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Battle of Lexington & Concord
The Battles of Lexington and Concord were the first military engagements of the American Revolutionary War.The battles were fought on April 19, 1775 in Middlesex County, Province of Massachusetts Bay, within the towns of Lexington, Concord, Lincoln, Menotomy, and Cambridge.They happened because the British commander in Boston had heard of supplies of powder and weapons being kept by Patriots in the towns of Lexington and Concord.The Americans won the battle.The British retreated back to Boston. -
Battle of Saratoga
The Battles of Saratoga marked the climax of the Saratoga campaign, giving a decisive victory to the Americans over the British in the American Revolutionary War. Battles of Saratoga were a turning point in the American Revolution. On September 19th, British General John Burgoyne achieved a small, but costly victory over American forces led by Horatio Gates and Benedict Arnold. His surrender to American forces at the Battle of Saratoga marked a turning point in the Revolutionary War. -
Battle of Yorktown
General George Washington, commanding a force of 17,000 French and Continental troops, begins the siege known as the Battle of Yorktown against British General Lord Charles Cornwallis and a contingent of 9,000 British troops at Yorktown,Virginia, in the most important battle of the Revolutionary War.Cornwallis surrendered to George Washington as French and American forces trapped the British at Yorktown.The British surrender and that ended the Revolutionary War. -
Northwest Ordinance
adopted by the Second Continental Congress, chartered a government for the Northwest Territory, provided a method for admitting new states to the Union from the territory, and listed a bill of rights guaranteed in the territory. The Northwest Ordinance banned slavery in the territory, making it the first major act of Congress to abolish slavery from new lands added to the United States. -
Alien and Sedition Acts
These laws were passed by the federalist congress and signed into law by President Adams. These laws included new powers to deport foreigners as well as making it harder for new immigrants to vote. Previously a new immigrant would have to reside in the United States for five years before becoming eligible to vote, but a new law raised this to 14 years.The Federalists saw foreigners as a deep threat to American security. -
Virginia & Kentucky Resolutions
Madison hoped that other states would register their opposition to the Alien and Sedition Acts as beyond the powers given to Congress. The Kentucky Resolutions, authored by Jefferson, went further than Madison's Virginia Resolution and asserted that states had the power to nullify unconstitutional federal laws. -
Marbury v. Madison
U.S. Supreme Court case that established the principle of judicial review in the United States, meaning that American courts have the power to strike down laws, statutes, and some government actions that contravene the U.S. Constitution. The Court unanimously decided not to require Madison to deliver the commission to Marbury. They found that the Judiciary Act of 1789 conflicted with the Constitution because it gave the Supreme Court more authority than it was given under the Constitution. -
Louisiana Purchase
was a land deal between the United States and France, in which the U.S. acquired approximately 827,000 square miles of land west of the Mississippi River for $15 million. The Louisiana Purchase is important because it gave the U.S. control of the Mississippi River and the port city of New Orleans, both of which were used by farmers to ship their crops and get paid. Jefferson had authorized Livingston only to purchase New Orleans. -
Missouri Compromise
The Missouri Compromise of 1820 was a compromise primarily focused on how slavery would be dealt with in the expanding United States.It played a significant role in the relationship between the North and the South in the time leading up to the American Civil War.Congress passed a law stating that Missouri was a slave state under the condition that slavery was to be forever prohibited in the rest of the Louisiana Purchase north of the 36th parallel. -
Monroe Doctrine
Articulated in President James Monroe's seventh annual message to Congress on December 2, 1823.The European powers, according to Monroe, were obligated to respect the Western Hemisphere as the United States sphere of interest.The Monroe Doctrine was a foreign policy statement originally set forth in 1823 which created separate spheres of European and American influence.The United States promised to stay out of European business and told the Europeans to stay out of the Western Hemisphere's area. -
Nullification Crisis
South Carolina adopted the ordinance to nullify the tariff acts and label them unconstitutional. Despite sympathetic voices from other Southern states, South Carolina found itself standing alone. The 1832 Nullification Crisis was caused by the introduction of a series of protective tariffs.The 1828 Tariff of Abominations which sparked the Nullification Crisis was the third protective tariff implemented by the government. -
Texas Annexation
The Texas Annexation was the 1845 annexation 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.The victorious United States came away with control of the American Southwest and California through the Treaty of Guadalupe in 1848.The slave-based cotton production boomed as the number of slaves in Texas increased 12,500 to 170,000. -
Oregon Treaty
Oregon Treaty is a treaty between the United Kingdom and the United States that was signed on June 15, 1846, in Washington, D.C. The British gained the land north of the 49th parallel, including the Vancouver Island and the United States received the territory south of the parallel. The Oregon Treaty between the U.S. and British. It was signed by President James K. Polk on June 15th, 1846. -
Mexican Cession
Lands surrendered, or ceded, to the United States by Mexico at the end of the Mexican War. The terms of this transfer were spelled out in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo of 1848. After the war with Mexico ended, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed. As a result, this treaty established our Mexican-United States border at Texas at the Rio Grande River. We also got California, Utah, and Nevada from Mexico. -
