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A Dutch Ship Brings the First Africans to Jamestown
Historians now know that small numbers of Africans lived in Virginia before 1619, the year a Dutch ship sold some twenty blacks (probably from the West Indies) to the colonists. But it was not until the 1680s that black slavery became the dominant labor system on plantations there. -
King Philips War
For nearly half a century following the Pequot War, New England was free of major Indian wars. During this period, the region's indigenous people declined rapidly in numbers and suffered severe losses of land and cultural independence. During the first three-quarters of the seventeenth century, New England's indigenous population fell from 140,000 to 10,000, while the English population grew to 50,000. Meanwhile, the New England Puritans launched a concerted campaign to convert the Indians to P -
The Shot Heard Around the World
The battles of Lexington and Concord occurred three weeks after Patrick Henry (1736-1799) delivered his famous words, "Give me liberty or give me death." Although an earlier battle with the British had been fought in North Carolina, at Moore's Creek Bridge, Lexington and Concord became fixed in the public mind as the valiant start of American resistance. -
Georgia Is a Haven for Debtors
By such a colony many families who would otherwise starve will be provided for, and made masters of houses and lands. The people in Great Britain, to whom these necessitous families were a burden, will be relieved. Numbers of manufacturers will be here employed for supplying them with clothes, working tools, and other necessities. And by giving refuge to the distressed Salzburgers [Austrians], and other persecuted Protestants, the power of Britain, as a reward for its hospitality, will be incre -
Boston Tea Party
Writing just five days before Bostonians dumped the cargoes of tea overboard; John Adams still assumed that the British ships would return to England. -
Cornwallis Surrenders to Washington at Yorktown
Convinced that he could not suppress the rebellion in the Carolinas, Lord Cornwallis retreated to Virginia in 1781. Sir Henry Clinton, fearful of an American attack on his base in New York City, ordered Cornwallis to send part of his army to New York and to take up defensive positions in Virginia. Still confident that he could defeat the rebels, Cornwallis refused to send troops northward and began to build fortifications at Yorktown, along Chesapeake Bay. -
Articles of Confederation
Under the Articles of Confederation, the national government was composed of a Congress, which had the power to declare war, appoint military officers, sign treaties, make alliances, appoint foreign ambassadors, and manage relations with Indians. All states were represented equally in Congress, and nine of the 13 states had to approve a bill before it became law. Amendments required the approval of all the states. -
First President in the United States
The Constitution provided only a broad outline of the office and powers of the president. It would be up to George Washington, as the first president, to define the office. It was unclear, for example, whether the president was to personally run the executive branch or, instead, serve as a constitutional monarch and delegate responsibility to the vice president and executive officers (the cabinet). -
Benjamin Franklin Invents the Lighting Rod
Perhaps the most important essay written by an American during the eighteenth century, Franklin's "Observations Concerning the Increase of mankind" was one of the first serious studies of demography. In the early nineteenth century it would serve as an inspiration for Thomas Malthus (1766-1834), who based his grim law of population (that population would inevitably outstrip the food supply) on Franklin's calculations. But Franklin's argument was, in fact, quite different from Malthus's bleak pro -
Lewis and Clark
Lewis and Clark led some 30 soldiers and ten civilians on one of history's great adventures. The Lewis and Clark expedition has been likened to the first trip to the moon, except that unlike the astronauts, Lewis and Clark were out of contact with their countrymen for two years. With the assistance of Sacagawea (1787?-1812), a Shoshoni Indian, who served as an interpreter, and Toussaint Charbonneau, a French-Canadian trapper, the expedition travelled up the Missouri River to the Rockies and the -
Samuel Finley Morse Invents the Telegraph
Historians of technology are cautious about naming the first person to invent anything, because someone else has always thought up at least a part of it first. Great ideas always flow from more than one inventive mind, and the telegraph is no exception. The noted American painter Samuel F. B. Morse put together a telegraph system in 1837. But the most original part of that system was the code that bears his name. -
Confederate States of America Formed
In early February 1861, the states of the lower South established a new government, the Confederate States of America, in Montgomery, Alabama, and drafted a constitution. Although modeled on the U.S. Constitution, this document specifically referred to slavery, state sovereignty, and God. It explicitly guaranteed slavery in the states and territories, but prohibited the international slave trade. It also limited the President to a single six-year term, gave the President a line-item veto, requir -
Civil War Ends
The next day, in a final message to his troops, Robert E. Lee acknowledged that he was "compelled to yield to overwhelming numbers and resources." Three-quarters of the Confederate white male population of military age had fought in the war, but by 1865, the North had four times as many troops as the Confederacy. At the time he surrendered, Lee's entire army had shrunk to just 35,000 men, compared to Grant's total of 113,000. Lee's decision to surrender, however, probably helped to prevent larg -
Russia Sells Alaska
. In 1867, the United States purchased Alaska from Russia for $72 million and occupied the Midway Islands in the Pacific. -
Great Chicago Fire
The fire raged for 30 hours. The blaze, leaping from house to house, ultimately destroyed four-and-a-half square miles of Chicago--some 17,500 buildings. By the time the fire burned itself out on October 10, the entire business district was destroyed. Six railroad depots and Marshall Field's department store had gone up in flames. At times, temperatures reached 1,500 to 1,800 degrees. People were incinerated; limestone disintegrated into powder. Some 250 people were known dead and another 200 w -
Martin Luther King Assinated
A distant gunman who raced away and escaped fatally shot Memphis, Friday, April 5 -- The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who preached nonviolence and racial brotherhood, here last night. Gov. Buford Ellington ordered Four thousand National Guard troops into Memphis after the 39-year-old Nobel Prize-winning civil rights leader died. -
President Kennedy Assinated
Dallas, Nov. 22--President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was shot and killed by an assassin today. He died of a wound in the brain caused by a rifle bullet that was fired at him as he was riding through downtown Dallas in a motorcade. Vice President Lyndon Baines Johnson, who was riding in the third car behind Mr. Kennedy's, was sworn in as the 36th President of the United States 99 minutes after Mr. Kennedy's death.
