-
Washington D.C. becomes the capital
Founded after the American Revolution as the seat of government of the newly independent country, Washington was named after George Washington, the first president of the United States and a Founding Father. -
Period: to
First Barbary War
The United States and Sweden fought against the four North African states known collectively as the "Barbary States". -
Thomas Jefferson is president
Thomas Jefferson was an American statesman, diplomat, lawyer, architect, philosopher, and Founding Father who served as the third president of the United States from 1801 to 1809. -
Creation of Judicial Review
Judicial review is the ability of a court to examine and decide if a statute, treaty or administrative regulation contradicts or violates the provisions of existing law, a State Constitution, or ultimately the United States Constitution. -
Louisiana Purchase
The Louisiana Purchase was the acquisition of the territory of Louisiana by the United States from France in 1803. In return for fifteen million dollars, the United States nominally acquired a total of 828,000 sq mi. -
Period: to
The Lewis and Clark Expedition
The Lewis and Clark expedition left St. Louis, Missouri, on a mission to explore the Northwest from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean. -
Aaron Burr shot Alexander Hamilton
It was the culmination of a long and bitter rivalry between the two men. Vice President Burr shot Hamilton, while Hamilton's shot broke a tree branch directly above Burr's head -
Noah Webster publishes Webster Dictionary
In 1807 Webster began compiling a fully comprehensive dictionary, An American Dictionary of the English Language; it took twenty-eight years to complete. To evaluate the etymology of words, Webster learned twenty-six languages, including Old English (Anglo-Saxon), Greek, Hebrew and Latin. -
Embargo Act
The embargo was imposed in response to violations of United States neutrality, in which American merchantmen and their cargo were seized as contraband of war by the European navies. -
First steamboat
The first successful steamboat was the Clermont, which was built by American inventor Robert Fulton in 1807. -
James Madison is president
James Madison was an American statesman, lawyer, diplomat, philosopher and Founding Father who served as the fourth president of the United States from 1809 to 1817. -
Period: to
War of 1812
In the War of 1812, the United States took on the greatest naval power in the world, Great Britain, in a conflict that would have an immense impact on the young country’s future. -
Star Spangled Banner
Written by Francis Scott Key after witnessing the bombardment of Fort McHenry by British ships of the Royal Navy in Baltimore Harbor during the Battle of Baltimore in the War of 1812. -
Battle of New Orleans
In the bloody Battle of New Orleans, future President Andrew Jackson and a motley assortment of militia fighters, frontiersmen, slaves, Indians and even pirates weathered a frontal assault by a superior British force, inflicting devastating casualties along the way. The victory vaulted Jackson to national stardom, and helped foil plans for a British invasion of the American frontier. -
The Year Without a Summer
The year 1816 is known as the Year Without a Summer because of severe climate abnormalities that caused average global temperatures to decrease by 0.4–0.7 °C (0.72–1.26 °F). This resulted in major food shortages across the Northern Hemisphere. -
James Monroe becomes president
James Monroe fought under George Washington and studied law with Thomas Jefferson. He was elected the fifth president of the United States in 1817. He is remembered for the Monroe Doctrine, as well as for expanding U.S territory via the acquisition of Florida from Spain. -
The Adams-Onis Treaty
The Adams–Onís Treaty of 1819 was a treaty between the United States and Spain in 1819 that ceded Florida to the U.S. and defined the boundary between the U.S. and New Spain. It settled a standing border dispute between the two countries and was considered a triumph of American diplomacy. -
Missouri Compromise passed
Congress passed a bill granting Missouri statehood as a slave state under the condition that slavery was to be forever prohibited in the rest of the Louisiana Purchase north of the 36th parallel, which runs approximately along the southern border of Missouri. -
Lowell's Mill
The Lowell mills were 19th-century textile mills that operated in the city of Lowell, Massachusetts, which was named after Francis Cabot Lowell; he introduced a new manufacturing system called the "Lowell system". -
Monroe Doctrine established
President James Monroe’s 1823 annual message to Congress contained the Monroe Doctrine, which warned European powers not to interfere in the affairs of the Western Hemisphere. -
John Quincy Adams becomes president
John Quincy Adams served as the sixth President of the United States from 1825 to 1829. A member of multiple political parties over the years, he also served as a diplomat, a Senator, and a member of the House of Representatives. -
Creation of Erie Canal
It was built to create a navigable water route from New York City and the Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes. -
Tariffs of Abominations
The controversial 1828 Tariff of Abominations was designed to protect American industry from cheaper British commodities. Opposition to the rise of taxes on raw materials, like cotton and tobacco, in the South led to the Nullification Crisis. -
Andrew Jackson becomes president
Jackson, the seventh United States president, took office after defeating incumbent President John Quincy Adams in the bitterly contested 1828 presidential election. -
Indian Removal Act
The Indian Removal Act was signed into law by President Andrew Jackson on May 28, 1830, authorizing the president to grant unsettled lands west of the Mississippi in exchange for Indian lands within existing state borders. -
Telegraph invented
Developed in the 1830s and 1840s by Samuel Morse and other inventors, the telegraph revolutionized long-distance communication. It worked by transmitting electrical signals over a wire laid between stations. -
