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Period: 2500 BCE to
Beginnings of Exploration
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1200 BCE
Olmec's Bloodletting
Bloodletting was the ritualized self-cutting or piercing of an individual's body that helped in many ways within ancient Mesoamerican societies. The location of the bloodletting on the body was what it represented. For example, drawing blood from the genitals, especially the men sex organs, would be done with the intent of increasing or representing human fertility. -
509 BCE
Rome's conquest of Europe
The Roman Empire conquered most of what would now be considered Western Europe. The empire was conquered by the Roman Army and a Roman way of life was established in these conquered countries. The main countries conquered were England/Wale, Spain, France , Greece, the Middle East and the North African coastal region. -
1347
The Black Death
The Black Death was discovered when trading ships docked at the after a long journey through the Black Sea. The people who gathered on the docks to greet the ships were met with a horrifying surprise. Sailors aboard the ships were dead, and those who were still alive were gravely ill. They symptoms were fevers, unable to keep food down and delirious from the pain.Over the next five years, the mysterious Black Death would kill more than 20 million people in Europe,1/3 of the population. -
Aug 3, 1492
Christopher Columbus Discovers America
Christopher Columbus led his three ships the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria out of the Spanish port of Palos, His objective was to sail west until he reached Asia where the riches of gold, pearls and spice awaited. But instead he found new land that would change everything. Ironically this life changing discovery was never revealed to Columbus and he died without knowing he discovered the Americas. -
1494
Colombian Exchange
The new contact between the old and new world provided trade of crops and livestock, which supported increases in population in both hemispheres, although diseases initially caused large declines in the numbers of indigenous peoples of the Americas. Traders returned to Europe with maize, potatoes, and tomatoes, which became very important crops in Europe by the 18th century. -
Jul 10, 1530
John Calvin introduces predestination
He was a principal figure in the development of the system of Christian theology later called Calvinism, aspects of which include the doctrines of predestination and of the absolute sovereignty of God in salvation of the human soul from death and eternal damnation, in which doctrines Calvin looked upon upon the Augustinian and other Christian traditions for his exploration. -
Jun 18, 1541
Exploration of the Mississippi River
Hernando de Soto’s Spanish expeditionary force crossed the Mississippi River and became the first Europeans to enter Arkansas. For the next two years, the Spaniards explored Arkansas with a large number of captive Indians. The expedition began on the gulf coast of Florida. For two years they explored what is now the American South. The goal was to find a kingdom of gold in the Aztecs of Mexico, who had been conquered by the Spanish twenty years earlier. De Soto and his men were disappointed. -
Period: to
English Colonial Societies
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Virginia's Savior Tabacco
In 1611 Rolfe, known as "an ardent smoker," decided to experiment tobacco in Jamestown, Virginia. The plant had first been brought to England, and by the 1610s there was a ready market in Britain for tobacco especially Spanish tobacco from the West Indies. Rolfe obtained tabbaco from a shipmaster some seeds from Trinidad and Caracas, Venezuela, and by July 1612 was growing Spanish tobacco -
Plymouth colony establishment
The Plymouth Colony, the second permanent English settlement in North America, was founded in 1620 by settlers including a group of religious dissenters commonly referred to as the Pilgrims. Though theologically very similar to the Puritans who later founded the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the Pilgrims believed that the Church of England could not be reformed. Rather than attempting to purify the church, the Pilgrims desired a total separation. -
Proprietary Colonies
Proprietary colonies were owned by an individual proprietor or by a group of proprietors under a charter from the English monarch. The men who received these grants were called Proprietary Governors or "Lords Proprietors". The great power
of the Lords Proprietors governed the Proprietary Colonies as landlords or overseers. The following facts detail their powers and political privileges -
Navigation Acts
The Navigation Acts were a series of Acts passed in the English Parliament in 1651,1660 & 1663. The colonies represented a lucrative source of wealth and trade. The Navigation Acts were designed to regulate colonial trade and enabled England to collect duties or taxes in the Colonies. -
