The Road to Revolution Vocabulary
Name:
Chapter 6, pages 155-189
Period:
Learning Goal: Students will understand the events and individuals that influenced the colonists to
declare independence from Great Britain.
Directions: Use your textbook to find definitions for each of the words listed below. Write the definitions
in a way that you will understand them! You do not need to copy word for word. Please write your
definitions on a separate sheet of paper! You WILL be handing in your definitions on the day of the
Vocabulary Test.
Section 1
 King George III – British monarch who reigned during the American Revolution
 Quartering Act – act requiring the colonists to quarter, or house, British soldiers and provide
them with supplies
 Sugar Act – law placing tax on sugar, molasses, and other products shipped to the colonies
 Stamp Act – law requiring all legal and commercial documents to carry an official stamp
showing that a tax had been paid
 Patrick Henry – member of Virginia’s House of Burgesses
 Sons of Liberty – secret society formed to oppose British policies
 speculate – to buy as an investment
 boycott – refusal to buy
 Proclamation of 1763 – British proclamation that forbade the colonists from settling west of the
Appalachian Mountains
Section 2
 Crispus Attucks – sailor of African-American and Native American ancestry who died at the
Boston Massacre
 Boston Massacre – incident in 1770 in which British troops fired on and killed American
colonists
 Townshend Acts – acts passed by Parliament in 1767 to tax imports in the colonists
 writs of assistance – search warrants used to enter homes or businesses to search for smuggled
goods
 Daughters of Liberty – organization of colonial women formed to protest British policies
 Samuel Adams – leader of Boston Sons of Liberty
 committee of correspondence – organization formed to exchange information about British
policies and American resistance
 Boston Tea Party – incident in 1773, when colonists protested British policies by boarding
British ships and throwing their cargos of tea overboard
 duties – taxes placed on imported goods duties – taxes placed on imported goods
 John Adams – lawyer who defended British soldiers accused of murder in the Boston Massacre
Section 3
 Minutemen – group of armed civilians, trained to be ready to fight “at a minute’s warning”
 Intolerable Acts – series of laws, known in Britain as the Coercive Acts, meant to punish
Massachusetts and clamp down on resistance in other colonies
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First Continental Congress – meeting of delegates from most of the colonies, called in reaction
to the Intolerable Acts
Paul Revere – Boston silversmith who rode into the countryside to spread news of British troop
movement
Lexington and Concord – first battles of the revolutionary war
Loyalists – Americans who supported the British
Patriots – American who sided with the rebels
militia – a force of armed civilians pledged to defend their community
Section 4
 Ethan Allen – leader of a Patriot group of fighters known as the Green Mountain Boys
 Second Continental Congress – America’s government during the Revolutionary War
 Continental Army – America’s Patriot army during the Revolutionary War
 Thomas Paine – political radical and the author of Common Sense
 Declaration of Independence – document that declared American independence from Britain
 Thomas Jefferson – delegate from Virginia who wrote the Declaration of Independence
 siege – when enemy forces surround a town or city in order to force it to surrender
 artillery – cannon and large guns