AP®︎ US History: Topic 3.4 Flashcards
Master key terms and definitions for Topic 3.4 of AP US History – Philosophical Foundations of the American Revolution to help you prep for quizzes and the AP exam.
The Enlightenment
Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century movement emphasizing reason, individual capacity, and rational evaluation of inherited institutions and political authority
Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century movement emphasizing reason, individual capacity, and rational evaluation of inherited institutions and political authority
The belief that a monarch’s authority came from God and did not depend on the consent of the people
Enlightenment thinker who argued that government rests on consent and exists to protect natural rights to life, liberty, and property
Rights inherent in every person, not granted by rulers and therefore not legitimately surrendered or taken away
The theory that people accept government in exchange for protection of their rights, making authority conditional on fulfilling that purpose
The principle that political power is legitimate only when it derives from the people subject to it
The people’s right to alter or abolish a government after sustained abuses show that it has become destructive of natural rights
The principle that rulers as well as citizens are bound by law and may not exercise arbitrary personal power
Enlightenment thinker who argued that dividing governmental powers protects liberty from concentrated and tyrannical authority
Division of governmental authority among institutions so that concentrated power cannot easily become tyrannical
The belief that government should derive authority from the people, serve the public good, and operate without a hereditary monarch
The principle that ultimate political authority resides in the people rather than in a monarch or hereditary ruling class
Citizens’ willingness to place the public good above narrow private interests and resist corruption
The 1730s–1740s revival movement that stressed personal conversion and conscience, challenged established religious hierarchies, and helped normalize individual judgment of authority
The belief among many Americans that they were specially blessed with liberty or divinely entrusted with preserving it
English-born writer who used accessible language in Common Sense to popularize immediate independence and republican government
Paine’s January 1776 pamphlet attacking monarchy and hereditary succession while urging immediate independence and representative republican government
Principal drafter of the Declaration of Independence who expressed natural rights as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness
The July 4, 1776 statement declaring independence and justifying it through equality, natural rights, consent, grievances, and the right of revolution