Nathanial Bacon
Nathaniel Bacon issued a Declaration of the People of Virginia which criticized Berkeley's administration, accusing him of levying unfair taxes, appointing friends to high positions, and not protecting outlying farmers from Indian attack. Bacon died of fever on October 26, 1676. Although Joseph Ingram took control of the rebel forces, the rebellion soon collapsed. -
Sir Isaac Newton
Sir Isaac Newton was an English mathematician, astronomer, theologian and physicist who is widely recognised as onr of the smartest scientists of all time and a key figure in the scientific revolution. His book Philosophiea Naturalis Principia Mathematicafirst published in 1687, laid the foundations of classical mechanics. Newton also made pathbreaking contributions to optics, and he shares credit with Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz for developing the infinitesimal calculus. -
Salem Witch Trials
The Salem witch trials were a series of hearings and prosecutions of people accused of witchcraft in colonial Massachusetts. The trials resulted in the executions of twenty people, fourteen of them women, and all but one by hanging. Despite being generally known as the Salem Witch Trials, the hearings in 1692 were conducted in several towns: Salem Village , Salem Town, Ipswich, and Andover. The most infamous trials were conducted by the Court of Oyer and Terminer in 1692 in Salem Town. -
Acts of Union 1707
The Acts of Union were two Acts of Parliament the Union with Scotland Act 1706 passed by the Parliament of England, and the Union with England Act passed in 1707 by the Parliament of Scotland. They put into effect the terms of the Treaty of Union, following negotiation between commissioners representing the parliaments of the two countries. By the two Acts, the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland were, in the words of the Treaty, "United into One Kingdom by the Name of Great Britain". -
Period: to
COLONIAL AMERICA TO 1763
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John Edwards
John Edwards was an American revivalist preacher, philosopher, and Congregationalist Protestant theologian. Like most of the Puritans, he held to the Reformed theology. His colonial followers later distinguished themselves from other Congregationalists as "New Lights" , as opposed to "Old Lights" Edwards is widely regarded as "one of America's most important and original philosophical theologians". -
The Triangular Trade
The best-known triangular trading system is the transatlantic slave trade, carrying slaves, cash crops, and manufactured goods between West Africa, Caribbean or American colonies and the European colonial powers. The use of African slaves was fundamental to growing colonial cash crops, which were exported to Europe. European goods, in turn, were used to purchase African slaves, who were then brought on the sea lane west from Africa to the Americas, the so-called Middle Passage. -
The Middle Passage
The Middle Passage was the stage of the triangular trade in which millions of Africans were shipped to the New World as part of the Atlantic slave trade. Ships departed Europe for African markets with manufactured goods, which were traded for purchased or kidnapped Africans, who were transported across the Atlantic as slaves, the slaves were then sold or traded for raw materials -
The Wilderness Economy
During the 1750's the forest land was cleared and settlers began manufacturing activities making the settlement a major hub of economic activity when iron deposits were found in the Champlain Valley. Mohicans and other native Iroquois tribes living in and around the wilderness offered an excellent opportunity for traders, they would trade fur for weapons with the tribes and had a acceptable relationship with them. -
French and Indian War
Also known as the Seven Years’ War, 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. being crushed at first, the British turned the tide with victories at Louisbourg, Fort Frontenac and the French-Canadian stronghold of Quebec. -
Treaty of Paris
The Treaty of Paris, signed in Paris by representatives of King George III of Great Britain and representatives of the United States of America. ended the American Revolutionary War, the treaty set the boundaries between the British Empire in North America and the United States, on lines "exceedingly generous" to the latter. Details included fishing rights and restoration of property and prisoners of war. -
Sugar Act
The Sugar Act, also known as the American Revenue Act or the American Duties Act, was a revenue-raising act passed by the Parliament of Great Britain on April 5, 1764.it was necessary that a revenue should be raised for defraying the expenses of defending, protecting, and securing the same." -
Period: to
The Revolutionary War
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Boston Massacre
