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Jan 7, 1450
John cabot
John Cabot was an early explorer and navigator. He was born in 1450 in Italy. He sailed to try to find a short route across the North Atlantic. In 1497, Cabot landed in what is now Canada but his efforts were important for the establishment of British colonies in North America. He is credited as the first European to reach the North American mainland after the Vikings. Cabot had thought that he had actually landed in Asia. -
Jan 7, 1451
Amerigo Vespucci
Amerigo Vespucci was born in 1451 in Florence, Italy. He made three voyages back and forth from the New World and Europe. His third voyage was his most successful after many expeditions he found a lot of different plants and animals. The people that made the voyage possible were his relatives that were very wealthy and gave him most of the money for the voyage. The person who hired him for the job was King Louis XI of France. North and South America were named after Amerigo in 1507 by schol -
Oct 7, 1451
Christopher Columbus
Christopher Columbus: Christopher was born in Genoa, Italy in 1451. He was an explorer that is known for setting sail in 1492 in the Santa Maria and with the Pinta and Nina ships to the Americas. He was a governor of the Indies at one point but was so bad at it that they arrested him and sent him back to Spain. He was also a very religious man. He believed that God had called him to go on his voyages that many credit him for opening up the Americas to European colonization. -
Jan 7, 1565
Henery hudson
Henry Hudson was born in 1565 in England. He was an important early explorer that gave England information about North America’s water ways. Hudson is best known for mapping the Hudson River, Hudson Bay, and the North Atlantic. He had wanted to find a northern passage to India. But his failed attempts earlier due to ice he could not get through or go around, led him eventually landing in what is. now Maine -
Aug 13, 1574
Samuel de Champlain
Samuel de Champlain was born August 13, 1574, in Brouage, France. He was an explorer and navigator. He mapped much of northeastern North America. He began exploring North America in 1603 and was important in establishing the French colonies in the New World. He discovered the lake that was named after him, Lake Champlain. -
Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin was most commonly known for his observations and experiments with lightning and electricity. He did many other important things like help draft the Declaration of Independence and was one of the signers of it. So he was not just an inventor, he was also a politician. Benjamin was born in 1706 in Boston by the Massachusetts Bay. His father could only afford to send him to school for one year but he loved to read and became a very smart man. -
Roger Sherman
Roger Sherman was born in 1721 in Newton, Massachusetts. He was a lawyer and successful landowner and businessman. He was elected to the Continental Congress in 1774. He was on the committee to help draft the Declaration of Independence which he also signed. Sherman also helped form the Articles of Confederation. He is credited as giving 138 speeches at the 1787 Constitutional Convention. -
George Washington
George Washington was elected the first President of the United States in 1787. He was born in 1732 in Westmoreland County, VA. First he was in the militia. He became Commander of the Continental Army in 1775. He was married to a widow who had two children but they never had children of their own. He was the only President to not live in Washington D.C. and he was also the only President to be elected unanimously. -
John Adams
Adams was born in 1735 in Massachusetts. He was the Vice President for George Washington to start with. Adams then became the second President of the United States. John Adams was also there to sign the Declaration of Independence and was the first President to live in the White House. He only served one term as President as he lost to Thomas Jefferson in 1801. His son, John Quincy Adams became the sixth President of the United States. -
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson was born in 1743. As the 3rd President of the United States, he made a big impact but is said to have been a terrible public speaker. He also never vetoed a bill. He loved to play music and was very talented at it. The most important thing he is known for was that he wrote the Declaration of Independence in 1776. He also helped write the Bill of Rights. He made the Louisiana Purchase from France in 1803 which doubled the size of the nation. -
French and Indian War
This was a war between the British and the French over the American colonies. This war lasted seven years so it was called the Seven Year’s War. The British declared the Seven Years’ War in 1756. The war ended in 1763 but not until over 22,000 people had died in the war. George Washington also fought in this war and made a big impact in the war. The tide of the war changed when the British started to pay people to fight with them. The war ended with the signing of the Treaty of Paris. Thi -
Sugar Act
This act was passed by British Parliament on April 5, 1764. Britain was in debt after the French and Indian War. But Britain also wanted to keep troops in the colonies which cost money also. So they passed the Sugar Act to help pay for the troops that were stationed there. It increased the tax on good such as wine, coffee, and sugar. It also strengthened laws to prosecute those that tried to smuggle goods into the country. -
Stamp Act
