Unit 2 - Birth of the Republic Key Terms

Seven Years' War (French and Indian War)

Fought between England and France, 1756-1763; known as the French and Indian War in the colonies, it started in 1754, over control of the Ohio River Valley and resulted in France’s withdrawal from North  America. It was the impetus for Parliament’s taxing policy that led to the American Revolution.

Pontiac's Rebellion (1763)

Indian uprising in the Ohio Valley region that killed 2,000 settlers; as a result, the British  sought peace with the Indians by prohibiting colonial settlement west of the Appalachian Mountains (the  Proclamation of 1763). The Americans saw this ban as an unlawful restriction of their rights and generally ignored  it.

Salutary neglect

British policy before 1763 of generally leaving the colonies alone to conduct their own internal  affairs; the abandonment of this policy after 1763 was a major factor leading to revolution and independence.

Sugar Act (1764)

Designed to raise revenue by stiffening the Molasses Act (1733), establishing new customs  regulations, and trying smugglers in British vice-admiralty courts; this was the first attempt to tax the colonies in  order to raise revenue rather than regulate trade. It actually lowered the tax on imported sugar in hopes of  discouraging smugglers and thereby increasing collection of the tax.

Benjamin Franklin

America’s leading diplomat of the time who served as a statesman and advisor throughout the  Revolutionary era. He was active in all the pre-revolutionary congresses and helped to secure the French alliance  of 1778 and the Treaty of Paris, which formally ended the Revolution in 1783.

Stamp Act (1765)

A tax on more than fifty items such as pamphlets, newspapers, playing cards, and dice; it set off a  strong protest among the colonists, who claimed it was an internal tax designed only to raise revenue and  therefore unlawful for Parliament to levy.

Sons of Liberty

Street gangs that formed during the Stamp Act crisis to enforce the boycotts and prevent the distribution and sale of the tax stamps; they were the vanguard of the Revolution as they intimidated British officials with violence.

Samuel Adams

Agitator and leader of the Sons of Liberty, who supported independence as soon as the British veered from salutary neglect; he was the primary leader of the Boston Tea Party and later a delegate to the Continental Congress.

Stamp Act Congress (1765)

Met in New York City to protest the Stamp Act; nine of the thirteen colonies petitioned  the king and organized a boycott that eventually helped to force the repeal of the tax. This meeting and action  was a major step to colonial unity and resistance of British authority.

Declaratory Act (1766)

Passed as the British Parliament repealed the Stamp Act; a face-saving action, it asserted Parliament's sovereignty over colonial taxation and legislative policies.

Townshend Acts (1767)

Levied taxes on imported items such as paper, glass, and tea; these taxes were designed to  address colonial resistance to “internal taxation” like the Stamp Act, which had no connection to trade and was  intended only to raise revenue. However, the colonials viewed the Townshend Acts as revenue-raising measures  and refused to pay these taxes as well.

Boston Massacre

Confrontation between British soldiers and Boston citizens in March 1770. The troops shot and  killed five colonials. American radicals used the event to roil relations between England and the colonies over  the next five years. 

Coercive Acts (1774)

British actions to punish Massachusetts for the Boston Tea Party; they included closing the  port of Boston, revoking Massachusetts’s charter, trying all British colonial officials accused of misdeeds outside  the colony, and housing British troops in private dwellings. In the colonies, these laws were known as the  Intolerable Acts, and they brought on the First Continental Congress in 1774.

Continental Army

Set up during the American Revolutionary War to fight for the thirteen colonies and later the United States. It was authorized by the Continental Congress in 1775 and led by General George Washington. It became a single standing force directly raised from all of the colonies, distinct from the several colonial militias.

George Washington

Commander of the Continental Army; while not a military genius, his integrity and judgment kept the army together. Ultimately, he was indispensable to the colonial cause.

George III

King of England during the American Revolution. Until 1776, the colonists believed he supported their attempt to keep their rights. In reality, he was a strong advocate for harsh policies toward them.

Virtual representation

Idea offered by Britain to colonists' demands for representation in Parliament and to  establish lawful authority to tax them; the explanation was that Parliament was a collective representation of all  Englishmen regardless of where they lived. According to this argument, a group's interest was represented in  London by virtue of it being English. Colonial leaders rejected this position.

John Dickinson

Conservative leader who wrote Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania; he advocated for colonial  rights but urged conciliation with England and opposed the Declaration of Independence. Later, he helped write  the Articles of Confederation.

Loyalists (Tories)

Colonists who remained loyal to England; they often were older, better educated people who  were members of the Anglican Church. The British hoped to use them as a pacification force but failed to  organize them properly.

