AP U.S. History: Chapters 5 through 10 Review

Comprehensive set of 200 vocabulary flashcards covering colonial society, the French and Indian War, the road to revolution, the Revolutionary War, the Confederation era, the Constitutional Convention, and the Federalist era through 1800.

Edict of Nantes (1598)

A crown decree granting limited religious toleration to French Protestants (Huguenots), which halted domestic religious wars and allowed France to emerge as a dominant European power.

Samuel de Champlain

An intrepid French soldier and explorer known as the "Father of New France," who established the settlement of Quebec in 1608 and allied with the Huron Indians.

Quebec (1608)

The granite sentinel settlement commanding the St. Lawrence River, founded by Samuel de Champlain, marking the permanent beginning of France's North American empire.

Coureurs de bois

French fur-trappers ("runners of the woods") who ranged across North American waterways and forests in pursuit of beaver pelts, naming landmarks such as Baton Rouge and Terre Haute.

Voyageurs

Singing, paddle-swinging French canoeists who recruited Native Americans into the fur business, paddling vast flotillas of pelts to trading centers like Montreal.

Antoine Cadillac

A French explorer who founded Detroit ("the City of Straits") in 1701 to block English settlers from pushing into the strategic Ohio Valley.

Robert de La Salle

A French explorer who traveled down the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico in 1682, naming the interior basin "Louisiana" in honor of King Louis XIV.

New Orleans (1718)

A strategic French fortified post established at the mouth of the Mississippi River to block Spanish expansion on the Gulf and tap the interior fur trade.

King William's War (1689–1697)

An early contest between British colonists and French coureurs de bois and their respective Indian allies, waged as primitive guerrilla warfare without regular troops.

Queen Anne's War (1702–1713)

A colonial war pitting British colonists against French forces and Spain, featuring bloody frontier raids against villages like Schenectady and Deerfield.

Treaty of Utrecht (1713)

The peace treaty concluding Queen Anne's War in which Britain acquired French-populated Acadia (Nova Scotia), Newfoundland, Hudson Bay, and limited trading rights in Spanish America.

Salutary Neglect

Decades of lax British enforcement of colonial trade regulations, particularly the Navigation Laws, following the 1713 peace, which allowed American independence to germinate.

War of Jenkins's Ear (1739)

A scuffle between Britain and Spain sparked after a Spanish commander sliced off the ear of British sea captain Jenkins, fought in the Caribbean and the buffer colony of Georgia.

King George's War (1744–1748)

The North American theater of the European War of Austrian Succession, in which New England colonists captured the French fortress of Louisbourg.

Louisbourg

A reputedly impregnable French fortress on Cape Breton Island guarding the St. Lawrence River; captured by New Englanders in 1745 but returned to France by the 1748 peace treaty.

Ohio Valley

The critical inland region contested by westward-pushing British colonists and the French, who required it to connect their Canadian holdings with the lower Mississippi Valley.

Fort Duquesne

A formidable French stronghold built at the strategic forks of the Ohio, Monongahela, and Allegheny Rivers, later the site of Pittsburgh.

Fort Necessity

A makeshift crude breastwork in the Ohio Country where twenty-one-year-old George Washington and his Virginia militiamen were surrounded and forced to surrender on July 4, 1754.

Acadians

French residents of Nova Scotia uprooted and expelled at bayonet point by British authorities in 1755, many of whom migrated to Louisiana and became known as Cajuns.

French and Indian War (Seven Years' War)

A nine-year global conflict begun in 1754 by George Washington in the Ohio Valley, pitting Britain and Prussia against France, Spain, Austria, and Russia across seven seas.

Albany Congress (1754)

An intercolonial conference summoned by Britain to Albany, New York, attended by delegates from seven colonies to keep the Iroquois loyal and foster colonial unity.

"Join, or Die"

Benjamin Franklin's famous 1754 political cartoon in the Pennsylvania Gazette showing a disjointed snake, published to promote colonial union at the Albany Congress.

General Edward Braddock

A bullheaded sixty-year-old British general mortally wounded in 1755 near Fort Duquesne after his force of regulars and colonial "buckskins" was ambushed in the forest.

