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1492
Christopher Columbus sets sail
The Spanish monarchs Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile subsided the voyages of Christopher Columbus. Columbus set sail in three small ships in August 1492. Six weeks later, after a perilous voyage of 3,000 miles, he disembarked on an island in the present-day Bahamas. Believing that he had reached Asia, Columbus called the native inhabitants Indians and the islands the West Indies. He then claimed the islands for Spain. -
1492
The Columbian Exchange
Christopher Columbus introduced horses, sugar plants, and disease to the New World, while facilitating the introduction of New World commodities like sugar, tobacco, chocolate, and potatoes to the Old World. The process by which commodities, people, and diseases crossed the Atlantic is known as the Columbian Exchange. It resulted in the mixing of people, and deadly diseases that devastated the Native American population, crops, animals, goods, and trade flows. -
1517
The Protestant Challenge to Spain
The defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588 was but one part of a larger but undeclared war between Protestant England and Catholic Spain. Between 1585 and 1604, the two rivals sparred repeatedly. England launched its own armada in 1589 in an effort to cripple the Spanish fleet and capture Spanish treasure. -
1534
New France
New France was the area colonized by France in North America, beginning with the exploration of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence by Jacques Cartier in 1534 and ending with the cession of New France to Great Britain and Spain in 1763 under the Treaty of Paris. The regions in New France included Quebec, Acadia, and the Louisiana Territory. -
1540
Puritans
In building their communities, New England Puritans consciously rejected the feudal practices of English society. All families received some land, and most adult men had a vote in the town meeting, the main institution of local government. From the time of their first arrival in Pueblo country in 1540, Spanish soldiers and Franciscan missionaries in the colony of New Mexico had attempted to dominate its Indian communities. -
The Spainś Armada
Spain's “Invincible Armada” set sail that May, but it was outfoxed by the English, then battered by storms while limping back to Spain with at least a third of its ships sunk or damaged. To meet Elizabeth’s challenges, Philip sent a Spanish Armada — 130 ships and 30,000 men — against England in 1588. -
The Thirteen Colonies
The 13 colonies were a group of settlements that became the original states of the United States of America. Nearly all the colonies were founded by the English, and all were located along the East Coast of North America. The colonies grew both geographically along the Atlantic coast and westward and numerically to 13 from the time of their founding to the American Revolution. Their settlements extended from what is now Maine in the north to the river in Georgia when the Revolution began. -
The Jamestown Settlement
In 1607, 104 English men and boys arrived in North America to start a settlement. On May 13 they picked Jamestown, Virginia for their settlement, which was named after their King, James I. The settlement became the first permanent English settlement in North America. -
England’s Tobacco Colonies
The development of tobacco as an export began in Virginia in 1614 when one of the English colonists, John Rolfe, experimented with a plant he had brought from the West Indies, 'Nicotania tabacum. In the same year, the first tobacco shipment was sent to England. -
New Englandś Indian Wars
At that time, millions of indigenous people had settled across North America in hundreds of different tribes. But between 1622 and the late 19th century, a series of wars and skirmishes known as the Indian Wars took place between American-Indians and European settlers, mainly over land control. -
Island colonies
Beginning in the 1640s — and drawing on the example of Brazil — planters on many of the islands shifted to sugar cultivation. Where conditions were right, as they were in Barbados, Jamaica, Nevis, and Martinique, these colonies were soon producing substantial crops of sugar and, as a consequence, claimed some of the world’s most valuable real estate. Daily life in plantation colonies was often miserable, but investors grew rich on the backs of their laborers. -
The South Atlantic System
Britain’s focus on America reflected the growth of a new agricultural and commercial order (the South Atlantic System) that produced sugar, tobacco, rice, and other tropical and subtropical products for an international market. The South Atlantic System had its center in Brazil and the West Indies, and sugar was its primary product. European merchants, investors, and planters reaped the profits of the South Atlantic System. -
The Restoration Colonies
His policies in the 1660s through the 1680s established and supported the Restoration colonies: the Carolinas, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania. All the Restoration colonies started as proprietary colonies, that is, the king gave each colony to a trusted individual, family, or group.
