Principles of American Democracy

Mercantilism

• The economic theory that trade generates wealth and is stimulated by the accumulation of profitable balances, which a government should encourage by means of protectionism.

salutary neglect

• American history term that refers to an unofficial and long-lasting 17th- & 18th-century British policy of avoiding strict enforcement of parliamentary laws, meant to keep the American colonies obedient to England

Natural rights

• To serve that purpose, he reasoned, individuals have both a right and a duty to preserve their own lives.

Inalienable rights

• Freedoms that each individual in the United States have which cannot be transferred to another person or surrendered except by the individual having those rights.

Liberty

• Being free within society from oppressive restrictions imposed by authority on one's way of life, behavior, or political views.

Justice

• The quality of being fair and reasonable.

Limited government

• When the government is empowered by law from a starting point of having no power, or where governmental power is restricted by law, usually in a written constitution.

Popular sovereignty

• Is the principle that the authority of a state and its government are created and sustained by the consent of its people, through their elected representatives, who is the source of all political power.

Discontent

• Usually when a person is dissatisfied, typically with the prevailing social or political situation.

Intolerable/Coercive Act

• Were punitive laws passed by the British Parliament in 1774 after the Boston Tea Party. The laws were meant to punish the Massachusetts colonists for their defiance in the Tea Party protest in reaction to changes in taxation by the British to the detriment of colonial goods.

Indentured Servants

• Is an employee within a system of unfree labor who is bound by a signed or forced contract to work for a particular employer for a fixed time.

Townshend Act

• A series of measures, passed by the British Parliament in 1767, that taxed goods imported to the American colonies.

Charter

• A written grant by a country's legislative or sovereign power, by which a body such as a company, college, or city is founded and its rights and privileges defined.

Enlightenment

• A European intellectual movement of the late 17th and 18th centuries emphasizing reason and individualism rather than tradition.

Colony

• A country or area under the full or partial political control of another country, typically a distant one, and occupied by settlers from that country.

Religious dissenters

• were Protestant Christians who separated from the Church of England in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries

Great Awakening

• was a series of religious revivals in the North American British colonies during the 17th and 18th Centuries.

First Continental Congress

• Was a meeting of delegates from twelve of the Thirteen Colonies who met from September 5 to October 26, 1774, at Carpenters' Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, early in the American Revolution.

Second Continental Congress

• Was a convention of delegates from the Thirteen Colonies that started meeting in the spring of 1775 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Declaration of Independence

• Was defined as the formal statement written by Thomas Jefferson declaring the freedom of the thirteen American colonies from Great Britain.
• Was the document adopted at the Second Continental Congress on July 4th, 1776.

Repealed

• To rescind or annul by authoritative act especially : to revoke or abrogate by legislative enactment.

Puritans

• Member of a group of English Protestants of the late 16th and 17th centuries who regarded the Reformation of the Church of England under Elizabeth as incomplete and sought to simplify and regulate forms of worship.

Common Sense

• Having good sense and sound judgment in practical matters.