Era 3 Vocabulary Menu

John Locke

• English philosopher and physician widely regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers

King George III

• was king of Great Britain and Ireland from October 1760 to January 1801 when the two united

Sugar Act

• revenue raising act passed by Parliament of Great Britain on April 1764
• its purpose was to end the smuggling trades of sugar and molasses from the French

Townshend Act

• A series of British acts of Parliament
• Its purpose was to take away laws and rights from the colonists after the Seven Years' War

Homespun

• handwoven cloth

Committees of Correspondence

• shadow governments placed by the Patriot leaders of the Thirteen Colonies before the American Revolution

Boston Massacre

• confrontation in Boston on 5 March 1770
• British soldiers shot and killed several people while being harrassed by a mob

Boston Tea Party

• American political and mercantile protest
• American colonists were angry at Britain for imposing "taxation without representation"
• they dumped 342 chests of tea imported by the British East India Company into the harbor

Coercive Acts

• also known as Intolerable Acts, they were a series of four laws passed by British Parliament to punish the colony of Massachusetts Bay for the Boston Tea Party

Continental Congress

• series of legislative bodies which met in the British American colonies before, during, and after the American Revolution

Lexington and Concord

• first military engagements in the American Revolution
• battles fought in April 1775
• British won the battle

George Washington

• American political leader, military general, statesman, and a Founding Father who served as the first president of the United States from 1789-1797

Common Sense

• a 47 page pamphlet written by Thomas Paine in 1775-1776 advocating independence from the British

Lord Dunmore

• John Murray, 4th Earl of Dunmore
• Scottish peer and colonial governor in the American Colonies and the Bahamas. Last colonial governor of Virginia

Declaration of Independence

• pronouncement adopted by the Second Continental Congress meeting in Philadelphia 4 July 1776
• this document was signed by the SCC to declare independence from the British

Battle of Saratoga

• two battles fought from Sep 19 to Oct 17 1777
• was a decisive victory for the Continental Army and a major turning point in the Revolutionary War

Battle of Yorktown

• Sep 28 1781 - Oct 19 1781
• also known as the most important battle in the Revolutionary War
• General Washington and his troops begins a siege against british General Cornwallis
• decisive victory for the Americans

Articles of Confederation

• an agreement among the 13 original states that served as its first constitution
• approved Nov 15 1777

Loyalist

• American colonists who stayed loyal to the British Crown during the Revolutionary War

Proclamation of 1763

• British-produced boundary marked in the Appalachian Mountains at the Eastern Continental Divide
• prohibited Anglo-American colonists from settling on land acquired from the French following the French and Indian War

Currency Act

• regulated paper money issued by the colonies of British America
• sought to protect merchants and creditors from being paid in depreciated colonial currency

Intolerable Acts

• punitive laws passed by the British Parliament in 1774 following the Boston Tea Party
• intended to punish the Massachusetts colonies for their defiance in the Tea Party

Salutary Neglect

• the British Crown policy of avoiding strict enforcement of parliamentary laws as long as the colonists were loyal to and contributed to the economic growth of the British

Constitutional Convention

• took place from May to September 1787
• point of the event was to decide how America was going to be governed after gaining independence from the British Force

Virginia Plan

• introduced to the Constitutional Convention in 1787 by James Madison
• proposal for a supreme national government with three branches and a bicameral legislature

New Jersey Plan

• introduced to the Constitutional Convention in 1787 by William Paterson
• proposed a unicameral legislature with equal votes of states and an executive elected by a national legislature

Great Compromise

• also called Connecticut Compromise
• an agreement that large and small states reached during the Constitutional Convention that in part defined the legislative structure and representation that each state would have under US Constitution