The Second Continental Congress convened in Philadelphia on May 10, 1775. The 48 delegates faced an unprecedented and ever-deepening crisis. Bloody battles between colonial militias and British redcoats had just been fought in Lexington and Concord. The shock of American casualties in Massachusetts hung over every debate inside the Pennsylvania State House. Outside the building local militia companies drilled in the streets as their drums echoed off the brick facades on nearby buildings.

The First Continental Congress met to protest British taxes. In contrast, the delegates at the Second Continental Congress were tasked with managing an undeclared war while the colonists were still subjects of King George III. Over the next 13 months the delegates simultaneously prepared for a war they hoped to avoid. Although the events that culminated in the Declaration of Independence now seem inevitable, at the time America’s fate remained inextricably tied to an unpredictable series of actions and reactions.

The Olive Branch Petition

The delegates to the Second Continental Congress felt a profound sense of urgency to respond the ongoing crisis. But what should they do? Radicals such as John Adams and Sam Adams argued that a full-scale war was inevitable. In contrast, moderates led by John Dickinson believed that a peaceful reconciliation was possible. They urged the Congress to pursue every diplomatic avenue before permanently committing to an armed conflict.

Caught between the outbreak of violence in Massachusetts and a widespread desire to reach a diplomatic solution, the delegates finally approved sending King George III an Olive Branch Petition. The petition affirmed the colonies’ loyalty to the Crown while imploring George III to undertake measures to resolve the conflict.

The Olive Branch Petition reached London in August 1775. George III now faced a fateful decision. He could use the petition as a way of opening serious negotiations to resolve the issues dividing Great Britain and her North American colonies. Instead, George III and his ministers viewed the Second Continental Congress as an illegal assembly operating outside the constitutional authority of the British Empire. From the Crown’s perspective, the colonies were already engaged in a full-scale insurrection that made their peace overtures seem disingenuous. Given these beliefs, George III refused to read the Olive Branch Petition and instead issued a formal proclamation declaring the colonies in “open and avowed rebellion.” He ordered all civil and military officers to bring the rebel leaders to justice for treason.

Common Sense

George III’s refusal to read the Olive Branch Petition crushed the hopes of moderates who had viewed the monarch as a “Good King” who was misguided by corrupt advisors. Despite their misgivings, a majority of American colonists still vacillated as they faced a momentous question: Should the colonies return to the British Empire or should they declare their independence?

A compelling answer to this question came from an unlikely source. Thomas Paine immigrated to Pennsylvania in 1774. In January 1776, the previously unknown author published Common Sense. The 47-page pamphlet attacked monarchy as an institution by insisting that kings were forcibly imposed upon people capable of self-government. Paine assailed George III as an oppressive “royal brute” who should be scorned and not venerated. He argued that independence was inevitable since a growing continent could not be permanently tied to a small and distant island. Paine concluded by exhorting the colonists to declare independence and “begin the world over again.”

Congress Declares Independence

Common Sense became an instant bestseller that reached hundreds of thousands of people and was even read aloud in taverns and town squares. People throughout the colonies agreed with Paine’s persuasive arguments why America should pursue its own destiny. The Continental Congress responded to the shift in public sentiment by formally adopting the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. The Declaration marked a watershed turning point in American history. The colonies now became independent states, and the Second Continental Congress became the central government of a people at war. The Continental Congress would ultimately win the war and negotiate a favorable peace treaty.

So why should you remember the sequence of events leading to the Declaration of Independence?

APUSH exams regularly contain set of multiple-choice questions that focus on the Olive Branch Petition, Common Sense, and the Declaration of Independence. You should know that the ideas about government in Common Sense were consistent with Enlightenment ideals about liberty. The Declaration of Independence created a new American identity by transforming a debate over taxes into a fight for independence.

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Highway 17 is a very busy road that extends south of Charleston, South Carolina. Many tourists use the road to travel to the beautiful beaches along the coast. Very few notice a roadside historic marker noting the nearby location of the 1739 Stono Rebellion, the largest slave insurrection in British North America.

Causes of the rebellion

The immediate cause of the Stono Rebellion lay in the demographic imbalance between white South Carolina planters and their enslaved African workers. Fueled by the lucrative export of rice and indigo crops, planters imported vast numbers of West Africans throughout the early eighteenth century. By 1739, enslaved Africans outnumbered white colonists in South Carolina by a margin of two to one.

An ongoing rivalry with Spain provided a spark that ignited the rebellion. Seeking to destabilize British colonial enterprises in the southeastern colonies, Spanish authorities in Florida issued a decree offering freedom to any enslaved person fleeing British territory. The promise of sanctuary in St. Augustine provided a powerful magnet for enslaved Africans enduring brutal conditions on rice and indigo plantations.

“Liberty! Liberty!”

Led by a literate enslaved man named Cato, about twenty enslaved Africans secretly plotted a daring insurrection. The rebels selected Sunday, September 9, 1739, knowing that the white planters would be in church.

The rebellion began when Cato and his followers raided a general store and killed two shopkeepers. They then seized a supply of guns and ammunition. As the rebels marched southward toward Florida enslaved Africans from neighboring plantations joined their ranks. Cato’s men burned several plantations and killed approximately twenty white colonists. The exuberant rebels beat on drums and joyously shouted “Liberty! Liberty!”

A brief but bloody battle

The Stono Rebellion only lasted a day. Alerted by frantic reports of widespread death and destruction, a heavily armed militia of about one hundred men raced to intercept the rebels. A brief but bloody battle soon ensued. The militia’s superior firepower enabled them to gain the upper hand and suppress the insurrection. Cato and a number of his followers tried to escape to nearby swamps along the Stono River. However, the planters soon captured and executed most of the rebels.

Consequences of the rebellion

Although it was brief, the Stono Rebellion had long-lasting consequences. Terrified by the realization that an organized force of slaves could threaten South Carolina’s stability, the colony’s General Assembly enacted the Negro Act of 1740. This sweeping statute codified strict controls designed to prevent future insurrections. For example, enslaved Africans were prohibited from traveling without passes signed by their owners. In addition, the act outlawed group gatherings without white supervision and made it illegal to teach slaves how to read or write.

So why should you remember the Stono Rebellion?

Slaves comprised the majority of South Carolina’s population. The Stono Rebellion underscored the growing tension in colonial society between slaves and their owners. South Carolina’s harsh new Slave Code became a model for other Southern states. The Stono Rebellion made South Carolina planters very sensitive to any threat to what they would later call their “peculiar institution.” It is not accident that the Civil War began in Charleston just a few miles north of where the Stono Rebellion took place.

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The ratification of the Constitution in 1789 marked a momentous turning point in American history. The Constitution created a new national government based upon the principle that sovereignty rests upon the people not the states. Although the Constitution did mark a political revolution, it did not initially begin a social revolution.

On May 25, 1787, 55 delegates from every state except Rhode Island meet in Philadelphia. The delegates quickly resolved to abandon the Articles of

Confederation and create a new Constitution. During about four months of intense give-and-take negotiations, the delegates seized control of America’s destiny. They skillfully resolved contentious issues between large and small states and between Northern and Southern states. Their compromises distinguished the possible from the impossible.

Political successes

The Constitution marked a decisive turning point in American political history. In a bold and unprecedented decision, the Framers transformed sovereignty from the states to the people. The new Constitution provided American with a new government that included co-equal executive, legislative, and judicial branches tied together by a complex system of checks and balances.

The Constitution created a durable and flexible model of democratic government. The famous “necessary and proper” clause corrected the limitations of the Articles of Confederation by authorizing Congress to carry “into execution the foregoing powers.” The first Congress responded to Anti-Federalist fears about excessive centralized authority by adopting a historic Bill of Rights.

The new Constitution was not a perfect reflection of the principles of liberty and self-government for which the Revolution had been fought. During the Constitutional Convention, Alexander Hamilton warned his fellow delegates that, “the people are turbulent and changing.” The Convention addressed this concern by creating a bicameral Congress with a House of Representatives chosen by the people and a Senate chosen by state legislators. In addition, the Constitution insulated Supreme Court justices from public opinion by granting them lifetime terms of office.

Social limitations

The Founding Framers were shaped by the prejudices of their culture. The revolutionary rhetoric about equality and natural rights did not change the status of women, Native Americans or enslaved Africans. The Framers failed once again to heed Abigail Adams’ plea to“remember the Ladies” by refusing to give women new political rights. Native Americans continued to lose their land and autonomy. Enslaved Africans did benefit from new emancipation laws in the North. However, over 90 percent of slaves lived in the South where conditions did not change.

The Constitution did not actually use the words slave or slavery. Afraid of alienating the Southern states, the Framers agreed to the infamous Three-Fifths Compromise, whereby slaves (euphemistically called “other persons”) were treated as three-fifths of a person for purposes of taxation and representation. The Three-Fifths Compromise was later repealed by Section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment. The amendment process thus enabled the Constitution to be a living document that could advance the democratic principles stated in its Preamble and in the Declaration of Independence.

So why should you remember the Constitution?

The Constitutional is a crucial foundational document in American history. As a result many exams include sets of multiple-choice questions designed to test your knowledge of the successes and limitations of the Constitution adopted in 1789. It is important to know that the Framers designed the Constitution to address the perceived limitations of the Articles of Confederation. For example, the necessary and proper clause significantly strengthened the powers of Congress. The Federalists allayed Anti-Federalist fears about excessive centralized authority by adopting a Bill of Rights. You should know that the Constitution created a government that did not fully reflect the Revolution’s principles of liberty and self-government. Be sure you can explain how the Constitution failed to improve the status of Native Americans, women, and enslaved Africans.

AP American History textbooks are very thick and contain hundreds of terms. If all of these terms had an equal chance of appearing on your APUSH exam studying would be a nightmare. Fortunately, help is on the way. Here is Part I of my famous list of the Golden Dozen APUSH terms. Six or seven of these terms appeared on the 2024, 2025, and 2026 APUSH exams. I am confident that an equal number will be used on the 2027 exam!

TERM 1: THE COLUMBIAN EXCHANGE

This key Period 1 term refers to the exchange of plants, animals, people, and microbes between the New World, Europe, and Africa in the 150 years following the discovery of America in 1492.

