U.S. History Review: Early Colonization through the Gilded Age

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering major political, social, economic, and military developments in American history from fifteenth-century Atlantic exploration through the late nineteenth century.

Prince Henry the Navigator

A Portuguese prince who fueled Atlantic expansion in the fifteenth century by establishing a school for mariners and spearheading the development of the caravel.

Caravel

A nimble Portuguese maritime vessel utilizing triangular lateen sails that allowed ships to sail into the wind.

Christopher Columbus

An Italian explorer who made four voyages across the Atlantic Ocean and persistently maintained on his deathbed that he had reached the eastern shores of Asia rather than encountering an entirely new continent.

Peter Martyr d'Anghiera

An Italian humanist who played a key role in European intellectual history following early Atlantic voyages by coining the term "Novus Orbis" (New World) to describe the lands encountered by Columbus.

Doña Marina (La Malinche)

An Indigenous woman who served as a vital translator, cultural advisor, and strategist during Hernán Cortés’s conquest of the Aztec Empire, enabling the Spanish to forge crucial alliances with rival Indigenous groups.

Treaty of Tordesillas (1494)

A late fifteenth-century treaty that resolved rivalry between Spain and Portugal by drawing a meridian line dividing control of the non-Christian world between both empires.

"Discourse on Western Planting" (1584)

A treatise written by Richard Hakluyt urging Queen Elizabeth I to establish English colonies in North America to expand Protestantism, create new economic markets, and counter Catholic Spain.

John Rolfe

The colonist who introduced tobacco cultivation to Virginia, creating massive demand for land and labor, driving the headright system, and expanding indentured servitude.

John Winthrop

The Puritan leader who helped found the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630 to establish a model reformed Christian community designed to reform the Church of England from afar.

"City upon a Hill"

John Winthrop's concept for the Massachusetts Bay Colony to serve as a model of reformed Protestantism for the rest of the world.

French Settlement in New France (Canada)

A colonial settlement pattern that relied heavily on small fur-trading networks and diplomatic alliances, fostering closer cultural integration with Native populations than English settlement.

Bacon's Rebellion (1676)

A colonial Virginia uprising caused primarily by conflict between frontier settlers and Indigenous groups, exacerbated by the colonial government's refusal to provide military support.

Yamasee War (1715–1717)

A colonial conflict in the Carolinas largely resulting from Indigenous resentment over the Indian slave trade and mounting debts to English traders.

Task System

A labor system developed in the Lowcountry (South Carolina and Georgia) that allowed enslaved people more autonomy after their daily assigned work was completed.

Walking Purchase of 1737

A fraudulent land acquisition orchestrated by Pennsylvania authorities that drove the Lenape off their ancestral lands.

The Great Awakening (1730s and 1740s)

A religious revival movement that transformed colonial American religious life by promoting an emotional, evangelical style of preaching that encouraged individuals to challenge traditional religious authority.

Seven Years' War Outcome (1763)

The conclusion of the French and Indian War, in which Great Britain emerged as the dominant imperial power in North America, gaining Canada and French territories east of the Mississippi River.

Pontiac's War (1763–1766)

An uprising launched by an alliance of Indigenous nations in the Great Lakes region to resist post-war British territorial expansion and the aggressive policies of British military commanders.

Royal Proclamation of 1763

A proclamation issued by King George III prohibiting Anglo-American settlement west of the Appalachian Mountains to prevent further conflicts with Native Americans.

Consumer Revolution

An eighteenth-century economic shift that allowed ordinary colonists to purchase imported British manufactured goods, binding the colonies closer to British culture while increasing personal debt.

Coercive Acts (Intolerable Acts)

A series of punitive British measures passed in response to colonial resistance; the Stamp Act was not among them.

Olive Branch Petition

A colonial petition representing a final attempt by American colonists to avoid a full-blown war with Great Britain.

Battle of Yorktown

The military engagement considered the final major battle of the American Revolutionary War.

"Common Sense" (1776)

A widely influential pamphlet written by Thomas Paine that argued for American independence and the establishment of a democratic republic.

British Revolutionary War Emancipation Policy

A British wartime measure offering freedom to enslaved people in exchange for military service against American forces.

