Chapter 1 Patriot History of United States – Flashcards
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Why did Europeans embark on world exploration in the 1400's?
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GOD - Competition between Catholic and Protestant nations in Europe for power and territory following the Protestant Reformation of 1517 GLORY - European monarchs desired to consolidate their territories, which increased their tax base, which in turn gave them more money to fund exploratory expeditions GOLD - Demand for goods from Cathay (China) by European markets drove merchants and investors to seek safer, cheaper water routes to the Far East.
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What three technologies made long ocean voyages possible?
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1. Invention of astrolabe by Arabs in 9th century. 2. Improved ship building (Vikings strengthened hulls, Baltic Coast sailors used sternpost rudders in larger ships) 3. Accurate maps produced by Italian seamen
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What four European countries led global exploration in the 1400s?
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England, Spain, Portugal and France
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Who was Prince Henry the Navigator
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He was the most famous of the Portuguese explorers, and a brother of King Edward of Portugal in the 15th century. Established training school for mapmakers and navigators at Sagres, on Portugal's southern coast. Bartholomeu Dias was a student of Prince Henry, and he was the first to sail around the Cape of Storms (Cape of Good Hope), the southern tip of Africa, in 1486.
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Who was Vasco de Gama?
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Portuguese explorer who first sailed from Atlantic coast of Portugal to Calicut India in 1498.
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Who was Christoper Columbus?
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Genoese sailor who sailed for Spain. He discovered the lands of the Western Hemisphere, first landing on Watling Island in the Bahamas on 12 Oct 1492. From there, he sailed to Cuba (Hispaniola), where he interacted with the natives, calling them Indians, because he still believed he had landed in the Far East.
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Describe Columbus's first fleet.
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Three vessels, the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria, crewed by 90 men.
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How many voyages for Spain did Columbus make to the New World and when?
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Four, in 1492, 1493, 1498, and 1502.
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How did America get its name?
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Amerigo Vespucci, a Florentine passenger on a Portuguese voyage in 1501, wrote accounts of the New World to his friends back in Europe, which were circulated before Columbus's written reports; as a result, the term "America" began to be used by geographers to describe the continents of the Western Hemisphere.
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Who was Vasco Nunez de Balboa?
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Spanish explorer who crossed the Isthmus of Panama in 1513 and reached the western ocean, which he named the Pacific.
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Who was Ferdinand Magellan?
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Spanish explorer who circled the globe from 1519 to 1522; the Strait of Magellan is named for him.
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Who was Juan Ponce de Leon?
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Spanish explorer who traversed an area along the Florida coast and attempted to establish a colony there.
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Who was Panfilo de Narvaez?
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Spanish explorer who explored Tampa Bay on the west coast of Florida. He drowned and natives killed all members of his expedition except four. These four survived to reach a Spanish settlement in Mexico.
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Who was Hernando Cortes?
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Spanish explorer of interior of Mexico who led Spanish forces to completely conquer the Aztec natives by 1521.
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What three factors enabled the Spanish conquest of the Aztecs?
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Mobility (horses, ships); Economic wealth made shipping and equipping large, trained, well-armed forces possible; Combat forces formed of groups of free citizens.
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Who was Hernando de Soto?
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Spanish explorer in Florida from 1539-1541, and crossed the Mississippi River, dying there in 1542.
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Who was Francisco Vasquez de Coronado?
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Spanish explorer in Mexico, who searched for the fabled Seven Cities of Cibola but did not find them. By 1541 he had mapped much of the American Southwest.
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How many Spanish settlements existed in Mexico and the American Southwest by the 1570s? What was the population of Spanish settlers at this time?
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Two hundred settlements; 160,000 settlers.
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What was usually the first permanent building erected by Spanish settlers?
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A church.
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What was the "Black Legend"?
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War waged by the Spanish settlers against the Indians, as described by Bartoleme de Las Casas, a Dominican friar and the Bishop of Chiapas.
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What was the role of the Spanish priests and friars in the New World?
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To convert the heathen Indians by teaching them the Gospel.
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What was the Pueblo Revolt?
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An uprising against the Spanish priests and colonists by the Pueblo Indians in 1680 which killed 21 Spanish priests and hundreds of colonists. The Indians rebelled because the Catholic Spanish attempted to make the Pueblos stop their own religious practices/customs altogether, after they had agreed to convert to Christianity.