Nutritious New World foods such as maize (corn) and potatoes improved the European diet, lengthened life spans, and stimulated a surge in economic activity that contributed to the region’s ongoing shift from feudalism to capitalism.

European diseases such as smallpox, measles, and influenza had a devastating impact on the Native American population. The collapse of entire New World communities enabled European colonists to more easily gain control over Native American lands. The Spanish then began to import enslaved Africans as a new source of labor for their Caribbean sugar plantations.

TERM 2: THE ENCOMIENDA SYSTEM

This key Period 1 term refers to the system used by the Spanish Crown to reward important officials with an encomienda, a grant conferring the right to demand tribute and labor from the local Native Americans. The Spanish used the encomienda system to organize and exploit Native American labor.

The encomienda system produced widespread abuses. In his Short History of the Destruction of the Indies, Bartolome de Las Casas described Spanish officials as “ravening wolves” who perpetrated unspeakable atrocities on Native Americans. The abuses of the encomienda system played a key role in sparking the Pueblo Revolt in 1680.

TERM 3: TRANSATLANTIC TRADE

This key Period 2 term refers to the exchange of goods and labor between Africa, the Americas, and Europe. The complex web of trade routes led to the emergence of a thriving transatlantic economy.

West Indian sugar, Chesapeake tobacco, British manufactured goods, and West African slaves dominated TRANSATLANTIC TRADE. At the same time, many ships also carried books, newspapers, pamphlets, and letters. This transatlantic print network spread Enlightenment ideas to influential colonial leaders.

TERM 4 – REPUBLICAN MOTHERHOOD

Neither the revolutionary ferment nor the new Constitution changed the legal status of women. But the spirit of republicanism did lead to the conclusion that every citizen had a stake in maintaining the nation’s hard-won liberty.

REPUBLICAN MOTHERHOOD is a key Period 3 term that began to emerge after the Revolutionary War. Its advocates stressed that the new American republic offered women the important role of raising their children to be virtuous and responsible citizens. By instructing their children in the principles of liberty, women played a key role in shaping America’s moral and political character. This role placed a new emphasis upon increasing educational opportunities for women.

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PERIOD 3: 1754 – 1800

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KEY POINTS

PERIOD 3: 1754 - 1800

TIMELINE

1763 Great Britain wins the French and Indian War

1765 Parliament enacts the Stamp Act

1770 Boston Massacre

1773 Boston Tea Party

1776 Congress declares Independence

1781 The Articles of Confederation were ratified

1787 Constitutional Convention meets

1789 George Washington becomes America’s first president

THE FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR

1. The French and Indian War began as a struggle for control of the upper Ohio River.

2. The French and Indian War ended French power in North America. Under the terms of the Treaty of Paris of 1763, the British North American empire now stretched from the Atlantic coast to the Mississippi River and from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. Colonists celebrated peace by praising their mother country and optimistically predicting the beginning of a prolonged period of peace and prosperity.

3. Native Americans did not celebrate the British victory. The war left them in a vulnerable position by ending their lucrative trade networks with French fur traders. It also prevented tribal leaders from using shifting military alliances to negotiate favorable agreements by playing the French and English against each other.

“NO TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION”

1. The French and Indian War doubled Britain’s national debt. Indignant royal officials complained that the average person in Great Britain had a debt 45 times as great as that of the average colonist.

2. Parliament enacted the Stamp Act to assert royal control and to raise revenue to help pay for British troops in America.

3. The Stamp Act provoked a contentious debate over Parliament’s right to tax its American colonies.

4. British leaders argued that Parliament was based upon a system of virtual representation in which each member represented the interests of all Englishmen, including the colonists.

5. The colonists rejected virtual representation. They argued that as Englishmen they could only be taxed by their elected representatives.

6. The Stamp Act sparked a series of popular boycotts, mob protests, and violence against royal officials.

7. The Boston Massacre and the Boston Tea Party played important roles in escalating tensions between the colonists and British authorities.

PHILOSOPHICAL FOUNDATIONS OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

1. REPUBLICANISM is the belief that government should be based on the consent of the governed. The colonists had a long-standing tradition of making local decisions in town meetings and in representative assemblies such as the House of Burgesses.

2. Key republican values included an emphasis on individual talent over hereditary privilege, opposition to standing armies, belief in the virtue of agrarian life, and a firm commitment to self-government by locally elected representatives.

3. Republican ideas shaped the American revolutionary movement by providing a common ideological framework that bound together the Northern and Southern colonies.

4. The political ideas of British writers such as John Locke inspired colonists to rethink the rights of British subjects. For example, in Common Sense, Thomas Paine defended republican principles while denouncing monarchy as a form of government that threatened people’s liberty. Paine’s widely read pamphlet illustrates the power of ideas to influence American revolutionary thought.

THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

1. The pivotal American victory at Saratoga persuaded France to declare war on Great Britain and openly aid the American cause.

2. The French king Louis XVI did not support America because he was sympathetic to republican values. Instead, he was motivated by a desire to avenge his country’s humiliating defeat in the French and Indian War.

3. During the Revolutionary War, Native Americans allied with the British or the Americans depending upon their own self-interests.

4. The Treaty of Paris officially recognized American independence and sovereignty over territories extending from the Mississippi River in the west, to the Great Lakes in the north, and to Spanish Florida in the south.

THE INFLUENCE OF REVOLUTIONARY IDEALS ON AMERICAN WOMEN

1. Abigail Adams’s famous plea to “Remember the Ladies” demonstrated that at least some colonial women were aware of the discrepancy between their subordinate legal status and the republican ideal of equality.

2. During the Revolutionary War, women contributed to the Patriot cause by managing and in some cases defending their family farms and shops. Groupslike the Philadelphia Ladies Association raised funds and distributed clothingto Washington’s Continental Army.

3. In seaport cities and thriving market towns, women exercised a new role as the purchasers of consumer goods such as tea, milk, butter, candles, sheets, coats,and gowns.

4. Although women began to play a more important role in America’s consumer culture, their subordinate legal status remained unchanged. For example,women could still not form a contract, buy or sell property, serve on a jury, or vote.

5. Restricted by custom and legal barriers. women did play an important role intheir local churches where they often constituted a majority of the congregation.

6. Although women’s subordinate legal position remained unchanged, the new republic required well-informed citizens. This need helped give rise to a new ideal of American wives that historians now call REPUBLICAN MOTHERHOOD. According to its advocates, republican mothers have the important responsibility of becoming exemplary parents who would raise their children to become virtuous citizens. Women would thus play a vital role in shaping America’s moral character.

7. In order to fulfill their role as republican mothers, women needed a better education. During the 1790s and early 1800s, reformers organized privates chools and academies devoted to opening new educational opportunities for American women. As a result, the once substantial literacy gap between men and women significantly closed.

THE INFLUENCE OF REVOLUTIONARY IDEALS ON AFRICAN AMERICANS

1. The American Revolution created a new ideal of a society based upon liberty and human rights. This language of liberty did not fall upon deaf ears in the North. Motivated by political and religious opposition to slavery, Mid-Atlantic and New England states initiated a “First Emancipation” by enacting laws eliminating slavery.

2. The Continental Congress further underscored the growing antislavery sentiment in the North. Enacted in 1787, the Northwest Ordinance contained the spread of slavery by prohibiting it in the territories comprising the Old Northwest. As a result, slavery rapidly became identified as a distinctive Southern institution.

ARTICLES OF CONFEDERATION

1. The Articles of Confederation created a “firm league of friendship” that could not exercise power independent of the states. For example, Congress could not tax the people, regulate trade, or raise an army. Congress could only ask the states for money and soldiers.

2. The limited national government consisted only of a unicameral legislature. The government lacked executive and legislative branches.

3. The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 provided an orderly procedure for territories to become new states on an equal basis with the original 13 states. As a result ofthis far-reaching law, settlers in the Northwest Territory would not become colonial subjects. Instead, they would be citizens of the United States.

4. The Northwest Ordinance contained the spread of slavery by banning it from the region’s vast and fertile lands. As a result, slavery rapidly became identified as a distinctive Southern institution.

5. The Northwest Ordinance marked the continuation of American westward expansion into territory controlled by American Indian nations.

THE CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION

1. On May 25, 1787, 55 delegates from every state except Rhode Island met in Philadelphia. The delegates quickly resolved to abandon the Articles of Confederation and create a new government.

2. During about 4 months of intense negotiations the delegates seized control of America’s destiny. They skillfully resolved contentious issues by reaching compromises that distinguished the possible from the impossible.

3. The Great Compromise resolved a dispute between the large states led by Virginia, and the small states, led by New Jersey. The compromise created a bicameral, or two-house Congress. Members of the House of Representatives would be apportioned on the basis of population, while each state would be allotted two seats in the Senate.

4. The words slave and slavery do not appear in the original Constitution. However, the Framers did indirectly recognize slavery in the Three-Fifths Compromise. Under the terms of this agreement, each slave counted as three-fifths of a person for purposes of determining a state’s level of taxation and representation. This increased the congressional representation of the slave states and also gave them a greater voice in the Electoral College.

5. The Framers decision to allow the importation of slaves to continue until 1808 also indirectly recognized the existence of slavery.

THE DEBATE OVER RATIFICATION

1. The Constitution would not go into effect until it was ratified by at least nine of the thirteen states.

2. A heated debate erupted between Federalists, who supported the Constitution, and Anti-Federalists, who opposed it.

3. The Anti-Federalists drew their primary support from small farmers and rural areas. They argued that the proposed Constitution lacked a Bill of Rights and that the new national government would dominate the states and threaten individual liberties.

4. The Federalists drew their primary support from large landowners, wealthy merchants, and urban areas. They argued that the proposed Constitution would create a federal government with enough power to promote the general welfare and ensure domestic tranquility.

5. Written by James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay, the Federalist Papers clearly articulated the Constitution’s key principles.

6. The Federalists ensured the ratification of the Constitution by promising the addition of a Bill of Rights that would enumerate individual rights and explicitly restricted the powers of the federal government.

THE CONSTITUTION

1. The Constitution rectified flaws in the Articles of Confederation by granting the federal government the power to tax, coin money, regulate interstate commerce,and raise an army. The “necessary and proper” clause gave Congress the power to implement these and all other “powers vested by this Constitution.”

