Dcush terms

chapter 5-15

Navigation Acts

Imposed on the colonies by England to help reduce the debt from the Seven Years' War and pay for continued British protection.

Virtual representation

The idea that American colonies, although they had no actual representative Parliament, were effectively represented by all members of Parliament.

Writs of assistance

One of the colonies' main complaints against Britain; these allowed unlimited search warrants without cause to look for evidence of smuggling.

Proclamation of 1763

Barred further settlement on lands west of the Appalachian Mountains, which alarmed many colonists.

Sugar Act

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

Revenue Act

Enlarged the list of enumerated goods under the Navigation Acts.

Stamp Act

Parliament's 1765 requirement that revenue stamps be affixed to all colonial printed matter, documents, and playing cards.

"no taxation without representation"

The rallying cry of opponents to the 1765 Stamp Act. The slogan decried the colonists' lack of representation in Parliament.

Stamp Act Congress

Met in 1765 with delegates from most North American colonies that affirmed Americans' loyalty to Great Britain while insisting on their right to consent to taxation.

Committee on Correspondence

Group organized by Samuel Adams in retaliation for the Gaspee incident to address American grievances, assert American rights, and form a network of rebellion.

Sons of Liberty

Organization formed by Samuel Adams, John Hancock, and other radicals in response to the Stamp Act.

Declaratory Act

Affirmed that Parliament had the authority and power to pass laws in the future that affected the colonies, including new taxes.

Regulators

Groups of backcountry Carolina settlers who protested colonial policies.

Townshend Acts

1767 parliamentary measures that taxed tea and other commodities, and established a Board of Customs Commissioners and colonial vice-admiralty courts.

Boston Massacre

Clash between British soldiers and a Boston mob on March 5, 1770 in which five colonists were killed.

Crispus Attucks

During the Boston Massacre, the individual who was supposedly at the head of the crowd of hecklers and who baited British troops. He was killed when the British troops fired on the crowd.

East India Company

A giant trading monopoly that effectively ruled recently acquired British possessions in India.

Boston Tea Party

The incident on December 16, 1773, in which the Sons of Liberty, dressed as Indians, dumped hundreds of chests of tea into Boston Harbor to protest the Tea Act of 1773.

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 quartering in private homes, and reduced the number of elected officials in Massachusetts.

Quebec Act

Extended Canada's boundaries and allowed for legal toleration of the Roman Catholic Church in the new British province.

Suffolk Resolves

Urged Americans to refuse to obey the new British laws, withhold taxes, and prepare for war.

Continental Congress

First meeting of representatives of the colonies, held in Philadelphia in 1774 to formulate actions against British policies.

Continental Association

Created to halt virtually all trade with Great Britain and the West Indies.

Battles of Lexington and Concord

The first shots fired in the Revolutionary War, on April 19, 1775, near Boston.

Battle of Bunker Hill

First major battle of the Revolutionary War which 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.

Lord Dunmore's proclamation

A proclamation issued in 1775 that offered freedom to any slave who fought for the king against the rebelling colonists.

Olive Branch Petition

Sent from Congress to George III reaffirming the colonies' loyalty to the crown and hoping for a "permanent reconciliation."

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 that made the break with Britain official; drafted by a committee of the Second Continental Congress.

American exceptionalism

The belief that the United States has a special mission to be a refuge from tyranny, a symbol of freedom, and model for the rest of the world.

Hessians

German soldiers paid to fight for the British in the Revolutionary War.

Battle of Saratoga

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

Benedict Arnold

A traitorous American commander who planned to sell out the American garrison at West Point to the British. His plot was discovered before it could be executed, and he joined the British army.

Battle of Yorktown

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

Treaty of Paris

Signed on September 3, 1783 and 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.

suffrage

The right to vote.

"wall of separation"

To push to separate church and state, Deists sought this to protect politics and intellect from religion.

Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom

A Virginia law, drafted by Thomas Jefferson in 1777 and enacted in 1786, that guarantees freedom of, and from, religion.

Christian Republicanism

Most leaders of the American Revolution were devout Christians and believed that religious values reinforced the morality required for a republic to thrive.

free labor

Working for a wage or owning a farm or shop.

inflation

An economic condition in which prices rise continuously.

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 Great Britain during the War of Independence.

New Brunswick

New province created in Canada to accommodate the large numbers of Loyalists leaving the United States.

Joseph Brant

The Mohawk leader who led the Iroquois against the Americans in the Revolutionary War.

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

Arguments for liberty presented to New England's courts and legislatures in the early 1770s by enslaved African-Americans.

Lemuel Haynes

A black member of the Massachusetts militia and celebrated minister who urged that Americans extend their conception of freedom to enslaved Africans during the Revolutionary era.

free Blacks

African-American persons not held in slavery.

Ladies' Associations

Formed by women to raise funds for American soldiers.

coverture

Principle in English and American law that a married woman lost her legal identity 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 played an indispensable role by training future citizens.

Articles of Confederation

First frame of government for the United States that was in effect from 1781 to 1788 that provided a weak central authority and was replaced by the Constitution. First Congress would govern a territory; then the territory would be admitted to the Union as a full state.

Ordinance of 1784

A law drafted by Thomas Jefferson that regulated land ownership and defined the terms by which western land would be marketed and settled; it established stages of self-government for the West.

Ordinance of 1785

A law that regulated land sales in the Old Northwest. The land surveyed was divided into 640-acre plots and sold at $1 per acre.

Northwest Ordinance of 1787

Law that created the Northwest Territory (area north of the Ohio River and west Pennsylvania), established conditions for self-government and statehood, included a Bill of Rights, and permanently prohibited slavery.

empire of liberty

The idea, expressed by Jefferson, that the United States would not rule its new territories as colonies, but rather would eventually admit them as full member states.

Shays's Rebellion

Attempt by compatriots, seeking debt relief through insurance of paper currency and lower taxes, to prevent courts from seizing property from indebted farmers.

Constitutional Convention

Meeting in Philadelphia, May 25-Septmeber 17, 1787, of representatives from twelve colonies (excluding Rhode Island) to revise the existing Articles of Confederation.

Virginia Plan

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

New Jersey Plan

Delegation to the Constitution 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.

division of powers

Also known as federalism; the division of political power between the states and federal governments under the U.S. Constitution.

checks and balances

A system created to prevent any one branch of the national government from dominating the other two.

separation of powers

Also known as check and balances; in which the power is divided between the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of the national government so that no one can dominate the other two and endanger citizens' liberties.

extraterritoriality

Slavery as a legal condition remained the status of an individual slave, even if that individual entered a "free" state where slavery had been abolished.

three-fifths clause

A provision signed into the Constitution in 1787 determining which portion of the slave population would be counted in determining each state's representation in the House of Representatives and its electoral votes for president.

The Federalist

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, John Jay and published under the pseudonym "Publius."

Anti-Federalists

Opponents of the Constitution who saw it as a limitation on individual states' rights; they 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.

Treaty of Greenville

1795 agreement under which twelve Indian tribes ceded most of Ohio and Indiana to the federal government, and which also established the "annuity" system.

annuity system

System of yearly payments to Native American tribes by which the federal government justified and institutionalized its interference in Indian tribal affairs.

gradual emancipation

American immigration laws under which nearly all white people could immigrate to the United States and become naturalized citizens.

open immigration

American immigration laws under which nearly all white people could immigrate to the United States and become naturalized citizens.

Notes on the State of Virginia

Thomas Jefferson's 1785 book that claimed, among other things, that Black people were incapable of becoming citizens and living in harmony alongside white people due to the legacy of slavery and what Jefferson believed were the "real distinctions that nature has made" between races.