This act was passed on February 17, 1765, by British Parliament. This act was a direct tax on the American colonists. It was a tax on all paper documents and any printed paper they used. The money raised was to be used to pay for the cost of protecting the American colonists. The colonists felt they should not be taxed unless their own parliament voted on it. -
Quartering Act
This act was passed on May 15, 1765 by British parliament. It stated that Great Britain’s soldiers would be quartered in American colonial housing, inns, barns, or other buildings. Colonists disputed this act because it violated the Bill of Rights of 1688. This act was part of the Intolerable Acts. The act expired on March 24, 1767. -
Boston Massacre
This event took place on March 5, 1770. There was a presence of British troops in Boston that were not welcome. The colonists were tired of the new laws and taxes the British imposed on them. The riot started when a mad mob of colonists started throwing rocks, snowballs, and sticks at a British sentinel. A British officer brought in more soldiers to protect their headquarters. Then the soldiers felt threatened and fired into the crowd, killing five colonists. -
William Clark
William Clark: Clark was born August 1, 1770. He helped co-lead Lewis’s expedition of the lands west of the Mississippi. Clark, like Lewis, was a U.S. soldier and explorer, he also served with the militia. Lewis and Clark served in the U.S. army together in 1795. Clark had a lot of knowledge about wild life and plants and was an excellent map maker so Lewis knew that he would bring him along on his expedition. In 1796, Clark resigned from the U.S. army to take care of his household and f -
The Tea Act
This act was passed on May 10, 1773 by British parliament. The Tea Act gave the East India Tea Company a monopoly on tea sales in the colonies. It lowered the tea price for the East India Tea Company so the colonists could not afford to buy tea anywhere else. The East India Tea Company had a lot of debt from the French Indian War so this was intended to help them out. This is the act responsible for the Boston Tea Party. -
Boston Tea Party
: This event was caused by the Tea Act of 1773. The Tea Act required taxes be paid on British tea. On December 16, 1773, a group of colonists from Massachusetts disguised themselves as Mohawk Indians and boarded three British tea ships. They dumped over 92,000 pounds of tea into the ocean to protest the tax. This ended up costing the British a lot of money. -
Meriwether Lewis
Meriwether Lewis: Lewis was born on August 18, 1774, near Ivy, Virginia. He was an explorer and a soldier that was part of the states militia. He was also asked by President Thomas Jefferson to be his private secretary in 1801. Jefferson asked Lewis to go and explore the lands west of the Mississippi. He asked William Clark to join him and they began their journey near St. Louis, Missouri in May of 1804. -
Revolutionary War
The Revolutionary War started in 1775 and ended in 1783. This was a war that was between British and American troops mainly but other countries did become involved. The colonists were being denied the rights of Parliament of Great Britain that governed them with no representation. The American colonies decided to break away from Great Britain’s rule. The Treaty of Paris was signed in 1783 to end the war. It is estimated that 25,000 American Revolutionaries died, but most of those deaths wer -
The Treaty of Paris
The Treaty of Paris was signed on September 3, 1783, to end the Revolutionary War. This was the treaty between the 13 Colonies and Great Britain. The American colonies were no longer under British rule and were recognized as an independent nation. This treaty also set new borders for the United States. The land included from the Great Lakes to Florida and from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mississippi River. Benjamin Franklin and John Adams were two of the Americans that were in Paris to sign t -
3/5 Compromise
This compromise was very important for slaves. It said that slaves count as 3/5 of a vote and 3/5 of a person. Delegates from the northern states and the southern states reached this compromise in 1787 at the U.S. Constitutional Convention. It determined how slaves would be counted when finding a state’s total population. Then that number would determine the number of seats that the state had in the U.S. House of Representatives. After the Civil War, the Compromise was nullified because all -
Fugitive slave Act of 1793
The Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 reassured slave owners that if a slave ran away they could capture them and bring them back as long as they were still in the U.S. territory. This law was mostly ignored by those that lived in the north. They refused to follow it and thought that slaves should get a trial before returning to slave owners. This led to another slave act, the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which was to strengthen the first one and made federal officials responsible for capturing runaw -
Whiskey Rebellion
This rebellion took place in 1794. The U.S. suffered from large debt incurred from the Revolutionary War. So in 1791, the Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton, proposed a tax on distilled spirits made in the United States. This made many settlers angry and they began the Whiskey Rebellion to fight against the tax. The rebellion turned violent and President Washington himself ended up taking a militia force to western Pennsylvania to stop the rebels. By the time they reached Pittsbu -
Robert E. Lee
