Forming State Governments and the Articles of Confederation: 1776-1789 Flashcards
1
Q
Republicanism
A
Brinkley p. 153
- Definition: The idea that the goverment is a republic, which means that all power comes from the people and not from a supreme authority
- Significance: Americans believed that their new government should be a republic so that they could avoid the type of tyrannical government that they were trying to become independent from
2
Q
Civic Virtue
A
Brinkley p. 153 and Wikipedia.com
- Definition: The cultivation of habits of personal living that are claimed to be important for the success of the community
- Significance: When attempting to create the new state and national governments, Americans believed that a republican government would only function if the population was made up of citizens with civic virtue
3
Q
Inequality
A
Brinkley p. 153 and Wikipedia.com
- Definition: A process in a society in which certain groups are limited and hindered in their roles in society
- Significance: Even though Americans wanted to have a society in which all individuals were treated equally, there was persistent inequality throughout the U.S. This was seen through the many privileges citizenship brought to white males while women remained subordinate to them, black slaves had no rights, and Native Americans were systematically exploited and displaced
4
Q
Small Freeholders
A
Brinkley p. 153
- Definition: Independent landowners
- Significance: The small freeholder was seen as the model individual that would have civic virtues and would perform actions in the nation’s best interests. The ideal of the small freeholder was basic to American political ideology
5
Q
State Constitutions
A
Brinkley p. 153
- Definition: Written documents that laid out the structure and authorities the different parts of the state governments possessed
- Significance: During the revolution the colonies began to draft their own state constitutions for their state governments. One of the main parts of the constitutions was that they were written down to avoid the vagueness and corruption of unwritten constitutions. The other major point was that they would have strong legislatures in order to avoid a powerful executive, like the one that the English monarchy had
6
Q
Executives
A
Brinkley p. 154
- Definition: The branch of a government that executes the laws
- Significance: The original state constitutions during the revolution appointed a weak executive in their state governments, which resulted in instability and weak governors. So by the late 1780’s, almost all of the states had either revised or drawn up a new constitution for themselves to create a stronger executive and a stable government
7
Q
Virginia’s Statute of Religious Liberty
A
Brinkley p. 154
- Definition: A document written by Thomas Jefferson in 1786 that called for the complete separation of church and state
- Significance: The new states strived to establish a nation where there would be complete religious freedom and no special priveleges granted to any religious denomination, so the state of Virginia acted on this by enacting the Statute of Religious Liberty in 1786
8
Q
National Government
A
Brinkley p. 155
- Definition: The body of the United States that governs the nation as a whole
- Significance: The original national government of the United States was established by the Articles of Confederation, which were adopted in 1777. This national government had many limitations, such as how Congress was the only central power – without any real executive in place – and how it did not have the power to regulate trade, draft troops, or levy taxes on the people
9
Q
Diplomacy
A
Brinkley p. 155 and Wikipedia.com
- Definition: The practice of conducting negotiations between representatives of groups or states
- Significance: The strict diplomatic policies and low esteem the rest of the world held towards the Confederation resulted in early diplomatic failures for the U.S.
- In 1786, ratification for a treaty with Spain that would accept the Florida boundary as the U.S. interpreted it but would limit the amount of U.S. vessels allowed to navigate the Mississippi river for twenty years was blocked by the southern states and did not allow the treaty to be ratified
10
Q
Land Ordinances of 1784, 1785
A
Brinkley p. 156
- Definition: The Ordinance of 1784 divided the western territory into ten districts that could petition Congress for statehood when its population equaled the number of free inhabitants of the smallest existing state. The Ordinance of 1785 created a system for surveying and selling the western lands.
- Significance: The Ordinance of 1784 established these provisions to avoid creating second-class citizens in territories, which was how many Americans had felt as former colonists under the British
- The Ordinance of 1785 would serve to survey and mark off into rectangle townships the territory north of the Ohio River to be set aside for the U.S. to gain revenue from and to be sold to the people
11
Q
The Grid
A
Brinkley p. 156-157
- Definition: The division of land into carefully measured and evenly divided squares or rectangles
- Significance: This pattern of land distribution became the norm for much of the land west of the Appalachians and became a model for the fair and even organization of towns and cities
12
Q
Northwest Ordinance
A
Brinkley p. 157
- Definition: Also known as the 1787 Ordinance, this law abandoned the ten districts established in 1784 and created a single Northwest Territory out of the lands north of the Ohio that could be divided into between three and five territories
- Significance: This law was passed to settle the criticism that Congress had received for selling some of the land of the territory to the Ohio and Scioto Companies before making it available to land speculators. The law also specified a population of 60,000 as a minimum for statehood, guaranteed freedom of religion, right to trial by jury, and prohibited slavery in the territory
13
Q
Public Domain
A
Brinkley p. 156 and Wikipedia.com
- Definition: Lands that cannot be sold since they are considered to be a part of the whole community
- Significance: The Ordinance of 1785 set four sections of every township aside for the U.S. public domain, in which the revenue from the sale of one of the other sections was to support creation of a public school
14
Q
Battle of Fallen Timbers
A
Brinkley p. 157-158
- Definition: A battle between 4,000 U.S. troops under General Anthony Wayne and Native Americans in the Ohio Valley in 1794. The Indians were defeated
- Significance: Upset by the American takeover of the territories that they had claimed for themselves, many Native American tribes began to act violently against Americans and refused to negotiate treaties with them
- Negotiations did not resume until after the Indians were defeated in this battle
15
Q
Postwar Depression
A
Brinkley p. 158-159
- Definition: An economic depression that lasted from 1784 to 1787 that increased the problem of an inadequate money supply in the U.S.
- Significance: The depression was inadequately dealt with by the Confederation because of the national government’s inability to tax and the failures of the passage of an impost plan that would charge a five percent duty on imported goods to be levied by Congress and used to fund the debt
- The states also had war debts but could not tax their people too much since they too were burdened by debt
