Relied on Agriculture Due to Warmer Climate and Fertile Soil

U.S. History : Vocabulary by Unit

Standard 1 and 2

Southern Colonies

•Relied on agriculture due to warmer climate and fertile soil

•Relied on indentured servants then slaves (after Bacon’s Rebellion) for labor to produce cash crops

•Jamestown was the first permanent English settlement

Middle Colonies

•Economy was a mixture of agriculture and trade

•More tolerant and diverse than New England

New England

•Economy relied mostly on trade and shipping

•Colonists located on coastal regions and rivers benefitted from being centers of trade and transportation

•MA Bay and Plymouth established for religious reasons

Virginia Company

•Joint-stock company that provided the funding for the colony of Jamestown

•Investors hoped settlers would find gold and earn profits for them

Tobacco Cultivation

•John Rolfe introduced a new strain of tobacco that grew well in Virginia

•Tobacco became a cash crop and saved Jamestown

Powhatan

•The Native American group living in the Jamestown area

•They were often in conflict with the English settlers over land

House of Burgesses

•Legislative body in Virginia

•First example of representative government in the American colonies, will become an example for democratic tradition in America

Bacon’s Rebellion

•Nathaniel Bacon and poor farmers rebel against the wealthy landowners and government in Jamestown

•Reflects the American ideal that not only the elite should have a say in the government, and also led to increase in slavery over indentured servants

Development of Slavery

•At first, the labor force was made up mostly of indentured servants who worked for a period of 5 years before gaining freedom

•Tobacco becoming a cash crop and tensions from Bacon’s Rebellion led to plantation owners using slaves instead

Religious Reasons for Settlement of New England

•Pilgrims came to Plymouth colony to separate from the Anglican Church. They wrote the Mayflower Compact

•Puritans settled in Massachusetts Bay colony and wanted to purify the Anglican Church.

King Phillip’s War

•Colonists in New England were in conflict with Native Americans over land. Metacom (King Phillip) went to war with the colonists to try to stop it. Colonists win.

•Metacom’s defeat by the English colonists marked the end of Native American resistance in the region.

Government in New England

•The Puritan church controlled much of the government in Massachusetts Bay

•The legislature in Mass. Bay was called the General Court

•Town meetings were also common – locals would meet to discuss issues and vote

•Citizens who were male and church members had a say in government

Religious Tensions in New England

•Roger Williams was banished from Mass. Bay because he believed it was wrong to take land from the Indians

•He founded Rhode Island and guaranteed separation of Church and state and religious freedom

•Anne Hutchinson fled to RI when she was banished for leading bible studies

Half-way covenant

•Gave partial membership to descendants of church members without a conversion experience

•Church leaders hoped the young people would want full membership and stay part of the Puritan church

•Puritan leaders wanted to keep control of the colony

Salem Witch Trials

•25 people condemned to death after being accused of witchcraft in Salem, Mass.

•Result of strict Puritan church having control over government and laws

•Also shows impact of harsh life in New England colonies

Loss of Massachusetts Charter

•Unrest in Massachusetts led to loss of the colony’s charter and the king took over

•Mass. Bay became a royal colony under the rule of a governor appointed by the king

Settlement of New Amsterdam

•Settled and called New Amsterdam by Dutch as settlement focused on the fur trade.

•Taken by the English and renamed New York. The English wanted to remove the “Dutch Wedge” and unite their southern and New England colonies.

Pennsylvania

•Founded by William Penn and the Quakers on the principle of religious freedom

•The Quakers got along better with Native Americans than many settlers and were more tolerant and peaceful

Quebec

•First permanent French settlement in North America

•Goals:

–Friendly relations with the Native Americans

–Make money from the fur trade

–Convert Native Americans to Catholicism

Mercantilism

•The belief that the purpose of a colony was to make the mother-country richer and more powerful.

•England’s Trans-Atlantic “Triangle” trade network was developed to get the most profit possible from the English colonies.

Middle Passage

•The voyage of slaves on slave ships from West Africa to the American colonies.

–Terrible conditions

–High death rates

–Called the middle passage because it was the middle part of the “Triangle Trade.”

Growth of African population

•As a result of the increasing need for slave labor in southern colonies and the trans-Atlantic trade, the number of slaves grew in the American colonies

•African-American culture was diverse; slaves came from completely different backgrounds

Great Awakening

•Religious movement that called for people to search for truth themselves instead of relying on the church.

•This led people to question traditional authorities like the church or even the king.

Benjamin Franklin

•Example of self-made man; he was not born wealthy but hard work and intelligence made him rich, famous, respected, and successful

•Social mobility: he moves up in social classes

•Individualism: believed you should improve yourself and fulfill your potential

Standard 3

French and Indian War

•A war between France and England over land in North America (Ohio River Valley)

•Increases tensions between colonists and Great Britain over Proclamation of 1763 and taxes to pay war debt

Proclamation of 1763

•British told colonists they could not move west of Appalachian mountains

Salutary Neglect

•Means that England mostly left the colonies alone and let them govern themselves

•This ended after the F&I War

Treaty of Paris - 1763

•Treaty ending the French and Indian War.

•France was forced to surrender all land east of the Mississippi River to England

•This means that England becomes the dominant imperial power in North America

Stamp Act

•1765 law in which England forced a tax on paper goods on the American colonies.

•Colonists reacted by forming the Stamp Act Congress  first time colonies acted as a unified group

Intolerable Acts

•A series of laws enacted by Parliament in 1774 that were meant to punish Boston for the Tea Party.

•Shut down Boston Harbor, enacted the Quartering Act, and shut down Massachusetts legislature

Sons and Daughters of Liberty

•A group of radical colonists that would use violence to oppose British oppression and taxation.

•They would use methods like threats or violence against tax collectors to stop the taxes from getting paid.

Committees of Correspondence

•A communication network of letters between the colonies to share information about protests and resisting British actions

•This information was critical for leaders of the revolution and united colonies

Townshend Acts

•A series of laws enacted by England in 1767 that taxed all goods that were imported from England to America.

•There was no way for the colonists to avoid paying these taxes.

Boston Massacre

•A clash between British soldiers and a mob of angry colonists in Boston in 1770.

•British soldiers fired on the crowd and 5 colonists were killed

•Leaders like Paul Revere used this event to unite the colonies against England.

Boston Tea Party

•In 1773, a group of angry colonists disguised themselves as Indians and dumped 18,000 pounds of tea off of a British ship into Boston Harbor.

•Led to the British punishing Boston with the Intolerable Acts

Lexington and Concord

•The British are sent to Concord to destroy a stockpile of weapons

•The minutemen (militia) meet them at Lexington where the first shots of the war are fired

1st and 2nd Continental Congress

•First Continental Congress: delegates from colonies meet (except GA) and decide to warn colonists to prepare for war

•Second Continental Congress: delegates meet and name the militia the Continental Army and appoint George Washington as commander

Common Sense

•Document written by Thomas Paine listing the reasons America should be independent from Great Britain

•Important because it was written for the common people and convinced more people to join the side of the revolutionaries

Standard 4

Declaration of Independence

•Document written by Thomas Jefferson to the King of England explaining why Americans wanted to be independent from Great Britain

•Influenced by John Locke’s idea of natural rights – life, liberty and property

•Written by the ‘Committee of Five’

French Alliance

•America needed foreign assistance to fight the war against England and France agreed to give America money and send troops and ships to help fight the war

•Benjamin Franklin went to France to convince them to help us fight the British

•Marquis de Lafayette was the French representative in America

Crossing of the Delaware

•Washington plans a surprise attack on Hessian mercenaries

•Victory is important because it boosts American morale and gives them a desire to keep fighting

Valley Forge

•This is where the American army camps for the winter 1777

•The soldiers were freezing and starving

•The army receives foreign help and training from Baron von Steuben and after Valley Forge the Continental Army is more professional and better trained

Trenton

•“Washington’s Crossing of the Delaware River”

•Surprise attack on the British leads to colonist victory

•Boosts morale of the colonists’ cause

Saratoga

•‘Turning point’ in the war

•Prevents the British from cutting the colonies in two in New York

Yorktown

•The Americans and the French trap the British at the Battle of Yorktown

•The geography of the land (peninsula) and the help from the French navy make this victory possible

•Lord Cornwallis (the British commander) surrenders and the Americans win

George Washington as a military leader

•Slowly formed the untrained continental soldiers into a professional army

•Was a strong enough leader to keep his army together in the face of defeats and extremely tough times like the winter at Valley Forge.

•Willing to take risks in order to achieve victory (as seen in the Crossing of the Delaware River).

Treaty of Paris 1783

•Officially ends the American Revolution and formally establishes American independence from Great Britain

•Also, sets the boundaries for the new nation

Standard 5

Articles of Confederation

•A document adopted by the Second Continental Congress in 1777 and approved by the states in 1781.

•This was the first law of the land for the new government of the United States

•Weaknesses: no executive, no courts, no taxing power

Daniel Shays’ Rebellion

•A 1787 uprising of farmers that were angry at the Massachusetts state government because of debt and foreclosures, so they shut down the state courts by force

•Showed the weakness of the Articles of Confederation because Massachusetts asked the federal government for help but they didn’t have the power to do anything

Land Ordinance of 1785

•This law divided up new lands and sold them at $640 per lot

•$$ used to fund new U.S. government, pay off war debts

Northwest Ordinance

•A law passed in 1787 under the Articles of Confederation government

•Set up a plan for territories to become states and contributed to westward migration

•Plan encouraged new state constitutions to avoid slavery and include a plan for public education