Robert E. Lee was born on January 19, 1807. He graduated from West Point in 1829. Later, he served as superintendent of West Point. Lee accepted a general’s commission in the Confederate Army when Virginia seceded from the Union. He was a very good General and military man, but on April 9, 1865, he was forced to surrender his army to Gen. Grant. -
Ulysses S. Grant
Ulysses S. Grant was born on April 27, 1808. He was born in Point Pleasant, Ohio. He did not want to work in his father’s tannery so joined military school instead. He did not do well in school but he finished and went on to serve in the military. Grant served as U.S. General and Commander of the Union armies during the late years of the Civil War. He was known to never surrender under any circumstances and while others thought the war would be won by taking control of land, Grant felt it w -
The Seven day Battles
The Seven Days Battles took place from June 25 to July 1, 1862. It was actually six different battles along the Virginia Peninsula east of Richmond, Virginia. The Union troops were led by Gen. McClellan and the Confederates were led by Gen. Lee. It was the bloodiest week in American history. There were more than 34,000 casualties. Many thought the Union would have no problem fighting against the Confederates, but this week showed that they in fact were a force that would not be easily defea -
Jefferson davis
Jefferson Davis was born on June 3, 1808 in Kentucky. He served as a U.S. Senator from Mississippi and served as Secretary of War under President Franklin Pierce. He was elected President of the Confederate States of America on February 18, 1861. Davis was captured on May 10, 1865 by Union forces and was charged with treason. He was released from jail on bail on May 13, 1867. -
Andrew Johnson
Andrew Johnson was born on December 29, 1808, in Raleigh, North Carolina. He grew up in poverty but found success as a politician. He served as Vice President of the United States. Later, he was made President after Lincoln’s death. He was the first President of the U.S. to be impeached. -
George H. Thomas
George H. Thomas was born on July 31, 1816 in Newsom’s Depot, Virginia. He graduated from West Point in 1840. He served in the U.S. Army and later the Union Army. When Thomas remained with the U.S. and did not join the Confederates, his family disowned him and never spoke to him again. He won one of the first Union victories in the Civil War, at Mill Springs, Kentucky. -
Bushrod Johnson
Bushrod Johnson was born in Belmont County, Ohio. He was born on October 7, 1817. Johnson graduated from West Point in 1840. He joined the Confederate Army. He was promoted to Major General in 1864. His greatest military success was the Battle of Chickamauga. -
Missouri Compromise
The Missouri Compromise was passed in 1820 by Congress. Missouri wanted statehood as a slave state, when there currently were 11 slave states and 11 non-slave states. Congress did not want this imbalance so they made the Missouri Compromise which admitted Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a non-slave state. This kept the balance at 12 states for each side. The Missouri Compromise was repealed in 1854 by the Kansas-Nebraska Act. -
John C. Breckinridge
John C. Breckinridge was born in Lexington, Kentucky on January 21, 1821. He graduated from Transylvania Law School in 1845. Breckinridge is the youngest Vice President ever elected to office and served under President James Buchanan. He sided with the slaveholders during the secession in 1861 and resigned his political positions to accept a post in the Confederate Army. He quickly became a major general. In February of 1865 he was appointed to Secretary of War for the Confederacy but the C -
Ruther b. Hayes
Rutherford B. Hayes was born on October 4, 1822 in Ohio. He became a lawyer. Hayes fought in the Civil War and was wounded in action. After the war, he was elected Governor of Ohio for two terms. In 1876, he was elected President of the United States. -
California Gold Rush
The California Gold rush started in 1848 and ended in 1852. It all started when a carpenter found two nuggets of gold in Northern California. After about a year, over ten thousand people came to where the carpenter found his gold. This all led to what was the biggest mass migration in American history as thousands moved to California. It also helped lead to the statehood of California. -
Civil War
The Civil War started in 1861 and ended 1865. This may have been one of the most important wars in U.S. history. This war was fought between the northern, free states and the southern, slave states. This war preserved the U.S. as one nation and ended slavery. There were 625,000 lives lost during the Civil War. Abraham Lincoln was President during the Civil War. -
Fort Sumter
Fort Sumter is an island fortification located in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina. This was the site of the first shots of the Civil War. On April 12, 1861, Confederate General P.G.T. Beauregard fired on the fort and they exchanged fire with U.S. Major Robert Anderson and his 86 soldiers in the fort. They surrendered the fort on April 13th. The fort was controlled by the Confederate troops for nearly four years. They abandoned the fort in February of 1865. -
Battle of Bull Run
This battle was fought in Fairfax and Prince William Counties, Virginia, just miles from Washington D.C. President Lincoln pushed Brigadier General Irvin McDowell into attacking the Confederate forces to try to quickly get to the Confederate capital of Richmond. He thought this could end the war quickly. So they did attack on July 21, 1861 but ended up retreating to the safety of Washington by the end of the day. It was then that the President knew the Civil War was going to be a long and co -
The Battle of Winchester
