period 2 APUSH

Virginia Company

Virginia Company A joint-stock enterprise that King James I chartered in 1606; the company was to spread Christianity in the Americas as well as find ways to make a profit in it.

Roanoke colony

Failed English attempt to establish a colony on Roanoke Island in the Outer Banks; the colony disappeared sometime between 1587 and 1590.

John Smith

An English soldier and explorer who became one of the leaders of the Jamestown colony and helped to establish relations with the Powhatans. His narratives describe the early history of Jamestown as well as his explorations of what became New England.

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.

uprising 1622

in 1622 when Powhatan’s brother and successor, Opechancanough, led a surprise attack that in a single day wiped out a quarter of Virginia’s settler population of 1,200.

dower rights

In colonial America, the right of a widowed woman to inherit one-third of her deceased husband’s property.

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.

PuritansPuritans

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

pilgrims

Puritan separatists who broke completely with the Church of England and sailed to the Americas aboard the Mayflower, founding Plymouth Colony on Cape Cod in 1620.

Mayflower Compact

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

Great Migration

Large-scale migration of southern Blacks during and after World War I to the North, where jobs had become available during the labor shortage of the war years.

Pequot War

An armed conflict in 1637 fought between the Pequot Indians and an alliance of Narragansett, Mohegan, and English. The Pequot loss led to most of them being killed, enslaved, or incorporated into other Native nations.

Halfway covevnant

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

Act Concerning Religion (or Maryland Toleration Act)

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

King Philip’s War

A multiyear conflict that began in 1675 between the English and a Native alliance led by Wampanoags Metacom (King Philip) and Weetamoo. Its end result was broadened freedoms for white New Englanders and the dispossession of the Wampanoags and other Indians.

Metacom

Wampanoag leader whom the colonists called King Philip; he led a war against the English colonists, one in which he was killed.

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, 1651–1775; enforcement of the act led to growing resentment by colonists.

Covenant Chain

Alliance formed in the 1670s between the English colony of New York and the Haudenosaunee League and eventually other colonies and Native nations.

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.

Bacon’s Rebellion

Unsuccessful 1676 revolt led by planter Nathaniel Bacon against British Governor of Virginia William Berkeley’s administration.

Glorious Revolution

A coup in 1688 engineered by a small group of aristocrats that led to William of Orange taking the British throne in place of James II.

English Bill of Rights

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

Dominion of New England

Consolidation into a single colony of the New England colonies—and later New York and New Jersey—by royal governor Edmund Andros in 1686; dominion reverted to individual colonial governments three years later.

Salem witch trials

A crisis of trials and executions in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692 that resulted from anxiety over witchcraft. This is in contrast to indentured servants who had a term of indenture (usually seven years), rather than a lifetime of enslavement.

Walking Purchase

An infamous 1737 purchase of Native American land in which Pennsylvanian colonists tricked the Delaware Indians, who had agreed to cede land equivalent to the distance a man could walk in thirty-six hours, but the colonists marked out an area using a team of runners.

staple crops

Important cash crops; for example, cotton or tobacco.