U.S. History: Colonial Era to the Civil War Exam Review

Vocabulary practice flashcards covering key terms, historical figures, acts, court cases, compromises, and concepts from early colonial settlement up to the Civil War.

Mayflower Compact (1620)

An agreement signed on November 11, 1620, by 41 adult male passengers aboard the Mayflower that established an early framework of self-government based on community consent before founding Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts.

Self-Government

A political principle where colonists or citizens agree to rule themselves and make collective decisions through community consensus rather than relying entirely on external authorities.

Triangular Trade

A transatlantic commercial trade network connecting Europe, Africa, and the Americas, involving the exchange of manufactured goods, enslaved Africans, and raw agricultural materials.

Mercantilism

An economic system in which colonies supply raw materials, natural resources, and wealth exclusively to enrich and strengthen the mother country.

Transatlantic Slave Trade

The forced capture, purchase, and transportation of millions of African people across the Atlantic Ocean to be subjected to chattel slavery in the Americas.

Middle Passage

The brutal ocean voyage across the Atlantic from Africa to the Americas in which enslaved Africans were subjected to horrific physical conditions, disease, violence, and separation from families.

John Winthrop

A prominent Puritan leader and the first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony who envisioned the colony as a model religious society.

"City Upon a Hill" (1630)

A metaphor delivered by John Winthrop in a sermon aboard the Arbella expressing that the Puritan community had a divine obligation to serve as a beacon and moral example for the rest of the world.

Puritans

English Protestants who sought to purify and reform the Church of England from within and established settlements in colonial New England centered around shared religious governance.

French and Indian War (1754–1763)

A North American war between Great Britain and France (with their respective colonial and Native American allies) fought for control over valuable territory and trade routes, especially in the Ohio River Valley.

Treaty of Paris (1763)

The peace agreement ending the French and Indian War that ceded most French mainland territory east of the Mississippi River to Britain, leaving Britain with massive war debt.

Coercive Acts / Intolerable Acts (1774)

A punitive package of legislation enacted by the British Parliament in 1774 to punish Massachusetts and Boston following the Boston Tea Party, prompting united colonial resistance.

Boston Port Act

A provision of the Coercive Acts that closed Boston Harbor to all commerce until the British East India Company was fully compensated for the tea destroyed in the Boston Tea Party.

Massachusetts Government Act

A Coercive Acts statute that severely curtailed self-government and town meetings in Massachusetts while placing the colony under direct royal administrative control.

Administration of Justice Act

A law under the Coercive Acts permitting royal officials accused of capital crimes in Massachusetts to have their trials relocated to other colonies or to Great Britain.

Quartering Act

British imperial legislation that required colonial civil authorities to provide housing, barracks, and supplies for stationed British troops.

Boston Massacre (1770)

A violent confrontation on March 5, 1770, in which British soldiers fired into a crowd of protesting colonists in Boston, resulting in the deaths of five people.

Crispus Attucks

A dockworker of African and Native American ancestry who was killed during the Boston Massacre, traditionally remembered as one of the first martyrs of the American Revolution.

Propaganda

Information, biased literature, or tailored imagery—such as Paul Revere's engraving of the Boston Massacre—distributed deliberately to influence public opinion against British authority.

"No Taxation Without Representation"

A central colonial protest slogan asserting that Britain had no constitutional authority to levy taxes on American colonists who lacked elected delegates in Parliament.

Boycott

A nonviolent protest tactic involving the organized refusal to buy or import British manufactured goods to inflict economic harm on British merchants.

Sons of Liberty

A grassroots colonial political organization formed to protest British tax policies, organize demonstrations, enforce boycotts, and resist imperial authority.

Committees of Correspondence

An intercolonial communications network established to share news, publish accounts of British abuses, and coordinate political actions among the colonies.

Nonimportation Agreements

Voluntary pacts signed by colonial merchants and consumers pledging to ban the purchase and importation of British items until tax measures were repealed.

Tea Act of 1773

A British parliamentary law designed to bail out the British East India Company by granting it a direct monopoly on colonial tea sales while retaining the import duty on tea.

Boston Tea Party (1773)

A direct action protest on December 16, 1773, where colonists disguised as Mohawk Indians boarded British merchant vessels and tossed 342 chests of tea into Boston Harbor.

