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James Monroe Elected President
James Monroe, (born April 28, 1758, Westmoreland county, Virginia [U.S.]—died July 4, 1831, New York, New York, U.S.), fifth president of the United States (1817–25), who issued an important contribution to U.S. foreign policy in the Monroe Doctrine, a warning to European nations against intervening in the Western Hemisphere. The period of his administration has been called the Era of Good Feelings. -
Andrew Jackson Elected President
Andrew Jackson (March 15, 1767 – June 8, 1845) 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. -
Denmark Vesey Slave Revolt
Denmark Vesey, (born c. 1767, probably St. Thomas, Danish West Indies—died July 2, 1822, Charleston, S.C., U.S.), self-educated black who planned the most extensive slave revolt in U.S. history (Charleston, 1822). Sold as a boy in 1781 to a Bermuda slaver captain named Joseph Vesey, young Denmark, who assumed his master’s surname, accompanied him on numerous voyages and in 1783 settled with his owner in Charleston. -
Black Hawk War
Black Hawk, Indian name Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak, (born 1767, Saukenuk [now in Rock Island, Illinois]—died October 3, 1838, village on the Des Moines River, southeastern Iowa Territory [now in northeastern Davis county, Iowa]), leader of a faction of Sauk, Fox, Kickapoo, and Ho-Chunk (Winnebago) peoples. Black Hawk and his followers contested the disposition of territory that had supposedly been granted to the United States by tribal spokesmen in the Treaty of St. Louis in 1804. -
Death of Tecumseh
Tecumseh, also spelled Tecumthe, Tikamthe, or Tecumtha , (born 1768, Old Piqua [modern Clark county, Ohio, U.S.]—died October 5, 1813, near Thames River, Upper Canada [now in Ontario, Canada]), Shawnee Indian chief, orator, military leader, and advocate of intertribal Indian alliance who directed Indian resistance to white rule in the Ohio River valley. -
Gabriel Professor
Gabriel, also called Gabriel Prosser , (born c. 1775, near Richmond, Va. [U.S.]—died September 1800, Richmond), American bondsman who planned the first major slave rebellion in U.S. history (Aug. 30, 1800). His abortive revolt greatly increased the whites’ fear of the slave population throughout the South. -
Francis Cabot Lowell Smuggled Memorized Textile Mill Plans From Manchester, England
Francis Cabot Lowell, (born April 7, 1775, Newburyport, Mass., U.S.—died Aug. 10, 1817, Boston), American businessman, a member of the gifted Lowell family of Massachusetts and the principal founder of what is said to have been the world’s first textile mill in which were performed all operations converting raw cotton into finished cloth. -
Second Great Awakening Began
The Second Great Awakening was a Protestant religious revival during the early 19th century in the United States. The movement began around 1790, gained momentum by 1800 and, after 1820, membership rose rapidly among Baptist and Methodist congregations whose preachers led the movement. -
Eli Whitney Patented the Cotton Gin
In 1794, U.S.-born inventor Eli Whitney (1765-1825) patented the cotton gin, a machine that revolutionized the production of cotton by greatly speeding up the process of removing seeds from cotton fiber. -
Horace Mann Elected Secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education
Horace Mann, (born May 4, 1796, Franklin, Massachusetts, U.S.—died August 2, 1859, Yellow Springs, Ohio), American educator, the first great American advocate of public education, who believed that, in a democratic society, education should be free and universal, nonsectarian, democratic in method, and reliant on well-trained professional teachers. -
Thomas Jefferson Elected President
On this day in 1801, Thomas Jefferson is elected the third president of the United States. The election constitutes the first peaceful transfer of power from one political party to another in the United States. -
Chesapeake-Leopard Affair
Tripolitan War, (1801–05), conflict between the United States and Tripoli (now in Libya), incited by American refusal to continue payment of tribute to the piratical rulers of the North African Barbary States of Algiers, Tunis, Morocco, and Tripoli; this practice had been customary among European nations and the nascent United States in exchange for immunity from attack on merchant vessels in the Mediterranean. -
Marbury vs. Madison
Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137, was a U.S. Supreme Court case that established the principle of judicial review in the United States, meaning that American courts have the power to strike down laws, statutes, and some government actions that contravene the U.S. Constitution. -
Louisiana Purchase
The Louisiana Purchase (1803) was a land deal between the United States and France, in which the U.S. acquired approximately 827,000 square miles of land west of the Mississippi River for $15 million. -
Beginning of Lewis and Clark Expedition
Lewis and Clark Expedition, (1804–06), U.S. military expedition, led by Capt. Meriwether Lewis and Lieut. William Clark, to explore the Louisiana Purchase and the Pacific Northwest. The expedition was a major chapter in the history of American exploration. -
Joseph Smith Founded the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints
Joseph Smith, originally Joseph Smith, Jr., (born December 23, 1805, Sharon, Vermont, U.S.—died June 27, 1844, Carthage, Illinois), Mormon prophet and founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. -
Embargo Act
The Embargo Act of 1807 was a law passed by the United State Congress and signed by President Thomas Jefferson on December 22, 1807. It prohibited American ships from trading in all foreign ports. ... In 1806, France passed a law that prohibited trade between neutral parties, like the U.S., and Britain. -
Transcendental Club's First Meeting
Frederic Henry Hedge, Ralph Waldo Emerson, George Ripley, and George Putnam (1807–1878; the Unitarian minister in Roxbury) met in Cambridge, Massachusetts on September 8, 1836, to discuss the formation of a new club; their first official meeting was held eleven days later at Ripley's house in Boston. -
James Madison Elected President
The United States presidential election of 1808 was the sixth quadrennial presidential election, held from Friday, November 4, to Wednesday, December 7, 1808. The Democratic-Republican candidate James Madison defeated Federalist candidate Charles Cotesworth Pinckney decisively. -
Non-Intercourse Act
In the last sixteen days of President Thomas Jefferson's presidency, the Congress replaced the Embargo Act of 1807 with the almost unenforceable Non-Intercourse Act of March 1809. This Act lifted all embargoes on American shipping except for those bound for British or French ports. -
End of the War of 1812
The War of 1812 was a conflict fought between the United States, the United Kingdom, and their respective allies from June 1812 to February 1815. Historians in Britain often see it as a minor theater of the Napoleonic Wars; in the United States and Canada, it is seen as a war in its own right. -
Treaty of Ghent Ratified
The Treaty of Ghent ended the War of 1812 between the United States and Great Britain. Peace negotiations began in Ghent, Belgium, starting in August of 1814. After four months of talks, the treaty was signed on December 24, 1814. The Senate unanimously ratified the Treaty of Ghent on February 16, 1815. -
Beginning of Manifest Destiny
The phrase "manifest destiny" is most often associated with the territorial expansion of the United States from 1812 to 1860. This era, from the end of the War of 1812 to the beginning of the American Civil War, has been called the "age of manifest destiny". -
The British Burning Invasion
The Burning of Washington was a British invasion of Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States, during the War of 1812. On August 24, 1814, after defeating the Americans at the Battle of Brandenburg, a British force led by Major General Robert Ross burned down buildings including the White House (known as the Presidential Mansion), and the Capitol, as well as other facilities of the U.S. government. -
Hartford Convention
Hartford Convention, (December 15, 1814–January 5, 1815), in U.S. history, a secret meeting in Hartford, Connecticut, of Federalist delegates from Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont who were dissatisfied with Pres. James Madison’s mercantile policies and the progress of the War of 1812 (“Mr. Madison’s War”), as well as long resentful over the balance of political power that gave the South, particularly Virginia. -
Era of Good Feeling Began
The “Era of Good Feelings” began in 1815 in the mood of victory that swept the nation at the end of the War of 1812. Exaltation replaced the bitter political divisions between Federalists and Republicans, between northern and southern states, and between east-coast cities and settlers on the western frontier. -
Battle of New Orleans
