APUSH Vocab Terms (Midterm)

Enlightenment

An eighteenth-century philosophical movement that emphasized the use of reason to reevaluate previously accepted doctrines and traditions and the power of reason to understand and shape the world.

Natural Rights

The rights to life, liberty, and property. According to the English philosopher John Locke in Two Treatises of Government, political authority was not given by God to monarchs. Instead, it derived from social compacts that people made to preserve their natural rights.

Tenancy

The rental of property. To attract tenants in New York's Hudson River Valley, Dutch and English manorial lords granted long tenancy leases, with the right to sell improvements- houses and barns for example- to the next tenant.

Sugar Act of 1764

British law that decreases the duty on French molasses, making it more attractive for shippers to obey the law, and at the same time raised penalties for smuggling. The act enrages New England merchants, who opposed both the tax and the fact that prosecuted merchants would be tried by British-appointed judges in a vice-admiralty court.

Stamp Act of 1765

British law imposing a tax on all paper used in the colonies. Widespread resistance to the Stamp Act prevented it from taking effect and led to its repeal in 1766.

Quartering Act of 1765

A British law passed by parliament at the request of General Thomas Gage, the British military commander in America, that required colonial governments to provide barracks and food for British troops.

1st Continental Congress

September 1774 gathering of colonial delegates in Philadelphia to discuss the crisis precipitated by the Coercive Acts. The Congress produced a declaration of rights and an agreement to impose a limited boycott of trade with Britain.

2nd Continental Congress

Legislative body that governed the United States from May 1775 through the war's duration. It established an army, created its own money, and declared independence once all hope for a peaceful reconciliation with Britain was gone.

Declaration of Independence

A document containing philosophical principles and a list of grievances that declared separation from Britain. Adopted by the Second Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, it ended a period of intense debate with moderates still hoping to reconcile with Britain.

Battle of Saratoga

A multistage battle in New York ending with the surrender of British general John Burgoyne. The victory ensured the diplomatic success of American representatives in Paris, who won a military alliance with France.

Valley Forge

A military camp in which George Washington's army of 12,000 soldiers and hundreds of camp followers suffered horribly in the winter of 1777-1778.

Battle of Yorktown

A battle in which French and American troops and a French fleet trapped the British army under the command of General Charles Cornwallis at Yorktown, Virginia. The Franco-American victory broke the resolve of the British government.

Treaty of Paris 1783

The treaty that ended the Revolutionary War. In the treaty, Great Britain formally recognized American independence and relinquished its claims to lands south of the Great Lakes and east of the Mississippi River.

Northwest Ordinance

A land act that provided for orderly settlement and established a process by which settled territories would become the states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin. It also banned slavery in the Northwest Territory.

Articles of Confederation

The written document defining the structure of government from 1781 to 1788, under which the Union was a confederation of equal states, with no executive and limited powers, existing mainly to foster a common defense.

Virginia Plan

A plan drafted by James Madison that was presented at the Philadelphia Constitutional Convention. It designed a powerful three-branch government, with representation in both houses of the congress tied to population; this plan would have eclipsed the vote of small states in the national government.

New Jersey Plan

Alternative to the Virginia Plan drafted by delegates from small states, retaining the confederation's single house congress with one vote per state. It shared with the Virginia Plan enhanced congressional powers to raise revenue, control commerce, and make binding requisitions on the states.

Federalists

Supporters of the Constitution of 1787, which creates a strong central government; their opponents, the Antifederalist, feared that a strong central government would corrupt the nation's newly won liberty.

Anti-Federalists

Opponents of ratification of the Constitution. Antifederalists feared that a powerful and distant central government would be out of touch with the needs of citizens. They also complained that it failed to guarantee individual liberties in a bill of rights.

Bill of Rights

The first ten amendments to the Constitution, officially ratified by 1791. The amendments safeguarded fundamental personal rights, including freedom of speech and religion, and mandated legal procedures, such as trial by jury.

Bank of the United States

A bank chartered in 1790 and jointly owned by private stockholders and the national government. Alexander Hamilton argued that the bank would provide stability to the specie-starved American economy by making loans to merchants, handling government funds, and issuing bills of credit.

Alien and Sedition Acts

The Alien Act authorized the deportation of foreigners, and the Sedition Act prohibited the publication of insults or malicious attacks on the president or members of Congress.

Treaty of Greenville

A 1795 treaty between the United States and various Indian tribes in Ohio. American negotiators acknowledged Indian ownership of the land, and, in return for various payments, the Western Confederacy ceded most of Ohio to the United States.

Marbury vs. Madison

A Supreme Court case that established the principle of judicial review in finding the parts of the Judiciary Act of 1789 were in conflict with the Constitution. For the first time, the Supreme Court assumed legal authority to overrule acts of other branches of the government.

Louisiana Purchase

The 1803 Purchase of French territory west of the Mississippi River that stretched from the Gulf of Mexico to Canada. The Louisiana Purchase nearly doubled the size of the United States and opened the way for future American expansion west. The purchase required President Thomas Jefferson to exercise powers not explicitly granted to him by the Constitution.

