Revolution & Early Republic (1754–1800): every key term you need (+ practice quiz)
116 flashcard terms for AP U.S. History Unit 3, written to match the course framework. Study them here, then drill them as interactive flashcards, or test yourself with the 29-question quiz — free, no account needed.
The North American theater of the Seven Years' War: Britain and its colonies defeated France and its Native allies, expelling France from the continent.
Albany Plan of Union (1754)
Franklin's proposal for colonial union ('Join, or Die'); rejected by both colonies and crown, but a precedent for later unity.
Treaty of Paris (1763)
France ceded Canada and lands east of the Mississippi to Britain; Spain took Louisiana. Britain became North America's master — with massive debts.
Pontiac's Rebellion (1763)
A pan-Native uprising against British posts after France's defeat; it convinced Britain to bar western settlement.
Proclamation of 1763
Banned colonial settlement west of the Appalachians to prevent Indian wars; colonists, hungry for land, ignored and resented it.
End of Salutary Neglect
War debt (£140 million) and new territory led Britain to tax and regulate the colonies in earnest — reversing a century of laxity.
Sugar Act (1764)
The first revenue-raising tax on the colonies, tightening customs enforcement on molasses — with smugglers tried in juryless vice-admiralty courts.
Stamp Act (1765)
Required tax stamps on documents and print — the first direct internal tax, provoking the crisis of 'no taxation without representation.'
Virtual Representation
Britain's claim that Parliament represented all subjects everywhere; colonists insisted on actual representation by men they elected.
Stamp Act Congress (1765)
Nine colonies met and declared Parliament could not tax the unrepresented — an early act of intercolonial unity.
Sons of Liberty
Protest network (Samuel Adams, others) that used demonstrations, intimidation, and boycotts to nullify the Stamp Act.
Nonimportation Agreements
Colonial boycotts of British goods — economic protest that mobilized ordinary people, including women, and pressured British merchants.
Daughters of Liberty
Women who supported boycotts by spinning homespun cloth and brewing substitutes — politicizing the household.
Declaratory Act (1766)
Passed alongside the Stamp Act's repeal: Parliament could legislate for the colonies 'in all cases whatsoever.'
Townshend Acts (1767)
Duties on imported glass, paper, paint, and tea; revenue would pay royal officials — freeing them from assembly control.
Boston Massacre (1770)
British soldiers fired on a taunting crowd, killing five (including Crispus Attucks); propaganda by Revere and Adams inflamed the colonies.
Committees of Correspondence
Networks (begun by Samuel Adams, 1772) linking towns and colonies to share grievances — the communications spine of resistance.
Boston Tea Party (1773)
Protesting the Tea Act's monopoly, colonists dumped 342 chests of East India tea into the harbor.
Coercive/Intolerable Acts (1774)
Britain's punishment: Boston's port closed, Massachusetts government gutted, troops quartered — pushing colonies toward union.
Quebec Act (1774)
Extended Quebec to the Ohio River and protected Catholicism — lumped with the Intolerable Acts by alarmed Protestants and land speculators.
First Continental Congress (1774)
Twelve colonies coordinated resistance: a declaration of rights, the Association's total boycott, and agreement to meet again.
Lexington and Concord (April 1775)
British troops sent to seize arms met militia — 'the shot heard round the world' began the war.
Second Continental Congress (1775)
Became the de facto government: created the Continental Army under Washington while still professing loyalty (Olive Branch Petition).
Common Sense (1776)
Thomas Paine's incendiary pamphlet demolished monarchy's mystique and made independence the common-sense choice — a runaway bestseller.
Declaration of Independence (1776)
Jefferson's document: natural rights, government by consent, the right of revolution, and a bill of grievances against the king.
Natural Rights & Social Contract
Lockean ideas — life, liberty, property; government by consent, dissolvable when it turns tyrannical — the Declaration's philosophical core.
Loyalists (Tories)
Perhaps a fifth of colonists stayed loyal — officials, Anglicans, many backcountry farmers; tens of thousands fled after the war.
Continental Army's Struggles
Chronic shortages, short enlistments, and defeats; Washington's genius was keeping an army in being — surviving was winning.
