Period 1
Historians believe that the earliest Americans came over the______ which connected Asia and North America
Bering Land Bridge
A movement in the 18th century that advocated the use of reason in the reappraisal of accepted ideas and social institutions.
Enlightenment
Challenged the authority of the British government; spoke to the common people of America and was the first work to openly ask for independence from Great Britain
Common Sense
This expression was popular in the 1840s. Many people believed that the U.S. was destined to secure territory from "sea to sea," from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean.
Manifest Destiny
Federal fort in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina; the Confederate attack on the fort marked the start of the Civil War
Fort Sumter
1494 divided the Atlantic world between two maritime powers, reserving for Portugal the West African coast and the route to India and giving Spain the oceans and the lands to the west
Treaty of Tordesillas
1650 laws that required among other things that all goods to and from the colonies be transported on British ships
Navigation Acts
The "Seven Years War" in which the English and the French battled for colonial domination in North America
French and Indian War
Passed as part of the Compromise of 1850, it set high penalties for anyone who aided escaped slaves and compelled all law enforcement officers to participate in retrieving runaways. Strengthened the antislavery cause in the North.
Fugitive Slave Law
1854 - Created Nebraska and Kansas as states and gave the people in those territories the right to chose to be a free or slave state through popular sovereignty.
Kansas-Nebraska Act
Priest who spoke out against Spanish treatment of Native Americans
Bartolome de las Casas
An economic system (Europe in 18th C) to increase a nation's wealth by government regulation of all of the nation's commercial interests
Mercantilism
Issued by King George III which forbade all settlement past a line drawn along the Appalachian Mountains
Proclamation of 1763
Idea that settlers in acquired territories should be able to vote on whether they'll allow slavery.
Popular Sovereignty
Harriet Beecher Stowe's widely read novel that dramatized the horrors of slavery. It heightened Northern support for abolition and escalated the sectional conflict.
Uncle Tom's Cabin
A grant of land made by Spain to a settler in the Americas, including the right to use Native Americans as laborers on it
Encomienda System
In 1676, [First Name] [Last Name], a young planter led a rebellion against people who were friendly to the Indians. In the process he torched Jamestown, Virginia and was murdered by Indians.
Bacon's Rebellion
Punitive laws that were meant to punish the Massachusetts colonists for their defiance in throwing a large tea shipment into Boston harbor
Intolerable Acts
Distinguished senator from Kentucky, who ran for president five times until his death in 1852. He was a strong supporter of the American System, a war hawk for the War of 1812, Speaker of the House of Representatives, and known as "The Great Compromiser." Outlined the Compromise of 1850 with five main points. Died before it was passed however.
Henry Clay
1857 Supreme Court decision that stated that slaves were not citizens; that living in a free state or territory, even for many years, did not free slaves; and declared the Missouri Compromise unconstitutional
Dred Scott v. Sanford
A Mesoamerican civilization of Mexico who created a strong empire that flourished between the 14th and 15th century. The arrival of Hernando Cortez and the Spanish Conquistadores ended their empire.
Aztec Empire
A New York editor whose trial for seditious libel backfired on the government; the jury found that truth was a defense for libel.
John Peter Zenger
Asserted that Parliament had the right to tax and make laws for the colonies
Declaratory Act
phrase used in James K Polk's 1844 presidential election dealing with the Oregon Territory. Polk's campaign used the phrase as a rallying cry for the United States to obtain all of Oregon Territory, including land claimed by the English, up through Northern Canada.
Fifty-Four Forty or Fight!
were a series of violent disturbances in [City] that were the culmination of discontent with new laws passed by Congress to draft men to fight in the ongoing American Civil War
New York Draft Riots