APUSH: Period 2 (1607-1754)

Martin Luther

(1483-1546): German friar who touched off the Protestant Reformation when he nailed a list of grievances against the Catholic Church to the door of Wittenberg's cathedral in 1517.

John Calvin

(1509-1564): French Protestant reformer whose religious teachings formed the theological basis for New England Puritans, Scottish Presbyterians, French Huguenots and members of the Dutch Reformed Church. Calvin argued that humans were inherently weak and wicked, and believed in an all-knowing, all-powerful God, who predestined select individuals for salvation.

John Winthrop

(1588-1649): First governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony. An able administrator and devout Puritan, Winthrop helped ensure the prosperity of the newly-established colony and enforce Puritan orthodoxy, taking a hard line against religious dissenters like Anne Hutchinson.

William Bradford

(1590-1657): Erudite leader of the separatist Pilgrims who left England for Holland, and eventually sailed on the Mayflower to establish the first English colony in Massachusetts. His account of the colony's founding, Of Plymouth Plantation, remains a clas- sic of American literature and in indispensable historical source.

William Berkeley

(1606-1677): Royal governor of Virginia colony from 1641 until his death. A member of Virginia's seaboard elite, he angered backwater settlers by refusing to protect them against Indian attacks, eventually leading to Bacon's rebellion.

Charles II

(1630-1685): Assumed the throne with the restoration of the monarchy in 1660. Charles sought to establish firm control over the colonies, ending the period of relative independence on the American mainland.

Duke of York

(1633-1701): Catholic English monarch who reigned as James II from 1685 until he was deposed during the Glorious Revolution in 1689. When the English seized New Amsterdam from the Dutch in 1664, they renamed it in the Duke's honor to commemorate his support for the colonial venture.

Sir Edmund Andros

(1637-1714): Much loathed administrator of the Dominion of New England, which was created in 1686 to strengthen imperial control over the New England colonies. Andros established strict control, doing away with town meetings and popular assemblies and taxing colonists without their consent. When word of the Glorious Revolution in England reached the colonists, they promptly dispatched Andros back to England.

William Penn

(1644-1718): Prominent Quaker activist who founded Pennsylvania as a haven for Quakers in 1681. He established friendly relations with neighboring Indian tribes and attracted a wide array of settlers to his colony with promises of economic opportunity, and ethnic and religious toleration.

Nathaniel Bacon

(1647-1676): Young Virginia planter who led a rebellion against governor William Berkeley in 1676.

William III and Mary II

(1650-1702) and (1662-1694): Dutch-born monarch and his English-born wife, daughter of King James II, installed to the British throne during the Glorious Revolution of 1689. William and Mary relaxed control over the American colonies, inaugurating a period of "salutary neglect" that lasted until the French and Indian War.

John Peter Zenger

(1697-1746): New York printer tried for seditious libel against the state's royal governor. His acquittal set an important precedent for freedom of the press.

King George's War

(1744-1748): North American theater of Europe's War of Austrian Succession that again pitted British colonists against their French counterparts in the North. The peace settlement did not involve any territorial realignment, leading to conflict between New England settlers and the British government.

Albany Congress

(1754): Intercolonial congress summoned by the British government to foster greater colonial unity and assure Iroquois support in the escalating war against the French.

French and Indian War

(1756-1763): Nine year war between the British and the French in North America. It resulted in the expulsion of the French from the North American mainland and helped spark the Seven Years' War in Europe.

Peter Stuyvesant

(c. 1610-1672): Director general of Dutch New Netherland from 1645 until the colony fell to the British in 1664.

Henry Hudson

(c.1565-1611): English explorer who ventured into New York Bay and up the Hudson River for the Dutch in 1609 in search of a Northwest Passage across the continent.

Massasoit

(c.1590-1661): Wampanoag chieftain who signed a peace treaty with Plymouth Bay settlers in 1621 and helped them celebrate the first Thanksgiving.

Anne Hutchinson

(c.1591-1643): Antinomian religious dissenter brought to trial for heresy in Massachusetts Bay after arguing that she need not follow God's laws or man's, and claiming direct revelation from God. Banished from the Puritan colony, Hutchinson moved to Rhode Island and later New York, where she and her family were killed by Indians.

Roger Williams

(c.1603-1683): Salem minister who advocated a complete break from the Church of England and criticized the Massachusetts Bay colony for unlawfully taking land from the Indians. Banished for his heresies, he established a small community in present-day Rhode Island, later acquiring a charter for the colony from England.