The Boston Massacre was the killing of five colonists by British regulars on March 5, 1770. It was the culmination of tensions in the American colonies that had been growing since Royal troops first appeared in Massachusetts in October 1768 to enforce the heavy tax burden imposed by the Townshend Acts. -
Boston Tea Party
Samuel Adams and the Sons of Liberty boarded three ships in the Boston harbor and threw 342 chests of tea overboard. This resulted in the passage of the punitive Coercive Acts in 1774 and pushed the two sides closer to war. -
Paul Revere
Paul Revere was an American silversmith, engraver, early industrialist, and Patriot in the American Revolution. He is best known for his midnight ride to alert the colonial militia in April 1775 to the approach of British forces before the battles of Lexington and Concord, as dramatized in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem, "Paul Revere's Ride" (1861). -
Battle of Lexington and Concord
The Battles of Lexington and Concord were the first military engagements of the American Revolutionary War. The battles were fought in Middlesex County, Province of Massachusetts Bay, within the towns of Lexington, Concord, Lincoln, Menotomy and Cambridge. They marked the outbreak of armed conflict between the Kingdom of Great Britain and its thirteen colonies in America. -
Common Sense- Thomas Paine
Common Sense is a pamphlet written by Thomas Paine in 1775–76 advocating independence from Great Britain to people in the Thirteen Colonies. Written in clear and persuasive prose, Paine marshaled moral and political arguments to encourage common people in the Colonies to fight for egalitarian government. It was published anonymously, at the beginning of the American Revolution, and became an immediate sensation. -
The Declaration Of Independence
The United States Declaration of Independence is the statement adopted by the Second Continental Congress meeting at the Pennsylvania State House (Independence Hall) in Philadelphia on July 4, 1776, which announced that the thirteen American colonies, then at war with the Kingdom of Great Britain, regarded themselves as thirteen independent sovereign states, no longer under British rule. These states would found a new nation – the United States of America. -
Massachusetts Constitution
The Constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is the fundamental governing document of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, one of the 50 individual state governments that make up the United States of America. Voters approved the document on June 15, 1780. -
Articles of Confederation Problem
Under the Articles of Confederation, no provisions were made for an executive branch to enforce the laws nor for a national court system to interpret them. A legislative Congress was the sole organ of the national government, but it had no power to force the states to do anything against their will. -
Period: to
The Constitution
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Shay’s Rebellion
Shays' Rebellion was an armed uprising in Massachusetts during 1786. Revolutionary War veteran Daniel Shays led four thousand rebels in an uprising against perceived economic and civil rights injustices. -
Virginia Plan
The Virginia Plan was a proposal by Virginia delegates for a bicameral legislative branch. The plan was drafted by James Madison while he waited for a quorum to assemble at the Constitutional Convention of 1787. -
The Great Debate
The transition from the Articles of Confederation to the United States Constitution wasn't a seamless one, and fixing the problems of the Articles of Confederation required a series of lengthy debates both during and after the convention. But one thing was certain, something had to be changed. Fifty-five Delegates met at the Constitutional Convention of 1787 to determine how best to adjust the existing document. -
The Three Branches
The Constitution created the 3 branches of government The Legislative Branch to make the laws. Congress is made up of two houses, the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Executive Branch to enforce the laws. The Judicial Branch to interpret the laws. -
Northwest Ordinance
The Northwest Ordinance, formally An Ordinance for the Government of the Territory of the United States, North-West of the River Ohio, and also known as The Ordinance of 1787, was an act of the Congress of the Confederation of the United States -
Period: to
New Republic
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Election of 1788
The United States presidential election of 1788–89 was the first quadrennial presidential election. It was held from Monday, December 15, 1788, to Saturday, January 10, 1789. It was conducted under the new United States Constitution, which had been ratified earlier in 1788. In the election, George Washington was unanimously elected for the first of his two terms as president, and John Adams became the first vice president. -
