Period 2: 1607–1754

What this unit covers

The topics below follow the published US History course framework for Unit 2. This unit is worth 6–8% of the exam, so budget your time against that rather than against how long the unit takes to teach.

Lessons in this unit

• Distinct Colonial Regions14 min · 3 objectivesCompare the economies, societies, and religious character of the Chesapeake, New England, and Middle colonies · Explain how differing motives for settlement shaped each region · Analyze how geography and labor systems produced regional divergence
• Transatlantic Trade & the Growth of Slavery14 min · 3 objectivesExplain how mercantilism and the Navigation Acts structured the Atlantic economy · Describe the Atlantic slave trade and the transition to hereditary racial slavery · Analyze the causes and significance of Bacon’s Rebellion
• Colonial Society & the Roots of Self-Government13 min · 3 objectivesExplain how the Great Awakening reshaped colonial religion and society · Describe the Enlightenment’s influence on colonial political thought · Analyze the growth of representative self-government and its tensions with imperial authority

Every term in Unit 2

All 23 terms we publish for Period 2: 1607–1754, with definitions. Reading them through is the fastest way to find the ones you cannot define — then drill those in cram mode until you can produce them without the prompt.

Salutary neglect

Britain's loose enforcement of trade laws before 1763, which let colonial assemblies build real power — so post-1763 enforcement felt like a violation of established rights.

Headright system

Fifty acres granted for each passage paid to Virginia. Concentrated land among those who could import servants, producing a planter elite.

Indentured servitude

Four to seven years of labor in exchange for passage. The Chesapeake's main labor source until the 1670s, when falling death rates and Bacon's Rebellion pushed planters toward slavery.

Bacon's Rebellion (1676)

Frontier settlers under Nathaniel Bacon attacked Native peoples and burned Jamestown, angry at Berkeley's refusal to expand. Frightened elites into replacing servants with enslaved Africans.

Virginia House of Burgesses (1619)

First representative assembly in English America and the beginning of the self-government tradition later invoked against Parliament.

Mayflower Compact (1620)

Agreement by Plymouth settlers to form a civil body politic and obey its laws — an early expression of government by consent.

City upon a hill

John Winthrop's image of Massachusetts Bay as a model Christian community watched by the world; the root of American exceptionalist rhetoric.

Puritan covenant theology

Belief that the community had a binding agreement with God, so collective prosperity or disaster reflected collective faithfulness — which justified tight regulation of behavior.

Roger Williams

Banished from Massachusetts for arguing for separation of church and state and for Native land rights; founded Rhode Island on religious liberty.

Anne Hutchinson

Banished for teaching that believers could know God directly, bypassing ministers — a challenge to both clerical and male authority.

Halfway Covenant (1662)

Allowed baptized but unconverted adults' children to be baptized. Evidence of declining Puritan religious intensity in the second generation.

King Philip's War (1675–76)

Metacom's war against New England expansion killed a larger share of the population than any later American war and ended organized Native resistance in southern New England.

Pueblo Revolt (1680)

Popé led a coordinated uprising that expelled the Spanish from New Mexico for twelve years — the most successful Native revolt in North America.

Middle Passage

The Atlantic crossing of enslaved Africans, with mortality commonly around 15%; one leg of the triangular trade linking Africa, the Americas and Europe.

Chattel slavery

Slavery as inheritable property status passing through the mother, racially defined and lifelong — distinct from other historical forms of bondage.

Stono Rebellion (1739)

Largest colonial slave uprising, in South Carolina. Prompted harsher slave codes restricting literacy, movement and assembly.

Navigation Acts

Required colonial trade to move in English ships through English ports in enumerated goods. Mercantilism in law, weakly enforced until the 1760s.

First Great Awakening

The 1730s–40s revival led by Whitefield and Edwards. Its emotional, personal faith undercut established clergy and taught colonists to question inherited authority.

Jonathan Edwards

Preacher of "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God", joining Calvinist theology to revival emotionalism.

George Whitefield

Itinerant preacher whose intercolonial tours drew enormous crowds — an early shared experience linking colonies that otherwise had little contact.

Enlightenment influence

Locke's natural rights and consent of the governed, plus the emphasis on reason, gave colonists the vocabulary of the Revolution.

New England vs Chesapeake

New England: family migration, towns, diversified economy, long life expectancy. Chesapeake: young male migrants, tobacco, high mortality, dispersed settlement.

Middle Colonies

Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey and Delaware — ethnically and religiously diverse, grain-exporting, the "breadbasket" colonies.

What examiners penalize here

• A favorite exam theme: both the Great Awakening (religious) and the Enlightenment (rational) taught colonists to **question established authority**. If a prompt asks about roots of the Revolution, you can cite *both* as sources of an independent, questioning colonial mindset.

Practice US History

Our practice bank is drawn from across the whole course rather than filtered to one unit, which is closer to how the exam asks anyway — it will not tell you which unit a question is testing.

Questions about this unit

All 9 units of AP United States History

1. Unit 1 · Period 1: 1491–1607
2. Unit 2 · Period 2: 1607–1754
3. Unit 3 · Period 3: 1754–1800
4. Unit 4 · Period 4: 1800–1848
5. Unit 5 · Period 5: 1844–1877
6. Unit 6 · Period 6: 1865–1898
7. Unit 7 · Period 7: 1890–1945
8. Unit 8 · Period 8: 1945–1980
9. Unit 9 · Period 9: 1980–Present