Metacom (King Philip)

(c.1638-1676): Wampanoag chief who led a brutal campaign against Puritan settlements in New England between 1675 and 1676. Though he himself was eventually captured and killed, his wife and son sold into slavery, his assault halted New England's westward expansion for several decades.

South Carolina slave revolt (Stono Rebellion)

1739 uprising of more than fifty South Carolina blacks along the Stono River. They attempted to reach Spanish-held Florida, but were stopped by the South Carolina militia.

Dominion of New England (1686-1689)

Administrative union created by royal authority, incorporating all of New England, New York, and East and West Jersey. Placed under the rule of Sir Edmund Andros, who curbed popular assemblies, taxed residents without their consent, and strictly enforced Navigation Laws. Its collapse after the Glorious Revolution in England demonstrated colonial opposition to strict royal control.

Half-Way Covenant

Agreement allowing unconverted offspring of church members to baptize their children. It signified a waning on religious zeal Amon second and third-generation Puritans.

Mayflower Compact

Agreement to form a majoritarian government in Plymouth, signed aboard the Mayflower. Created a foundation for self-government in the Massachusetts Bay colony.

blue laws

Also known as sumptuary laws, they are designed to restrict personal behavior in accord with a strict code of morality. Blue laws were passed across the colonies, particularly in Puritan New England and Quaker Pennsylvania.

Leisler's Rebellion (1689-1691)

Armed conflict between aspiring merchants led by Jacob Leisler and the ruling elite of New York. One of many uprisings that erupted across the colonies when wealthy colonists attempted to recreate European social structures in the New World.

English Civil War (1642-1651)

Armed conflict between royalists and parliamentarians, resulting in the victory of pro-parliament forces and the execution of Charles I.

Arminianism

Belief that salvation is offered to all humans but is conditional on acceptance of God's grace. Different from Calvinism, which emphasizes predestination and unconditional election.

antinomianism

Belief that the elect need not obey the law of either God or man; most notably advocated in the colonies by Anne Hutchinson.

predestination

Calvinist doctrine that God has foreordained some people to be saved and some to be damned. Though their fate was irreversible, Calvinists, particularly those who believed they were destined for salvation, sought to lead sanctified lives in order to demonstrate to others that they were in fact members of "the elect."

Calvinism

Dominant theological credo of the New England Puritans based on the teachings of John Calvin. It emphasized a strong moral code and predestination. Calvinists supported constitutional representative government and separation of church and state.

Fundamental Orders

Drafted by settlers in the Connecticut River valley in 1639, this document was the first "modern constitution" establishing a democratically controlled government. Key features of the document were borrowed for Connecticut's colonial charter and, later, it's state constitution.

headright system

Employed in the tobacco colonies to encourage the importation of indentured servants, the system allowed an individual to acquire fifty acres of land if he paid for a laborer's passage to the colony.

Puritans

English Protestant reformers who sought to purify the Church of England of Catholic rituals and creeds. Some of the most devout Puritans believed that only "visible saints" should be admitted church membership.

Royal African Company

English joint-stock company that enjoyed a state-granted monopoly on the colonial slave trade from 1672 until 1698. The supply of places to the North American colonies rose sharply once the company lost its monopoly privileges.

Triangular Trade

Exchange of rum slaves, and molasses between the North American colonies, Africa, and the West Indies. A small but immensely profitable subset of the Atlantic trade.

Massachusetts Bay Colony

Founded in 1630, it was established by non-separating Puritans, and soon grew to be the largest and most influential of the New England Colonies.

coureurs de bois

French for "runners of the woods," they were French fur-trappers, also known as voyageurs (travelers) who established trading posts throughout North America. The fur trade wreaked havoc on the health and folkways of their Native American trading partners.

Acadians

French residents of Nova Scotia, many of whom were uprooted by the British in 1755 and scattered as far south as Louisiana, where their descendants became known as "Cajuns."

conversion

Intense religious experience that confirmed an individual's place among the "elect," or the "visible saints." Calvinists who experienced conversion were expected to lead sanctified lives.

indentured servants

Migrants who, in exchange for transatlantic passage, bound themselves to a colonial employer for a term of service, typically between four and seven years. Their migration addressed the chronic labor shortage in the colonies and facilitated settlement.

