US History to 1865 chapter 6

Boston Massacre

(4.1) In 1770, British soldiers fired into a crowd of colonists who were teasing and taunting them. Eleven were wounded; Five colonists were killed, including Crispus Attucks, a sailor of African and Native American ancestry.

Lexington and Concord

1775: British Commander Thomas Gage sent 700 British troops to seize minutemen's arm in Concord. Battle between British and Minutemen broke out. Lexington, a village five miles east of Concord. British met by 70 armed men assembled on the village green. In the next two minutes, more firing left 8 Americans dead and ten wounded.

Revenue (Sugar) Act

Grenville's bill; Revenue/Sugar Act; It lowered the duty on French molasses to three pence, making it more attractive for shippers to obey the law, and at the same time raised penalties for smuggling. The act appeared to be in the tradition of the navigation acts meant to regulate trade, but Grenville's actual intent was to raise revenue; his goal by the novel means of lowering a duty.

Samuel Adams

Harvard graduate; town officer; had shrewd political instincts; founder of Sons of Liberty. , American Revolutionary leader and patriot; one of the most vocal patriots for independence; signed the Declaration of Independence

Vice-admiralty courts

Hated British courts in which juries were not allowed and defendants were assumed guilty until proven innocent; vice admiralty courts were juryless courts located in British colonies that were granted jurisdiction over local legal matters related to maritime activities, such as disputes between merchants and seamen.

Townshend Duties

Popularly referred to as the Townshend Duties, the Revenue Act of 1767 taxed glass, lead, paper, paint, and tea entering the colonies. The colonists objected to the fact that the act was clearly designed to raise revenue exclusively for England rather than to regulate trade in a manner favorable to the entire British empire. Townshend naively assumed that external taxes on transatlantic trade would be acceptable to Americans. They embodied the principle, taxation through trade duties.

Boston Tea Party

a political protest by the Sons of Liberty in Boston, on December 16, 1773. The demonstrators, some disguised as American Indians, destroyed an entire shipment of tea sent by the East India Company, in defiance of the Tea Act of May 10, 1773.

Daughters of Liberty

a successful Colonial American group, established in the year 1765, that consisted of women who displayed their loyalty by participating in boycotts of British goods following the passage of the Townshend Acts

non-importation

an agreement that pledged not to import or use goods imported from great britain

Declaratory Act

asserted Parliament's right to legislate for the colonies "in all cases whatsoever"; (1766) Stated that the British Parliament had the same power to tax in the colonies as it did in Great Britain. Parliament emphasized its authority to make binding laws on the American colonies.

Non-consumption

boycott of all British-made goods; , Efforts by colonists to boycott materials/goods imported. Encouraged home manufacturing.

Committees of correspondence

politicized ordinary townspeople, sparking a revolutionary language of rights and constitutional duties. Bypassed the official flow of power and information through the colony's royal government. The committees of correspondence were shadow governments organized by the Patriot leaders of the Thirteen Colonies on the eve of the American Revolution. They coordinated responses to Britain and shared their plans;

Thomas Hutchinson

stiff-necked lieutenant governor and chief justice. Five years later, royal governor; lieutenant governor of Mass. elegant home was attacked by a violent crowd of Bostonians

external tax

taxes imposed to regulate trade; they arose out of activities that originated outside of the colonies, such as customs duties. The Sugar Act was considered an external tax, because it only operated on goods imported into the colonies from overseas. Many colonists who objected to Parliament's "internal" taxes on the colonies felt that Parliament had the authority to levy external taxes on imported goods.

Sons of Liberty

A political organization formed after the passage of the Stamp Act to protest various British acts; organization used both peaceful and violent means of protest; The secret society was formed to protect the rights of the colonists and to take to the streets against the abuses of the British government.

French & Indian War

Also known as the French and Indian War. , A conflict between the British and her colonists against the French and their Native American allies over disputed territory in the Ohio River Valley. Also known as the Seven Years War. Britain would win and all French territory east of the Mississippi was granted to Britain.

Proclamation of 1763

An act by the British government that forbid colonists from settling west of the Appalachian Mountains; and which required any settlers already living west of the mountains to move back east.

Stamp Act

An act that precipitated a major conflict between Britain and the colonies over Parliament's right to tax. It imposed a tax on all paper used for official documents - newspapers, pamphlets, court documents, licenses, wills, ships' cargo lists - and required an affixed stamp as proof that the tax had been paid. Unlike the Sugar Act, which regulated trade, it was designed plainly and simply to raise money. It affected nearly everyone who used any taxed paper but, most of all, users of official documents in the business and legal communities.

Tea Act

Lord North's legislation that gave favored status to the East India Company, allowing it to sell tea directly to a few selected merchants in four colonial cities, cutting out British middlemen. The appointed agents would resell the tea, collecting three pence tax that had its origins in the Townshend duty on tea of 1767.

Customs service

Meant to collect taxes from colonies, but loses more money than it makes. Created by George III; , a government agency authorized to collect taxes on foreign goods entering a country. Controlling the flow of goods into and out of a country.

Internal Tax

Taxes which arose out of activities that occurred within the colonies. The Stamp Act was considered an internal tax, because it taxed the colonists on legal transactions they undertook locally. Many colonists and Englishmen felt that Parliament did not have the authority to levy internal taxes on the colonies.

Coercive (Intolerable) Acts

The British response to the Boston Tea Party; there were four parts (The Boston Port Act, the Massachusetts Government Act, the Administration of Justice Act, and the Quartering Act). In effect, the port of Boston was closed until local citizens would pay for the lost tea, the royal governor's power was increased at the expense of the legislature, royal officials accused of crimes could be tried elsewhere, and troops could be quartered anywhere. These acts angered and alarmed Americans, and united them in support of Boston against Britain.

First Continental Congress

The gathering of delegates from every colony, except Georgia, in Philadelphia in September 1774 to discuss the crisis between Britain and the colonies; A gathering of colonial leaders who were deeply troubled about the relationship between Great Britain and its colonies in America.

Virtual Representation

The notion, propounded by the British Parliament in the eighteenth century, that the House of Commons represented all British subjects- wherever they lived and regardless of whether they had directly voted for their representatives.

Treaty of Paris, 1763

Treaty between Britain, France, and Spain, which ended the Seven Years War (and the French and Indian War). France lost Canada, the land east of the Mississippi, some Caribbean islands and India to Britain. France also gave New Orleans and the land west of the Mississippi to Spain to compensate it for ceding Florida to the British.