Chapter 7 Vocabulary: America Secedes from the Empire (1775-1783)

Vocabulary flashcards covering key terms, historical figures, battles, and treaties from Chapter 7: America Secedes from the Empire (1775-1783).

Second Continental Congress

A assembly of delegates from all thirteen colonies that met in Philadelphia starting on May 10, 1775, adopting measures to raise money, build an army and navy, and select George Washington to command the military forces.

Battle of Bunker Hill

A June 1775 battle on Breed's Hill where entrenched American forces inflicted severe casualties on attacking British troops before being forced to abandon the position due to a lack of gunpowder.

Olive Branch Petition

A document adopted by the Continental Congress in July 1775 professing American loyalty to King George III and begging him to cease hostilities, which was subsequently rejected by the crown.

Hessians

European mercenaries, primarily from the German principality of Hesse, hired by King George III to help crush the American rebellion.

Common Sense

An influential 1776 pamphlet written by Thomas Paine arguing for complete American independence and the establishment of a republic where political power derives from popular consent.

Declaration of Independence

The formal document drafted by Thomas Jefferson and approved by Congress on July 4, 1776, invoking universal natural rights to justify the American colonies' separation from Great Britain.

Declaration of the Rights of Man

A French revolutionary document adopted thirteen years after 1776, directly influenced and inspired by the American Declaration of Independence.

Loyalists

American colonists who maintained allegiance to King George III during the Revolutionary War, derisively referred to by Patriots as Tories.

Patriots

American colonists who supported independence and fought against British soldiers and Loyalist neighbors, derisively referred to by British loyalists as Whigs.

Battle of Long Island

A summer and fall 1776 battle in which outmaneuvered American forces fled under panic, allowing the British to occupy New York City for the remainder of the war.

Battle of Trenton

A military engagement on December 26, 1776, in which George Washington surprise-captured one thousand sleeping Hessians after crossing the Delaware River.

Battle of Saratoga

An October 17, 1777 battle where British General John Burgoyne surrendered his entire army to American General Horatio Gates, serving as a turning point that persuaded France to enter the war as an American ally.

Model Treaty

A template drafted by the Continental Congress in 1776 to guide diplomatic relations, favoring purely commercial ties and explicitly rejecting political or military alliances.

Armed Neutrality

An alliance organized in 1780 by Catherine the Great of Russia, uniting passive European naval powers to resist British dominance on the high seas.

Treaty of Fort Stanwix

A 1784 agreement between the United States and pro-British Iroquois nations, marking the first formal treaty between the U.S. and an Indian nation, under which the Iroquois ceded most of their lands.

Privateers

Privately owned armed merchant vessels authorized by Congress to prey upon enemy shipping, capturing roughly six hundred British merchant prizes during the war.

Battle of Yorktown

The final major land battle of the war, where combined American and French forces surrounded General Cornwallis by land and sea, forcing his surrender on October 19, 1781.

Treaty of Paris (1783)

The peace agreement in which Great Britain formally recognized American independence and granted boundaries stretching west to the Mississippi River, north to the Great Lakes, and south to Spanish Florida.

Ethan Allen

American military leader who, alongside Benedict Arnold, captured the British garrisons at Ticonderoga and Crown Point in May 1775.

General Richard Montgomery

An Irish-born former British officer who led an American column up Lake Champlain to capture Montréal before being killed in a failed assault on Québec in late 1775.

Thomas Paine

A radical former corset-maker's apprentice who wrote Common Sense, calling for independence and a democratic republic based on citizen virtue.

Abigail Adams

The wife of John Adams who privately advocated for women's rights in 1776 letters, urging her husband to remember the ladies in the new nation's laws.

Richard Henry Lee

The Virginia delegate who formally moved on June 7, 1776, that the United Colonies ought to be free and independent states.

Baron von Steuben

A Prussian drillmaster who arrived at Valley Forge and systematically trained the Continental Army into a disciplined professional force.

Comte de Rochambeau

Commander of a French army of six thousand regular troops that arrived in Newport, Rhode Island, in 1780 to fight alongside Washington's forces.

General Nathanael Greene

A Quaker-reared American tactician in the Southern campaign who used a strategy of delay to wear down General Cornwallis's army and clear most of Georgia and South Carolina.

Joseph Brant

A Mohawk chief and Anglican convert who led ferocious pro-British Indian raids along the Pennsylvania and New York frontiers.

George Rogers Clark

An audacious frontiersman who led a small force down the Ohio River in 1778-1779 to capture British forts at Kaskaskia, Cahokia, and Vincennes.

John Paul Jones

A Scottish-born naval officer who helped establish the American naval tradition by destroying British merchant shipping in European waters.

Admiral de Grasse

Commander of a powerful French fleet in the West Indies that blockaded Chesapeake Bay in 1781, preventing British naval reinforcement or escape at Yorktown.

John Jay

An American peace negotiator in Paris who distrusted French intentions and secretly negotiated separate peace terms directly with Great Britain.