Chapter 1
What European empire had laid claim to the Great Lakes area and northeast Canada?
France (named New France)
What was the enclosure movement?
English landlords evicted small farmers and fenced off "commons" previously open to all, creating visual and physical boundaries for property ownership and the cultivation of sheep and other farm animals. Losing land through enclosure was one reason (poor) people immigrated to the Americas, particularly on indentures.
What carribean island is connected to the founding of the Carolina colonies in 1663?
Barbados
What was the Great Awakening?
The Great Awakening occurred in the 1730s and 1740s in the North American colonies and was a religious revival characterized by a more emotional, personal approach to religious worship.
Who wrote Common Sense? Was it published before or after the Declaration of Independence?
Thomas Paine wrote it and published it in January 1776, six months before the Declaration of Independence was signed on July 4th, 1776.
What is Republican motherhood?
The ideology that emerged as a result of American independence wherein (white) women’s political role was to train their sons (and daughters) to be future virtuous and moral citizens.
What is coverture?
When a woman married, she surrendered her legal identity, which became “covered” by her husband. She could not own property or sign contracts in her own name, control her wages if she worked, write a separate will, or, except in the rarest circumstances, go to court to seek a divorce. If a woman was not married, her most immediate male family member (father, brother, etc.) "covered" her.
What two states that now border Massachusetts were founded by religious dissenters in the 17th century?
Connecticut, Rhode Island
What was the result of the Yamasee War?
Carolina Colonists decided that Native slave trading was too dangerous and, from that point forward, would purchase enslaved Africans.
How do enslaved people resist and survive slavery?
Survive: creating family and community, retaining African traditions (like naming, creating creole languages like Gullah, creating hybrid religious practices, etc.)
What was the Sugar Act?
Passed in 1764, it lowered the colonial sugar tax from 6 pence to 3 pence but also created new infrastructure to prosecute illegal trade and smugglers by trial and jury; as a result, colonists had to pay a sugar tax they had never paid before.
What made Vermont's state constitution different from all other states of the New Nation?
The Constitution eliminated property and tax-paying requirements for male voters.
List two items that came to the Americas from Europe, Asia, and Africa (Old World) and two items that came to the Old World from the Americas during the Columbian Exchange.
ex. Americas to the Old World: tomatoes, tobacco, potatoes, corn, peanuts, chili peppers
Old World to Americas: sugarcane, wheat, horses, pigs, rice, peaches, watermelons, cattle, and sheep
What are dower rights?
In colonial America, a widow had the right to inherit one-third of her deceased husband’s property.
Which woman colonist's captivity narrative described her experience during King Philip's War? (merging chapters 2 & 3)
Mary Rowlandson
What did the Stono Rebellion result in? (1739-1741)
It "led to a severe tightening of the South Carolina slave code and the temporary imposition of a prohibitive tax on imported slaves."
What was the Stamp Act?
Passed in 1765, it required colonists to pay for an official stamp on paper goods, legal documents, newspapers, and playing cards to fund the Empire's defense costs. The Stamp Act mobilized colonists from all thirteen colonies.
What are freedom petitions? What are freedom suits?
Freedom petitions are collective petitions by enslaved people seeking to be freed by the state legislature or local courts.
Freedom suits are individual lawsuits that enslaved people brought before the local courts, where they argued, for a host of reasons, that their enslavers illegally held them as property.
What was the Pueblo Revolt?
In present-day New Mexico, the Pueblo, inspired by the religious leader Pope, rose up against and killed colonists and Franciscan missionaries. The revolt succeeded and inspired other revolts in the Southwest and Northern Mexico.
What made Maryland a unique colony when it was established in 1632? How did the English Civil War affect the colony?
Maryland began as a proprietary and Catholic refuge colony (when one individual is granted land and governmental authority). The English Civil War also led to a religious Civil War in Maryland, leading to the 1649 Act Concerning Religion, which formalized religious toleration.
How does the Walking Purchase of 1737 show that the Pennsylvania colony was no longer living up to William Penn's original vision?
William Penn wanted harmonious coexistence with Native nations and fair dealings due to his Quaker ideals; the Walking Purchase of 1737 cheated Delaware people out of unimaginable amounts of land.
What is deism, and what intellectual movement is it associated with?
"A belief that God essentially withdrew after creating the world, leaving it to function according to scientific laws without divine intervention."
The Enlightenment
What were the Townshend Acts? What group of women were associated with a response to the acts?
Passed in 1767, it set new taxes on all imported British goods; it also created a new board of customs commissioners and vice-admiralty courts to collect the taxes and suppress smuggling. This led to a mass consumer boycott of British manufacturers in 1768, led by the Daughters of Liberty. Enforcement of the Townshend Acts also led to the British occupation of Boston in 1768.
What three accomplishments did Thomas Jefferson want to be remembered for?