Great Compromise (1787)

A constitutional agreement reached at the 1787 Convention that settled the debate over congressional representation for large and small states.

Anti-Federalists

Critics of the proposed 1787 Constitution whose primary complaint was that it lacked a Bill of Rights to protect individual liberties.

Alexander Hamilton's Financial Plan

A federal economic program that included controversial national measures, most notably the creation of a National Bank.

Whiskey Rebellion (1794)

An armed domestic uprising in western Pennsylvania whose suppression demonstrated the ability of the new federal government to enforce its laws.

Alien and Sedition Acts

Statutes passed during the John Adams administration intended to silence political opposition and critics of the Federalist government.

"Revolution of 1800"

The presidential contest between Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, notable for marking the first peaceful transfer of executive power between rival political parties in United States history.

Electoral College Deadlock of 1800

An electoral tie between Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr that was ultimately broken by the House of Representatives after Alexander Hamilton urged Federalists to support Jefferson.

Three-Fifths Clause (Presidential Impact)

A constitutional provision granting southern states extra representation in Congress and the Electoral College based on enslaved populations, boosting Thomas Jefferson's victory.

Shawnee Confederacy of Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa

A Native American alliance organized in the early 1800s to unite Indigenous nations across the continent to stop white land cessions and cultural assimilation.

Marbury v. Madison (1803)

A landmark Supreme Court decision that fundamentally shaped the American legal system by establishing the principle of judicial review.

"Great Divergence" (Market Revolution)

The regional economic divide wherein the North developed complex railroad and factory infrastructure while the South doubled down on agrarian slave labor.

Lowell System

A manufacturing system in Massachusetts that created a new industrial workforce of young women who experienced a mix of independence and strict paternalism.

Transportation Revolution (Southern Impact)

The expansion of canals, steamboats, and railroads that largely bypassed the South, leaving the region reliant on river travel and isolated from Northern and Western markets.

Southern Planter Elite Resistance to Industrialization

The refusal of southern slaveowners to embrace large-scale industrialization due to fears that a diversified economy would undermine social and political control over the enslaved population.

Cotton Gin

The technological innovation that most directly allowed the South to maintain its traditional agrarian slave society while the North modernized.

"Bank War"

President Andrew Jackson’s campaign against the Second Bank of the United States, in which he vetoed its re-charter and transferred federal deposits into private state "pet banks."

Whig Party (1830s)

A major national political party that emerged in the 1830s, primarily united by opposition to Andrew Jackson’s expansion of executive power and economic policies.

Nat Turner's Rebellion (1831)

A violent slave uprising in Virginia that prompted Southern state legislatures to enact harsher Black Codes prohibiting Black literacy, assembly, and independent religious gatherings.

Worcester v. Georgia (1832)

A Supreme Court decision in which Chief Justice John Marshall ruled that the Cherokee Nation was a distinct political community, though President Andrew Jackson refused to enforce it.

"Immediatism"

An abolitionist doctrine of the 1830s that rejected gradual emancipation and colonization schemes, demanding the immediate, uncompensated abolition of slavery and moral equality.

Alexis de Tocqueville

A French political thinker who observed in the 1830s that the defining feature of American democracy was an overarching passion for equality of conditions paired with a rampant voluntary association culture.

Second Great Awakening (Moral Abolitionism)

Antebellum religious revivals led by figures like William Lloyd Garrison that preached individual moral accountability and social perfectionism, framing slavery as a national sin requiring immediate repentance.

Manifest Destiny

An 1840s ideology justifying American expansion to the Pacific Ocean through the belief that God had uniquely destined white Americans to spread democratic institutions and civilization.

"Free Labor" Ideology

A Northern economic viewpoint arguing that individual effort, dignity, and social mobility elevated free workers, whereas slavery degraded labor and stifled innovation.

Southwest Expansion of the Cotton Kingdom

The geographic expansion of cotton agriculture that intensified the domestic slave trade and sparked fierce political conflicts over slavery in newly acquired western territories.

