Unit 3: Period 3: 1754 to 1800

19 terms. Say what each one means, then open the card to check.

• Seven Years' War

  A global war from 1754 to 1763, called the French and Indian War in North America, in which Britain defeated France and took Canada and the lands east of the Mississippi.

  Example. The fighting began in 1754 when Virginia troops under a young George Washington clashed with French forces in the Ohio country of western Pennsylvania.

• Albany Plan of Union

  A 1754 proposal by Benjamin Franklin for a council of the colonies to handle defense and Native affairs; the colonial assemblies rejected it.

  Example. Franklin's newspaper ran a cartoon of a snake cut into pieces with the words Join, or Die to urge the colonies to unite.

• Pontiac's War

  A 1763 uprising of Native nations around the Great Lakes and Ohio valley, named for the Ottawa leader Pontiac, against British forts and policies after the French defeat.

  Example. Native warriors captured several British forts in 1763 after the British cut back the gifts the French had long given their allies.

• Proclamation of 1763

  A royal order that barred colonists from settling west of the Appalachian Mountains, meant to calm Native peoples and cut the cost of frontier wars.

  Example. The line ran roughly along the crest of the Appalachian Mountains, from the north down toward Florida.

• Virtual representation

  The British argument that members of Parliament represented all British subjects, including colonists who elected none of them.

  Example. British officials pointed out that many towns in England also elected no member of Parliament, yet were still taxed.

• Stamp Act

  A 1765 law of Parliament that laid a direct tax on the colonists; colonial protest forced Parliament to repeal it in 1766.

  Example. It was due to take effect on November 1, 1765, and it was repealed in March 1766 before it was ever widely collected.

• Coercive Acts

  Laws passed in 1774 to punish Massachusetts after the Boston Tea Party, closing Boston harbor and limiting town meetings; colonists called them the Intolerable Acts.

  Example. Other colonies sent food to Boston after its harbor was closed, and they called the First Continental Congress in response.

• Common Sense

  Thomas Paine's 1776 pamphlet that attacked monarchy itself and urged independence in plain language that ordinary readers could follow.

  Example. The pamphlet was reprinted again and again in 1776 and read aloud in taverns and army camps.

• Declaration of Independence

  The 1776 statement, drafted mainly by Thomas Jefferson, that justified separation from Britain by natural rights and by a list of the king's wrongs.

  Example. Its list of grievances accuses the king of keeping standing armies in the colonies in peacetime without the consent of their legislatures.

• Battle of Saratoga

  An American victory in New York in 1777 that persuaded France to sign an alliance with the United States in 1778.

  Example. General John Burgoyne surrendered nearly 6,000 British and German troops after his army was cut off in upstate New York.

• Loyalists

  Colonists who stayed loyal to the British crown during the Revolution; tens of thousands left the country during or after the war.

  Example. Many Loyalists fled to Canada or Britain, and some states seized their land and property.

• Republican motherhood

  The idea, common after the Revolution, that women served the new republic through their role as mothers of its future citizens.

  Example. Historians coined the name in the 1970s to describe a set of ideas that ran through sermons, essays and advice books of the 1780s and 1790s.

• Articles of Confederation

  The first national constitution, in force from 1781 to 1789, which created a weak Congress that could not tax or regulate trade.

  Example. Each state, large or small, cast a single vote in Congress, and changing the Articles required all thirteen states to agree.

• Northwest Ordinance

  A 1787 law of the Confederation Congress that set up government in the Northwest Territory, a path to statehood and a ban on slavery there.

  Example. States such as Ohio, Indiana and Illinois entered the Union later as equals of the original thirteen under this plan.

• Shays' Rebellion

  A 1786 to 1787 uprising of indebted farmers in western Massachusetts that convinced many leaders the national government was too weak.

  Example. Many of the rebels were war veterans who had been paid in nearly worthless paper money and now faced high state taxes that had to be paid in gold or silver.

• Federalists and Anti-Federalists

  The two sides in the 1787 to 1788 ratification fight: Federalists backed the new Constitution, and Anti-Federalists feared it made the national government too strong.

  Example. In New York, Hamilton, Madison and John Jay wrote newspaper essays under the name Publius to win support for ratification.

• Hamilton's financial plan

  Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton's program to pay off war debts in full, have the national government take over state debts and charter a national bank.

  Example. In the Compromise of 1790, southern leaders accepted the plan to take over state debts in return for placing the national capital on the Potomac River.

• Whiskey Rebellion

  A 1794 revolt of farmers in western Pennsylvania against a federal excise tax on whiskey passed in 1791 as part of Hamilton's plan to raise revenue.

  Example. Backcountry farmers turned their grain into whiskey to ship it more cheaply over the mountains, so the tax hit them hard, and some tarred and feathered tax collectors.

• Alien and Sedition Acts

  Laws passed in 1798 under President Adams that made it harder to become a citizen and made false, malicious criticism of the government a crime.

  Example. Several Republican newspaper editors were jailed for attacking the Adams administration in print.