Constitutional Convention

•Founding fathers met at Pennsylvania State House in May 1787 to revise the Articles of Confederation, but ended up writing a whole new Constitution

•Major conflicts at the Constitution over the issues of representation in Congress and slavery had to be resolved through compromises

Great Compromise

•A compromise made at the Constitutional Convention to resolve the conflict between the Virginia Plan (large states) and New Jersey Plan (small states)

•Proposed a bicameral legislature with the House of Representatives, where representation is based on population and the Senate, where every state gets 2 representatives

3/5 Compromise

•A compromise between free states and slave states over whether or not slaves should be counted as part of the population for representation purposes in the House of Representatives

•Decided that slaves would count as 3/5 of a person (Out of every 5 slaves, 3 would count towards population)

U.S. Constitution

•America’s final law of the land, written at Constitutional Convention after the AOC failed because it was too weak

•Provided for a more powerful central government, but this power was limited by separation of powers, checks and balances, and federalism

Popular Sovereignty

•The people have power in the government by voting to elect representatives

•This idea is the same as what Jefferson described as “consent of the governed” in the Declaration of Independence

Separation of Powers

•The powers of the national government are divided by the Constitution into three separate branches to prevent any one person or branch from having too much power

•The legislative branch (Congress) makes the laws, executive branch (President) enforces the laws, and judicial branch (courts) interprets the laws.

•This comes from French philosopher Montesquieu

Checks and Balances

•Principle of the Constitution that gives each branch of government the authority to limit the power of the other two branches

•Examples:

•Congress passes laws, president can veto them and Supreme court can rule them unconstitutional

•President appoints Supreme Court justices and Congress approves them; Congress can impeach the president

Federalism

•A system in which power is shared between different levels of government

•For example, in the U.S. we have the federal (national) government, state governments, and local governments

Judicial Review

•The Supreme Court has the power to declare laws unconstitutional

•This authority is a part of the system of checks and balances

Limited Government

•Government is not all powerful

•The Constitution limits the power of the federal government through separation of powers, checks and balances, federalism and the Bill of Rights

Federalists

•Group of political leaders that supported the new U.S. Constitution in the debate over ratification (approving and adopting the document)

•Wanted a strong federal government and were led by Alexander Hamilton and James Madison

•Federalist Papers = a collection of essays written to convince Americans to approve the Constitution

Anti-Federalists

•Group of political leaders led by Thomas Jefferson that were against ratification of the new Constitution

•They wanted a weaker federal government and strong state governments and refused to ratify without a Bill of Rights

•The Anti-Federalist Papers = written to point out problems in the Constitution

Bill of Rights

•First 10 amendments to the Constitution

•Anti-Federalists insisted on adding these before ratification

•Designed to protectindividual rights (#1-9) and states’ rights (#10) from the power of the national government

Standard 6

Washington’s Presidency

•Important because he set precedents for how the President would conduct himself and how the executive branch would work

•Showed the strength of the new federal government in Whiskey Rebellion, said America should not get involved in European affairs, and warned against factions/political parties

Whiskey Rebellion

•Farmers in Pennsylvania refused to pay a tax put on whiskey by the federal government

•President Washington ordered the militia to go an and stop the rebellion, and the rebels scattered without a fight

•Proved that the federal government was now strong enough under the new Constitution to handle a crisis

Non-Intervention in Europe

•The people of France asked Americans to help in their revolution to overthrow the king of France

•Washington thought America needed to stay out of European problems and issued the “Declaration of Neutrality”

Adams’ Presidency

•American diplomats effectively resolve the XYZ Affair with the French, who tried to force the U.S. to pay bribe or tribute money to continue to deal with France

•Adams lost public support because of Alien and Sedition Acts that set fines and jail time for anyone speaking out against the government (violation of 1st amendment)

Louisiana Purchase

•President Jefferson send James Monroe to negotiate with Napoleon to buy the Louisiana territory from France

•This doubles the size of the U.S. (territorial growth)

Westward expansion

•Describes the territorial growth of the United States during the first half of the 19th century

•the U.S. grows and gains land to the west

•Louisiana Purchase

•Northwest Ordinance

•Manifest Destiny

Manifest Destiny

•“obviously meant to be” that God wanted Americans to move west

•Belief that Americans were supposed to move and expand west to the Pacific coast

Lewis and Clark expedition

•Jefferson gets Lewis and Clark to explore the Louisiana territory and report on what was there

•Jefferson sends them to be diplomatic with Native Americans and to record information about plants, animals and the land

War of 1812

•War between the U.S. and Great Britain over impressment and British alliance with Native Americans

•Significance: Increased nationalism and helped create national identity

National identity

•The nature of a country as a whole including language, culture, traditions and shared values

American System

•Plan to unify the regions and create a strong, stable economy

•Created infrastructure – canals, railroads (transportation between regions)

•Written by Senator Henry Clay