Imperial Crisis & Revolution
This 1765 British parliamentary act imposed a direct tax on all printed materials in the colonies.
What is the Stamp Act?
This civic ideal held that post-revolutionary women carried the primary responsibility of instructing future citizens in moral and political virtue.
What is republican motherhood?
In Voices of Freedom, Abigail Adams urged her husband John to "Remember the Ladies" to limit this type of authority that husbands exercised over wives.
What is "unlimited power"?
Most Native American nations sided with this power during the Revolutionary War to protect their ancestral lands from colonial encroachment.
Who is Great Britain?
This term refers to a government in which political authority rests in the consent of the governed, with no hereditary king or aristocracy.
What is a republic?
Colonial women exercised economic power to protest British taxes by producing homespun cloth rather than purchasing British imports as part of this group.
Who are the Daughters of Liberty?
In 1776, this state enacted the most radical democratic state constitution, eliminating property requirements for voting and abolishing the office of governor.
What is Pennsylvania?
Patrick Henry famously declared "Give me liberty, or give me death!" and later asserted this quote to demonstrate colonial unity.
What is "I am not a Virginian, but an American"?
Northern states enacted these laws after the Revolution, freeing children born to enslaved mothers only after they completed a lengthy period of service.
What are gradual emancipation laws?
The right to vote, which was expanded across several state constitutions after the Revolution, is formally known by this term.
What is suffrage?
Thomas Paine argued in Common Sense that the American struggle for independence held global significance because America served as this for human freedom.
What is an "asylum for liberty"?
Authored by Thomas Jefferson and passed in 1786, this landmark law formally disestablished the state church in Virginia and guaranteed religious liberty.
What is the Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom?
This former enslaved man and soldier during the Revolution wrote essays adapting Thomas Jefferson’s declaration of unalienable rights to demand Black liberty.
Who is Lemuel Haynes?
French writer Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur popularized this famous concept to describe how immigrants of diverse European backgrounds blended into a new culture.
What is the "melting pot"?
The rapid decrease in the value of paper currency issued by Congress during the Revolutionary War caused severe political conflict over this economic issue.
What is inflation?
Loyalist Samuel Seabury argued in Voices of Freedom that the primary threat to American freedom came from these local revolutionary institutions rather than Parliament.
What are local committees (and the Continental Congress)?
Black abolitionists like Lemuel Haynes utilized these formal written petitions submitted to state legislatures to demand natural rights and emancipation.
What are freedom petitions?
In response to colonial boycotts, British officials maintained that Americans were represented in Parliament through this doctrine, which held that every member represented the entire empire.
What is virtual representation?
Following the Revolution, this growing population of African Americans faced restricted employment opportunities, disenfranchisement, and strict legal boundaries.
Who are free Blacks?
During the 1760s and 1770s, British authorities used these court orders to search colonial merchant vessels for smuggled goods without specific warrants.
What are writs of assistance?
Virginia’s royal governor issued this 1775 proclamation offering freedom to any enslaved person who escaped and fought for the British Crown.
What is Lord Dunmore’s Proclamation?
Free-market economic principles popularized in Adam Smith’s 1776 work The Wealth of Nations argued that prices and wages should be governed by this concept rather than government regulation.
What is free trade (or the "invisible hand")?
Loyalists, who made up roughly this percentage of the white American population, argued that breaking away from Britain would lead to mob rule and anarchy.
What is 20 percent (or 15–20%)?
Post-revolutionary women cited the need to educate their sons in republican values as the primary justification for expanded access to this resource.
What is education (or female academies)?
Native Americans were excluded from the revolutionary "social contract" primarily because white Americans viewed them as lacking this key prerequisite for citizenship.
What is civilization (or settled property ownership)?