Patrick Henry

An early advocate of independence who was a strong opponent of the Stamp Act and great defender of individual rights; in 1775, he declared: 'Give me liberty, or give me death.'

Thomas Paine (Common Sense)

Writer of Common Sense, an electrifying pamphlet of January 1776 calling for a break with England; written with great passion and force, it swept the colonies and provided a clear rationale for colonial independence.

John Locke

English philosopher who wrote that governments have a duty to protect people's life, liberty, and property; many colonial leaders read his ideas and incorporated them into their political rhetoric and thinking.

Declaration of Independence (1776)

Document that was approved by the Second Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, and that announced the separation of 13 North American British colonies from Great Britain. It explained why the Congress on July 2 “unanimously” by the votes of 12 colonies (with New York abstaining) had resolved that “these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be Free and Independent States.”

Thomas Jefferson

Lead author of the Declaration of Independence; in it, he explained the colonists’ philosophy of  government and the reasons for independence. He wrote that governments that did not protect unalienable rights should be changed.

Battle of Saratoga

A turning point of the Revolution in October 1777, when an army of 6,000 British soldiers  surrendered in New York; the battle resulted from a British attempt to divide the colonies through the Hudson  River Valley. The American victory convinced the French to ally with the colonies and assured the ultimate  success of independence. 

Battle of Yorktown

A siege that ended in October 1781 when Washington trapped 8,000 British soldiers on a peninsula in Virginia after a British campaign in the southern colonies; this defeat caused the British to cease large-scale fighting in America and to start negotiations, which eventually led to the colonies' independence.

John Jay

Lead diplomat in negotiating the Treaty of Paris (1783); he secretly dealt with the British representatives at Paris and gained all of America's goals for independence despite the deviousness and meddling of France and Spain.

Republican motherhood

It called on women to teach republican values within the family and granted women a new importance in American political culture. It reinforced the idea of a domestic women's sphere separate from the public world of men while encouraging the education of women and emphasizing their civic importance.

Articles of Confederation

Unified the newly independent states, creating a central government with limited power; difficulties after the Revolution led to calls for a stronger central government.

Northwest Ordinance (1787)

The major success of Congress under the Articles of Confederation that organized the  Northwest Territory for future statehood; the law provided territorial status for a region when its population  reached 5,000. At 60,000, the territory could petition for statehood with the same rights as existing states. It set  into law the procedure for expanding the nation that eventually led to the admission of many other new states.  Also, by outlawing slavery in the Northwest Territory, it represented the first action by the national government  against that institution.

Annapolis Convention

Meeting held at Annapolis, Maryland, in 1786 to discuss interstate commerce; only five states sent delegates, but Alexander Hamilton used the forum to issue a call for the states to meet the next spring to revise the Articles of Confederation. The Annapolis Convention was a stepping-stone to creation of the  Constitution.

Shays's Rebellion

An uprising in western Massachusetts between August 1786 and February 1787 that closed the courts and threatened revolution in the state; the central government's inability to suppress the revolt reinforced the belief that the Articles of Confederation needed to be strengthened or abandoned.

New Jersey Plan

Offered by William Paterson to counter the Virginia Plan; it favored a one-house Congress with equal representation for each state and maintained much of the Articles of Confederation but strengthened the government's power to tax and regulate commerce.

Virginia Plan

Edmund Randolph’s and James Madison’s proposal for a new government that would give Congress  increased taxing and legislative power; it called for two houses of Congress—an elected lower house and an  upper house appointed by the lower house. Because seats in Congress would be apportioned according to the  states’ populations, this plan was favored by the large states.

James Madison

strong nationalist who organized the Annapolis Convention, authored the Virginia Plan for the Constitution, and drafted the constitutional amendments that became the Bill of Rights; he was also a founding member of the Democratic Republican Party.

Constitutional Convention (Philadelphia Convention)

1787 convention that drew up the Constitution of the United States. Stimulated by severe economic troubles, which produced radical political movements such as Shays's Rebellion, and urged on by a demand for a stronger central government, the convention met in the Pennsylvania State House in Philadelphia.

Great Compromise

broke the impasse at the Constitutional Convention over congressional representation. Congress would consist of two houses-seats in the lower assigned according to each state's population and states having equal representation in the upper chamber.

Three-Fifths Compromise

agreement at the Constitutional Convention that broke the impasse over taxation and representation in the House of Representatives; the delegates agreed to count slaves as three-fifths of a person for both. This formula had been used in 1783 to make financial assessments among the states under the Articles.

separation of powers

in order to preserve individual liberty, the Framers of the Constitution sought to ensure that three separate and independent branches of the Federal Government would exercise each of government's three basic functions: legislative, executive, and judicial.

federalism

In the United States, the distribution of power between the national (federal) government and state governments.

