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Colonization of Jamestown
A group of roughly 100 members of a joint venture called the Virginia Company founded the first permanent English settlement in North America. -
Pilgrims landing at Plymouth
Over a hundred travelers embarked on the voyage of the Mayflower in September 1620. Less than one third were Separatists. The rest were immigrants, adventurers, and speculators. -
Pequot War
Despite early attempts to reconcile differences, continued confrontations precipitated the first war between Native Americans and English settlers in northeastern America and set the stage for the ultimate domination of the region by Europeans. The War not only involved the Pequots and the English Puritans, but several other Indians tribes, some of which, including the Mohegans, aligned themselves with the English. -
Bacon’s Rebellion
Bacon's Rebellion was probably one of the most confusing yet intriguing chapters in Jamestown's history. For many years, historians considered the Virginia Rebellion of 1676 to be the first stirring of revolutionary sentiment in America, which culminated in the American Revolution almost exactly one hundred years later. However, in the past few decades, based on findings from a more distant viewpoint, historians have come to understand Bacon's Rebellion as a power struggle between two stubborn, -
King Philip's War
King Philip’s War (1675-1676) marked the last major effort by the Native Americans of southern New England to drive out the English settlers. With tensions spilling over following the collapse of trade partnerships and aggressive expansion of colonist territories, Pokunoket chief Metacom — a.k.a. King Philip — led a bloody uprising of Wampanoag, Nipmuck, Pocumtuck and Narragansett tribes. The fighting lasted fourteen months and destroyed twelve frontier towns, ending shortly after Metacom was ca -
Salem Witch Trials
The infamous Salem witch trials began during the spring of 1692, after a group of young girls in Salem Village, Massachusetts, claimed to be possessed by the devil and accused several local women of witchcraft. As a wave of hysteria spread throughout colonial Massachusetts, a special court convened in Salem to hear the cases; the first convicted witch, Bridget Bishop, was hanged that June. -
French and Indian War
Also known as the Seven Years’ War, this New World conflict marked another chapter in the long imperial struggle between Britain and France. When France’s expansion into the Ohio River valley brought repeated conflict with the claims of the British colonies, a series of battles led to the official British declaration of war in 1756. -
Treaty of Paris 1763
The Treaty of Paris of 1763 ended the French and Indian War/Seven Years’ War between Great Britain and France, as well as their respective allies. In the terms of the treaty, France gave up all its territories in mainland North America, effectively ending any foreign military threat to the British colonies there. -
Pontiac's War/Rebellion
Pontiac’s Rebellion begins when a confederacy of Native American warriors under Ottawa chief Pontiac attacks the British force at Detroit. After failing to take the fort in their initial assault, Pontiac’s forces, made up of Ottawas and reinforced by Wyandots, Ojibwas, and Potawatamis, initiated a siege that would stretch into months. -
Proclamation of 1763
The Proclamation of 1763 was made following the British victory over France in the French and Indian Wars. The Royal Proclamation of 1763 was perceived as being beneficial to the Native American Indians and Great Britain but as detrimental to the colonists. It was a line that colonists couldn't go past so the Native Americans could have their own land. -
Intolerable/Coercive Acts
The Coercive Acts were a series of four acts established by the British government. The aim of the legislation was to restore order in Massachusetts and punish Bostonians for their Tea Party, in which members of the revolutionary-minded Sons of Liberty boarded three British tea ships in Boston Harbor and dumped 342 crates of tea—nearly $1 million worth in today’s money—into the water to protest the Tea Act. -
Articles of Confederation
The Articles of Confederation served as the written document that established the functions of the national government of the United States after it declared independence from Great Britain. It established a weak central government that mostly, but not entirely, prevented the individual states from conducting their own foreign diplomacy. -
Shays’ Rebellion
Shays’ Rebellion is the name given to a series of protests in 1786 and 1787 by American farmers against state and local enforcement of tax collections and judgments for debt. Although farmers took up arms in states from New Hampshire to South Carolina, the rebellion was most serious in Massachusetts, where bad harvests, economic depression, and high taxes threatened farmers with the loss of their farms. The rebellion took its name from its symbolic leader, Daniel Shays of Massachusetts, a former -
Constitutional Convention
The Constitutional Convention also known as the Philadelphia Convention, the Federal Convention, or the Grand Convention at Philadelphia took place from May 25 to September 17, 1787, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. -
Addition of Northwest Territory
Congress enacted the Northwest Ordinance, structuring settlement of the Northwest Territory and creating a policy for the addition of new states to the nation. -
Northwest Ordinance of 1787
