CLEP History of the United States I key terms

The first written plan of government for the United States, adopted in 1781, which gave most power to the states and created a weak national Congress unable to tax or regulate trade.

A 1787 constitutional agreement that created a two-house Congress: representation by population in the House and equal representation for each state in the Senate.

A constitutional provision counting three out of every five enslaved people toward a state's population for representation and taxation, increasing the political power of slaveholding states.

A series of 85 essays by Hamilton, Madison, and Jay published in 1787 and 1788 urging ratification of the Constitution and explaining how the new federal system would work.

The first ten amendments to the Constitution, ratified in 1791, which protect individual liberties such as speech, religion, and fair trial from federal government overreach.

The power of courts to declare laws or government actions unconstitutional, established in Marbury v. Madison in 1803 and a foundation of the American legal system.

Laws passed in 1798 that lengthened the naturalization period, allowed deportation of suspected foreign radicals, and punished criticism of the federal government, sparking major controversy.

Statements drafted by Madison and Jefferson in 1798 arguing that states could judge the constitutionality of federal laws, laying groundwork for later nullification arguments.

An 1820 law admitting Missouri as a slave state and Maine as free, and banning slavery in most of the Louisiana Purchase territory north of the 36°30′ line.

A package of laws that admitted California as free, organized Utah and New Mexico with popular sovereignty, and included a tougher Fugitive Slave Act.

An 1854 law that repealed the Missouri Compromise and let settlers in those territories decide on slavery through popular sovereignty, triggering violent conflict.

An 1857 Supreme Court ruling that enslaved people were not citizens and Congress could not ban slavery in federal territories, inflaming sectional tensions.

A January 1863 executive order by Lincoln declaring enslaved people in Confederate-held territory free, shifting the Civil War's purpose toward abolition.

The Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments, which abolished slavery, guaranteed citizenship and equal protection, and protected voting rights by race.

A labor system in which poor Europeans signed contracts to work for a set number of years in the colonies in exchange for passage to America.

A system treating enslaved people as movable property who could be bought, sold, and inherited, forming the labor foundation of much of the Southern economy.

A reform movement seeking the immediate or gradual end of slavery, gaining strength in the 1830s through newspapers, petitions, and organizations like the American Anti-Slavery Society.

An 1848 meeting in New York considered the start of the American women's rights movement, issuing a Declaration of Sentiments demanding suffrage and equality.

A nineteenth-century ideal that assigned middle-class white women to the home as moral guardians, emphasizing piety, purity, domesticity, and submissiveness.

A reform campaign to reduce or ban alcohol consumption, prominent in the antebellum era and linked to concerns about family stability, productivity, and moral order.

An economic theory holding that a nation's power depends on accumulating wealth through favorable trade balances and colonies that supply raw materials and buy finished goods.

A network of Atlantic trade routes linking Europe, Africa, and the Americas, exchanging manufactured goods, enslaved people, and colonial staple crops such as sugar and tobacco.

A 1765 British law requiring colonists to buy tax stamps for printed materials, the first direct internal tax that sparked widespread protest and the Stamp Act Congress.

An 1793 invention by Eli Whitney that quickly separated cotton fibers from seeds, making short-staple cotton profitable and accelerating slavery's expansion in the South.

An 1825 waterway connecting the Great Lakes to the Hudson River, cutting transport costs and fueling commerce and settlement in the Great Lakes region.

The early nineteenth-century transformation of the American economy through canals, railroads, factories, and commercialization, tying households into national and international markets.

Henry Clay's economic program favoring a protective tariff, a national bank, and federally funded internal improvements to promote national economic development.

An 1862 law granting 160 acres of public land to settlers who farmed it for five years, encouraging western migration and agricultural expansion.

An eighteenth-century intellectual movement emphasizing reason, science, natural rights, and government by consent, shaping the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

The post-revolutionary idea that women served the republic by educating virtuous, patriotic children, giving them a civic role while keeping them mainly in the home.

A mid-nineteenth-century literary and philosophical movement, associated with Emerson and Thoreau, stressing intuition, nature, and individual conscience over established institutions.

A wave of religious revivals in the early 1800s that emphasized personal conversion and moral reform, spurring movements such as temperance and abolitionism.

The agreement ending the Revolutionary War, in which Britain recognized American independence and granted territory west to the Mississippi River.

The 1803 purchase of France's North American territory for $15 million, doubling the size of the United States and opening land for westward expansion.

A 1823 policy declaring that the Western Hemisphere was closed to new European colonization and that the United States would avoid involvement in European affairs.

A law stopping American exports to pressure Britain and France to respect neutral shipping, but it damaged the U.S. economy and proved deeply unpopular.

The 1848 treaty ending the Mexican-American War, in which Mexico ceded vast territory including California and the Southwest to the United States.

The belief that Americans were destined to expand across the continent, justifying westward settlement and territorial acquisition in the 1840s.