2. Advocates of a broad interpretation of the necessary and proper clause typically supported internal improvements and a national bank.

3. Debates over how to interpret the necessary and proper clause contributed tothe formation of political parties.

4. The Constitution created a federal system by granting specific powers to the national government while reserving other powers to the states.

5. The House of Representatives gave people a direct voice in the new government. However, the electoral college and the selection of senators by state legislatures expressed the Founders desire to curb popular passions.

6. Charles Beard contended that wealthy white men wrote the Constitution to as an economic document designed to protect private property. For example, the Three-Fifths Compromise was intended to protect the economic interests of slaveholders.

7. Beard’s critics argue that the Constitution was written by practical men motivated by republican principles. For example, the Constitution limited executive authority by rejecting monarchy, dividing the government into three co-equal branches, and creating a system of checks and balances to curb abuses of power.

THE NEW REPUBLIC

1. George Washington commanded unmatched prestige and respect. His administration created institutions and precedents that put the principles of the Constitution into practice.

2. Alexander Hamilton served as America’s first Secretary of the Treasury. At Washington’s request, he submitted a series of far-reaching economic proposals. Hamilton’s plans included funding the national debt at face value, assuming state debts, imposing tariffs on imported goods, and chartering a national bank.

3. Hamilton’s proposal to charter a national bank triggered America’s first debate on whether the Constitution should be interpreted strictly or loosely. Jefferson favored a “strict” interpretation by forcefully arguing that what the Constitution does not permit it forbids. Hamilton countered by favoring a “loose” interpretation arguing that what the Constitution does not forbid it permits.

4. Hamilton’s arguments prevailed, and Washington signed the bank bill into law, thus chartering the First National Bank of the United States.

5. Political parties are not mentioned in the Constitution. However, parties began to coalesce around the economic policies and political views of Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson. The Federalist Party supported Hamilton’s programs while opponents led by Jefferson founded the Democratic-Republican party.

6. The emergence of the Federalists and the Democratic-Republicans inaugurated America’s two-party system. Historians divided American political history into party eras. The first party era began with the election of John Adams in 1796.

7. George Washington’s Farewell Address encouraged national unity. He cautioned against political factions and warned about the danger of entering into permanent alliances with European powers.

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PERIOD 2: 1607 – 1754

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KEY POINTS

TIMELINE

1607 English establish Jamestown

1608 French establish Quebec

1619 First Africans arrive in Virginia

1619 House of Burgesses convenes

1620 Pilgrims found Plymouth

1630 Puritans found Massachusetts Bay Colony

1636 Puritans banish Roger Williams

1637 Puritans condemn Anne Hutchinson for heresy

1651 First English Navigation Acts

1675 King Philip’s War

1676 Bacon’s Rebellion

1680 Pueblo Revolt

1681 William Penn granted Pennsylvania charter

1730 Beginning of First Great Awakening

1754 Beginning of the French and Indian War

NEW FRANCE

1. French colonists used access to key waterways such as the St. Lawrence River, the Great Lakes, and the Mississippi River to facilitate trade with Native Americans.

2. French fur traders and trappers dominated the lucrative fur trade. Beaver skins were France’s major “money crop.” In the best years, traders bought and sold over 100,000 beaver skins. For example, in 1693, a fleet of 400 Native American canoes brought furs to French traders in Montreal.

3. French fur traders developed a cooperative relationship with Native American tribes. They used economic trade and intermarriage to expand their influence. Unlike the English settlers, they did not build plantations and farms on lands claimed by Native Americans.

THE CHESAPEAKE COLONIES

1. The Chesapeake colonies included Virginia and Maryland.

2. Jamestown was founded by the Virginia Company, a joint-stock company dedicated to making a profit.

3. Fertile soil, a warm climate, abundant rainfall, and a long growing season enabled Chesapeake planters to successfully cultivate tobacco as a cash crop.

4. Tobacco required a large and inexpensive labor force. Virginia planters initially turned to English indentured servants. They comprised about three-fourths of the 120,000 people who immigrated to the Chesapeake during the seventeenth century.

5. After 1650, improving conditions enabled a growing number of indentured servants to earn their freedom and become independent farmers. But their hopes for success proved to be fleeting. Falling tobacco prices and rising taxes caused mounting frustration and resentment.

6. Discontented frontier farmers, many of whom had been indentured servants, rebelled against the arbitrary rule of Governor Berkeley and the haughty class of wealthy planters he favored.

7. Led by Nathaniel Bacon, the rebels captured and burned Jamestown. But Bacon’s sudden death from dysentery enabled Berkeley to regain the upper hand and crush the rebellion.

8. Although Bacon’s proved to be brief, it had enduring and fateful consequences. It exposed tensions between the wealthy planters and the poor former indentured servants. The threat of violence encouraged alarmed Chesapeake planters to replace unruly and potentially rebellious indentured servants with enslaved Africans.

9. The number of enslaved Africans in Virginia rose from 300 in 1650 to over 100,000 in 1750. Strict laws codified slavery as a system of race-based, inherited, and perpetual bondage. Virginia thus developed a rigid racial system that contrasted with the racially mixed society in New Spain.

THE NEW ENGLAND COLONIES

1. The New England colonies included Massachusetts Bay, New Hampshire, Connecticut, and Rhode Island. These colonies were founded by a relatively homogenous group of Puritan settlers who fled religious persecution in England.

2. The Puritans had a powerful sense of mission. In his famous “City Upon a Hill” sermon, John Winthrop expressed the Puritan belief that they had a special pact with God to build a “city upon a hill” that would serve as an ideal Christian commonwealth.

3. Although the Puritans came to America for religious freedom, they did not tolerate outspoken religious dissenters. For example, Puritan authorities banished Anne Hutchinson for her unorthodox religious views and Roger Williams for his unorthodox political views.

4. The Puritans settled in families and rarely intermarried with Native Americans.

They typically lived in small tightly knit communities centered around a meetinghouse.

5. The New England environment featured long, cold winters, stony soils, and relatively brief growing seasons. Farmers nonetheless cultivated a healthy mix of crops that included wheat, rye, maize, potatoes, and beans. The dense hardwood forests produced fine lumber for ships.

6. Familiar forms of British institutions such as town meetings and representative assemblies took root in the New England colonies.

THE MIDDLE ATLANTIC COLONIES

7. The Middle Atlantic colonies included New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware.

8. Geography blessed the region with broad navigable rivers and deep natural harbors that promoted commerce and diverse business opportunities.

9. Middle Atlantic farmers grew abundant crops of wheat, corn, and other grains. Enterprising merchants shipped the region’s surplus grains to the sugar plantations in the Caribbean. Killing fall frosts meant they would not be tempted to cultivate tobacco.

10. William Penn founded Pennsylvania as a refuge for Quakers. Quakers were religious dissenters who believed that all people were equal since every individual possessed a spiritual inner light. Quakers were pacifists who refused to bear arms. They advocated religious toleration, opposed slavery, and allowed women to speak publicly in religious meetings.

THE BRITISH WEST INDIES COLONIES

1. Sugar plantations dominated economic life in the British West Indies. Sugar required expensive equipment, a large labor force, and extensive land holdings.

2. The West Indian sugar economy created a society consisting of a fabulously wealthy planter elite, a vast population of enslaved Africans, and a small number of free whites. The scarcity of land on small islands forced many whites to leave the British West Indies.

TRANSATLANTIC TRADE

1. The exchange of goods and labor between Africa, the Americas, and Europe led to the emergence of a transatlantic economy.

2. Technological advances in navigation and ship construction allowed for improved transportation, communication, and trade volume across the Atlantic.

3. MERCANTILISM was a British economic policy designed to achieve a favorable balance of trade by exporting more goods than it imported. In order to achieve this goal, Great Britain purchased raw materials from its American colonies and then sold them more expensive manufactured goods.

4. Growing Atlantic trade led Parliament to enact a series of Navigation Acts intended to integrate the American colonies into a coherent imperial structure based on mercantilist principles.

5. European wars prevented Great Britain from rigorously enforcing the Navigation Acts. During a period of extended “salutary neglect,” colonial merchants successfully evaded burdensome mercantile regulations.

NATIVE AMERICANS AND THE COLONISTS

1. The New England Puritans and the Chesapeake colonists followed a similar pattern of interaction with Native Americans.

2. Colonists in both regions began by establishing peaceful relations with the

indigenous peoples. However, tensions quickly arose as the expanding colonial population placed relentless pressure on tribal lands and resources. At the same time, colonists began to view Native Americans as “savages” who practiced “cruel and barbarous” religions.

3. Conflicts over land and culture led to a series of costly wars. In Virginia, the Powhatan confederacy launched bloody attacks that failed to dislodge the English colonists. At the same time, New Englanders successfully defeated a coalition led by a Native American leader they named King Philip. The brutal raids claimed the lives of 1,000 settlers and at least 4,000 Native Americans. The clashes in Virginia and New England left the Native Americans a broken and defeated people.

SLAVERY IN THE SOUTHERN COLONIES

1. Geography played a crucial role in the growth of slavery in the Southern

colonies. Fertile land, a warm climate, abundant rainfall, and a long growing season enabled planters in Virginia and South Carolina to grow tobacco, rice, and indigo as cash crops.

2. Tobacco and rice required a large supply of inexpensive labor. Enslaved Africans provided a number of economic advantages. Unlike indentured servants, slaves were compelled to work for the duration of their lives.

3. By the mid-1700, a small but powerful group of wealthy planters dominated Southern society. Although the majority of white families in the South did not own slaves, they did aspire to become slave owners. Impoverished whites felt superior to enslaved Africans, thus providing social support for slavery.

4. Few seventeenth and early eighteenth-century white colonists questioned human bondage as either morally unacceptable or a contradiction of their belief in liberty.

5. In 1705, the Virginia General Assembly enacted laws codifying slavery as a system of race-based, inherited, and perpetual bondage. The Virginia statues provided models for similar laws in other Southern states.