Bill of Rights

the first 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution, which were adopted as a single unit in 1791, and which constitute a collection of mutually reinforcing guarantees of individual rights and of limitations on federal and state governments.

ratification

process by which the states approved the U.S. Constitution. Article VII of the Constitution required that nine states ratify the document in order for it to go into effect.

Federalist Papers

eighty-five essays written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay and published in newspapers to convince New York to ratify the Constitution; taken together, they are seen as a treatise on the foundations of the Constitution.

Federalists

persons who favored ratification of the U.S. Constitution by the states; they are not to be confused with the later Federalist Party.

Anti-Federalists

persons who opposed ratification of the U.S. Constitution by the states; in general, they feared the concentration of power the Constitution would place in the national government.

Alexander Hamilton

strong nationalist, first secretary of the treasury; he supported a strong central government and was founder of the Federalist Party.

Loose constructionist

person who believes that the 'elastic clause' of the Constitution (Article 1, Section 8, paragraph 18) gives the central government wide latitude of action; loose constructionists hold that even powers not explicitly set forth in the Constitution may be exercised if it is 'necessary and proper' to carry out powers that are specifically stated.

Thomas Jefferson

first secretary of state, who led opposition to the Hamilton/Washington plan to centralize power  at the expense of the states; after founding the Democratic Republican Party to oppose these plans, Jefferson was  elected vice president in 1796 and president in 1800.

Strict constructionist

Person who interprets the Constitution very narrowly; a strict constructionist believes that a  power not explicitly stated in the Constitution could not be exercised by government. Historically, strict  constructionists have hoped to restrict authority of the central government and preserve states’ rights.

Whiskey Rebellion

Uprising in western Pennsylvania in 1794 over an excise tax levied on whiskey; farmers saw  the tax as an unjust and illegal levy, like the Stamp Act. President Washington crushed the rebellion with  overwhelming force and thereby demonstrated the power of the new government to maintain order and carry out  the law.

Jay's Treaty (1794)

Agreement that provided England would evacuate a series of forts in U.S. territory along the  Great Lakes; in return, the United States agreed to pay pre-Revolutionary War debts owed to Britain. The British  also partially opened the West Indies to American shipping. The treaty was barely ratified in the face of strong  Republican opposition.

Pinckney's Treaty (1795)

Agreement with Spain that opened the Mississippi River to American navigation and  granted Americans the right of deposit in New Orleans; Spain agreed to the treaty because it feared that Jay's  Treaty included an Anglo-American alliance.

Farewell Address

Presidential message in which Washington warned the nation to avoid both entangling foreign  alliances and domestic “factions” (political parties); the ideas of the address became the basis of isolationist  arguments for the next 150 years.

Federalist Party

Political party led by Alexander Hamilton; it favored a strong central government, commercial  interests, Hamilton’s financial plan, and close ties to England. Its membership was strongest among the merchant  class and property owners.

Democratic Republican Party

olitical party led by Thomas Jefferson; it feared centralized political power,  supported states’ rights, opposed Hamilton’s financial plan, and supported ties to France. It was heavily  influenced by agrarian interests in the southern states.

John Adams

Early advocate of American independence from Great Britain, a major figure in the Continental Congress (1774–77), the first vice president (1789–97) and second president (1797–1801) of the United States. His term as president was dominated by the issue of the French Revolutionary Wars, and his insistence on American neutrality led to fierce criticism from both the Jeffersonian Republicans and from some in his own party, led by his rival Alexander Hamilton. Adams signed the controversial Alien and Sedition Acts, and built up the Army and Navy in the undeclared naval war with France.

Alien and Sedition Acts

Series of acts designed to suppress perceived French agents working against American  neutrality; the acts gave the president power to deport “dangerous” aliens, lengthen the residency requirement  for citizenship, and restrict freedoms of speech and press.

Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions

Reaction against the Sedition Act; written by Madison for Virginia and Jefferson  for Kentucky, they stated that when the national government exceeded its powers under the Constitution, the  states had the right to nullify the law. Essentially, the resolutions held that the Constitution was a compact among  the states and they were its final arbiter.

XYZ Affair

Diplomatic effort by President John Adams to soothe the French, who were upset over Jay's Treaty and  American neutrality in their conflict with Britain; three American delegates to France were told they must offer a  bribe before any negotiations could begin. They refused, and the humiliation heightened tensions between the  two countries and set off war hysteria in the United States.