Florida U.S. History EOC key terms

Economic theory holding that a nation's power depends on accumulating wealth by exporting more than it imports and by controlling colonial trade for the benefit of the mother country.

Atlantic trading system in which goods, raw materials, and enslaved Africans moved among Europe, Africa, and the Americas, tying colonial economies to forced labor.

The brutal transatlantic voyage that carried enslaved Africans to the Americas, during which captives were packed into ships and many died from disease or mistreatment.

A system in which enslaved people are treated as movable property who can be bought, sold, and inherited, with no legal rights to their own labor or children.

1620 agreement among Pilgrim settlers to create a self-governing community and obey laws made for the general good, an early example of colonial self-rule.

The elected representative assembly established in Virginia in 1619, the first legislative body in an English North American colony and a model for colonial self-government.

Idea, associated with Locke, that government derives authority from the consent of the governed and exists to protect people's natural rights; if it fails, people may alter it.

Rights believed to belong to all people from birth, such as life, liberty, and property, which governments are expected to protect rather than grant.

1776 document, drafted mainly by Jefferson, that announced the colonies' separation from Britain and grounded the claim in natural rights and consent of the governed.

The first U.S. constitution, in effect from 1781 to 1789, which created a weak national government with a one-house Congress and no power to tax or regulate commerce.

1786-1787 uprising of Massachusetts farmers facing debt foreclosure, which exposed the weakness of the Articles of Confederation and pushed leaders toward a stronger national government.

1787 meeting in Philadelphia where delegates replaced the Articles of Confederation with a new framework of government, resolving disputes through compromises over representation and slavery.

1787 agreement creating a two-house Congress with representation by population in the House and equal representation by state in the Senate, settling large- and small-state conflict.

Constitutional agreement counting three of every five enslaved people toward a state's population for representation and taxation, strengthening slaveholding states' power without granting rights.

System dividing power between a national government and state governments, with each level holding its own authority and some powers shared.

Principle dividing government into legislative, executive, and judicial branches so that no single branch holds all authority.

Arrangement giving each branch of government ways to limit the others, such as a presidential veto or judicial review, to prevent any branch from becoming too powerful.

Power of courts to declare laws or government actions unconstitutional, established in practice by Marbury v. Madison in 1803.

1803 Supreme Court decision, written by Chief Justice Marshall, that first asserted the Court's power to strike down a federal law as unconstitutional.

Series of 85 essays by Hamilton, Madison, and Jay published in 1787-1788 urging ratification of the Constitution and explaining its protections against tyranny.

Opponents of ratifying the Constitution who feared a strong central government would threaten liberty and demanded a bill of rights as a condition.

First ten amendments to the Constitution, ratified in 1791, protecting individual freedoms such as speech, religion, and fair trial from federal overreach.

Reconstruction-era amendment granting citizenship and equal protection under law and applying due process protections against state governments.

Mid-nineteenth-century belief that the United States was destined to expand across North America, used to justify westward settlement and wars against Mexico and Native nations.

Vast territory of present-day California and the Southwest transferred from Mexico to the United States in 1848 under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, ending the Mexican-American War.

1820 law admitting Missouri as a slave state and Maine as free, and banning slavery in most of the Louisiana Purchase north of a set line.

Package of laws admitting California as free while allowing popular sovereignty in Utah and New Mexico and enacting a stricter Fugitive Slave Act, temporarily easing sectional conflict.

Doctrine letting residents of a territory decide by vote whether to allow slavery, applied in the Kansas-Nebraska Act and central to 1850s sectional debates.

1854 law creating those territories and allowing popular sovereignty, which repealed the Missouri Compromise line and triggered violent conflict in Kansas.

1857 Supreme Court ruling that enslaved people were not citizens, Congress could not bar slavery from territories, and the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional, inflaming antislavery opinion.

1863 executive order by Lincoln declaring enslaved people in Confederate-held territory free, reframing the Civil War as a fight against slavery and enabling Black enlistment.

Period after the Civil War, roughly 1865-1877, when the federal government rebuilt the South, extended rights to freedpeople, and imposed conditions for readmission of states.

1870 amendment barring denial of the vote based on race, color, or previous servitude, intended to enfranchise Black men after the Civil War.

Laws passed by Southern states after the Civil War restricting freedpeople's movement, labor, and civil rights, prompting Radical Republican countermeasures.

State and local laws in the South that mandated racial segregation in public spaces and were upheld by Plessy v. Ferguson until the civil rights era.

1896 Supreme Court decision upholding racial segregation under the doctrine of separate but equal, providing legal cover for Jim Crow until it was overturned in 1954.

1954 unanimous Supreme Court ruling that racial segregation in public schools violated the Fourteenth Amendment, overturning Plessy and energizing the civil rights movement.

Federal law banning discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin in employment and public accommodations, a landmark of the civil rights movement.

Federal law that outlawed discriminatory voting practices such as literacy tests and provided federal oversight of elections in areas with histories of disenfranchisement.