1. Starting UVA
2. The Declaration of Independence
3. The Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom, introduced in VA's House of Burgesses in 1779 and adopted in 1786
What is a borderland, and what is an example of one?
"A meeting place of peoples where geographical and cultural borders are not clearly defined"
ex. Marriages between French fur traders and Indigenous women.
What is the difference between Puritans and Pilgrims?
Puritans considered themselves the “true protestants,” and believed that neither the Church of England nor the country of England lived up to Protestant ideals. Puritans differed in their views but largely believed English Protestantism retained too many Catholic features. The first Puritans to arrive and begin the Plymouth Colony were Pilgrims. New England Puritans were largely “congregationalists,” and Puritan ideals structured society, government, and economic activity.
List two slavery-related laws the House of Burgesses passed in Colonial Virginia from 1639 to 1705. (or Maryland)
White people who run away with enslaved Black people are imprisoned for the length of escape; slavery follows the condition of the mother, making slavery inheritable and legally tied to Black women's reproduction; it becomes legal for enslavers to kill enslaved people; Black and Indigenous people cannot own Christians; interracial marriage resulting in banishment or imprisonment with a tax; white women who have non-white babies lose custody of their babies; it's lawful to kill a runaway enslaved person; plus more
What is a difference between Northern and Southern colonial slavery, and what is a similarity?
Difference: plantation slavery was the economy, due to cash crops, in the Southern and Caribbean colonies; enslaved labor was an essential, but not primary, form of labor that facilitated the Northern economy; different populations
Similarity: colonial laws regarding slavery were close to identical in all colonies; enslaved people couldn't bear arms, interracial marriage was forbidden, slavery was inheritable and tied to the mother, it was legal to be violent towards enslaved people, Native Americans and African people could be enslaved; enslaved people performed similar work in all colonies, etc.
What were the Intolerable Acts?
Four parliamentary measures passed in 1774 in response to the Boston Tea Party (1773, in response to the Tea Act) that required payment for the tea, barred colonial trials of British soldiers (in response to the trial of British soldiers for the Boston Massacre, 1770), authorized local officials to house soldiers in colonial towns, and reduced the number of elected officials in Massachusetts.
What are free Black communities and where do they form after the American Revolution leads to the creation of the New Nation?
Emancipated and self-emancipated Black people came together to form their own, largely self-sufficient, towns or communities (think neighborhoods in cities) to escape racism and racial violence, forming their own churches and schools with their own leaders. Formed in Maryland, Virginia, New England, and in major cities like Philadelphia, Boston, New York, and Hartford. Many Black people sided with the British, and in a last-ditch attempt to weaken the newly formed United States, the British, in 1783, while still occupying NYC, told enslaved people they would free them and transport them out of the country (called "the Book of Negroes"). These Black loyalists formed free Black communities in Nova Scotia, Sierra Leone, and other places.
In general, how did Native American people view land rights/ownership?
“Specific families or towns had the right to farm on certain lands, and nations or confederacies claimed specific areas for hunting, fishing, and gathering. They saw land as a resource that particular people had the right to use, but not as an economic commodity that could be bought and sold.”
How many Anglo-Powhatan wars were there? Were they successful?
The first war started in 1610; after 4 years of fighting, there were 8 years of peace. The second war began in 1622 and ended in the massacre of hundreds of Powhatans, and Virginia lost its investors and became the first royal colony. The third war began in 1644, 20 years later, and ended with the Powhatan leader's death and a treaty that forced them to cede land, submit to the English, and move to reservations.
How are mercantilism and anglicization related?
Mercantilism is the belief that "government should regulate economic activity so as to promote national power" and ensure that more wealth flows into the empire than out, effectively creating an English Empire-exclusive trade network. With colonists incentivized to buy English goods, which were often what was available, they emulated English trends and lifestyles, effectively exporting English ways of life to the colonies. Emulating English identity, as opposed to a new American one, was essential to anglicization.
Which came first, the Seven Years' War or Pontiac's War, and why?
Seven Years' War, then Pontiac's War
Native nations were devastated by land losses after failed alliances with European powers during the Seven Years' War, which resulted in a lot of Native land coming under English control. Pontiac's War was inspired by a belief that Indigenous people should band together after European allyship had hurt Native nations during the Seven Years' War.
Why was the Battle of Saratoga an important victory for the Patriots?
It convinced the French and other European nations to aid the American colonists in the war for Independence; plus it was a morale boost.
What is Phillis Wheatley arguing for in her 1774 letter published in the Connecticut Gazette and Universal Intelligencer? (One of the primary sources this week in Voices of Freedom)
To abolish slavery, which she desires "not for their hurt, but to convince them of the strange absurdity of their conduct, whose words and actions are so diametrically opposite. How well the cry for liberty, and the reverse disposition for the exercise of oppressive power over others agree, I humbly think it does not require the penetration of a philosopher to determine."