Comprehensive U.S. History from Conquistadors to Civil War

Conquistadores

A Spanish term for conquerors, used to describe Spanish and Portuguese explorers/soldiers that conquered land held by indigenous people in Central and South America as well as Florida, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California.

Tenochtitlan

The capital city of the Aztec empire, built on marshy islands on the western side of Lake Tetzcoo, present-day Mexico City.

Aztec

A Mesoamerican empire ruled by the Mexica people, defeated under Cortez and his allies from 1519-1528.

Columbian Exchange

The transatlantic flow of goods that altered millions of years of evolution, introducing products like corn, tomatoes, and tobacco to Europe, Africa, and Asia from the Americas.

Mestizos

A Spanish word for a mixed European and Native American ancestry, which made up a large population of Spanish America.

John Smith

An English explorer and soldier who became one of the leaders of the Jamestown Colony and helped establish relations with the Powhatans.

Virginia Company

A joint stock enterprise chartered by King James in 1606 to spread Christianity in the Americas and make a profit.

Roanoke Colony

An attempt to found an English colony at Roanoke that failed but was followed by a permanent English colony at Jamestown.

Headright System

A land policy promising 50 acres to any colonist who could afford passage to Virginia, plus 50 more for accompanying servants.

House of Burgesses

The first elected assembly in colonial America, established in 1619 in Virginia.

Puritans

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

Pilgrims

Puritan separatists who broke with the Church of England and founded Plymouth Colony in 1620.

Mayflower Compact

A document signed in 1620 aboard the Mayflower committing the group to majority rule government by its male colonists.

Pequot War

An armed conflict in 1637 between the Pequot Indians and an alliance of the Narragansett, Mohegan, and English.

King Philip's War

A multiyear conflict that began in 1675 between the English and a Native alliance led by Wampanoags Metacom.

Mercantilism

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

Bacon's Rebellion

An unsuccessful 1676 revolt led by planter Nathaniel Bacon against British Governor of Virginia William Berkeley's administration.

English Bill of Rights

A series of laws enacted in 1689 that inscribed the rights of English men into law and enumerated parliamentary powers.

Salem Witch Trials

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

Staple Crops

Important cash crops like tobacco or cotton.

Middle Passage

The deadly middle leg of the transatlantic triangular trade, transporting enslaved Africans to the Americas.

Triangular Trade

A series of triangular trading routes carrying British manufactured goods to Africa and the colonies, colonial products to Europe, and captured Africans to the Americas.

Stono Rebellion

An uprising by enslaved men in 1739 in South Carolina that led to a tightening of the slave code.

Salutary Neglect

A policy of avoiding strict enforcement of parliamentary laws meant to keep the colonies obedient to England.

Enlightenment

A revolution in thought in the eighteenth century emphasizing reason and science over traditional religion.

Deism

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

Great Awakening

A fervent religious revival movement in the 1720s through the 1740s spread in the colonies by ministers.

Seven Years War

The last and most important of four colonial wars fought between England and France for control of North America.

French-Indian War

The last and most important of four colonial wars fought between England and France for control of North America.

Pontiac's War

A war inspired by the Delaware prophet Neolin in which Native American fighters attacked British forts after the Treaty of Paris.

Proclamation Line of 1763

A royal directive prohibiting settlement west of the Appalachian Mountains after the Seven Years' War.

Stamp Act

Parliament's 1765 requirement that revenue stamps be affixed to all colonial printed matter.

Sugar Act

A 1764 decision by Parliament to tax refined sugar and many other colonial products.

"No taxation without representation"

The rallying cry of opponents to the Stamp Act, decrying the colonists' lack of representation in Parliament.

Committee of Correspondence

A group organized by Samuel Adams to address American grievances and form a network of rebellion.

Sons of Liberty

An organization formed in response to the Stamp Act by Samuel Adams and others.

Regulators

Groups of backcountry Carolina settlers who protested colonial policies.

Townsend Acts

1767 parliamentary measures that taxed tea and other commodities and established a Board of Customs Commissioners.

Boston Massacre

A clash between British soldiers and a Boston mob on March 5, 1770, resulting in the death of five colonists.

Crispus Attucks

One of the protesters against British troops who was killed during the Boston Massacre.

