AP U.S. History: Colonial Era, Road to Revolution, and the Revolutionary War

Comprehensive practice flashcards matching key terms, historical figures, legislative acts, and military battles from the French and Indian War, the American Enlightenment and Great Awakening, the imperial crises of the 1760s–1770s, and the Revolutionary War.

General Edward Braddock

The commander-in-chief of the British army in America who was ambushed and killed in 1755 while attempting to retake the forks of the Ohio River where George Washington had surrendered at Fort Necessity.

William Pitt

The English secretary of state and future prime minister who revitalized the British war effort in 1757 by forcibly enlisting colonists, seizing supplies, and quartering troops.

Battle of Quebec (1759)

A major confrontation on September 13, 1759, in which British General James Wolfe scaled a hidden ravine at night to defeat French forces under the Marquis de Montcalm, resulting in the deaths of both commanding generals.

Family Compact (Pacte de Famille)

An August 1761 military alliance signed between King Louis XV of France and King Charles III of Spain that prompted Great Britain to expand hostilities against Spain.

Treaty of Paris (1763)

The peace agreement signed on February 10, 1763, that officially ended the Seven Years' War and transferred French colonial possessions in Canada to Great Britain.

Proclamation of 1763

A royal decree by the King of England barring Anglo-American settlement west of the Appalachian Mountains in order to reduce costly clashes with Native American populations.

Board of Trade and Plantations

An advisory body established by the British Crown in 1696 that monitored colonial commerce but lacked real authority to enforce executive decisions.

Privy Council

The central administrative agency in London that held governing authority over the British Empire alongside the admiralty and the treasury.

Colonial Agents

Lobbyists sent by American colonial assemblies to London to represent provincial interests, the most prominent of whom was Benjamin Franklin, who represented Pennsylvania, Georgia, New Jersey, and Massachusetts.

Grand Council (Albany Plan of Union)

The representative colonial legislature proposed in Benjamin Franklin's 1754 Albany Plan of Union, designed to be elected every three years by colonial assemblies to oversee defense, trade, and taxation.

President General (Albany Plan of Union)

The central executive officer proposed under the 1754 Albany Plan of Union, appointed and supported by the British Crown to direct defense and Indian treaties alongside the Grand Council.

The Enlightenment

A 17th- and 18th-century intellectual movement originating in Europe that stressed reason, skepticism, empiricism, and natural laws over superstition and traditional monarchical or church authority.

Thomas Hobbes

The English political theorist who published Leviathan in 1651, asserting that humans are naturally selfish and require an absolute monarch to maintain order.

Two Treatises on Government

The 1690 work by John Locke stating that all humans possess inalienable natural rights to life, liberty, and property, which governments are instituted to protect.

Social Contract Theory (John Locke)

The philosophical concept that an unwritten agreement exists wherein citizens grant power to a government only so long as it protects their natural rights; if it fails, citizens hold the right to replace it.

Baron Charles de Montesquieu

An Enlightenment thinker who argued that large centralized governments are ineffective and proposed federalism—dividing authority among tiers (empire, region, county, village) and branches.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The Enlightenment philosopher who published The Social Contract in 1762, arguing for checks and balances through an independent legislative body to represent the people against executive overreach.

The Great Awakening

A colonial religious revival of the 1730s and 1740s that emphasized emotionalism, personal salvation, and individual spiritual authority over traditional liturgical structures.

Jonathan Edwards

A prominent Great Awakening revivalist theologian and preacher best known for his sermon 'Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.'

New Light Colleges

Colleges founded in the wake of the Great Awakening to train revivalist ministers and educate followers, including Princeton, Brown, Dartmouth, and Columbia.

George Whitefield's Orphan House

A charitable institution established in Georgia for destitute children, funded by evangelist George Whitefield through extensive preaching tours across the American colonies.

Nathan Cole

A Connecticut farmer whose 1741 diary detailed dropping his plow and riding in haste to Middletown to hear George Whitefield preach to an assembled crowd of thousands.

Reverend Nathanael Henchman

An 'Old Light' pastor of the First Church in Lynn who published an open letter in July 1745 denouncing George Whitefield as a dangerous agitator who disrupted parish order and unity.

Sugar Act (1764)

Parliamentary legislation intended to curb illicit colonial trade with the foreign West Indies by establishing stricter customs enforcement on sugar while lowering the duty on molasses.

Currency Act (1765)

A British statute that forbade colonial assemblies from issuing paper legal tender and required all outstanding paper money in circulation to be retired.

The Stamp Act (1765)

The first direct, internal parliamentary tax levied on American legal documents, newspapers, and printed goods, creating widespread unified resistance across all thirteen colonies.

Virginia Resolves

A set of resolutions drafted by Patrick Henry declaring that Virginians were subject only to taxes levied by their own elected representative assemblies.

