrats, led by Woodrow Wilson, easily took the White House (1912). 

The Marshall Plan was enacted in 1948, during the Truman presidency, which lasted from 1945 to 1953. The GI Bill was enacted in 1944, toward the end of Franklin Roosevelt's presidency. The first minimum wage laws predate the Truman presidency, and include provisions in the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act. The National Interstate and Defense Highways Act was enacted during the Eisenhower presidency, which followed that of Truman.

African-American men were able to vote and hold office in the South during Reconstruction; however, white Southern violence and the withdrawal of Federal soldiers from the South after 1876 allowed white Southerners to use Jim Crow laws to prevent virtually all Southern blacks from voting after the end of Reconstruction. African Americans in the South would not regain the right to vote until the Civil Rights Movement and the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. 

The two answers reading “FDR shepherded fifteen bills through Congress . . .”  and “FDR closed insolvent banks” are the correct answers. The first 100 days, or the first 100 days that FDR was in office, were a transformative time (to put it lightly) during the Great Depression. At the outset, the FOHD showed that FDR intended to keep his promise of doing anything and everything he could in order to combat the Great Depression (as opposed to Hoover, who counseled “waiting it out”). Second, the FOHD were a time of great legislative importance, as FDR managed to get fifteen bills through Congress (that’s a feat in itself, by the way). Additionally, FDR reacted to the mounting banking problems by declaring a “bank holiday” to give the banks a chance to regroup.

The CCC, WPA, and other similar agencies were designed to employ unemployed males, and jumpstart the economy through “priming the pump.” Due to the Great Depression, unemployment was cataclysmically high—in some areas as high as 90%. Keep in mind, this was before things like unemployment benefits; thus, not working meant not eating, unless you had savings. These agencies put men to work doing various projects for the government, thus improving communities and enabling them to draw a paycheck. As to the “jumpstarting the economy,” this was an idea first espoused by John Maynard Keynes, a British economist. Although the majority of his thesis is beyond the scope of this test, it boils down to “you must spend money to make money.”

This is an interesting question, and one that is actually still somewhat controversial. At any rate, the Act prohibited commercial banks from engaging in investment. The stock market crash and the ensuing slump were clearly the driving reasons behind this Act. Unfortunately, an in-depth discussion of the Act is far beyond the scope of this test.

Essentially, at the beginning of the Depression, panicked people began running to the banks to withdraw ALL of the funds they deposited. Now, this may sound fairly innocuous, but the fact of the matter is that banks do not carry enough reserves (liquid cash) to cover the account of every single account-holder. Thus, the first few account holders to arrive at the bank and withdraw the entirety of their funds wiped the bank clean, meaning that the rest of the account holders had nothing. Everything they deposited in the bank was gone, wiped clean. You can see how this would eventually become a self-fulfilling prophecy (people afraid of having their savings wiped out would make a run on the bank leading to people getting their savings wiped out). FDR reacted to this by closing banks for several days during a “bank holiday” in order to more fully address the problem.

Richard Nixon used the phrase "silent majority" as an intentionally vague descriptor of his supporters, with the definition focused more on who was not part of the group. In Nixon's usage, the "silent majority" were those Americans who were not protesting or agitating for sweeping changes in civil rights of all forms. Largely, Nixon was speaking to and for white middle and working class Americans who were greatly troubled by the large scale societal upheavals of the 1960s.

Andrew Johnson, in 1868, and Bill Clinton, in 1998, are the only two United States Presidents to have been impeached by the House. Both were acquitted in the Senate. Richard Nixon would have likely been the only President to undergo the full impeachment process, if he had not chosen to resign before the trial began. Andrew Johnson’s impeachment was an effort by the Radical Republicans (who controlled Congress at the time) to remove Johnson from office. They desired control over the reconstruction process in the South and charged Johnson with a violation of the Tenure of Office Act and improper conduct against the will of the public. The vote passed the house, but did not gain the necessary two-thirds majority vote in the Senate—they were just one vote short. The impeachment of Bill Clinton was made on grounds of perjury and obstruction of justice. The opposition Republican Party controlled Congress at the time, but not sufficiently to carry out the impeachment in the Senate. The vote was evenly split in the Senate, falling seventeen votes short. 

The term “New Federalism” refers to a policy of increasing the power of the States, at the expense of Federal authority. Nixon used the term to include an additional reduction in programs providing for social-welfare. By 1971 approximately two-thirds of Americans disapproved of the ongoing war in Vietnam. Nixon was aware that in order to win the election of 1972, he had to bring the troops home, which he did; however, this decision does not fit under the umbrella of “New Federalism." Nixon also encouraged more familiar relations with the USSR, in an attempt to discourage armament, a move thatalso opened relations with China.