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SECOND EXAM STUDY GUIDE

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The Other Colonies (written)

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Having detailed the major colonial efforts in Virginia and Massachusetts, the class now turned to other British colonies such as Pennsylvania, Carolina, New York, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Georgia, etc.  This lecture examined the origins of each colony and placed each within the cultural confines of either North or South.  There’s a LOT of detail in here, which can’t be avoided.  Like I said, sometimes history is just a ton of work and memorization.  Read the lecture, watch the movie that comes with it.  Use your memorization techniques to make it stick.  You can do it.

So you need to know the following: 
 

  • William Penn

  • Quakers

  • The "Inner Light"

  • The reasons why Quakers were despised by many.

  • Lydia Wardell

  • Pennsylvania

  • The appearance of 1600s Pennsylvania

  • The dress, sports, names, treatment of women, and education in 1600s

  • How much religious freedom really existed in tolerant colonies like PA and MD.

  • Pennsylvania's central role in American history

  • The reasons for the founding of Maryland, Carolina, Georgia, New York, the New England colonies

  • Maryland Colony

  • George Calvert, The Lord Baltimore

  • Calvert's job

  • The Act Concerning Religion, 1649

  • Carolina Colony

  • The extent to which Puritans tried to purge Catholic elements out of English churches

  • William Laud and the reasons Puritans disliked this man

  • Papism

  • The fate of Charles I and English Commonwealth

  • Restoration Colony

  • The behavior of Charles II

  • The true nobles who owned Carolina

  • The significance of John Locke to Carolina Colony

  • Charles Towne

  • Rice

  • New England

  • New Netherlands

  • New Amsterdam

  • The reasons Britain wanted this colony

  • Dutch influences left in modern New York

  • The Duke of York

  • New York

  • Georgia

  • James Oglethorpe

  • Debtor's prison, Robert Castell, and the reasons Oglethorpe wanted to use Georgia to help the poor. 

  • The rules of Georgia Colony

  • Delaware and New Jersey

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Colonial Slavery

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Lectures now turned to a deeply disturbing aspect of colonial society - African slavery.  This lecture studied the origins and operations of the African slave trade, the people and terminology involved, and it discussed slavery in the North American colonies.  This is a particularly appalling lecture due to the heartbreak and violence involved in slavery.  It’s also unsettling when one starts to consider that many of our early leaders and thinkers were deeply involved in slavery – in purchasing Africans, hurting them, separating their families, complaining about cost.  Everything we know about slavery they also knew (because they put it in place). 

So you need to know the following:

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  • Azurara and the emergence of racism.

  • The nature of slavery in Europe before the1400s

  • The reasons Europeans turned to the Sub-saharan African trade

  • What happened at Lagos

  • The early origins of the slave trade  

  • The number of Africans involved

  • How many Africans came to the British North American colonies

  • The dates of the slave trade

  • The British Royal African Company 

  • Slavery and the slave trade in Africa

  • Independent traders

  • The economic operations of a slave ship

  • The mechanics of the trade and its design/intention

  • Capture

  • Factories

  • Middle Passage

  • Loose Packing

  • Tight Packing

  • Wolof, Ibo, Bambara 

  • Ports associated with the slave trade in British North America 

  • What slavery brought to North America – skills, violence, rebellion

  • Rebellion and plots

  • Stono Rebellion

  • How slavery developed in VA, when, and why

  • 1619 in Virginia

  • The Punch Case

  • Slave Code

  • The significance of racism

  • The legacy of the slave trade

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The Colonies in the 1700s

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This lecture dealt with cultural, social, and political developments in the British colonies during the 1700s.  During this century, the colonies began to emerge from the wilderness.  As many European visitors noticed, the colonies started to look more like mature civilizations and less like frontier outposts.  The 1700s saw the emergence of colonial cities, colonial newspapers, a postal system, a new interest in luxury, higher education, and manners, and the development of political systems and customs that would have some significance in the coming American Revolution.