Compromise of 1850
The Compromise of 1850 was a package of five separate bills passed by the United States Congress in September 1850, which defused a four-year political confrontation between slave and free states on the status of territories acquired during the Mexican–American War. The south gained by the strengthening of the fugitive slave law, the north gained a new free state, California. Texas lost territory but was compensated with 10 million dollars to pay for its debt. -
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´. The Kansas-Nebraska Act allowed each territory to decide the issue of slavery on the basis of popular sovereignty. Kansas with slavery would violate the Missouri Compromise. -
Bleeding Kansas
Series of violent civil confrontations in the United States between 1854 and 1861 which emerged from a political and ideological debate over the legality of slavery in the proposed state of Kansas.Kansas is an important staging ground for what some people argue is the first battles of the Civil War, because it is this battlefield on which the forces of anti-slavery and the forces of slavery meet. -
Battle of Fort Sumter
The Battle of Fort Sumter was the first battle of the American Civil War. The intense Confederate artillery bombardment of Major Robert Anderson's small Union garrison in the unfinished fort in the harbor at Charleston, South Carolina, had been preceded by months of siege-like conditions. After South Carolina's secession, plans were made to have Major Robert Anderson remain at Fort Moultrie. security issues forced Anderson to leave with his men. -
Battle of Bull Run
The First Battle of Bull Run, also known as the First Battle of Manassas, was fought on July 21, 1861 in Prince William County, Virginia, just north of the city of Manassas and about 25 miles west-southwest of Washington, D.C. It was the first major battle of the American Civil War. It was a stunning Confederate victory over the Union Army of Virginia. Over 20,000 men fell as casualties at this fight. -
Battle of Antietam
Over 23,000 men fell as casualties in the one-day Battle of Antietam, making it the bloodiest day in American history. The Union victory at Antietam resulted in President Abraham Lincoln issuing his Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation on September 22, 1862. Union victory at Antietam provided President Abraham Lincoln the opportunity he had wanted to announce the Emancipation Proclamation, making the Battle of Antietam one of the key turning points of the American Civil War. -
Emancipation Proclomation
Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation.The declaration reads,all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.The Emancipation Proclamation led the way to total abolition of slavery in the United States.It proclaimed the freedom of slaves in the ten Confederate states still in rebellion. Freed slaves could be enlisted in the Union Army. -
Battle of Vicksburg
The Siege of Vicksburg was the final major military action in the Vicksburg Campaign of the American Civil War.Gen.Ulysses S. Grant's Army of the Tennessee converged on Vicksburg on the Mississippi River,investing the city and trapping a Confederate army under Lt.Gen.John Pemberton.Grant's Vicksburg campaign was one of the most brilliant of the war.On July 4,Vicksburg surrendered after prolonged siege operations.This was the culmination of one of the most brilliant military campaigns of the war. -
Battle of Gettysburg
The Battle of Gettysburg was fought July 1–3, 1863, in and around the town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania,by Union and Confederate forces during the American Civil War.The battle involved the largest number of casualties of the entire war and is often described as the war's turning point. Union victory that stopped Confederate General Robert E. Lee's second invasion of the North.More than 50,000 men fell as casualties during the 3-day battle,making it the bloodiest battle of the American Civil War. -
Gettysburg Address
The Gettysburg Address is a speech delivered by Abraham Lincoln at the November 19, 1863, dedication of Soldier's National Cemetery, a cemetery for Union soldiers killed at the Battle Of Gettysburg during the American Civil War. President Abraham Lincoln delivered a short speech at the end of the ceremonies dedicating the battlefield cemetery at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. That speech has come to be known as the Gettysburg Address. -
13th Amendment passed
The 13th amendment abolished slavery in the United States. The 13th Amendment to the US Constitution outlaws slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. Lincoln recognized that the Emancipation Proclamation would have to be followed by a constitutional amendment in order to guarantee the abolishment of slavery. The 13th amendment was passed at the end of the Civil War before the Southern states had been restored to the Union and should have easily passed the Congress. -
14th Amendment passed
The amendment grants citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in the United States which included former slaves who had just been freed after the Civil War. The amendment addresses citizenship rights and equal protection of the laws and was proposed in response to issues related to former slaves following the American Civil War. The amendment granted all citizens equal protection of the laws. -
15th Amendment passed
The 15th amendment granted African American men the right to vote. The 15th Amendment to the Constitution granted African American men the right to vote by declaring that the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition. -
Plessy v. Ferguson
was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court issued in 1896. It upheld the constitutionality of racial segregation laws for public facilities as long as the segregated facilities were equal in quality a doctrine that came to be known as separate but equal. In 1892, passenger Homer Plessy refused to sit in a Jim Crow car. He was brought before Judge John H. Ferguson of the Criminal Court for New Orleans, who upheld the state law. The law was challenged in the supreme court.
