APUSH-- all key terms, events, etc

agriculture

organized farming

Aztecs

Advanced MesoAmerican people centered around modern-day Mexico who was conquered by the Spanish under Hernan Cortez.

Tenochtitlan

The capital of the Aztec empire. Present-day Mexico City.

“mound-builders”

ancient North American civilization who settled in the Ohio River Valley 1,000 years before the arrival of Columbus.

Pueblo

small village

Great League of Peace

an alliance of the Iroquois formed originally between 1450 and 1600 that combined their strengths to pressure Europeans to work with them in the fur trade and wage war across the area.

Reconquista

The reconquest of Spain from the Moors.

The Moors

African Muslims who had occupied the Iberian Peninsula for centuries.

Conquistadores

“conquerers”, Spanish and Portuguese soldiers who conquered lands held by indigenous people.

Columbian Exchange

the transatlantic flow of goods and people that began with Columbus’s voyage in 1492.

Encomienda

 A legal and labor system in New Spain where someone was granted land and natives, for whom the grantee was responsible for converting to Christianity.

Council of Indies

The main body of Spanish administration.

Repartimiento System

Residents of Indian villages were free and entitled to wages, but still required to perform a fixed amount of labor each year.

Black Legend

The image of Spain as a brutal and exploitative colonizer

St. Augustine

the oldest colonization of North American (1562) in present-day Florida.

Samuel de Champlain

 founder of Quebec in 1608

Jacques Marquette

Jesuit priest, locator of the Missippi River in 1673.

Louis Joliet

 located the Mississippi River in 1673.

Rene-Robert Cavelier

Descended to the Gulf of Mexico and claimed the entire Mississippi River Valley for France.

Henry Hudson

Employed by the Dutch East Indie Company filed in New York Harbour looking for a Northwest passage.

Caravel

15th-century European ship capable of long distance travel.

borderland

a place between or near recognized borders where no group of people has complete political or cultural control.

Anglican Church

 the established state church of England, formed by Henry VII after the pope refused to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon.

charters

exclusive rights and privileges

Humphrey Gilbert

granted a charter to establish Newfoundland

Walter Raleigh

granted a charter to establish the Roanoke Colony

Protestantism

Followers of the Protestant Church.

Enclosure movement

 a movement that saw thousands of persons uprooted from rural farmland, leading thousands to flood England’s cities seeking jobs.

Indentured servants

settlers who signed a temporary period of servitude to a master in exchange for passage to the New World.

Headlight system

A land-grant policy that promised fifty acres to any colonist who could afford passage to Virginia, as well as fifty more for any accompanying servants. Eventually, it was adopted in other colonies.

House of Burgesses

The first elected assembly in colonial America, established in 1619 in Virginia. Only wealthy landowners could vote in its elections.

Uprising of 1622

Unsuccessful uprising of Virginia Native Americans that wiped out one-quarter of the settler population, but ultimately led to settlers’ gaining supremacy.

Puritans

a new branch of religion that sought to purify the Church of England.

Natural liberty

Acting without restraint also meant the liberty to do evil like the Irish, Indians, and bad Christians.

Moral Liberty

A liberty to only of what is good. Often meant severe restraint on religion, speech, and behavior.

Pilgrims

Puritan separatists who broke completely with the Church of England and sailed to the New World aboard the Mayflower, finding Plymouth Colony on Cape Cod in 1620.

Mayflower Compact

 a set of rules for self-governance established by the English settlers who traveled to the New World on the Mayflower.

The Great Migration

The migration of approximately 21,000 English Puritans to the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

Pequot War

an armed conflict in 1637 that led to the destruction of one of New England’s most powerful Indian groups.

Half-way Covenant

a 1662 religious compromise that allowed baptism and partial church membership to colonial New Englanders whose parents were not Puritan elect.

“English liberty”

 the idea that English people were entitled to certain liberties, including trial by jury, habeas corpus, and the right to face one’s accuser in court. These rights meant that even the English king was subject to the rule of law.

