HENRETTA APUSH Chapter 5

Boston Massacre

tension between Boston mobs and British troops erupted in British troops firing on mob and killing five Bostonians in 1770

Bunker Hill

location of important battle between British troops and local Patriots in 1775

CoerciveActs

Four British acts of 1774 meant to punish Massachusetts for the destruction of three shiploads of tea. Known in America as the Intolerable Acts, they led to open rebellion in the northern colonies.

Committees of Correspondence

A communications network established among towns in the colonies, and among colonial assemblies, between 1772 and 1773 to provide for rapid dissemination of news about important political developments.

Continental Association

An association established in 1774 by the First Continental Congress to enforce a boycott of British goods. This group's boycotts of 1765 and 1768 raised the political consciousness of rural Americans.

Currency Act

an act responding to protest by London merchants against Virginia's paper money
WHY: to defend colonists and keep "specie" as the currency.
REACTION: angry and frustrated because many didnt have silver or gold. They began protest and smuggled goods

Daughters of Liberty

Patriotic wsomen agreed not to consume British made goods as protest against British taxes

Declaratory Act

A law issued by Parliament to assert Parliament's unassailable right to legislate for its British colonies "in all cases whatsoever," putting Americans on notice that the simultaneous repeal of the Stamp Act changed nothing in the imperial powers of Britain.

First Continental Congress

September 1774 gathering of colonial delegates in Philadelphia to discuss the crisis precipitated by the Coercive Acts. The congress produced a declaration of rights and an agreement to impose a limited boycott of trade with Britain.

Lexington & Concord

in 1775, General Gage, commanding the British forces occupying rebellious Boston, sent several hundred men on an expedition to these two small towns west of Boston, where his informers alerted him to the presence of Samuel Adams and a cache of Patriot arms and ammunition; finding them fled, Gage sent his men marching back to Boston, when American patriots and Minutemen began to shoot at them from the cover of rocks and trees; nearly 100 British soldiers were killed. It is considered the opening shot of the American Revolution.

Loyalists, Neutrals, and Patriots

1) those who wished to remain subjects of the British Empire (20%); 2) those who just wanted to be left alone(30%); 3) supporters of the Independence movement(50%);

Minutemen

Colonial militiamen who stood ready to mobilize on short notice during the imperial crisis of the 1770s. These volunteers formed the core of the citizens' army that met British troops at Lexington and Concord in April 1775.

Prohibitory Act

1775 British Act closing American ports to foreign shippig; meant to intimidate colonies into submission

Quartering Act

A British law that required colonial governments to provide barracks and food for British troops.

Quebec Act

This Act of 1774 principal components were:
The province's territory was expanded to take over part of the Indian Reserve, including much of what is now southern Ontario, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, and parts of Minnesota.
Reference to the Protestant faith was removed from the oath of allegiance.
It guaranteed free practice of the Catholic faith.
It restored the use of the French civil law for matters of private law, except that in accordance with the English common law, it granted unlimited freedom of testation. It maintained English common law for matters of public law, including administrative appeals, court procedure, and criminal prosecution.

Samuel Adams

Patriot leader of the Revolutionary Sons of Liberty

Second Continental Congress

The legislative body that governed the United States from May 1775 through the war's duration. It established an army, created its own money, and declared independence once all hope for a peaceful reconciliation with Britain was gone.

Sons of Liberty

Colonists-primarily middling merchants and artisans-who banded together to protest the Stamp Act and other imperial reforms of the 1760s. The group originated in Boston in 1765 but soon spread to all the colonies.

Stamp Act Crisis

British law imposing a tax on all paper used in the colonies. Widespread resistance to the Stamp Act prevented it from taking effect and led to its repeal in 1766.

Sugar Act

A 1764 British law that decreased the duty on French molasses, making it more attractive for shippers to obey the law, and at the same time raised penalties for smuggling. This act regulated trade but was also intended to raise revenue.

Tea Act

A British act that lowered the existing tax on tea and granted exemptions to the East India Company to make their tea cheaper in the colonies and entice boycotting Americans to buy it. Resistance to this act led to the passage of the Coercive Acts and imposition of military rule in Massachusetts.

Tea Party

a political protest by the Sons of Liberty in Boston, on December 16, 1773. The demonstrators, some disguised as American Indians, destroyed an entire shipment of tea sent by the East India Company, in defiance of the Tea Act of May 10, 1773.

Thomas Jefferson's "Declaration of Independence"

A document containing philosophical principles and a list of grievances that declared separation from Britain. Adopted by the Second Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, it ended a period of intense debate with moderates still hoping to reconcile with Britain.

Thomas Paine's "Common Sense"

a pamphlet written by Thomas Paine in 1775-76 that inspired people in the Thirteen Colonies to declare and fight for independence from Great Britain in the summer of 1776. The pamphlet explained the advantages of and the need for immediate independence in clear, simple language.

Townhend Acts

Another attempt by the British government to raise revenue in the colonies to pay the salaries of governors and judges so that they would remain loyal to Great Britain, to create a more effective means of enforcing compliance with trade regulations,

vice-admiralty courts

A maritime tribunal presided over by a royally appointed judge, with no jury.

natural rights

The rights to life, liberty, and property. According to the English philosopher John Locke in Two Treatises of Government (1690), political authority was not given by God to monarchs. Instead, it derived from social compacts that people made to preserve their natural rights.

Stamp Act Congress

A congress of delegates from nine assemblies, which met in New York City in October 1765 to protest the loss of American "rights and liberties," especially the right to trial by jury. The congress challenged the constitutionality of both the Stamp and Sugar Acts by declaring that only the colonists' elected representatives could tax them.

Non Importation Act

Colonists attempted nonimportation agreements three times: in 1766, in response to the Stamp Act; in 1768, in response to the Townshend Duties; and in 1774, in response to the Coercive Acts. In each case, colonial radicals pressured merchants to stop importing British goods. In 1774 nonimportation was adopted by the First Continental Congress and enforced by the Continental Association. American women became crucial to the movement by reducing their households' consumption of imported goods and producing large quantities of homespun cloth.

virtual representation

The claim made by British politicians that the interests of the American colonists were adequately represented in Parliament by merchants who traded with the colonies and by absentee landlords (mostly sugar planters) who owned estates in the West Indies.

English Common Law

The centuries-old body of legal rules and procedures that protected the lives and property of the British monarch's subjects.