Battle of Saratoga (1777)
The turning point: Burgoyne's surrender convinced France to ally openly with America (1778), transforming the war.
Valley Forge (1777–78)
The Continental Army's winter of suffering and retraining (von Steuben's drills) — endurance that forged a professional force.
French Alliance (1778)
France supplied money, troops, and above all a navy — making Yorktown possible; Spain and the Dutch also joined against Britain.
Battle of Yorktown (1781)
Washington and Rochambeau trapped Cornwallis as the French fleet sealed the Chesapeake; the surrender ended major fighting.
Treaty of Paris (1783)
Britain recognized American independence with borders to the Mississippi; Loyalists and prewar debts got paper promises.
Republican Motherhood
The postwar ideal that women should raise virtuous citizen-sons — elevating women's education while confining their sphere.
Revolution's Effect on Slavery
Northern states began gradual abolition; Virginia eased manumission; but Southern slavery survived and the ideals-vs-practice contradiction was set.
State Constitutions
New states wrote constitutions with bills of rights, weak governors, and strong legislatures — laboratories of republican government.
Articles of Confederation (1781)
The first national government: a single-house Congress with no power to tax, regulate trade, or enforce laws — sovereignty stayed with the states.
Northwest Ordinance (1787)
The Confederation's triumph: orderly territories becoming equal states, public education support, and slavery banned northwest of the Ohio.
Land Ordinance of 1785
Surveyed the West into townships and sections, funding schools — the grid that still marks the Midwest.
Shays's Rebellion (1786–87)
Indebted Massachusetts farmers closed courts; the weak response terrified elites and catalyzed the Constitutional Convention.
Constitutional Convention (1787)
Fifty-five delegates in Philadelphia scrapped the Articles and drafted a new federal Constitution behind closed doors.
Great (Connecticut) Compromise
House by population, Senate with two per state — resolving the large-state/small-state deadlock.
Three-Fifths Compromise
Counted three-fifths of the enslaved for representation and taxation — embedding slavery's power in the Constitution.
Slave Trade & Fugitive Clauses
The Constitution protected the Atlantic slave trade until 1808 and required the return of fugitives — the price of Southern ratification.
Separation of Powers & Checks
Montesquieu applied: three branches checking one another, federalism dividing power between nation and states.
Federalists vs. Antifederalists
Ratification's contest: Federalists (Hamilton, Madison, Jay) for the Constitution; Antifederalists (Henry, Mason) fearing centralized tyranny and demanding a bill of rights.
The Federalist Papers
Eighty-five essays defending the Constitution — Madison's No. 10 arguing a large republic best controls faction.
Bill of Rights (1791)
Ten amendments protecting speech, press, religion, assembly, arms, and due process — the Antifederalists' enduring victory.
Washington's Presidency (1789–97)
Set precedents: the cabinet, two terms, executive dignity — 'I walk on untrodden ground.'
Hamilton's Financial Plan
Funding the debt at par, assuming state debts, a national bank, tariffs, and excise taxes — binding the wealthy to the new government.
Bank of the United States (1791)
Hamilton's loose-construction triumph over Jefferson's strict-construction objections — the 'necessary and proper' debate begins.
Whiskey Rebellion (1794)
Western Pennsylvania farmers resisted the excise; Washington led 13,000 militia to crush it — federal law would be enforced.
First Party System
Hamilton's Federalists (commerce, Britain, strong nation) vs. Jefferson's Democratic-Republicans (agriculture, France, states' rights).
Neutrality Proclamation (1793)
Washington kept America out of the French revolutionary wars — self-interest over the 1778 alliance.
Jay's Treaty (1794)
Averted war with Britain at humiliating cost; it enraged Republicans and midwifed the party press.
Pinckney's Treaty (1795)
Spain granted Mississippi navigation and the right of deposit at New Orleans — the West's economic lifeline.
Washington's Farewell Address (1796)
Warned against permanent alliances and the 'baneful effects' of party spirit.
XYZ Affair & Quasi-War (1797–1800)
French bribe demands ('millions for defense, not one cent for tribute') sparked an undeclared naval war with France.
