Unit 2 Key Terms and Concepts

Abolish          
Articles of Confederation          
Battle of Saratoga          
Charter          
Committees of Correspondence          
Common Law         
Daughters of Liberty         
Diplomacy          
English Bill of Rights          
First Continental Congress          
Feudalism          
Legislative Supremacy          
Loyalists         
Magna Carta          
National Government          
Natural Law          
Northwest Ordinance          
Parliament          
Patriots          
Petition          
Petition of Rights          
Popular Sovereignty          
Quebec Campaign           
Rights of Englishmen          
Rule of Law          
Second Continental Congress         
Self-Evident          
Shays Rebellion          
Sons of Liberty          
The shot heard around the world          
Treason          
Treaty of Paris          
Tories          
Unalienable Rights          
Veto          
Writs of Assistance          
​Yorktown Surrender

• Organization formed by women prior to the American Revolution to protest treatment of the colonies by British rulers.
  

• A statute that limited the English monarch’s power to tax people without the consent of the Parliament and guaranteed certain rights to English Subjects.

• An organization created in 1765 in every colony to express opposition to the stamp act.

• A system of government in which the legislative branch has ultimate Power.

• Easy for anyone to see; obvious
  

• The practice of carrying on normal relationships with governments of other Countries.
  

• The British legislature, which consists of two houses; the House of Lords and the House of Commons.
  

• Committees that began as voluntary associations and were eventually established by most of the colonial governments. Their mission was to make sure each colony knew about events and opinions in the other colonies. They helped unite the people against the British.
  

• The principle that both those who govern and those who are governed must obey the law and are subject to the same laws.
  

• The body of delegates representing the colonies that met in 1775 shortly after the start of the Revolutionary war. They organize the Continental Army, select George Washington to lead the army, and drafted the Declaration of Independence.
  

• An act passed by Parliament in 1689 that limited the power of the monarch
  

• A written document from a government or ruler that grants certain rights to individuals, groups, organizations, or others.
  

• A higher, unchanging set of rules that govern human relations believed by the founders to have come from “Nature and Nature’s Independence”
  

• Another name for Loyalists.
  

• This document was agreed to by King John of England in 1215, It granted civil rights and liberties to English nobles, such as the right to a jury of ones peers
  

• Fundamental rights that every person has that cannot be taken away by government.
  

• To formally put an end to
  

• Colonists who opposed American independence and remain loyal to Great Britain during the American Revolution.
  

• The body of delegates who convened to represent the interests of the colonists and protest British rule. They met in 1774 and drafted a Declaration of Rights.
  

• The Americans that supported the war for independence against Great Britain.
  

• System of social, economic, and political organization.
  

• The body of unwritten law developed in England from judicial decisions based on custom and earlier judicial decisions; basis of English legal system and American Law.
  

• The right of a branch of government to reject a bill that has been passed in an effort to delay or prevent its enactment.
  

• Basic, legal claims established over time, that all subject of the English monarch were understood to have.
  

• A failed invasion of Canada by the Americans in 1775-1776.
  

• A line in a poem describing the effect of the outbreak of the American Revolution in April 1775.
  

• The agreement signed on September 3, 1783 between Great Britain and the US that ended the Revolutionary War. Great Britain recognized the US Independence.
  

• Betrayal of one’s country, especially by giving aid to an enemy in wartime or plotting to overthrow the government.
  

• The final military act that ended the Revolutionary war in October 1781, American and French forces blocked a British escape from Virginia.
  

• Documents giving a governmental authority the power to search and seize property without restrictions.
  

• The legal claim that allows a person to ask their government to correct things that they think are wrong or do things that they believe.
  

• The natural rights concept that ultimate political authority rests with the People.
  

• An important battle of the Revolutionary War. The American victory prevented the British from splitting the colonies in two. The British Surrendered.
  

• The first Constitution of the US, created to form a union and friendship among the 13 colonial states. It provided for a weak central government.
  

• The organization having central political authority in the nation.
  

• A law that prohibited slavery in the Northwest Territory and provided for settling the Western lands and the admission of new states.
  

• An armed revolt by Massachusetts farms who sought relief from debts and foreclosures of mortgages. The group prevented judges from hearing cases and attempted to capture an arsenal.