Bill of Rights
The Bill of Rights is the first ten amendments to the United States Constitution. Proposed following the oftentimes bitter 1787–88 battle over ratification of the U.S. Constitution, and crafted to address the objections raised by Anti-Federalists, the Bill of Rights amendments add to the Constitution specific guarantees of personal freedoms and rights, and explicit declarations that all powers not specifically delegated to Congress by the Constitution are reserved for the states or the people. -
Whiskey Rebellion
The Whiskey Rebellion was a tax protest in the United States beginning in 1791 during the presidency of George Washington. The so-called "whiskey tax" was the first tax imposed on a domestic product by the newly formed federal government. -
The First Bank of the United States
The Bank of the United States, commonly known as the First Bank of the United States, was a national bank, chartered for a term of twenty years, by the United States Congress on February 25, 1791.Hamilton believed a national bank was necessary to stabilize and improve the nation's credit, and to improve handling of the financial business of the United States government under the newly enacted Constitution. -
Jay’s Treaty
Jay's Treaty, was a 1795 treaty between the United States and Great Britain that averted war, resolved issues remaining since the Treaty of Paris of 1783 and facilitated ten years of peaceful trade between the United States and Britain in the midst of the French Revolutionary Wars, which began in 1792. -
Pickney’s Treaty
Pinckney's Treaty, also commonly known as the Treaty of San Lorenzo or the Treaty of Madrid, was signed in San Lorenzo de El Escorial on October 27, 1795 and established intentions of friendship between the United States and Spain. -
Election of 1796
The United States presidential election of 1796 was the first contested American presidential election and the only one to elect a President and Vice President from opposing tickets. Although Adams won, Thomas Jefferson received more electoral votes than Pinckney and was elected Vice-President. -
Period: to
Age of Jefferson
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Louisiana Purchase
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. Part or all of 15 states were eventually created from the land deal, which is considered one of the most important achievements of Thomas Jefferson’s presidency. -
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. -
War of 1812
In the War of 1812, the United States took on the greatest naval power in the world, Great Britain, in a conflict that would have an immense impact on the young country’s future. Causes of the war included British attempts to restrict U.S. trade, the Royal Navy’s impressment of American seamen and America’s desire to expand its territory. The United States suffered many costly defeats at the hands of British. -
Battle of New Orleans
The Battle of New Orleans was a series of engagements fought between December 14, 1814 and January 18, 1815, constituting the last major battle of the War of 1812 American combatants,[9] commanded by Major General Andrew Jackson, prevented a much larger British force, commanded by Admiral Alexander Cochrane and General Edward Pakenham, from seizing New Orleans and the vast territory the United States had acquired with the Louisiana Purchase -
Panic of 1819
The Panic of 1819 was the first major peacetime financial crisis in the United States followed by a general collapse of the American economy persisting through 1821. The Panic announced the transition of the nation from its colonial commercial status with Europe toward an independent economy, increasingly characterized by the financial and industrial imperatives of central bank monetary policy, making it susceptible to boom and bust cycles. -
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. -
Steamboats
In 1811 the first of many river steamboats left the dock at Pittsburgh to steam down the Ohio River to the Mississippi and on to New Orleans.In 1817 a consortium in Sackets Harbor, New York funded the construction of the first US steamboat, Ontario, to run on Lake Ontario and the Great Lakes, beginning the growth of lake commercial and passenger traffic. -
Iron Plow
Jethro Wood was the inventor of a cast-iron moldboard plow with replaceable parts, the first commercially successful iron moldboard plow. His invention accelerated the development of American agriculture in the antebellum period. -
Period: to
The American Industrial Revolution
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Monroe Doctrine
The Monroe Doctrine was a United States policy of opposing European colonialism in The Americas beginning in 1823. It stated that further eforts by European nations to take control of any independent state in North or South America would be seen as "the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward the United States." At the same time, the doctrine noted that the U.S. would recognize and not interfere with existing European colonies. -