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What does mestizo mean?
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The population which arose in the New World as a result of intermarriage between Europeans and Indians (known today as Mexican or Hispanic peoples).
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Why did the Spanish colonies grow so slowly?
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1. Fear of pirates in the Caribbean and on the high seas. 2. Fear of shipwrecks or vessel collisions. 3. Spain's rigid adherence to mercantilism in its economy.
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What is mercantilism?
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An economic theory that holds that wealth is fixed, and for one nation to get richer, another must get poorer. The Spanish economy of the 15-1600s was valued according to the amount of gold and silver (fixed wealth) held in vaults by the King.
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What was the Northwest Passage?
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A water route across the northern part of the North American continent to the Pacific Ocean.
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Who was Jacques Cartier?
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A French explorer/ship captain who sailed up the St Lawrence River, looking for the Northwest Passage. He reached the site of modern-day Montreal in 1534.
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Who was Samuel de Champlain?
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French mapmaker who also searched for a water link between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans; established a fort in 1608 at Quebec.
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What does Quebec mean?
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Algonquin Indian word "kebec" means "where the river narrows".
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Who were the French Huguenots?
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Post-Reformation French Protestants persecuted by the Catholic Church in France, who were encouraged by the French government to emigrate to a few small French colonies located in the southeastern United States during the 1560s.
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Where were the primary French settlements located in the New World?
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The northern reaches of North America (modern Canada).
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What was the economic incentive for the French in the New World?
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Fur trade.
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Why did the French colonies remain so small?
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1. French colonies (Canada) less attractive to immigrants because of cold climate. 2. Few peasants wanted to leave France in the 1600s because their living conditions at home were not too bad. 3. French government wanted to keep young men at home in France in order to maintain a large base of military recruits. 4. Fur trade with the Indians had to be protected, so the French government restrained immigrants from moving to the interior forests of Canada, where most of the Indians - and the furs - were located.
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Who were Jacques Marquette and Rene de La Salle?
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French Catholic missionaries to the Indian populations of New France.
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Why was England one of the last European countries to settle the New World?
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Before Queen Elizabeth I came to the English throne in 1558, England was backward in commerce, industry, and wealth, and it was not a major European nation.
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What happened to encourage exploration by the English after Queen Elizabeth I took the throne in 1558?
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1. England developed a large navy with competent and skilled sailors. 2. Profits from piracy and privateering attracted English "sea dogs" to begin plundering the Spanish sea lanes to the New World. 3. The English reading public had become fascinated with the writings of Humphrey Gilbert, who wrote a book in 1576 about a possible passage via the northwest to China and the East Indies, and he challenged Englishmen to discover that route. Queen Elizabeth I granted Gilbert rights to plant an English colony in North America in 1578. He died attempting to colonize Newfoundland.
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Who were John Hawkins and Francis Drake?
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English "sea dogs" who became very successful pirates by raiding Spanish ships traveling the sea lanes into the New World, as well as by invading/capturing some of the Spanish ports on the mainland of North America.
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Who was Walter Raleigh?
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Walter Raleigh was the half-brother of Humphrey Gilbert, and he inherited Gilbert's settlement grant, awarded by Elizabeth I. Raleigh established English settlements in America, at Roanoke, on the Carolina coast, in 1585, and at Roanoke Island in 1587.
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Who was Virginia Dare?
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She was born on Roanoke Island in 1587 to English settler parents. She is considered the first European born in America.
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What happened to Raleigh's colony at Roanoke?
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No one knows for sure. Commanded by John White, the governor of the new colony, the three immigrant ships returned to England for supplies in 1587, after depositng 150 new English settlers on Roanoke Island. Delayed in England by threat of invasion from Spain until 1591, by the time White returned to Roanoke Island, he found the colonists' houses still standing, but no settlers. Carved on a tree was the word CROATOAN - the name of a nearby friendly tribe of Indians - but no one has ever determined the actual fate of the "Lost Colony of Roanoke".
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What was the first permanent English colony in America? When was it established?
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Jamestown (in modern-day Virginia) in 1607.
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What four factors contributed to the great success and prosperity of the English colonies?
