Key terms
50 acres of land to any male colonist who paid for his own or another's passage.
What is the Headright System?
This crop, which grew well in Virginia, was England's first successful cash crop.
What is tobacco?
I led Jamestown, Virginia, in 1608. A young Powhatan girl, who is now famous, saved me.
Who is John Smith?
A multi-racial coalition led against Governor William Berkeley over heavy taxes and his refusal to encourage white settlement on Native land.
What is Bacon's Rebellion?
This 1776 document declared that "all men are created equal."
What is the Declaration of Independence?
When a woman married, she surrendered her legal identity to her husband and could not own property, sign contracts in her name, control her wages, or seek a divorce.
What is Coverture?
Before English colonies grew tobacco, the Spanish made this crop their first big success in the Caribbean. In the U.S., Louisiana became its largest producer.
What is sugar?
I was a Puritan and the first governor of the Massachusetts colony, where I wanted to create a "city upon a hill."
Who is John Winthrop?
This war began in 1754 when Britain and France fought over the Ohio River Valley, and a young George Washington was forced to surrender Fort Necessity. When it ended in 1763, France had lost almost all of its North American land.
What is The Seven Years' War (French and Indian War)
Every state north of Maryland moved to end slavery after the Revolution, but most did it this way.
What is gradual emancipation?
The voyage across the Atlantic from Africa to the Americas, where men, women, and children were crammed aboard vessels.
What is the Middle Passage?
Enslaved people from Sierra Leone brought this rice variety and the knowledge of how to grow it to the South Carolina Lowcountry.
What is Carolina Gold?
I was a Wampanoag leader. In 1675, I led a pan-Native alliance against New England's colonists in a war the English named after me.
Who is Metacom?
A crowd taunted British soldiers on King Street and pelted them with snowballs and chunks of ice. The soldiers fired, and five colonists died. Paul Revere’s engraving of the scene turned it into powerful propaganda.
What is the Boston Massacre?
Thomas Jefferson believed the new republic would be safest in the hands of this kind of citizen: a white man who owned and worked a small farm and so depended on no one.”
What is a yeoman farmer?
This document gave recognition of American independence and ceded land between Canada and Florida east of the Mississippi River.
What is the Treaty of Paris?
South Carolina planters grew this crop on higher ground. Enslaved workers soaked its leaves in vats, and this plant was used to dye cloth.
What is Indigo?
We are a secret group that formed in 1765 to resist the Stamp Act. In Boston, we hung an effigy of the colony’s stamp distributor, Andrew Oliver, from a tree. We borrowed our name from a speech a member of Parliament gave defending the colonists.
Who are the Sons of Liberty?
In 1763, Native nations around the Great Lakes rose up against the British. Inspired by the Delaware prophet Neolin, they captured several British forts and laid siege to Fort Detroit. They killed hundreds of white settlers who had intruded onto their lands.
What is Pontiac's War?
Starting in the late 1760s, groups of colonial women met in public to make their own cloth, often competing to see who could produce the most. To avoid British tea, they brewed ‘Liberty tea’ from local herbs. Their name echoed a better-known men’s protest group
What is Daughters of Liberty?
The idea of upholding the republic by teaching their sons to have civic virtue.
What is republican motherhood?
In the 1600s, the southern colonies were societies with slaves, where slavery was one form of labor among several. As tobacco, rice and indigo came to dominate their economies, they became this instead, a place where slavery shaped everything
What is a slave society?
I took the words of the Massachusetts Constitution into court and used them to sue my enslaver for my freedom. When I won, I chose a new last name.
Who is Elizabeth Freedom or "Mumbet"?
King George III issued this order in October 1763. It set aside the land between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River for Native nations and banned the sale of Native lands to colonists.
What is the Proclamation Line of 1763? (Proclamation of 1763)
In 1775, Virginia’s royal governor promised freedom to any enslaved man who fled a Patriot owner and fought for the British. Hundreds joined, which helps explain why Black men fought on both sides of the war.
What is Lord Dunmore's Proclamation?