The Restoration colonies also contributed to the rise in population in English America as many thousands of Europeans made their way to the colonies. -
Bacon's Rebellion
Bacon's Rebellion in 1676 was the last major uprising of enslaved blacks and white indentured servants in Colonial Virginia. One consequence of the failed rebellion was the intensification of African slavery and the social separation of blacks and whites in Virginia. It was an armed rebellion held by Virginia settlers that took place from 1676 to 1677. It was led by Nathaniel Bacon against Colonial Governor William Berkeley. -
The Enlightenment
The Enlightenment, also known as the Age of Reason, was an intellectual and cultural movement in the eighteenth century that emphasized reason over superstition and science over blind faith. The Enlightenment produced modern secularized theories of psychology and ethics. The study of science and the investigation of natural phenomena were encouraged, but Enlightenment thinkers also applied science and reason to society's problems. -
The Great Awakening
The Great Awakening, religious revival in the British American colonies mainly between about 1730s and the 1740s. The movement came at a time when the idea of secular rationalism was being emphasized, and passion for religion had grown stale. The revival of Protestant beliefs was part of a much broader movement that was taking place in England, Scotland, and Germany at that time. -
The 7 years war
The Seven Years War was a global conflict that involved most of the European Great Powers, and was fought primarily in Europe, the Americas, and Asia-Pacific. The war ended in 1763 with the Treaty of Paris, signed by Great Britain, Hanover, France, and Spain, and the Peace of Hubertusburg, signed by Austria, Prussia, and Saxony. Under the Treaty of Paris the French lost nearly all their land claims in North America and their trading interests in India. -
Sugar event of 1764
The Sugar Act (American Revenue Act) is passed by Parliament to raise funds for the depleted British treasury and to curtail the colonists' smuggling of non-British sugar and molasses to avoid import tariffs. The act placed a tax on sugar and molasses imported into the colonies. This was a huge disruption to the Boston and New England economies because they used sugar and molasses to make rum, a main export in their trade with other countries. -
Sons of Liberty
The Sons of Liberty was a loosely organized, clandestine, sometimes violent, political organization active in the Thirteen American Colonies founded to advance the rights of the colonists and to fight taxation by the British government. Among the members were many well-known patriots, such as Samuel Adams, John Hancock, and Paul Revere. Their activities helped lead the colonies into the American Revolution. -
Boston Massacre
The Boston Massacre was a confrontation in Boston on March 5, 1770, in which a group of nine British soldiers shot five people out of a crowd of three or four hundred who were harassing them verbally and throwing various projectiles.
The event in Boston helped to unite the colonies against Britain. What started as a minor fight became a turning point in the beginnings of the American Revolution. -
The Boston Tea Party
The Boston Tea Party was a political protest that occurred on December 16, 1773, at Griffin's Wharf in Boston, Massachusetts. American colonists, frustrated and angry at Britain for imposing “taxation without representation,” dumped 342 chests of tea, imported by the British East India Company into the harbor. The Boston Tea Party was the first significant act of defiance by American colonists. -
Continental Congress
The Continental Congress was a series of legislative bodies, with some executive function, for thirteen of Britain's colonies in North America, and the newly declared United States just before, during, and after the American Revolutionary War. The assembly of delegates from the North American rebel colonies held during and after the War of American Independence. It issued the Declaration of Independence (1776) and framed the Articles of Confederation (1777). -
Lexington and Concord
The Battles of Lexington and Concord were the first military engagements of the American Revolutionary War. The battles were fought on April 19, 1775, in Middlesex County, Province of Massachusetts Bay, within the towns of Lexington, Concord, Lincoln, Menotomy, and Cambridge.
