AP US History Final Study Guide

Hugenots

French Protestant dissenters, the Huguenots were granted limited toleration under the Edict of Nantes. After King Louis XIV outlawed Protestantism in 1685, many Huguenots fled elsewhere, including to British North America.

Edict of Nantes

This French law promised religious toleration, but was later revoked by Louis XIV, spurring a mass migration of French to the New World.

Roanok island

Site of England’s first attempt at establishing a colony off the coast of the Carolinas.

Spanish Armada

Spanish fleet defeated in the English Channel in 1588. The defeat of the Armada marked the beginning of the decline of the Spanish Empire.

James Town

Site of the first permanent English settlement in the New World.

Sir Francis Drake

Name of the first English sailor to circumnavigate the globe.

Sir Walter Railey

Who was the dash English adventurer that attempted Roanoke Island

Captain John Smith

Name the person most commonly seen as the leader of Jame Town.

John Rolfe

This person is commonly referred to as the “father of tobacco”…

Powhatan

Chief of the Powhatan Indians and father of Pocahontas. As a show of force, Powhatan staged the kidnapping and mock execution of Captain John Smith in 1607. He later led the Powhatan Indians in the first Anglo-Powhatan War, negotiating a tenuous peace in 1614.

Indentured Survents

Migrants who, in exchange for transatlantic passage, bound themselves to a colonial employer for a term of service, typically between four and seven years. Their migration addressed the chronic labor shortage in the colonies and facilitated settlement.

Head Right System

Employed in the tobacco colonies to encourage the importation of indentured servants, the system allowed an individual to acquire fifty acres of land if he paid for a laborer’s passage to the colony.

Bacon’s Rebellion

Uprising of Virginia backcountry farmers and indentured servants led by planter Nathaniel Bacon; initially a response to Governor William Berkeley’s refusal to protect backcountry settlers from Indian attacks, the rebellion eventually grew into a broader conflict between impoverished settlers and the planter elite.

Middle Passage

Transatlantic voyage slaves endured between Africa and the colonies. Mortality rates were notoriously high.

jeremiad

Often-fiery sermons lamenting the waning piety of parishioners first delivered in New England in the mid-seventeenth century; named after the doom-saying Old Testament prophet Jeremiah.

Salem Witch Trials

Series of witchcraft trials launched after a group of adolescent girls in Salem, Massachusetts, claimed to have been bewitched by certain older women of the town. Twenty individuals were put to death before the trials were put to an end by the governor of Massachusetts.

Nathaniel Bacon

Young Virginia planter who led a rebellion against Governor William Berkeley in 1676 to protest Berkeley’s refusal to protect frontier settlers from Indian attacks.

Acadians

French residents of Nova Scotia, many of whom were uprooted by the British in 1755 and scattered as far south as Louisiana, where their descendants became known as “Cajuns.”

French and Indian War

Nine-year war between the British and the French in North America. It resulted in the expulsion of the French from the North American mainland and helped spark the wider Seven Years’ War in Europe and elsewhere.

Albany Congress

Intercolonial congress summoned by the British government to foster greater colonial unity and assure Iroquois support in the escalating war against the French.

Battle of Quebec

Historic British victory over French forces on the outskirts of Québec. The surrender of Québec marked the beginning of the end of French rule in North America.

Pontiac’s War

Bloody campaign waged by Ottawa chief Pontiac to drive the British out of Ohio Country. It was brutally crushed by British troops, who resorted to distributing blankets infected with smallpox as a means to put down the rebellion.

Proclamation of 1763

Decree issued by Parliament in the wake of Pontiac’s War, prohibiting settlement beyond the Appalachians. Contributed to rising resentment of British rule in the American colonies.

Mercantilism

Economic theory that closely linked a nation’s political and military power to its bullion reserves. Mercantilists generally favored protectionism and colonial acquisition as means to increase exports.

Quartering Act

Required colonies to provide food and quarters for British troops. Many colonists resented the act, which they perceived as an encroachment on their rights.

stamp tax

Widely unpopular tax on an array of paper goods, repealed in 1766 after mass protests erupted across the colonies. Colonists developed the principle of “no taxation without representation” that questioned Parliament’s authority over the colonies and laid the foundation for future revolutionary claims.

