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Tenochtitlan

Tenochtitlan

The capital city of the Aztec empire. The city was built on marshy islands on the western side of Lake Tetzcoco, which is the site of present-day Mexico City.

Columbian Exchange

Transatlantic flow of goods and people that began with Colombus.

Creoles

Persons born in the New World of European ancestry.

Pueblo Revolt

Uprising in 1680 in which Pueblo Indians temporarily drove Spanish colonists out of modern-day New Mexico.

Bartolomo De Las Casas

A Catholic missionary who renounced the Spanish practice of coercively converting Indians and advocated for their better treatment.

Indentured Servants

Settlers who signed on for a temporary period of servitude to a master in exchange for passage to the New World.

Virginia Company

A joint-stock enterprise that King James 1 chartered in 1606.

Enclosure Movement

A legal process that divided large farm fields in England that were previously collectively owned by groups of peasants into smaller, individually owned plots.

headright system

A land-grant policy that promised 50 acres to any colonist who would afford passage to Virginia, as well as 50 more for any servants. Eventually expanded to all colonists.

House of Burgesses

The first elected assembly in colonial America, established in 1619 in Virginia.

Uprising of 1622

Unsuccessful uprising of Virginia Native Americans that wiped out one-quarter of the settler population, but ultimately led to the settlers' gaining supremacy.

Puritans

English religious group that south to purify the Church of England.

Pilgrims

Puritan separatists who broke completely with the Church of England and sailed to the New World abord the Mayflower.

Pequot War

An armed conflict in 1637 that led to the destruction of one of New England's most powerful Indian groups.

Half Way Covenant

A 1662 religious compromise that allowed Baptism and partial church membership to colonial New Englanders whose parents were not among the Puritan elect.

Act Concerning Religion

Law that granted free exercise of religion to all Christian denominations in colonial Maryland.

King Philip's War

A multiyear conflict that began in 1675 with an Indian uprising against white colonists, broadened freedoms for white New Englanders and the dispossession of the region's Indians.

Mercantilism

Policy of Great Britain and other imperial powers of regulating the economies of colonies to benefit the mother country.

Navigation Act

Passed to control colonial trade and bolster the mercantile system.

Quakers

Quakers are people who belong to a historically Protestant Christian set of denominations known formally as the Religious Society of Friends. Members of these movements are generally united by a belief in each human's ability to experience the light within or see "that of God in every one".

Bacon's Rebellion

Unsuccessful 1676 revolt led by planter Nathaniel Bacon against Virginia governor William Berkeley's administration because of governmental corruption and because Berkeley had failed to protect settlers from Indian raids and did not allow them to occupy Indian lands.

Glorious Revolution

A coup in 1688 engineered by a small group of aristocrats that led to William of Orange taking the British throne over James II.

Salem Witch Trials

Witch trials and executions in Salem.

Dominion of New England

Consolidation into a single colony of the New England colonies, and later New York and New Jersey.

Middle Passage

The hellish and deadly middle leg of the transatlantic slave route, where European ships carried manufactured goods to Africa, then transported enslaved Africans to the Americans.

Stono Rebellion

A slave uprising in 1739 in South Carolina that led to a severe tightening of the slave code.

Republicanism

Political theory in 18th century England and America that celebrated active participation in public life by economically independent citizens as central to freedom.

Salutary Neglect

Informal British policy during first half of 18th century that allowed the American colonies considerable freedom to pursue their economic and political interests in exchange for obedience,

Enlightenment

Revolution in thought in the 18th century that emphasized reason and science over traditional religion.

Deism

Enlightenment thought applied to religion, emphasized reason, morality, and natural law.

1st Great Awakening

Fervent religious revival movement in the 1720s through the 1740s that was spread throughout the colonies by ministers like Johnathan Edwards.

Seven Years War

The last—and most important—of four colonial wars fought between England and France for control of North America east of the Mississippi River.

Pontiac's Rebellion

An Indian attack on British forts after France ceded to the British its territory east of the Mississippi.

Neolin

A Native American religious prophet who, by preaching pan-Indian unity and rejection of European technology and commerce, helped inspire Pontiac's Rebellion.

Proclamation of 1763

Royal directive issues after the French and Indian War prohibiting settlement, surveys, and land grants west of the Appalachians.

