U.S. History: Colonial America, Revolution, Expansion, and Civil War

Clovis points

Flaked stone projectile points developed by Paleo-Indians, used as specialized technology for hunting big game during the Ice Age.

Paleo-Indians

The earliest human inhabitants of North America who migrated across the Beringia land bridge during the late Ice Age.

Columbian Exchange

The widespread global transfer of plants, animals, diseases, culture, and human populations between the Eastern and Western Hemispheres following 1492.

Watershed migration

The major, defining historical movement of human populations into North America via the Bering Strait land bridge.

Treaty of Tordesillas

A 1494 agreement between Spain and Portugal, brokered by the Pope, dividing non-Christian lands in the Americas along a meridian line.

Puritans

English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries who sought to "purify" the Church of England of Catholic practices and settled Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay.

Mayflower Compact

The 1620 legal agreement signed by Pilgrims aboard the Mayflower, establishing a self-governing colony based on majority rule.

House of Burgesses

Established in Virginia in 1619, the first legislative assembly of elected representatives in North America.

Cash crops

Agricultural crops produced strictly for commercial sale and profit rather than for local consumption (e.g., tobacco, rice, indigo).

Religious dissent

Disagreement with or opposition to the official established state church or dominant religious doctrines (e.g., Roger Williams, Anne Hutchinson).

Middle Passage

The grueling forced trans-Atlantic voyage of enslaved Africans from West Africa to the Americas under brutal conditions.

Task system

A system of labor organization under slavery (common in South Carolina rice fields) where enslaved individuals were assigned daily tasks and given limited freedom after completion.

Gullah culture

A distinct African American culture and creole language developed by isolated enslaved populations in the coastal Sea Islands of South Carolina and Georgia.

Stono Rebellion

A 1739 rebellion in South Carolina where enslaved people armed themselves and marched toward Spanish Florida, leading to harsher colonial slave codes.

Natural rights

Fundamental rights (such as life, liberty, and property) inherently possessed by all human beings, popularized by John Locke and Enlightenment thinkers.

Common Sense

A 1776 influential pamphlet authored by Thomas Paine arguing for American independence from Great Britain and advocating a democratic republic.

Declaration of Independence

The formal 1776 statement drafted by Thomas Jefferson declaring the thirteen American colonies free from British rule based on Enlightenment ideals.

Continental Congress

The convention of delegates from the Thirteen Colonies that served as the governing body of the United States during the American Revolution.

Saratoga

A major 1777 battle in New York that marked the turning point of the American Revolution, convincing France to form an official military alliance with the U.S.

Treaty of Paris

The 1783 peace treaty that officially ended the American Revolutionary War and recognized the United States as an independent nation.

Louisiana Purchase

The 1803 land deal in which the U.S. purchased vast western territory from France for $15 million, doubling the size of the nation.

Erie Canal

A landmark engineering project completed in 1825 connecting the Great Lakes to the Hudson River, triggering the Market Revolution in the Northeast.

Trail of Tears

The forced relocation of the Cherokee and other Native American nations from their ancestral homelands in the Southeast to Indian Territory west of the Mississippi River.

Missouri Compromise

An 1820 agreement admitting Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state, setting the 36°30′ parallel line to regulate slavery in northern territories.

Nullification Crisis

An 1832 sectional political crisis over federal tariffs, where South Carolina asserted a state's legal right to nullify federal laws within its borders.

Manifest Destiny

The 19th-century belief that the United States was divinely ordained to expand its territory across the entire North American continent.

Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo

The 1848 peace treaty ending the Mexican-American War, in which Mexico ceded present-day California, Nevada, Utah, and parts of neighboring states to the U.S.

Dred Scott

An 1857 Supreme Court ruling declaring that African Americans were not citizens and that Congress had no constitutional power to prohibit slavery in federal territories.

Fugitive Slave Act

A controversial component of the Compromise of 1850 requiring citizens nationwide to assist in the capture and return of escaped enslaved individuals.

Sectionalism

Exaggerated devotion to the regional interests, economy, and culture of one's own section of the country over the nation as a whole.

Emancipation Proclamation

An 1863 executive order issued by Abraham Lincoln declaring all enslaved people residing in Confederate-held territory to be permanently free.

Fort Sumter

A federal fort in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina, where the opening shots of the American Civil War were fired in April 1861.

Gettysburg

An 1863 battle in Pennsylvania considered the military turning point of the Civil War, halting Lee's northern invasion and leading to Lincoln's famous address.

Total war

A military strategy targeting not only enemy armies but also civilian infrastructure, agriculture, and economic resources to shatter the enemy's will to fight.

Appomattox

The Virginia courthouse site where Confederate General Robert E. Lee formally surrendered to Union General Ulysses S. Grant in April 1865.

Ten Percent Plan

Lincoln's lenient 1863 Reconstruction proposal requiring 10 percent of 1860 voters in a seceded state to swear a loyalty oath before re-entering the Union.

Radical Republicans

A faction of the Republican Party during Reconstruction that favored strict punishment for former Confederates and strong federal protection of civil rights for freedmen.

Freedmen's Bureau

A federal agency established in 1865 to assist newly liberated African Americans and impoverished whites in the South with education, food, and employment.

Ku Klux Klan

A violent white supremacist terrorist organization formed during Reconstruction to intimidate freed people and suppress Black political participation.

Jim Crow

A system of state and local segregation laws enacted in the American South following Reconstruction to enforce racial caste and disenfranchise African Americans.