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Colonization
The Civil War was a war of contradictions. The South seceded to perpetuate slavery and instead ended up destroying it. North vowed not to interfere with slavery and won sufficient support to kill it. Unlike many abolitionists, President Lincoln understood he couldn’t eliminate slavery without first saving the union. And unlike many conservative Republicans and Democrats, he realized he couldn’t save the union without eliminating slavery. (Education , Political, & Revolution) -
jamestown
On May 14, 1607, a group of roughly 100 members of a joint venture called the Virginia Company 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 the brink of failure before the arrival of a new group of settlers and supplies in 1610.
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Slave Trade
Slavery in America began when the first African slaves were brought to the North American colony of Jamestown, Virginia, in 1619, to aid in the production of such lucrative crops as tobacco. Slavery was practiced throughout the American colonies in the 17th and 18th centuries, and African-American slaves helped build the economic foundations of the new nation. The invention of the cotton gin in 1793 solidified the central importance of slavery to the South’s economy. (Social & Political) -
Mayflower
In September 1620, a merchant ship called the Mayflower set sail from Plymouth, a port on the southern coast of England. Typically, the Mayflower’s cargo was wine and dry goods, but on this trip the ship carried passengers: 102 of them, all hoping to start a new life on the other side of the Atlantic. Nearly 40 of these passengers were Protestant
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Plymouth
In September 1620, during the reign of King James I, around 100 English men and women–many of them members of the English Separatist Church–set sail for the New World aboard the Mayflower, a three-masted merchant ship. The ship landed on the shores of Cape Cod, in present-day Massachusetts, two months later, and in late December anchored at Plymouth Rock, where they would form the first permanent settlement of Europeans in New England.
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The Navigation Act
Throughout the colonial period, after the middle of the seventeenth century, the one great source of irritation between the mother country and her colonies was found in the Navigation Acts.The twofold object of these acts was to protect English shipping, and to secure a profit to the home country from the colonies. As early as the reign of Richard II steps had been taken for the protection of shipping. (Economical) -
glorious revolution
The Glorious Revolution of 1688-1689 replaced the reigning king, James II, with the joint monarchy of his protestant daughter Mary and her Dutch husband, William of Orange. It was the keystone of the Whig (those opposed to a Catholic succession) history of Britain. (Revolution & Economical) -
French & 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. Boosted by the financing of future Prime Minister William Pitt, the British turned the tide with victories at Louisbourg. (Revolution) -
Colonies Won French & 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. Boosted by the financing of future Prime Minister William Pitt, the British turned the tide with victories at Louisbourg.(Social & Economical) -
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. While congress in Charleston, New York, and Philadelphia rejected tea shipments, merchants in Boston refused to concede to Patriot pressure. (political) -
Tea Act
The Tea Act of 1773 was one of several measures imposed on the American colonists by the heavily indebted British government in the decade leading up to the American Revolutionary War (1775-83). The act’s main purpose was not to raise revenue from the colonies but to bail out the floundering East India Company, a key actor in the British economy. The British government granted the company a monopoly on the importation and sale of tea in the colonies. (Political) -
revolutionary war
The American Revolutionary War (1775–1783), also known as the American War of Independence[19] and the Revolutionary War in the United States, was the armed conflict between Great Britain and thirteen of its North American colonies, which became the independent United States of America.
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American Revolution
The American Revolution (1775-83) is also known as the American Revolutionary War and the U.S. War of Independence. The conflict arose from growing tensions between residents of Great Britain’s 13 North American colonies and the colonial government, which represented the British crown. Skirmishes between British troops and colonial militiamen in Lexington and Concord in April 1775 kicked off the armed conflict. (political) -
declaration of independence
When armed conflict between bands of American colonists and British soldiers began in April 1775, the Americans were ostensibly fighting only for their rights as subjects of the British crown. By the following summer, with the Revolutionary War in full swing, the movement for independence from Britain had grown, and delegates of the Continental Congress were faced with a vote on the issue. (Revolution) -
Battle of Trenton
General George Washington’s army crossed the icy Delaware on Christmas Day 1776 and, over the course of the next 10 days, won two crucial battles of the American Revolution. In the Battle of Trenton (December 26), Washington defeated a formidable garrison of Hessian mercenaries before withdrawing. A week later he returned to Trenton to lure British forces south, then executed a daring night march to capture Princeton on January 3. (economical) -
Battle of Saratoga
On September 19, 1777, Burgoyne had split up his 7500-man army into three columns to sweep around where he believed the Americans might be. One column of British troops would move west about 2 miles inland and begin to move south. A second column of British troops moved about a mile inland before moving south. The third column, made of German troops, moved along the river road and defended British supplies. (economical) -
Rhode Island Battle
