P's

Question 1

Panic of 1873

Answer 1

an economic depression brought on by the over-expansive tendencies of railroad builders and businessmen during the immediate post-war boom and triggered by economic downturns in Europe and, more immediately, by the failure of Jay Cooke and Company, a major American financial firm

Question 2

Patroon system

Answer 2

the Dutch system by which large landed estates were given to wealthy men who transported at least fifty families to New Netherlands; these families then became tenant farmers on the estate of the patron who had transported them

Question 3

Peculiar Institution

Answer 3

Black slavery, the necessary concomitant of the expanding Southern plantation system

Question 4

William Penn

Answer 4

the founder of Pennsylvania and the designer of the city of Philadelphia

Question 5

Pennsylvania

Answer 5

a colony founded by William Penn in 1681 as a refuge for Quakers that quickly became prosperous, as Penn offered generous terms on land and guaranteed a representative assembly and full religious freedom

Question 6

Pennsylvania Dutch

Answer 6

German immigrants who settled fairly close to the frontier in Pennsylvania

Question 7

Commodore Matthew Perry

Answer 7

lead a U.S. naval force into Tokyo Bay in 1853 on a peaceful mission to open Japan - previously closed to the outside world - to American diplomacy and commerce

Question 8

Oliver Hazard Perry

Answer 8

an admiral in the U.S. navy, who, in 1813, defeated a British force at Put-In Bay and established control of Lake Erie

Question 9

Personal Liberty Laws

Answer 9

Laws enacted by several Northern states in an attempt to prevent the working of the Fugitive Slave Law

Question 10

Pet banks

Answer 10

so named by President Jackson’s critics, various state and local banks to which the federal government’s deposits from the Bank of the United States were distributed after its charter expired in 1836

Question 11

Pilgrims

Answer 11

Separatists who left England in 1620 on the “Mayflower” and established a quiet and prosperous colony in Cape Cod, Massachusetts

Question 12

Pinckney Treaty

Answer 12

the treaty, ratified by the Senate in 1796, in which the Spanish opened the Mississippi River to American traffic, including the right of deposit in the port city of New Orleans, and recognized the 31st parallel as the northern boundary of Florida

Question 13

Plantations

Answer 13

vast areas of land owned by the elite families of the Chesapeake colonies; these included lavish manor houses from which the planters ruled their agricultural fields, indentured servants, and, later, black slaves

Question 14

Planter class

Answer 14

Southern owners of large farms who also owned fifty or more slaves

Question 15

Juan Ponce de Leon

Answer 15

a Spanish conquistador who, in 1513, explored Florida in search of gold and a fabled fountain of youth, neither of which he found, but he did claim Florida for Spain

Question 16

Portsmouth

Answer 16

a settlement near Narragansett Bay founded by the dissident Puritan Anne Hutchinson in 1638

Question 17

Power of judicial review over federal legislation

Answer 17

first asserted by Supreme Court Justice John Marshall in “Marbury vs. Madison,” a power that has become the foundation of the Supreme Court’s check on the other two branches of government

Question 18

Powhatan

Answer 18

the powerful local Indian chief whose relations with the Jamestown colonists were at best uncertain and often openly hostile, with disastrous results for the colonists

Question 19

Preamble of the Constitution

Answer 19

“We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

Question 20

Preemption Act

Answer 20

a law passed in 1841 that allowed settlers who had squatted on unsurveyed federal lands the first chance to buy the land (up to 160 acres) at low prices once it was put on the market

Question 21

Proclamation of 1763

Answer 21

an act by British Prime Minister George Grenville forbidding white settlement west of the crest of the Appalachians, in hopes of keeping the Indians happy and the settlers close to the coast and thus easier to control

Question 22

Proclamation of Neutrality

Answer 22

President Washington’s response to revolutionary France’s war with the other European powers in 1792

Question 23

Prohibitory Act

Answer 23

an act of the British Parliament, approved by the king (who ignored the Olive Branch Petition), declaring the colonies in rebellion and no longer under his protection, essentially declaring war on America

Question 24

Property Qualification for Voting

Answer 24

a restriction on the right to vote for non-property owners that had been eliminated by most Northern states and expanded the electorate before the election of 1824

Question 25

Proprietary Colony

Answer 25

a colony granted by charter of the English monarch to a single individual or groups of individuals who actually owned the colony and was directly responsible for it to the English monarch

Question 26

Protective Tariff of 1816

Answer 26

the first protective tariff in U.S. history, it was passed to slow the flood of cheap British manufactured goods into the country

Question 27

Protestant Revivalism

Answer 27

a powerful force for the improvement of U.S. society in the mid-nineteenth century that offered salvation to all; a strong sectarian spirit split the Protestant movement into many groups

Question 28

Providence

Answer 28

a settlement near Narragansett Bay founded by the dissident Puritan preacher Roger Williams in 1636

Question 29

Puritans

Answer 29

religious people who left England to settle in North America because of their belief that the Church of England needed to be reformed