Election of 1824
In the United States presidential election of 1824, John Quincy Adams was elected President on February 9, 1825, after the election was decided by the House of Representatives. the Democratic-Republican Party changed as four separate candidates sought the presidency. Such change had not yet led to formal party organization, but later the faction led by Jackson would be the Democratic Party, while the factions led by John Quincy Adams and Henry Clay would become the National Republican Party. -
First Police Forces
The birth and development of the American police can be traced to a multitude of historical, legal and political-economic conditions. The institution of slavery and the control of minorities, however, were two of the more formidable historic features of American society shaping early policing. Slave patrols and Night Watches, which later became modern police departments, were both designed to control the behaviors of minorities. -
Free-Black Communities
many African-Americans were able to secure their freedom and live in a state of semi-freedom even before slavery was abolished by war. Free blacks lived in all parts of the United States, but the majority lived amid slavery in the American South. It is estimated that by 1860 there were about 1.5 million free blacks in the southern states. -
Tenant Farmers
A tenant farmer is one who resides on land owned by a landlord. Tenant farming is an agricultural production system in which landowners contribute their land and often a measure of operating capital and management; while tenant farmers contribute their labor along with at times varying amounts of capital and management. Depending on the contract, tenants can make payments to the owner either of a fixed portion of the product, in cash or in a combination. -
Telegraph
Developed in the 1830s and 1840s by Samuel Morse and other inventors, the telegraph revolutionized long-distance communication. It worked by transmitting electrical signals over a wire laid between stations. In addition to helping invent the telegraph, Samuel Morse developed a code that assigned a set of dots and dashes to each letter of the English alphabet and allowed for the simple transmission of complex messages across telegraph lines. -
Period: to
Age of Jackson
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Nat Turner’s Rebellion
Nat Turner's Rebellion was a slave rebellion that took place in Southampton County, Virginia, during August 1831. Led by Nat Turner, rebel slaves killed from 55 to 65 people, the largest and deadliest slave uprising in U.S. history. The rebellion was put down within a few days, but Turner survived in hiding for more than two months afterwards. The rebellion was effectively suppressed at Belmont Plantation on the morning of August 23, 1831. -
Election of 1832
It saw incumbent President Andrew Jackson, candidate of the Democratic Party, easily win re-election against Henry Clay of Kentucky, candidate of the National Republican Party, and Anti-Masonic Party candidate William Wirt. Jackson won 219 of the 286 electoral votes cast. -
Davy Crocket
was a 19th-century American folk hero, frontiersman, soldier, and politician. He represented Tennessee in the U.S. House of Representatives and served in the Texas Revolution.
He was made a colonel in the militia of Lawrence County, Tennessee. In 1825, he was elected to the U.S. Congress where he vehemently opposed many of the policies of President Andrew Jackson, especially the Indian Removal Act. -
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. As president, Jackson sought to advance the rights of the "common man" against a "corrupt aristocracy" and to preserve the Union. -
Election of 1836
As Pres. Andrew Jackson’s second term drew to a close, he unofficially anointed his vice president, Martin Van Buren, as the standard-bearer of the Democratic Party. Although Van Buren lacked Jackson’s personal charisma, he was considered a skilled politician, and in May 1835 he was unanimously nominated as the party’s presidential candidate at a national convention in Baltimore, Md. -
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. The panic had both domestic and foreign origins. On May 10, 1837, banks in New York City suspended specie payments, meaning that they would no longer redeem commercial paper in specie at full face value -
John Tyler
John Tyler was an American politician who served as the tenth President of the United States from 1841 to 1845 after briefly being the tenth Vice President he was elected to the latter office on the 1840 Whig ticket with President William Henry Harrison. Tyler ascended to the presidency after Harrison's death in April 1841, . He was a supporter of states' rights, and as president he adopted nationalist policies only when they did not infringe on the powers of the states. -