The Battle of Rhode Island began on August 9, 1778, when 11,000 Continental line troops and militia crossed Holland's Ferry to reinforce the state militia in preparation for an attack on the British in that state. Meanwhile, the French fleet under d’Estaing blocked the small naval force at Narragansett Bay. When a larger British fleet arrived to challenge the French, they prepared to do battle, but a hurricane (August 13–14) scattered the ships and severely damaged both fleets. (Economical) -
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. (Economical) -
constitutional convention
The Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia met between May and September of 1787 to address the problems of the weak central government that existed under the Articles of Confederation. The United States Constitution that emerged from the convention established a federal government with more specific powers, including those related to conducting relations with foreign governments. (Economical) -
Great Compromise
The Great Compromise, also known as the Connecticut Compromise, was the result of a debate among delegates that decided how much representation each state should have in Congress. Delegates gathered at the Constitutional Convention in 1787 to reach a compromise on this issue. The Great Compromise affected the formation of Congress and the House of Representatives. -
Original Colonies
Virginia was first colonized in 1607, followed by New York, Massachusetts, Maryland, Rhode Island and Connecticut by 1635. New Hampshire, Delaware, North Carolina, South Carolina and New Jersey followed, with Pennsylvania and Georgia being the last of the original 13 colonies to be established, in 1732. (political & economic & social) -
Bill of rights
The Constitution was written in the summer of 1787 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, by delegates from 12 states, in order to replace the Articles of Confederation with a new form of government. It created a federal system with a national government composed of 3 separated powers, and included both reserved and concurrent powers of states. (Revolution) -
Middle Passage
Middle Passage, the forced voyage of enslaved Africans across the Atlantic Ocean to the New World. It was one leg of the triangular trade route that took goods (such as knives, guns, ammunition, cotton cloth, tools, and brass dishes) from Europe to Africa, Africans to work as slaves in the Americas and West Indies, and items, mostly raw materials, produced on the plantations (sugar, rice, tobacco, indigo, rum, and cotton) back to Europe. -
Telegraph invented
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.
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The invention of the Cotton Gin
In 1794, U.S.-born inventor Eli Whitney (1765-1825) patented the cotton gin, a machine that revolutionized the production of cotton by greatly speeding up the process of removing seeds from cotton fiber. By the mid-19th century, cotton had become America’s leading export. Despite its success, the gin made little money for Whitney due to patent-infringement issues. (revolution) -
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. -
Westward Expansion
The story of the United States has always been one of westward expansion, beginning along the East Coast and continuing, often by leaps and bounds, until it reached the Pacific—what Theodore Roosevelt described as "the great leap Westward." The acquisition of Hawaii and Alaska, though not usually included in discussions of Americans expanding their nation westward, continued the practices established under the principle of Manifest Destiny. (Economical) -
Lewis and Clark expedition
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 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. (Economical) -
triangular trade
Triangular Trade was made possible by the establishment of the 13 Colonies in Colonial America and their surplus of raw materials. The following chart indicates the natural resources and raw materials, together with goods that were manufactured in the colonies, that were used for trading purposes with England. These goods included timber, sugar fur, cotton, flour, iron ore products, tobacco, rice, indigo dye, fish, guns, ammunition. wool and rum. (Economical) -
The War of 1812
The War of 1812 is probably our most obscure conflict. Although a great deal has been written about the war, the average American is only vaguely aware of why we fought or who the enemy was. Even those who know something about the contest are likely to remember only a few dramatic moments, such as the writing of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” the burning of the nation’s capital, or the Battle of New Orleans.
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Missouri Compromise
In the years leading up to the Missouri Compromise of 1820, tensions began to rise between pro-slavery and anti-slavery factions within the U.S. Congress and across the country.They reached a boiling point after Missouri’s 1819 request for admission to the Union as a slave state, which threatened to upset the delicate balance between slave states and free states. Congress orchestrated a two-part compromise, granting Missouri’s request but also admitting Maine as a free state.(Political) -
Nullification Crisis
nullification crisis, in U.S. history, confrontation between the state of South Carolina and the federal government in 1832–33 over the former’s attempt to declare null and void within the state the federal Tariffs of 1828 and 1832. The resolution of the nullification crisis in favor of the federal government helped to undermine the nullification doctrine, the constitutional theory that upheld the right of states to nullify federal acts within their boundaries. (Political) -
Trail of Tears
At the beginning of the 1830s, nearly 125,000 Native Americans lived on millions of acres of land in Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, North Carolina and Florida–land their ancestors had occupied and cultivated for generations. By the end of the decade, very few natives remained anywhere in the southeastern United States. Working on behalf of white settlers who wanted to grow cotton on the Indians’ land. (political) -
Manifest Destiny
Expansion westward seemed perfectly natural to many Americans in the mid-nineteenth century. Like the Massachusetts Puritans who hoped to build a "city upon a hill, "courageous pioneers believed that America had a divine obligation to stretch the boundaries of their noble republic to the Pacific Ocean. Independence had been won in the Revolution and reaffirmed in the War of 1812. The spirit of nationalism that swept the nation in the next two decades demanded more territory.
