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APUSH Terms Periods 2 and 3

Key Concepts:

Terms in this set (51)

Albany Plan
The Albany Plan of Union was a plan to create a unified government for the Thirteen Colonies, suggested by Benjamin Franklin, then a senior leader (age 45) and a delegate from Pennsylvania, at the Albany Congress on July 10, 1754 in Albany, New York.
7 Years' War
The Seven Years' War was a global conflict fought between 1756 and 1763. It involved every European great power of the time and spanned five continents, affecting Europe, the Americas, West Africa, India, and the Philippines.
Peace of Paris (1763)
The Treaty of Paris of 1763 ended the French and Indian War/Seven Years' War between Great Britain and France, as well as their respective allies. In the terms of the treaty, France gave up all its territories in mainland North America, effectively ending any foreign military threat to the British colonies there.
George III
George III was King of Great Britain and King of Ireland from 25 October 1760 until the union of the two countries on 1 January 1801, after which he was King of the United Kingdom of Great Brita
Proclamation of 1763
The Royal Proclamation of 1763 was issued October 7, 1763, by King George III following Great Britain's acquisition of French territory in North America after the end of the French and Indian War/Seven Years' War, which forbade all settlement west of a line drawn along the Appalachian Mountains.
Sons of Liberty
The Sons of Liberty was an organization that was created in the Thirteen American Colonies. The secret society was formed to protect the rights of the colonists and to fight taxation by the British government.
Regulator Movement
The War of the Regulation or the Regulator Movement was an uprising in the British North America's Carolina colonies, lasting from about 1765 to 1771, in which citizens took up arms against colonial officials.
Virginia House of Burgesses
Governor George Yeardley arrived in Virginia from England and announced that the Virginia Company had voted to abolish martial law and create a legislative assembly. This announcement was made and a House was established. The first assembly met on July 30, 1619, in the church at Jamestown.
Declaratory Act
A declaration by the British Parliament that accompanied the repeal of the Stamp Act. It stated that the British Parliament's taxing authority was the same in America as in Great Britain. Parliament had directly taxed the colonies for revenue in the Sugar Act (1764) and the Stamp Act (1765).
Townshend Duties
Imposed duties on glass, lead, paints, paper, and tea imported into the colonies.
Tea Act
The Tea Act was the final straw in a series of unpopular policies and taxes imposed by Britain on her American colonies. The policy ignited a "powder keg" of opposition and resentment among American colonists and was the catalyst of the Boston Tea Party.
Boston Massacre
The Boston Massacre, known as the Incident on King Street by the British, was an incident on March 5, 1770, in which British Army soldiers shot and killed people while under attack by a mob.
John Adams
A leader of the American Revolution and served as the second U.S. president from 1797 to 1801. Became a critic of Great Britain's authority in colonial America and viewed the British imposition of high taxes and tariffs as a tool of oppression.

- 1770s a delegate to the Continental Congress.

- 1780s served as a diplomat in Europe and helped negotiate the Treaty of Paris (1783)

