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Jamestown
Jamestown escaped being attacked, due to a warning from a Powhatan boy living with the English. During the attack, 350-400 of the 1,200 settlers were killed. After the attack, the Powhatan Indians withdrew, as was their way, and waited for the English to learn their lesson or pack up and leave. -
Benjamin Franklin's Albany Plan, French and Indian War begins in America
The Albany Plan of Union was a plan to create a unified government for the Thirteen Colonies. The French and Indian War began in 1754 and ended with the Treaty of Paris in 1763. The war provided Great Britain enormous territorial gains in North America, but disputes over subsequent frontier policy and paying the war's expenses led to colonial discontent, and ultimately to the American Revolution. -
Anglicanism established in Georgia
Christ Church of Savannah, the first Anglican church to be established in the Georgia colony, was founded by Henry Herbert in 1733. The current church building, the third to be constructed on the site since 1744, was completed in 1838. -
Writs of Assistance introduced in colonies
Writs of assistance were documents which served as a general search warrant, allowing customs officials to enter any ship or building that they suspected for any reason might hold smuggled goods. -
Treaty of Paris ends French & Indian War
The Treaty of Paris of 1763 ended the French and Indian War/Seven Years' War between Great Britain and France, as well as their respective allies. In the terms of the treaty, France gave up all its territories in mainland North America, effectively ending any foreign military threat to the British colonies there. -
Proclamation Act of 1763
The Proclamation Line of 1763 was a British-produced boundary marked in the Appalachian Mountains at the Eastern Continental Divide. -
Pontiac’s Rebellion
Pontiac's War was launched in 1763 by a loose confederation of American Indians dissatisfied with British rule in the Great Lakes region following the French and Indian War. -
Sugar Act
The American Revenue Act of 1764, so called Sugar Act, was a law that attempted to curb the smuggling of sugar and molasses in the colonies by reducing the previous tax rate and enforcing the collection of duties. -
The Currency Act
The Currency Act or Paper Bills of Credit Act is one of many several Acts of the Parliament of Great Britain that regulated paper money issued by the colonies of British America. The Acts sought to protect British merchants and creditors from being paid in depreciated colonial currency. -
End of Salutary Neglect
The salutary neglect period ended as a consequence of the French and Indian War, also known as the Seven Years War, from years 1755 to 1763. Many believe that the French and Indian War affected the relationship between the British and the colonists by leading to the revolution. -
Stamp Act
Parliament's first direct tax on the American colonies, this act, like those passed in 1764, was enacted to raise money for Britain. It taxed newspapers, almanacs, pamphlets, broadsides, legal documents, dice, and playing cards. -
Quartering Act
The Quartering Act of 1765 required the colonies to house British soldiers in barracks provided by the colonies. If the barracks were too small to house all the soldiers, then localities were to accommodate the soldiers in local inns, livery stables, ale houses, victualling houses and the houses of sellers of wine. -
Sons of Liberty
The Sons of Liberty was a term broadly applied to loosely organized revolutionary bands in the Thirteen American Colonies to advance the rights of the European colonists and to fight taxation by the British government. It played a major role in most colonies in battling the Stamp Act in 1765. -
Declaratory Act
Declaratory Act, (1766), declaration by the British Parliament that accompanied the repeal of the Stamp Act. It stated that the British Parliament's taxing authority was the same in America as in Great Britain. -
Mason-Dixon Line drawn
The Mason–Dixon line, also called the Mason and Dixon line or Mason's and Dixon's line, is a demarcation line separating four U.S. states, forming part of the borders of Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, and West Virginia. -
Townshend Acts
The Townshend Acts, named after Charles Townshend, British chancellor of the Exchequer, imposed duties on British china, glass, lead, paint, paper and tea imported to the colonies -
Boston Massacre
The Boston Massacre was a confrontation on March 5, 1770, in which British soldiers shot and killed several people while being harassed by a mob in Boston. The event was heavily publicized by leading Patriots such as Paul Revere and Samuel Adams. -
Boston Tea Party
Boston Tea Party, (December 16, 1773), incident in which 342 chests of tea belonging to the British East India Company were thrown from ships into Boston Harbor by American patriots disguised as Mohawk Indians. -