  • So you need to know the following: 

    What happened to the colonial population in the 1700s

  • The types of people who came to live in the colonies - the different nationalities, for example

  • The differences between immigration in the 1600s and the 1700s.

  • The Treaty of Utrecht and the Peace of Utrecht

  • The drive exhibited by American colonists and what this means/suggests

  • The emergence of commercial farming/diversification of the colonial economy

  • The tremendous wealth generated in the colonies

  • The major colonial cities 

  • The increasing differences between North and South

  • Consumer culture

  • The colonial interest in manners

  • The new colonial colleges

  • Benjamin Franklin and luxury

  • Royal colonies and what the term means

  • Independent colonies

  • The Board of Trade

  • The political systems developed in the colonies - Governor, Upper House (Council), Lower House (Assembly)

  • The powers of the various elements of colonial government.  (Governor = Grant Pardons, Appoint judges, call Assembly into session, Veto laws, Grant land.  Council - advise and assist the Governor – usually twelve members.  Assembly - pass laws and taxes.  Control budget, spending.  Authorize payment of Governor's salary.)

  • The economic relationship between the colonies and Britain

  • Navigation Acts

  • The Hat Act

  • The Woolens Act

  • The Molasses Act

  • Iron Act

  • Try to understand the 1700s.  This is the century of the American Revolution.  As you look at what was happened in the100 or so years before the Revolution, consider why it might have occurred.  Usually, the more one studies the 1700s, the fewer reasons one finds to rebel.

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Danger in the Colonies and the Seven Years' War

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Catastrophe shapes history – that’s one of the central arguments of this class.  This lecture considers a significant catastrophe that took place right before the American Revolution – a gigantic war – which played a significant role in touching off the revolutionary movement.  A lot of people don’t really know about this war and its impact.  This lecture tries to explain this by placing the catastrophe in context, pointing out that there was so much violence and war in the colonies that the colonists themselves might not have recognized the giant war as a catastrophic event.  In short, because there was so much war already, people in the 1700s might not have fully appreciated the impact of the Seven Years’ War. This lecture, therefore, tries to show just how much conflict took place in the colonies by running through numerous events.

So you need to know the following: 
 

  • The Seven Years' War

  • The musket

  • Treaty of Utrecht and the Balance of Power

  • Prussia's role in destabilizing the balance of power

  • The situation in Western Pennsylvania

  • George Washington - his history as a young man, his actions

  • Jumonville Glen - what happened here, what you think happened with Washington

  • General Braddock's fate and the significance of his sash to George Washington

  • The 1622 Psalm Sunday attack

  • Pequot War

  • King Phillip's War

  • Yamassee War

  • Eunice Williams 

  • Skulking War 

  • King William’s War

  • Queen Anne’s War

  • Stono Rebellion

  • Bacon’s Rebellion, Regulator Movement, Paxton Boys

  • The direction of colonial rebellion


The Road to Revolution

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Simply put, these lectures traced the road to the American Revolution.  They described the chain of events that led American colonists to declare their independence from Great Britain in 1776.

So you need to know the following: 
 

  • The outcome of the Seven Years' War

  • The British debt situation at the end of the war

  • The options available and not available to Britain

  • The colonial economy at the end of the Seven Years' War

  • George Grenville

  • The Sugar/American Duties Act, 1764

  • James Otis and his argument about taxation and the Magna Carta

  • The Stamp Act, 1765

  • The Stamp Act Crisis, 1765

  • Thomas Hutchinson

  • The Virginia Resolves 

  • Charles Townsend

  • The Townsend Acts, 1767

  • The Boston Massacre, 1770

  • The Tea Act, 1773

  • East India Tea Company

  • The Boston Tea Party

  • The Coercive/ Intolerable Acts, 1774 

  • The First Continental Congress

  • Nonimportation/Nonexportation

  • Thomas Gage

  • The PowerderHouse and Salem raids

  • Lexington and Concord

  • Jessie Adair

  • Thomas Paine – the author of “Common Sense.”  He was a British immigrant who arrived in the American colonies in 1774. 

