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1436
Christopher Columbus
Christopher Columbus was an Italian explorer, navigator, and colonizer. Born in the Republic of Genoa, under the auspices of the Catholic Monarchs of Spain he completed four voyages across the Atlantic Ocean. Those voyages and his efforts to establish settlements on the island of Hispaniola, initiated the permanent European colonization of the New World. -
Period: 1436 to May 20, 1506
Christopher Columbus
The explorer Christopher Columbus made four trips across the Atlantic Ocean from Spain. He was determined to find a direct water route west from Europe to Asia, but he never did. Instead, he accidentally stumbled upon the Americas. He is the one who proved the the world was not flat. -
1492
First American to Enter North America
The first people founded North America and made everything how it is today. -
1492
Christopher Columbus Lands
After sailing across the Atlantic Ocean, Italian explorer Christopher Columbus sights a Bahamian island, believing he has reached East Asia. His expedition went ashore the same day and claimed the land for Isabella and Ferdinand of Spain, who sponsored his attempt to find a western ocean route to China, India, and the fabled gold and spice islands of Asia. -
Mercantilism
The economic theory that trade generates wealth and is stimulated by the accumulation of profitable balances, which a government should encourage by means of protectionism. -
Jamestown
The Jamestown settlement in the Colony of Virginia was the first permanent English settlement in the Americas. It was located on the east bank of the Powhatan (James) River about 2.5 mi (4 km) southwest of the center of modern Williamsburg. William Kelso writes that Jamestown "is where the British Empire began". -
Navigation Act of 1651
The Navigation Act of 1651, aimed primarily at the Dutch, required all trade between England and the colonies to be carried in English or colonial vessels, resulting in the Anglo-Dutch War in 1652. -
Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin was an American polymath and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. Franklin was a leading author, printer, political theorist, politician, free mason, postmaster, scientist, inventor, humorist, civic activist, statesman, and diplomat. As a scientist, he was a major figure in the American Enlightenment and the history of physics for his discoveries and theories regarding electricity. -
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George Washington
He was the first president of the United states.He was also one of the founding fathers of the US. He was the commander of the Continental Army. -
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Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson was an American Founding Father who was the principal author of the Declaration of Independence. He was the third president of the US. -
French and Indian War
The French and Indian War comprised the North American theater of the worldwide Seven Years' War of 1756–63. It pitted the colonies of British America against those of New France. Both sides were supported by military units from their parent countries of Great Britain and France, as well as by American Indian allies. -
Proclamation of 1763
The Royal Proclamation of 1763 was issued October 7, 1763, by King George III following Great Britain's acquisition of French territory in North America after the end of the French and Indian War/Seven Years' War, which forbade all settlement west of a line drawn along the Appalachian Mountains. -
Stamp Act
An act of the British Parliament in 1765 that exacted revenue from the American colonies by imposing a stamp duty on newspapers and legal and commercial documents. Colonial opposition led to the act's repeal in 1766 and helped encourage the revolutionary movement against the Crown. -
Boston Massacre
The Boston Massacre, known as the Incident on King Street by the British, was an incident on March 5, 1770, in which British Army soldiers shot and killed several people while under attack by a mob. -
Boston Tea Party
Boston Tea Party was incident in which 342 chests of tea belonging to the British East India Company were thrown from ships into Boston Harbor by American patriots disguised as Mohawk Indians. -
American Revolution
The American Revolution was a colonial revolt that took place between 1765 and 1783. The American Patriots in the Thirteen Colonies won independence from Great Britain, becoming the United States of America. They defeated the British in the American Revolutionary War in alliance with France and others. -
Declaration of Independence
The United States Declaration of Independence is the statement adopted by the Second Continental Congress meeting at the Pennsylvania State House. The Declaration announced that the thirteen American colonies then at war with the Kingdom of Great Britain would regard themselves as thirteen independent sovereign states no longer under British rule. With the Declaration, these new states took a collective first step toward forming the United States of America. -
United States Constitution Signed
This was the same place the Declaration of Independence was signed. The Constitution was written during the Philadelphia Convention—now known as the Constitutional Convention—which convened from May 25 to September 17, 1787. It was signed on September 17, 1787. -
The Enlightenment
The Enlightenment was an intellectual and philosophical movement that dominated the world of ideas in Europe during the 18th century, "The Century of Philosophy". The Enlightenment included a range of ideas centered on reason as the primary source of authority and legitimacy and came to advance ideals like liberty, progress, tolerance, fraternity, constitutional government and separation of church and state. -
Westward Expansion
In 1803 the Louisiana Purchase took place, doubling the size of the country. By 1840 almost 7 million Americans had migrated westward in hopes of securing land and being prosperous. The belief that settlers were destined to expand to the west is often referred to as Manifest Destiny. -
Louisiana Purchase
