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The U.S. Library of Congress is founded
The Library of Congress is a research library in Washington, D.C., that serves as the library and research service of the U.S. Congress and the de facto national library of the United States. Founded in 1800, the library is the United States' oldest federal cultural institution -
Louisiana Purchase
United States payed $15 million to receive the territory which extends west from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains. Napoleon, the leader of France, was in financial trouble due to war and was willing to give that huge chunk of land for a very little price. Jefferson wanted to expand America and eagerly bought the land. This transaction, although was unconstitutional, is forgotten about and is overlooked today. -
Lewis and Clark
Lewis and Clark set out to explore the unknown territories of the Louisiana purchase. -
War of 1812
U.S. declared war on Britain over Britian's interference and prevetion of American shipping to Europe and over their interference of America's westward expansion. Many important events took place during this war. For one, Washington D.C. got captured by the British and the White House and Capital Building were set on fire. Another event that happened was Francis Scott Key wrote the Star-Spangled Banner as he watched Britian's attack on Fort McHenry at Baltimore. -
Missouri Compromise
The Missouri Compromise of 1820 was a law that tried to address growing sectional tensions over the issue of slavery. By passing the law, which President James Monroe signed, the U.S. Congress admitted Missouri to the Union as a state that allowed slavery, and Maine as a free state. It also banned slavery from the remaining Louisiana Purchase lands located north of the 36º 30’ parallel (the southern border of Missouri). -
The Monroe Doctrine
The Monroe Doctrine is a United States foreign policy position that opposes European colonialism in the Western Hemisphere. It holds that any intervention in the political affairs of the Americas by foreign powers is a potentially hostile act against the United States. -
First Public Railroad System
Construction began on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. This is the first public railroad in the U.S. It was a key factor in America's westward expansion and it made trade much easier and less expensive. This threw America into the Industrial Revolution as well as changed the face of this once primitive land. -
The Indian Removal Act
The Indian Removal Act was signed into law by President Andrew Jackson, authorizing the president to grant lands west of the Mississippi in exchange for Indian lands within existing state borders. A few tribes went peacefully, but many resisted the relocation policy. During the fall and winter of 1838 and 1839, the Cherokees were forcibly moved west by the United States government. Approximately 4,000 Cherokees died on this forced march, which became known as the Trail of Tears. -
Mexican-American War
The Mexican-American War of 1846 to 1848 marked the first U.S. armed conflict chiefly fought on foreign soil. When the dust cleared, Mexico had lost about one-third of its territory, including nearly all of present-day California, Utah, Nevada, Arizona and New Mexico. -
The Kansas-Nebraska Act
The Kansas-Nebraska Act repealed the Missouri Compromise, created two new territories, and allowed for popular sovereignty. It also produced a violent uprising known as “Bleeding Kansas,” as proslavery and antislavery activists flooded into the territories to sway the vote. -
The Seneca Falls Convention
The Seneca Falls Convention was the first women's rights convention. It advertised itself as "a convention to discuss the social, civil, and religious condition and rights of woman". Held in the Wesleyan Chapel of the town of Seneca Falls, New York, -
The California Gold Rush
Gold is discovered at Sutter's Mill in California. After news spread that gold had been discovered there, thousands of Americans dropped everything they had and moved to California. By 1849, it was the peak of the Gold Rush, thus, creating the name forty-niners for the many miners that searched for gold there. This event greatly increased America's westward expansion. -
Abraham Lincoln Becomes the 16th President of the U.S.
Abraham Lincoln was elected president in 1860 and again in 1864 His first inauguration, on March 4,1861, featured an unprecedented amount of security around the president-elect, spurred by the approaching onset of the U.S. Civil War.
Lincoln had campaigned against Stephen Douglas, mostly in a series of debates which addressed popular sovereignty and slavery. Guided by the phrase in the Declaration of Independence that “All men are created equal,” Lincoln spoke against slavery. -
The Beginning of the American Civil War
The American Civil War was a four-year war (1861–65) between the United States and 11 Southern states that seceded from the Union and formed the Confederate States of America. -
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." -
The Alaska Purchase
The Alaska Purchase was the purchase of Alaska from the Russian Empire to the United States for a sum of $7.2 million in 1867. -
The End Of The American Civil War
The American Civil War was a four-year war (1861–65) between the United States and 11 Southern states that seceded from the Union and formed the Confederate States of America. -
President Abraham Lincoln Was Assassinated
On April 14, 1865, at approximately 10:20 p.m., John Wilkes Booth, a prominent American actor, snuck up behind President Abraham Lincoln as he watched a play at Ford’s Theater, and shot him in the back of the head at point-blank range. The President was carried across the street to a private home where he died early the following morning. -
The 13th Amendment
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. -
The 14h Amendment
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws… -
Completion Of The First Transcontinental Railroad
The First Transcontinental Railroad was completed on May 10, 1869, when the Central Pacific Railroad's tracks from the west met the Union Pacific Railroad's tracks from the east in Promontory Summit, Utah. Leland Stanford, the founder of Stanford University, drove the ceremonial "Golden Spike" with a mallet to mark the occasion. -
The 15th Amendment
The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color or previous condition of servitude… -
The Land Rush of 1889
The Land Run of 1889, although not without precedent in the history of the West, began the disposal of the federal public domain in Oklahoma. The legal basis for opening the Oklahoma District, now called the Unassigned Lands, came in 1889 when, in the U.S. Congress, Illinois Rep. William Springer amended the Indian Appropriations Bill to authorize Pres. Benjamin Harrison to proclaim the two-million-acre region open for settlement. -
Plessy v Ferguson
Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537, was a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision ruling that racial segregation laws did not violate the U.S. Constitution as long as the facilities for each race were equal in quality, a doctrine that came to be known as "separate but equal". -
The Spanish-American War
The Spanish-American War of 1898 ended Spain’s colonial empire in the Western Hemisphere and secured the position of the United States as a Pacific power. U.S. victory in the war produced a peace treaty that compelled the Spanish to relinquish claims on Cuba, and to cede sovereignty over Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines to the United States. The United States also annexed the independent state of Hawaii during the conflict. -
Hurricane in Galveston, Texas
The Galveston, Texas hurricane, with winds of 135 miles an hour, kills 8,000 people. It remains the most deadly natural disaster in American history. It was not named, during that era, and would have been a Category 4 storm on the Saffir-Simpson scale today.