-
Period: 1000 BCE to 1000
Eastern Woodland People
The Eastern Woodland Culture consisted of Indian tribes inhabiting the eastern United States and Canada. The Eastern Woodlands were moderate-climate regions roughly from the Atlantic to the Mississippi River and included the Great Lakes. This huge area boasted ample rainfall, numerous lakes and rivers, and great forests. The rich earth and forests from the Ohio River to the Gulf of Mexico comprised the southeastern part of the Eastern Woodlands. -
950 BCE
Mound Builders/ Adena Hopewell
Mound Builders, in North American archaeology, name given to those people who built mounds in a large area from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico and from the Mississippi River to the Appalachian Mts. The greatest concentrations of mounds are found in the Mississippi and Ohio valleys. The term "Mound Builders" arose when the origin of the monuments was considered mysterious, most European Americans assuming that the Native Americans were too uncivilized for this accomplishment. -
200
Burial Mounds
The Adena built small burial mounds. The burial ceremony prepared the body's spirit for the afterlife. First they covered the body with red paint. Red represented the color of blood and life. The Adena believed the red paint allow the person's spirit to live after death. Then they laid the painted body on a bed of bark strips on the floor of a burial house. -
Period: 1096 to 1291
The Crusades
The Crusades were a series of religious wars between Christians and Muslims started primarily to secure control of holy sites considered sacred by both groups. In all, eight major Crusade expeditions occurred between 1096 and 1291. The bloody, violent and often ruthless conflicts propelled the status of European Christians, making them major players in the fight for land in the Middle East. -
Period: 1300 to
The Renaissance
Known as the Renaissance, the period immediately following the Middle Ages in Europe saw a great revival of interest in the classical learning and values of ancient Greece and Rome. Against a backdrop of political stability and growing prosperity, the development of new technologies–including the printing press, a new system of astronomy and the discovery and exploration of new continents–was accompanied by a flowering of philosophy, literature and especially art. -
1346
The Black Death
The Black Death arrived in Europe by sea in October 1347 when 12 Genoese trading ships docked at the Sicilian port of Messina 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: Most of the sailors aboard the ships were dead, and those who were still alive were gravely ill. They were overcome with fever, unable to keep food down and delirious from pain. -
1452
Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) was a painter, architect, inventor, and student of all things scientific. His natural genius crossed so many disciplines that he epitomized the term “Renaissance man.” Today he remains best known for his art, including two paintings that remain among the world’s most famous and admired, Mona Lisa and The Last Supper. Art, da Vinci believed, was indisputably connected with science and nature. -
1492
Columbian Exchange
The Columbian Exchange was a transfer of ideas, humans, culture, plants and various technologies, that occurred in the 1400s and 1500s between the Old World and the Americas. It took place following the 1492 voyage of Christopher Columbus as part of European colonization, and brought with it diseases and invasive species that had an initial negative impact. Some crops, such as potatoes, and tomatoes, had never been grown anywhere other than South America. -
1521
Hernan Cortez
Hernando Cortes, was a landmark victory for the European settlers. Following the Spanish arrival in Mexico, a huge battle erupted between the army of Cortes and the Aztec people under the rule of Montezuma -
Aug 13, 1521
Conquest of the Aztecs
The Spanish campaign declared victorious on August 13, 1521, when a coalition army of Spanish forces and native Tlaxcalan warriors led by Hernán Cortés and Xicotencatl the Younger captured the emperor Cuauhtemoc and Tenochtitlan, the capital of the Aztec Empire. -
Period: Jan 6, 1580 to
John Smith
Colonizer and publicist. During his two years in America, Smith was principally responsible for the survival of England’s first permanent colony in the New World. His bold leadership, military experience, and determination brought a measure of discipline to the dissolute colonists; his negotiations with the Indians prevented starvation; and his dispersal of the colony from unhealthy Jamestown lowered mortality. . -
Charter Colonies
Charter colony is one of three classes of colonial government established in the 17th century English colonies in North America, the other classes being proprietary colony and royal colony. The colonies of Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Massachusetts Bay were charter colonies. In a charter colony, Britain granted a charter to the colonial government establishing the rules under which the colony was to be governed. -
Mayflower Compact
When Pilgrims and other New World settlers set out on the Mayflower for America from England in 1620, they intended to lay anchor in northern Virginia. But after treacherous shoals and storms drove their ship off course, the settlers landed in Massachusetts instead, near Cape Cod, outside of Virginia’s jurisdiction. Knowing life without laws could prove catastrophic, colonist leaders created a set of rules for self-governance which became known as the Mayflower Compact. -