The battle broke out because the British had ordered troops to seize weapons from the town of Concord and to Capture the rebel leaders Samuel Adams and John Hancock from the town of Lexington. -
Declaration of Independence
The United States Declaration of Independence, formally The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, is the pronouncement and founding document adopted by the Second Continental Congress meeting at Pennsylvania State House in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on July 4, 1776. By issuing the Declaration of Independence, adopted by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, the 13 American colonies severed their political connections to Great Britain. -
Articles of Confederation
The Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union was an agreement among the 13 Colonies of the United States of America that served as its first frame of government. It was approved after much debate by the Second Continental Congress on November 15, 1777, and sent to the states for ratification. The Articles created a loose confederation of sovereign states and a weak central government, leaving most of the power with the state governments. -
Battle of Yorktown
Outnumbered and outfought during a three-week siege in which they sustained great losses, British troops surrendered to the Continental Army and their French allies. This last major land battle of the American Revolution led to negotiations for peace with the British and the signing of the Treaty of Paris in 1783. -
Shays' Rebellion
Shays' Rebellion was an armed uprising in Western Massachusetts and Worcester in response to a debt crisis among the citizenry and in opposition to the state government's increased efforts to collect taxes both on individuals and their trades. Shays' Rebellion was a series of violent attacks on courthouses and other government properties. The fight took place mostly in and around Springfield during 1786 and 1787. -
Second Great Awakening
The Second Great Awakening was a Protestant religious revival during the early 19th century in the United States. The Second Great Awakening, which spread religion through revivals and emotional preaching, sparked a number of reform movements. It is best known for its large camp meetings that led extraordinary numbers of people to convert through an enthusiastic style of preaching and audience participation. -
Bank of the United States
The Bank of the United States, now commonly referred to as the first Bank of the United States, opened for business in Philadelphia on December 12, 1791, with a twenty-year charter. The First Bank of the United States was the first centralized banking system and helped stabilize the economy during the volatile years after the Revolutionary War. It helped shape fiscal policy that continues to this day through the Federal Reserve. -
Louisiana Purchase
The Louisiana Purchase was the acquisition of the territory of Louisiana by the United States from the French First Republic in 1803. In return for fifteen million dollars, or approximately eighteen dollars per square mile, the United States nominally acquired a total of 828,000 sq mi in Middle America. For roughly 4 cents an acre, the United States doubled its size, expanding the nation westward. -
Lewis and Clark Expedition
The Lewis and Clark Expedition, also known as the Corps of Discovery Expedition, was the United States expedition to cross the newly acquired western portion of the country after the Louisiana Purchase. Lewis and Clark's team mapped uncharted land, rivers, and mountains. They brought back journals filled with details about Native American tribes and scientific notes about plants and animals they'd never seen before. -
American Renaissance
The American Renaissance period in American literature ran from about 1830 to around the Civil War. A central term in American studies, the American Renaissance was for a while considered synonymous with American Romanticism and was closely associated with Transcendentalism. A literary explosion during the 1840s inspired in part of Emerson's ideas on the liberation of if the individual. -
Abolitionism
Abolitionism, or the abolitionist movement, is the movement to end slavery. In Western Europe and the Americas, abolitionism was a historic movement that sought to end the Atlantic slave trade and liberate the enslaved people. It was the movement chiefly responsible for creating the emotional climate necessary for ending the transatlantic slave trade and chattel slavery. -
Indian Removal Act
The Indian Removal Act was signed into law by President Andrew Jackson on May 28, 1830, 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.
The reason for this forced removal was to make westward expansion for Americans easier. Those who believed in Manifest Destiny felt that Native Americans were stopping them from moving westward. -
Trail of Tears
The Trail of Tears was a series of forced displacements of approximately 60,000 American Indians of the "Five Civilized Tribes" between 1830 and 1850 by the United States government. The United States government forcibly removed the southeastern Native Americans from their homelands and relocated them on lands in Indian Territory. Part of the Indian removal, the ethnic cleansing was gradual, occurring over a period of nearly two decades. -
Bank War
The Bank War was a political struggle that developed over the issue of rechartering the Second Bank of the United States during the presidency of Andrew Jackson. The affair resulted in the shutdown of the Bank and its replacement by state banks. The struggle between President Andrew Jackson and Nicholas Biddle, president of the Bank of the United States, over the continued existence of the only national banking institution in the nation during the second quarter of the 19th century. -
Whig Party
The Whig Party was a political party in the United States during the middle of the 19th century. Alongside the slightly larger Democratic Party, it was one of the two major parties in the United States between the late 1830s and the early 1850s as part of the Second Party System. An American political party formed in the 1830s to oppose President Andrew Jackson and the Democrats. Whigs stood for protective tariffs, national banking, and federal aid for internal improvements. -
Manifest Destiny
Manifest Destiny, a phrase coined in 1845, is the idea that the United States is destined—by God, its advocates believed—to expand its dominion and spread democracy and capitalism across the entire North American continent. It was a cultural belief in the 19th-century United States that American settlers were destined to expand across North America. -
Mexican-American War
The Mexican–American War, also known in the United States as the Mexican War and in Mexico as the Intervención estadounidense en México, was an armed conflict between the United States and Mexico from 1846 to 1848. It followed the 1845 American annexation of Texas, which Mexico still considered its territory. -
Gold Rush
California Gold Rush, influx of thousands of miners to Northern California after news reports of the discovery of gold at Sutter's Mill in January of 1848 had spread around the world by the end of that year. The onslaught of migrants prompted Californians to organize a government and apply for statehood in 1849. -
Underground Railroad
The Underground Railroad was a network of clandestine routes and safe houses established in the United States during the early- to mid-19th century. It was a network of people, both whites and free Blacks, who worked together to help runaways from slaveholding states travel to states in the North and to the country of Canada, where slavery was illegal. It was used by enslaved African Americans primarily to escape into free states and Canada. -
Compromise of 1850
The Compromise of 1850 was a package of five separate bills passed by the United States Congress in September 1850 that defused a political confrontation between slave and free states on the status of territories acquired in the Mexican–American War. It also set Texas' western and northern borders and included provisions addressing fugitive slaves and the slave trade. -
Battle of Bull Run
The First Battle of Bull Run, also known as the Battle of First Manassas, was the first major battle of the American Civil War. The battle was fought on July 21, 1861, in Prince William County, Virginia, just north of the city of Manassas and about thirty miles west-southwest of Washington, D.C.
It cost some 3,000 Union casualties, compared with 1,750 for the Confederates. -
Transcontinental Railroad
North America's first transcontinental railroad was a 1,911-mile continuous railroad line constructed between 1863 and 1869 that connected the existing eastern U.S. rail network at Council Bluffs, Iowa with the Pacific coast at the Oakland Long Wharf on San Francisco Bay. By connecting the existing eastern U.S. rail networks to the west coast, the Transcontinental Railroad became the first continuous railroad line across the United States. -
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." -
Siege of Vicksburg
The siege of Vicksburg was the final major military action in the Vicksburg campaign of the American Civil War. Grant hoped to secure control of the Mississippi River for the Union. By having control of the river, Union forces would split the Confederacy in two and control an important route to move men and supplies. The last major Confederate stronghold on the Mississippi River was the city of Vicksburg, Mississippi. -
Battle of Gettysburg
The Battle of Gettysburg was fought July 1–3, 1863, in and around the town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, by Union and Confederate forces during the American Civil War. The Union had won the Battle of Gettysburg. Though the cautious Meade would be criticized for not pursuing the enemy after Gettysburg, the battle was a crushing defeat for the Confederacy. Union casualties in the battle numbered 23,000, while the Confederates had lost some 28,000 men–more than a third of Lee's army. -
Reconstruction
The Reconstruction era was a period in American history following the American Civil War and lasting until approximately the Compromise of 1877. Its main focus was on bringing the southern states back into full political participation in the Union, guaranteeing rights to former slaves, and defining new relationships between African Americans and whites. -
Thirteenth Amendment
The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution abolished slavery. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for a crime where of the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. It was passed by Congress on January 31, 1865, and ratified on December 6, 1865 -
Civil Rights Act of 1875
The Civil Rights Act of 1875, sometimes called the Enforcement Act or the Force Act, was a United States federal law enacted during the Reconstruction era in response to civil rights violations against African Americans. The bill guaranteed all citizens, regardless of color, access to accommodations, theatres, public schools, churches, and cemeteries.