Unit 1: Chapter 2

In addition, colonial merchants and others organized a boycott of British goods. (A boycott is a refusal to buy certain products or use certain services.)

The soldiers opened fire, leaving an African American named Crispus Attucks and four other colonists dead or dying in the snow. The incident, which became known as the Boston Massacre, added to an already tense situation.

On September 5, 1774, the First Continental Congress convened in Philadelphia.

The Revolutionary War, which became a war for American independence from Britain, had begun.

Patriotism is the passion that inspires a person to serve his or her country, either in defending it from invasion or protecting its rights and maintaining its laws and institutions.

In 1777, the Continental Congress adopted a set of laws to govern the United States. These laws were called the Articles of Confederation.

After fighting a war to gain independence from what they regarded as a tyrannical king and Parliament, Americans generally agreed that their new nation should be a democracy, or government by the people.

Specifically, they favored the creation of a republic, a government run by the people through their elected representatives.

In only four months, convention delegates produced the document that has governed the United States for more than 200 years, the United States Constitution.

The Constitution created what some leaders began to call a federal system of government, a system in which power is shared among state and national authorities.

In addition, the Constitution set up a system of checks and balances. This system gives each branch the power to check, or stop, the other branches in certain ways.

Those who favored the Constitution were called Federalists. They wanted the strong national government the Constitution provided.

He worked to establish a tone of dignity in his term of office, or administration. (Administration can also refer to the members and agencies of the executive branch as a whole.)

Jefferson favored a strict construction, or interpretation, of the Constitution. That is, he believed that the government should only use the implied powers of the Constitution when it was absolutely necessary.

Hamilton preferred a loose construction. He thought the government could use the implied powers of the Constitution to do many things as long as they were not expressly prohibited by the Constitution.

A political party is a group of people who seek to win elections and hold public office in order to control government policy and programs.

Yet in a much larger sense it was a victory for the Supreme Court, for it established the power of judicial review. This is the power of federal courts to review state laws and state court decisions to determine if they are in keeping with the federal Constitution. Judicial review also allows federal courts to decide whether laws passed by Congress are constitutional.

An embargo is a restriction on trade.

Then, in 1819, the United States experienced the first depression, or severe economic downturn, in its history.

After months of bitter debate, in 1820 Congress reached what is now called the Missouri Compromise. Slavery would not be restricted in Missouri; at the same time, Maine was carved out of northern Massachusetts and admitted to the Union as a free (nonslave) state. This arrangement kept the balance in the Senate between slave and free states.