New Amsterdam
New Amsterdam (Dutch: Nieuw Amsterdam) was a 17th-century Dutch settlement established at the southern tip of Manhattan Island that served as the seat of the colonial government in New Netherland. The factorij became a settlement outside Fort Amsterdam. The fort was situated on the strategic southern tip of the island of Manhattan and was meant to defend the fur trade operations of the Dutch West India Company in the North River. -
Massachusetts Bay Colony
The Massachusetts Bay Colony was an English settlement on the east coast of North America in the 17th century around the Massachusetts Bay, the northernmost of the several colonies later reorganized as the Province of Massachusetts Bay. -
James II
The second surviving son of Charles I, he ascended the throne upon the death of his brother, Charles II. Members of Britain's Protestant political elite increasingly suspected him of being pro-French and pro-Catholic and of having designs on becoming an absolute monarch. When he produced a Catholic heir, a son called James Francis Edward, leading nobles called on his Protestant son-in-law and nephew William III of Orange to land an invasion army from the Dutch Republic. -
Period: to
James II
James II and VII was King of England and Ireland as James II and King of Scotland as James VII, from 6 February 1685 until he was deposed in the Glorious Revolution of 1688. He was the last Roman Catholic monarch of England, Scotland and Ireland. -
New England Colonies
The New England Colonies of British America included Connecticut Colony, Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Massachusetts Bay Colony, and Province of New Hampshire, as well as a few smaller short-lived colonies. -
Rhode Island
Rhode Island's permanent settlement by European colonists began in 1636 when a group of refugees from the Massachusetts Bay Colony left the colony to seek freedom of worship. Roger Williams, the unofficial head of the group of refugees, acquired land from Native Americans and established the town of Providence. Other early towns settled in the Rhode Island area were Portsmouth (1638), Newport (1639), and Warwick (1642). -
Triangular Trade
The transatlantic slave trade began in the 15th century, after the Portuguese started exploring the coast of West Africa. At first the number of enslaved Africans taken was small. In about 1650, however, with the development of plantations on the newly colonised Caribbean islands and American mainland, the trade grew. -
Proprietary Colonies
Proprietary Colonies were grants of land in the form of a charter, or a license to rule, for individuals or groups. They were used to settle areas rapidly with British subjects at the proprietors' expense during the costly settlement years. Also, they could be used by the Crown to repay a debt to, or bestow a favor upon, a highly placed person. Charters replaced the trading company as the dominant settlement device, beginning with Maryland's royal grant in 1632. -
Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin the Enlightened Scientist. ... With only a modest formal education, Franklin was famous and even revered in his own day for his accomplishments as a printer, author, politician, inventor, scientist, civic activist and diplomat, among the many other roles he fulfilled during his life. -
Period: to
The Enlightenment
European politics, philosophy, science and communications were radically reoriented during the course of the “long 18th century” (1685-1815) as part of a movement referred to by its participants as the Age of Reason, or simply the Enlightenment. Enlightenment thinkers in Britain, in France and throughout Europe questioned traditional authority and embraced the notion that humanity could be improved through rational change. -
Glorious Revolution
The Glorious Revolution, also called the Revolution of 1688, was the overthrow of King James II of England by a union of English Parliamentarians with the Dutch stadtholder William III, Prince of Orange. -
Salem Witch Trials
The infamous Salem witch trials began during the spring of 1692, after a group of young girls in Salem Village, Massachusetts, claimed to be possessed by the devil and accused several local women of witchcraft. As a wave of hysteria spread throughout colonial Massachusetts, a special court convened in Salem to hear the cases; the first convicted witch, Bridget Bishop, was hanged that June. Eighteen others followed Bishop to Salem’s Gallows Hill, while some 150 more were accused -
Chesapeake Colonies
The Chesapeake Colonies were the Colony and Dominion of Virginia, later the Commonwealth of Virginia, and Province of Maryland, later Maryland, both colonies located in British America and centered on the Chesapeake Bay. Disease ravaged settlements of the Chesapeake region grew slowly due to disease (malaria etc.) Most of these settlers were male immigrants from England who died soon after their arrival.Due to the majority of men, eligible women did not remain single for long. -
Period: to
Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin (January 17, 1706 to April 17, 1790) was a Founding Father and a polymath, inventor, scientist, printer, politician, freemason and diplomat. Franklin helped to draft the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, and he negotiated the 1783 Treaty of Paris ending the Revolutionary War. His scientific pursuits included investigations into electricity, mathematics and mapmaking. A writer known for his wit and wisdom, Franklin also published Poor Richard’s. -
Act of Union
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 that had been agreed on 22 July 1706, following negotiation between commissioners representing the parliaments of the two countries. -
Free-Black Communities
In the nineteenth century, Philadelphia and the region surrounding it came to contain free black communities that by most measures were the most vibrant, dynamic, and influential in the United States. Free African Americans relied on each other to confront the persistent power of slavery and white supremacy in Philadelphia and the region. At the same time, many free blacks looked outward and became leaders in the national fight against those same threats. -
Period: to
John Edwards
In the 1720s to early 1730s, Edwards became concerned that the people of the colonies had lost their focus on God. Instead, he thought they were being distracted by the worldly goods that had become more plentiful as new colonists and traders flowed into Massachusetts and Connecticut with more regularity. He became a and central figure in a new religious revival known as the Great Awakening, during which time he delivered his most famous sermon, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. -
The Great Awakening
The Great Awakening or First Great Awakening was a Protestant religious revival that swept Protestant Europe and British America in the 1730s and 1740s. An evangelical and revitalization movement, it left a permanent impact on American Protestantism. It resulted from powerful preaching that gave listeners a sense of deep personal revelation of their need of salvation by Jesus Christ. The Great Awakening pulled away from ritual, ceremony, sacramentalism, and hierarchy. -
Period: to
American Industrial Revolution
The growth of the Industrial Revolution depended on the ability to transport raw materials and finished goods over long distances. There were three main types of transportation that increased during the Industrial Revolution: waterways, roads, and railroads. Transportation was important because people were starting to live in the West. During this time period, transportation via water was the cheapest way to move heavy products (such as coal and iron). -
Boston Tea Party
This famed act of American colonial defiance served as a protest against taxation. Seeking to boost the troubled East India Company, British Parliament adjusted import duties with the passage of the Tea Act in 1773. On the night of December 16, 1773, 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. -
Stamp Act
The Stamp Act was passed by the British Parliament on March 22, 1765. The new tax was imposed on all American colonists and required them to pay a tax on every piece of printed paper they used. Ship's papers, legal documents, licenses, newspapers, other publications, and even playing cards were taxed. -
Townshend Acts
A series of measures introduced into the English Parliament by Chancellor of the Exchequer Charles Townshend in 1767, the Townshend Acts imposed duties on glass, lead, paints, paper and tea imported into the colonies. But many Americans viewed the taxation as an abuse of power, resulting in the passage of agreements to limit imports from Britain. In 1770, Parliament repealed all the Townshend duties except the tax on tea. -
Boston Massacre
The Boston Massacre occurred on March 5, 1770. A squad of British soldiers, come to support a sentry who was being pressed by a heckling, snowballing crowd, 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 Boston Massacre is remembered as a key event in helping to galvanize the colonial public to the Patriot cause. -
Coercive Acts
The Coercive Acts are names used to describe a series of laws relating to Britain's colonies in North America and passed by the British Parliament in 1774. Four of the acts were issued in direct response to the Boston Tea Party of December 1773. -
Paul Revere
Revere became a Freemason in 1760, and soon joined two more overtly political groups–the Sons of Liberty and the North End Caucus. Through them, he participated in Samuel Adams’s gradually accelerating movement toward independence, serving primarily as a courier and an engraver of propaganda pictures, the two best-known examples of which are a “view” of British ships landing troops in 1768 and a wildly inaccurate cartoon depicting the Boston Massacre of 1770. -
Problems of Article of Confederation
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
Articles Of Cofederation
The Articles of Confederation was the first written constitution of the United States. Stemming from wartime urgency, its progress was slowed by fears of central authority and extensive land claims by states before was it was ratified on March 1, 1781. Under these articles, the states remained sovereign and independent, with Congress serving as the last resort on appeal of disputes. Congress was also given the authority to make treaties and alliances. -
Period: to
Shay's Rebellion
Shays’ Rebellion is the name given to a series of protests in 1786 and 1787 by American farmers against state and local enforcement of tax collections and judgments for debt. Although farmers took up arms in states from New Hampshire to South Carolina, the rebellion was most serious in Massachusetts, where bad harvests, economic depression, and high taxes threatened farmers with the loss of their farms. -
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 (the Confederation Congress), passed July 13, 1787. -
Judicial Review
The Constitution gives the Supreme Court the power to hold trials in cases involving ambassadors, public ministers, consuls, and states. Public ministers are diplomatic officials other than ambassadors. Consuls are government officials who represent a country's commercial interests in another country. -
Changes in Transportation
The growth of the Industrial Revolution depended on the ability to transport raw materials and finished goods over long distances. There were three main types of transportation that increased during the Industrial Revolution: waterways, roads, and railroads. ... The roads also improved immensely during this time period. -
Steamboats
At the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the invention of the steam engine became widely popular. In 1787, John Fitch demonstrated the first steamboat, which had twelve paddles and was propelled by a steam engine. From 1787 to the 1830s, steamboats were improved. -
Period: to
Constitutional Convention
The Constitutional Convention took place in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Although the Convention was intended to revise the Articles of Confederation, the intention from the outset of many of its proponents, chief among them James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, was to create a new government rather than fix the existing one. The result of the Convention was the creation of the United States Constitution, placing the Convention among the most significant events in the history of the U.S -
Virginia Plan
The Virginia Plan (also known as the Randolph Plan, after its sponsor, or the Large-State 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 Virginia Plan proposed a strong central government composed of three branches: legislative, executive, and judicial. -
Period: to
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. -
First national test
Whiskey Rebellion, (1794), in American history, uprising that afforded the new U.S. government its first opportunity to establish federal authority by military means within state boundaries, as officials moved into western Pennsylvania to quell an uprising of settlers rebelling against the liquor tax. This helped the government form a stronger government to keep things like this from happening. -
Period: to
Whiskey Rebellion
The Whiskey Rebellion (also known as the Whiskey Insurrection) 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. It became law in 1791, and was intended to generate revenue for the war debt incurred during the Revolutionary War. -
Bill of Rights
After the American Declaration of Independence in 1776, the Founding Fathers turned to the composition of the states’ and then the federal Constitution. Although a Bill of Rights to protect the citizens was not initially deemed important, the Constitution’s supporters realized it was crucial to achieving ratification. Thanks largely to the efforts of James Madison, the Bill of Rights officially became part of the Constitution in December 1791. -
Cotton Gin
In 1793, Eli Whitney invented a simple machine that influenced the history of the United States. He invented a cotton gin that was popular in the South. The South became the cotton producing part of the country because Whitney's cotton gin was able to successfully pull out the seeds from the cotton bolls. -
George Washington First Cabinet
Washington held his first full cabinet meeting on February 25, 1793, with Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of War Henry Knox, and Attorney General Edmund Randolph. One prominent individual who did not attend cabinet meetings was Vice President John Adams. -
Washington Farewell Address
In the midst of building hostilities, Washington decided to resign from office after his second term. On September 19, 1796, the American Daily Advertiser published Washington's Farewell Address to the nation. The basic premise of the address was a condemnation of political parties. -
XYZ Affair
The XYZ Affair was a political and diplomatic episode in 1797 and 1798, early in the administration of John Adams, involving a confrontation between the United States and Republican France that led to an undeclared war called the Quasi-War. -
Period: to
Adam's Presidency
When Adams entered office, the ongoing war between France and Great Britain was causing great difficulties for American merchants on the high seas and arousing intense partisanship among contending political factions nationwide. His tenure as president was dominated by the Quasi-War, an undeclared war against the French Republic waged primarily in the Caribbean. -
Personal Liberty Laws
The personal liberty laws were laws passed by several U.S. states in the North to counter the Fugitive Slave Acts of 1793 and 1850. Different laws did this in different ways, including allowing jury trials for escaped slaves and forbidding state authorities from cooperating in their capture and return. -
Period: to