COLONIAL SOCIETY AND CULTURE

1. The FIRST GREAT AWAKENING was a religious revival that stressed emotion as a way to achieve personal salvation. In contrast, the ENLIGHTENMENT was an intellectual movement that stressed human reason as a way to discover the natural laws that regulated both the universe and human society.

2. Both the First Great Awakening and the Enlightenment challenged traditional authority. The First Great Awakening challenged the authority of the “Old Light” Puritan and Anglican ministries. The Enlightenment challenged the authority of the British Crown and royal officials in the colonies.

3. The First Great Awakening led to the emergence of a number of Protestant Evangelical sects. Since no one sect was strong enough to dominate the others, the different sects had to tolerate each other. This led to support for freedom of religion in America.

4. The Enlightenment’s concepts of reason and natural rights reinforced the colonial idea that the colonies could govern themselves. The right to self-government is stressed in the opening paragraph of the Declaration of Independence.

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PERIOD 1, 1491 – 1606

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KEY POINTS

TIMELINE

38,000 – 12,000 B.C. Ancient hunters migrate to America

2500 B.C. Corn developed as a staple crop in central Mexico

1000 C.E. Corn cultivation reaches the Eastern Woodlands

900 – 1200 C.E. Hopi and Zuni build planned towns

1200 Cahokia city-empire along the Mississippi

1434 Portuguese explore coast of Sub-Saharan Africa

1492 Columbus’s first voyage to the Americas

1502 First enslaved Africans transported to Caribbean islands

1521 Hernan Cortes defeats the Aztecs

1542 Bartolome’ de las Casas’s A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies

1585 English colony at Roanoke Island

THE FIRST AMERICANS

1. By about nine thousand years ago, people could be found from Alaska to the southernmost tip of South America.

2. Native American populations settled across the vast expanse of North America. Over time, they developed distinctive complex societies by adapting to and transforming their diverse environments.

3. Native Americans spoke hundreds of distinct languages. They did not know they were a common category of people until named and treated so by the European invaders.

4. The early peoples of North America lived in families that were part of larger clans. They lived in village communities, divided labor by gender, and shared a strong sense of spirituality. They believed that every element in nature contained some measure of spiritual power.

5. Native peoples developed a mathematically based calendar, constructed irrigation systems, built multi-family dwellings, and lived in cities inhabited by 100,000 or more people.

6. The early peoples did not develop wheeled vehicles, waterwheels, or a tradition of private property rights. Native Americans viewed land and water as communal possessions that could not be owned or traded.

7. Indians living in central Mexico pioneered the cultivation of maize, beans, and squash. As these farming techniques spread northward, they enabled Native Americans to develop settled farming communities.

8. Between 700 and 1200 C.E., maize, beans, and squash became integral parts of the Native American diet.

9. The abundant natural resources of the Pacific Northwest supported a relatively

dense population. Waterways teemed with fish and dense forests supplied

game, berries, and wood for housing and boats. People such as the Kwakiutl

celebrated their abundance by carving magnificent totems as symbols of the

ancestral spirits that guided each family.

10. The Southwest was much drier than the Pacific Northwest. The Hop collected

rainwater in rock cisterns and carefully parceled it out to their fields. People

throughout the region lived in multi-story houses made of adobe. They coaxed

crops of corn, beans, melons, and squash, from the sun-parched but fertile soil.

11. The Great Plains are flat open grasslands extending from the Rocky Mountains

to the Mississippi River. Huge buffalo herds once roamed these grasslands. The

Pawnee were farmers who planted corn, squash, and beans. Once the plants were strong the entire Pawnee tribe packed up for the spring buffalo hunt. On the hunt, the Pawnee lived in tepees, portable, houses made of buffalo skins.

12. Hardwood forests dominated the Eastern Woodlands, a vast region stretching

from the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River in the north to the Gulf of Mexico

in the South. The tribes in this region lived in semi-permanent villages built in forest clearings. They blended agriculture with hunting and gathering.

COLUMBUS AND THE SPANISH CONQUISTADORES

1. Columbus and other Spanish sea captains hoped to chart a new ocean route to Asia. Instead, they discovered two vast new continents.

2. Spanish conquistadores like Cortez and Pissarro hoped to topple the Aztec and Inka empires in order to seize power and wealth.

3. Spanish missionaries came to the New World to promote Christianity.

THE COLUMBIAN EXCHANGE

1. The COLUMBIAN EXCHANGE refers to the exchange of plants, animals, microbes, and peoples between the New World, Europe, and Africa in the 150 years following the discovery of America in 1492.

2. The Columbian Exchange set in motion a series of profound changes that brought catastrophic population losses to Native Americans, immense suffering to West Africa, and unprecedented prosperity to Western Europe.

3. Nutritious New World foods such as maize, potatoes, and tomatoes improved European diets thus stimulating population growth and economic activity. At the same time, the influx of New World gold and silver facilitated economic growth. These powerful forces contributed to the rising prosperity of the merchant class in Western Europe.

4. European microbes caused epidemics that led to a catastrophic decline in Native American populations. Demographers estimate that 40 to 100 million people lived in the Americas in 1491. The figure plummeted to an estimated 8 million people in 1600.

5. The Columbian Exchange also impacted life in West Africa. The severe drop in New World population forced the Spanish to look to Africa for a new source of

labor. Between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, European slave traders

forcibly transported over 12 million Africans to the Americas.

THE ENCOMIENDA SYSTEM

1. An ENCOMIENDA was a license granted by the Spanish to royal officials to extract labor and tribute from native peoples living in specified areas.

2. The Spanish created the encomienda system to organize and exploit Native American labor. The encomienda system began in the Caribbean and spread to Mexico.

3. The encomienda system allowed Spanish colonial economies to marshal Native American labor to support plantation-based agriculture and extract precious metals.

4. Although the native peoples were legally not slaves, ruthless planters nevertheless created a brutal system of forced labor that led to many abuses. For example, sugar planters forced Native American workers to labor in boiling houses where the temperature reached above 120 degrees.

5. The inhumanity of the system appalled Dominican priest Bartolome’ de las Casas. He renounced his encomienda and wrote a series of essays denouncing the Spanish as “ravening wolves” who descended upon defenseless Native Americans.

NEW SPAIN

1. Spanish authorities attempted to exercise a significant degree of administrative control over New Spain. The royal council in Madrid divided their American empire into two immense regions known as viceroyalties. The king appointed a viceroy to govern each region. However, the great distance between Madrid and New Spain enabled colonial authorities to delay, frustrate, and sometimes evade royal orders.

2. As disease and warfare reduced their numbers, the native population could not meet the Spanish demand for a large body of captive laborers. By the early 1500s, the Spanish began to import enslaved Africans to labor on Caribbean sugar plantations and in Peruvian silver mines. About 300,000 enslaved Africans arrived in New Spain between 1500 and 1650.

3. Women comprised less than one-third of the total number of Spaniards who settled in the New World. As a result, many male emigrants married Native American women. Their racially mixed offspring became known as mestizos.

4. The Spanish developed a race-based society. New Spain’s high rate of intermarriage produced a racially mixed population of Europeans, Africans, and Native Americans.

5. Spanish colonists were devout Catholics. They did not leave Spain to seek greater religious freedom.

6. Jesuit and Franciscan priests waged a vigorous campaign to convert Native Americans to the Catholic faith.

7. The Spanish discovered and colonized Florida. The presence of the Spanish in this region illustrates the growing competition between European powers in the Americas.

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The Puritans arrived in Massachusetts in 1629 and founded Boston the following year. Unlike the profit-driven male settlers in Virginia, the Puritans migrated in family groups with a spiritual mission to build an ideal Christian commonwealth. While they differed in fundamental ways, the Puritans and Virginia colonists shared a similar pattern of interaction with Native Americans.

Demographers estimate that by 1600 as many as 120,000 Native Americans inhabited New England. In the beginning, Indians welcomed the newcomers by providing them with food and teaching them how to hunt and fish in a new environment. But as in Virginia tensions quickly developed over differing attitudes towards land.

A transformed landscape

Native Americans had no concept of private property. Tribes viewed land as a collective resource, much like air and water. In contrast, the English believed that land could be bought, sold, and transferred in a treaty.

As the New England colony grew, new settlements pushed deeper into traditional Indian lands. The appearance of fenced fields surrounding family farms provided a concrete visual expression of English attitudes towards land and farming. The transformed landscape posed a direct threat to the Indian way of life.

“Nothing will satisfy them”

The relentless growth of the New England colonies alarmed Native American tribes. Indians complained that the Puritans pushed them off their tribal lands, killed their game, and cheated them in trade. Chief Metacom (also known as King Philip), expressed his tribe’s growing frustration and anger when he bitterly complained, “They [the English] have driven us from our hunting ground…ruined our corn fields and taken our timber…Nothing will satisfy them.”

King Philip’s War

Metacom convinced a coalition of tribes that the New England colonists intended to “drive us to utter ruin.” Warfare suddenly erupted in June 1675 when Indian warriors led by Metacom launched a series of attacks at Puritan settlements across southern New England.

Known as King Philip’s War the brief but intense conflict became a bloody contest for territory, natural resources, and cultural identity. Indian attacks destroyed at least 12 English towns and damaged many others. At one point, Metacom’s warriors pushed the line of English settlements almost back to the coast. Almost 1,000 New England colonists lost their lives out of a total population of about 80,000. This represented a higher proportion of adult males lost than in the American Civil War or in World War II.

Native Americans suffered even greater losses. Merciless English attacks decimated Indian villages, burned crops, and executed prisoners. Historians estimate that 60 percent of the Indians in southern New England perished due to combat, starvation, or disease. The conflict abruptly ended with colonial forces killed Metacom in August 1676.

Short and long-term consequences

King Philip’s War caused immense economic destruction and inflicted heavy casualties on both sides. The war created food shortages, disrupted trade, and destroyed settlement that had required decades to build.

The war led to long-lasting social consequences. It decisively ended a period of peaceful coexistence between Native Americans and the Puritan settlers. Cultural and racial boundaries between the two groups hardened as the English now portrayed Native Americans as “irredeemable savages.” Compared with the French and Spanish interactions with American Indians, English interactions now promoted separation between the two groups. This established a pattern of racial division and enmity that set a precedent for future American westward expansion.

