Key Terms
- Bill of Rights
- the first ten amendments to the United States Constitution, which guarantee individual rights
- Citizen Genêt affair
- the controversy over the French representative who tried to involve the United States in France’s war against Great Britain
- Democratic-Republicans
- advocates of limited government who were troubled by the expansive domestic policies of Washington’s administration and opposed the Federalists
- impressment
- the practice of capturing sailors and forcing them into military service
- letters of marque
- French warrants allowing ships and their crews to engage in piracy
- Louisiana Purchase
- the U.S. purchase of the large territory of Louisiana from France in 1803
- Marbury v. Madison
- the landmark 1803 case establishing the Supreme Court’s powers of judicial review, specifically the power to review and possibly nullify actions of Congress and the president
- Revolution of 1800
- the peaceful transfer of power from the Federalists to the Democratic-Republicans with the election of 1800
- the Terror
- a period during the French Revolution characterized by extreme violence and the execution of numerous enemies of the revolutionary government, from 1793 through 1794
- XYZ affair
- the French attempt to extract a bribe from the United States during the Quasi-War of 1798–1800