Intolerable Acts
The Intolerable Acts were punitive laws passed by the British Parliament in 1774 after the Boston Tea Party. The laws were meant to punish the Massachusetts colonists for their defiance in the Tea Party protest in reaction to changes in taxation by the British Government. -
Quartering Acts
The Quartering Act of 1765 required the colonies to house British soldiers in barracks provided by the colonies. If the barracks were too small to house all the soldiers, then localities were to accommodate the soldiers in local inns, livery stables, alehouses, victualling houses, and the houses of sellers of wine. -
First Continental Congress
The First Continental Congress convened in Carpenters' Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, between September 5 and October 26, 1774. Delegates from twelve of Britain's thirteen American colonies met to discuss America's future under growing British aggression. -
Battles of Lexington and 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. -
Battle of Bunker Hill
The Battle of Bunker Hill was fought on June 17, 1775, during the Siege of Boston in the first stage of the American Revolutionary War. The battle is named after Bunker Hill in Charlestown, Massachusetts, which was peripherally involved in the battle. -
Olive Branch Petition
The Olive Branch Petition was a final attempt by the colonists to avoid going to war with Britain during the American Revolution. It was a document in which the colonists pledged their loyalty to the crown and asserted their rights as British citizens. The Olive Branch Petition was adopted by Congress on July 5, 1775 -
Thomas Paine’s Common Sense
Common Sense is a 47-page pamphlet written by Thomas Paine in 1775–1776 advocating independence from Great Britain to people in the Thirteen Colonies. Writing in clear and persuasive prose, Paine marshaled moral and political arguments to encourage common people in the Colonies to fight for egalitarian government. -
Declaration of Independence
The United States Declaration of Independence is the pronouncement adopted by the Second Continental Congress meeting in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on July 4, 1776 -
Saratoga
The Battle of Saratoga occurred in September and October, 1777, during the second year of the American Revolution. It included two crucial battles, fought eighteen days apart, and was a decisive victory for the Continental Army and a crucial turning point in the Revolutionary War. -
Valley Forge
Valley Forge functioned as the third of eight winter encampments for the Continental Army's main body, commanded by General George Washington, during the American Revolutionary War. In September 1777, Congress fled Philadelphia to escape the British capture of the city. -
Cornwallis surrenders at Yorktown
The Surrender of Lord Cornwallis is an oil painting by John Trumbull. The painting was completed in 1820, and hangs in the rotunda of the United States Capitol in Washington, D. C. -
Articles of Confederation ratified
On March 1, 1781, the Articles of Confederation are finally ratified. The Articles were signed by Congress and sent to the individual states for ratification on November 15, 1777, after 16 months of debate. Bickering over land claims between Virginia and Maryland delayed final ratification for almost four more years. -
Treaty of Paris
The Treaty of Paris, signed in Paris by representatives of King George III of Great Britain and representatives of the United States of America on September 3, 1783, officially ended the American Revolutionary War. -
Land Ordinance
The Land Ordinance of 1785 was adopted by the United States Congress of the Confederation on May 20, 1785. It set up a standardized system whereby settlers could purchase title to farmland in the undeveloped west. -
Shays Rebellion
A violent insurrection in the Massachusetts countryside during 1786 and 1787, Shays' Rebellion was brought about by a monetary debt crisis at the end of the American Revolutionary War. Although Massachusetts was the focal point of the crisis, other states experienced similar economic hardships. -
The Annapolis Convention
The Annapolis Convention, formally titled as a Meeting of Commissioners to Remedy Defects of the Federal Government, was a national political convention held September 11–14, 1786 at Mann's Tavern in Annapolis, Maryland, in which twelve delegates from five states (New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Virginia) gathered to discuss and develop a consensus on reversing the protectionist trade barriers that each state had erected -
Constitutional Convention
The Constitutional Convention took place from May 14 to September 17, 1787, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The point of the event was to decide how America was going to be governed. Although the Convention had been officially called to revise the existing Articles of Confederation, many delegates had much bigger plans. -