So why should you study the relations between the Puritans and Native Americans?

The topic has generated several sets of multiple-choice questions. In addition, recent APUSH exams have included Long Essay Questions asking students to evaluate how Native American societies adapted to the presence of English colonists and to evaluate the importance of causes of conflict among these two groups. The causes and consequences of King Philip’s War would provide an important source of historic evidence for LEQs on these topics.

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The Constitution begins with the apparently all-inclusive phrase “We the people.” At that time, enslaved Africans comprised approximately 20 percent of the people living in the United States. Despite their numerical presence, the Framers excluded enslaved Africans from becoming a part of America’s new government.

The words “slave” and “slavery” cannot be found in the original 1787 Constitution. This omission does not mean the Framers were unaware of the problems posed by slavery. James Madison explicitly identified slavery as the primary source of contention dividing delegates. In his personal Notes of Debates in the Federal Convention, Madison observed that the most profound political fractures did not emerge from differences in state size. Instead, he noted that “the states were divided into different interests…from their having or not having slaves.”

The divisions between slave and free states manifested themselves in polarizing debates over two issues. First, the delegates had to determine how slaves would be counted for purposes of taxation and for determining representation in Congress. And second, the delegates had to decide if America would continue to participate in the Atlantic slave trade.

The Three-Fifths Compromise

The Great Compromise established that Congress would include a popularly elected House of Representatives. A state’s total population would determine how many representatives it would receive. Southern states wanted to count their entire enslaved population to increase their political power in the House of Representatives. Northern delegates countered by arguing that people held as property should be fully taxes and not be counted toward political representation.

The delegates settled the dispute by agreeing to the Three-Fifths Compromise. Under this agreement slaves (euphemistically called “other people”) were treated as three-fifths of a person for purposes of both taxation and representation. This gave the South an enlarged influence in the House of Representations and a larger voice in the Electoral College.

The Slave Trade Debate

The Three-Fifths Compromise did not end the problems created by slavery. During the convention’s final month, delegates repeatedly clashed over whether the federal government could ban the transatlantic slave trade. Gouvernor Morris of Pennsylvania passionately rejected the idea that a slaveholder who goes to Africa and “in the defiance of the most sacred laws of humanity tears away his fellow creatures from their dearest connections and damns them to the most cruel bondage” should be rewarded with increased political power in a government established to protect liberty.

Morris’s moral plea failed to persuade delegates from South Carolina and Georgia. They pointed out that their states needed to continue the slave trade in order to replace the slaves evacuated by the British during the Revolutionary War. John Rutledge of South Carolina underscored the callous pragmatism of Southern planters when he dispassionately noted, “Religion and humanity have nothing to do with this [slavery] question. Interest alone is the governing principle of nations.”

Led by James Madison, realistic delegates wanted to avoid a dispute with the South that would fracture the convention. Great as the evil is,” Madison wrote, “a dismemberment of the Union would be worse.” Determined to distinguish the possible from the impossible, the convention resolved the issue by agreeing to a compromise in which Congress would not abolish the transatlantic slave trade until 1808.

So why should you study and remember slavery and the Constitution? APUSH test writers expect students to understand that slavery posed a threat to national unity. The compromises reached at the Constitutional Convention began a series of agreements that ultimately failed to resolve the underlying tensions between the North and South. The divisions temporarily resolved in the summer of 1787 in Philadelphia laid bare enduring fault lines that led to the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861.

It is important to keep in mind that the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery and effectively made the “three-fifths of all other persons” category obsolete. The Fourteenth Amendment explicitly replaced the wording to ensure full representation for newly freed Black Americans.

Colonial America witnessed a dramatic expansion of political liberty. New England town meetings and assemblies such as the Virginia House of Burgesses gave white men an opportunity to participate in public life. At the same time, Enlightened thinkers such as Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson accepted John Locke’s argument that every person was entitled to enjoy natural rights that included life, liberty, and property.

However, the enjoyment of liberty coexisted with the simultaneous expansion of slavery. Between 1700 and 1775, enslaved Africans comprised just under half of the 585,000 persons who arrived in colonial America. The presence of slavery in a land dedicated to promoting liberty posed a deep contradiction that would not be resolved until the Civil War.

The Declaration of Independence

Jefferson opened the Declaration of Independence with a concise and compelling statement of principles and self-evident truths. Inspired by John Locke’s philosophy of natural rights, Jefferson asserted that governments derive “their just powers from the consent of the governed.” The governed are entitled to “alter or abolish” their ties to a government that denies them their “unalienable rights” to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

The Declaration of Independence created a new American identity by transforming a debate over taxes into a fight for independence. By helping to generate a new national identity, the Declaration decisively answered what John Adams called “the greatest question” of the day. The impact of Jefferson’s words accomplished more than justifying a war for political independence – they also proclaimed broad “self-evident” truths that became an enduring expression of America’s founding principles and goals.

“An execrable commerce”

The Declaration of Independence did not have an immediate impact upon the condition of enslaved Africans. Jefferson’s original draft did contain a clause condemning the slave trade. Jefferson blamed King George III for forcing the transatlantic slave trade onto the colonies. He described slavery as a “cruel war against human nature” and “an execrable commerce.” He further accused the king of keeping local slave markets open and blocking colonial laws meant to end or limit the slave trade.

Delegates from Georgia and South Carolina strongly objected to Jefferson’s anti-slavery language. In addition, northern delegates where merchants profited from the slave trade also wanted the critical passages removed. The Continental Congress needed a unanimous vote for independence. As a result, the delegates edited out the anti-slavery passages to avoid unnecessary controversy.

The harsh reality of slavery thus contradicted Jefferson’s eloquent expression of republican ideals. Although not originally fulfilled, Jefferson’s stirring statement that “all men are created equal”created a language of freedom that became an inspiring part of the American dream.

So why should you remember the language of liberty and the presence of slavery? APUSH test writers expect you to understand the implications of America’s principle of liberty. It is important to point out that that the language of liberty did not fall upon deaf ears in the North. Motivated by political and religious opposition to slavery, Mid-Atlantic and New England states initiated a “First Emancipation” by enacting laws eliminating slavery.

The Continental Congress further underscored the growing antislavery sentiment in the North. Passed in 1787, the Northwest Ordinance contained the spread of slavery by prohibiting it in the territories comprising the Old Northwest. As a result, slavery rapidly became identified as a distinctive Southern institution.

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The BIG day has finally arrived! The 2026 APUSH exam will begin in a few hours!

Good luck to all of my in-person and Substack students. I’m confident you’ll earn excellent scores. Special good luck to Mr. Chmiel’s FSCA students! GOOOO APUSH Students!!!

On March 31, 1776, Abigail Adams wrote a celebrated letter to her husband John, who was then serving as a Massachusetts representative to the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia. Keenly aware that the delegates from all Thirteen Colonies were on the brink of composing a Declaration of Independence, Abigail urged John to “Remember the Ladies and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands.”

Abigail’s famous request underscored the fact that colonial authorities had treated women as second-class citizens. Her letter demonstrated that colonial women were keenly aware of the discrepancy between their subordinate legal status and republican ideal of equality. However, traditional expectations about women’s legal rights and customary roles were deeply entrenched. Given this mindset, it is not surprising that John Adams dismissed his wife’s plea by replying, “As to your extraordinary code of laws, I cannot but laugh…We know better than to repeal our Masculine systems.”

Republican Motherhood

As John Adams confidently predicted, America’s new Constitution did not lead to an expansion of women’s legal rights. American women still could not form contracts, buy or sell property, serve on juries, or vote. Given these restrictions, what should be the role of women in a new republic dedicated to the principles of liberty and equality?

Although the subordinate legal position of American women remained unchanged, the new republic still required well-informed citizens and virtuous public officials who would prioritize the public good over their own interests. This need helped give rise to a new ideal for American wives that historians now call Republican Motherhood.

According to its advocates, republican mothers had the responsibility to become exemplary parents who would raise their children to uphold the ideals of the new American republic. Women would thus play a vital and respected role in shaping America’s moral character. Catherine Beecher unhesitantly forecast, “Let the women of a country be virtuous and intelligent, and the men will certainly be the same.”

New opportunities and roles

Republican motherhood both reinforced and expanded women’s traditional role. The concept gave motherhood a new dignity and importance. At the same time, it also placed a new emphasis upon increased educational opportunities for the nation’s republican mothers. If mothers were to become “caretakers of the Republic,” it logically followed that they would need more options to learn about government, history, and philosophy.

During the early 1800s, communities in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states opened several academic schools for young women. This eventually enabled women to become teachers. The commitment to recognize women as teachers and “moral guardians” led directly to the emergence of educated women who would play leading roles in the abolition and temperance movements.

So why should you remember Republican Motherhood? APUSH test writers expect students to know that formidable legal and cultural barriers circumscribed women’s lives during the early Republic. Although women remained excluded from the nation’s political life, Republican Motherhood provided the intellectual foundation for the women’s rights movement that emerged following the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848.

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Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater published The Conscience of a Conservative in 1960. At first glance, a slender 123- page book by a little-known senator from a seemingly remote Southwestern state appeared insignificant. But looks were deceiving. The Conscience of a Conservative became a massive best-seller that sold 3.5 million copies and transformed Goldwater into a leader in the Republican Party.

The Conscience of a Conservative provided a concise but forceful statement of conservative beliefs. Goldwater countered the prevailing liberal consensus by lambasting expensive New Deal programs. Instead, he forthrightly called for a dramatically reduced federal government that only performed tasks specifically enumerated by the Constitution. Goldwater’s manifesto also embraced economic principles based on lower taxes and minimal government regulations.

The Election of 1964

Goldwater’s cogent arguments resonated among citizens disillusioned with liberal policies. “We just wanted the government to get off our backs and out of our pockets,” explained one Arizona supporter. A California housewife spoke for many when she said, “I felt like someone was finally talking to me and not at me. I went out and organized my entire neighborhood for Goldwater.”

The California housewife joined an army of Republican activists who successfully helped Goldwater become the party’s 1964 presidential nominee. The election featured a historic choice between liberal and conservative candidates. The Democratic nominee, President Lyndon Johnson or Texas, ran on a liberal platform promising to wage war on poverty, extend medical care to the elderly, and support a landmark voting rights bill. In contrast, Goldwater ran on a conservative platform promising to cut taxes, shrink the federal government, and restore American military strength.