Battle of New Orleans, (January 8, 1815), U.S. victory against Great Britain in the War of 1812 and the final major battle of that conflict. Both the British and American troops were unaware of the peace treaty that had been signed between the two countries in Ghent, Belgium, a few weeks prior, and so the Battle of New Orleans occurred despite the agreements made across the Atlantic. -
Rush-Bagot Treaty
The Rush–Bagot Treaty or Rush–Bagot Disarmament was a treaty between the United States and the United Kingdom limiting naval armaments on the Great Lakes and Lake Champlain, following the War of 1812. It was ratified by the United States Senate on April 16, 1818,[1] and was confirmed by Canada, following Confederation in 1867. -
Anglo-American Convention
The Convention respecting fisheries, boundary and the restoration of slaves between the United States of America and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, also known as the London Convention, Anglo-American Convention of 1818, Convention of 1818, or simply the Treaty of 1818, was an international treaty ... -
Panic of 1819
Panic of 1819. In 1819, the impressive post-War of 1812 economic expansion ended. Banks throughout the country failed; mortgages were foreclosed, forcing people out of their homes and off their farms. Falling prices impaired agriculture and manufacturing, triggering widespread unemployment. -
Adams-Onis Treaty
The Adams-Onís Treaty of 1819, also known as the Transcontinental Treaty, the Florida Purchase Treaty, or the Florida Treaty, 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. -
McCulloch vs Maryland
In McCulloch v. Maryland (1819) the Supreme Court ruled that Congress had implied powers under the Necessary and Proper Clause of Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution to create the Second Bank of the United States and that the state of Maryland lacked the power to tax the Bank. -
Missouri Compromise
The Missouri Compromise was an effort by Congress to defuse the sectional and political rivalries triggered by the request of Missouri late in 1819 for admission as a state in which slavery would be permitted. At the time, the United States contained twenty-two states, evenly divided between slave and free. -
Dartmouth College V. Woodward
Dartmouth College case, formally Trustees of Dartmouth College v. Woodward (4 Wheat. 518 [1819]), U.S. Supreme Court case in which the court held that the charter of Dartmouth College granted in 1769 by King George III of England was a contract and, as such, could not be impaired by the New Hampshire legislature. -
Monroe Doctrine
The Monroe Doctrine was a United States policy of opposing European colonialism in the Americas beginning in 1823. It stated that further efforts by European nations to take control of any independent state in North or South America would be viewed as "the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward the United States. -
Robert Owen Founded the New Harmony Community
(In 1824 George Rapp's Harmony Society, the religious group that owned the property and had founded the communal village of Harmony (or Harmonie) on the site in 1814, decided to relocate to Pennsylvania.) Owen renamed it New Harmony and established the village as his preliminary model for a utopian community. -
Gibbons vs. Georgia
Gibbons v. Ogden, (1824), U.S. Supreme Court case establishing the principle that states cannot, by legislative enactment, interfere with the power of Congress to regulate commerce. The state of New York agreed in 1798 to grant Robert Fulton and his backer, Robert R. Livingston, a monopoly on steamboat navigation in state waters if they developed a steamboat capable of traveling 4 miles (6.4 km) per hour upstream on the Hudson River. -
John Quincy Adams Elected President
On February 9, 1825, the House of Representatives elected John Quincy Adams as president. The 1824 presidential election was the first election in which the winner of the election lost the popular vote. -
Erie Canal Completed
The Erie Canal is a canal in New York, United States that is part of the east–west, cross-state route of the New York State Canal System. Originally, it ran 363 miles from where Albany meets the Hudson River to where Buffalo meets Lake Erie. -
Tariff of Abominations
The Tariff of 1828 was a protective tariff passed by the Congress of the United States on May 19, 1828, designed to protect industry in the northern United States. -
Creation of the Wig Party in the U.S
The Whig Party was a political party active in the middle of the 19th century in the United States. ... It originally formed in opposition to the policies of President Andrew Jackson (in office 1829–1837) and his Democratic Party. -
Charles B. Finney Lead Religious Revivals in Western New York
Revival meetings like the one illustrated here were filled with exuberant outbursts of religious fervor. After having a series of religious visions, Joseph Smith, a young man from Palmyra, New York published the Book of Mormon and established the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in 1830. -
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. -
Worcester vs. Georgia
Worcester v. Georgia, 31 U.S. 515, was a case in which the United States Supreme Court vacated the conviction of Samuel Worcester and held that the Georgia criminal statute that prohibited non-Native Americans from being present on Native American lands without a license from the state was unconstitutional. -
Andrew Jackson Vetoed the Re-Charter of the Second Bank of the United States
Jackson Vetoes Re-Charter of the Second Bank of the US. Andrew Jackson vetoed the bill re-chartering the Second Bank in July 1832 by arguing that in the form presented to him it was incompatible with “justice,” “sound policy” and the Constitution. -
Nullification Crisis Began
In November 1832 the Nullification Convention met. The convention declared that the tariffs of 1828 and 1832 were unconstitutional and unenforceable within the state of South Carolina after February 1, 1833. They said that attempts to use force to collect the taxes would lead to the state's secession. -
Lyman Beecher Delivered His "Six Sermons in Intemperance"
He held pastorates at Litchfield, Conn., and at Boston, during which he opposed rationalism, Catholicism, and the liquor traffic. Turning his attention to evangelizing the West, he became president of the newly founded Lane Theological Seminary in Cincinnati, Ohio (1832–50), and also assumed a new pastorate there (1832–42). His Calvinism, considered strict by Bostonians, proved so mild for western Presbyterians that he was tried for heresy, but his synod acquitted him. -
Treaty of New Echtoa
Treaty of New Echota. It cost three men their lives and provided the legal basis for the Trail of Tears, the forcible removal of the Cherokee Nation from Georgia. The Treaty of New Echota was signed on this day in 1835, ceding Cherokee land to the U.S. in exchange for compensation. -
First McGuffey Reader Published
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Texas Declared Independence from Mexico
The Texas Declaration of Independence was the formal declaration of independence of the Republic of Texas from Mexico in the Texas Revolution. It was adopted at the Convention of 1836 at Washington-on-the-Brazos on March 2, 1836, and formally signed the next day after mistakes were noted in the text. -
Battle of the Alamo
The Battle of the Alamo was a pivotal event in the Texas Revolution. Following a 13-day siege, Mexican troops under President General Antonio López de Santa Anna launched an assault on the Alamo Mission near San Antonio de Béxar, killing the Texian defenders. -
Andrew Jackson Issued of Specie Circular
The Specie Circular is a United States presidential executive order issued by President Andrew Jackson in 1836 pursuant to the Coinage Act and carried out by his successor, President Martin Van Buren. It required payment for government land to be in gold and silver. -
Panic of 1837
The Panic of 1837 was a financial crisis in the United States that touched off a major recession that lasted until the mid-1840s. Profits, prices, and wages went down while unemployment went up. Pessimism abounded during the time. -
Martin Van Buren Elected President
Martin Van Buren was the eighth President of the United States from 1837 to 1841. A founder of the Democratic Party, he previously served as the ninth Governor of New York, the tenth U.S. Secretary of State, and the eighth Vice President of the United States. -
Ralph Waldo Emerson gave the "Divinity School Address"
The "Divinity School Address" is the common name for the speech Ralph Waldo Emerson gave to the graduating class of Harvard Divinity School on July 15, 1838. -
Trail of Tears Began
In 1838 and 1839, as part of Andrew Jackson's Indian removal policy, the Cherokee nation was forced to give up its lands east of the Mississippi River and to migrate to an area in present-day Oklahoma. The Cherokee people called this journey the "Trail of Tears," because of its devastating effects. -
