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| One of the most popular public officials in 18th-century Britain. He's best known as the minister who organized Britain's successful war effort against France in the French and Indian War. |
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| Head of the British government from 1763 to 1765. He passed the Sugar Act, Quartering Act, Currency Act, and the Stamp Act, provoking the Imperial Crisis of 1765-1766. |
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| Issued by the Privy Council, it tried to prevent colonists from encroaching upon Indian lands by prohibiting settlement west of the Appalachian watershed unless the government first purchased those lands by treaty. |
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| Named for Ottawa Chief Pontiac, it brought an unprecedented alliance of Indian nations together to attack 13 British posts in the West. Most of the forts fell. |
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| Also called "hard money", it refers to silver and gold coins rather than paper money. |
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| English concept that Members of Parliament represented the entire empire, not just a local constituency and its voters. According to it, settlers were represented in Parliament the same way nonvoting subjects in Britain were. Colonists accepted it for nonvoting settlers within their colonies but rejected it to describe their relationship with Parliament. |
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| Act passed by an administration of George Grenville in 1765. It imposed duties on most legal documents in the colonies and on newspapers and other publications. Massive colonial resistance to it resulted in a major imperial crisis. |
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| Taxes imposed on land, people, retail items (excises), or legal documents and newspapers (Stamp Act) that most colonists thought only their elected assemblies had the power to impose on them. |
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| Taxes based on oceanic trade, such as port duties. Some colonists saw them more as means of trade regulation than as taxes for revenue. |
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| The symbol of the gallows on which enemies of the people deserved to be hanged. The best known was in Boston. |
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| Non-Importation Agreements |
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| Agreements not to import goods from Great Britain. Deigned to put pressure on the British economy and force the repeal of unpopular Parliamentary acts. |
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| Passed by Parliament in 1767. It imposed duties on tea, paper, glass, red and white led, and painter's colors. It provoked the Imperial Crisis of 1767-1770. Parliament repealed all duties except the one on tea in 1770. |
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| Heart of the English legal system based on precedents and judicial decisions. Common-law courts offered due process through legal devices like trial by jury, which usually consisted of local men. |
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| Skilled laborers who worked with their hands. In early America, artisans often owned their own shops and produced goods either for general sale or special order. |
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| Colonial term for the confrontation between colonial protesters and British soldiers in front of the customs on March 5, 1770. Five colonists were killed and six wounded. |
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| Committees of Correspondence |
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| Bodies formed on both local and colonial levels. They played an important role in exchanging ideas and information, spread primarily anti-British material, and played an important step in the first tentative unity of people in different colonies. |
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| Reliance on old feudal charters for all profits that could be extracted from them. It took hold in several colonies by the mid-18th century and caused serious problems between many landowners and tenants. |
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| Tax based on people or population rather than property. It was usually a fixed amount per adult. |
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| Female slave imported from Africa in 1761 at the age of 8. She was sold to John and Susannah Wheatley. Susannah taught her to read and write, and in 1769, she published her first poem in Boston. In 1773, she went to London to celebrate the publication of her poetry volume there. She became a transatlantic sensation and became emancipated upon her return to Boston. |
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| Boston's Sons of Liberty threw 342 chests of East India Company tea into Boston harbor rather than allow them to be landed and pay the hated tax in 1773. |
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| Coercive (Intolerable) Acts |
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| Four statutes passed by Parliament in response to the Boston Tea Party. They closed the port of Boston until the tea was paid for and overturned the Massachusetts Charter of 1691. Colonists called them and the Quebec Act the Intolerable Acts. |
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| Type of convention elected by colonists to organize resistance. They tended to be larger than the legal assemblies they displaced. They played a major role in politicizing the countryside. |
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| Legal writ ordering a person, usually a public official, to carry out a specific act. New royal councilors for Massachusetts in 1774 were appointed by a writ of Mandamus. |
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| First Continental Congress |
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| Inter-colonial body met in Philadelphia in 1774 to organize resistance against the Coercive Acts by defining American rights, petitioning the King ,and appealing to the British and American people. They created the Association, local communities in each colony to impose non-importation |
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| Groups created by the First Continental Congress in local committees to enforce trade sanctions against Britain, an important sign that Congress was starting to act as a central government |
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| First military engagements of Revolutionary War. In April 19, 1775, British soldiers fired into a much smaller body of minutemen on the Lexington green. |
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| Second Continental Congress |
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| Intercolonial body that met in Philadelphia in 1775 after the Battles of Lexington and Concord. They organized the Continental Army, appointed George Washington commander-in-chief, and pursued policies of military resistance and conciliation. They chose independence when conciliation failed in July 1776 and drafted the Articles of Confederation in 1777, which finally went into force in March, 1781. |
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| Term used by Americans to describe 17,000 mercenary groups hired by Britain from various German groups, especially Hesse. |
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| Declaration of Independence |
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| A document drafted primarily Thomas Jefferson of Virginia. It justified American independence to the world by affirming that “all men are created equal” and have a natural right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” The longest section condemned King George III as a tyrant. |
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