🇺🇸APUSH Unit 3 Terms #1

Vocabulary flashcards covering key terms and concepts from the American Colonial Period and Early Republic.

Proclamation of 1763

A British decree that forbade colonists from settling west of the Appalachian Mountains, aiming to prevent conflicts with Native Americans.

Sons (& Daughters) of Liberty

Patriot organizations that secretly worked to oppose British policies through boycotts and protests, often resorting to intimidation.

Stamp Act

A 1765 British tax on all legal documents, newspapers, and other printed materials in the American colonies, requiring a stamp to show payment.

Townshend Act

A series of 1767 British acts that taxed goods imported into the American colonies, such as glass, lead, paper, paint, and tea.

Quartering Act

British laws that required American colonists to provide housing and supplies for British soldiers.

Declaratory Act

A 1766 British act that asserted Parliament's full power and authority to make laws binding the colonies 'in all cases whatsoever,' accompanying the repeal of the Stamp Act.

Tea Act

A 1773 British act that granted the British East India Company a monopoly on tea sales in the colonies, leading to the Boston Tea Party.

Social Contract Theory

An Enlightenment concept that states governments exist only by the consent of the governed, who agree to give up some freedoms for protection.

Coercive Acts

A series of punitive laws passed by the British Parliament in 1774 in response to the Boston Tea Party, also known as the Intolerable Acts.

First Continental Congress

A meeting of delegates from twelve of the thirteen British colonies in 1774, called to discuss a response to the Coercive Acts.

Committees of Correspondence

Shadow governments formed by Patriot leaders on the eve of the American Revolution to coordinate communications and organize resistance against British policies.

Virtual representation

The British constitutional theory that members of Parliament represented all British subjects, including colonists, even if they had not directly voted for them.

Boston Massacre

A confrontation on March 5, 1770, in which British soldiers shot and killed several American colonists.

Second Continental Congress

A convention of delegates from the Thirteen Colonies that started meeting in 1775, soon after the American Revolutionary War began, and managed the colonial war effort.

Olive Branch Petition

A final attempt by the Second Continental Congress in 1775 to avoid war with Great Britain, affirming American loyalty to the Crown and requesting a peaceful resolution.

Common Sense

An influential pamphlet written by Thomas Paine in 1776, advocating for immediate independence from Great Britain.

Articles of Confederation

The first national constitution of the United States, ratified in 1781, establishing a weak central government largely subordinate to the states.

Treaty of Paris 1783

The agreement that formally ended the American Revolutionary War, recognizing U.S. independence and defining its borders.

republicanism

A political ideology centered on citizenship in a state organized as a republic, emphasizing civic virtue, popular sovereignty, and the rejection of inherited rule.

Northwest Ordinance 1787

An act of the Confederation Congress that provided a method for admitting new states to the Union from the Northwest Territory and banned slavery in those territories.

Republican Motherhood

An early American ideal that emphasized the role of women in instilling republican values in their children and maintaining civic virtue in the new republic.

Shays’s Rebellion

An armed uprising in Massachusetts during 1786 and 1787 by farmers struggling with debt, which highlighted the weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation.