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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. -
1492
Christopher Columbus Lands
Italian explorer Christopher Columbus sets foot on the American mainland for the first time, at the Paria Peninsula in present-day Venezuela. Thinking it an island, he christened it Isla Santa and claimed it for Spain. Columbus didn't “discover” America, he never set foot in North America. During four separate trips that started with the one in 1492, Columbus landed on various Caribbean islands that are now the Bahamas. He also explored the Central and South American coasts. -
1492
First Americans Enter North America
The first people founded North America and made everything how it is today. -
Mercantilism
Mercantilism is the belief in the benefits of profitable trading; commercialism, or a national economic policy designed to maximize the trade of a nation and, historically, to maximize the accumulation of gold and silver. -
Jamestown
On May 14, 1607, a group of roughly 100 members of a joint venture that founded the first permanent English settlement in North America on the banks of the James River. Famine, disease and conflict with local Native American tribes in the first two years brought Jamestown to failure before new settlers and supplies. During the 1620s, Jamestown expanded from the area around the original James Fort into a New Town built to the east; it remained the capital of the Virginia colony until 1699. -
Navigation Act of 1651
The Navigation Acts were a series of English laws that restricted colonial trade to England. They were first enacted in 1651 and throughout that time until 1663, and were repealed in 1849. They reflected the policy of mercantilism, which sought to keep all the benefits of trade inside the Empire and to minimize the loss of gold and silver to foreigners. They prohibited the colonies from trading directly with the Netherlands, Spain, France, and their colonies. -
Benjamin Franklin
Franklin earned the title of "The First American" for his early and indefatigable campaigning for colonial unity, initially as an author and spokesman in London for several colonies. He exemplified the emerging American nation. Franklin was foundational in defining the American ethos as a marriage of the practical values of thrift with the scientific and tolerant values of the Enlightenment. -
George Washington
George Washington was an American statesman and soldier who served as the first President of the United States from 1789 to 1797 and was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. -
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson was an American Founding Father who was the principal author of the Declaration of Independence and later served as the third President of the United States from 1801 to 1809. -
French and Indian War
Also known as the Seven Years War, this New World conflict marked another chapter in the long imperial struggle between Britain and France. When France’s expansion into the Ohio River valley brought repeated conflict with the claims of the British colonies, a series of battles led to the official British declaration of war in 1756. At the 1763 peace conference, the British received the territories of Canada from France and Florida from Spain, opening the Mississippi Valley to westward expansion. -
Proclamation of 1763
The Proclamation of 1763 was issued October 7, 1763, by King George III after the end of the French and Indian War. It rendered worthless land grants given by the British government to Americans who fought for the crown against France. This Proclamation angered American colonists, who wanted to continue their westward expansion into new lands for farming and keep local control over their settled area. -
Stamp Act
The Stamp Act of 1765 was the first internal tax levied directly on American colonists by the British government. The act, which imposed a tax on all paper documents in the colonies, came at a time when the British Empire was deep in debt from the Seven Years’ War. Arguing that only their own representative assemblies could tax them, the colonists insisted that the act was unconstitutional, and they resorted to mob violence to intimidate stamp collectors into resigning. -
Boston Massacre
A squad of British soldiers let loose a volley of shots. Three persons were killed immediately and two died later of their wounds; among the victims was Crispus Attucks, a man of black or Indian parentage. The British officer in charge, Capt. Thomas Preston, was arrested for manslaughter, along with eight of his men; all were later acquitted. The Boston Massacre is remembered as a key event in helping to galvanize the colonial public to the Patriot cause. -
Boston Tea Party
The Boston Tea Party was a political protest by the Sons of Liberty in Boston, Massachusetts. In defiance of the Tea Act, people destroyed an entire shipment of tea sent by the East India Company. The British government responded harshly and the episode escalated into the American Revolution. The Tea Party became an iconic event in history, and since then other political protests such as the Tea Party movement have referred to themselves as historical successors to the Boston protest of 1773. -
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 in Philadelphia on July 4, 1776. The Declaration announced that the thirteen American colonies at war with the Kingdom of Great Britain would now regard themselves as thirteen independent sovereign states no longer under British rule. With the Declaration, these states formed a new nation – 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". -
Louisiana Purchase
The Louisiana Purchase was the acquisition of the Louisiana territory by the United States from France in 1803. The Louisiana territory included land from fifteen present U.S. states and two Canadian provinces. The territory contained land that forms Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska and the portion of many other states. Its non-native population was around 60,000 inhabitants, of whom half were African slaves. -
Westward Expansion
President Thomas Jefferson purchased the territory of Louisiana from the French government for $15 million. To Jefferson, westward expansion was the key to the nation’s health: He believed that a republic depended on an independent, virtuous citizenry for its survival, and that independence and virtue went hand in hand with land ownership, especially the ownership of small farms. -
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
The Lewis and Clark Expedition was the first American expedition to cross what is now the western portion of the United States. It began near St. Louis, made its way westward, and passed through the continental divide to reach the Pacific coast. The Corps of Discovery comprised a selected group of U.S. 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
When the president listened and represented the common people and it was abusing his power as president. It was also a 18th-century political philosophy in the United States that espoused greater democracy for the common man as that term was then defined. -
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. Adams was the second president to lose re-election, following his father, John Adams. Jackson had won a plurality of the electoral and popular vote in the 1824 election, but had lost the contingent election that was held in the House of Representatives. -
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. Advocating for emancipation separated abolitionists from more moderate anti-slavery advocates, who argued for gradual emancipation, and from “Free-Soil” activists who sought to restrict slavery to existing areas and prevent its spread. -
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 Indian tribes for their removal to federal territory west of the Mississippi River in exchange for their lands. -
Manifest Destiny
The god given right for the U.S. to spread from the East to the West. -
Andrew Jackson
Andrew Jackson was an American soldier and statesman who served as the seventh president of the United States from 1829 to 1837. -
Mexican American War
The Mexican-American War marked the first U.S. armed conflict chiefly fought on foreign soil. It politically divided and militarily unprepared Mexico against the expansionist administration of U.S. President 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. When the dust cleared, Mexico had lost about 1/3 of its territory. -
Compromise of 1850
The Compromise of 1850 consists of five laws passed in September of 1850 that dealt with the issue of slavery. California requested permission to enter the Union as a free state, potentially upsetting the balance between the free and slave states in the U.S. Senate. The Fugitive Slave Act was amended and the slave trade was abolished. An act was passed settling a boundary dispute between Texas and New Mexico that also established a territorial government in New Mexico. -
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," Dred Scott v. Sandford, also known as the Dred Scott case, was a landmark decision by the United States Supreme Court on US labor law and constitutional law. -
Dred Scott Decision
Dred Scott decision was a legal case in which the U.S. Supreme Court on March 6, 1857, ruled that Dred Scott, who had resided in a free state and territory was not thereby 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 and north 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 of Lincoln served as the primary catalyst of the American Civil War. The United States had become increasingly divided over sectional disagreements, regarding the extension of slavery into territories. A group formed the Constitutional Union Party, which sought to avoid secession by pushing aside the issue of slavery. -
Civil War
The American Civil War 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, Confederates attacked Fort Sumter in South Carolina. They faced secessionists of the Confederate States, who advocated for states' rights to expand slavery. Among the 34 U.S. states, seven Southern slave states individually declared their secession from the U.S. to form the Confederate States of America, or the South. -
Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass was an African-American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman. Douglass wrote several autobiographies. He described his experiences as a slave in his 1845 autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, which became a bestseller, and was influential in promoting the cause of abolition, as was his second book. -
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.