Jefferson Administration
By July 1801, Jefferson had assembled his Cabinet, which consisted of Secretary of State James Madison, Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin, Secretary of War, Henry Dearborn, Attorney General Levi Lincoln Sr., and Secretary of the Navy Robert Smith. After his decision to pursue the presidency in the contingent election, Burr was excluded from any role in the Jefferson administration. -
Louisiana Purchase
With the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, the 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. -
Period: to
Westward Expansion
Former U.S. president Thomas Jefferson believed that the nation's future depended on its westward expansion. In 1803 the Louisiana Purchase took place, doubling the size of the country. By 1840 almost 7 million Americans had migrated westward in hopes of securing land and being prosperous. -
Period: to
Lewis & Clark
Meriwether Lewis was an American explorer, who with William Clark led the Lewis and Clark Expedition through the uncharted American interior to the Pacific Northwest in 1804–06. He later served as governor of Upper Louisiana Territory. The Lewis and Clark Expedition spanned 8,000 mi (13,000 km) and three years, taking the Corps of Discovery, as the expedition party was known, down the Ohio River, up the Missouri River, across the Continental Divide, and to the Pacific Ocean. -
Sacagawea
The bilingual Shoshone woman Sacagawea accompanied the Lewis and Clark Corps of expedition in 1805-06 from the northern plains through the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean and back. Her skills as a translator were invaluable, and her intimate knowledge of some difficult terrain. Perhaps most significant was her calming presence on both the expeditioners and the Native Americans they encountered, Remarkably, Sacagawea did it all while caring for the son she bore just two months. -
Period: to
Madison Presidency
The presidency of James Madison began on March 4, 1809, when James Madison was inaugurated as President of the United States, and ended on March 4, 1817. Madison, the fourth United States president, took office after defeating Charles Cotesworth Pinckney decisively in the 1808 presidential election. He was re-elected four years later, defeating DeWitt Clinton in the 1812 election. His presidency was dominated by the War of 1812 with the United Kingdom. -
Tecumeseh
Shawnee Indian political leader and war chief Tecumseh came of age amid the border warfare that ravaged the Ohio Valley in the late 18th century. He took part in a series of raids of Kentucky and Tennessee frontier settlements in the 1780s, and emerged as a prominent chief by 1800. After Prophetstown was destroyed during the Battle of Tippecanoe, the Shawnee chief fought with pro-British forces in the War of 1812 until his death in the Battle of the Thames. -
America Strategy
America's strategy for the war was offensive. Since the Royal Navy was #1 in the world, America focused on land campaigns to conquer Canada. Their ultimate objective was to conquer British North America and to break the power of their native enemies. However, despite their grandiose plans, the Americans were ill-prepared for war. Despite their massive manpower advantage, they stared the war with only 13,000 soldiers – less than double the 7000 British and Canadian troops in Canada. -
British Strategy
The British strategy for the war was defensive. Despite having the world's greatest navy and fielding thousands of professionals, Britain had few resources to spare for British North America in 1812. England was locked in a life-or-death struggle with Napoleon. Britain's strategy for North America involved blockading American ports to disrupt trade, and British and Canadian land forces were to stay on the defensive and guard Canada and wait for reinforcements. -
Period: to
War of 1812
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, Canadian and Native American troops over the course of the War of 1812. Nonetheless, American troops were able to repulse British invasions in New York, Baltimore and New Orleans, The ratification of the Treaty of Ghent on February 17, 1815 -
McCulloch v. Maryland
McCulloch v. Maryland, 17 U.S., was a landmark decision by the Supreme Court of the United States. The state of Maryland had attempted to impede operation of a branch of the Second Bank of the United States by imposing a tax on all notes of banks not chartered in Maryland. -
Temperance Movement
The Temperance movement is a social movement against the consumption of alcoholic beverages. Temperance movements typically criticize alcohol intoxication, promote complete abstinence (teetotalism), or use its political influence to press the government to enact alcohol laws to regulate the availability of alcohol or even its complete prohibition. -
Monroe Doctrine
On December 2, 1823, President James Monroe used his annual message to Congress for a bold assertion: ‘The American continents are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers.’ Along with such other statements as George Washington’s Farewell Address and John Hay’s Open Door notes regarding China, this ‘Monroe Doctrine’ became a cornerstone of American foreign policy. -
Election of 1824
1824 Presidential Election. 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. ... In this election, the Democratic-Republican Party splintered as four separate candidates sought the presidency. An election that Jackson lost. -
John Quincy Adams
John Quincy Adams was an American statesman who served as a diplomat, United States Senator, member of the House of Representatives, and the sixth President of the United States from 1825 to 1829 -
Period: to
Presidency of John Quincy Adams
The presidency of John Quincy Adams began on March 4, 1825, when John Quincy Adams was inaugurated as President of the United States, and ended on March 4, 1829. Adams, the sixth United States president, took office following the 1824 presidential election, in which he and three other Democratic-Republicans—Henry Clay, William H. Crawford, and Andrew Jackson—sought the presidency. No candidate won a majority of Electoral College votes. -
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 1790, gained momentum by 1800 and, after 1820, membership rose rapidly among Baptist and Methodist congregations whose preachers led the movement. -
Second Party System
The Second Party System is a name for the political party system in the United States during the 1800s. ... One was the Democratic Party, led by Andrew Jackson. The other was the Whig Party, started by Henry Clay. The Whig party was made up of members of the National Republican Party and other people who opposed Jackson. -
Andrew Jackson
Born in poverty, Andrew Jackson (1767-1845) had become a wealthy Tennessee lawyer and rising young politician by 1812, when war broke out between the United States and Britain. His leadership in that conflict earned Jackson national fame as a military hero, and he would become America’s most influential–and polarizing–political figure during the 1820s and 1830s. After narrowly losing to John Quincy Adams in the contentious 1824 presidential election, -
Andrew Jackson
Andrew Jackson was born on March 15, 1767, in the Waxhaws region between North Carolina and South Carolina. A lawyer and a landowner, he became a national war hero after defeating the British in New Orleans during the War of 1812. Jackson was elected the seventh president of the United States in 1828. -
Period: to
Age of Jackson
At Andrew Jackson's 1828 inauguration, hundreds of bearded, buckskin-clad frontiersmen trashed the White House while celebrating the election of one of their own to the Presidency. Though born in South Carolina, Jackson, like many others, had moved to the frontier. Indeed, America was a country on the move west. -
Nat Turner's Rebellion
Nat Turner's Rebellion (also known as the Southampton Insurrection) 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 over 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. -
Abolitionist
From the 1830s until 1870, the abolitionist movement attempted to achieve immediate emancipation of all slaves and the ending of racial segregation and discrimination. Yet these two expressions of hostility to slavery–abolitionism and Free-Soilism–were often closely related not only in their beliefs and their interaction but also in the minds of southern slaveholders who finally came to regard the North as united against them in favor of black emancipation. -
Oregon Trail
The Oregon Trail, was the longest of the overland routes used in the westward expansion of the United States, was first traced by explorers and fur traders for traveling to the Oregon Country. Then the Oregon Trail crossed the Snake River Plain of present-day southern Idaho and the Blue Mountains of northeastern Oregon before reaching the Willamette Valley. American settlers began following the trail in 1841, led by Marcus Whitman. -
Annexation of Texas
The Texas annexation was the 1845 incorporation of the Republic of Texas into the United States of America, which was admitted to the Union as the 28th state on December 29, 1845. The Republic of Texas declared independence from the Republic of Mexico on March 2, 1836. -
Sam Houston
After moving to Texas in 1832, he joined the growing conflict between the Mexican government and became commander of the local army. On April 21, 1836, Houston and his men defeated Mexican General Antonio López de Santa Anna at San Jacinto to secure Texan independence. He was voted president in 1836 and again in 1841, then served as a senator after Texas became a state in 1845. Despite his pro-slavery views, he believed in preserving the Union. -
Election of 1836
Martin Van Buren was the personal choice of Andrew Jackson and faced no opposition for the Democratic nomination. Martin Van Buren The Whigs, however, were badly split and decided to field a number of regional candidates in the hope of having the issue decided by the House of Representatives (as had been the case in the Election of 1824). William Henry Harrison, hero of the Battle of Tippecanoe, hoped to gain the support of Western voters, Daniel Webster had strength in New England. -
Martin van Buren
Unlike the seven men who preceded him in the White House, Martin Van Buren (1782-1862) was the first president to be born a citizen of the United States and not a British subject. He rose quickly in New York politics, winning a U.S. Senate seat in 1821 and presiding over a sophisticated state political organization. Van Buren helped form the new Democratic Party from a coalition of Jeffersonian Republicans who backed the military hero and president Andrew Jackson. -
Telegraph