- America's first vice president
- Americas second president
Sam Adams
One of the Independence movement's most celebrated leaders and statesmen. An organizer of Boston's Sons of Liberty. He represented Massachusetts in the Continental Congress from 1774 through 1781.
Boston Tea Party
The dumping of 18,000 pounds of tea into Boston Harbor by colonists in 1773 to protest the Tea Act.
Daughters of Liberty
Women who displayed their patriotism by participating in boycotts of British goods following the passage of the Townshend Acts.
Coercive/Intolerable Acts
Also called the Coercive Acts, harsh laws passed by the British Parliament in 1774 meant to punish the American colonists for the Boston Tea Party and other protests. Like the Stamp Act and the Townshend Acts, the Intolerable Acts pushed the colonists toward war with Great Britain.
Quebec Act
1774, passed by the British Parliament to institute a permanent administration in Canada replacing the temporary government created at the time of the Proclamation of 1763. It gave the French Canadians complete religious freedom and restored the French form of civil law.
Committees of Correspondence
The Committees of Correspondence rallied colonial opposition against British policy and established a political union among the Thirteen Colonies. Letter from Samuel Adams to James Warren, 4 November 1772. Massachusetts Historical Society.
1st Continental Congress
The First Continental Congress was a meeting of delegates from twelve of the Thirteen Colonies who met from September 5 to October 26, 1774 at Carpenters' Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania early in the American Revolution.
Virginia Resolves
a name applied to several sets of resolutions. The most important were the Virginia Resolves on the Stamp Act. Patrick Henry introduced six resolutions, which were adopted by the Virginia House of Burgesses on 30 May 1765 except for the last two, which were considered too radical.
Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin (January 17, 1706 to April 17, 1790) was a Founding Father and a polymath, inventor, scientist, printer, politician, freemason and diplomat. Franklin helped to draft the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, and he negotiated the 1783 Treaty of Paris ending the Revolutionary War. His scientific pursuits included investigations into electricity, mathematics and mapmaking. A writer known for his wit and wisdom, Franklin also published Poor Richard's Almanack, invented bifocal glasses and organized the first successful American lending library.
Loyalists
colonist loyal to Great Britain during the American Revolution. Loyalists constituted about one-third of the population of the American colonies during that conflict. They were not confined to any particular group or class, but their numbers were strongest among the following groups: officeholders and others who served the British crown and had a vested interest in upholding its authority
Lexington and Concord
The Battles of Lexington and Concord, fought on April 19, 1775, kicked off the American Revolutionary War (1775-83). Tensions had been building for many years between residents of the 13 American colonies and the British authorities, particularly in Massachusetts. On the night of April 18, 1775, hundreds of British troops marched from Boston to nearby Concord in order to seize an arms cache. Paul Revere and other riders sounded the alarm, and colonial militiamen began mobilizing to intercept the Redcoat column. A confrontation on the Lexington town green started off the fighting, and soon the British were hastily retreating under intense fire. Many more battles followed, and in 1783 the colonists formally won their independence.
Thomas Paine
England-born political philosopher and writer Thomas Paine (1737-1809) helped shape many of the ideas that marked the Age of Revolution. Published in 1776, his highly popular "Common Sense" was the first pamphlet to advocate American independence. After writing the "Crisis" papers during the American Revolution, Paine returned to Europe and offered his defense of the French Revolution with "The Rights of Man." His political views led to a stint in prison; after his release, he produced his last great pamphlets, "The Age of Reason," an exposition of institutionalized religion, and "Agrarian Justice," a call for land reform.
Common Sense
Published in 1776, Common Sense challenged the authority of the British government and the royal monarchy. The plain language that Paine used spoke to the common people of America and was the first work to openly ask for independence from Great Britain.
Declaration of Independence
hen armed conflict between bands of American colonists and British soldiers began in April 1775, the Americans were ostensibly fighting only for their rights as subjects of the British crown. By the following summer, with the Revolutionary War in full swing, the movement for independence from Britain had grown, and delegates of the Continental Congress were faced with a vote on the issue. In mid-June 1776, a five-man committee including Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and Benjamin Franklin was tasked with drafting a formal statement of the colonies' intentions. The Congress formally adopted the Declaration of Independence-written largely by Jefferson-in Philadelphia on July 4, a date now celebrated as the birth of American independence.
Articles of Confederation
The Articles of Confederation was the first written constitution of the United States. Stemming from wartime urgency, its progress was slowed by fears of central authority and extensive land claims by states before was it was ratified on March 1, 1781. Under these articles, the states remained sovereign and independent, with Congress serving as the last resort on appeal of disputes. Congress was also given the authority to make treaties and alliances, maintain armed forces and coin money. However, the central government lacked the ability to levy taxes and regulate commerce, issues that led to the Constitutional Convention in 1787 for the creation of new federal laws.
Land Ordinance of 1785
The Land Ordinance of 1785 set forth how the government of the United States would measure, divide and distribute the land it had acquired from Great Britain north and west of the Ohio River at the end of the American Revolution.
Northwest Ordinance of 1787
The Northwest Ordinance, adopted July 13, 1787, by the Second Continental Congress, chartered a government for the Northwest Territory, provided a method for admitting new states to the Union from the territory, and listed a bill of rights guaranteed in the territory. Following the principles outlined by Thomas Jefferson in the Ordinance of 1784, the authors of the Northwest Ordinance (probably Nathan Dane and Rufus King) spelled out a plan that was subsequently used as the country expanded to the Pacific
Shays' Rebellion
Shays' Rebellion is the name given to a series of protests in 1786 and 1787 by American farmers against state and local enforcement of tax collections and judgments for debt. Although farmers took up arms in states from New Hampshire to South Carolina, the rebellion was most serious in Massachusetts, where bad harvests, economic depression, and high taxes threatened farmers with the loss of their farms. The rebellion took its name from its symbolic leader, Daniel Shays of Massachusetts, a former captain in the Continental army.
Siege of Yorktown
In the fall of 1781, a combined American force of Colonial and French troops laid seige to the British Army at Yorktown, Virginia. Led by George Washington and French General Comte de Rochambeau, they began their final attack on October 14th, capturing two British defenses and leading to the surrender, just days later, of British General Lord Corwallis and nearly 9,000 troops. Yorktown proved to be the final battle of the American Revolution, and the British began peace negotiations shortly after the American victory.
Valley Forge
Valley Forge is the story of the six month encampment of the Continental Army of the newly formed United States of America under the command of General George Washington, a few miles from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. No battle was fought here, but from December 19, 1777 to June 19, 1778, a struggle against the elements and low morale was overcome on this sacred ground.
Constitutional Convention
On May 15, 1776, the Second Continental Congress, meeting in Independence Hall, Philadelphia, issued "A Resolve" to the thirteen colonies: "Adopt such a government as shall, in the opinion of the representatives of the people, best conduce to the safety and happiness of their constituents in particular and America in general." Between 1776 and 1780 each of the thirteen colonies adopted a republican form of government. What emerged was the most extensive documentation of the powers of government and the rights of the people that the world had ever witnessed.
Federalists
The Federalist Party originated in opposition to the Democratic-Republican Party in America during President George Washington's first administration. Known for their support of a strong national government, the Federalists emphasized commercial and diplomatic harmony with Britain following the signing of the 1794 Jay Treaty. The party split over negotiations with France during President John Adams's administration, though it remained a political force until its members passed into the Democratic and the Whig parties in the 1820s. Despite its dissolution, the party made a lasting impact by laying the foundations of a national economy, creating a national judicial system and formulating principles of foreign policy.
Anti-Federalists
Anti-Federalists, in early U.S. history, a loose political coalition of popular politicians such as Patrick Henry who unsuccessfully opposed the strong central government envisioned in the U.S. Constitution of 1787 and whose agitations led to the addition of a Bill of Rights. The first in the long line of states'-rights advocates, they feared the authority of a single national government, upper-class dominance, inadequate separation of powers, and loss of immediate control over local affairs. Stilling their opposition in order to support the first administration of President George Washington, the Anti-Federalists in 1791 became the nucleus of the Jeffersonian Republican Party (subsequently Democratic-Republican, finally Democratic) as strict constructionists of the new Constitution and in opposition to a strong national fiscal policy.
Federalist Papers
The Federalist Papers consist of eighty-five letters written to newspapers in the late 1780s to urge ratification of the U.S. Constitution. With the Constitution needing approval from nine of thirteen states, the press was inundated with letters about the controversial document. Celebrated statesmen Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay weighed in with a series of essays under the pseudonym "Publius," arguing that the proposed system would preserve the Union and empower the federal government to act firmly and coherently in the national interest. These articles, written in the spirit both of propaganda and of logical argument, were published in book form as The Federalist in 1788.
Alexander Hamilton
Though he never attained the highest office of his adopted country, few of America's founders influenced its political system more than Alexander Hamilton (1755-1804). Born in the British West Indies, he arrived in the colonies as a teenager, and quickly embarked on a remarkable career. He was a member of the Continental Congress, an author of the Federalist Papers, a champion of the Constitution and the first secretary of the Treasury, where he helped found the first national bank, the U.S. Mint and a tax collection bureau that would later become the U.S. Coast Guard. Troubled by personal and political scandals in his later years, Hamilton was shot and killed in one of history's most infamous duels by one of his fiercest rivals, the then Vice President Aaron Burr, in July 1804.
James Madison
James Madison (1751-1836) was a founding father of the United States and the fourth American president, serving in office from 1809 to 1817. An advocate for a strong federal government, the Virginia-born Madison composed the first drafts of the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights and earned the nickname "Father of the Constitution." In 1792, Madison and Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) founded the Democratic-Republican Party, which has been called America's first opposition political party. When Jefferson became the third U.S. president, Madison served as his secretary of state. In this role, he oversaw the Louisiana Purchase from the French in 1803. During his presidency, Madison led the U.S. into the controversial War of 1812 (1812-15) against Great Britain. After two terms in the White House, Madison retired to his Virginia plantation, Montpelier, with his wife Dolley (1768-1849).
Bill of Rights
The first 10 amendments to the Constitution make up the Bill of Rights. Written by James Madison in response to calls from several states for greater constitutional protection for individual liberties, the Bill of Rights lists specific prohibitions on governmental power. The Virginia Declaration of Rights, written by George Mason, strongly influenced Madison.
George Washington
George Washington (1732-99) was commander in chief of the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War (1775-83) and served two terms as the first U.S. president, from 1789 to 1797. The son of a prosperous planter, Washington was raised in colonial Virginia. As a young man, he worked as a surveyor then fought in the French and Indian War (1754-63). During the American Revolution, he led the colonial forces to victory over the British and became a national hero. In 1787, he was elected president of the convention that wrote the U.S. Constitution. Two years later, Washington became America's first president. Realizing that the way he handled the job would impact how future presidents approached the position, he handed down a legacy of strength, integrity and national purpose. Less than three years after leaving office, he died at his Virginia plantation, Mount Vernon, at age 67.
Democratic-Republican Party
Democratic-Republican Party, originally (1792-98) Republican Party, first opposition political party in the United States. Organized in 1792 as the Republican Party, its members held power nationally between 1801 and 1825. It was the direct antecedent of the present Democratic Party.
Expansion and Migration Westward
In 1803, President Thomas Jefferson purchased the territory of Louisiana from the French government for $15 million. The Louisiana Purchase stretched from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains and from Canada to New Orleans, and it doubled the size of the United States. To Jefferson, westward expansion was the key to the nation's health: He believed that a republic depended on an independent, virtuous citizenry for its survival, and that independence and virtue went hand in hand with land ownership, especially the ownership of small farms. ("Those who labor in the earth," he wrote, "are the chosen people of God.") In order to provide enough land to sustain this ideal population of virtuous yeomen, the United States would have to continue to expand.The westward expansion of the United States is one of the defining themes of 19th-century American history, but it is not just the story of Jefferson's expanding "empire of liberty." On the contrary, as one historian writes, in the six decades after the Louisiana Purchase, westward expansion "very nearly destroy[ed] the republic."
Spanish Expansion in California
In the eighteenth century, and especially after 1750, New Spain fostered settlement of New Mexico by a system of mercedes, or land grants, given to prestigious individuals and to groups of more humble status. This approach fostered respect for Puebloan lands and also increased tensions with Navajos and Apaches. In these villages, bonds of godparentage, work on the acéquías (irrigation ditches), and the Penitentes (a lay Catholic brotherhood) provided social cohesion within a pattern of dispersed settlement.