Great English Migration (1630-1642)

Migration of seventy-thousand refugees from England to the North American Colonies, primarily New England and the Caribbean. The twenty thousand who came to Massachusetts largely shared a common sense of purpose—to establish a model Christian settlement in the New World.

new lights

Ministers who took part in the revivalist emotive religious tradition pioneered by George Whitfield during the Great Awakening.

Zenger trial

New York lives case against John Peter Zenger. Established the principle that truthful statements about public officials could not be prosecuted as libel.

jeremiad

Often-fiery sermons lamenting the waning piety of parishioners first delivered in New England in the mid-seventeenth century; named after the doom-saying Old Testament prophet Jeremiah.

old lights

Orthodox clergymen who rejected the emotionalism of the Great Awakening in favor of a more rational spirituality.

Glorious (Bloodless) Revolution (1688-1689)

Relatively peaceful overthrow of the unpopular Catholic monarch, James II, who was replaced with Dutch-born William III and Mary II, daughter of James II. William and Mary accepted increased parliamentary oversight and new limits on monarchical authority.

Quakers

Religious group known for their tolerance, emphasis on peace, and idealistic Indian policy, who settled heavily in Pennsylvania in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

First Great Awakening (1730s and 1740s)

Religious revival that swept the colonies. Ministers like Johnathan Edwards and George Whitfield placed an emphasis on direct, emotive spirituality.

Queen Anne's War (1702-1713)

Second in a series of conflicts between the European powers for control of North America, fought between the English and French colonists in the North, and the English and Spanish in Florida. Under the peace treaty, the French ceded Acadia (Nova Scotia), Newfoundland, and Hudson Bay to Britain.

Congregational Church

Self-governing Puritan congregations without the hierarchical establishment of the Anglican Church.

King Philip's War (1675-1676)

Series of assaults by Metacom, King Philip, on English settlements in New England. The attacks slowed the westward migration of New England settlers for several decades.

Pequot War (1636-1638)

Series of clashes between English settlers and Pequot Indians in the Connecticut River valley. Ended in the slaughter of the Pequots by the Puritans and their Narragansett Indian allies.

Navigation Laws

Series of laws passes, beginning in 1651, to regulate colonial shipping; the acts provided that only English ships would be allowed to trade in English and colonial ports and that all goods destined for the colonies would first pass through England.

Salem witch trials

Series of witchcraft trials launched after a group of adolescent girls in Salem claimed to have been bewitched by certain older women of the town. Twenty individuals were t=put to death before the trials were put to an end by the governor of Massachusetts.

"slave codes"

Set of laws beginning in 1662 defining racial slavery. They established the hereditary nature of slavery and limited the rights and education of slaves.

Separatists

Small group of Puritans who sought to break away entirely from the Church of England; after initially settling in Holland, a number of Separatists made their way to Plymouth Bay, Massachusetts in 1620.

War of Jenkins' Ear

Small-scale clash between Britain and Spain in the Caribbean and in the buffer colony, Georgia. It merged with the much larger war of Austrian Succession in 1742.

Molasses Act (1733)

Tax on imported molasses passed by parliament in an effort to squelch the North American trade with the French West Indies. It proved largely ineffective due to widespread smuggling.

middle passage

Transatlantic voyage slaves endured between Africa and the colonies. Mortality rates were notoriously high.

salutary neglect

Unofficial policy of relaxed royal control over colonial trade and only weak enforcement of Navigation Laws. Lasted from the Glorious revolution to the end of the French and Indian War in 1763.

Bacon's Rebellion (1676)

Uprising of Virginia backcountry farmers and indentured servants led by planter Nathaniel Bacon' initially a response to Governor William Berkley's refusal to protect settlers from Indian attacks, the rebellion eventually grew into a broader conflict between impoverished settlers and the planter elite

New York slave revolt

Uprising of approximately two dozen enslaved Africans that resulted in the deaths of nine whites and the brutal execution of twenty-one participating blacks.

patroonships

Vast tracts of land along the Hudson River in New Netherlands granted to wealthy promoters in exchange for bringing fifty settlers to the property.

King William's War (1689-1697)

War fought largely between French trappers, British settlers, and their respective Indian allies. The colonial theater of the larger wWar of the League of Augsburg in Europe.

New England Confederation

Weak union of the colonies in Massachusetts and Connecticut led by Puritans for the purposes of defense and organization; an early attempt at self-government during the benign neglect of the English Civil War in 1643.

Poor Richard's Almanack

Widely read annual pamphlet edited by Benjamin Franklin. Best known for its proverbs and aphorisms emphasizing thrift, industry, morality, and common sense.