Election of 1840
The United States presidential election of 1840 saw President Martin Van Buren fight for re-election against an economic depression and a Whig Party unified for the first time behind war hero William Henry Harrison. Rallying under the slogan “Tippecanoe and Tyler, too,” the Whigs easily defeated Van Buren. -
Temperance Movement
Temperance movement, movement dedicated to promoting moderation and, more often, complete abstinence in the use of intoxicating liquor. Although an abstinence pledge had been introduced by churches as early as 1800, the earliest temperance organizations seem to have been those founded at Saratoga, New York, in 1808 and in Massachusetts in 1813. The movement spread rapidly under the influence of the churches by 1841 there were 6,000 local societies in several U.S. states. But it -
Period: to
Cultural Changes
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Second Great Awakening
The Second Great Awakening was a Protestant religious revival during the early 19th century in the United States. The movement began around 1825, gained momentum by 1840 and, after 1850, membership rose rapidly among Baptist and Methodist congregations whose preachers led the movement. -
Creation of parks
Parks were described as places In the late 19th century, large tracts of land on the outskirts of cities were purchased by city governments to create "pleasure grounds": semi-open, charmingly landscaped areas whose primary purpose was to allow city residents, especially the workers, to relax in nature. As time passed and the urban area grew around the parks, land in these parks was used for other purposes, such as zoos, golf courses and museums. -
American Anti-Slavery Society
The American Anti-Slavery Society was an abolitionist society founded by William Lloyd Garrison, and Arthur Tappan. Frederick Douglass, an escaped slave, was a key leader of this society who often spoke at its meetings. William Wells Brown was also a freed slave who often spoke at meetings. By 1838, the society had 1,350 local charters with around 250,000 members. -
Joseph Smith
Joseph Smith Jr. was an American religious leader and founder of Mormonism and the Latter Day Saint movement. When he was twenty-four, Smith published the Book of Mormon. By the time of his death fourteen years later, he had attracted tens of thousands of followers and founded a religious culture that continues to the present. -
New York Female Reform Society
This organization tryed to help ban prostitution. The NYFMRS attempted many strategies in preventing prostitution from occurring. Some of these strategies included entering brothels and praying for the prostitutes and their clients, these women told men to quit operating these programs and threatening to publish names in their monthly journal of the men who regularly visited brothels. offering education to those women in need and opening up an employment agency to help some respectable women. -
Election of 1844
The United States presidential election of 1844 saw Democrat James Knox Polk defeat Whig Henry Clay in a close contest that turned on foreign policy, with Polk favoring the annexation of Texas and Clay opposed. Polk went on to win a narrow victory over Whig candidate Henry Clay, in part because Clay had taken a stand against expansion, although economic issues were also of great importance. -
Antonio Lopez de Santa Ana
Santa Anna was a Mexican politician and general who fought to defend royalist New Spain and then for Mexican independence. He greatly influenced early Mexican politics and government, and was a skilled soldier and cunning politician, who dominated Mexican history in the first half of the nineteenth century to such an extent that historians often refer to it as the "Age of Santa Anna". \ -
Stephen F. Austin
Stephen F Austin known as the "Father of Texas", and the founder of Texas of the region by bringing 300 families from the United States to the region in 1845. Austin served in the Missouri territorial legislature before moving to Arkansas Territory and later Louisiana. His father, Moses Austin, received an empresario grant from Spain to settle Texas. After Moses Austin's death in 1821, Stephen Austin won recognition of the empresario grant from the newly-independent state of Mexico. -
Period: to
Westward Expansion
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Oregon Trail
The Oregon Trail is a 2,170-mile historic east–west, large-wheeled wagon route and emigrant trail in the United States that connected the Missouri River to valleys in Oregon. The eastern part of the Oregon Trail spanned part of the future state of Kansas, and nearly all of what are now the states of Nebraska and Wyoming. The western half of the trail spanned most of the future states of Idaho and Oregon. -
Bear Flag Revolt
