Term
| How did England feel towards colonists after the French Indian War? |
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Definition
| King George III and his prime minister, George Grenville, noted that the colonists had benefited most from the expensive war and yet had paid very little in comparison to citizens living in England. To even this disparity, Parliament passed a series of acts (listed below) designed to secure revenue from the colonies. In addition, royal officials revoked their policy of salutary neglect and began to enforce the Navigation Acts, and newer taxation measures, with vigor. |
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| In efforts to keep peace with the Native Americans, the British government established the Proclamation Line in 1763, barring colonial settlement west of the Allegheny Mountains in Pennsylvania. The Proclamation declared that colonists already settled in this region must remove themselves, negating colonists’ claims to the West and thus inhibiting colonial expansion. |
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| In 1764, Parliament passed the Sugar Act to counter smuggling of foreign sugar and to establish a British monopoly in the American sugar market. The act also allowed royal officials to seize colonial cargo with little or no legal cause. A major criticism of the Sugar Act was that it aimed not to regulate the economy of the British Empire but to raise revenue for the British government. This distinction became important as the colonists determined which actions of the British government warranted resistance. |
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| As a further measure to force the colonies to help pay off the war debt, Prime Minister Grenville pushed the Stamp Act through Parliament in March 1765. This act required Americans to buy special watermarked paper for newspapers, playing cards, and legal documents such as wills and marriage licenses. Violators faced jury-less trials in Nova Scotian vice-admiralty courts, where guilt was presumed until innocence was proven.Colonists believed they should not have to pay Parliamentary taxes because they did not elect any members of Parliament. They argued that they should be able to determine their own taxes independent of Parliament. |
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Term
| How did Prime Minister Grenville claim colonists were represented? |
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Definition
| He claimed that all of these people were “virtually represented” in Parliament. This theory of virtual representation held that the members of Parliament not only represented their specific geographical constituencies, but they also considered the well-being of all British subjects when deliberating on legislation. |
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Term
| Opposition to the Stamp Act |
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Definition
| As dissent spread through the colonies, it quickly became more organized. Radical groups calling themselves the Sons of Liberty formed throughout the colonies to channel the widespread violence, often burning stamps and threatening British officials. Merchants in New York began a boycott of British goods and merchants in other cities soon joined in. Representatives of nine colonial assemblies met in New York City at the Stamp Act Congress, where they prepared a petition asking Parliament to repeal the Stamp Act on the grounds that it violated the principle of “no taxation without representation.” |
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| Townshend had assumed leadership of the government. Townshend proposed taxing imports into the American colonies to recover Parliament’s lost revenue, and secured passage of the Revenue Act of 1767. Popularly referred to as the Townshend Duties, the Revenue Act taxed glass, lead, paint, paper, and tea entering the colonies. The profits from these taxes were to be used to pay the salaries of the royal governors in the colonies. In practice, however, the Townshend Duties yielded little income for the British; the taxes on tea brought in the only significant revenue. |
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| But tension again flared with the Boston Massacre in March 1770, when an unruly mob bombarded British troops with rocks and dared them to shoot. In the ensuing chaos, five colonists were killed. The Boston Massacre marked the peak of colonial opposition to the Townshend Duties. |
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Term
| The Committee of Correspondence |
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Definition
Samuel Adams urged every Massachusetts community to appoint a committee to coordinate colony-wide measures protecting colonial rights. Within the year, approximately 250 Committees of Correspondence formed throughout the colonies. These committees linked political leaders of almost every colony in resistance to the British.
The Committees of Correspondence began on the community level in Massachusetts and eventually became the means by which the colonies coordinated their efforts to preserve their rights. |
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| The British East India Company suffered from the American boycott of British tea. In an effort to save the company, Parliament passed the Tea Act in 1773, which eliminated import tariffs on tea entering England and allowed the company to sell directly to consumers rather than through merchants. These changes lowered the price of British tea to below that of smuggled tea, which the British hoped would end the boycott. Parliament planned to use the profits from tea sales to pay the salaries of the colonial royal governors, a move which, like the Townshend Duties, particularly angered colonists. |
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| While protests of the Tea Act in the form of tea boycotts and the burning of tea cargos occurred throughout the colonies, the response in Boston was most aggressive. In December 1773, a group of colonists dressed as Native Americans dumped about $70,000 worth of the tea into Boston Harbor. This event, known as the Boston Tea Party, took on an epic status. |
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Term
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Definition
Closed Boston Harbor to trade until the city paid for the lost tea.
Removed certain democratic elements of the Massachusetts government, most notably by making formerly elected positions appointed by the crown.
Restricted town meetings, requiring that their agenda be approved by the royal governor
Declared that any royal agent charged with murder in the colonies would be tried in Britain.