House of Commons

The elective body that made up a part of Parliament.

Act Concerning Religion (or Maryland Toleration Act)

1649 law that granted free exercise of religion to all Christian denominations in colonial America.

Metacom

the chief of the Wampanoags, colonists called him King Philip.

Mercantilism

Policy of Great Britain and other imperial powers of regulating the economics of colonies to benefit the mother nation.

Navigation Act

 Law passed by the English Parliament to control colonial trade and bolster mercantile system 1650-1775; enforcement of the act led to the growth of resentment by colonists.

covenant chain

alliance formed in the 1670s between the English and Iroqouis nations.

Yamasee uprising

Revolt of Yamasee and Creek Indians, aggravated by rising debts and slave traders raids, against Carolina settlers. It resulted in the expulsion of many Indians to Florida.

Society of Friends (Quaker)

Religious group in England and America whose members believed all persons possessed the “inner light” or spirit of God; they were early proponents of abolition of slavery and women’s rights.

Bacon’s Rebellion

unsuccessful 1676 revolt led by plantar Nathenial Bacon against Virginian governor William Berkeley’s administration because of governmental corruption and because Berkeley had failed to protect settlers from Indian raids and did not allow them to occupy Indian lands.

Glorious Revolution

a coup in 1688 engineered by a small group of aristocrats that led to William of Orange taking the British throne in the place of James II.

English Bill of Rights

Gave certain rights to Parliment and entitled rights to citizens.

Lords of Trade

An English regulatory board established to oversee colonial affairs in 1675.

Dominion of New England

Consolidation into a single colony of the New England colonies– and later New York and New Jersey– by royal governor Edmund Andros in 1686; dominion reverted to individual colonial governments three years later. 

Salem Witch Trials

A crisis of trials and executions in Salem Massachusetts in 1692 that resulted from anxiety over witchcraft.

Walking Purchase of 1737

an infamous 1737 purchase of Indian land in which Pennsylvania colonists trick the Lenni Lanape Indians. The Lanape agreed to cede land equivalent to the distance a man could walk in thirty-six hours, but colonists marked out an area using a team of runners.

Atlantic Slave Trade

The systematic importation of African slaves from their native continent of Africa across the Atlantic Ocean to the New World, largely fueled by rising demand for sugar, rice, coffee, and tobacco during the 18th century.

Yeoman farmers

Small landowners (the majority of white families in the Old South) who farmed their own land and usually did not own slaves.

The Stono Rebellion

A slave uprising in 1739 in South Carolina that led to the severe tightening of the slave code and the temporary imposition of a prohibitive tax on imported slaves.

Republicanism

Political theory in eighteenth-century England and America that celebrated active participation in public life by economically independent citizens as central to freedom.

Liberalism

Originally, a political philosophy that emphasized the protection of liberty by limiting the power of government to interfere with the natural rights of citizens; in the twentieth century, belief in an activist government promoting greater economic and social equality

Salutary neglect

 Informal British policy during the first half of the eighteenth century that allowed the American colonies considerable freedom to pursue their economic and political interests in exchange for colonial obedience.

Enlightenment

Revolution in thought in the eighteenth century that emphasized reason and science over the authority of traditional religion.

Deism

Enlightenment thought applied to religion; emphasized reason, morality, and natural law.

Great Awakening

Fervent religious revival movement in the 1720s through the 1740s that was spread throughout the colonies by ministers like New England Congregationalist Jonathan Edwards and English revivalist George Whitefield.

Ohio Company

 a company that was formed by Virginians to profit from land sales and settlement and trade with American Indians in the Ohio River Valley region.

Acadian

descendant of French colonists who settled in an area that became part of Eastern Canada.

Stamp Act

Parliament’s 1765 requirement that revenue stamps be affixed to all colonial printed matter, documents, and playing cards; the Stamp Act Congress met to formulate a response and the act was repealed a year later.

