U.S. History Review: Early Americas to the New Nation

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering the U.S. History midterm review notes, spanning pre-Columbian Indigenous civilizations, early European colonization, the American Revolution, the drafting of the Constitution, and the formation of the early republic.

Big Game Hunting

The primary method used by ancient people during the Ice Age to obtain food, clothing, and bone tools.

Central Mexico (Early Agriculture)

The geographic region where agriculture first developed in the Americas, beginning with corn and leading to permanent settlements and complex societies.

Olmec

An ancient Mesoamerican civilization that developed around $1{,}200\text{ B.C.}$ along the Gulf of Mexico.

Mound Builders

Ancient North American societies, including the Adena, Hopewell, and Mississippian, who excelled at trade and built massive burial and pyramid mounds.

Totems

Carved symbols representing ancestral spirits that guided families and documented family histories among Northwest Coast Native American tribes.

Iroquois

A Native American group residing in the Eastern Woodlands who adapted to cold winters by crafting snowshoes and hunting lances.

Kinship

Family networks that formed the core of Native American social structure, providing social services such as education, governance, healthcare, and religion.

Division of Labor

The assignment of distinct daily tasks based on gender, age, and social status, which established social order in Native American and West African societies.

Lineage Groups

Kinship-based social units in West African communities in which all residents could trace their origins back to a single common ancestor.

Oba

The ruler of the West African forest kingdom of Benin who controlled trade, appointed district chiefs, oversaw metalworking, and conducted trade with the Portuguese.

Askia Muhammad

The Songhai ruler who established a centralized government featuring organized administrative departments for defense, banking, and farming.

Social Hierarchy

A rigid social order organizing Renaissance-era Europe, ranging from the Pope, Church, and monarchs at the apex to merchants in the middle and peasants at the base.

Reformation

A $16\text{th}$-century European religious movement that challenged papal authority and divided Western Christianity into Catholicism and Protestantism.

Colonization

The establishment and direct administrative control of distant settlements by a sovereign state.

Middle Passage

The transatlantic leg of the triangular trade network that transported enslaved Africans to the Americas under brutal conditions, claiming approximately $2\text{ million}$ lives by $1800$.

Columbian Exchange

The widespread transatlantic transfer of plants, animals, culture, human populations, and communicable diseases between the Eastern and Western Hemispheres.

New France

French colonial territories in North America founded by Samuel de Champlain in $1605$, whose economy centered on cooperative fur trading with Indigenous peoples such as the Huron.

Joint-Stock Company

A commercial enterprise, such as the Virginia Company, that pooled private investors' capital to establish colonies under a royal charter.

John Smith

The English leader who took charge of the struggling Jamestown settlement in $1607$, imposing strict military discipline, hygiene rules, and diplomacy with the Powhatan.

Headright System

A Virginia Company policy granting land to colonial planters who financed the transatlantic transportation of imported laborers.

Indentured Servants

Laborers who bound themselves by contract to work for a master for an agreed period (typically $7\text{ years}$) in exchange for passage to America, food, and shelter.

House of Burgesses

The representative assembly established in colonial Virginia that served as the first limited self-governing legislature in the English colonies.

Puritans

English religious followers of John Calvin who sought to purify the Anglican Church of remaining Catholic practices and emphasized discipline, strict morals, and hard work.

Mayflower Compact

A covenant drafted by the Pilgrims in $1620$ establishing a civil body politic that governed according to the will of the majority.

Wampanoag Confederation

The Native American confederation that assisted the Plymouth colonists by teaching them corn cultivation and maintained peaceful relations with them for $50\text{ years}$.

"City upon a Hill"

The phrase used by John Winthrop to describe the moral mission of the Massachusetts Bay Colony as a model Puritan commonwealth for the rest of the world.

Great Migration

The mass migration between $1629$ and $1643$ in which approximately $16{,}000$ English Puritans settled in the New England colonies.

Roger Williams

A Puritan minister banished from Massachusetts for nonconformist views who founded Rhode Island in $1635$ as the first colony guaranteeing full religious tolerance.

Maryland Toleration Act

A $1649$ colonial law enacted in Maryland—a refuge established by Lord Baltimore for Catholics—protecting freedom of worship for all Trinitarian Christians.