  • "Common Sense" – This was Paine’s book, which broke the final tie between Britain and America when it destroyed the loyalty colonists had expressed for the king.  See, the colonists had hesitated to declare independence, even after the Battle of Lexington and Concord, because they felt a certain loyalty and bond to the British king and to the British form of government (thought by many to be the best in the world).  “Common Sense,” written by Thomas Paine (a recent British immigrant), and published in early 1776, told the colonists that the king was not their friend.  It also pointed out serious flaws in the British system of government and questioned why colonists wanted to stay under British rule.  “Common Sense” noted that the colonies were larger and potentially more prosperous than Britain, and that the colonists had a chance to make history by creating a new nation without the limitations of royalty or class.  “You could be great if you declared independence,” was one of the document’s essential messages.  It also asked “Why are you so devoted to Britain, the king, and the government?  They’re not so great.”  “Common Sense” became a huge hit in America and led the Second Continental Congress to ask for a Declaration of Independence.

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  • The Double Meaning of Common Sense – Paine wanted the colonists to see it was “common sense” to declare independence.  He also wanted them to use “Common Sense,” or the knowledge and wisdom of the COMMON PEOPLE.  Get it?

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  • Thomas Jefferson – from Virginia, the best writer in the colonies.  He was the primary author of the Declaration of Independence.

  • THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE  - This document was written by Thomas Jefferson in 1776, at the request of the Second Continental Congress.  Its purpose was to declare American independence, but also to justify this drastic action. Jefferson argued that the British government had become, through its taxation and military policies, tyrannical and abusive.

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  •  Part of the Declaration seeks to PROVE that Britain had become abusive by listing everything nasty it had done to America.  He then said that when confronted by an abusive and tyrannical government, people have a DUTY to overthrow this government, lest it become more abusive and cause harm to more people.  In other words, Jefferson claimed that Americans had no choice but to declare independence; they simply HAD to take a stand against a government that was out of control.  Was Jefferson right?  Well, what if people in Germany had taken a stand against a clearly abusive government back in the 1930s?  Might WWII have been avoided? 

 

The American Revolution and The Great Awakening/Enlightenment  (Written)

 

This looks like it’s going to be pretty dull, but it’s not.  This lecture explores how two events in colonial history - the Great Awakening and the Enlightenment - turned anger over taxes into violent revolution and independence.   This lecture provides the bridge between colonial anger and war.

 

Understanding these two movements means you need to know the following:

  • The status of religion in the 1700s colonies

  • The reasons why fewer people were going to church in the 1700s.

  • Deism

  • The evangelical nature of the Great Awakening - the religious message

  • The language of and behavior of Great Awakening ministers

  • George Whitefield

  • Anaphora and its purpose

  • The relationship between Great Awakening speech and colonial leaders

  • The Declaration of Independence and the Great Awakening

  • The Enlightenment - what it was and what it believed about people

  • The Great Dark and what it tells us about what Enlightenment did to colonists

  • Thomas Hobbes, the social contract, Leviathan

  • John Locke and how he developed and improved on Hobbes

  • The State of Nature and the purpose of government for Hobbes and Locke

  • How Locke's ideas affected colonial leaders

  • The roles the Enlightenment and the Great Awakening played in the American Revolution.

 

American Revolution.

This is a written lecture, and it’s topic is pretty self-explanatory.

You need to know the following:

  • Lexington and Concord (again)

  • What happened in the immediate aftermath of Lexington and Concord

  • George Washington - why he was given command of the colonial army, whether he was a decent general or not.

  • Benedict Arnold - his background, battles, and reasons for turning traitor

  • Valley Forge

  • France's role in the Revolution

  • The war in the South

  • Violence against loyalists in the southern part of the Revolution

  • Yorktown

  • The significance of hurricanes in the Revolutionary War

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