In the Texas region at the close of the seventeenth century, Spain responded to expanding French settlements in the Mississippi River valley, and even incursions along the Red River, by establishing two small missions in 1690 and five more in 1716, and then by situating a presidio (1718) at the Río San Antonio. From this emerging center several more missions were founded, and for over a century priests laboriously evangelized the Indians of Texas. In the Texas War for Independence (1836), a Mexican siege of Mission San Antonio de Valero gained enduring fame as Alamo.

Concerned about Russian fur-trapping and raiding settlements along the coast of Alta California in the 1760s, Spanish authorities initiated another program of temporal and spiritual conquest. Under the leadership of José de Gálvez, appointed visitador general by King Carlos III, and Father Junipero Serra, Catalonian soldiers and Franciscan priests founded several presidios and twenty-one missions along the Pacific coast, from San Diego (1769) to Solano (1823). Although some rebellions erupted--at San Diego in 1775, at San Gabriel in 1785, and at Santa Barbara, Santa Inez, and La Purísima in 1824--apathy and disease (especially syphilis, introduced by the soldiers) mostly reigned at the missions. Argument continues about the priests' treatment of the Indians, responsibility for the precipitous decline in the Indian populations, and the legitimacy of the whole effort to so radically change, often by force, Indian culture and beliefs.