Monroe Doctrine

The 1823 declaration by President James Monroe that the Western Hemisphere was closed to any further colonization or interference by European powers. In exchange, Monroe pledged that the United States would not become involved in European affairs.

Commonwealth System

The republican system of political economy created by state government by 1820, whereby states funneled aid to private businesses whose projects would improve the general welfare.

Missouri Compromise

A series of political agreements devised by Speaker of the house Henry Clay. Maine entered the Union as a free state in 1820 and Missouri followed as a slave state in 1821, preserving a balance in the Senate between North and South.

Second Great Awakening

Unprecedented religious revival that swept the nation between 1790 and 1850; it also proved to be a major impetus for the reform movements of the era.

Industrial Revolution

A burst of major inventions and economic expansion based on water and steam power and the use of machine technology that transformed certain industries, such as cotton textiles and irons, between 1790 and 1860.

Division of Labor

A system of manufacture that divides production into a series of distinct and repetitive tasks performed by machines or workers.

Unions

Organizations of workers that began during the Industrial Revolution to bargain with employers over wages, hours, benefits, and control of the workplace.

Erie Canal

A 364-mile waterway connecting the Hudson River and Lake Erie. The Erie Canal brought prosperity to the entire Great Lakes region.

Middle Class

An economic group of prosperous farmers, artisans, and traders that emerged in the early nineteenth century, reflecting a dramatic increase in prosperity.

Self-made man

A nineteenth-century ideal that celebrated men who rose to wealth or social prominence from humble origins through self-discipline, hard work, and temperate habits.

Benevolent Empire

A broad-ranging campaign of moral and institutional reforms inspired by evangelical Christian ideals and endorsed by upper-middle class men and women in the 1820s and 1830s.

American Temperance Movement

A society invigorated by evangelical Protestants in 1832 that set out to curb the consumption of alcoholic beverages.

Nativism

Antiforeign sentiment in the United States that fueled anti-immigrant and immigration-restriction policies against the Irish and Germans in the 1840s and 1850s.

Political Machine

A highly organized group of insiders that directs a political party, usually run by professional politicians.

Spoils System

The widespread award of public jobs to political supporters after an electoral victory. In 1829, Andrew Jackson instituted the system on the national level, arguing that the rotation of officeholders was preferable to a permanent group of bureaucrats.

Internal Improvements

Public works such as roads and canals

Corrupt Bargain

A term used by Andrew Jackson's supporters for the appointment by President John Quincy Adams of Henry Clay as his secretary of state.

Nullification

The constitutional argument advanced by John C. Calhoun that a state legislature or convention could void a law passed by Congress.

States Rights

An interpretation of the Constitution that exalts the sovereignty of the states and circumscribes the authority of the national government.

Second Bank of the United States

National bank with multiple branches chartered in 1816 for twenty years, intended to help regulate the economy.

Indian Removal Act

Act that directed the mandatory relocation of eastern tribes to territory west of the Mississippi.

Trail of Tears

Forced westward journey of Cherokees from their lands in Georgia to present-day Oklahoma in 1838, during which nearly a quarter of the Cherokees died en route.

Capitalism

An economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production (like factories and land) and the operation of those means for profit in a competitive market

Laissez-Faire Economics

The principle that the less government does, the better, particularly in reference to the economy.

Jacksonian Democrats

A political movement during the 1820s-1830s, led by President Andrew Jackson, that emphasized greater political power for the "common man" and expanded suffrage to all white men by eliminating property requirements

Mormonism

The religion of members of the Church of Latter Day Saints, founded by Joseph Smith in 1830.

Underground Railroad

An informal network of whites and free blacks in the South that assisted fugitive slaves to reach freedom in the North.

Alamo

The 1836 defeat by the Mexican army of the Texan garrison defending the Alamo in San Antonio.

Secret Ballot

Form of voting that allows the voter to enter a choice in privacy without having to submit a recognizable ballot.

Free-Soil Movement

A political movement that opposed the expansion of slavery. In 1848 the free-soilers organized the Free-Soil Party, which depicted slavery as a threat to republicanism and to the Jeffersonian ideal of a freeholder society, arguments that won broad support among aspiring white farmers.

Wilmot Proviso

The 1846 proposal by Representative David Wilmot of Pennsylvania to ban slavery in territory acquired from the Mexican War.

Dred Scott v. Sandford

The 1857 Supreme Court decision thatThe 1857 Supreme Court decision that ruled the Missouri Compromise unconstitutional and denied African Americans citizenship.

Kansas-Nebraska Act

A controversial 1854 law that divided Indian Territory into Kansas and Nebraska and left the new territories to decide the issue of slavery on the basis of popular sovereignty.

Compromise of 1850

Laws passed in 1850 meant to resolve the dispute over the status of slavery in the territories.

Bleeding Kansas

Term for the bloody struggle between proslavery and antislavery factions in Kansas following its organization as a territory in the fall of 1854.