Unit 3 Full Study Guide (Topics 3.2-3.9) — Synthesis EditionUnit 3 Full Study Guide (Topics 3.2-3.9) — Synthesis Edition

AP US HISTORY · UNIT 3

Unit 3 Full Study Guide

Topics 3.2 - 3.9, Synthesis Edition

AP US History Study Guide — Outside-Research Edition

This is a synthesis document — it pulls together the causation chains, historiography, and primary sources already built out in depth in the 8 individual topic guides (3.2–3.9) in this same folder. Read those for the full research, citations, terms-and-actors tables, and per-topic practice prompts. This guide's job is to show you how they connect into one continuous argument, which is exactly what a unit-spanning LEQ or DBQ rewards. Every OUTSIDE SOURCE — Beyond AMSCO fact used here is sourced in full in its home topic's guide — check there for the citation.

Master Timeline

Date Event

1689–1748 King William's, Queen Anne's, and King George's Wars — the first three Anglo-French colonial wars July 3, 1754 Washington surrenders at Fort Necessity — opening shot of the French and Indian War

1754 Albany Plan of Union proposed (Franklin) and rejected by the colonies

1756–1763 Seven Years' War (global); 1754–1763 in North America

1763 Peace of Paris ends the war; Pontiac's Rebellion; Proclamation of 1763

1764 Sugar Act

1765 Quartering Act; Stamp Act; Virginia Resolves (Patrick Henry ); Stamp Act Congress

1766 Stamp Act repealed; Declaratory Act

1767 Townshend Acts

March 5, 1770 Boston Massacre

1770 Townshend Acts repealed (except the tea tax)

1772 Committees of Correspondence begin; the Gaspee burned

1773 Tea Act; Boston Tea Party (December)

1774 Intolerable Acts (Coercive Acts + Quebec Act); First Continental Congress (September)

April 18–19, 1775 Lexington and Concord

June 17, 1775 Bunker Hill

May 1775 Second Continental Congress convenes; Washington named commander-in-chief

July 1775 Olive Branch Petition sent, then rejected; Prohibitory Act

Jan. 1776 Common Sense published

July 4, 1776 Declaration of Independence adopted

1776–77 State constitutions drafted; Articles of Confederation drafted

1776–77 American losses in New York/Philadelphia; Valley Forge winter

Oct. 1777 Battle of Saratoga — the diplomatic turning point

1778 France formally allies with the U.S.

Sept. 5, 1781 Battle of the Chesapeake (French naval victory )

Oct. 1781 Siege of Yorktown — Cornwallis surrenders

1781 Articles of Confederation finally ratified (March)

1783 Treaty of Paris ends the war

1785 Land Ordinance of 1785

1786 Annapolis Convention; Shay s's Rebellion begins

Jan. 25, 1787 Shay s's forces routed at the Springfield arsenal

AMSCO APUSH Unit 3 2 of 6

May –Sept. 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia

July 1787 Northwest Ordinance passed

Sept. 17, 1787 Constitution signed, sent to states

1787–88 The Federalist Papers and Anti-Federalist essay s (Brutus No. 1, etc.) published

June 1788 New Hampshire ratifies — 9th state, technically enough to take effect

Nov. 1789 / May 1790 North Carolina, then Rhode Island — last two states to ratify

1791 Bill of Rights ratified

Date Event

The Throughline of Unit 3

1. Imperial war reshapes the empire (3.2). Britain wins the Seven Years' War but nearly doubles its national debt (£75M → £133M) and inherits a territory too large to defend cheaply. It abandons salutary neglect and starts taxing/regulating the colonies directly — and, per historian Fred Anderson, the war also created a psychological mismatch: colonists came home assuming they were now equal partners in the empire, while Britain came home treating them as subordinate amateurs.

2. Taxation sparks resistance (3.3). A decade of revenue acts (Sugar, Stamp, Townshend, Tea) meets escalating colonial resistance — petitions, then boycotts, then violence — each cycle ending not because the money was resolved but because the constitutional question (does Parliament have the authority to tax at all?) never got answered. Small taxes kept functioning as tests of a much bigger principle. 3. Ideas justify rebellion (3.4). Enlightenment concepts — Locke's natural rights/consent/right-of-revolution framework, and (per historian Bernard Bailyn) a sincere ideological fear that concentrated power corrupts liberty — give colonists a vocabulary for a complete break, not just a better deal. Paine's Common Sense (Jan. 1776) translates that vocabulary from elite philosophy into a mass movement.

4. War is fought and won (3.5). Colonial unity, the Declaration's Lockean framing, and — decisively — Saratoga's diplomatic consequence (bringing France, then Spain and the Dutch, into the war) turn a losing rebellion into a war Britain can't afford to fully resource. The French navy, not just the French alliance, is what actually traps Cornwallis at Yorktown.

5. Revolutionary ideals ripple outward and are also sharply limited (3.6). "All men are created equal" opens a real if narrow window against slavery (1776–93) that the Constitution's own compromises help close, expands women's civic voice through "Republican Motherhood" without touching legal equality, and inspires the Haitian Revolution to go further than the U.S. itself ever did. Historian Gordon Wood argues the Revolution was nonetheless "radical" — just socially, not politically, radical. 6. A weak national government is tried first (3.7). Fear of recreating British tyranny produces a deliberately powerless Congress — no taxing power, no enforcement power, unanimous consent to amend. The Northwest Ordinance (1787) is a real accomplishment, but Shays's Rebellion (1786–87) turns quiet elite concern into political action for a new convention.

7. A stronger government is designed and debated (3.8). The Constitutional Convention resolves representation (Great Compromise), slavery (Three-Fifths and slave-trade compromises), and trade (Commercial Compromise) through hard bargaining, not consensus — and the ratification fight becomes a real, still-studied debate about whether scale (Madison, Federalist 10) or closeness (Brutus No. 1) better protects liberty. Federalists win by promising a Bill of Rights.