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1. English business practices such as joint-stock companies were more attractive to investors because they produced profits for them. 2. Political and social climate open to innovation, invention, technical creativity and entrepreneurship was predominant in England, encouraging risk taking. 3. Advanced property rights in England by the 1600s were extended to English colonists in the New World, where the land was so abundant that anyone could own it. 4. Growing religious toleration brought about by religious dissenters from the Church of England called Puritans.
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What was a joint-stock company?
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An English form of business which was attractive to investors because the company was permanent (it did not dissolve with the death of the primary owner), and it featured limited liability, meaning that a stockholder could lose only the money he had invested (unlike previous business forms which held shareholders liable for a company's debts, too).
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What was the Virginia Company?
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In 1606, James I of England granted a charter for land in the New World to the Virginia Company, a joint-stock company owned by 600 English individuals and 50 commercial firms. The Virginia Company was divided into two subsidiary companies, the London Company and the Plymouth Company. The London Company land grant reached from modern-day North Carolina to New York, and it was named VIRGINIA, in honor of Elizabeth I (the "Virgin Queen"). The Plymouth Company land grant encompassed the area of modern-day New England.
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What was another goal of the London Company, besides to produce profits for its investors?
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To propagate the Christian religion in the Chesapeake Bay region of America.
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How many colonists did the London Company send out to Virginia in the first wave? What was to be their job after they arrived? What rights (legal, political, religious) were they guaranteed in the new colony of Virginia?
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144 English boys and men, on three ships, went out to Virginia in 1607 as employees of the London Company. They were tasked with establish a trading colony in America to extract wealth for shipment back to England. These colonists were guaranteed all the same rights in Virginia as they had known as English citizens.
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Who led the first English colonists to Virginia?
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Captain John Smith.
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What happened to these first Virginia colonists?
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Most of the first-wave colonists to Virginia were 'gentleman adventurers' who knew little about growing their own food, and most did not want to work with their hands. A few managed to find pitch, tar, lumber, and iron to export back to England, but most died during the first year of starvation or disease. Only about 40 of the first wave of colonists survived the first year at Jamestown.
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How did the Jamestown Colony manage to grow and prosper after the first year?
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In 1608 John Smith assumed control of the survivors, imposed military discipline, and issued the Biblical edict, "He who will not work will not eat." In the second winter, less than 15 percent died. Smith also organized raids on Indian villages to obtain food and animals, bringing harrassment to the colonists when they left their fort walls. Under this rigid structure, the colony had stabilized by 1609, and then the colonists deposed Smith, who they felt was tyrannical.
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Describe the second wave of settlement in Jamestown.
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Smith returned to England in 1609, obtained a new charter from the king, and the London Company (now calling itself the Virginia Company) raised more capital by selling stock and by offering additional stock to anyone willing to migrate to Virginia. It offered free passage for indentures, or servants, willing to work for the company for seven years after arrival in Virginia. Six hundred men and women signed up to go to Virginia in a fleet of nine ships in 1609. Seven ships reached Jamestown just in time for the winter 'starving time', and the colonists were reduced to eating rats and horse hides that third terrible winter at Jamestown. Another ship arrived in late spring 1610, having run aground in Bermuda the previous fall. (The ninth ship had wrecked en route to Virginia in 1609.) Conditions were so dire by this time that all of the Jamestown colonists boarded ships to return to England, but at the mouth of the James River, they encountered an English vessel bringing supplies. They returned to the colony fort, and shortly thereafter another new group of settlers revived the colony, insuring its permanent survival into the future.
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What major change to the original socio-economic model at Jamestown ultimately guaranteed its future success and prosperity?
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The original model at Jamestown was socialist - all the fruits of the colonists' labors on the company lands went into a communal storehouse, from which all were fed; all workers were organized into forced-labor gangs; shirkers were flogged, and some even hanged. Eventually, the colony administrators realized that individual incentives would succeed where force would not, and private ownership of land was finally allowed. This new incentive to individual colonists, coupled with the introduction of tobacco farming, now ensured prosperity for any colonist who was willing to apply himself with hard work and better knowledge of agriculture.
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Who was Chief Powhatan?
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He led a confederation of more than 20 Indian tribes in the Virginia region. He enjoined the colonists to support his tribal coalition in defeating other enemy tribes, which created an uneasy relationship between the Indians and the colonists. His daughter, Pocahontas, was at one point kidnapped by the Deputy Governor of the Virginia Colony, as a political move with the tribes, and she was held captive at Jamestown, where she met her husband-to-be, John Rolfe.