The Battle of Winchester was held in and around Winchester, Virginia, a very small town. The fight took place on May 25, 1862. The whole town was full of soldiers and the city became a war zone. It was a major victory for Confederate Maj. Gen. Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson. Maj. Gen. Nathaniel P. Banks was in command of the Union troops there which were majorly outnumbered by the Confederate soldiers. -
Battle of Fredericksburg
The Battle of Fredericksburg was held at Fredericksburg, Virginia. It was fought December 11-15, 1862. This battle was one of the largest and deadliest battles of the Civil War. More than 17,000 men were killed and over 85,000 wounded. Union General Ambrose Burnside was in command and suffered one of the most embarrassing defeats the Union encountered during the Civil War. -
Battle of Stone river
The Battle of Stone River started on December 31, 1862. It took place at Murfreesboro, Tennessee. Both sides had a plan to attack, it was just a matter of who attacked first. Braxton Bragg’s Confederate army was the first to attack. This attack almost succeeded but heavy artillery from the other side, and being openly exposed, Bragg’s army was broken up by the Union. The battle ended on January 2, 1863 with nearly 3,000 casualties. The two sides camped so close to each other at night, some -
The battle of Chancellorsville
This battle was held near the village of Chancellorsville Virginia. It took place April 30-May 6, 1863. The Union was led by Gen. Hooker and the Confederates by Gen. Lee. It was a Confederate victory that was known as Lee’s “perfect battle”. Lee had made an important decision to divide his army against the much larger Union force and Gen. Hooker became timid in his decision making, which led to the Confederate win. -
The Battle of Gettysburg
The Battle of Gettysburg began on July 1, 1863, in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. It ended just two days later on July 3rd. General Robert E. Lee led the Confederate troops and seemed likely to win at first. But Union Gen. George G. Meade and his troops were able to fight Lee and his men off and win the battle. Though it was only three days, 51,000 soldiers were killed, captured, wounded or missing. Four months later, President Lincoln gave his historical Gettysburg Address there. -
The battle of chickamauga
This battle was fought September 19-20, 1863. In this battle, the Confederates outnumbered the Federals. The confederates had 5,000 more men then the federals did so they had the upper hand. The area had wet, swampy terrain, with lots of trees which made it hard for both sides. This was the first major battle of the Civil War to be fought in Georgia. The Chickamauga battlefield was part of the very first National Military Park. -
Battle of Chattanooga
This battle took place in Hamilton County and the city of Chattanooga, Tennessee. It took place November 23-25, 1863. Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant began leading troops there to remove the Confederate hold of Chattanooga. Union soldiers were holed up inside the city and Grant helped get food to them so they could survive and hold on until they could remove the Confederates. The win of this battle helped open up the deep south for the Union to invade later on during the Civil War. -
The Battle of wilderness
This battle occurred in Spotsylvania and Orange Counties, Virginia. It took place May 5-7, 1864. The reason this battle was tricky was because of the dense, thick forest. The Union was led by Lieutenant Gen. Ulysses S. Grant and Maj. Gen. George G. Meade. The Confederate Army was led by Gen. Robert E. Lee. Lee was badly outnumbered, but the forest caused confused fighting and took away the Union’s advantage. During the last night, a brushfire broke out between the two armies which caused a -
Battle of Cold Harbor
This battle took place May 31-June 12, 1864. It was held just outside Richmond, Virginia, which was the Confederate capitol. The main part of this battle resulted in nearly 7,000 Union casualties in less than an hour. Gen. Grant called Cold Harbor his worst defeat of the war and regretted making that deadly attack. The Confederates called Cold Harbor their easiest victory of the Civil War. -
Battle of Frot Stedman
This battle took place on March 25, 1865. It happened at Petersburg, Virginia. The Union troops were led by Lt. Gen. Grant and the Confederates were led by Gen. Lee. This was also known as the Battle of Hare’s Hill. This battle was towards the end of the Civil War and Lee’s army was weakened by desertion, disease, and shortage of supplies and he was outnumbered. This was a 4-hour action and it had no impact on Union lines. -
Battle of Monocacy
This battle took place on July 9, 1864. It took place in Frederick County, Maryland. Gen. Wallace led the Union troops and Gen. Early led the Confederate troops. This was the northernmost victory for the Confederates during the Civil War. Even though they won, it delayed their march to Washington D.C. which allowed Union troops to get their first. Therefore, this battle is called the “Battle that Saved Washington”. -
The Declaration of Independence
This bill was signed on July 4, 1776 by the congressional representatives of the 13 Colonies. There were 56 people that came together in a room and discussed the bill for hours. This bill states that we were breaking away from Great Britain and making their own colony. It also stated the rules of the new country that they were founding. Some of the people that signed it were Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Roger Sherman, Robert Livingston, and Benjamin Franklin. John Hancock was the first man