Alien and Sedition Acts (1798)
Federalist laws to muzzle immigrants and the opposition press — jailing Republican editors for criticizing the government.
Virginia & Kentucky Resolutions (1798–99)
Madison and Jefferson's response: states could judge (and Kentucky said nullify) unconstitutional federal acts — a states'-rights time bomb.
Election of 1800
Jefferson's victory over Adams — the first peaceful transfer of power between parties, the 'Revolution of 1800.'
Fort Necessity & Young Washington (1754)
Washington's frontier skirmish and surrender in the Ohio country lit the fuse of a world war — the French and Indian War's opening shots.
Braddock's Defeat (1755)
A British army was destroyed marching on Fort Duquesne — exposing redcoat vulnerability and schooling colonial officers like Washington.
William Pitt
Britain's war minister whose strategy — pay Prussia to fight in Europe, throw resources at America — won the war after 1757.
Battle of Quebec (1759)
Wolfe's victory on the Plains of Abraham broke French power in Canada — the war's decisive stroke.
Colonial Wartime Friction
British officers disdained colonial troops; colonists resented impressment and quartering; merchants traded with the enemy — seeds of estrangement.
Paxton Boys & Frontier Rage (1764)
Frontier violence after Pontiac's war showed the West's volatility — and colonists' defiance of eastern and imperial authority alike.
George Grenville
The prime minister whose revenue program (Sugar, Stamp, Quartering Acts) began the imperial crisis — logical in London, tyrannical in Boston.
Quartering Act (1765)
Required colonies to house and supply British troops — resented as taxation in kind and a standing-army menace.
Patrick Henry & the Virginia Resolves
Henry's Stamp Act resolutions ('If this be treason...') claimed Virginians could be taxed only by their own assembly — radicalism spreading by newspaper.
Crowd Action & Effigies
Boston crowds hanged stamp-master effigies and demolished officials' houses — 'the people out of doors' as a political force.
John Dickinson
'Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania' (1767) argued Parliament could regulate trade but not tax for revenue — the moderate resistance's voice.
Crispus Attucks
Sailor of African and Native descent, first to die at the Boston Massacre — remembered as the Revolution's first martyr.
John Adams Defends the Soldiers
Adams won acquittals for the Massacre soldiers — rule of law even amid resistance, and a career-making display of principle.
Gaspee Affair (1772)
Rhode Islanders burned a grounded customs schooner; the threat to try suspects in England spurred intercolonial committees.
Tea Act Logic (1773)
Parliament's rescue of the East India Company made tea cheaper but kept the duty — a trap colonists refused to swallow.
Suffolk Resolves (1774)
Massachusetts towns declared the Coercive Acts void and urged militia preparation — endorsed by the First Continental Congress.
The Association (1774)
Congress's total boycott of British goods, enforced by local committees — a shadow government in the making.
Minutemen & Powder Alarms
Massachusetts militia reorganized for rapid response as both sides raced to control gunpowder stores.
Paul Revere & the Alarm Riders
The warning network (Revere, Dawes, Prescott) that raised the countryside on April 18–19, 1775.
Bunker Hill (1775)
A pyrrhic British 'victory' — 1,000+ casualties storming Breed's Hill — proving colonials would stand and fight.
Olive Branch Petition (1775)
Congress's last loyal appeal to George III; the king refused to receive it and declared the colonies in rebellion.
Dunmore's Proclamation (1775)
Virginia's royal governor offered freedom to enslaved men who joined the British — welding planters to the Revolution and opening Black routes to liberty.
Hessians
German mercenaries hired by Britain — their use outraged colonists and filled Trenton's Christmas prisoner haul.
Trenton & Princeton (1776–77)
Washington's desperate winter strikes across the Delaware revived a dying cause — morale as a weapon.
Battle of Long Island & the Retreats (1776)
Howe's victories nearly destroyed the Continental Army; Washington's escapes preserved it — 'we may lose battles, not the army.'
Marquis de Lafayette
The teenage French noble who became Washington's surrogate son and the alliance's living symbol.