In 1787, Congress enacted the Northwest Ordinance, structuring settlement of the Northwest Territory and creating a policy for the addition of new states to the nation. -
George Washington
George Washington was the first President of the United States, the Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War, and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. -
Judiciary Act of 1789
In the Judiciary Act of 1789, the First Congress provided the detailed organization of a federal judiciary that the Constitution had sketched only in general terms. Acting on its constitutional authority to establish inferior courts, the Congress instituted a three-part judiciary. The Supreme Court consisted of a Chief Justice and five associate justices. In each state and in Kentucky and Maine (then part of other states), a federal judge presided over a United States district court, which heard -
Whiskey Rebellion
In January 1791, President George Washington's Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton proposed a seemingly innocuous excise tax "upon spirits distilled within the United States, and for appropriating the same."1 What Congress failed to predict was the vehement rejection of this tax by Americans living on the frontier of Western Pennsylvania. By 1794, the Whiskey Rebellion threatened the stability of the nascent United States and forced President Washington to personally lead the United Sta -
Bill of Rights
The first 10 amendments to the Constitution make up the Bill of Rights. Written by James Madison in response to calls from several states for greater constitutional protection for individual liberties, the Bill of Rights lists specific prohibitions on governmental power. The Virginia Declaration of Rights, written by George Mason, strongly influenced Madison. -
Adams
John Adams, Jr. was an American lawyer, author, statesman, and diplomat. He served as the second President of the United States, the first Vice President, and as a Founding Father was a leader of American independence from Great Britain. -
John Adams
John Adams, Jr. was an American lawyer, author, statesman, and diplomat. He served as the second President of the United States, the first Vice President, and as a Founding Father was a leader of American independence from Great Britain. -
Alien and Sedition Acts
The Alien and Sedition Acts were passed by Congress in 1798 in preparation for an anticipated war with France. The Naturalization Act increased the residency requirement for American citizenship from five to fourteen years, required aliens to declare their intent to acquire citizenship five years before it could be granted, and rendered people from enemy nations ineligible for naturalization. -
Lousiana Purchase
Te United States purchased approximately 828,000,000 square miles of territory from France, thereby doubling the size of the young republic. What was known as Louisiana Territory stretched from the Mississippi River in the east to the Rocky Mountains in the west and from the Gulf of Mexico in the south to the Canadian border in the north. -
Marbury v. Madison
In Marbury v. Madison (1803) the Supreme Court announced for the first time the principle that a court may declare an act of Congress void if it is inconsistent with the Constitution. William Marbury had been appointed a justice of the peace for the District of Columbia in the final hours of the Adams administration. When James Madison, Thomas Jefferson’s secretary of state, refused to deliver Marbury’s commission, Marbury, joined by three other similarly situated appointees, petitioned for a wr -
Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson was an American Founding Father who was principal author of the Declaration of Independence. He was elected the second Vice President of the United States, serving under John Adams and in 1800 was elected third President. -
Madison
James Madison, Jr. was a political theorist, American statesman, and served as the fourth President of the United States. -
Monroe
James Monroe was the fifth President of the United States, serving between 1817 and 1825. Monroe was the last president who was a Founding Father of the United States and the last president from the Virginian dynasty and the Republican Generation. -
Quincy Adams
John Quincy Adams was an American statesman who served as the sixth President of the United States from 1825 to 1829. He also served as a diplomat, a Senator and member of the House of Representatives. -
Jackson
Andrew Jackson was the seventh President of the United States. He was born near the end of the colonial era, somewhere near the then-unmarked border between North and South Carolina. -
Nat Turner’s Rebellion
Believing in signs and hearing divine voices, Turner was convinced by an eclipse of the Sun (1831) that the time to rise up had come, and he enlisted the help of four other slaves in the area. An insurrection was planned, aborted, and rescheduled for August 21,1831, when he and six other slaves killed the Travis family, managed to secure arms and horses, and enlisted about 75 other slaves in a disorganized insurrection that resulted in the murder of 51 white people. -
Van Buren
Martin Van Buren was an American politician who served as the eighth President of the United States. -
Trail of Tears
The U.S. government used the Treaty of New Echota in 1835 to justify the removal. The treaty, signed by about 100 Cherokees known as the Treaty Party, relinquished all lands east of the Mississippi River in exchange for land in Indian Territory and the promise of money, livestock, various provisions, tools and other benefits. -
Harrison