Turner's rebellion
Nat Turner's Rebellion was a slave rebellion that took place in Southampton County, Virginia, in August 1831, led by Nat Turner. Rebel slaves killed from 55 to 65 people, at least 51 being white. -
Black Hawk War
The Black Hawk War was a brief conflict between the United States and Native Americans led by Black Hawk, a Sauk leader. The war erupted soon after Black Hawk and a group of Sauks, Meskwakis, and Kickapoos, known as the "British Band", crossed the Mississippi River, into the U.S. state of Illinois, from Iowa Indian Territory in April 1832. -
Period: to
Nullification Crisis
The nullification crisis was a United States sectional political crisis in 1832–33, during the presidency of Andrew Jackson, which involved a confrontation between the state of South Carolina and the federal government. It ensued after South Carolina declared that the federal Tariffs of 1828 and 1832 were unconstitutional and therefore null and void within the sovereign boundaries of the state. -
Texas Declares Independence from Mexico
During the Texas Revolution, a convention of American Texans meets at Washington-on-the-Brazos and declares the independence of Texas from Mexico. The Texans also adopted a constitution that protected the free practice of slavery, which had been prohibited by Mexican law. -
Martin Van Buren becomes president
He studied law and held various political positions before serving as U.S. senator, as secretary of state and as vice president. He was elected the eighth president of the United States in 1836, but his policies were unpopular and he failed to win a second term. -
Trail of Tears
The Trail of Tears was a series of forced relocation's of approximately 60,000 Native Americans in the United States from their ancestral homelands in the Southeastern United States, to areas to the west of the Mississippi River that had been designated as Indian Territory. -
Samuel Morse invents Morse code
Morse code is a method used in telecommunication to encode text characters as standardized sequences of two different signal durations, called dots and dashes. -
Wagon trails head to California
The California Trail was an emigrant trail of about 3,000 mi across the western half of the North American continent from Missouri River towns to what is now the state of California. After it was established, the first half of the California Trail followed the same corridor of networked river valley trails as the Oregon Trail and the Mormon Trail, namely the valleys of the Platte, North Platte, and Sweetwater rivers to Wyoming. -
William Henry Harris becomes president
William Henry Harrison became the ninth president of the United States in 1841. Elected at age 67, he was then the oldest man to take the office, and became the first U.S. president to die in office. His one-month tenure was the shortest. -
John Tyler becomes president
John Tyler became the tenth President of the United States when President William Henry Harrison died in April 1841. He was the first Vice President to succeed to the Presidency after the death of his predecessor. -
James K Polk becomes president
James K. Polk was a Democrat and assumed office after defeating Whig Henry Clay in the 1844 presidential election. -
Texas admitted into the Union
The Texas annexation was the 1845 annexation of the Republic of Texas into the United States of America, which was admitted to the Union as the 28th state on December 29, 1845. -
Period: to
Mexican-American War
The Mexican-American War was an armed conflict between the United States and Mexico from 1846 to 1848. It followed in the wake of the 1845 U.S. annexation of Texas. -
Oregon Treaty
The Oregon Treaty is a treaty between Great Britain and the United States that was signed on June 15, 1846, in Washington, D.C.. The treaty brought an end to the Oregon boundary dispute by settling competing American and British claims to the Oregon Country. -
Mormons settle in Utah
Young led the Mormons on their great trek westward through the wilderness some 1,300 miles to the Rocky Mountains—a rite of passage they saw as necessary in order to find their promised land. -
Gold discovered in California
Gold was found by James W. Marshall at Sutter's Mill in Coloma, California. The news of gold brought approximately 300,000 people to California from the rest of the United States and abroad. 1848The sudden influx of gold into the money supply reinvigorated the American economy, and the sudden population increase allowed California to go rapidly to statehood, in the Compromise of 1850. -
Seneca Falls Convention
The Seneca Falls Convention was the first women’s rights convention in the United States. Held in July 1848 in Seneca Falls, New York, the meeting launched the women’s suffrage movement, which more than seven decades later ensured women the right to vote. -
Zachary Taylor becomes president
Zachary Taylor, a general and national hero in the United States Army from the time of the Mexican-American War and the War of 1812, was elected the 12th U.S. President, serving from March 1849 until his death in July 1850. -
Compromise of 1850
The Compromise of 1850 was a package of five separate bills passed by the United States Congress in September 1850 that defused a political confrontation between slave and free states on the status of territories acquired in the Mexican–American War. -
Creation of the Know-Nothing Party
The Know-Nothing Party was a far-right nativist political party and movement in the United States which operated nationwide. It was primarily an anti-Catholic, anti-immigration, and xenophobic movement, originally starting as a secret society. -
Millard Fillmore becomes president
Millard Fillmore, a member of the Whig party, was the 13th President of the United States (1850-1853) and the last President not to be affiliated with either the Democratic or Republican parties. -
New York Times newspaper begins
The New York Times is an American newspaper based in New York City with worldwide influence and readership. Founded in 1851, the paper has won 127 Pulitzer Prizes, more than any other newspaper. The Times is ranked 18th in the world by circulation and 3rd in the U.S. -