Sons of Liberty

An intercolonial political organization formed in 1765 that utilized direct action, protests, and the intimidation of stamp distributors to resist parliamentary taxation.

Declaratory Act (1766)

Legislation passed by Parliament immediately upon repealing the Stamp Act, asserting full authority to legislate for the American colonies 'in all cases whatsoever.'

Mutiny Act of 1765

British legislation requiring colonial provincial authorities to provide quarters, barracks, and supplies for stationed royal troops.

Townshend Duties

Import taxes levied in 1767 by Charles Townshend on colonial imports of glass, lead, paint, paper, and tea, classified by the ministry as external duties.

Massachusetts Circular Letter

A formal protest circulated in 1767 by the Massachusetts Assembly condemning the Townshend Duties, reaffirmed by an Assembly vote of 92 to 17 against British orders to rescind it.

Boston Massacre

A violent confrontation on March 5, 1770, in which British sentries guarding the customs house fired into an aggressive crowd, killing five colonists.

Committees of Correspondence

An intercolonial network proposed by Samuel Adams in Boston in 1772 to publicize grievances against British policies and coordinate resistance propaganda.

Virtual Representation

The British constitutional doctrine stating that members of Parliament represented the interests of all British subjects throughout the undivided empire, regardless of whether subjects voted for them.

Tea Act (1773)

Legislation designed to prevent the bankruptcy of the British East India Company by granting it a monopoly to export tea directly to America without paying navigation taxes.

Daughters of Liberty

A female patriotic association led by Mercy Otis Warren that enforced consumer boycotts against British imports and disseminated anti-British political writings.

Boston Tea Party

A protest staged on December 16, 1773, in which three groups of fifty colonists disguised as Mohawk Indians boarded British merchant vessels and dumped tea cargoes into Boston Harbor.

Intolerable (Coercive) Acts

Punitive statutes passed in 1774 following the Boston Tea Party that closed the Port of Boston, restricted Massachusetts self-government, mandated troop quartering, and sent royal officials to Britain for trial.

First Continental Congress

A convention of delegates from twelve colonies (excluding Georgia) that met in Philadelphia in September 1774, approving military preparations and enacting total non-importation, non-exportation, and non-consumption of British goods.

Second Continental Congress

The intercolonial assembly that convened in 1775, established the Continental Army, appointed George Washington commander-in-chief, and drafted the Declaration of Independence.

Olive Branch Petition

A petition adopted by the Second Continental Congress on July 5, 1775, offering a final appeal for reconciliation to King George III before hostilities widened.

Mason's Virginia Declaration of Rights

A foundational 1776 state human rights text authored by George Mason that served as the primary ideological source for the principles in the Declaration of Independence.

Fairfax County Resolves

A 1774 set of resolutions adopted in Virginia that advocated a complete boycott of British goods and called for an end to the importation of enslaved persons.

Jefferson's Draft of a Constitution for Virginia

A state constitutional draft prepared by Thomas Jefferson that supplied the catalog of royal abuses and grievances incorporated into the Declaration of Independence.

Joseph Coolidge

The Boston merchant and relative by marriage to whom Thomas Jefferson presented the mahogany lap desk on which he composed the Declaration of Independence.

Common Sense

A January 1776 pamphlet written by Thomas Paine that sold nearly 120,000 copies by April, advocating immediate separation from the British crown and the establishment of an independent democratic republic.

Pennsylvania Magazine

A Philadelphia publication that hired Thomas Paine as editor in 1774 following his arrival from England with a recommendation from Benjamin Franklin.

Lexington and Concord

The opening armed engagements of the Revolutionary War on April 19, 1775, in Massachusetts, where colonial Minutemen skirmished with British Redcoats at the 'shot heard round the world.'

Battle of Bunker Hill

The bloodiest single engagement of the Revolutionary War, fought in June 1775, where British forces sustained more than 1,000 casualties to dislodge 400 American patriots.

Hessians

German auxiliary mercenary troops hired by the British government to augment royal forces fighting in North America.

Battle of Trenton

A morale-boosting American victory on December 26, 1776, following George Washington's nighttime crossing of the Delaware River from Pennsylvania into New Jersey to surprise a Hessian garrison.

Battle of Saratoga

A pair of decisive battles fought in upstate New York in the fall of 1777 that served as the turning point of the war and persuaded the French crown to sign the 1778 Treaty of Alliance.

Valley Forge

The Continental Army's winter encampment in Pennsylvania during the winter of 1777–1778, where over 2,000 soldiers perished from severe cold, malnutrition, and illness.

Battle of Yorktown

The culminating joint American and French military operation in October 1781 in Virginia, which ended when General Lord Cornwallis surrendered his army to George Washington.