Treaty of Alliance (1778)

A wartime military pact between the United States and France negotiating French financial, troop, and naval assistance against Great Britain during the American Revolutionary War.

Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution

The constitutional provision defining the structure of the House of Representatives, establishing two-year member terms, representation allocated by state population, and the sole power of impeachment.

Three-Fifths Compromise

A constitutional agreement counting three out of every five enslaved persons for state population calculations to determine representation in the House of Representatives and direct taxation.

Marbury v. Madison (1803)

A landmark Supreme Court decision authored by Chief Justice John Marshall that formally established the judicial branch's power of judicial review.

Judicial Review

The principle granting the Supreme Court and federal judiciary the ultimate authority to determine whether legislative acts or executive orders violate the United States Constitution.

Spoils System

The practice championed by President Andrew Jackson of rewarding loyal political supporters and campaign allies with federal government appointments and civil service jobs.

Rotation in Office

Andrew Jackson's political belief that public service positions should regularly rotate among ordinary citizens rather than being monopolized by permanent political elites.

Nat Turner (1831)

An enslaved African American preacher who organized and led an armed two-day revolt against white slaveholders in Southampton County, Virginia, in August 1831.

Whig Party

A major political party formed in the 1830s by Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and opponents of Andrew Jackson that advocated for congressional supremacy, a national bank, and federally funded internal improvements.

"King Andrew Jackson"

A derogatory nickname and political caricature created by Whig critics to accuse President Andrew Jackson of abusing executive veto power and acting as a monarch.

Indian Removal Act (1830)

Federal legislation supported by Andrew Jackson ordering the forced expulsion of southeastern Native American tribes westward, culminating in the fatal forced relocations known as the Trail of Tears.

George Washington's Farewell Address (1796)

A valedictory address published on September 19, 1796, in which George Washington advised the young republic to maintain neutrality and avoid entering into permanent political alliances with foreign nations.

Manifest Destiny

The 19th-century political doctrine asserting that the United States possessed a divinely sanctioned mission to expand its territory and democratic institutions across the continent to the Pacific Ocean.

Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852)

An influential antislavery novel written by Harriet Beecher Stowe that personalized the cruelty and human misery of chattel slavery, galvanizing Northern abolitionist sentiment.

John Brown's Raid (1859)

An armed assault on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, led by militant abolitionist John Brown in an unsuccessful attempt to instigate a widespread uprising of enslaved people.

Election of Abraham Lincoln (1860)

The presidential contest in November 1860 won by Republican Abraham Lincoln on a platform prohibiting slavery's westward expansion, serving as the immediate catalyst for Southern secession.

Secession

The formal political withdrawal of a state from a national federation, initiated by South Carolina in December 1860 and followed by ten other Southern states to form the Confederacy.

Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854)

A law introduced by Senator Stephen Douglas creating the Kansas and Nebraska territories and repealing the Missouri Compromise line by implementing popular sovereignty to determine slavery's legal status.

Popular Sovereignty

A political doctrine allowing resident voters within an organized territory to democratically decide for themselves whether slavery would be permitted or banned.

Bleeding Kansas

A sequence of violent guerrilla confrontations and political terror between proslavery and antislavery settlers vying for control of the Kansas Territory following the Kansas-Nebraska Act.

Missouri Compromise (1820)

An agreement that admitted Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state, while prohibiting slavery in remaining Louisiana Purchase lands north of latitude 36°30′.

Compromise of 1850

A legislative package admitting California as a free state, applying popular sovereignty to Utah and New Mexico, ending the slave trade in Washington, D.C., and establishing a stricter Fugitive Slave Act.

Fugitive Slave Act of 1850

A component of the Compromise of 1850 requiring federal magistrates and Northern citizens to assist in tracking down and returning escaped enslaved individuals to Southern enslavers.

Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857)

A Supreme Court ruling delivered by Chief Justice Roger B. Taney holding that African Americans were not U.S. citizens and declaring that Congress had no constitutional power to prohibit slavery in federal territories.

Sectionalism

An exaggerated devotion and political loyalty to the economic, cultural, and political interests of one's own geographical region rather than the nation as a whole.

Abolitionist

A reformer or activist committed to the total, unconditional, and immediate eradication of the institution of human enslavement.