The election appeared to produce definitive results. Johnson won 61 percent of the vote and crushed Goldwater in the Electoral College. LBJ’s overwhelming victory served to usher in a new age of liberal dominance and conservative retreat. However, an unexpected combination of Sunbelt conservatives, Christian evangelicals, and blue-collar workers forged an increasingly powerful political coalition that revived the Republican Party.

Discontented Sunbelt Conservatives

Political commentators noted that both President Johnson and Senator Goldwater hailed from states in a region they named the Sunbelt. The coincidence was not a surprise. The Sunbelt comprised portions of a booming region of 16 states stretching from North Carolina through Florida and Texas to Arizona and southern California.

A number of factors combined to make the Sunbelt America’s fastest growing region. Affordable air-conditioning cooled homes and offices during the region’s hot summers. Low taxes and weak labor unions attracted businesses. And finally, the federal government awarded Sunbelt states a host of defense and space contracts. For example, Florida and Texas became centers of huge aerospace complexes.

The historic migration of people and businesses translated into growing political power. As their population increased, Sunbelt states claimed more seats in the House of Representatives and thus more votes in the Electoral College. In the 1960 presidential election, California, Texas, and Florida had a total of 66 electoral votes. Twenty years later, these three states commanded 88 electoral votes.

The prosperous suburbs surrounding Los Angeles, Phoenix, Dallas, and Atlanta quickly became conservative strongholds. White middle-class suburbanites opposed Great Society programs. Instead, they embraced Goldwater’s conservative philosophy favoring reductions in expensive government welfare programs and burdensome business regulations. The Sunbelt conservatives formed what historian Lisa McGirr called “the ground forces of the conservative revival.”

Alarmed Christian Evangelicals

The 1960s and 1970s produced a number of social and cultural changes that alarmed Christian evangelicals. Hippies experimented with drugs and celebrated premarital sex. Feminists challenged traditional family roles and enthusiastically endorsed the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). At the same time, the newly vocal gay community demanded recognition and equal civil rights.

Outraged Christian evangelicals did not limit their opposition to hippies, feminists, and gays; they also directed special outrage at liberal Supreme Court decisions. Rulings prohibiting officially sponsored prayer and Bible readings in public schools deeply offended devout Christians who believed these activities played an important role in the development of moral values. The Supreme Court’s 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade legalizing abortion aroused outrage among both Protestants and Catholics who defended the unborn infant’s right to life.

Sexual permissiveness, the ERA, school prayer, and abortion galvanized a determined group of conservative Christians known as the Religious Right. This movement became a significant political force when Jerry Falwell, a Baptist minister and popular religious broadcaster from Lynchburg, Virginia, founded the Moral Majority. Launched in 1979, the organization advanced a “pro-life, pro-family, pro-morality, and pro-American” agenda. The Moral Majority’s four million members and two million donors played a key role in mobilizing evangelical Christians into a powerful political force.

Discontented Blue-Collar Workers

During the 1970s, millions of Americans watched All in the Family, a humorous but culturally relevant television program about a working-class family living in Queens, New York. Most episodes revolved around the outspoken views of Archie Bunker, a World War II veteran who worked as a foreman on a loading dock. Although he was a fictional character, Archie’s frustrations accurately reflected the growing discontent among America’s blue-collar workers.

Beginning with the New Deal, working-class voters formed a core group of the Democratic Party coalition. However, during the late 1970s slowing wage growth, rising prices, and growing tax burdens threatened their standard of living. At the same time, court-ordered busing of school children to achieve racial balance fueled a rising sense of resentment.

As the 1980 presidential election approached, real-life Archie Bunkers felt increasingly alienated from Democratic Party policies and candidates. They searched for a new leader who promised to roll back expensive social welfare programs, support traditional family values, and restore economic confidence.

The Election of Ronald Reagan

During the fall of 1980, millions of concerned Americans felt squeezed by double-digit inflation, crippling mortgage rates, and an unemployment rate of nearly eight percent. Overseas, months of futile negotiations by the Carter administration failed to persuade the Iranian government to release 53 American hostages. Opinion polls reported that less than 25 percent of the American people approved of President Carter’s leadership. For many, it seemed as if America had lost its way.

Sensing victory, the Republicans nominated Ronald Reagan as their presidential candidate. A one-time movie actor, television host, and two-term governor of California, Reagan refused to listen to dire forecasts predicting an increasingly dismal future. “There are those in our land,” he declared, “who would have us believe that the United States, like other great civilizations of the past, has reached the zenith of its power.” Reagan then confidently insisted, “I don’t believe that.”

During the presidential campaign, Reagan repeatedly asked the American people to answer one question: “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?” On election day, a resurgent coalition of conservative Republican voters answered no. Reagan and his running mate, George H.W. Bush, won a convincing victory. A prominent Goldwater supporter quipped, “Goldwater won in 1964; it just took until 1980 to count the ballots.”

So why should you remember the rise of the Conservative Movement from 1960 to 1980. This topic generated a DBQ in 2015 and set of multiple-choice questions on almost every subsequent APUSH exam. Although the prompts vary, the questions all ask students to know that conservatives and their evangelical allies defended traditional family values, supported free market economic policies, opposed Great Society programs, and helped elect Ronald Reagan in 1980.

Chicago’s traffic jams, frigid temperatures, and piles of snow left Tom Garrison feeling frustrated. He remembered thinking, “There has to be a place where the sky isn’t the color of a wet sidewalk.” Garrison’s search for a better place to live with a “vast blue sky” took him to Phoenix, Arizona.

Garrison wasn’t alone. Between 1950 and 1980, millions of Americans moved from Rust Belt cities like Chicago to Sunbelt cities like Phoenix. As you can see in our map, the Sunbelt includes portions of 16 states from southern North Carolina through Florida and Texas to Arizona and southern California.

The Refrigerator Revolution

Before the 1950s, the intense heat and humidity of the South and the hot arid deserts of the Southwest deterred large-scale settlements in these regions For example, in 1950, the population of Phoenix was just 106,818. At that time, it was the 99^th largest city in the United States.

Air conditioning changed everything. The widespread adoption of central air conditioning transformed Phoenix from a desert outpost into a booming metropolis. One new resident recalled that “people thought we were crazy to move to a place where the temperature hits 110 degrees. But by the mid-1970s, we had ‘refrigerated air.’ You’d dash from your air-conditioned car into your air-conditioned office and then go home to a chilled living room.” He concluded that, “the heat had become a novelty rather than a threat. We traded shoveling snow for staying indoors in July – it seemed like a fair swap.”

The “fair swap” convinced a wave of migrants to move to Arizona. By 1980, Phoenix boasted a population of 789,704 making it America’s 9^th largest city. Phoenix was not an isolated example of population growth in the Sunbelt. Between 1950 and 1980 the population of Florida soared from 2.77 million to 9.74 million while the population of Texas doubled from 7.71 million to 14.22 million.

Defense and High-Tech Jobs

During the Cold War the federal government poured billions of dollars into the economies of the Sunbelt states. The region’s vast open spaces made it ideal for year-round training. As a result, aerospace and defense contractors like Lockheed and Boeing built massive plants. In addition, high-tech companies like Motorola and Intel also opened major facilities.

“A middle-class guy could live like a king”

Affordable housing also contributed to the appeal of living in the Sunbelt cities and suburbs. For example, a migrant from San Francisco marveled at his family’s ability to purchase a ranch-style house in Scottsdale, Arizona “for a price that would have barely gotten us a studio apartment back in San Francisco.” He enthusiastically encouraged others to move to a place “where a middle-class guy could live like a king on a modest paycheck.”

Retirement communities

A combination of Social Security checks and generous pensions enabled more and more people to retire in Florida and Arizona. Soon massive retirement communities sprang up in both states.

So why should you remember the rise of the Sunbelt. College Board APUSH test writers have used LEQ and SAQ free-response questions to underscore the importance of the mass migration of people to the Sunbelt. For example, students should know that air conditioning provides an example of a technological innovation that changed American society in the period between 1950 and 2000. In addition, APUSH students should be able to compare the mass migration to the Sunbelt with the mass migration of African American to cities in the Midwest and Northeast.

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Is it possible for an event that didn’t happen to have major consequences and become part of a frequent set of APUSH exam questions? Surprisingly, the answer is yes! Let me explain:

In early August 1964, U.S. Navy warships and South Vietnamese gunboats began conducting intelligence gathering operations in the Gulf of Tonkin along the coast of North Vietnam. On August 4^th, two American destroyers reported that small but swift North Vietnamese torpedo boats fired at them. The U.S. warships took evasive actions while wildly firing in all directions. The commander of one of the destroyers soon radioed that there had been no actual visual sightings of enemy ships. He tentatively concluded that the alleged contact may have been due to a combination of an unusually dark night and “freak weather” conditions that adversely affected the ship’s sonar and radar.

Although what happened remained unclear, President Johnson told a nationally televised audience that “hostile actions against United States ships” forced him to respond to North Vietnamese aggression. Even as he spoke, 64 Crusader jets struck 4 North Vietnamese patrol boat bases and a major oil storage depot. President Johnson assured the American public that his swift military action had been “limited and fitting” and that the United States would “seek no wider war.”

The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution

The next day, Johnson asked Congress to pass a resolution authorizing him to take “all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression.” Congress and the American public were not told about the secret raids on North Vietnam or the new evidence that an attack may not have occurred. Unaware of this information, the House unanimously supported the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution while only two senators opposed it.

Johnson’s deft handling of the Gulf of Tonkin affair seemed to be a major political success. The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution sent a clear signal to North Vietnam that America would defend South Vietnam. Opinion polls showed that 72 percent of the public supported LBJ’s forceful but measured actions. Very few people listened when Senator Wayne Morse warned, “We are in effect giving the President warmaking powers in the absence of a declaration of war. I believe this to be a historic mistake.”

A “blank check”

The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution gave President Johnson a “blank check” to fight a full-scale war without a formal Congressional declaration of war. In March 1965 he took the fateful step of ordering the first U.S. Marines to land in South Vietnam. By the end of the year, 180,000 additional combat soldiers poured into the country.