Fugitive Slave Act of 1850

A component of the Compromise of 1850 that intensified sectional conflict by compelling Northern citizens to assist in capturing runaway slaves and undermining local personal liberty laws.

Popular Sovereignty

A core doctrine proposed in the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 stating that the residents of a territory should determine for themselves whether to permit slavery.

Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857)

A Supreme Court ruling declaring that Black Americans could not be citizens and that Congress had no constitutional power to prohibit slavery in federal territories.

John Brown's Raid on Harpers Ferry (1859)

An abolitionist raid that deepened the sectional rift by convincing many Southerners that the North was actively plotting to incite violent slave insurrections.

Election of Abraham Lincoln (1860)

The presidential contest that triggered Southern secession because Lincoln won the presidency without carrying a single Southern state, proving the South had lost its national political power.

Battle of Antietam (September 1862)

A pivotal Union victory that provided Abraham Lincoln the necessary political cushion to officially issue the Emancipation Proclamation.

Emancipation Proclamation

An executive order issued by Abraham Lincoln that officially freed enslaved people located specifically in areas in rebellion against the United States government.

Civil War Infantry Tactics and Weaponry

The deadly tactical mismatch of using Napoleonic-style massed infantry charges against rifled muskets and Minié balls, resulting in extremely high casualty rates.

NYC Draft Riots of 1863

Violent civil unrest fueled by racial tensions and public anger over the ability of wealthy citizens to buy their way out of the military draft.

Fall of Vicksburg (1863)

A critical Union victory that split the Confederacy in two by granting Union forces complete military control over the Mississippi River.

Fourteenth Amendment

A Reconstruction amendment ratified to guarantee birthright citizenship and "equal protection of the laws" for all persons.

Post-Civil War Black Codes

Restrictive statutes passed by Southern state governments after the Civil War to regulate and limit the labor and behavior of African Americans to maintain an order similar to slavery.

Freedmen's Bureau

A federal agency created during Reconstruction to assist formerly enslaved people by establishing schools, adjudicating labor disputes, and providing food and medical care.

Ku Klux Klan and Southern Paramilitary Organizations

White supremacist groups most responsible for deploying violence and intimidation to "redeem" the South and overturn Republican rule during Reconstruction.

Compromise of 1877

An agreement traditionally seen as the end of Reconstruction that resulted in the removal of federal troops from the South and the restoration of "home rule" to Democratic state governments.

Great Railroad Strike of 1877

A major labor dispute marking the first time in American history that a nationwide strike was suppressed through the deployment of state militias and federal troops.

Social Darwinism

A Gilded Age philosophy championed by sociologists like William Graham Sumner asserting that inequality was a natural result of economic competition and that government aid to the poor hindered social progress.

Knights of Labor vs. American Federation of Labor (AFL)

A labor divergence where the Knights of Labor welcomed both skilled and unskilled workers (including women and African Americans), whereas Samuel Gompers's AFL focused primarily on skilled white male workers.

Haymarket Square Riot (1886)

A Chicago labor gathering that turned violent, devastating the American labor movement by associating union activists with foreign anarchism and violent radicalism in the public mind.

Populist (People's) Party Omaha Platform (1892)

A political platform whose central demands included government ownership of railroads and telegraph lines alongside the free and unlimited coinage of silver.

Battle of the Little Bighorn (Greasy Grass) (1876)

An engagement in which Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer and his 7th Cavalry were defeated after underestimating village size and being vastly outnumbered by Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho warriors led by Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse.

Carlisle Indian Industrial School

An off-reservation boarding school created under federal assimilation policies designed to systematically eradicate Indigenous cultures, languages, and social structures to integrate Native youth into white society.

Dawes Severalty Act of 1887

A federal law that undermined tribal sovereignty by breaking up communal reservation land into individual family allotments to encourage private land ownership and capitalist farming.

Ghost Dance Movement

A late 1880s Indigenous religious movement offering spiritual hope by promising that ancestors would return, buffalo herds would be restored, and white settlers would disappear from Native lands.

Wounded Knee Massacre (1890)

An 1890 military attack where U.S. Cavalry forces killed Lakota men, women, and children due to military panic over the Ghost Dance and an accidental gunshot during a disarmament.