William Pitt

A British statesman known as the "Great Commoner" and "Organizer of Victory," who concentrated Britain's military power on capturing the vitals of Canada: Quebec and Montreal.

Battle of Quebec (1759)

A historic engagement on the Plains of Abraham where British forces under James Wolfe defeated French forces under Montcalm, causing the surrender of Quebec.

Peace of Paris (1763)

The treaty ending the French and Indian War that eliminated French power from mainland North America, leaving Britain dominant in the East and Spain holding trans-Mississippi Louisiana.

Pontiac's Uprising (1763)

A violent campaign led by Ottawa chief Pontiac and allied tribes to drive British forces from the Ohio Country, besieging Detroit and killing two thousand soldiers and settlers.

Proclamation of 1763

A royal decree prohibiting American colonists from settling west of the Appalachian Mountains, designed to prevent Indian conflicts but defying colonial expansionist hopes.

Pennsylvania Dutch

A corrupt term for Deutsch, referring to the heavy-accented, mostly Lutheran German immigrants who settled in the backcountry of Pennsylvania and made up one-third of its population.

Scots-Irish

Pugnacious Lowland Scots Presbyterian immigrants who had previously lived in Northern Ireland before settling along the Appalachian frontier and Great Wagon Road.

Rack-renting

The ruthless practice of increasing land rents inflicted by Scottish and Irish landlords that prompted waves of Scots-Irish to abandon their homes and migrate to America.

Great Wagon Road

An inland travel route hugging the eastern Appalachian foothills from Pennsylvania to Georgia, along which chains of Scots-Irish settlements were established.

Paxton Boys (1764)

An armed march of Scots-Irish frontiersmen on Philadelphia protesting the Quaker oligarchy's lenient policy toward Native Americans.

Regulator Movement

A small, violent insurrection in North Carolina led by backcountry Scots-Irish settlers against eastern domination and corrupt colonial administration.

Michel-Guillaume Jean de Crèvecoeur

A French settler in the 1770s who described the multiethnic American population as a "promiscuous breed" and posed the classic question, "What then is the American, this new man?"

Jayle Birds

Approximately 50,000 British paupers and convicts involuntarily deported by London authorities to the colonies under an unfair English penal code containing about 200 capital crimes.

Triangular Trade

An infamously profitable Atlantic trade system involving New England rum traded for African slaves, who were traded in the West Indies for molasses to make more rum.

Molasses Act (1733)

A British statute aimed at squelching North American trade with the French West Indies, which American merchants circumvented through extensive smuggling and bribery.

Naval Stores

Highly valued colonial timber byproducts such as tar, pitch, rosin, and turpentine needed to maintain Britain's maritime dominance, promoted by crown bounties.

King's Broad Arrow

A royal mark chopped into majestic colonial white pine trees reserving them for future use as masts for His Majesty's navy, under penalty of a fine.

Colonial Taverns

Sociable stops along waterways and roads containing bars and bowling alleys where all social classes mingled, serving as cradles of democracy and political agitation.

Anglican Church (Colonial)

The tax-supported Church of England established in the southern colonies and parts of New York, which served as a major prop of royal authority in America.

Congregational Church

The established Puritan-descended church in all New England colonies except Rhode Island, which fostered seditious sermons and supported the revolutionary movement.

Arminianism

The theological doctrine named after Dutch theologian Jacobus Arminius preaching that individual free will, rather than divine predestination, determines a person's eternal fate.

Great Awakening

A rousing intercolonial religious revival in the 1730s and 1740s emphasizing direct, emotive spirituality and human helplessness, sparking the first spontaneous mass movement in America.

Jonathan Edwards

An intellectual pastor from Northampton, Massachusetts, who ignited the Great Awakening in 1734 by preaching against salvation through good works and affirming total dependence on God's grace.

"Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God"

Jonathan Edwards's most famous hellfire sermon, in which he depicted God holding sinners over the pit of hell like a spider or loathsome insect over a fire.

George Whitefield

An itinerant English parson whose booming, theatrical open-air preaching toured the colonies starting in 1738, moving audiences and converting thousands of sinners.

Old Lights

Orthodox colonial clergymen who were deeply skeptical of the theatrical emotionalism and revivalist antics introduced during the Great Awakening.

