Chapter 7

nonimportation agreements

were a series of commercial restrictions adopted by American colonists to protest British revenue policies prior to the American Revolution. Britain's Stamp Act of 1765 triggered the first nonimportation agreements. To protest taxation without representation, New York merchants agreed collectively to embargo British imports until Parliament repealed the stamp tax, and they persuaded the merchants of Boston and Philadelphia to do likewise. Under pressure from British exporters who lost business, Parliament repealed the Stamp Act within a year.

Republicanism

A philosophy of limited government with elected representatives serving at the will of the people. The government is based on consent of the governed.

George Grenville

Became prime minister of Britain in 1763 he persuaded the Parliament to pass a law allowing smugglers to be sent to vice-admiralty courts which were run by British officers and had no jury. He did this to end smuggling.

mercantilism

An economic policy under which nations sought to increase their wealth and power by obtaining large amounts of gold and silver and by selling more goods than they bought

Baron von Steuben

Baron Friedrich von Steuben, a Prussian military man hired by George Washington to whip the Continental Army into shape during the darkest days of the Revolutionary War, is known for his bravery and the discipline and grit he brought to the American troops.

Admiralty courts

British courts originally established to try cases involving smuggling or violations of the Navigation Acts which the British government sometimes used to try American criminals in the colonies. Trials in Admiralty Courts were heard by judges without a jury.

Navigation Law of 1650

Law passed by Parliament to regulate the mercantilist system; aimed at rival Dutch shippers. Said that all commerce flowing to and from the colonies could only be transported in British/colonial vessels

Marquis de Lafayette

Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de La Fayette (known in the United States simply as Lafayette) was a French aristocrat and military officer who fought in the American Revolutionary War, commanding American troops in several battles, including the Siege of Yorktown. After returning to France, he was a key figure in the French Revolution of 1789 and the July Revolution of 1830. Lafayette was born into a wealthy land-owning family in Chavaniac in the province of Auvergne in south central France. He followed the family's martial tradition and was commissioned an officer at age 13. He became convinced that the American revolutionary cause was noble, and he traveled to the New World seeking glory in it. He was made a major general at age 19, but he was initially not given American troops to command. He was wounded during the Battle of Brandywine but still managed to organize an orderly retreat, and he served with distinction in the Battle of Rhode Island. In the middle of the war, he sailed for home to lobby for an increase in French support. He returned to America in 1780 and was given senior positions in the Continental Army. In 1781, troops under his command in Virginia blocked forces led by Cornwallis until other American and French forces could position themselves for the decisive Siege of Yorktown.

1st Continental Congress

On September 1774, delegates from 12 colonies gathered in Philadelphia. After debating, the delegates passed a resolution backing Mass. in its struggle. Decided to boycott all British goods and to stop exporting goods to Britain until the Intolerance Act was canceled.

Sam Adams

Samuel Adams was a Founding Father of the United States and a political theorist who protested British taxation without representation, uniting the American colonies in the fight for independence during the Revolutionary War. A member of the Sons of Liberty who started the Committee of Correspondence to stir public support for American independence.

Stamp Act Congress

Stamp Act, (1765), in U.S. colonial history, first British parliamentary attempt to raise revenue through direct taxation of all colonial commercial and legal papers, newspapers, pamphlets, cards, almanacs, and dice. The devastating effect of Pontiac's War on colonial frontier settlements added to the enormous new defense burdens resulting from Great Britain's victory in the French and Indian War. The British chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir George Grenville, hoped to meet at least half of these costs by the combined revenues of the Sugar Act and the Stamp Act

Sugar Act of 1764

Sugar Act, also called Plantation Act or Revenue Act, (1764), in U.S. colonial history, British legislation aimed at ending the smuggling trade in sugar and molasses from the French and Dutch West Indies and at providing increased revenues to fund enlarged British Empire responsibilities following the French and Indian War. Actually a reinvigoration of the largely ineffective Molasses Act of 1733, the Sugar Act provided for strong customs enforcement of the duties on refined sugar and molasses imported into the colonies from non-British Caribbean sources.

Boston Massacre

Tensions ran high in Boston in early 1770. More than 2,000 British soldiers occupied the city of 16,000 colonists and tried to enforce Britain's tax laws, like the Stamp Act and Townshend Acts. American colonists rebelled against the taxes they found repressive, rallying around the cry, "no taxation without representation." Skirmishes between colonists and soldiers—and between patriot colonists and colonists loyal to Britain (loyalists)—were increasingly common. To protest taxes, patriots often vandalized stores selling British goods and intimidated store merchants and their customers.

Battle of Lexington and Concord

The Battles of Lexington and Concord, fought on April 19, 1775, kicked off the American Revolutionary War. Tensions had been building for many years between residents of the 13 American colonies and the British authorities, particularly in Massachusetts. On the night of April 18, 1775, hundreds of British troops marched from Boston to nearby Concord in order to seize an arms cache. Paul Revere and other riders sounded the alarm, and colonial militiamen began mobilizing to intercept the Redcoat column. A confrontation on the Lexington town green started off the fighting, and soon the British were hastily retreating under intense fire. Many more battles followed, and in 1783 the colonists formally won their independence.

