Dudes
Founding Father. Led the Sons and Daughters of Liberty. Also penned Massachusetts Circular Letter in 1768, which demanded that the Townshend Act be repealed.
Samuel Adams
Founding Father from Pennsylvania. He wrote a series of essays called “Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania,” which rekindled interest in the issue of taxation without representation during the Townshend Acts. He oversaw the drafting of the Articles of Confederation.
John Dickinson
Founding Father. A New Jersey statesman who put forth the New Jersey Plan at the Constitutional Convention in rebuttal of the Virginia Plan.
William Patterson
A meeting of representatives of nine of the Thirteen Colonies. They sent word to England that only colonial legislatures had the authority to tax the colonists. Repealed in 1766 and replaced with the Declaratory Act.
Stamp Act Congress
A rare triumph under the Articles of Confederation, it established guidelines for attaining statehood: territories with at least 60,000 people could apply for statehood. If accepted by Congress, the new state would have equal status with other states. It banned slavery north ofthe Ohio River and east of the Mississippi, thereby guaranteeing future free states in the Midwest.
Northwest Ordinance of 1785
A Patriot from Massachusetts. Coined the phrase “Taxation without representation is tyranny,” which is popularly abbreviated as “no taxation without representation.”
James Otis
Founding Father. Young Virginian lawyer and Patriot. In reaction to the Stamp Act, he accused the British government of usurping the rights guaranteed to colonists as Englishmen. He encouraged his fellow leaders to insist that Virginians be taxed only by Virginians, not by some distant royal authority. Later an Anti-Federalist.
Patrick Henry
Founding Father. A Virginian who would become the first Attorney General and second Secretary of State. Proposed the Virginia Plan at the Constitutional Convention.
Edmund Randolph
Authorized under the Townshend Acts, writs allowed customs officials to search colonial homes, businesses, and warehouses for smuggled goods without a warrant from a judge. Led to the Massachusetts Circular Letter.
Writs of assistance
A tariff on imports. Northerners favored a higher rate to protect their manufacturing industry from foreign encroachment, while Southern farmers wanted a lower rate to provide for cheaper consumer goods.
Tariff Act of 1789
A Whig statesman who shifted British efforts in the French and Indian War from colonial skirmishes to the capturing of Canada, with key victories in Louisbourg (1758), Quebec (1759), and Montreal (1760). This effectively removed France’s presence from North America.
William Pitt
A delegate at the First and Second Continental Congress. On June 7, 1776, he famously made an official motion calling for the colonies to declare independence.
Richard Henry Lee
Founding Father from Virginia. One of three delegates at the Constitutional Convention who refused to sign the final document. He objected to its lack of a Bill of Rights, and wanted an immediate end to the slave trade (while supporting slavery itself). His 1776 Virginia Declaration of Rights would strongly influence the French Revolution’s Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.
George Mason
A law passed by Parliament in 1764. It limited the use of colonial paper money, in order to protect British merchants from depreciation. While not a major contributing factor to the American Revolution, it did signify growing British interest in regulating the colonies.
Currency Act
Taxes paid when purchases are made on a specific good. See: Whiskey Rebellion.
Excise Taxes
War chief of the Miami Confederacy during the Northwest Indian War. Along with Blue Jacket, he informed Americans that the Confederacy considered the Ohio River the northwestern boundary of the newfound United States. At St. Clair’s Defeat, his troops killed over a thousand U.S. officers and soldiers in the largest American Indian victory in history.
Little Turtle
British general. Led the British response to Pontiac’s Rebellion. Served as military governor of Massachusetts (1774–1775) to enforce the Intolerable Acts. Led British forces at Lexington and Concord, as well as Bunker Hill. Replaced in 1775 by William Howe.
Thomas Gage
Founding Father and noted financier of the American Revolution. Signed the Declaration, the Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution. Declined to become the first Treasury Secretary, instead recommending Alexander Hamilton.
Robert Morris
Penned by Samuel Adams, it was a response to the Townshend Acts and the resulting writs of assistance. It demanded the Townshend Act be immediately repealed. Widely circulated, it rejuvenated boycotts of British goods.
Massachusetts Circular Letter
A collection of American Indian tribes in the eighteenth century. In the Northwest Indian War (1785–1795), a military alliance led by Little Turtle and Blue Jacket attempted to resist the expansion of the U.S. into the Old Northwest territory.
Miami Confederacy
British Prime Minister who passed the Currency, Sugar, Quartering, and Stamp Acts. He felt the colonists were being asked to pay only their fair share of the debt from the French and Indian War.
George Grenville
A general in the American Revolutionary War. He participated in the Capture of Fort Ticonderoga and the Battle of Saratoga. Most infamously remembered for defection to the British, which caused his name to become a byword for treason.
Benedict Arnold
A South Carolinian notable for his role at the Constitutional Convention, where he helped introduce the Fugitive Slave Clause and the “no religious test” clause for public officers. Later negotiated Pinckney’s Treaty with Spain.
Charles Pickney
The Gaspee was a British warship commissioned to capture vessels carrying smuggled goods before they reached the colonies. The Gaspee ran aground on the shores of Rhode Island. The Sons of Liberty set fire to the boat, and event celebrated throughout coastal colonial towns as a victory for the tax-burdened consumer.
Gaspee Affair
It declared that states could overrule federal law, as the U.S. Constitution drew its powers only from what the sovereign states delegated to it. An important precedent for later acts of nullification.
Kentucky Resolution