Unit 3 Vocab (1754-1800)
People:
1) John Hancock: “the King of the Smugglers,” this wealthy Massachusetts merchant was
instrumental in persuading colonists to declare their independence from Britain; he also
was a ringleader in the decision to store gunpowder at Lexington and Concord, which
led to the first battle of the war
2) Benedict Arnold: American general during the Revolutionary War who won a key battle
for the Americans at Ft. Ticonderoga before becoming a double-agent for the British; he
was declared a traitor but escaped to be sheltered by loyalists
3) Charles Cornwallis: British general who is best known for surrendering to General
Washington at the climatic Battle of Yorktown, which effectively cost the British the war
4) John Paul Jones: a daring, hard-fighting young Scotsman who helped destroy British
merchant ships in 1777; his actions gave inspiration to the tiny American navy in its’
struggle against the mighty British navy
5) Marquis de Lafayette: wealthy French nobleman who was made Major General of the
colonial army; his wealth and military expertise were very helpful to the Americans
6) Comte de Rochambeau: Frenchman who commanded a French army of 6,000 troops in
the summer of 1780; this force was a key part of the Franco-American attack on British
forces in New York that led to British defeat by 1781
7) Abigail Adams: worked to convince her husband, colonial leader (and later president)
John Adams, to “consider the Ladies” when working on the Declaration of Independence
8) Talleyrand: French foreign minister involved in the XYZ Affair of 1797; when Americans
sent diplomats to speak to Talleyrand about the seizing of American ships by the French,
Talleyrand’s intermediaries (known only as “X,Y, and Z”) demanded a payment from the
Americans in order to meet with him
Key Terms:
9) Mercantilism: economic theory that states that a nation’s power is determined by its
wealth in precious metals (esp. gold and silver); additionally, a nation’s colonies only
exist to enrich the homeland with resources
10) Internal vs external taxation: “internal” taxes were on goods that flowed within the
colonies (like the Stamp Act) whereas “external” taxes were on goods that flowed into
the colonies from outside (like the Sugar Act); colonists had more tolerance for external
taxes, as they felt that internal trade should be regulated by their colonial gov’ts
11) Virtual representation: political theory more popular in Britain than the colonies that
claimed that every member of Parliament in London represented all British subjects
throughout the Empire
12) Quartering Act: law passed in the 1760s to require colonists to pay taxes used to house
and feed British soldiers; it was very unpopular and the New York legislature was even
suspended by the British gov’t since they refused to comply with the law
13) Admiralty courts: Offenders of the Sugar Act and Stamp Act were tried in these courts
with no juries and where a defendant was presumed guilty until proven innocent; many
colonists saw their rights under English Bill of Rights as having been violated
14) Loyalists/Tories: colonists who stayed loyal to the British during the Revolution;
estimated at roughly 1/3 of the population of the American colonies
15) Mercenaries: a person hired to serve in another nation’s military; during the Revolution,
King George III hired German soldiers (Hessians) to fight against the colonists
16) Natural rights theory: the theory that people are born with certain “natural rights”
which cannot be taken away; hence Jefferson’s reference in the Declaration of
Independence to “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness”
17) Patriots/Whigs: colonists who resisted the British during the Revolution; estimated at
roughly half of the population of the American colonies
18) Sovereignty: supreme political authority; in monarchies, this power was viewed as
coming from the king/queen, but in a republic, this power was viewed as coming from
the people
19) Federation: a two-level government, of federal and state governments, with the federal
government holding supreme authority in cases where federal and state law conflict;
otherwise states are free to make their own laws
20) Republic: a type of democracy where the people elect leaders, but do not generally
make laws; those leaders then are tasked with making laws and running the
government; if the people do not approve they have the power to not re-elect the
leaders
21) Mobocracy: those who feared an excess of democracy (both monarchists and
democrats) created this term to describe the possibility of a dangerous, even violent,
mass movement that would lead to chaos and anarchy that would weaken the new
nation
22) Confederation: a group of sovereign states, each of which is largely free to act
independently from the others and is justified as protection from a tyrannical central
gov’t; characterized by a very weak federal gov’t with limited power to compel all states
to act together (usually limited to waging war and conducting foreign policy); all other
powers are reserved for state gov’ts
23) Northwest Ordinance: this ordinance established a process for how new states could be
added to the nation; new lands would first be brought in as free “territories” (without
slavery) under the control of the federal gov’t; once a territory got 60,000 people and
had been reviewed by Congress, it could create its own state gov’t
24) Anti-Federalists: those who opposed the ratification of the new constitution without the
addition of a Bill of Rights guaranteeing citizens rights that the gov’t is not supposed to
take away
25) The Federalist Papers: a series of articles written by Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and
James Madison in New York newspapers in support of ratifying the Constitution as it
was, without a Bill of Rights and in support of a stronger federal gov’t than existed
under the Articles of Confederation; historians view them as the eminent writings on
the theory of federalism
26) The Cabinet: this body of the executive branch was started by President Washington
and continues to this day; it is designed to assemble a group of experts who advise the
president on matters of governance and policy
27) Neutrality Proclamation of 1793: issued by Pres. Washington, established an official
policy of isolationism designed to keep the US out of international conflicts (even if
Washington did not always stick with it in practice, as his administration at times
favored Britain over France)
28) Jay Treaty: a 1794 treaty that angered anti-federalist Jeffersonians because they viewed
it as being soft on the British; John Jay negotiated it and he failed to get the British to
stop harassing American ships and to stop claiming that the US still owed them on prerevolution debts
29) Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions: in 1798, these resolutions laid the legal groundwork
for the development of the states’ rights theory; passed by state legislatures in those
states, they were a rebellion against the federal gov’t’s Alien and Sedition Acts, which
they argued were violations of the Bill of Rights