Colonial America
This group of religious dissenters, known for their belief in equality and nonviolence, played a significant role in the founding of Pennsylvania.
This document contains the statement, "we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal..."
What is the Declaration of Independence?
This branch of government interprets the laws and actions of the other two branches according to the constitution.
What is the Judicial branch?
This 1803 purchase from France nearly doubled the size of the United States and opened up vast new territories for settlement.
What is the Louisiana Purchase?
This invention led to a boom in cotton.
What is the Cotton Gin?
This was the earliest permanent British settlement in North America.
What is Jamestown?
This government, established during the revolutionary war, proved ineffective.
What is the Articles of Confederation?
This system ensures that no one branch of government becomes too powerful, as each branch can limit the powers of the others.
What are Checks and Balances?
These laws, passed under the Articles of Confederation, established a template for expanding into western territory
What is the Northwest Ordinance?
This 1820 compromise aimed to balance the number of free and slave states by admitting Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state.
What is the Missouri Compromise?
This British law forbade colonists from settling west of the Appalachian Mountains to prevent conflicts with Native American tribes.
What is the Proclamation Line of 1763?
Colonists were enraged at these actions because they challenged the idea of self-rule that the colonists had, to some extent, been practicing.
What are British Acts and Taxes?
These first ten constitutional amendments protect specific rights of citizens.
What is the Bill of Rights?
This 1854 law allowed settlers in Kansas and Nebraska to decide for themselves whether to permit slavery, leading to violence in the region.
What is the Kansas-Nebraska Act?
This landmark case, decided by the Supreme Court in 1857, ruled that slaves were not citizens and had no rights to sue in federal court.
What is Dred Scott v. Sandford
The Puritan leader who gave the famous "City on a Hill" sermon.
Who is John Winthrop?
The goal of most colonists at the onset of the revolutionary war.
What is parliamentary representation?
This term refers to the right of the Congress to stretch its powers as needed to carry out its duties.
What is the Elastic Clause?
This territory was annexed by the United States in 1845, sparking a war with Mexico.
What is the Texas Republic?
This law, passed as part of the Compromise of 1850, required that runaway slaves be returned to their owners even if they had reached free states.
What is the Fugitive Slave Law?
This destabilized native tribes before the arrival of British settlers and made them more willing to ally with the British.
What are waves of European diseases?
This pamphlet, written by Thomas Paine in 1776, helped inspire colonial rebellion by criticizing British rule and advocating for independence.
What is Common Sense?
What documents, by Hamilton, Madison, and Jay, argued for the ratification of the constitution?
What are the Federalist Papers?
This concept, which argued that American expansion was divinely ordained, was used to justify the annexation of new territories.
What is Manifest Destiny?
This 1787 compromise was reached at the Constitutional Convention to count enslaved people for purposes of taxation and representation.
What is the 3/5 compromise?