Albany Plan of Union

A failed proposal by the 7 northern colonies urging the unification of the colonies under one president, because they anticipated the French and Indian War.

Stamp Act

A tax law on printed goods and document made in 1765, with it being repealed a year later.

Virtual Representation

The idea that the American colonies had no actual representative in Parliament, were still "virtually" represented by all members of Parliament.

Writs of Assistance

Allowed unlimited search warrants without cause to look for evidence of smuggling, one of the biggest complaints against Britain.

Sugar Act

Taxed refined sugar and other colonial products.

Sons of Liberty

Organization formed by Samuel Adams and other radicals in response to the Stamp Act.

Townshend Acts

Taxed tea and other commodities and established a Board of Customs Commissioners and colonial vice-admiralty courts.

Boston Massacre

Clash between British soldiers and a Boston mob, 5 colonists killed.

Intolerable Acts

Measures in reaction to the Boston Tea Party that forced payment for the tea, disallowed colonial trials of British soldiers, forced their quartering in private homes, and reduced the number of elected officials in Massachusetts.

Battle of Lexington/Concord

The first shots fired in the Revolutionary War, in 1775, near Boston, 100 minutemen and 250 British soldiers killed.

Lord Dunmore's Proclamation

A proclamation that offered freedom to any slave who fought for the king against the rebelling colonists.

Common Sense

A pamphlet anonymously written by Thomas Paine in January 1776 that attacked the English principles of hereditary rule and monarchical government.

Battle of Saratoga

Major defeat of British general John Burgoyne and more than 5,000 British troops at Saratoga, New York, on October 17, 1777.

Treaty of Paris

1783, ended the Revolutionary War, recognized American independence from Britain, established the border between Canada and the United States, fixed the western border at the Mississippi river, and ceded Florida to Spain.

Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom

A Virginia law, drafted by Thomas Jefferson in 1777 and enacted in 1786, that guarantees freedom of, and from, religion.

Loyalists

Colonists who remained loyal to Great Britain.

Joseph Brant

The Mohawk leader who led the Iroquois against the Americans in the Revolutionary War.

Republican Motherhood

The ideology that emerged as a result of American independence where women played an indispensable role by training future citizens.

Articles of Confederation

First frame of government for the United States; in effect from 1781 to 1788, it provided for a weak central authority and was soon replaced by the Constitution.

Ordinance of 1784

A law that defined the terms by which western land would be marketed and settled; established stages of self-government for the West.

Ordinance of 1785

Regulated land sales in the Old Northwest. The Land surveyed was divided into 640-acre plots and sold at $1 per acre.

Northwest Ordinance: 1787

Law that created the Northwest Territory, established conditions for self-government and statehood, included a Bill of Rights, and permanently prohibited Slavery.

Bill of Rights

First 10 amendments to the Constitution to guarantee individual rights against infringement by the federal government.

The Federalists

Collection of 85 essays that appeared in the New York press in support of the Constitution.

Anti-Federalists

Opponents of the Constitution who saw it as a limitation on individual and states' rights; their demands led to the Bill of Rights.

3/5 Compromise

Signed into Constitution in 1787, in which the slave population would be counted as three-fifths for determining representation for the House and the Electoral Votes.

Treaty of Greenville

A 1795 treaty between the United States and various Indian tribes in Ohio. American negotiators acknowledged Indian ownership of the land, and, in return for various payments, the Western Confederacy ceded most of Ohio to the United States.

Shay's Rebellion

Attempt by Massachusetts farmer Daniel Shays and 1,200 compatriots, seeking debt relief through issuance of paper currency and lower taxes, to prevent courts from seizing property from indebted farmers.

Virginia Plan

Virginia's delegation to the Constitutional Convention's plan for a strong central government and a two-house legislature apportioned by population.

New Jersey Plan

New Jersey's delegation to the Constitutional Convention's plan for one legislative body with equal representation for each state.

Federalism

Federalists overall favored a strong central government.

Checks and Balances

A systematic balance to prevent any one branch of the national government from dominating the other two.

Bank of United States

Proposed by Alexander Hamilton, operated from 1791-1811 to issue a uniform currency, make business loans, and collect tax monies. Second bank was chartered by was vetoed out by Jackson.

Jay's Treaty

Treaty with Britain negotiated. Britain agreed to vacate forts in the Northwest Territories and festering disagreements would be settled by commission.