Sons of Liberty

Patriotic groups that played a central role in agitating against the Stamp Act and enforcing nonimportation agreements.

Declaratory Act

Passed alongside the repeal of the Stamp Act, it reaffirmed Parliament’s unqualified sovereignty over the North American colonies.

Boston Massacre

Clash between unruly Bostonian protestors and locally stationed British redcoats, who fired on the jeering crowd, killing or wounding eleven citizens.

committees of correspondence

Local committees established across Massachusetts, and later in each of the thirteen colonies, to coordinate colonial opposition to British policies through the exchange of letters and pamphlets.

Boston Tea Party

Rowdy protest against the British East India Company’s newly acquired monopoly on the tea trade. Colonists, disguised as Indians, dumped 342 chests of tea into Boston harbor, prompting harsh sanctions from the British Parliament.

“Intolerable Acts”

Series of punitive measures passed in retaliation for the Boston Tea Party, closing the Port of Boston, revoking a number of rights in the Massachusetts colonial charter, and expanding the Quartering Act to allow for the lodging of soldiers in private homes. In response, colonists convened the First Continental Congress and called for a complete boycott of British goods.

Quebec Act

Allowed the French residents of Québec to retain their traditional political and religious institutions, and extended the boundaries of the province southward to the Ohio River. Mistakenly perceived by the colonists to be part of Parliament’s response to the Boston Tea Party.

Pontiac

Ottawa chief who led an uprising against the British in the wake of the French and Indian War. Though initially routing British forces at Detroit, Pontiac and his men succumbed after British troops distributed smallpox-infected blankets among the Indians.

Crispus Attucks

Runaway slave and leader of the Boston protests that resulted in the "Boston Massacre," in which Attucks was first to die.

Samuel Adams

Boston revolutionary who organized Massachusetts committees of correspondence to help sustain opposition to British policies. A delegate to the First and Second Continental Congresses, Adams continued to play a key role throughout the Revolutionary and early national periods, later serving as governor of his home state.

Marquis de Lafayette

French nobleman who served as major general in the colonial army during the American Revolution and aided the newly independent colonies in securing French support.

Baron von Steuben

German-born inspector general of the Continental army who helped train the novice colonial militia in the art of warfare.

Articles of Confederation

this provided for a bicameral legislature comprised of a House of Representatives based on population and a Senate with each state having equal membership therein.

Northwest Ordinance

This legislation provided for the governing and future statehood for the territories of the Old Northwest.

Land Ordinance of 1785

Provided for the sale of land in the Old Northwest and earmarked the proceeds toward repaying the national debt.

the great compromise

Popular term for the measure that reconciled the New Jersey and Virginia Plans at the Constitutional Convention, giving states proportional representation in the House and equal representation in the Senate. The compromise broke the stalemate at the convention and paved the way for subsequent compromises over slavery and the Electoral College.

the three-fifths compromise

Name given to the agreement between the free and slave states dealing with how enslaved persons were to be counted as population with regards to representation in the House of representatives.

anti-federalists

This group opposed the adoption of the Constitution. They feared that a strong central government would be more likely to violate the individual liberties, and otherwise become despotic.

the society of Cincinnati

an exclusive hereditary society organized by, and for the benefit of, former Continental Army officers.

civic virtue

Willingness on the part of citizens to sacrifice personal self-interest for the public good. Deemed a necessary component of a successful republic.

Revolution of 1800

Electoral victory of Democratic Republicans over the Federalists, who lost their congressional majority and the presidency. The peaceful transfer of power between rival parties solidified faith in America’s political system.

midnight judges

Federal justices appointed by John Adams during the last days of his presidency. Their positions were revoked when the newly elected Republican Congress repealed the Judiciary Act.

Marbury v. Madison

Supreme Court case that established the principle of “judicial review”—the idea that the Supreme Court had the final authority to determine constitutionality.

Louisiana Purchase

Acquisition of Louisiana Territory from France. The purchase more than doubled the territory of the United States, opening vast tracts for settlement.

impressment

Act of forcibly drafting an individual into military service, employed by the British navy against American seamen in times of war against France, 1793–1815. Impressment was a continual source of conflict between Britain and the United States in the early national period.

