Unit 2 Key Terms APUSH Popovich

Headright system

A land-grant policy that promised fifty acres to any colonist who could afford passage to Virginia, as well as fifty more for any accompanying servants. The headright policy was eventually expanded to include any colonists—and was also adopted in other colonies.

House of Burgesses

The first elected assembly in colonial America, established in 1619 in Virginia. Only wealthy landowners could vote in its elections.

John Winthrop

Puritan leader and governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony who resolved to use the colony as a refuge for persecuted Puritans and as an instrument of building a "wilderness Zion" in America.

Puritans

English religious group that sought to purify the Church of England; founded the Massachusetts Bay Colony under John Winthrop in 1630.

Mayflower Compact

Document signed in 1620 aboard the Mayflower before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth; the document committed the group to majority-rule government.

Dissenters

Protestants who belonged to denominations outside of the established Anglican Church.

Pequot War

An armed conflict in 1637 that led to the destruction of one of New England's most powerful Indian groups.

Half-Way Covenant

A 1662 religious compromise that allowed baptism and partial church membership to colonial New Englanders whose parents were not among the Puritan elect.

English Liberty

The idea that English people were entitled to certain liberties, including trial by jury, habeas corpus, and the right to face one's accuser in court. These rights meant that even the English king was subject to the rule of law.

Act Concerning Religion (or Maryland Toleration Act)

1649 law that granted free exercise of religion to all Christian denominations in colonial Maryland.

King Phillip's War

A multiyear conflict that began in 1675 with an Indian uprising against white colonists. Its end result was broadened freedoms for white New Englanders and the dispossession of the region's Indians.

Mercantilism

Policy of Great Britain and other imperial powers of regulating the economies of colonies to benefit the mother country.

Navigation Act

Law passed by the English Parliament to control colonial trade and bolster the mercantile system, 1650-1775; enforcement of the act led to growing resentment by colonists.

Society of Friends (Quakers)

Religious group in England and America whose members believed all persons possessed the "inner light" or spirit of God; they were early proponents of abolition of slavery and equal rights for women.

Plantation

An early word for a colony, a settlement "planted" from abroad among an alien population in Ireland or the New World. Later, a large agricultural enterprise that used unfree labor to produce a crop for the world market.

Bacon's Rebellion

Unsuccessful 1676 revolt led by planter Nathaniel Bacon against Virginia governor William Berkeley's administration because of governmental corruption and because Berkeley had failed to protect settlers from Indian raids and did not allow them to occupy Indian lands.

Salem Witch Trials

A crisis of trials and executions in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692 that resulted from anxiety over witchcraft.

Staple crops

Important cash crops; for example, cotton or tobacco.

Atlantic Slave Trade

The systematic importation of African slaves from their native continent across the Atlantic Ocean to the New World, largely fueled by rising demand for sugar, rice, coffee, and tobacco.

Middle Passage

The hellish and often deadly middle leg of the transatlantic "Triangular Trade" in which European ships carried manufactured goods to Africa, then transported enslaved Africans to the Americas and the Caribbean, and finally conveyed American agricultural products back to Europe; from the late sixteenth to the early nineteenth century, some 12 million Africans were transported via the Middle Passage, unknown millions more dying en route.

Yeoman farmers

Small landowners (the majority of white families in the Old South) who farmed their own land and usually did not own slaves.

Stono Rebellion

A slave uprising in 1739 in South Carolina that led to a severe tightening of the slave code and the temporary imposition of a prohibitive tax on imported slaves.

republicanism

Political theory in eighteenth-century England and America that celebrated active participation in public life by economically independent citizens as central to freedom.

liberalism

Originally, political philosophy that emphasized the protection of liberty by limiting the power of government to interfere with the natural rights of citizens; in the twentieth century, belief in an activist government promoting greater social and economic equality.

Salutary neglect

Informal British policy during the first half of the eighteenth century that allowed the American colonies considerable freedom to pursue their economic and political interests in exchange for colonial obedience.

Deism

Enlightenment thought applied to religion; emphasized reason, morality, and natural law.

Great Awakening

Fervent religious revival movement in the 1720s through the 1740s that was spread throughout the colonies by ministers like New England Congregationalist Jonathan Edwards and English revivalist George Whitefield.

French and Indian War

The last—and most important—of four colonial wars fought between England and France for control of North America east of the Mississippi River.

Proclamation of 1763

Royal directive issued after the French and Indian War prohibiting settlement, surveys, and land grants west of the Appalachian Mountains; caused considerable resentment among colonists hoping to move west.

Albany Plan of Union

A failed 1754 proposal by the seven northern colonies in anticipation of the French and Indian War, urging the unification of the colonies under one crown-appointed president.