Key Terms
What are Indentured servants?
Migrants who, in exchange for transatlantic passage, bound themselves to a colonial employer for a term of service, typically 4-7 years; addressed the chronic labor shortage in the colonies and facilitated settlement
What was the Middle Passage?
Transatlantic voyage, slaves endured between Africa and the colonies. Mortality rates were notoriously high
What were the Salem witch trials?
A series of witchcraft trials launched by teen girls in Salem, Massachusetts, claimed to be bewitched by certain older women in the town. [20 individuals were put to death before the trials ended]
Who was Nathaniel Bacon? What did he do?
A Virginia planter and the leader of Bacon's Rebellion in 1676, a significant uprising against colonial authority that highlighted tensions between settlers and Native Americans
What was the Headright System?
Employed in the tobacco colonies to encourage the importation of indentured servants, the system allowed an individual to acquire 50 acres of land if he paid for a laborer’s passage to the colony
What are Slave codes?
A set of laws defining racial slavery beginning in 1662, including establishing the hereditary nature of slavery, and legally limiting the rights and learning of slaves
What was Bacon’s Rebellion (1676)?
Uprising of Virginia backcountry farmers and indentured servants led by Nathaniel Bacon, initially a response to Governor William Berkeley’s refusal to protect backcountry settlers from Indian attacks, it eventually grew into a broader conflict between impoverished settlers and the planter elite
Who was William Berkeley?
An English colonial governor of Virginia who aimed to diversify the tobacco economy and promote agricultural development. His policies, including the General Assembly, balanced the wealthy planters' interests. However, conflicts with settlers and Native Americans led to Bacon's Rebellion in 1676.
What was the Halfway Covenant(1662)? What did it signify?
An agreement allowing unconverted offspring of church members to baptize their children; it signified a waning of religious zeal among second and third-generation Puritans
Basically, partial church membership, which showed a decrease in the strictness within the church
What were Jeremiads?
Sermons lamenting the waning piety of parishioners first delivered in New England in the mid-17th century; named after the doom-saying Old Testament prophet Jeremiah
What was the New York Slave Revolt (1712)?
Uprising of approximately two dozen slaves that resulted in the deaths of 9 whites and the brutal execution of 21 participating blacks.
Who was Anthony Johnson? Significance?
Anthony Johnson was one of the first Africans to arrive in British North America and became a landowner in Virginia. He was a a significant figure in the history of slavery in America
What was the Royal African Company?
An English joint stock company that enjoyed a state-granted monopoly on the colonial slave trade from 1672-1698. Supplying slaves to North American colonies rose once the company lost its monopoly privileges
What was Leisler’s rebellion(1689-1691)?
Armed conflict between aspiring merchants led by Jacob Leisler and the ruling elite of New York. One of many uprisings that erupted across the colonies when wealthy colonists attempted to recreate European social structures in the New World
Shows growing disparity between the social classes
What was the South Carolina Slave Revolt?
Uprising, also known as the Stono Rebellion, of more than 50 SC blacks along the Stono River. The slaves attempted to reach Spanish Florida but were stopped by the South Carolina militia