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Who was John Rolfe?
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He was a Colonial Virginia planter who first cured tobacco in 1612, breaking the monopoly on tobacco for export to Europe long held by the Spanish colonies. England had been importing 200 thousand pounds sterling of tobacco per year from Spanish Cuba, so Rolfe's successful curing and profitable production of a tobacco crop in the English colony of Virginia gained him great financial and social reward. Rolfe married Pocahontas, the daughter of the primary Indian leader of the Virginia region, in 1614. This marriage secured a more peaceful coexistence between the colonists and the natives, before Rolfe and Pocahontas eventually returned to England. She converted to Christianity, and in England, she came to represent the common view that Indians could be "Europeanized" and evangelized.
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What factors guaranteed the success of the tobacco industry in Virginia after 1612?
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1. Individual settlers were allowed to own land. 2. Freemen could receive 100 acres of land after 1617. 3. Headright policy - 50 acres for every head of household and 50 acres for every adult family member or servant who came with him to America was set up. 4. Most plantations had direct river access, allowing for convenient shipment of crops to market. 5. Encouraged expansion to interior of Virginia, opening more settlements and requiring additional forts.
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What was the major deterrent to the tobacco industry in Virginia? How was it solved?
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Labor shortages became serious after tobacco cultivation began, as it is a very labor intensive crop. The Virginia planters increased indentures, among which were "20 and odd Negroes" brought to Virginia by a Dutch ship in 1619.
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What was the legal status of these early Negro laborers in Colonial Virginia?
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Lines blurred between indentures of all colors and slaves. Determining who was likely to become a slave was difficult in the early days of imported Negro labor. Some white colonists did not distinguish servants by their color, and some early Negro indentured servants were released at the end of their indentures.
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When did Negro laborers status in Virginia change to that of slaves?
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English colonists in northern Virginia preferred European indentured servants well into the 1670s. But by the 1660s southern colonists had altered their attitude toward Africans and by 1664 some southern colonies declared slavery hereditary.
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When was the first elected legislative assembly convened in Virginia?
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1619.
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Why did the idea of land and liberty become intertwined in the minds of Virginia founders?
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Because land ownership conferred voting rights, and as more common men became landowners in Colonial Virginia, they assumed responsibility for protecting the rights of all other colonists who owned land as well.
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Why did the Virginia Company lose its charter?
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1. Stockholder dissatisfaction back in England over low profits. 2. Worsened relations with the Chesapeake Indian tribes. 3. Perception that the London directors of the Virginia Company could not properly oversee the colony and provide it with adequate protection.
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When did Virginia become a Royal Province?
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In 1624.
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What was one of the results of the Virginia colony becoming a Royal Province?
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The colonial settlers became much more embroiled in English politics, particularly during the struggles between the Cavaliers and the Puritans which resulted in the execution of King Charles I by the Puritans and their taking over the English Parliament in the mid1600s. Factions in the Virginia Colony took sides just as the factions back in England did.
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What was Bacon's Rebellion?
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Nathaniel Bacon, Jr was a Virginia colonist whose farm was on the western frontier where the Indians were a bigger problem. He requested that Governor Berkeley provide him and his western neighbors with military protection. The governor refused. In June 1676 Bacon demanded a commission, vowing to lead his own expedition against the Indians. Again the governor refused the request. Bacon went ahead and led a march on the hostiles anyway, and killed some friendly Indians instead, which nearly threw the entire region into war. Feeling betrayed by the governor's refusal to assist earlier, he then turned his 500 men on the government at Jamestown. Gov Berkeley managed to avert a coup by naming Bacon a General and putting him in charge of the Indian campaign. After Bacon departed for the western frontier, Berkeley attempted to raise an army loyal to himself. Bacon learned of this, returned to Jamestown, scattered Berkeley's ragtag militia and burned most of the buildings in the colonial capitol. Bacon then became ill and died, and leaderless, his troops were overwhelmed by Governor Berkeley's forces and newly arrived 1100 British troops who hanged 23 rebels and confiscated property of other rebels. These actions violated English property laws, and the governor was recalled to England to answer to the King, where he died.
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Who was Lord Baltimore?
