The Enlightenment
An intellectual movement hinged on the principles of human dignity, rationality, adoration of science and learning, rights of conscience, and the integration of faith and knowledge.
What is the Enlightenment?
Event in December of 1773 where colonists dressed up as Native Americans and dumped a shipment of British tea into the Boston Harbor. This event would lead to the implementation of the Intolerable Acts.
What is the Boston Tea Party?
Written by Thomas Payne in January of 1776, this pamphlet took Enlightenment ideals and transformed them into accessible language and format; shifting American anger from Parliament to the monarchic system.
What is Common Sense?
Document that loosely bound the states together and provided the framework for the first American government. Deliberately weak, it did not give the federal government to tax and set how the U.S. would tackle territorial expansion.
What are the Articles of Confederation?
Issued by the Royal Governor of Virginia in 1775, this promised freedom to any slave or indentured servant that could manage to escape and join British military forces; plan foiled by a smallpox eepidemic.
What is Lord Dunmore's Proclamation?
English philosopher who believed that all human activity is motivated by self-interest and that a monarchy is the best type of government to protect the rights of individuals.
Who is Thomas Hobbes?
Lasting for less than a year, this tax put charges on items such as newspapers, playing cards, official papers and contracts. Money raised from this tax was reinvested into colonial upkeep.
What is the Stamp Act (1765)?
Country that sent military supplies and troops to aid the colonies in the American Revolution. Without it's assistance, the United States probably could not have won the war.
What is France?
George Washington's Secretary of State, this man became one of the figureheads of the Democratic Republicans and despised the idea of the federal government consolidating power over states.
Who is Thomas Jefferson?
This Frenchman advocated for American intervention in the French Revolution and tried to recruit American citizens to join the war effort. He attended Democratic Republican meetings and eventually was forced to seek asylum in the United States.
Who is Edmund Genet?
A famous Enlightenment/Humanist thinker who wrote the Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) and explored what it meant to be a virtuous citizen; declaring that it was a balance between self-interest and a commitment to the common good.
Who is Adam Smith?
Technically an American loss, this battle, occurring on June 17, 1775, was fought uphill by the British and signified the Colonists' willingness to sacrifice.
What is Battle of Bunker Hill/Breed's Hill?
A Mohawk leader during the American Revolution who tried to align with the British; raising a volunteer force of loyalist troops who were responsible for holding most of New York during the Revolution. His actions would cause conflict between the Mohawk and the rest of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy.
Who is Joseph Brant?
The political party who believed that the government should combine states' debts from the Revolutionary War and create a federal system to pay it all off.
Who are the Federalists?
Taxes implemented after the Stamp Act in June of 1767, these aimed to renew focus on imports/exports and the profits from the taxes were used to pay the salaries of colonial judges and tax officials.
What are the Townshend Acts?
A preacher in the Great Awakening who used fear to reconnect people emotionally with religion. Most well know for Sinners in the Hand of an Angry God.
Who is Jonathan Edwards?
Massachusetts Colony governor who replaced Thomas Hutchinson and enforced the Intolerable Acts with a military fervor.
Who is Thomas Gage?
Mythologized group during the American Revolution who were often thought of as rednecks that used native fighting tactics. In reality, they fought the British with traditional European tactics.
Minutemen
Event where citizens of Massachusetts shutdown courthouses and burnt records in protest of the Massachusetts government raising taxes and refusing to print more money after the American Revolution.
What is Shay's Rebellion?
Great Awakening figure who decided to hold sermons outside and preach in an evangelical style
Who is George Whitfield?
Founded in 1731 by Benjamin Franklin, this subscription-based library helped circulate Enlightenment/Humanist ideals throughout the intellectual community.
What is the Library Company of Philadelphia?
A group of advisors to the King whom Benjamin Franklin wanted to meet with in order to ease tensions. When Franklin leaked Hutchinson's letters, this group jeered and yelled at him for three hours.
What is the Privy Council (Lord Wedderburn)?
Military encampment where George Washington displayed his extraordinary leadership qualities of maintaining morale and inspiring loyalty.
What is Valley Forge?
Drafted by Madison, this document recommended that the Articles be tossed out and replaced with a government consisting of a bicameral legislative where the number of representatives was based on population and the federal government would have the ability to override state law.
What is the Virginia Plan?
One of the victims of the Boston Massacre. He was a man of color and admitted on his deathbed that the British Regulars did not shoot without cause.
Who is Crispus Attucks?