During the Bear Flag Revolt, a small group of American settlers in California rebelled against the Mexican government and proclaimed California an independent republic. The republic was short-lived because soon after the Bear Flag was raised, the U.S. military began occupying California, which went on to join the union in 1850. The Bear Flag became the official state flag in 1911. -
Mexican American War
The Mexican-American War marked the first U.S. armed conflict chiefly fought on foreign soil. It pitted a politically divided and militarily unprepared Mexico against the expansionist-minded administration of U.S. President James K. Polk, who believed the United States had a “manifest destiny” to spread across the continent to the Pacific Ocean. A border skirmish along the Rio Grande started off the fighting and was followed by a series of U.S. victories. -
Know Nothings
The Native American Party, renamed the American Party in 1855 and commonly known as the "Know Nothing" movement, was an American nativist political party that operated nationally in the mid-1850s. It was primarily anti-Catholic and hostile to immigration, starting originally as a secret society. The movement briefly emerged as a major political party in the form of the American Party. Adherents to the movement were to reply "I know nothing" when asked about its specifics by outsiders. -
California Gold Rush
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 some 300,000 people to California from the rest of the United States and abroad. The Gold Rush had severe effects on Native Californians and resulted in a precipitous population decline from disease, genocide and starvation. -
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Sectionalism
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Election of 1852
he United States presidential election of 1852 was the seventeenth quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 2, 1852. Pierce and his running mate William R. King went on to win what was at the time one of the nation’s largest electoral victories, defeating Scott and his running mate, William Alexander Graham of North Carolina, 254 electoral votes to 42. -
Kansas-Nebraska Act
The Kansas-Nebraska Act was passed by the U.S. Congress on May 30, 1854. It allowed people in the territories of Kansas and Nebraska to decide for themselves whether or not to allow slavery within their borders. The Act served to repeal the Missouri Compromise of 1820 which prohibited slavery north of latitude 36°30´. -
Bleeding Kansas
Bloody Kansas or the Border War was a series of violent political confrontations in the United States between 1854 and 1861 involving anti-slavery "Free-Staters" and pro-slavery "Border Ruffian", or "southern" elements in Kansas. At the heart of the conflict was the question of whether Kansas would allow or outlaw slavery, and thus enter the Union as a slave state or a free state. -
John Brown's Raid
John Brown led a small army of 18 men into the small town of Harper's Ferry, Virginia. His plan was to instigate a major slave rebellion in the South. He would seize the arms and ammunition in the federal arsenal, arm slaves in the area and move south along the Appalachian Mountains, attracting slaves to his cause. He had no rations. He had no escape route. His plan was doomed from the very beginning. But it did succeed to deepen the divide between the North and South. -
Election of 1860
United States presidential election of 1860. United States presidential election of 1860, American presidential election held on Nov. 6, 1860, in which Republican Abraham Lincoln defeated Southern Democrat John C. Breckinridge, Democrat Stephen A. Douglas, and Constitutional Union candidate John Bell. -
Army of the Potomac
The Army of the Potomac was the principal Union Army in the Eastern Theater of the American Civil War. It was created in July 1861 shortly after the First Battle of Bull Run and was disbanded in June 1865 following the surrender of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia in April.The Army of the Potomac was created in 1861, but was then only the size of a corps -
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Civil War
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Twenty Negro Law
The "Twenty Negro Law",was a piece of legislation enacted by the Confederate Congress during the American Civil War. The law specifically exempted from Confederate military service one white man for every twenty slaves owned on a Confederate plantation, or for two or more plantations within five miles of each other that collectively had twenty or more slaves.Passed as part of the Second Conscription Act in 1862. -
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Reconstruction
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Emancipation Proclamation
The emancipation Proclamation declared all slaves in the confederate territory free.This did not free many slaves because the land was under confederate control do the union had trouble freeing them. The plantations were usually located far away from the union. This law also said that northern slaves were not free Lincoln did not wan to free all the slaves because he didnt think he had the constitutional power to do so. -