Republicans

First identified during the early 19th century, supported a strict interpretation of the Constitution, which they believed would safeguard individual freedom and states' rights.

Whiskey Rebellion

Violet protests by western Pennsylvania farmers against the federal excise tax on whiskey.

Alien and Sedition Acts

Four measures passed in 1798 during the undeclared war with France that limited the freedoms of speech and press and restricted the liberty of noncitizens.

Virginia Resolution

Legislation passed in 1798 and 1799 by the Virginia and the Kentucky legislatures; written by James Madison and Thomas Jefferson in response to the Alien and Sedition Acts, the resolutions advanced the state-compact theory of the Constitution. This one called on the federal courts to protect free speech.

Haitian Revolution

A slave uprising that led to the establishment of Haiti as an independent country in 1804.

Gabriel's Rebellion

A planned slave rebellion in Richmond led by Gabriel, a slave. The plan leaked out just before the march, and authorities rounded up the participants and executed thirty-five of them, including Gabriel.

Marbury v. Madison

First U.S. Supreme Court decision to declare a federal law, the Judiciary Act of 1801 - unconstitutional.

Louisiana Purchase

1803 purchase from France of the important port of New Orleans and 828,000 square miles west of the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains.

Barbary Wars

The first wars fought by the United State and the nations first encounter with the Islamic World. Against pirates plundering off the Mediterranean coast of Africa.

Embargo Act

Attempt in 1807 to exert economic pressure by prohibiting all exports from the United States, smugglers ended up circumventing the cargo, and it was repealed.

War of 1812

War fought with Britain over issues that included impressment of American sailors, interference with shipping, and collusion with Northwest Territory Indians.

Erie Canal

Most important and profitable of the canals of the 1820s and 1830s, stretched from Buffalo to Albany, New York.

Cotton Kingdom

Cotton-producing region, relying predominantly on slave labor, that spanned from North Carolina west to Louisiana and reached as far north as southern Illinois.

American System

Program of internal improvements and protective tariffs which formed the core of Whig ideology.

Gibbons v. Odgen

Reinforced the "commerce clause" of the Constitution, the governments right to regulate interstate commerce.

Manifest Destiny

Phrase first used in 1845 to urge annexation of Texas; used thereafter to encourage American settlement of European colonial and Indian lands in the Great Plains and the West.

Second Great Awakening

Religious revival movement of the early decades of the nine-teenth century, in reaction of secularism and rationalist religion.

McCulloch v. Maryland

Decision in which Justice John Marshall, holding that Maryland could not tax the Second Bank of the United States, supported the authority of the federal government versus the states.

Panic of 1819

Financial collapse brought on by sharply falling cotton prices.

Era of Good Feelings

Contemporary characterization of the administration of popular Republican president James Monroe, 1817-1825.

Missouri Compromise

Deal proposed to resolve the slave/free imbalance in Congress that would result from Missouri's admission as a slave state; Maine's admission as a free state offset Missouri.

Spoils System

Filling of federal government jobs with persons loyal to the party of the president; originated in Andrew Jackson's first term.

Tariff of Abominations

Tariff passed in 1828 by Parliament that taxed imported goods at a very high rate; aroused strong opposition in the South.

Force Act

Sparked by nullification crisis in South Carolina, that authorized the president's use of the army to compel states to comply with federal law.

Indian Removal Act

Law signed by Jackson that permitted the negotiation of treaties to obtain the Indians' lands in exchange for their relocation to now Oklahoma.

Worcester v. Georgia

In 1832, this Supreme Court case ruled that the laws of Georgia had no force within the Cherokee territory. However, President Jackson sided with Georgia and the decision could not be enforced without Jackson's support. (p 196)

Bank War

Political struggle in the early 1830s between Jackson and Nicholas Biddle over the renewing of the Second Bank's charter.

The "Peculiar Institution"

Term used by whites in the antebellum South to refer to slavery without using the word "slavery."

Fugitive Slaves

Slaves who escaped from their owners.

Underground Railroad

Operating in the decades before the Civil War, the "railroad" was a clandestine system of routes and safehouses through which slaves were led to freedom in the North.

Denmark Vessey

An 1822 failed slave uprising in Charleston. Led by Denmark Vesey, a free black man.