James Oglethorpe

The English proprietor who founded Georgia in $1732$ as a humanitarian haven for indebted prisoners and as a military buffer against Spanish Florida.

Bacon's Rebellion

A $1676$ armed revolt of Virginia frontier settlers led by Nathaniel Bacon against Governor William Berkeley's administration, driven by land grievances and high taxes.

Metacom (King Philip)

The Wampanoag leader who formed an alliance of Native American tribes in King Philip's War ($1675\text{--}1676$) to resist English colonial expansion across New England.

Society of Friends (Quakers)

A religious group that settled Pennsylvania under William Penn, practicing religious tolerance, civil liberties, pacifism, and fair land negotiations with Native Americans.

Salutary Neglect

The British colonial policy of leniently enforcing trade regulations and imperial oversight as long as colonies remained commercially profitable and loyal.

Proclamation of 1763

A British royal decree issued after Pontiac's Rebellion that prohibited colonial settlement west of the Appalachian Mountains to prevent clashes with Native Americans.

Stamp Act of 1765

The first internal British tax levied directly on American colonists, requiring a purchased revenue stamp on printed papers, legal documents, and publications.

Sons of Liberty

A grassroots political resistance group organized by Samuel Adams that mobilized protests and intimidated British officials enforcing parliamentary taxation.

Intolerable Acts

A series of punitive British statutes passed in $1774$ to punish Boston for the Boston Tea Party by closing its port, quartering soldiers, and establishing martial law.

Minutemen

Colonial militia members during the American Revolution who trained to assemble and engage British regulars on a minute's notice.

Olive Branch Petition

A final appeal adopted by the Second Continental Congress in July $1775$ requesting peace and reconciliation with King George III, which the king formally rejected.

Common Sense

A widely circulated $1776$ pamphlet written by Thomas Paine that attacked monarchical rule and persuaded American colonists to declare complete independence.

Declaration of Independence

The historic document adopted on July $4$, $1776$, principally authored by Thomas Jefferson, asserting inherent human rights and dissolving political allegiance to Britain.

Hessians

German mercenary soldiers contracted by Great Britain to fight against American forces during the Revolutionary War.

Battle of Saratoga

The pivotal $1777$ Patriot military victory that marked the turning point of the Revolutionary War and secured a formal military alliance with France.

Friedrich von Steuben

The Prussian military officer who trained and transformed the Continental Army into a disciplined fighting force at Valley Forge during the winter of $1778$.

Battle of Yorktown

The decisive $1781$ military siege in Virginia where American and French forces encircled General Charles Cornwallis, forcing the final major British surrender.

Egalitarianism

The post-revolutionary philosophical belief that an individual's worth is determined by merit and virtue rather than family pedigree, though it initially excluded women and minorities.

Articles of Confederation

The first national constitution of the United States, drafted in $1777$, establishing a unicameral central legislature with limited powers and no independent executive or judiciary.

Northwest Ordinance of 1787

An act of the Confederation Congress that established a clear blueprint for governing western territories and admitting new states on an equal footing with the original states.

Shays' Rebellion

A $1786$ armed insurrection of debt-burdened Massachusetts farmers led by Daniel Shays that demonstrated the central government's weakness under the Articles of Confederation.

Virginia Plan

James Madison's proposal at the Constitutional Convention for a strong national government with a bicameral legislature whose representation was apportioned by state population.

Great Compromise (Connecticut Plan)

The constitutional agreement that balanced small and large states by creating a bicameral Congress: a Senate with equal votes per state and a House based on population.

Three-Fifths Compromise

The constitutional clause dictating that $\frac{3}{5}$ of an enslaved population would count toward both federal taxation and proportional representation in the House.

Federalist Papers

A series of $85$ analytical essays written anonymously by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay to convince New York delegates to ratify the Constitution.

Bill of Rights

The first ten amendments to the United States Constitution, added to guarantee specific individual liberties and states' rights against federal overreach.

Precedent

An established custom, action, or decision that serves as an authoritative model for future administrative, legal, or constitutional practices.

Judiciary Act of 1789

Federal legislation that structured the federal judiciary by establishing a Supreme Court of $6\text{ justices}$, creating district and circuit courts, and setting federal law as supreme.

Assumption

Alexander Hamilton's fiscal strategy under which the federal government assumed and funded the outstanding debts incurred by individual states during the Revolutionary War.