Instated the Quartering Act, forcing civilians to house and support British soldiers |
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Definition
| Established Roman Catholicism as Quebec’s official religion, gave Quebec’s royal governors wide powers, and extended Quebec’s borders south to the Ohio River and west to the Mississippi, thereby inhibiting westward expansion of the colonies. |
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Term
| Battle of Lexington and Concord |
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Definition
| Once in Concord, the British troops faced a much larger colonial force. In the skirmish, the British lost 273 men and were driven back into Boston. The Battle of Lexington and Concord convinced many colonists to take up arms. The next night, 20,000 New England troops began a month-long siege of the British garrison in Boston. |
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Term
| Thomas Pane, Common Sense |
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Definition
| Paine called for economic and political independence, and proposed that America become a new kind of nation founded on the principles of liberty. By May 1776, Rhode Island had declared its independence and New England was deep in rebellion. |
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Term
| The Declaration of Independence |
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Definition
| The Declaration of Independence proclaimed a complete and irrevocable break from England, arguing that the British government had broken its contract with the colonies. It extolled the virtues of democratic self-government, and tapped into the Enlightenment ideas of John Locke and others who promoted equality, liberty, justice, and self-fulfillment. |
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Term
| How did colonists gain support in the Revolution? |
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Definition
| The colonists found much-needed allies in their war against Britain when, in 1778, France joined the war on the American side. Within two years Spain and the Dutch Republic had also declared war against Britain. Caught in an international war, the British had to split their troops between Europe and North America. With their forces thus divided, the British relied more and more on loyalists to fight in the colonies, and soon found that they had overestimated loyalist support. |
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Term
| Divisions between colonists |
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Definition
| The signing of the Declaration of Independence ignited a sharp division in the colonies between the Whigs, in favor of independence, and the Tories, British loyalists and sympathizers. Approximately 20 percent of free Americans were Tories. Tory influence was most powerful in the Middle Colonies and in Georgia. Slaves also made up a significant number of Tory loyalists, responding to Britain’s promises of freedom for any slave who fought to restore royal authority. The most prominent Whig strongholds were New England, Virginia, and South Carolina |
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Term
| Significance of the Treaty of Paris 1783 |
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Definition
| With the Treaty of Paris of 1783, the British recognized American independence and agreed to evacuate their troops. The United States borders were set along Canada, the Mississippi, and Spanish Florida. |
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Term
| Similarities in newly drafted constitutions |
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Definition
By 1784, all thirteen state constitutions contained a bill of rights outlining the civil rights and freedoms accorded citizens.
In general, the constitutions established weak executive branches and responsive legislatures. Most called for bicameral legislatures and for appointed, rather than elected, officials.
Most reduced property requirements for voting and otherwise increased social equality.
Most called for no official state religion. |
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Term
| Significance of the Articles of Confederation by John Dickinson |
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Definition
| The Articles of Confederation demonstrated the colonists’ dislike of centralized authority and their fear of falling under a system as potentially tyrannical as they felt the British system had been. |
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Term
| How did Americans try to facilitate Westward Expansion through laws? |
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Definition
| he government attempted to control this expansion with the Land Ordinance of 1785, which outlined the protocol for settlement. A second ordinance, the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, forbade slavery in the territory above the Ohio River, contained a settlers’ bill of rights, and defined the process through which territories could become states. In such expansion efforts, the government faced fierce opposition from the Native Americans and Spanish along the frontier. The Spanish, denying the validity of the Treaty of Paris, closed the port of New Orleans to American ships in 1784. |
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Term
| Significance of Shay's Rebellion |
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Definition
| For many Americans, Shays’s Rebellion, along with the economic depression, revealed the shortcomings of national government under the Articles of Confederation. Congress could neither suppress revolt nor regulate inflation; it had neither policing nor financial power. |
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Term
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Definition
| he plan called for a bicameral (two house) legislature with representation in both houses proportional to population. These houses of Congress would jointly name the president and federal judges. But the smaller states opposed the Virginia Plan, since representation by population would give more power to the larger states |
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Term
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Definition
| Smaller states supported the New Jersey Plan, which called for a unicameral (one house) Congress in which each state would have an equal number of seats. |
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Term
| The Connecticut Compromise |
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Definition
| The Connecticut Compromise combined the Virginia Plan’s suggestion of proportional representation and the New Jersey Plan’s suggestion of equal representation for all states, creating the House of Representatives and the Senate as we know them today. |
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Term
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Definition
| Dispute over representation of slaves. The solution came in the three-fifths clause, which allowed three-fifths of all slaves to be counted as people. |
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Term
| Which conflicts between groups were appeased by the Constitution? |
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Definition
The delegates’ acceptance of the need to strengthen the national government and their fear of government despotism and tyranny
The interests of the larger and smaller states
The interests of northern and southern states |
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Term
| Responsibilities of 3 Branches |
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Definition
The president, the head of the executive branch, could veto acts of Congress and was responsible for appointing Supreme Court and other federal judges.
Congress, as a joint body, was given the power to impeach, try, and remove the president or Supreme Court justices from office, if necessary. The upper house of Congress, the Senate, could ratify or reject treaties proposed by the president, and had to approve the president’s cabinet appointments.
The judicial branch, headed by the Supreme Court, had the power to interpret the laws passed by Congress. |
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Term
| Privilege of Electoral College |
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Definition
| The writers of the Constitution wanted to increase the power of the national government without debilitating the states. They reserved for state legislatures the powers to elect members of the Senate and to select delegates for the Electoral College that elected the President. They further stipulated that the Constitution could be amended by a vote of three-fourths of the state legislatures. |
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Term
| Federalists vs Anti-Federalists |
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Definition
| The process of ratification began with two opposed and entrenched sides. The supporters of the Constitution called themselves Federalists. Their opponents went by the name Anti-federalists. The Anti-federalists claimed the Constitution granted too much power to the national government. They argued that the Constitution doomed the states to be dominated by a potentially tyrannical central government. Federalists defended the necessity of a strong national government and lauded the Constitution as the best possible framework. |
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Term
| How did the Constitution get ratified? |
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Definition
| In June 1788, New Hampshire became the ninth state to ratify the Constitution, making the document the legitimate framework of national government. Debate gripped Virginia and New York. In late June 1788, Virginia finally ratified the Constitution by a narrow 53 percent majority. In New York, disputes continued for a month until Alexander Hamilton’s Federalists finally emerged victorious by a margin only slightly greater than that in Virginia.The Federalist Papers may have been a great influence. |
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