CIS US History ch 6 vocab

republics

Representative political system in which citizens govern themselves by electing representatives, or legislators, to make key decisions on the citizens’ behalf.

suffrage

The right to vote

Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom

A Virginia law, drafted by Thomas Jefferson in 1777 and enacted in 1786, that guarantees freedom of, and from, religion.

inflation

An economic condition in which prices rise continuously.

Free trade

The belief that economic development arises from the exchange of goods between different countries without governmental interference.

The Wealth of Nations

The 1776 work by economist Adam Smith that argued that the “invisible hand” of the free market directed economic life more effectively and fairly than governmental intervention.

Loyalists

Colonists who remained loyal to Great Britain during the War of Independence.

abolition

Social movement of the pre–Civil War era that advocated the immediate emancipation of the slaves and their incorporation into American society as equal citizens.

Freedom petitions

Arguments for liberty presented to courts and legislatures starting in the early 1770s by enslaved African Americans.

Lemuel Haynes

A Black member of the Massachusetts militia and celebrated minister who urged that Americans extend their conception of freedom to enslaved Africans during the Revolutionary era.

free Blacks

African American persons not held in slavery; immediately before the Civil War, there were nearly a half million free Blacks in the United States, split almost evenly between North and South

coverture

Principle in English and U.S. law that a married woman lost her legal identity, which became “covered” by that of her husband, who therefore controlled her person and the family’s economic resources.

republican motherhood 

The ideology that emerged as a result of American independence where women’s political role was to train their sons to be future citizens.