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The Louisiana Purchase was a land deal between the United States and France for 15 million dollars. It doubled the size of the US. -
Robert Fulton built the first successful steamboat called the Clermont. Its first trip was up the Hudson River in New York at the "fast" speed of 5 mph. Steamboats helped in the commercial success of the US. -
The Missouri Compromise was written to address the growing sectional tensions over the issue of slavery. President Monroe signed the law and it maintained a delegate balance of admitting free and slave states. For example, at the time, Missouri was admitted as a slave state and Maine as a free state. -
Almost 60,000 American Indians were forced and displaced off their ancestral land, by the United States government, to areas west of the Mississippi River that had been designated Indian Territory.
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Samuel Morse patented the telegraph in 1834. However, the first telegraph was not sent until 1844. It read, "What Hath God Wrought?" It worked by transmitting electrical signals over a wire laid between stations. -
The Battle of the Alamo is considered a pivotal moment in The Texas Revolution. Although the Mexican army was victorious in recapturing the fort and almost all of the 200 Texan defenders were killed; it rallied the rest of Texas to fight against the Mexican army eventually leading to a victory over Santa Ana. -
Texas became the 28th state in the United States. Texas entered the United States as a slave state, broadening the irrepressible differences in the United States over the issue of slavery and setting off the Mexican-American War. -
Abe Lincoln was an American lawyer and statesman. As President, he built the Republican Party into a strong national organization. He was known for "preserving the union." -
Conflict began primarily as a result of the long-standing disagreement over the issue of slavery, westward expansion and states rights. The Civil War was fought between the United States of America and the Confederate States of America, a collection of eleven southern states that left the Union between 1860-1861.
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President Lincoln delivered the inspirational and famously short (272 word) Gettysburg Address was praised for reinvigorating national ideals of freedom, liberty and justice amid a Civil War that had torn the country into pieces. -
While attending the play "Our American Cousin" at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C., Abraham Lincoln was assassinated by well-known stage actor John Wilkes Booth. He was a Southern sympathizers who believed that the Confederacy could be restored and that Lincoln was determined to overthrow the Constitution and to destroy his beloved South. -
The 13th Amendment forever abolished slavery as an institution in all of the U.S.