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Mexican American War
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. (Revolution) -
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. (Economical, Political, & Revolution) -
Compromise of 1850
Divisions over slavery in territory gained in the Mexican-American (1846-48).War were resolved in the Compromise of 1850.It consisted of laws admitting California as a free state, creating Utah and New Mexico territories with the question of slavery in each to be determined by popular sovereignty, settling a Texas-New Mexico boundary dispute in the former’s favor, ending the slave trade in Washington, D.C. (economic, social & political) -
Pony Express
Pony Express, by name of Central Overland California & Pike’s Peak Express Company, system of U.S. mail delivery by continuous horse-and-rider relays between St. Joseph, Missouri, and Sacramento, California, and from Sacramento to San Francisco, California, by steamer (April 1860–October 1861). (Education & Revolution) -
Confederacy
During the American Civil War, the Confederate States of America consisted of the governments of 11 Southern states that seceded from the Union in 1860-61, carrying on all the affairs of a separate government and conducting a major war until defeated in the spring of 1865. Convinced that their way of life, based on slavery, was irretrievably threatened by the election of President Abraham Lincoln. (Social) -
cival war
AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
America’s bloodiest clash, the sectional conflct of the Civil War (1861-65) pitted the Union against the Confederate States of America and resulted in the death of more than 620,000, with millions more injured.
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Battle of Bull Run
This was the first major land battle of the armies in Virginia. On July 16, 1861, the untried Union army under Brig. Gen. Irvin McDowell marched from Washington against the Confederate army, which was drawn up behind Bull Run beyond Centreville. On the 21st, McDowell crossed at Sudley Ford and attacked the Confederate left flank on Matthews Hill. Fighting raged throughout the day as Confederate forces were driven back to Henry Hill. -
Emancipation Proclamation
When the American Civil War (1861-65) began, President Abraham Lincoln carefully framed the conflict as concerning the preservation of the Union rather than the abolition of slavery. Although he personally found the practice of slavery abhorrent, he knew that neither Northerners nor the residents of the border slave states would support abolition as a war aim. But by mid-1862, as thousands of slaves fled to join the invading Northern armies. (political & Social -
Gettysburg
The Battle of Gettysburg, fought from July 1 to July 3, 1863, is considered the most important engagement of the American Civil War. After a great victory over Union forces at Chancellorsville, General Robert E. Lee marched his Army of Northern Virginia into Pennsylvania in late June 1863. On July 1, the advancing Confederates clashed with the Union’s Army of the Potomac, commanded by General George G. Meade, at the crossroads town of Gettysburg. (revolution) -
Reconstruction
The Union victory in the Civil War in 1865 may have given some 4 million slaves their freedom, but the process of rebuilding the South during the Reconstruction period (1865-1877) introduced a new set of significant challenges. Under the administration of President Andrew Johnson in 1865 and 1866, new southern state legislatures passed restrictive “black codes” to control the labor and behavior of former slaves and other African Americans. (revolution) -
reconstruction war
There are two basic areas of topics in regards to The Reconstruction Era. One covers a period from 1865-1877 and is as broad as the U.S. History in its entirety and the other sticks mainly to the Southern states and dates from 1863-1877. This was the reconstruction of both society and state directed by Washington.
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13th amendment
The 13th amendment, which formally abolished slavery in the United States, passed the Senate on April 8, 1864, and the House on January 31, 1865. On February 1, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln approved the Joint Resolution of Congress submitting the proposed amendment to the state legislatures. The necessary number of states ratified it by December 6, 1865. (education & political) -
Civil rights act of 1866
The Civil Rights Act of 1866 (14 Stat. 27) was a momentous chapter in the development of civic equality for newly emancipated blacks in the years following the Civil War. The act accomplished three primary objectives designed to integrate blacks into mainstream American society. First, the act proclaimed "that all persons born in the United States ... are hereby declared to be citizens of the United States." Second, the act specifically defines the rights of American citizenship. -
Reconstruction Act
After the North defeated the South in the Civil War, politicians faced the task of putting the divided country back together. There was great debate about how severely the former Confederate states should be punished for leaving the Union. With the assassination of President Lincoln in 1865, it was up to President Andrew Johnson to try to reunite former enemies. (Social & Revolution) -
14th amendment
Following the Civil War, Congress submitted to the states three amendments as part of its Reconstruction program to guarantee equal civil and legal rights to black citizens. The major provision of the 14th amendment was to grant citizenship to “All persons born or naturalized in the United States,” thereby granting citizenship to former slaves. (education & political) -
15th Amendment
The 15th Amendment, granting African-American men the right to vote, was formally adopted into the U.S. Constitution on March 30, 1870. Passed by Congress the year before, the amendment reads: “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 of servitude.” Despite the amendment, by the late 1870's. (education & political)