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He was George Calvert, a English devout Catholic. In 1632, his son was awarded a land charter in northern Chesapeake Bay, which became the Maryland colony. Lord Baltimore became overseer of the Maryland colony from England and would establish its guiding principles from the outset, although he never visited the colony.
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How did the Maryland colony differ from the Virginia colony?
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It was planned better. It had more laborers from the first, and the settlers planted corn as soon as they arrived.
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Why did Lord Baltimore enact the Toleration Act of 1649 in Maryland?
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Because Catholics had been severely persecuted in England, and Baltimore thought a large number of them would emigrate to Maryland after he enacted the Toleration Act, which simply stated that anyone who believed in Jesus Christ would not be disturbed in the new colony.
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When was the Carolina colony established?
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1663. It was the final English mainland slave society to be founded.
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How did the Carolina settlers solve their Indian problem?
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White Carolinians allied with the Cherokee Indians and drove all the other tribes out of the colony to the Western Frontier.
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When was slavery legalized in Carolina?
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In 1712 a South Carolina statute was passed that stated "all negroes, mulattoes, mustizoes, or Indians, which at any time before have been sold . . and their children, are hereby made and declared slaves."
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Who were the early Carolina settlers? What did they produce?
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The southern part of the colony, around Charles Town, and on down the coast was populated mostly by English Barbados planters and their slaves. They grew rice and indigo along the sweltering, marshy Carolina seacoast.
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How did slave life differ in Carolina from slave life in Virginia?
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The rice plantations depended on an almost entirely male workforce, so slave families did not live together as a rule. The women and children remained with the white families, who often lived in Charles Town or nearby, while the male slaves worked in the sweltering, wet rice and indigo fields in the isolated coastal areas and on the barrier islands just off the coast.
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What were the differences between the northern Carolinians and the southern Carolinians?
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The southern Carolinian colonists were aristocratic Englishmen for the most part, coming to Carolina either directly from England or via Barbados. The northern Carolina settlers main crop was tobacco, and their ethnic backgrounds were much more mixed, comprised of German and Scots-Irish farmers who trickled down from Pennsylvania, plus Quaker and Moravian farmers, as well as Celts (or Crackers, as they were known), who were wild frontiersmen who had been run out of the civilized areas of Pennsylvania and Virginia. Planter versus farmer rivalries were common. The colony was split into two separate colonies in 1729.
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What were five trends that would be repeated over and over during America's colonial era?
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1. Distance between England and the colonies allowed for a great deal of independence among the Americans. 2. Land ownership gave the colonists political confidence and status. 3. The idea of rebellion against a government that did not protect life, property and religious freedom was common. 4. Religious toleration was prevalent. 5. Balance-of-power politics arose as a necessity because of the colonists' threats from the Indians, as well as settlers to the New World from other European nations.
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Who were the Separatists in England?
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They were the English citizens of the Puritan religion who removed themselves from England entirely, defying the English king, and moved to other European Protestant nations. Some of these Separatists eventually became the Pilgrims who arrived in Plymouth, in New England on the ship The Mayflower in 1620, and established the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
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What was the Mayflower Compact?
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The Mayflower Compact was a governing document prepared by the Pilgrim colonists before they ever departed their ship after arriving in Plymouth. It set out laws for the administration of the colony, but it went a step further in underscoring the idea that government came from the governed - under God - and that the law treated all equally.
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Who was John Carver?
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John Carver was the first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
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Who was the Indian who greatly assisted the Pilgrims during their first hard winter in Massachusetts Bay?
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Squanto, who was called a 'special instrument sent from God' by William Bradford, the colony's second governor, because Squanto saw to it that the Indians gave enough food to the colonists during their first winter to ensure their survival. This was the winter that precipitated the First American Thanksgiving.
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Who had voting rights in the Massachusetts Bay Colony between 1629 and 1632?
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Only Puritans who owned land.
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What was the "Halfway Covenant" in the Puritan Church of the Massachusetts Bay Colony?
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It allowed third-generation Puritan children to be baptized if their parents were baptized, instead of having to wait until adulthood to be accepted into the church.
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What American defense system arose as a result of the Pequot War?
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The American colonial militia system, where local people came together to protect their local areas. The American Indians realized after the militia system evolved that they were going to have to unify in order to defeat the English.