Embargo Act

Enacted in response to British and French mistreatment of American merchants, the act banned the export of all goods from the United States to any foreign port. The embargo placed great strains on the American economy, while only marginally affecting its European targets, and was therefore repealed in 1809.

Non-Intercourse Act

Passed alongside the repeal of the Embargo Act, it reopened trade with all but the two belligerent nations, Britain and France. The act continued Jefferson’s policy of economic coercion, still with little effect.

Macon’s Bill No. 2

Aimed at resuming peaceful trade with Britain and France, the act stipulated that if either Britain or France repealed its trade restrictions, the United States would reinstate the embargo against the nonrepealing nation. When Napoleon offered to lift his restrictions on British ports, the United States was forced to declare an embargo on Britain, thereby pushing the two nations closer toward war.

war hawks

Democratic-Republican congressmen who pressed James Madison to declare war on Britain. Largely drawn from the South and West, the war hawks resented British constraints on American trade and accused the British of supporting Indian attacks against American settlements on the frontier.

Sally Hemings

One of Thomas Jefferson’s slaves on his plantation in Monticello. DNA testing confirms that Thomas Jefferson fathered Sally Hemings’s children.

Albert Gallatin

Secretary of the Treasury from 1801 to 1813 under Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, Gallatin sought to balance the federal budget and reduce the national debt.

John Marshall

Chief justice of the Supreme Court from 1801 until his death in 1835, Marshall strengthened the role of the courts by establishing the principle of judicial review. During his tenure, the Court also expanded the powers of the federal government through a series of decisions that established federal supremacy over the states.

Toussaint L’Ouverture

Haitian revolutionary who led a successful slave uprising and helped establish an independent Haiti in 1797. In 1802, L’Ouverture was captured by a French force sent to reestablish control over the island. Shipped back to France and imprisoned for treason, he succumbed to pneumonia in 1803.

Aaron Burr

Revolutionary War soldier and vice president under Thomas Jefferson, Burr is perhaps most famous for fatally wounding Alexander Hamilton in a duel in 1804. In 1806, Burr led a failed plot to separate the trans-Mississippi West from the United States. Narrowly acquitted of treason, Burr fled to France, where he tried to convince Napoleon to ally with Britain against the United States.

Tecumseh

Accomplished Shawnee warrior, Tecumseh sought to establish a confederacy of Indian tribes east of the Mississippi. He opposed individual tribes selling land to the United States, arguing that the land belonged to all the native peoples. After 1811, Tecumseh allied with the British, fighting fiercely against the United States until his death in 1813.

corrupt bargain

Alleged deal between presidential candidates John Quincy Adams and Henry Clay to throw the election, to be decided by the House of Representatives, in Adams’s favor. Though never proven, the accusation became the rallying cry for supporters of Andrew Jackson, who had actually garnered a plurality of the popular vote in 1824.

spoils system

Policy of rewarding political supporters with public office, first widely employed at the federal level by Andrew Jackson. The practice was widely abused by unscrupulous office seekers, but it also helped cement party loyalty in the emerging two-party system.

Tariff of Abominations

Noteworthy for its unprecedentedly high duties on imports. Southerners vehemently opposed the tariff, arguing that it hurt southern farmers, who did not enjoy the protection of tariffs but were forced to pay higher prices for manufactures.

Nullification Crisis

Showdown between President Andrew Jackson and the South Carolina legislature, which declared the 1832 tariff null and void in the state and threatened secession if the federal government tried to collect duties. It was resolved by a compromise negotiated by Henry Clay in 1833.

Force Bill

Passed by Congress alongside the compromise Tariff of 1833, it authorized the president to use the military to collect federal tariff duties.

Trail of Tears

Forced march of fifteen thousand Cherokee Indians from their Georgia and Alabama homes to Indian Territory. Some four thousand Cherokees died on the arduous journey.

Alamo

Fortress in Texas where two hundred American volunteers were slain by Santa Anna in 1836. “Remember the Alamo” became a battle cry in support of Texan independence.

