This page shows a list of test questions in the 8th Grade Social Studies public release collection at MSDE. 8th Grade Social Studies
Standard "5.0 History," Indicator "EPD.6 …"
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This is a test question that allows you to select spans of text directly from the passage.
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Select two phrases from the Mississippi Declaration of Secession that are evidence of the main cause of the Civil War.
Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery. . . . Its labor supplies the product which constitutes [makes up] by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. . . . There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates [orders] of abolition, or a dissolution [break apart] of the Union. . . . That we do not overstate the dangers to our institution, a reference to a few facts will sufficiently prove. . . .
The hostility to this institution . . . tramples the original equality of the South under foot. . . .
It has enlisted its press, its pulpit [churches] and its schools against us, until the whole popular mind of the North is excited and inflamed with prejudice  . . .
We must either submit to degradation, and to the loss of property worth four billions of money , or we must secede from the Union framed by our fathers. . . .
This is a multiple choice question that allows you to select only one option.
What was one argument against the annexation of Texas in the mid-1840s?
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Information about the Question.
Which event directly led to the expansion of slavery in the United States?
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What difference between the North and the South most directly led to the Civil War?
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Which part of the 1860 Democratic Party platform caused the most conflict between the North and the South?
This is a test question that allows you to select spans of text directly from the passage.
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Select two phrases that are reasons for South Carolina’s decision to secede from the United States in 1860.
. . . [A]ll the States north of that [geographical] line have united in the election of a . . . President . . . whose . . . purposes are hostile to slavery. . . . [T]he public . . . must rest in the belief that Slavery is in the course of . . . extinction. . . .
The . . . Constitution will then no longer exist; the equal rights of the States will be lost. The slaveholding States will no longer have the power of self-government . . . and the Federal Government will have become their enemy.
. . . [A]ll hope of remedy is rendered vain [made useless], by the fact that . . . the North has invested a great political error with . . . a more erroneous [incorrect] religious belief.
—South Carolina declaration of secession, 1860
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One section of our country believes slavery is right and ought to be extended, while the other believes it is wrong and ought not to be extended. This is the only substantial dispute.
President Abraham Lincoln, First Inaugural Address, 1861
President Lincoln's idea expressed in this excerpt eventually led to the
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Multiple-choice question with one correct answer choice.
What factor led the United States into Civil War?