The Louisiana Purchase was the acquisition of the Louisiana territory by the United States from France in 1803. The U.S. paid fifty million francs and a cancellation of debts worth eighteen million francs for a total of sixty-eight million francs. -
Lewis and Clark
The Lewis and Clark Expedition from May 1804 to September 1806, also known as the Corps of Discovery Expedition, was the first American expedition to cross what is now the western portion of the United States. -
Lewis and Clark Expedition
It was the first expedition to cross the western part of the United States. It began near ST. Louis, made its way westward and reached the Pacific coast. The Corps of Discovery comprised a selected group for US Army volunteers under the command of captain Meriwether Lewis and his close friend, Second Lieutenant William Clark. -
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln was an American statesman and lawyer who served as the 16th President of the United States from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. -
Jacksonian Democracy
Jacksonian democracy was a 19th-century political philosophy in the United States that espoused greater democracy for the common man as that term was then defined. Originating with President Andrew Jackson and his supporters, it became the nation's dominant political worldview for a generation. -
Election of 1828
The United States presidential election of 1828 was the 11th quadrennial presidential election. Jackson defeated Adams, marking the start of Democratic dominance in federal politics. It featured a re-match of the 1824 election, as incumbent President John Quincy Adams of the National Republican Party faced Andrew Jackson of the nascent Democratic Party. After the 1824 election, Jackson's supporters immediately began plans for a re-match in 1828. -
Abolitionist Movement
The abolitionist movement was a social and political push for the immediate emancipation of all slaves and the end of racial discrimination and segregation. Abolitionists are distinguished from free-soldiers, who opposed the further extension of slavery, but the groups came to act together politically and otherwise in the antislavery cause. The abolitionist movement was one of high moral purpose and courage. -
Indian Removal Act
The Indian Removal Act was signed by President Andrew Jackson on May 28, 1830. The law authorized the president to negotiate with southern Native American tribes for their removal to federal territory west of the Mississippi River in exchange for their lands. -
Manifest Destiny
The 19th-century doctrine or belief that the expansion of the US throughout the American continents was both justified and inevitable. -
Andrew Jackson
Andrew Jackson was an American soldier and statesman who served as the seventh president of the United States from 1829 to 1837. Before being elected to the presidency, Jackson gained fame as a general in the United States Army and served in both houses of Congress. -
Mexican American War
The Mexican–American War, also known as the Mexican War in the United States and in Mexico as the American intervention in Mexico, was an armed conflict between the United States of America and the United Mexican States. On April 25, 1846, Mexican cavalry attacked a group of U.S. soldiers in the disputed zone under the command of General Zachary Taylor, killing about a dozen. They then laid siege to an American fort along the Rio Grande. -
Dred Scott
Dred Scott was an enslaved African American man in the United States who unsuccessfully sued for his freedom and that of his wife and their two daughters in the Dred Scott v. Sandford case of 1857, popularly known as the "Dred Scott Decision". -
Compromise of 1850
As part of the Compromise of 1850, the Fugitive Slave Act was amended and the slave trade in Washington, D.C., was abolished. California entered the Union as a free state and a territorial government was created in Utah. The general solution was to transfer a considerable part of the territory claimed by the state to the federal government; to organize two new territories formally, New Mexico and Utah, which expressly would be allowed to locally determine if they were free or not. -
Dred Scott Decision
Dred Scott decision legal case in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a slave who had resided in a free state and territory was not entitled to his freedom; that African Americans were not and could never be citizens of the United States; and that the Missouri Compromise, which had declared free all territories west of Missouri, was unconstitutional. The decision added fuel to the sectional controversy and pushed the country closer to civil war. -
Election of 1860
The United States Presidential Election of 1860 was the nineteenth quadrennial presidential election to select the President and Vice President of the United States. The election was held on Tuesday, November 6, 1860.In 1860, Lincoln won the party's presidential nomination. In the November 1860 election, Lincoln again faced Douglas, who represented the Northern faction of a heavily divided Democratic Party, as well as Breckinridge and Bell. -
Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war that was fought in the United States from 1861 to 1865. As a result of the long-standing controversy over slavery, war broke out in April 1861, when Confederate forces attacked Fort Sumter in South Carolina, shortly after U.S. President Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated. -
Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass was an African-American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman. After escaping from slavery in Maryland, he became a national leader of the abolitionist movement in Massachusetts and New York, gaining note for his oratory and incisive antislavery writings. In his time, he was described by abolitionists as a living counter-example to slaveholders' arguments that slaves lacked the intellectual capacity to function as independent American citizens. -
Era of Reform
The Progressive Era was a period of widespread social activism and political reform across the United States that spanned from the 1890s to the 1920s. The main objectives of the Progressive movement were eliminating problems caused by industrialization, urbanization, immigration, and corruption in government.