William Henry Harrison was the ninth President of the United States, an American military officer and politician, and the last President born as a British subject. He was also the first president to die in office. -
Tyler
John Tyler was the tenth President of the United States. He was elected vice president on the 1840 Whig ticket with William Henry Harrison, and became president after his running mate's death in April 1841. -
Polk
James Knox Polk was the 11th President of the United States. Polk was born in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina. He later lived in and represented Tennessee. -
Mormon Migration
Mormons had been considering moving west -- beyond the borders of the United States -- since before Joseph Smith's 1844 murder, but his assassination made it clear that the period of relative calm the Mormon faithful had enjoyed in Nauvoo, Illinois, was coming to an end. In 1845 mob violence against the Mormon community increased, and the Illinois legislature revoked the city's charter. -
Mexican Cession
In February 1848, the two countries signed the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo. The treaty recognized Texas as a U.S. state, and ceded a large chunk of land — about half the area that belonged to the Mexican republic — to the United States for the cost of $15 million. The Mexican Cession included land that would later become California, Nevada, and Utah, as well as portions of Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Wyoming. -
Seneca Falls Convention
At the Wesleyan Chapel in Seneca Falls, N.Y., a woman’s rights convention–the first ever held in the United States–convenes with almost 200 women in attendance. The convention was organized by Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, two abolitionists who met at the 1840 World Anti-Slavery Convention in London. As women, Mott and Stanton were barred from the convention floor, and the common indignation that this aroused in both of them was the impetus for their founding of the women’s rights mo -
Gold Rush
The discovery of gold nuggets in the Sacramento Valley in early 1848 sparked the Gold Rush, arguably one of the most significant events to shape American history during the first half of the 19th century. As news spread of the discovery, thousands of prospective gold miners traveled by sea or over land to San Francisco and the surrounding area; by the end of 1849, the non-native population of the California territory was some 100,000 (compared with the pre-1848 figure of less than 1,000). A tota -
Taylor
Zachary Taylor was the 12th President of the United States, serving from March 1849 until his death in July 1850. Before his presidency, Taylor was a career officer in the United States Army, rising to the rank of major general. -
Fillmore
Millard Fillmore was the 13th President of the United States, the last Whig president, and the last president not to be affiliated with either the Democratic or Republican parties. -
Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. -
Gasden Purchase
The Gadsden Purchase, or Treaty, was an agreement between the United States and Mexico, finalized in 1854, in which the United States agreed to pay Mexico $10 million for a 29,670 square mile portion of Mexico that later became part of Arizona and New Mexico. Gadsden’s Purchase provided the land necessary for a southern transcontinental railroad and attempted to resolve conflicts that lingered after the Mexican-American War. -
Pierce
Franklin Pierce was the 14th President of the United States. Pierce was a northern Democrat who saw the abolitionist movement as a fundamental threat to the unity of the nation. -
Kansas Nebraska Act
The Kansas-Nebrask Act was an 1854 bill that mandated “popular sovereignty”–allowing settlers of a territory to decide whether slavery would be allowed within a new state’s borders. -
Buchanan
James Buchanan, Jr. was the 15th President of the United States, serving immediately prior to the American Civil War. -
Homestead Act
Passed on May 20, 1862, the Homestead Act accelerated the settlement of the western territory by granting adult heads of families 160 acres of surveyed public land for a minimal filing fee and 5 years of continuous residence on that land. -
Purchase of Alaska
The purchase of Alaska in 1867 marked the end of Russian efforts to expand trade and settlements to the Pacific coast of North America, and became an important step in the United States rise as a great power in the Asia-Pacific region. -
Grant
Ulysses S. Grant was the 18th President of the United States. As Commanding General of the United States Army, Grant worked closely with President Abraham Lincoln to lead the Union Army to victory over the Confederacy in the American Civil War. -
Completion of Transcontinental Railroad
For the first time in American history, railways linked together east and west. In 1850, more than 9,000 miles of track covered the United States. By 1860, the number had risen to over 30,000 miles, more miles of rail than the rest of the world altogether. Initially, most of the construction had been in the nation’s growing industrial centers in the Northeast, but by 1860, railways were rapidly expanding into the upper Midwest. -
Hayes
Rutherford Birchard Hayes was the 19th President of the United States. As president, he oversaw the end of Reconstruction, began the efforts that led to civil service reform, and attempted to reconcile. -
Johnson
Lyndon Baines Johnson, often referred to as LBJ, was the 36th President of the United States from 1963 to 1969, assuming the office after serving as the 37th Vice President of the United States from 1961 to 1963.