New Lights

Ministers and parishioners who defended the Great Awakening for revitalizing American religion and who helped establish centers of higher learning like Princeton, Brown, and Rutgers.

John Trumbull (1756–1843)

An aspiring Connecticut painter discouraged by his father's remark that "Connecticut is not Athens," who had to travel to London to pursue his artistic career.

Charles Willson Peale (1741–1827)

An American portrait artist celebrated for his paintings of George Washington, who also operated a museum, stuffed birds, and practiced dentistry.

John Singleton Copley (1738–1815)

A preeminent colonial portrait painter from Boston who moved to England in 1774 to avoid the disruptions of war and was regarded as a Loyalist.

Phillis Wheatley (c. 1753–1784)

An enslaved African girl brought to Boston who received no formal education yet published a polished book of poetry in England influenced by Alexander Pope.

Poor Richard's Almanack

A widely read publication edited by Benjamin Franklin from 1732 to 1758 containing pithy proverbs emphasizing thrift, industry, common sense, and morality.

John Peter Zenger Case (1734–1735)

A celebrated New York trial where printer Zenger assailed the corrupt royal governor and was acquitted of seditious libel, establishing the legal precedent that truth is a defense.

Republicanism (18th-century)

A political philosophy defining a just society as one where citizens willingly subordinate selfish interests to the common good, opposing monarchy and aristocracy while depending on civic virtue.

Radical Whigs

Eighteenth-century British commentators whose writings warned colonists against the threat posed to liberty by arbitrary monarchical authority, royal patronage, and moral corruption.

Mercantilism

An economic doctrine holding that a nation's military and political power is measured by gold and silver, requiring colonies to supply raw materials and purchase manufactured goods.

Navigation Law of 1650

A Parliamentary act designed to eliminate Dutch competitors from the American carrying trade by requiring all colonial commerce to be transported exclusively in British or colonial ships.

Enumerated Products

Specified colonial goods, notably tobacco, that merchants were legally required to ship exclusively to Great Britain, even if foreign prices were higher.

Royal Veto (Colonial)

The British crown's reserved right to nullify colonial statutes that undermined the mercantilist system, used 469 times out of 8,563 reviewed laws.

George Grenville

The British Prime Minister who aroused colonial hostility after 1763 by strictly enforcing the Navigation Laws and securing the Sugar, Quartering, and Stamp Acts from Parliament.

Sugar Act of 1764

The first law ever passed by Parliament to raise tax revenues in the colonies for the crown, which levied duties on foreign sugar imported from the West Indies.

Quartering Act of 1765

A British statute requiring specified colonies to provide food, provisions, and housing for British troops stationed in North America.

Stamp Act (1765)

An odious tax requiring embossed stamps on bills of sale for about fifty trade items and legal documents, including playing cards, pamphlets, newspapers, and marriage licenses.

Admiralty Courts

Hated British military courts without juries that assumed defendants were guilty until proven innocent, used to prosecute violators of the Sugar and Stamp Acts.

"No Taxation Without Representation"

The rallying slogan of angry colonists who conceded Parliament's right to legislate for the empire but denied its right to levy taxes on unrepresented colonists.

Virtual Representation

Prime Minister Grenville's theory that every member of Parliament represented all British subjects, including the American colonists who had never cast a ballot.

Stamp Act Congress (1765)

A meeting in New York City of twenty-seven delegates from nine colonies that drafted a petition of rights and grievances asking the king and Parliament to repeal the Stamp Act.

Nonimportation Agreements

Widespread consumer boycotts against British imported goods, which united American colonists in common resistance and stimulated the wearing of homespun clothing.

Sons and Daughters of Liberty

Militant groups of colonial protesters who enforced nonimportation agreements by tarring and feathering violators and hanging effigies of stamp agents on liberty poles.

Declaratory Act (1766)

A statute passed by Parliament immediately upon repealing the Stamp Act, affirming Parliament's unqualified right "to bind" the American colonies "in all cases whatsoever."

Charles Townshend

The gifted but erratic British Chancellor of the Exchequer who convinced Parliament in 1767 to impose light indirect import duties on glass, lead, paper, paint, and tea.

Townshend Acts (1767)

British import levies payable at American ports whose revenues were specifically earmarked to pay the salaries of royal governors and judges, stripping assemblies of the power of the purse.