Virtual representation

the idea that the American colonies, although they had no actual Parliamentary representation, were “virtually” represented by all members of Parliament. 

Writs of assistance

 allowed unlimited search warrants without cause to look for evidence of smuggling in the colonies.

The Sugar Act

1764 decision by Parliament to tax refined sugar and many other colonial products.

Committee of Correspondence

Group organized by Samuel Adams in retaliation for the *Gaspee* incident to address American grievances, assert American rights, and form a network of rebellion.

Sons of Liberty

 Organization formed by Samuel Adams, John Hancock, and other radicals in response to the Stamp Act.

Regulators

Group of backcountry Carolina settlers who protested colonial policies.

Townshend Acts

1767 parliamentary measures that taxed tea and other commodities, and established a Board of Customs Commissioners and colonial vice-admiralty courts.

Boston Massacre

Clash between British soldiers and Boston mob March 5, 1775, in which five colonists were killed.

Crispus Attucks

During the Boston Massacre, the individual who was supposedly at the head of the crowd of hecklers and who baited the British troops. He was killed when the British troops fired on the crowd.

Boston Tea Party

The incident of December 16, 1773, in which the Sons of Liberty, dressed as Indians, dumped hundreds of chests of tea into the Boston Harbor to protest the Tea Act of 1773. Under the Tea Act, the British exported to the colonies millions of pounds of cheap – but still taxed– tea, thereby undercutting the price of smuggled tea and forcing payment of the tea duty.

Intolerable Acts

Four Parliamentary measures in reaction to the Boston Tea Party that forced payment for the tea, disallowed colonials trials for British soldiers, forced their quartering in private homes, and reduced the number of elected officials in Massachusetts.

Continental Congress

First meeting of representatives of the colonies, held in Philidelphia in 1774 to formulate actions against British policies; in the Second Continental Congress (1775-1789), the colonial representatives conducted the war and adopted the Declaration of Independence and the Articles of Confederation.

The Battle of Lexington and Concord

The first shots fired in the Revolutionary War on April 19, 1775, near Boston; approximately 100 minutemen and 250 British soldiers were killed.

Battle of Bunker Hill

First major battle of the Revolutionary War; it actually took place at nearby Breed’s Hill, Massachusetts on June 17, 1775.

Continental Army

Army authorized by the Continental Congress in 1775 to fight the British; commanded by General George Washington.

Lord Dunmore’s Proclamation

A proclamation issued in 1775 by the earl of Dunmore, the British governor of Virginia, that offered freedom to any slave who fought for the king against the rebelling colonies.

Common Sense

A pamphlet anonymously written by Thomas Paine in January 1776 that attacked the English principles of heredity rule and monarchial government.

Declaration of Independence

Document adopted on July 4, 1776, that made the break with Britain official; drafted by the Committee of the Second Congressional Congress, including the principal writer Thomas Jefferson. 

Hessian

German soldiers, most from Hessel-Cassel Principality, paid to fight for the British in the Revolutionary War.

Battle of Saratoga

Major defeat of British General John Burgoyne and more than 5,000 British troops at Saratoga, New York on October 17, 1777.

Benedict Arnold

a traitorous American commander who planned to sell out the American garrison at West Point to the British. His plot was discovered before it could be executed and he joined the British army.

Battle of Yorktown

Last battle of the Revolutionary War; General Lord Charles Cornwallis along with over 7,000 British troops surrendered at Yorktown, Pennsylvania on October 17, 1781.

Treaty of Paris

Signed on September 3, 1783, the treaty ended the Revolutionary War, recognized American independence from Britain, established the border between Canada and the United States, fixed the western border at the Mississippi River, and ceded Florida to Spain.

republics

 representative political system in which citizens governed themselves by electing representatives, or legislators, to make key decisions on the citizens’ behalves.

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 government interference.

The Wealth of Nations

The 1776 work by economist Adam Smith 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 New England’s courts and legislatures in the early 1770s by enslaved African Americans.