Uncle Tom's Cabin is published
Uncle Tom's Cabin is an anti-slavery novel by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe. Published in 1852, the novel had a profound effect on attitudes toward African Americans and slavery in the U.S. and is said to have "helped lay the groundwork for the Civil War". -
Franklin Pierce becomes president
Franklin Pierce became 14th President of the United States at a time of apparent tranquility (1853-1857). By pursuing the recommendations of southern advisers, Pierce — a New Englander — hoped to ease the divisions that led eventually to Civil War. -
Kansas-Nebraska Act
The Kansas-Nebraska Act was passed by the U.S. Congress on May 30, 1854. It allowed people in the territories of Kansas and Nebraska to decide for themselves whether or not to allow slavery within their borders. The Act served to repeal the Missouri Compromise of 1820 which prohibited slavery north of latitude 36°30´. -
Dred Scott v. Sandford
Dred Scott v. Sandford was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court held that the Constitution of the United States was not meant to include American citizenship for black people, regardless of whether they were enslaved or free, and therefore the rights and privileges it confers upon American citizens could not apply to them. -
James Buchanan becomes president
James Buchanan, the 15th President of the United States (1857-1861), served immediately prior to the American Civil War. He remains the only President to be elected from Pennsylvania and to remain a lifelong bachelor. -
Minnesota enters the Union
Minnesota enters the Union as the 32nd state on May 11, 1858. Known as the “Land of 10,000 Lakes,” Minnesota is the northern terminus of the Mississippi River’s traffic and the westernmost point of the inland waterway that extends through the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence Seaway to the Atlantic Ocean. -
South Carolina secedes from the Union
South Carolina was the first state to secede from the Union in December 1860, and was one of the founding member states of the Confederacy in February 1861. -
Abraham Lincoln becomes president
Abraham Lincoln became the United States’ 16th President in 1861, issuing the Emancipation Proclamation that declared forever free those slaves within the Confederacy in 1863. -
Period: to
Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war in the United States from 1861 to 1865, fought between the northern United States and the southern United States. The civil war began primarily as a result of the long-standing controversy over the enslavement of black people. War broke out in April 1861 when secessionist forces attacked Fort Sumter in South Carolina shortly after Abraham Lincoln had been inaugurated as the President of the United States. -
The Confederacy is born
In February 1861, representatives from the six seceded states met in Montgomery, Alabama, to formally establish a unified government, which they named the Confederate States of America. On February 9, Jefferson Davis of Mississippi was elected the Confederacy’s first president. -
Homestead Act
The Homestead Acts were several laws in the United States by which an applicant could acquire ownership of government land or the public domain 160 million acres, typically called a homestead. -
Emancipation Proclamation
President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, as the nation approached its third year of bloody civil war. The proclamation declared "that all persons held as slaves" within the rebellious states "are, and henceforward shall be free". -
Battle of Gettysburg
The Battle of Gettysburg, fought from July 1 to July 3, 1863, is considered the most important engagement of the American Civil War. After a great victory over Union forces at Chancellorsville, General Robert E. Lee marched his Army of Northern Virginia into Pennsylvania in late June 1863. -
Sand Creek massacre of Cheyenne and Arapaho
The Sand Creek massacre was a massacre of Cheyenne and Arapaho people by the U.S. Army in the American Indian Wars that occurred on November 29, 1864, when a 675-man force of the Third Colorado Cavalry under the command of U.S. Army Colonel John Chivington attacked and destroyed a village of Cheyenne and Arapaho people in southeastern Colorado Territory, killing and mutilating an estimated 150–500 Native Americans, about two-thirds of whom were women and children. -
Andrew Johnson becomes president
With the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Johnson became the 17th President of the United States (1865-1869), an old-fashioned southern Jacksonian Democrat of pronounced states’ rights views. -
13th Amendment
The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. In Congress, it was passed by the Senate on April 8, 1864, and by the House on January 31, 1865. -
President Lincoln assassinated
Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States, was assassinated by well-known stage actor John Wilkes Booth on April 14, 1865, while attending the play Our American Cousin at Ford's Theater in Washington, D.C. -
14th Amendment
The Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was adopted on July 9, 1868, as one of the Reconstruction Amendments. The amendment addresses citizenship rights and equal protection under the law and was proposed in response to issues related to former slaves following the American Civil War. -
Ulysses S. Grant becomes president
In 1865, as commanding general, Ulysses S. Grant led the Union Armies to victory over the Confederacy in the American Civil War. As an American hero, Grant was later elected the 18th President of the United States (1869–1877), working to implement Congressional Reconstruction and to remove the vestiges of slavery. -
Transcontinental Railroad completed
The First Transcontinental Railroad was a 1,912-mile continuous railroad line that connected the existing eastern U.S. rail network at Council Bluffs, Iowa with the Pacific coast at the Oakland Long Wharf on San Francisco Bay. -
15th Amendment
The 15th Amendment granting African-American men the right to vote was adopted into the U.S. Constitution in 1870.
