APUSH Important Acts/Compromises/Documents for S1 final

Navigation Acts

1651. The English government passed these which prohibited "Ships of any Foreign Nation whatsoever to come to, Trade in, or Traffice with any of the English Plantations in America." Gave England dominance of Atlantic trade.

salutary neglect

1714-1760. By relaxing their supervision of internal colonial affairs, British royal bureaucrats practiced this which inadvertently assisted the rise of self-government in North America.

Hat Act

1732. One of the Navigation Acts passed by the British. Prevented export or intercolonial sale of hats.

Molasses Act

1733. One of the Navigation Acts passed by the British. Cut American imports of molasses from French West Indies, but was extensively violated.

Iron Act

1750. One of the Navigation Acts passed by the British. Prevented manufacture of finished iron products, but was extensively violated.

Currency Act of 1751

1751. One of the Navigation Acts passed by the British. Ended use of paper currency as legal tender in New England.

Proclamation of 1763

1763. Issued by the British to prohibit white settlements west of the Appalachians, but was largely ignored by colonists.

Treaty of Paris

1763. Ended the Great War for Empire, and granted Britain sovereignty over half the continent of North America, including French Canada, all French territory east of the Mississippi River, Spanish Florida, and the recent conquests in Africa and India.

Revenue Act of 1762

1762. Passed by Parliament to enforce the collection of trade duties, which colonial merchants had evaded for decades by bribing customs officials.

Sugar Act

1764. Replaced the widely-ignored Molasses Act of 1733. It was a duty of 3 pence per gallon on molasses and tightened customs enforcement.

Stamp Act

1765. Sparked the first great imperial crisis. It was to cover part of the cost of keeping British troops in America. It required a tax stamp (as proof the tax had been paid) on all court documents, land titles, contracts, newspapers, and other printed items.

Quartering Act

1765. Parliament passed this at the request of General Thomas Gage, the British military commander in America. It required colonial governments to provide barracks and food for British troops.

Declaratory Act

1766. Prime Minister Rockingham, after repealing the Stamp Act and reducing the duty on molasses to a penny a gallon "pacified imperial reformers and and hard-liners" with this act, which explicitly reaffirmed Parliament's "full power and authority to make laws and statues . . . to bind the colonies and people of America . . . in all cases whatsoever."

Townshend Act of 1767

1767. Placed duties on colonial imports of paper, paint, glass, and tea, raising about 40,000 pounds a year. Some of this money was used for American military expenses, but most of it was used to pay the salaries of royal governors, judges, and other imperial officials.

Restraining Act

1767. Suspended the New York Assembly. Faced with the loss of self-government, New Yorkers reluctantly appropriated funds to quarter the troops.

First American Boycott

1765. Influential Americans favored and active but peaceful resistance to the British Sugar and Stamp Acts by performing this.

Second American Boycott

1768. The Massachusetts assembly circulated a letter condemning the Townshend Act, and Boston and New York merchants began this to protest taxes imposed without consent.

Tea Act

1773. Provided financial relief for the East India Company by giving it a government loan and to boost its revenue, it canceled the import duties on tea the company exported to Ireland and the American colonies, making it cheaper than Dutch tea.

Coercive Acts

1774. Four acts to force Massachusetts to pay for the tea thrown off of the Dartmouth ship, and to submit to imperial authority. (Boston Port Bill, Massachusetts Government Act, Quartering Act, and the Justice Act)

Quebec Act

1774. Parliament passed this act which allowed the practice of Roman Catholicism in Quebec.

Declaration of Independence

1776. Passed by the Second Continental Congress, this document largely sparked the Revolutionary War, and its main author, Thomas Jefferson, used the document as a means of criticizing King George III of England.

Articles of Confederation

1777. Approved by the Continental Congress, these provided for a loose union in which "each state retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence."

Franco-American Alliance

1778. Specified that once France entered the American Revolutionary War, neither America nor France qould sign a separate peace without the "liberty, sovereignty, and independence" of the United States. In return, the Continental Congress agreed to recognize any French conquests in the West Indies.

Northwest Ordinances

1787. With these, the Confederation Congress divided the domain north of the Ohio River into territories and set up democratic procedures by which they could eventually join the Union as states. South of the Ohio River, the Congress allowed the existing southern states to play a substantial role in the settling of the ceded lands.

Judiciary Act of 1789

1789. Established a federal district court in each state and three circuit courts to hear appeals from the districts, with the Supreme Court having the final say. It also specified that cases arising in state courts that involved federal laws could be appealed to the Supreme Court.

Bill of Rights

1791. Ten of the nineteen amendments to the Constitution submitted by James Madison, which were approved by Congress. These safeguard fundamental personal rights, including freedom of speech and religion, and mandate legal procedures, such as trial by jury. By protecting individual citizens, the amendments eased Antifederalists' fears of an oppressive national government and secure the legitimacy of the Constitution.