Developed in the 1830s and 1840s by Samuel Morse (1791-1872) 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 (bearing his name) 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. -
Mormons
Mormons are a religious and cultural group related to Mormonism, initiated by Joseph Smith in upstate New York during the 1820s. After Smith's death in 1844, the Mormons followed Brigham Young to what would become the Utah Territory. Today, most Mormons are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The center of Mormon is in Utah, North America and has more Mormons than any other continent, though the majority of Mormons live outside the United States. -
Manifest Destiny
Manifest Destiny is a term for the attitude prevalent during the 19th century period of American expansion that the United States not only could, but was destined to, stretch from coast to coast. This attitude helped fuel western settlement, Native American removal and war with Mexico. The phrase was first employed by John L. O’Sullivan in an article on the annexation of Texas published in the July-August 1845 edition of the United States Magazine and Democratic Review. -
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. 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
The Mexican-American War (1846-1848) 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. -
Suffrage
The campaign for women’s suffrage began in earnest in the decades before the Civil War. During the 1820s and 30s, most states had extended the franchise to all white men, regardless of how much money or property they had. At the same time, all sorts of reform groups were proliferating across the United States–temperance clubs, religious movements and moral-reform societies. Meanwhile, many American women were beginning to turn to what historians have called the “Cult of True Womanhood” -
Period: to
California Gold Rush
The discovery of gold nuggets in the Sacramento Valley in early 1848 sparked the Gold Rush, arguably one of the most significant events to shape American history during the first half of the 19th century. As news spread of the discovery, thousands of prospective gold miners traveled by sea or over land to San Francisco and the surrounding area; by the end of 1849. the non-native population of the California territory was some 100,000. -
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, signed on February 2, 1848, ended the Mexican-American War in favor of the United States. The war had begun almost two years earlier, in May 1846, over a territorial dispute involving Texas. The treaty added an additional 525,000 square miles to United States territory, including the including the land that makes up all or parts of present-day Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming. -
Chinese Migration
Once the Chinese heard the news of the gold rush, an immense amount of them traveled to California. The majority of these Chinese immigrants were unskilled male laborers who were in search of a better life for themselves and, for many, their families at home. For example, they were not Christian, they barely spoke English, they had darker skin, and they had unique eating habits and clothing. They were also extremely unobtrusive, peaceful, frugal, and hard-working. -
Underground Railroad
The Underground Railroad was a network of people, many African American, offering shelter and aid to escaped slaves. The exact dates of its operation are not known, but it operated anywhere from the late 18th century to the Civil War. The Underground Railroad was formed as a convergence of various clandestine efforts at the time. -
Harriet Tubman
Harriet Tubman became famous as a “conductor” on the Underground Railroad during the turbulent 1850s. Born a slave on Maryland’s eastern shore, she endured the harsh existence of a field hand, including brutal beatings. In 1849 she fled slavery, leaving her husband and family behind in order to escape. Despite a bounty on her head, she returned to the South at least 19 times to lead her family and hundreds of other slaves to freedom via the Underground Railroad. -
Compromise of 1850
Senator Henry Clay introduced a series of resolutions on January 29, 1850, in an attempt to seek a compromise and avert a crisis between North and South. As part of the Compromise of 1850, the Fugitive Slave Act was amended and the slave trade in Washington, D.C., was abolished. -
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´. -
Greek Revival
The Greek Revival was an architectural movement of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, predominantly in Northern Europe and the United States. A product of Hellenism, it may be looked upon as the last phase in the development of Neoclassical architecture. The term was first used by Charles Robert Cockerell in a lecture he gave as Professor of Architecture to the Royal Academy of Arts, London in 1842. -
Immigration
The United States experienced major waves of immigration during the colonial era, the first part of the 19th century and from the 1880s to 1920. Many immigrants came to America seeking greater economic opportunity, while some, such as the Pilgrims in the early 1600s, arrived in search of religious freedom. The first significant federal legislation restricting immigration was the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act. -
Period: to
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.
