AP U.S. History · Summary

Unit 2 summary

1. Regions differed by settlers and land: Chesapeake tobacco and servants, New England families and towns, middle-colony grain and diversity, lower-South rice and enslaved majorities.
2. Labor in the Chesapeake shifted from indentured servants to enslaved Africans in the late 1600s, pushed by fewer English servants, more available captives and planters' fear after Bacon's Rebellion.
3. Colonial laws turned slavery into a hereditary, race-based system, including Virginia's 1662 rule that a child's status followed the mother's.
4. Mercantilism and the Navigation Acts tied colonial trade to England, but smuggling and salutary neglect left colonists used to running their own affairs.
5. The Spanish, French and English treated Native peoples differently; conflicts such as the Pueblo Revolt and King Philip's War show resistance and its costs.
6. The Great Awakening stressed emotional faith and challenged settled ministers; the Enlightenment stressed reason and natural rights; both fed colonial habits of questioning authority.
7. To source a document, name its purpose, audience or point of view, then explain how that shapes what it says.