Henry Clay

Secretary of state and U.S. senator from Kentucky, Clay was known as the "Great Compromiser," helping to negotiate the Missouri Compromise in 1820, the Compromise Tariff of 1833, and the Compromise of 1850. As a National Republican, later Whig, Clay advocated a strong national agenda of internal improvements and protective tariffs, known as the American System.

Oneida Community

One of the more radical utopian communities established in the nineteenth century, it advocated “free love,” birth control, and eugenics. Utopian communities reflected the reformist spirit of the age.

Francis Parkman

Early American historian who wrote a series of volumes on the imperial struggle between Britain and France in North America.

Susan B. Anthony

Reformer and woman suffragist, Anthony, with long-time friend Elizabeth Cady Stanton, advocated for temperance and women’s rights in New York State, established the abolitionist Women’s Loyal League during the Civil War, and founded the National Woman Suffrage Association in 1869 to lobby for a constitutional amendment giving women the vote.

Manifest Destiny

Belief that the United States was destined by God to spread its “empire of liberty” across North America. Served as a justification for mid-nineteenth-century expansionism.

Aroostook War

Series of clashes between American and Canadian lumberjacks in the disputed territory of northern Maine, resolved when a permanent boundary was agreed upon in 1842.

spot resolutions

Measures introduced by Illinois congressman Abraham Lincoln, questioning President James K. Polk’s justification for war with Mexico. Lincoln requested that Polk clarify precisely where Mexican forces had attacked American troops.

Wilmot Proviso

Amendment that sought to prohibit slavery from territories acquired from Mexico. Introduced by Pennsylvania congressman David Wilmot, the failed amendment ratcheted up tensions between North and South over the issue of slavery.

Uncle Tom’s cabin

this 1852 anti-slavery tome dramatized the horrors of slavery, and heightened awareness of the evils of slavery.

Bleeding Kansas

Civil war in Kansas over the issue of slavery in the territory, fought intermittently until 1861, when it merged with the wider national Civil War.

Dred Scott v. Stanford

Supreme Court decision that extended federal protection to slavery by ruling that Congress did not have the power to prohibit slavery in any territory. Also declared that slaves, as property, were not citizens of the United States.

Freeport question

Raised during one of the Lincoln-Douglas debates by Abraham Lincoln, who asked whether the Court or the people should decide the future of slavery in the territories.

Harpers Ferry

Federal arsenal in Virginia seized by abolitionist John Brown in 1859. Though Brown was later captured and executed, his raid alarmed southerners, who believed that northerners shared in Brown’s extremism.

Charles Sumner

Massachusetts senator and abolitionist, Sumner opposed the extension of slavery, speaking out passionately on the civil war in Kansas. Sumner is best known for the caning he received at the hands of Preston Brooks on the Senate floor in 1856. After his recovery, he returned to the Senate and led the radical Republican coalition against Andrew Johnson during Reconstruction.

Preston S. Brooks

Fiery South Carolina congressman who senselessly caned Charles Sumner on the Senate floor in 1856. His violent temper flared in response to Sumner’s "Crime Against Kansas" speech, in which the Massachusetts senator threw bitter insults at the southern slaveocracy, singling out Brooks’s South Carolina colleague, Senator Andrew Butler.

Abraham Lincoln

Sixteenth president of the United States. An Illinois lawyer and politician, Lincoln briefly served in Congress from 1847 to 1848, when he introduced the famous "spot" resolutions on the Mexican War. He gained national prominence in 1858 during the Lincoln-Douglas debates in the Illinois senate race and emerged as the leading contender for the Republican nomination in 1860. Lincoln’s election in 1860 drove South Carolina from the Union, eventually leading to the Civil War.

John Brown

Radical abolitionist who launched an attack on a federal armory at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, in an effort to lead slaves in a violent uprising against their owners. Brown, who first took up arms against slavery during the Kansas civil war, was captured shortly after he launched his ill-conceived raid on the armory and was sentenced to hang.

Wabash, St. Louis & Pacific Railroad Company v. Illinois

A Supreme Court decision that prohibited states from regulating the railroads because the Constitution grants Congress the power to regulate interstate commerce. As a result, reformers turned their attention to the federal government, which now held sole power to regulate the railroad industry.