Northwest Ordinance
Also known as the Ordinance of 1787, the Northwest Ordinance established a government for the Northwest Territory, outlined the process for admitting a new state to the Union, and guaranteed that newly created states would be equal to the original thirteen states. -
Federalist Papers
The Federalist Papers is a collection of 85 articles and essays written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay under the collective pseudonym "Publius" to promote the ratification of the United States Constitution. -
Hamilton’s Fiscal Program
The paramount problem facing Hamilton was a huge national debt. He proposed that the government assume the entire debt of the federal government and the states. His plan was to retire the old depreciated obligations by borrowing new money at a lower interest rate. Hamilton's debt program was a remarkable success. -
First Bank of the US chartered
The President, Directors and Company of the Bank of the United States, commonly known as the First Bank of the United States, was a national bank, chartered for a term of twenty years, by the United States Congress on February 25, 1791. It followed the Bank of North America, the nation's first de facto central bank. -
Bill of Rights ratified
The Bill of Rights. On December 15, 1791, the new United States of America ratified the Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution, confirming the fundamental rights of its citizens. -
Cotton gin
A cotton gin – meaning "cotton engine" – is a machine that quickly and easily separates cotton fibers from their seeds, enabling much greater productivity than manual cotton separation -
Whiskey Rebellion
The Whiskey Rebellion was a tax protest in the United States beginning in 1791 and ending in 1794 during the presidency of George Washington, ultimately under the command of American Revolutionary war veteran Major James McFarlane. -
Washington’s Farewell Address
Washington's Farewell Address is a letter written by American President George Washington as a valedictory to "friends and the fellow-citizens" after 20 years of public service to the United States. He wrote it near the end of his second term of presidency -
XYZ Affair
The XYZ Affair was a diplomatic incident between French and United States diplomats that resulted in a limited, undeclared war known as the Quasi-War. U.S. and French negotiators restored peace with the Convention of 1800, also known as the Treaty of Mortefontaine. -
Alien and Sedition Acts
The Alien and Sedition Acts were a series of four laws passed by the U.S. Congress in 1798 amid widespread fear that war with France was imminent. The four laws–which remain controversial to this day–restricted the activities of foreign residents in the country and limited freedom of speech and of the press. -
Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions
The Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions were political statements drafted in 1798 and 1799 in which the Kentucky and Virginia legislatures took the position that the federal Alien and Sedition Acts were unconstitutional. -
Revolution of 1800
Vice President Thomas Jefferson of the Democratic-Republican Party defeated incumbent President John Adams of the Federalist Party. The election was a political realignment that ushered in a generation of Democratic-Republican leadership. -
John Marshall appointed Chief Justice of Supreme Court
Following a diplomatic mission to France, he won election to Congress, where he supported President John Adams. Adams appointed him secretary of state and in 1801 chief justice, a position he held until death. -
Marbury v. Madison
Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137, was a landmark 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 they find to violate the Constitution of the United States. -
Louisiana Purchase
The Louisiana Purchase was the acquisition of the territory of Louisiana by the United States from France in 1803. -
Lewis and Clark Expedition
The Lewis and Clark Expedition from August 31, 1803, to September 25, 1806, also known as the Corps of Discovery Expedition, was the United States expedition to cross the newly acquired western portion of the country after the Louisiana Purchase. -
Hamilton-Burr Duel
The Burr–Hamilton duel was a duel fought at Weehawken, New Jersey, between Aaron Burr, at that time the sitting Vice President of the United States, and Alexander Hamilton, the former Secretary of the Treasury -
War of 1812
The War of 1812 was a conflict fought between the United States and its allies, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and its dependent colonies in North America and Native American allies. -
Treaty of Ghent
The Treaty of Ghent was the peace treaty that ended the War of 1812 between the United States and the United Kingdom. It took effect in February 1815. Both sides signed it on December 24, 1814, in the city of Ghent, United Netherlands. -
Burning of Washington, D.C.