Boston Massacre (March 5, 1770)

A clash between Boston townspeople and ten British redcoats in which the soldiers opened fire without orders under extreme provocation, killing or wounding eleven civilians.

Crispus Attucks

A powerfully built runaway mulatto and mob leader who was one of the first colonists killed by British soldiers during the Boston Massacre.

Lord North

King George III's pliant, corpulent Tory Prime Minister whose government persuaded Parliament in 1770 to repeal Townshend duties while retaining the offensive three-pence tea tax.

Samuel Adams

A Massachusetts political organizer and propagandist who lived for politics, defended colonial rights, and established the local committees of correspondence.

Committees of Correspondence

Underground communication networks first created by Samuel Adams in Boston in 1772 to spread the spirit of resistance by exchanging letters across Massachusetts towns.

Intercolonial Committees of Correspondence

Central standing committees initiated by Virginia's House of Burgesses in 1773 that shared intelligence between colonies, directly evolving into the first continental congresses.

British East India Company Monopoly (1773)

A government-granted monopoly over the American tea market awarded to a financially burdened corporation, giving it lower prices that colonists rejected as a tax trap.

Thomas Hutchinson

The royal governor of Massachusetts who ordered tea ships not to clear Boston harbor until their cargoes were unloaded, directly triggering the Boston Tea Party.

Boston Tea Party (December 16, 1773)

An act of defiance in which a band of Bostonians disguised as Indians boarded docked cargo ships and dumped 342 chests of British East India Company tea into the harbor.

"Intolerable Acts" (1774)

Punitive Parliamentary acts passed to chastise Massachusetts after the Boston Tea Party, which revoked chartered rights, restricted town meetings, and closed Boston harbor.

Boston Port Act (1774)

A drastic statute within the "Intolerable Acts" that closed Boston harbor to all commerce until damages for the destroyed tea were paid and order was restored.

Quebec Act of 1774

A British statute guaranteeing Catholic faith and customs without trial by jury or assemblies to French-Canadians, while extending Quebec's territory southward to the Ohio River.

First Continental Congress (1774)

A consultative assembly of fifty-five delegates from twelve colonies that met in Philadelphia from September to October 1774, creating The Association and drafting a Declaration of Rights.

The Association (1774)

A boycott agreement adopted by the First Continental Congress calling for complete nonimportation, nonexportation, and nonconsumption of British goods.

Battles of Lexington and Concord (1775)

The opening military clashes of the Revolutionary War in April 1775, sparked when British troops attempted to seize colonial stores and arrest Samuel Adams and John Hancock.

Minute Men

Rapidly mobilized colonial militia members who stood their ground at Lexington green, suffering eight casualties before forcing the British to retreat from Concord.

Marquis de Lafayette

A wealthy nineteen-year-old French nobleman commissioned as a major general in the Continental Army whose military services and connections secured essential French aid.

Lord Dunmore's Ethiopian Regiment

A British military unit formed after Virginia's royal governor issued a 1775 proclamation promising freedom to any enslaved black who joined the British army.

Second Continental Congress (1775)

An assembly representing all thirteen colonies that convened in Philadelphia in May 1775, organized military defenses, and selected George Washington to command the Continental Army.

George Washington (Continental Commander)

A forty-three-year-old Virginia planter chosen by the Continental Congress to head the army besieging Boston, renowned for moral character, patience, and leadership.

Ethan Allen

The commander who, with Benedict Arnold, surprised and captured the British garrisons at Ticonderoga and Crown Point in May 1775, securing gunpowder and artillery.

Battle of Bunker Hill (June 1775)

A confrontation on Breed's Hill where 1,500 entrenched Americans inflicted heavy casualties on 3,000 advancing redcoats before retreating when their gunpowder was exhausted.

Olive Branch Petition (July 1775)

A Continental Congress petition professing American loyalty to the crown and begging King George III to prevent further hostilities, rejected by the king.

Hessians ("Hessian Flies")

German mercenary troops hired from German princes by King George III to fight against the colonists, many of whom deserted in America lured by promises of land.

Richard Montgomery

An Irish-born American general who captured Montreal in 1775 and was killed during a blizzard assault on Quebec on the final day of 1775.