First Bank of the United States

1791. Chartered by Federalists in Congress to issue notes and make commercial loans.

Jay's Treaty

1795. Ratified by the Senate just barely. After John Jay had gone to Britain to protect merchant property though diplomacy on Washington's orders, he returned with this treaty that accepted Britain's right to stop neutral ships, and required the U.S. government to make "full and complete compensation" to British merchants for pre-Revolutionary War debts owed by American citizens. In return, the agreement allowed Americans to submit claims for illegal seizures and required the British to remove their troops and Indian agents from the Northwest Territory.

Pinckney's Treaty

1795. Agreement between the United States (under Jefferson) and Spain that reopened the Mississippi River to American trade and allowed settlers to export crops via the Spanish-held port of New Orleans.

Greenville Treaty

1795. Under this, American negotiators acknowledged Indian ownership of the land and, in return for various payments, the Western Confederacy ceded most of Ohio.

Alien Act

1798. One of three coercive acts limiting individual rights and threatening the fledgling party system. Authorized the deportation of foreigners.

Sedition Act

1798. One of three coercive acts limiting individual rights and threatening the fledgling party system. Prohibited the publication of insults or malicious attacks on the president or members of Congress.

Naturalization Act

1798. One of three coercive acts limiting individual rights and threatening the fledgling party system. Lengthened the residency requirement for American citizenship from five to fourteen years.

Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions

1798/1799. Statements passed by the legislatures of Virginia and Kentucky that resolved that the Alien and Sedition Acts were unconstitutional.

Embargo Act

1807. Inspired by the boycotts of the the 1760s and 1770s. Prohibited American ships from leaving their home ports until Britain and France stopped restricting U.S. trade. It backfired.

Adams-Onis Treaty

1819. In this, John Quincy Adams persuaded Spain to cede the Florida territory to the United States and in return, the American government accepted Spain's claim to Texas and agreed to a compromise on the western boundary for the state of Louisiana, which had entered the Union in 1812.

Virginia Manumission Law

1782. Allowed individual owners to free their slaves; within a decade, planters had released 10,000 slaves

Massachusetts Mill Dam Act

1795. Approved by judges, this deprived farmers of their traditional right under common law to stop the flooding and forced them to accept "fair compensation" for their lost acreage.

Second Bank of the United States

1816. Chartered by National Republicans in Congress to provide credit. Recharter vetoed by Andrew Jackson, who adopted Jefferson's position.

Missouri Compromise

1821. Prohibited new slave states in the Louisiana Purchase north of 36º30'. Consequently, southern senators had long prevented the creation of new territories there; it remained Permanent Indian Territory.

Post Office Act

1792. Created more than eight thousand post offices by 1830, and the mails safely delivered thousands of letters and banknotes worth millions of dollars.

division of labor

Beginning in 1800. A system of manufacture that divides production into a series of distinct and repetitive tasks performed by machines or workers. 1800-1830, was practiced in the shoe industry.

protective tariffs

Import duties designed to protect domestic products from cheaper foreign goods. Became particularly controversial in the 1830s, and again between 1880 and 1914, as it became an important political issue.

American System

1824. Mercantilist system of national economic development advocated by Henry Clay and adopted by John Quincy Adams. It had three interrelated parts: a national bank to manage the nation's financial system; protective tariffs to provide revenue and encourage American industry; and a nationally funded network of roads, canals, and railroads.

Tariff of Abomination

1828. Raised duties significantly on raw materials, textiles, and iron goods, enraging the South. Supported by northern Jacksonians, and supporters of Adams and Clay.

National Road Bill

1806. Congress approved funds for this, which constructed a National Road constructed of compacted gravel, to tie the Midwest to the seaboard states.

Indian Removal Act

1830. Pushed through Congress by Jackson, this created the Indian Territory, outside the bounds of any state (on lands in present-day Oklahoma and Kansas). It also promised money and reserved land to Native American peoples who would agree to give up their ancestral holdings east of the Mississippi River.

Ordinance of Nullification

1832. Created by South Carolinians who had called a state convention, this declared the tariffs of 1828 and 1832 to be null and void, prohibited to collection of those tariffs in South Carolina after February 1, 1833, and threatened secession if federal officials tried to collect them.

Wilmot Proviso

1846. Proposed that slavery be prohibited in any territories gained from the Mexican War. Passed by the House of Representatives, but not by the Senate.

Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo

1848. In this, the United States agreed to pay Mexico $15 million in return for more than one-third of its territory.

Compromise of 1850

1850. Passed as an attempt to preserve the Union. Included a new Fugitive Slave Act, admitted California as a free state, resolved a boundary dispute between New MExico and Texas in favor of New Mexico, abolished the slave trade in Washington D.C., and organized the rest of the lands acquired from Mexico into the territories of New Mexico and Utah and left them with popular sovereignty.

Fugitive Slave Act of 1850

1850. Part of the Compromise of 1850, and under its terms, federal magistrates in the northern states determined the status of alleged runaway slaves. The law denied a jury trial to the accused blacks and even the right to testify. Using this, southern owners reenslaved about 200 fugitives, as well as some free northern blacks.

Ostend Manifesto

1854. Urged president Pierce to seize Cuba. Northern Democrats in Congress denounced this and scuttled the planters'' dreams of American expansion into the Caribbean.

Kansas-Nebraska Act

1854. Created the territories of Kansas and Nebraska, opening new lands for settlement, and had the effect of repealing the Missouri Compromise of 1820 by allowing settlers in those territories to determine through popular sovereignty whether they would allow slavery within each territory.

popular soveriegnty

The republican principle that ultimate power resides in the hands of the electorate. It dictates that voters directly (or indirectly through their elected representatives) approve the constitutions and laws of the state and national governments. During the 1850s, the U.S. Congress used this principle in devising legislation giving the residents of a western territory the authority to allow or prohibit slavery there.

Lecompton constitution

1857. The second of four proposed constitutions for the state of Kansas. The document was written in response to the anti-slavery position of the 1855 Topeka Constitution of James H. Lane and other free-state advocates.The territorial legislature, consisting mostly of slave-owners, met at the designated capital of Lecompton in September 1857 to produce a rival document.

First Confiscation Act

1861. Congress passed this which authorized the seizure of property, including slave property, used to support the rebellion.

Legal Tender Act

1862. Authorized $150 million in paper currency--soon known as greenbacks--and required the public to accept them as legal tender.

Homestead Act of 1862

1862. Gave settlers the title to 160 acres of public land after five years of residence.

Second Confiscation Act

1862. This act overrode the property rights of Confederate planters by declaring "forever free" the thousands of fugitive slaves and all slaves captured by the Union army.

The Emancipation Proclamation

1862. Stated in September that slavery would be legally abolished in all states that remained out of the Union on January 1, 1863. The Rebel states could preserve slavery by renouncing secession.

Wade-Davis Bill

1864. Proposal for a law that required an oath of allegiance to the Union by a majority of each state's adult white men, new governments formed only by those who had never taken up arms against the North, and permanent disenfranchisement of Confederate leaders. Killed by Lincoln's pocket veto.

Thirteenth Amendment

1865. Slavery and involuntary servitude were made illegal by this provision (except when used "as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted").

Fourteenth Amendment

1868. Made native-born Americans and naturalized immigrants (significantly African Americans) have equal citizenship rights.

Fifteenth Amendment

1870. "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude."

Burlingame Treaty

1868. After the Civil War, this treaty between the United States and China opened the way for increasing numbers to emigrate.

Reconstruction Act of 1867

1867. Divided the conquered South into five military districts, each under the command of a U.S. general. Under this, to reenter the Union, each former Confederate state had to grant the vote to freedmen and dent it to leading ex-Confederates.

gold standard

1879. United States gave value to their paper money equivalent to an amount of gold.

Chinese Exclusion Act

1862. Specifically barred Chinese laborers from entering the United States. Each decade after it was passed, Congress renewed the law and tightened its provisions; it was not repealed until 1943.

Dawes Severalty Act

1887. Another effort to assimilate native peoples. It was designed to break up tribal landholding and give Indians individual ownership of land by dividing reservations into homesteads, just like those of white farmers in the West. It did not end up well for the natives as whites were able to use this to take up previously native land.

Interstate Commerce Act

1887. One of two major bills that expanded federal power. By establishing a national commission to investigate and regulate railroad shipping rates, this set an important precedent for later regulation.

Lacey Act

1906. Allowed the U.S. president, without congressional approval, to set aside "objects of historic and scientific interest" as national monuments.

Hatch Act

1887. One of two major bills that expanded federal power. Provided federal funding for agricultural research and education, directly meeting farmers' demands for government aid to agriculture.

Currency Act of 1764

1764. Banned the American colonies from treating paper money as legal tender, ensuring that merchants would be paid in good money, boosting their profits and British wealth. Passed by George Grenville.

Revenue Act of 1767

1767. Created a board of customs commissioners in Boston and vice-admiralty courts in Halifax, Boston, Philadelphia, and Charleston.

Prohibitory Act

1775. Parliament passed this which outlawed all trade with the rebellious colonies.

Oregon Donation Land Claim Act

1850. Granted farm-sized plots of "free land" to settlers who took up residence before 1854.