Chapter 5 Vocab

Question 0

Quartering Act of 1765

Answer 0

Definition: A British law passed by Parliament that required colonial governments to provide barracks and food for British troops.

Significance: It made it unfair for citizens due to the fact that they have to take care of random soldiers.

Question 1

Sugar Act of 1764

Answer 1

Definition: British law that decreased the duty on French molasses, making it more attractive for shippers to obey the law, and at the same time raised penalties for smuggling.

Significance: The act enraged New England merchants, who opposed both the tax.

Question 2

Stamp Act Congress

Answer 2

Definition: A congress of delegates from nine assemblies that met in New York City in October 1765 to protest the loss of American “rights and liberties,” especially the right to trial by jury.

Significance: The congress challenged the constitutionality of both the Stamp and Sugar Acts by declaring that only the colonists’ elected representatives could tax them.

Question 3

Sons of Liberty

Answer 3

Definition: Colonists — primarily middling merchants and artisans — who banded together to protest the Stamp Act and other imperial reforms of the 1760s.

Significance: The group originated in Boston in 1765 but soon spread to all the colonies.

Question 4

Natural Rights

Answer 4

Definition: The rights to life, liberty, and property. According to the English philosopher John Locke in Two Treatises of Government (1690), political authority was not given by God to monarchs.

Significance: The government cannot take these rights away from the people.

Question 5

Declaratory Act of 1766

Answer 5

Definition: Law issued by Parliament to assert Parliament’s unassailable right to legislate for its British colonies “in all cases whatsoever,” putting Americans on notice that the simultaneous repeal of the Stamp Act changed nothing in the imperial powers of Britain.

Significance: It reaffirmed Parliament’s power and authority.

Question 6

Townshend Act of 1767

Answer 6

Definition: British law that established new duties on tea, glass, lead, paper, and painters’ colors imported into the colonies.

Significance: The Townshend duties led to boycotts and heightened tensions between Britain and the American colonies.

Question 7

Nonimportation Movement

Answer 7

Definition: Colonists attempted nonimportation agreements three times: in 1766, in response to the Stamp Act; in 1768, in response to the Townshend duties; and in 1774, in response to the Coercive Acts. In each case, colonial radicals pressured merchants to stop importing British goods. In 1774 nonimportation was adopted by the First Continental Congress and enforced by the Continental Association.

Significance: American women became crucial to the movement by reducing their households’ consumption of imported goods and producing large quantities of homespun cloth.

Question 8

Committees of Correspondence

Answer 8

Definition: A communications network established among towns in the colonies, and among colonial assemblies, between 1772 and 1773 to provide for rapid dissemination of news about important political developments.

Significance: The committees of correspondence had created a firm sense of Patriot unity.

Question 9

Tea Act of May 1773

Answer 9

Definition: British act that lowered the existing tax on tea and granted exemptions to the East India Company to make their tea cheaper in the colonies and entice boycotting Americans to buy it.

Significance: Resistance to the Tea Act led to the passage of the Coercive Acts and imposition of military rule in Massachusetts.

Question 10

Coercive Acts

Answer 10

Definition: Four British acts of 1774 meant to punish Massachusetts for the destruction of three shiploads of tea. Known in America as the Intolerable Acts.

Significance: They led to open rebellion in the northern colonies.

Question 11

Continental Congress

Answer 11

Definition: September 1774 gathering of colonial delegates in Philadelphia to discuss the crisis precipitated by the Coercive Acts.

Significance:The Congress produced a declaration of rights and an agreement to impose a limited boycott of trade with Britain.

Question 12

Continental Association

Answer 12

Definition: An association established in 1774 by the First Continental Congress to enforce a boycott of British goods.

Significance: It quickly set up a rural network of committees to do its work.

Question 13

Lord Dunmore- Dunmore’s War

Answer 13

Definition: A single battle, fought at Point Pleasant, were the Shawnees were defeated by Dunmore and his militia. Dunmore then claims Kentucky.

Significance: This war was the declaration of independence for the people who felt abandoned by the crown.

Question 14

Minutemen

Answer 14

Definition: Colonial militiamen who stood ready to mobilize on short notice during the imperial crisis of the 1770s.

Significance: These volunteers formed the core of the citizens’ army that met British troops at Lexington and Concord in April 1775

Question 15

Second Continental Congress

Answer 15

Definition: Legislative body that governed the United States from May 1775 through the war’s duration.

Significance: It established an army, created its own money, and declared independence once all hope for a peaceful reconciliation with Britain was gone.

Question 16

Popular Sovereignty

Answer 16

Definition: The principle that ultimate power lies in the hands of the electorate.

Significance: It helps to establish the political values of the new nation.

Question 17

George Greenville

Answer 17

Definition: He is part of the government and he was also obsessed with getting out debt.

Significance: He created the acts that made the citizens furious.

Question 18

Charles Townshend

Answer 18

Definition: He was the chancellor on the Board of Trade. Board of Trade is a group of people that discusses everything regarding trade and exchanging materials with certain countries.

Significance: Townshend had sought restrictions on the colonial assemblies and strongly supported the Stamp act.

Question 19

Lord North

Answer 19

Definition: He is a prime minister who came up with a compromise to deal with the ridiculous taxes.

Significance: He persuaded Parliament to repeal the majority of the Townshend acts.

Question 20

Thomas Paine’s Common Sense

Answer 20

Definition: A rousing call for independence and a republican form of government.

Significance: Paine argued for american independence by turning the traditional metaphor of patriarchal authority on its head: “Is it the interest of a man to be a boy all his life?” he asked.

Question 21

Thomas Jefferson- Declaration of Independence

Answer 21

Definition: He had mobilized resistance to the Coercive acts with the pamphlet A Summary View of the Rights of British America (1774).

Significance: In the Declaration, he justified independence and republicanism to ameri cans and the world by vilifying George III: “He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.” Such a prince was a “tyrant,” Jefferson concluded, and “is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.”

Question 22

John Dickinson’s Letters from a farmer in Pennsylvania

Answer 22

Definition: John Dickinson’s Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania (1768) urged colonists to “remember your ancestors and your posterity” and oppose parliamentary taxes.

Significance: The letters circulated widely and served as an early call to resistance.

Question 23

French and Indian War

Answer 23

Definition: The French and the Indians joined together in order to defeat the British. Unfortunately they lost and the British gained a bunch of land.

Significance: The British gained the majority of the land within the thirteen colonies.

Question 24

Stamp Act of 1765

Answer 24

Definition: British law imposing a tax on all paper used in the colonies. Widespread resistance to the Stamp Act prevented it from taking effect and led to its repeal in 1766.

Significance: It covered part of the cost to keep the British troops.