Johnson’s dramatic escalation transformed a localized guerrilla conflict into a massive, years-long military commitment. By the end of 1967, about 500,000 American soldiers guarded South Vietnam’s cities and patrolled its rice paddies. Search-and-destroy missions killed over 200,000 enemy soldiers but left one-fourth of the people in South Vietnam homeless. Known as the Viet Cong, the South Vietnamese communists struck back with deadly ambushes and hidden booby traps. About 16,000 American soldiers lost their lives between 1965 and 1967.

Credibility Gap

The rising American casualties contradicted the Johnson administration’s optimistic reports. Public skepticism about the war created a widening “credibility gap.” The gap deepened as evidence surfaced that the August 4^th “attack” in the Gulf of Tonkin probably did not occur. An ever growing number of people concluded that the war had in fact been launched on a lie.

Hawks versus Doves

When President Johnon escalated the war about two thirds of the public approved his decision. “I don’t like being over here,” wrote one marine, “But I am doing a job that must be done. Supporters of the war agreed. Known as “hawks”, they argued that America was fighting a just cause to defend the freedom of South Vietnam. Without American help, South Vietnam would fall and the communists would eventually take over Southeast Asia.

When the war did not quickly end, a growing number of people began to question America’s involvement in Vietnam. Known as “doves,” these critics argued the United States could not win a guerrilla war in Asia. The tragic loss of life was too great. Instead of saving South Vietnam, American bombs were destroying it. The dollars spent in Vietnam would be better spent funding Great Society programs.

The increasingly bitter debate between the hawks and doves polarized American society. A deeply ambivalent housewife expressed the public’s frustrations when she told an interviewer, “I want to get out, but I don’t want to give up.”

So why should you remember the causes and consequences of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. The resolution set in motion a series of far-reaching military, political, and social consequences. APUSH test writers expect students to know that America became involved in Vietnam to fulfill its commitment to contain communist expansion. Multiple-choice questions often use political cartoons to illustrate the growing public debate between hawks and doves over the merits and rationale for the Vietnam War. Short-answer questions expect students to know that the Vietnam War led to massive anti-war protests. A series of prompts by the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) express the disillusionment of a growing number of young Americans with the Vietnam War.

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World War II left Western Europe in ruins. Winston Churchill warned that Europe had become “a rubble heap, a charnel house, a breeding ground of pestilence and hate.” Churchill’s grim assessment accurately described a continent that only a few years before had dominated the globe. Economic weakness threatened political instability making Europe vulnerable to Soviet influence. For example, the Communist Party enjoyed growing support among unemployed workers in France and Italy.

The Marshall Plan

Secretary of State George Marshall recognized the crisis and convinced President Truman that the United States had to act quickly. Speaking at Harvard University in June 1947, he proposed a bold plan to offer massive economic aid to help reconstruct Europe.

The Marshall Plan committed $13 billion (the equivalent of $200 billion in 2026) to help rebuild 16 Western European countries. The desperately needed funds helped these nations stage a remarkable economic recovery. Within four years, industrial production within the region reached a level 41 percent higher than it had been on the eve of World War II. The Marshall Plan thus achieved its twin goals of rebuilding Western Europe and containing Communism.

The Berlin Blockade

Although the Marshall Plan proved to be a great success, it did not reduce tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union. In 1948 the city of Berlin suddenly became the focus of the first great test of wills between the rival superpowers.

At the end of World War II, the Allies divided Germany into separate occupation zones that became known as West and East Germany. As Germany’s largest city and former capital, Berlin had a tremendous political and psychological significance. The Allies recognized this fact when they divided Berlin into four separate zones controlled by the United States, Britain, France, and the Soviet Union. However, the city of Berlin lay 110 miles inside East Germany.

Stalin increasingly viewed the presence of the Western powers in Berlin as an unacceptable obstacle to his plan to dominate East Germany. On June 24, 1948, he ordered troops to blockade all the roads, rail lines, and canals linking the city to West Germany. Stalin knew that the vulnerable and now isolated city only had a 30-day supply of food to feed its population of 2.2 million people. He believed the blockade would convincingly demonstrate that the United States had neither the power nor the will to support Berlin.

“We’re going to stay, period!”

President Truman understood that the Berlin Blockade represented a direct challenge to America’s new policy of containment. He rejected the options of ordering a discreet withdrawal or using military force to provoke a direct confrontation. Recognizing that the Berlin Blockade represented a crucial test of American resolve, Truman forcefully declared, “We are going to stay, period!”

The Berlin Airlift

Truman surprised Stalin by choosing to supply West Berlin by air. Although this risky strategy avoided a military confrontation, it required a massive and unprecedented airlift to supply the 4,500 tons of food, coal, and medicine the people of West Berlin needed every day.

The Berlin Airlift proved to be an inspiring success. American, British, and French aviators flew 277,804 missions and delivered 2.3 million tons of supplies in just 321 days. In addition, American pilots raised the spirits of West Berlin children by parachuting thousands of toys and candy bars.

Stalin soon realized he had been outwitted. The constant roar of planes over Berlin provided a vivid demonstration of American determination. The crisis changed the relationship between Germany and the Western Allies from that of occupiers and occupied to partners in a joint struggle to defend the Free World. Faced with these strategic and psychological realities, Stalin lifted the blockade on May 12, 1949.

The airlift underscored Berlin’s importance as a visible symbol of the Cold War in Europe. In 1961, the Soviets surrounded the city with a 28-mile concrete wall, designed to prevent East Germans from escaping to freedom in West Berlin. The Berlin Wall quickly became the supreme symbol of the Iron Curtain in Europe.

Rival Alliances

The Berlin Airlift convinced American leaders of the need to organize an alliance to protect Western Europe against possible Soviet aggression. On April 4, 1949, ten European countries joined the United States and Canada to sign the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The pact operated on the principle of COLLECTIVE SERCURITY. Article 5 stipulated “an armed attack against one or more of the signatories in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all.”

America’s decision to join a peacetime alliance based on collective security marked a decisive break from the country’s long-standing isolationist past. The Truman administration thus positioned the United States as a superpower, ready to accept its global responsibilities.

The Soviet Union did not view NATO as a defensive alliance. Instead, its leaders criticized NATO as an example of how American’s demand for new markets and additional raw materials turned it into an expansionist power, threatening Soviet security. In 1955, the Soviets responded by forming a rival military alliance with their Eastern European satellites called the Warsaw Pact. Two hostile military alliances now confronted each other across a tense and divided Europe.

So why should you remember Cold War events in Europe between 1947 and 1950. The Marshall Plan, Berlin Airlift, and NATO have all generated sets of multiple-choice questions. In addition, pivotal Cold War events in Europe are key parts of SAQ and LEQ questions asking students to interpret the origins of the Cold War.

THE COLD WAR and CONTAINMENT

The defeat of Germany and Japan left the United States and the Soviet Union as the world’s two remaining great powers. Americans optimistically hoped that peace would mean a world in which democracy and freedom would prevail. “We really believed in our hearts,” one White House advisor later recalled, “that this was the dawn of the new day we had all been praying for and talking about for so many years.” Yet within a short time this hopeful spirit vanished and the United States and the Soviet Union became bitter rivals in a prolonged period of economic and political rivalry known as the Cold War.

“A blue piece of paper”

Russian dictator Joseph Stalin did not limit Soviet expansion to dominating Eastern Europe. In early 1947, the lengthening shadow of Soviet pressure threatened to undermine the independence of Greece and Turkey. Conditions were particularly perilous in Greece, where a civil war raged between Communist insurgents and supporters of the pro-Western Greek government. Alarming reports from Greece warned that the government faced imminent collapse.

The already desperate situation in Greece became even worse when the British ambassador to the United States delivered an urgent “blue piece of paper.” The formal message informed the Truman administration that Great Britain could no longer afford to give aid to Greece and Turkey. An American official correctly appraised the historic significance of the British message when he noted, “Great Britain within the hour handed the job of world leadership with all its burden and all its glory to the United States.”

George Kennan and Containment

Stalin’s aggressive support for Communist insurgents in Greece did not surprise George Kennan. A leading U.S. State Department expert on Russian history, he believed that Soviet hostility toward the capitalist nations would remain a constant factor for years to come. In an influential Long Telegram and subsequent essay published in Foreign Affairs, Kennan argued that Communist ideology led Soviet leaders to believe that “the outside world was hostile and that it was their duty eventually to overthrow the political forces beyond their borders.”

Given the antagonism between communism and capitalism, Kennan urged the United States to adopt a policy of “long-term, patient but firm, and vigorous containment of Soviet expansive tendencies.” By CONTAINMENT, Kennan meant adopting a strategic policy of blocking the expansion of Soviet military power and Communist ideology.

The Truman Doctrine

President Truman agreed with Kennan’s argument that an unbridgeable ideological chasm divided the United States and the Soviet Union. He therefore accepted America’s responsibility to contain Soviet expansion. On March 12, 1947, Truman asked a joint session of Congress for $400 million in economic aid and military assistance for Greece and Turkey.

Truman did not stop with a request for money. The United States, he declared, could survive only in a world in which freedom flourished. He then articulated what came to be known as the Truman Doctrine: “I believe it must be the policy of the United States to support free people who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or outside pressures.”

Congress overwhelmingly approved Truman’s request for economic aid to Greece and Turkey. American aid then played a vital role in helping these two countries successfully resist Soviet pressure.

A fateful turning point

The Truman Doctrine marked a fateful turning point in American history. After the First World War, America withdrew into isolationism, leaving Europe to contend with its own problems. As the leader of the Free World, the United States now recognized its responsibility to protect Europe, defend freedom, and use its power to limit the spread of Soviet influence. “The free people of the world look to us for support in maintaining their freedom,” declared Truman. “If we falter in our leadership, we may endanger the peace of the world.”

The drawing that introduces this essay provides a striking visual representation of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. Dressed in a suit of golden armor, the American warrior defends individual freedom against a rival red Soviet warrior who represents dictatorship and absolute conformity.