Generally speaking, the mission effort overwhelmingly failed. Disease, indifference, rebellion, and the resilience of Native beliefs meant that most Indian peoples never genuinely converted to Spanish ways. In Texas in 1823-1824 and in California in 1833, Mexico "secularized" the missions, converting them into simple parish churches. The Indians were to have regained lands preempted by the missions, but most settled in towns or returned to their original habitats, and former army personnel occupied the mission lands.

Several settlements in the Spanish borderlands grew into metropolises--especially Los Angeles (1781) and San Jose (1777)--but Spain founded only pueblos (small towns) and several lasting villas (large towns), most notably Santa Fe (1610), Albuquerque (1716), and San Antonio. Each city remains a magnet for contemporary Mexican immigrants who move al norte (to the north), to places their predecessors founded and named. Although Spain ceded Florida to England in 1763, St. Augustine remains the oldest European-founded city in the United States.
George Washingtons Farewell Address
Washington departed the presidency and the nation's then capital city of Philadelphia in September 1796 with a characteristic sense of how to take dramatic advantage of the moment.
Alien and Sedition Acts
The Alien and Sedition Acts were passed by Congress in 1798 in preparation for an anticipated war with France. The Naturalization Act increased the residency requirement for American citizenship from five to fourteen years, required aliens to declare their intent to acquire citizenship five years before it could be granted, and rendered people from enemy nations ineligible for naturalization. The subsequent Sedition Act banned the publishing of scandalous or malicious writings against the government. The acts were designed by Federalists to limit the power of the opposition Republican Party, but enforcement ended after Thomas Jefferson was elected president in 1800.
Great Compromise
On July 16, 1787, a plan proposed by Roger Sherman and Oliver Ellsworth, Connecticut's delegates to the Constitutional Convention, established a two-house legislature. The Great Compromise, or Connecticut Compromise as it is often called, proposed a solution to the heated debate between larger and smaller states over their representation in the newly proposed Senate. The larger states believed that representation should be based proportionally on the contribution each state made to the nation's finances and defense, and the smaller states believed that the only fair plan was one of equal representation. The compromise proposed by Sherman and Ellsworth provided for a dual system of representation. In the House of Representatives each state's number of seats would be in proportion to population. In the Senate, all states would have the same number of seats. Amendments to the compromise based representation in the House on total white population and three-fifths of the black population. On July 16, 1787, the convention adopted the Great Compromise by a one-vote margin.
Revolution of 1800
The presidential election of 1800 was an intense political contest. Pitting two clearly opposing parties against each other for the first time, the Federalists and the Democratic Republicans fought in what some historians have called the dirtiest campaign in US politics. Referred to by Thomas Jefferson in 1819 as "The Revolution of 1800," the election results marked the first peaceful change of executive party in the US and confirmed the role of the electorate in choosing the American president.
Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions
These resolutions were passed by the legislatures of Kentucky and Virginia in response to the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 and were authored by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, respectively. The resolutions argued that the federal government had no authority to exercise power not specifically delegated to it in the Constitution.
Whiskey Rebellion
In January 1791, President George Washington's Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton proposed a seemingly innocuous excise tax "upon spirits distilled within the United States, and for appropriating the same."1 What Congress failed to predict was the vehement rejection of this tax by Americans living on the frontier of Western Pennsylvania. By 1794, the Whiskey Rebellion threatened the stability of the nascent United States and forced President Washington to personally lead the United States militia westward to stop the rebels.
XYZ Affair
XYZ Affair, diplomatic incident that, when made public in 1798, nearly involved the United States and France in war. Pres. John Adams dispatched three ministers to France in 1797 to negotiate a commercial agreement to protect U.S. shipping. In Paris the ministers were approached by three French agents who suggested a bribe of $250,000 to Talleyrand, the French foreign minister, and a loan of $10,000,000 to France as a prelude to negotiations. In April 1798 the machinations of the three French agents (called X, Y, and Z in the diplomatic correspondence) were made public in the United States. There was a great outcry over the bribe solicitation, followed by preparations for war. Although a period of undeclared naval warfare ensued between France and the United States formal war was avoided, and the incident was settled by the Convention of 1800.
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