Boston Tea Party

The Boston Tea Party was a political protest that occurred on December 16, 1773, at Griffin's Wharf in Boston, Massachusetts. American colonists, frustrated and angry at Britain for imposing "taxation without representation," dumped 342 chests of tea, imported by the British East India Company into the harbor. The event was the first major act of defiance to British rule over the colonists. It showed Great Britain that Americans wouldn't take taxation and tyranny sitting down, and rallied American patriots across the 13 colonies to fight for independence.

Committees of Correspondence

The Committees of Correspondence were the American colonies' means for maintaining communication lines in the years before the Revolutionary War. In 1764, Boston formed the earliest Committee of Correspondence to encourage opposition to Britain's stiffening of customs enforcement and prohibition of American paper money. The following year, New York formed a similar committee to keep the other colonies notified of its actions in resisting the Stamp Act. In 1773, the Virginia House of Burgesses proposed that each colonial legislature appoint a committee for intercolonial correspondence. The exchanges that followed built solidarity during the turbulent times and helped bring about the formation of the First Continental Congress in 1774.

Quebec Act of 1774

The Quebec Act, passed by Parliament, alarmed the colonies because it nullified many of the Western claims of the coast colonies by extending the boundaries of the province of Quebec to the Ohio River on the south and to the Mississippi River on the west. The concessions in favor of the Roman Catholic Church also roused much resentment among Protestants in the Thirteen Colonies as some colonials took it as a sign that Britain was planning to impose Catholicism upon the colonies.

Intolerable Acts

The Intolerable Acts were punitive laws passed by the British Parliament in 1774 after the Boston Tea Party. The laws were meant to punish the Massachusetts colonists for their defiance in the Tea Party protest in reaction to changes in taxation by the British Government. In Great Britain, these laws were referred to as the Coercive Acts. The acts took away self-governance and rights that Massachusetts had enjoyed since its founding, triggering outrage and indignation in the Thirteen Colonies. They were key developments in the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War in April 1775. Four of the acts were issued in direct response to the Boston Tea Party of December 16, 1773. The British Parliament hoped these punitive measures would, by making an example of Massachusetts, reverse the trend of colonial resistance to parliamentary authority that had begun with the 1764 Sugar Act.

Quartering Act of 1765

The Quartering Act of 1765 required the colonies to house British soldiers in barracks provided by the colonies. If the barracks were too small to house all the soldiers, then localities were to accommodate the soldiers in local inns, livery stables, ale houses. However, the New York colonial assembly disliked being commanded to provide quarter for British troops—they preferred to be asked and then to give their consent, if they were going to have soldiers in their midst at all. Thus, they refused to comply with the law, and in 1767, Parliament passed the New York Restraining Act. The Restraining Act prohibited the royal governor of New York from signing any further legislation until the assembly complied with the Quartering Act.

Sons and Daughters of Liberty

The Sons of Liberty was a secret organization. It was feared by the British, who called it the "Sons of Violence." The Sons sometimes attacked British authorities and those who supported them. Some women Patriots formed a group called the Daughters of Liberty. They chose to boycott British goods.

Stamp Act

The Stamp Act of 1765 was the first internal tax levied directly on American colonists by the British Parliament. The act, which imposed a tax on all paper documents in the colonies, came at a time when the British Empire was deep in debt from the Seven Years' War. Looking to its North American colonies as a revenue source.

Townshend Acts

The Townshend Acts were a series of measures, passed by the British Parliament in 1767, that taxed goods imported to the American colonies. But American colonists, who had no representation in Parliament, saw the Acts as an abuse of power. The British sent troops to America to enforce the unpopular new laws, further heightening tensions between Great Britain and the American colonies in the run-up to the American Revolutionary War.

Virtual representation

Virtual representation refers to the idea that the members of Parliament, including the Lords and the Crown-in-Parliament, reserved the right to speak for the interests of all British subjects, rather than for the interests of only the district that elected them or for the regions in which they held peerages and spiritual sway.[1] Virtual representation was the British response to the First Continental Congress in the American colonies. The Second Continental Congress asked for representation in Parliament in the Suffolk Resolves, also known as the first Olive Branch Petition. Parliament claimed that their members had the well being of the colonists in mind. The Colonies rejected this premise.

"No taxation without representation"

a phrase, generally attributed to James Otis about 1761, that reflected the resentment of American colonists at being taxed by a British Parliament to which they elected no representatives and became an anti-British slogan before the American Revolution; in full, "Taxation without representation is tyranny."

Whigs

conservatives and popular with pro-Bank people and plantation owners. They mainly came from the National Republican Party, which was once largely Federalists. They took their name from the British political party that had opposed King George during the American Revolution.