Road to Revolution
1765 tax act that angered American colonists of nearly every walk of life by requiring paper goods to carry a paid stamp.
What was the Stamp Act?
The first battles of the war took place in April 1775 in these two Massachusetts towns.
What were Lexington and Concord?
This branch of government enforces federal law in the U.S.
The executive branch.
1803 land deal that doubled the nation’s size and secured control of the Mississippi River and New Orleans.
What was the Louisiana Purchase?
The rallying cry of the Sons of Liberty.
What was "no taxation without representation?"
1776 document that marked an official break with Britain.
What was the Declaration of Independence?
During the "Ratification Debates," these people wanted a more decentralized system of government that gave more authority to individual state legislatures.
Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson clashed over this major proposal that would hold public funds, issue currency, and make government loans.
What was the National Bank?
A 1770 event, later memorialized in propaganda prints, that helped fuel anti-British sentiment throughout the colonies.
What was the "Boston Massacre"?
The official agreement that ended the war and formally acknowledged American independence.
The Treaty of Paris of 1783
Some colonies-turning-states refused to ratify the Constitution until it included this set of amendments.
What was the Bill of Rights?
1797–98 diplomatic scandal involving French agents demanding bribes from U.S. envoys.
What was the XYZ Affair?
Parliament’s closing of Boston’s port in 1774 led colonists to rename these laws the “Intolerable Acts.”
What were the "Coercive Acts"?
This 1776 battle was a morale boost after Washington’s troops surprised Hessians on Christmas morning.
What was the Battle of Trenton?
1786–87 uprising by debt-ridden farmers that highlighted the weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation.
What was Shays's Rebellion?
Law that made it a crime to “write, print, utter, or publish” anything “false, scandalous, and malicious” about the government.
What was the Sedition Act of 1798?
A wartime governing body that created the Continental Army in 1775.
What was the Second Continental Congress?
Turning point in the Revolutionary War that convinced France not only to ally militarily with the U.S., but to recognize it as an independent nation and begin trading with it.
What were the Battles of Saratoga?
The division of power between national and state governments; one of the basic principles of the American style of governance.
What is federalism?
1798 document in which Thomas Jefferson claimed that states had the right to nullify federal laws.
What was the Kentucky Resolution?