Boston Tea Party

The incident on December 16, 1773, where the Sons of Liberty dumped tea into Boston Harbor to protest the Tea Act.

Tea Act

The British exported to the colonies millions of pounds of cheap-but still taxed-tea, thereby undercutting the price of smuggled tea and forcing payment of the tea duty.

Intolerable Acts

Four parliamentary measures in reaction to the Boston Tea Party that forced payment for the tea, disallowed colonial trials of British soldiers, forced their quartering in private homes, and reduced the number of elected officials in Massachusetts.

Continental Congress

First meeting of representatives of the colonies, held in Philadelphia in 1774 to formulate actions against British policies; in the Second Continental Congress (1775-1789), the colonial representatives conducted the war and adopted the Declaration of Independence and the Articles of Confederation.

Battles of Lexington and Concord

The first shots fired in the Revolutionary War, on April 19, 1775, near Boston; approximately 100 minutemen and 250 British soldiers were killed.

Battle of Bunker Hill

First major battle of the Revolutionary War; it actually took place at nearby Breed's Hill, Massachusetts, on June 17, 1775.

Continental Army

Army authorized by the Continental Congress in 1775 to fight the British; commanded by General George Washington.

Lord Dunmore's Proclamation

A proclamation issued in 1775 by the earl of Dunmore, the British governor of Virginia, that offered freedom to any men enslaved by rebels who volunteered to fight for the king.

Common Sense

A pamphlet anonymously written by Thomas Paine in January 1776 that attacked the English principles of hereditary rule and monarchical Government.

Declaration of Independence

Document adopted on July 4, 1776, that made the break with Britain official; drafted by a committee of the Second Continental Congress, including principal writer Thomas Jefferson.

Battle of Saratoga

Major defeat of British general John Burgoyne and more than 5,000 British troops at Saratoga, New York, on October 17, 1777.

Battle of Yorktown

Last battle of the Revolutionary War; General Lord Charles Cornwallis along with over 7,000 British troops surrendered at Yorktown, Virginia, on October 17, 1781.

Treaty of Paris

Signed on September 3, 1783, the treaty that ended the Revolutionary War, recognized American independence from Britain, established the border between Canada and the United States, fixed the western border at the Mississippi River, and ceded Florida to Spain.

Republic

Representative political system in which citizens govern themselves by electing representatives, or legislators, to make key decisions on the citizens' behalf.

Suffrage

The right to vote.

Inflation

An economic condition in which prices continue to raise and the US dollar becomes less productive.

Free trade

The belief that economic development arises from the exchange of goods between different countries without governmental interference.

The Wealth of Nations

The 1776 work by economist Adam Smith that argued that the 'invisible hand' of the free market directed economic life more effectively and fairly than governmental intervention.

Loyalists

Colonists who remained loyal to British during the war of independence.

Abolition

Social movement of the pre-Civil War era that advocated the immediate emancipation of the slaves and their incorporation into American society as equal citizens.

Freedom petitions

Social movement of the pre-Civil War era that advocated the immediate emancipation of the slaves and their incorporation into American society as equal citizens.

Free blacks

African American persons not held in slavery; immediately before the Civil War, there were nearly a half million free Blacks in the United States, split almost evenly between North and South.

Coverture

Principle in English and U.S. law that a married woman lost her legal identity, which became 'covered' by that of her husband, who therefore controlled her person and the family's economic resources.

Republican motherhood

The ideology that emerged as a result of American independence where women's political role was to train their sons to be future citizens.

Articles of Confederation

First frame of government for the United States; in effect from 1781 to 1788, it provided for a weak central authority and was soon replaced by the Constitution.

Shays's Rebellion

Attempt by Massachusetts farmer Daniel Shays and 1,200 compatriots, seeking debt relief through issuance of paper currency and lower taxes, to prevent courts from seizing property from indebted farmers.

Constitutional Convention

Meeting in Philadelphia, May 25-September 17, 1787, of representatives from twelve colonies-excepting Rhode Island-to revise the existing Articles of Confederation; the convention soon resolved to produce an entirely new constitution.

Virginia Plan

Virginia's delegation to the Constitutional Convention's plan for a strong central government and a two-house legislature apportioned by population.