Ford's Theater
Ford's theater was the theater where Lincoln was assassinated. He was shot in the head during a performance by a well known actor, John Wilkes Booth. It was built in the year 1863 during the Civil War era. It held the play "Our American Cousin" and the capacity was 1700 with more chairs on the main floor that could swell to 2300 -
Battle of Vicksburg
From the spring of 1862, until July 1863, during the American Civil War Union forces waged a campaign to take to take the confederate stronghold of Vicksburg, Mississippi which lay on the east bank of the Mississippi River, halfway between Memphis to the north and New Orleans to the south. The capture of Vicksburg divided the Confederacy and proved the military genius of Union General Ulysses S Grant. This was a battle that will always be part of US history -
Election of 1864
In the election of 1864, there is Lincoln vs. McClellan. Lincoln wants to end the war if he is elected, citizens of the north are sick of war so many vote for McClellan, but Lincoln wins. This happened in the month of November 8,1864 and it was around the civil war era. This era was mostly about Abraham Lincoln and his death. He was one of the greatest presidents ever. -
Freedman’s Bureau
The Freedmen’s Bureau, was established in 1865 by Congress to help former black slaves and poor whites in the South in the aftermath of the U.S. Civil War (1861-65). Some 4 million slaves gained their freedom as a result of the Union victory in the war, which left many communities in ruins and destroyed the South’s plantation-based economy. The Freedmen’s Bureau provided food, housing and medical aid, established schools and offered legal assistance. -
Appomattox Courthouse
On April 9, 1865, near the town of Appomattox Court House, Virginia, Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered his Army of Northern Virginia to Union General Ulysses S. Grant. Days earlier, Lee had abandoned the Confederate capital of Richmond and the city of Petersburg; his goal was to rally the remnants of his beleaguered troops, meet Confederate reinforcements in North Carolina and resume fighting. -
KKK
The Ku Klux Klan commonly called the KKK or simply the Klan, is three distinct movements in the United States that have advocated extremist reactionary positions such as white supremacy, white nationalism, anti-immigration. Historically, the KKK used terrorism both physical assault and murder against groups or individuals whom they opposed. All three movements have called for the "purification" of American society and all are considered right-wing extremist organizations. -
Election of 1866
The 1866 elections were a decisive event in the early Reconstruction era, in which President Andrew Johnson faced off against the Radical Republicans in a bitter dispute over whether Reconstruction should be lenient or harsh toward the vanquished South. A Congress consisting of mostly Radical Republicans sat early in the Capitol and aside from the delegation from Tennessee who were allowed in, the few Southern Congressmen who arrived were not seated. -
Carpetbaggers
carpetbagger was a Northerner who moved to the South after the American Civil War during the Reconstruction era (1863–1877). Many white Southerners denounced them, fearing they would loot and plunder the defeated South and be politically allied with the Radical Republicans. These men would rob southerners who were just trying to get back on their feet. -
Election of 1868
United States presidential election of 1868 was the 21st quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 3, 1868. It was the first presidential election to take place after the American Civil War, during the period referred to as Reconstruction.The incumbent President, Andrew Johnson, who succeeded to the presidency in 1865 following the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, was unpopular and failed to receive the Democratic presidential nomination. -
Sharecroppers
With the southern economy in disarray many former slaves expected the federal government to give them a certain amount of land as compensation for all the work they had done during the slavery era.y. During Reconstruction, however, the conflict over labor resulted in the sharecropping system, in which black families would rent small plots of land in return for a portion of their crop, to be given to the landowner at the end of each year. -
Election of 1876
The election of 1876 between Rutherford B. Hayes and Democrat Samuel Tilden of New York was one of the most hostile, controversial campaigns in American history. Oregon's count was challenged. Allegations of widespread voter fraud forced Congress to set up a special electoral commission to determine the winner, composed of fifteen congressmen and Supreme Court justices.