Interstate Commerce Act

Congressional legislation that established the Interstate Commerce Commission, compelled railroads to publish standard rates, and prohibited rebates and pools. Railroads quickly became adept at using the act to achieve their own ends, but it gave the government an important means to regulate big business.

vertical integration

The practice perfected by Andrew Carnegie of controlling every step of the industrial production process in order to increase efficiency and limit competition.

Social Darwinists

Believers in the idea, popular in the late nineteenth century, that people gained wealth by “survival of the fittest.” Therefore, the wealthy had simply won a natural competition and owed nothing to the poor, and indeed service to the poor would interfere with this organic process. Some Social Darwinists also applied this theory to whole nations and races, explaining that powerful peoples were naturally endowed with gifts that allowed them to gain superiority over others. This theory provided one of the popular justifications for U.S. imperial ventures like the Spanish-American War.

horizontal integration

The practice perfected by John D. Rockefeller of dominating a particular phase of the production process in order to monopolize a market, often by forming trusts and alliances with competitors.

National Labor Union

This first national labor organization in U.S. history gained 600,000 members from many parts of the work force, although it limited the participation of Chinese, women, and blacks. The organization devoted much of its energy to fighting for an eight-hour workday before it dissolved in 1872.

Knights of Labor

The second national labor organization, organized in 1869 as a secret society and opened for public membership in 1881. The Knights were known for their efforts to organize all workers, regardless of skill level, gender, or race. After the mid-1880s their membership declined for a variety of reasons, including the Knights’ participation in violent strikes and discord between skilled and unskilled members.

Haymarket Square

A May Day rally that turned violent when someone threw a bomb into the middle of the meeting, killing several dozen people. Eight anarchists were arrested for conspiracy contributing to the disorder, although evidence linking them to the bombing was thin. Four were executed, one committed suicide, and three were pardoned in 1893.

Andrew Carnegie

A tycoon who came to dominate the burgeoning steel industry. His company, later named United States Steel, was the biggest corporation in U.S. history in 1901. After he retired, he donated most of his fortune to public libraries, universities, arts organizations, and other charitable causes.

Mary Harris “Mother” Jones

A prominent labor activist and community organizer, dubbed "the most dangerous woman in America" in 1902 by a West Virginia district attorney. Jones was born in Ireland and worked as a dressmaker and schoolteacher before turning to labor organizing in the 1870s, first for the Knights of Labor and later for the United Mine Workers. By the turn of the century, she had adopted the matronly public persona of "Mother Jones." In 1903 she organized a "Children’s Crusade" of youthful mill and mine workers who marched from Pennsylvania to New York to publicize the issue of child labor.

Samuel Gompers

The president of the American Federation of Labor nearly every year from its founding in 1886 until his death in 1924. Gompers was no foe of capitalism but wanted employers to offer workers a fair deal by paying high wages and providing job security.

New Immigrants

Immigrants from southern and eastern Europe who formed a recognizable wave of immigration from the 1880s until 1924, in contrast to the immigrants from western Europe who had come before them. These new immigrants congregated in ethnic urban neighborhoods, where they worried many native-born Americans, some of whom responded with nativist anti-immigrant campaigns and others of whom introduced urban reforms to help the immigrants assimilate.

liberal Protestants

Members of a branch of Protestantism that flourished from 1875 to 1925 and encouraged followers to use the Bible as a moral compass rather than to believe that the Bible represented scientific or historical truth. Many liberal Protestants became active in the “social gospel” and other reform movements of the era.

Tuskegee Institute

A normal and industrial school led by Booker T. Washington in Tuskegee, Alabama. It focused on training young black students in agriculture and the trades to help them achieve economic independence. Washington justified segregated vocational training as a necessary first step on the road to racial equality, although critics accused him of being too “accommodationist.”

yellow journalism

A scandal-mongering practice of journalism that emerged in New York during the Gilded Age out of the circulation battles between Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World and William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal. The expression has remained a pejorative term referring to sensationalist journalism practiced with unethical, unprofessional standards.