New Jersey Plan

New Jersey's delegation to the Constitutional Convention's plan for one legislative body with equal representation for each state.

Federalism

A system of government in which power is divided between the central government and the states.

Federalists

Collection of eighty-five essays that appeared in the New York press in 1787-1788 in support of the Constitution; written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay and published under the pseudonym 'Publius.'

Anti-Federalists

Opponents of the Constitution who saw it as a limitation on individual and states' rights; their demands led to the addition of a Bill of Rights to the document.

Bill of Rights

First ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution, adopted in 1791 to guarantee individual rights against infringement by the federal government.

Gradual Emancipation

A series of acts passed in state legislatures in the North in the years following the Revolution that freed slaves after they reached a certain age, following lengthy 'apprenticeships.'

Checks and balances

A systematic balance to prevent any one branch of the national government from dominating the other two branches.

Separation of powers

Feature of the U.S. Constitution, sometimes called 'checks and balances,' in which power is divided between executive, legislative, and judicial branches of the national government so that no one can dominate the other two and endanger citizens' liberties.

Three-fifths compromise

A provision signed into the Constitution in 1787 that three-fifths of the enslaved population would be counted in determining each state's representation in the House of Representatives and its electoral votes for president.

Bank of the United States

Proposed by the first secretary of the treasury, Alexander Hamilton, the bank that opened in 1791 and operated until 1811 to issue a uniform currency, make business loans, and collect tax monies.

Impressment

The British navy's practice of using press-gangs to kidnap men in British and colonial ports who were then forced to serve in the British navy.

Jay's Treaty

Treaty with Britain negotiated in 1794 by Chief Justice John Jay; Britain agreed to vacate forts in the Northwest Territories, and festering disagreements would be settled by commission.

Federalists and Republicans

The two increasingly coherent political parties that appeared in Congress by the mid-1790s.

Whiskey Rebellion

Violent protest by western Pennsylvania farmers against the federal excise tax on whiskey in 1794.

Democratic-Republican societies

Organizations created in the mid-1790s by opponents of the policies of the Washington administration and supporters of the French Revolution.

Judith Sargent Murray

A writer and early feminist thinker prominent in the years following the American Revolution.

XYZ affair

A diplomatic incident between the United States and France that led to an undeclared war.

Alien and Sedition Acts

Four measures passed in 1798 during the undeclared war with France that limited the freedoms of speech and press and restricted the liberty of noncitizens.

Virginia and Kentucky resolutions

Legislation passed in 1798 and 1799 by the Virginia and the Kentucky legislatures; written by James Madison and Thomas Jefferson in response to the Alien and Sedition Acts.

Revolution of 1800

First time that an American political party surrendered power to the opposition party; Jefferson, a Republican, had defeated incumbent Adams, a Federalist, for president.

Haitian Revolution

A revolution by enslaved people that led to the establishment of Haiti as an independent country in 1804.

Gabriel's Rebellion

An 1800 uprising planned by Virginian slaves to gain their freedom, led by a blacksmith named Gabriel.

Marbury v. Madison

First U.S. Supreme Court decision to declare a federal law—the Judiciary Act of 1801—unconstitutional.

Louisiana Purchase

President Thomas Jefferson's 1803 purchase from France of the important port of New Orleans and 828,000 square miles west of the Mississippi River.

Lewis and Clark expedition

A mission to the Pacific coast commissioned for the purposes of scientific and geographical exploration.

Barbary Wars

The first wars fought by the United States against plundering pirates off the Mediterranean coast of Africa from 1801 to 1805.

Embargo Act

Attempt in 1807 to exert economic pressure by prohibiting all exports from the United States in reaction to continued British impressment of American sailors.

Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa

Shawnee diplomatic and military leader who tried to unite all Indians into a confederation to resist white encroachment on their lands.

War of 1812

Conflict fought between the United States and Great Britain from 1812 to 1815.

Fort McHenry

Fort in Baltimore Harbor unsuccessfully bombarded by the British in September 1814.

Battle of New Orleans

Last battle of the War of 1812, fought on January 8, 1815, weeks after the peace treaty was signed.

Hartford Convention

Meeting of New England Federalists on December 15, 1814, to protest the War of 1812.