Baron von Steuben
The Prussian drillmaster whose Valley Forge training manual turned the Continentals into professionals.
Southern Strategy (British)
After 1778 Britain bet on Loyalist support in the South — taking Savannah and Charleston before bleeding out in the backcountry.
Kings Mountain & Cowpens (1780–81)
Patriot militia and Morgan's tactical masterpiece shredded British forces in the Carolinas — the road to Yorktown.
Nathanael Greene
'We fight, get beat, rise, and fight again' — his southern campaign lost battles and won the war of attrition.
Benedict Arnold's Treason (1780)
The hero of Saratoga sold West Point's plans — the Revolution's byword for betrayal.
African Americans in the Revolution
~5,000 served the patriot cause; thousands more fled to British lines — both sides' promises testing the Revolution's meaning.
Native Americans & the Revolution
Most nations sided with Britain against land-hungry settlers; the Iroquois Confederacy split and was devastated (Sullivan's 1779 campaign).
Newburgh Conspiracy (1783)
Unpaid officers flirted with coercing Congress; Washington's spectacles speech ('I have grown gray in your service') dissolved it — civilian supremacy preserved.
Society of the Cincinnati
Revolutionary officers' hereditary order that alarmed republicans fearful of aristocracy.
State Constitutions' Innovations
Written constitutions, declarations of rights, annual elections, weak governors — republican theory tested in the states first.
Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom (1786)
Jefferson's law separating church and state — 'Almighty God hath created the mind free' — model for the First Amendment.
Annapolis Convention (1786)
A poorly attended trade meeting that called the Philadelphia convention — Hamilton and Madison seizing the moment.
Virginia Plan vs. New Jersey Plan
Madison's population-based congress versus the small states' equal-vote congress — the deadlock the Great Compromise broke.
Electoral College
The framers' filtered method of choosing presidents — balancing popular input, state power, and distrust of direct democracy.
Commerce Compromise
Congress could regulate trade and tax imports but not exports — sectional bargaining over economic power.
George Mason & the Objections
Virginia's antifederalist author of the Declaration of Rights refused to sign a Constitution without a bill of rights.
Ratification State by State
Delaware first; Massachusetts's 'ratify now, amend later' formula; Virginia and New York's cliffhangers — nine states made it law (June 1788).
Judiciary Act of 1789
Built the federal court system — district courts, circuit courts, and a Supreme Court of six.
Report on Public Credit & Assumption Deal
Hamilton's funding plan passed via the dinner-table bargain: state debts assumed, capital on the Potomac.
Citizen Genêt Affair (1793)
France's envoy recruited privateers on American soil until even Jefferson wanted him gone — neutrality's first test.
Battle of Fallen Timbers & Treaty of Greenville (1794–95)
Wayne's victory over the Northwest Confederacy opened Ohio — Native land ceded under duress.
Treaty of San Lorenzo (Pinckney's Treaty) Details
Spain, fearing Anglo-American alignment, granted the Mississippi and New Orleans deposit — the West's loyalty secured.
Fries's Rebellion (1799)
Pennsylvania Germans resisted the direct house tax; pardoned by Adams — the last Federalist-era tax revolt.
Convention of 1800
Adams's peace with France ended the Quasi-War and the 1778 alliance — 'the most disinterested act of my life,' splitting his party.
Midnight Judges & Judiciary Act of 1801
Lame-duck Federalists packed new judgeships — setting up Marbury v. Madison and the fight over the courts.
Gabriel's Rebellion (1800)
An enslaved blacksmith's planned march on Richmond, betrayed and crushed — revolutionary liberty's language turned against slavery, and Virginia's terrified response.
Abigail Adams — 'Remember the Ladies'
Her 1776 letter urged John to check husbands' 'unlimited power'; his jest in reply marked the Revolution's gender limits.
Judith Sargent Murray
'On the Equality of the Sexes' (1790) argued women's minds equaled men's — republican education for daughters.
Emancipation in the North
Vermont's ban (1777), Pennsylvania's gradual act (1780), and judicial abolition in Massachusetts — the first emancipations in the hemisphere.