So why should you remember the Cold War, Truman Doctrine, and containment? The commitment to containment dominated American foreign policy from 1947 to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The term containment plays a prominent part in the answer of at least a dozen multiple-choice questions. It also plays a role in LEQ questions asking students to analyze changes in American foreign policy from 1945 to 1991.

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The first day at a new job is always exciting and even a bit frightening. This was especially true for 28-year-old Lillian Hatcher as she began her job as a riveter at the vast Willow Run aircraft factory outside Detroit. She later remembered, “I had never seen anything so large in my life. It was a city under one roof. When I walked in the noise was deafening. The riveting hammers sounded like machine guns.

The scale of the Willow Run assembly line overwhelmed everyone. Over 60 football fields could fit into the 3.5 million-square foot room. Built to mass produce B-24 Liberator bombers, the assembly line stretched for over one mile.

The arsenal of democracy needed women

President Roosevelt promised America’s allies that the United States would become the “arsenal of democracy.” Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, America’s mighty industries roared to life producing weapons to fight the Axis powers.

Approximately 16 million Americans served in the U.S. Armed Forces during World War II. This massive mobilization represented 12 percent of the U.S. population. Munition factories like Willow Run urgently called upon women to take the place of men fighting overseas.

Rosie the Riveter to the rescue

World War II created an unprecedented opportunity for American women to fill jobs vacated by men drafted into the armed forces. The iconic “Rose the Riveter” poster featured a woman named Rose Will Monroe who worked on the Willow Run assembly line.

The marketing campaign worked. More than 5 million women entered the labor force. Like Lillian Hatcher, one -third of these women took jobs in previously all-male defense plants.

Pride in mastering “men’s work”

Before World War II, America’s female workforce consisted primarily of young single women performing “pink collar” jobs such as teaching, nursing, and supporting office clerical operations. The women who worked in defense plants didn’t just build Liberator bombers, Sherman tanks, and Liberty ships; they also challenged traditional assumptions about what comprised “women’s work.”

The new female workers proved they could perform “men’s work.” They surprised their foremen by successfully operating giant overhead cranes, joining the links in a tank, and cleaning blast furnaces. Women enjoyed their independence and took pride in contributing to the war effort. “We were good at what we did,” recalled one shipyard worker. “There was a special feeling, I think, among the women, that we were part of this wonderful effort of building a ship.”

Working in defense industries also meant earning higher wages. For example, a female shipbuilder in Mobile, Alabama could earn $37.00 a week. The same worker would earn $21.00 as a salesclerk and just $14.00 as a waitress. The experience of earning wages, learning valuable new skills, and contributing to the war effort created a feeling one wartime female worker enthusiastically called, “a taste of freedom.”

Foreshadowing the future

World War II did not alter the widespread belief that women defense workers were performing a temporary role. When the atomic bomb abruptly ended the war, many women lost their jobs to returning male veterans.

The “taste of freedom” earned in World War II would not be forgotten. The war served as a vehicle for accelerating the ongoing process of increasing the female participation in the labor force. World War II thus foreshadowed the dramatic expansion of women’s workforce participation that accompanied the second wave of feminism in the 1960s and 1970s.

So why should you remember Women and World War II? This is one of the most frequently tested topics on the APUSH exam. It has generated one SAQ, four sets of multiple-choice questions, and been a part of 3 DBQs! These questions focus on two key trends: First, World War II promoted enhanced opportunities for women by opening jobs previously held by men. And second, the wartime jobs challenged traditional assumptions about the proper roles for women in American society.

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TOBACCO and SLAVERY in COLONIAL VIRGINIA

PART III

WILLIAM BYRD II

RECONCILED SLAVERY and LIBERTY

I would like to begin this essay by introducing you to William Byrd II. Byrd was 50 years old in 1724 when he sat for this handsome portrait. At that time, he was one of the wealthiest and most influential planters in colonial Virginia. The artist portrayed Byrd as a supremely confident planter who was in full control of himself, his family, and his slaves.

Westover

Byrd lived in Westover; a gracious plantation located along the banks of the James River midway between Jamestown and Richmond. Vessels regularly tied up at the plantation’s docks to deliver elegant furniture, stylish clothes, and other prized manufactured goods from England. The vessels then returned to London with cargoes of tobacco.

Byrd was a highly cultivated gentleman. His classical education at a private school in England included lessons in Greek and Latin along with readings in French, Italian, and Hebrew. As a scholar with wide-ranging interests, Byrd amassed a personal library with over 3,500 books.

A secret diary

In addition to reading his books, Byrd wrote a secret diary. As a result, we know a great deal about his daily activities and attitudes towards the world around him. Byrd began a typical day by reading passages from the Bible along with verses from Homer’s Odyssey and other Greek classics. His afternoon included playing billiards with distinguished guests and then eating a hearty dinner. Byrd ended his day by thanking God for his good health and good fortune.

Byrd’s prayers did not include thoughts for the hundreds of enslaved Africans who labored in Westover’s tobacco fields and docks. Sections from his secret diary indicate that Byrd viewed enslaved Africans as his personal property. In striking passages that are painful to read, Byrd describes how he punished his slaves with whippings and by forcing them to drink their own urine. How did a cultured gentleman like William Byrd II reconcile owning slaves with his proud belief that Virginia was a land of liberty?

A society with slaves

Byrd was just 2 years old when Bacon’s Rebellion erupted across Virginia’s Tidewater region. At that time, Virginia was still a society in which white indentured servants outnumbered enslaved Africans by 5 to 1. Slavery was thus not yet an integral part of Virginia’s rapidly growing plantation economy.

A slave society

Bacon’s Rebellion alarmed Virginia’s wealthy tobacco planters. They recognized that their reliance on indentured servants poured a large number of indentured servants into a society with limited opportunities for advancement.

By the early 1700s, Byrd and other planters concluded that investing in enslaved Africans was more economical and less dangerous than investing in indentured servants. As a result, the percentage of enslaved Africans in Virginia steadily increased. By 1750, enslaved Africans comprised 43 percent of Virginia’s total population. As a result, Virginia transformed from a colony where slavery existed to a colony dominated by its economic commitment to slavery.

Legal support

Slavery could not become a atable and enduring institution without legal support, In 1705, the Virginia General Assembly enacted a series of laws that codified slavery as a system of race-based, inherited, and perpetual bondage. The law further established a system of harsh punishments designed to enforce strict racial boundaries. For example, ministers who performed an interracial marriage were fined 10,000 pounds of tobacco.

A contradiction

Byrd and other leading Virginians boasted that their colony was a “Land of Liberty” where republican rights and self-government flourished. Yet at the same time they contradicted this belief by denying legal rights to 40 percent of the colony’s population.

Byrd and his contemporaries did not see a contradiction between owning slaves and proclaiming republican principles. They viewed slavey as an economic necessity. Tobacco cultivation required a large supply of inexpensive laborers. The enslaved Africans proved to be a profitable and essential economic investment.

A lack of moral outrage

The majority of white families in Virginia did not own slaves. However, few if any, questioned human bondage as morally unacceptable. Slavery and racism soon became inseparably intertwined in Virginia. Impoverished farmers and wealthy planters like William Byrd found a shared identity in a rigid social hierarchy in which every white person was superior to every black person. The lack of moral outrage enabled slavery to grow and endure.

So why should you remember William Byrd II? Byrd’s career and views provide a vivid illustration that can help you respond to free-response questions asking you to analyze the causes of the development of the institution of slavery in Virginia in the eighteenth century. It can also provide concrete evidence for short-answer questions asking you to describe similarities and differences between the economies that developed in Virginia, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania.

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TOBACCO and SLAVERY in COLONIAL VIRGINIA

PART II

BACON’S REBELLION

A sudden breakdown of law and order in Jamestown deeply alarmed William Sherwood. As a wealthy planter and a member of Virginia’s House of Burgesses, he felt compelled to file a report to the King’s Privy Council in London. Sherwood blamed the violence on a previously unknown rebel leader named Nathaniel Bacon and a “rabble” composed of “a good number of indigent and dissatisfied persons.”

As an established landowner, Sherwood opposed policies that would favor the interests of former indentured servants. He feared that Bacon and his followers would enact “their own laws” and upend Virginia’s existing social order.

Frustrated small farmers

Sherwood and other wealthy planters had legitimate reasons to be worried about rebellious former indentured servants. Once they earned their freedom, indentured servants became independent small farmers. But falling tobacco prices, rising taxes, and dwindling opportunities to purchase fertile land along navigable streams left them feeling frustrated and embittered.

The long list of grievances fueled a growing anger directed at Virginia Governor William Berkeley and wealthy planters like William Sherwood. For example, Berkeley used his annual 1,000-pound salary to finance the construction of a magnificent plantation filled with expensive imported furniture. His lavish lifestyle callously ignored impoverished indentured servants who lived in humble cabins while spending four years of their working lives to pay the 6-pound cost of a transatlantic voyage from London to Virginia.

Bacon’s Rebellion

In the spring of 1676, Nathaniel Bacon took advantage of popular discontent to lead a rebellion against Governor Berkeley. The painting introducing this post depicts Bacon leading his followers into Jamestown. When Berkeley rejected Bacon’s demands for lower taxes and more aggressive political reforms, Bacon and 600-armed followers burned down Jamestown and then destroyed 1.5 million pounds of tobacco.

Known as Bacon’s Rebellion, the insurrection unexpectedly ended when Bacon suddenly died from dysentery. His death demoralized the leaderless rebels and enabled Governor Berkeley to crush the uprising. The vindictive governor then executed 23 of the “outlaws.”

Fateful consequences

Although Bacon’s Rebellion proved to be brief, it had enduring and fateful consequences. The sudden burst of violence exposed long-simmering tensions between the wealthy planters and their struggling former indentured servants.

Bacon’s Rebellion persuaded frightened planters to begin replacing unruly and potentially violent indentured servants with more easily controlled slaves imported from Africa. Bacon’s Rebellion thus marked the beginning of the fateful process of creating a permanent enslaved African labor force.

So why should you remember Bacon’s Rebellion? APUSH test writers expect students to have a firm understanding of the origins of slavery in Virginia. Bacon’s Rebellion marked the beginning of a pivotal shift in Virginia’s labor force and social structure.

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