Catherine Beecher Published Essay on the Education of Female Teacher
In 1841, she published her most well-known work, A Treatise on Domestic Economy, which aimed to codify domestic duties and emphasized the importance of women's labor. Beecher extolled the feminine virtues and believed that femininity was innately suited to the responsibilities of both mothers and teachers. -
Webster-Ashburton Treaty
The Webster–Ashburton Treaty, signed August 9, 1842, was a treaty that resolved several border issues between the United States and the British North American colonies (the region that became Canada). -
Treaty of Wanghia with China
The Treaty of Wanghia was a diplomatic agreement between Qing-dynasty China and the United States, signed on July 3, 1844 in the Kun Iam Temple. Its official title name is the Treaty of peace, amity, and commerce, between the United States of America and the Chinese Empire. -
James Polk Elected President
The United States presidential election of 1844 was the 15th quadrennial presidential election, held from November 1, to December 4, 1844. Democrat James K. Polk defeated Whig Henry Clay in a close contest that turned on the controversial issues of slavery and the annexation of the Republic of Texas. -
U.S. Annexation of Texas
The Annexation of Texas, the Mexican-American War, and the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo, 1845–1848. During his tenure, U.S. President James K. Polk oversaw the greatest territorial expansion of the United States to date. -
Bear Flag Revolt
During the Bear Flag Revolt, from June to July 1846, a small group of American settlers in California rebelled against the Mexican government and proclaimed California an independent republic. -
Start of the Mexican War
Mexican-American War, also called Mexican War, Spanish Guerra de 1847 or Guerra de Estados Unidos a Mexico (“War of the United States Against Mexico”), war between the United States and Mexico (April 1846–February 1848) stemming from the United States’ annexation of Texas in 1845 and from a dispute over whether Texas ended at the Nueces River (Mexican claim) or the Rio Grande (U.S. claim). The war—in which U.S. forces were consistently victorious results. -
John Humphrey Noyes Founded the Oneida Community
The Oneida Community was a perfectionist religious communal society founded by John Humphrey Noyes in 1848 in Oneida, New York. ... The Oneida Community practiced communalism (in the sense of communal property and possessions), complex marriage, male sexual continence, and mutual criticism. -
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, (Feb. 2, 1848), treaty between the United States and Mexico that ended the Mexican War. It was signed at Villa de Guadalupe Hidalgo. The treaty drew the boundary between the United States and Mexico at the Rio Grande and the Gila River; for a payment of $15,000,000 the United States received more than 525,000 square miles. -
Gold Rush Began in California
The California Gold Rush began on January 24, 1848, when 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. -
Henry David Thoreau Published Civil Disobedience
Resistance to Civil Government (Civil Disobedience) is an essay by American transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau that was first published in 1849. In it, Thoreau argues that individuals should not permit governments to overrule or atrophy their consciences, and that they have a duty to avoid allowing such acquiescence to enable the government to make them the agents of injustice. Thoreau was motivated in part by his disgust with slavery and the Mexican–American War (1846–1848). -
Commodore Matthew Perry Entered Tokyo Harbor Opening Japan to the U.S.
The United States and the Opening to Japan, 1853. On July 8, 1853, American Commodore Matthew Perry led his four ships into the harbor at Tokyo Bay, seeking to re-establish for the first time in over 200 years regular trade and discourse between Japan and the western world. -
Gadsden Purchase
The Gadsden Purchase is a 29,670-square-mile region of present-day southern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico that the United States purchased via a treaty that took effect on June 8, 1854. -
Kanagawa Treaty
In Tokyo, Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry, representing the U.S. government, signs the Treaty of Kanagawa with the Japanese government, opening the ports of Shimoda and Hakodate to American trade and permitting the establishment of a U.S. consulate in Japan.
