EGHS US History 2025 - Spjuth

Jamestown

the first permanent English colony in North America, founded in Virginia in 1607.

John Smith

Leader for the settlement of Jamestown. Saved the colony from disaster when he forced men there to work instead of just look for gold.

Powhatan

a group of Native American peoples that lived in eastern Virginia at the time of the first English settlements there.

13 Colonies

British colonies established along the eastern coast of North America.

Plantations

a large farm on which the labor of slaves or other workers is used to grow a single crop.

Triangular Trade

the transatlantic system of trade in which goods and people, including slaves, were exchanged between Africa, England, Europe, the West Indies, and the colonies in North America.

Middle Passage

the voyage that brought enslaved Africans to the West Indies and later to North America.

Salutary Neglect

an English policy of relaxing the enforcement of regulations in its colonies in return for the colonies' continued economic loyalty.

Enlightenment

an 18th-century intellectual movement that emphasized the use of reason and the scientific method as means of obtaining knowledge.

Benjamin Franklin

American statesman; he was a philosopher, scientist, inventor, writer, publisher, first U.S. postmaster; and member of the committee to draft the Constitution.

French and Indian War

A conflict between Britain and France for control of territory in North America, lasting from 1754 to 1763.

Stamp Act

a 1765 law in which Parliament established the first direct taxation of goods and services within the British colonies in North America.

Sons of Liberty

A radical resistance organization which formed in 1765 after the passage of the Stamp Act. They incited riots, tarred and feathered tax collectors, and burned the customs houses.

Boston Massacre

a clash between British soldiers and Boston colonists in 1770, in which five of the colonists were killed.

Boston Tea Party

the dumping of 18,000 pounds of tea into Boston harbor by colonists in 1773 to protest the Tea Act.

Intollerable Acts

a series of laws enacted by Parliament in 1774 to punish Massachusetts colonists for the Boston Tea Party.

Battle at Lexington and Concord

Two towns west of Boston that were the sites of the first Revolutionary War battles on April 19, 1775.

Second Continental Congress

Convened in May 1775, approved the Declaration of Independence, and served as the only agency of national government during the Revolutionary War.

George Washington

First president of the United States.

John Adams

Second president of the United States and a Federalist. Prevented all out war with France after the XYZ Affair.

Thomas Jefferson

The chairman of the committee to draft the Declaration of Independence, the Declaration's main author and one of its signers, and the third president of the United States.

Declaration of Independence

the document, written by Thomas Jefferson in 1776, in which the delegates of the Continental Congress declared the colonies' independence from Britain.

Patriots

"colonists who supported American independence from Britain.

Loyalists

colonists who supported the British government during the American Revolution.

Treaty of Paris of 1783

Ended the Revolutionary War, confirming the independence of the United States and setting the boundaries of the new nation.