On August 24, 1814, as the War of 1812 raged on, invading British troops marched into Washington and set fire to the U.S. Capitol, the President's Mansion, and other local landmarks. -
Hartford Convention
The Hartford Convention was a series of meetings from December 15, 1814 to January 5, 1815, in Hartford, Connecticut, United States, in which the New England Federalist Party met to discuss their grievances concerning the ongoing War of 1812 and the political problems arising from the federal government's -
Battle of New Orleans
The Battle of New Orleans was fought on January 8, 1815 between the British Army under Major General Sir Edward Pakenham and the United States Army under Brevet Major General Andrew Jackson, roughly 5 miles southeast of the French Quarter of New Orleans, in the current suburb of Chalmette, Louisiana. -
Second Bank of the US
The Second Bank of the United States, located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, was the second federally authorized Hamiltonian national bank in the United States during its 20-year charter from February 1816 to January 1836. -
Era of Good Feelings
The Era of Good Feelings marked a period in the political history of the United States that reflected a sense of national purpose and a desire for unity among Americans in the aftermath of the War of 1812 -
McCulloch v. Maryland
McCulloch v. Maryland, 17 U.S. 316, was a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision that defined the scope of the U.S. Congress's legislative power and how it relates to the powers of American state legislatures. -
Missouri Compromise
The Missouri Compromise was United States federal legislation that stopped northern attempts to forever prohibit slavery's expansion by admitting Missouri as a slave state in exchange for legislation which prohibited slavery north of the 36°30′ parallel except for Missouri. -
Monroe Doctrine
The Monroe Doctrine is the best known U.S. policy toward the Western Hemisphere. Buried in a routine annual message delivered to Congress by President James Monroe in December 1823, the doctrine warns European nations that the United States would not tolerate further colonization or puppet monarchs. -
“Corrupt Bargain” Election
Henry Clay was thrice a candidate for the Presidency and the chief architect of the Compromise of 1850 which moved slavery to the forefront of Congressional debates. The 1824 presidential election marked the final collapse of the Republican-Federalist political framework. -
Gibbons v. Ogden
Gibbons v. Ogden, 22 U.S. 1, was a landmark decision in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that the power to regulate interstate commerce, granted to Congress by the Commerce Clause of the United States Constitution, encompassed the power to regulate navigation. -
American System (Henry Clay)
This "System" consisted of three mutually reinforcing parts: a tariff to protect and promote American industry; a national bank to foster commerce; and federal subsidies for roads, canals, and other "internal improvements" to develop profitable markets for agriculture. -
Erie Canal Opens
The Erie Canal opened on October 26, 1825, providing overland water transportation between the Hudson River on the east and Lake Erie at the western end. -
Andrew Jackson elected president
Nashville, Tennessee, U.S. Andrew Jackson (March 15, 1767 – June 8, 1845) was an American lawyer, soldier, and statesman who served as the seventh president of the United States from 1829 to 1837. -
Kitchen Cabinet
Andrew Jackson's group of informal advisers. Called the Kitchen Cabinet because the often met in the White House Kitchen. The nickname given to a tariff by southerners who opposed it. Occurred in 1828. -
Spoils system
Spoils system, also called patronage system, practice in which the political party winning an election rewards its campaign workers and other active supporters by appointment to government posts and with other favours. -
Maysville Road Veto
Its advocates regarded it as a part of the national Cumberland Road system. Congress passed a bill in 1830 providing federal funds to complete the project. Jackson vetoed the bill on the grounds that federal funding of intrastate projects of this nature was unconstitutional. -
Indian Removal Ac
The Indian Removal Act was signed into law on May 28, 1830, by United States President Andrew Jackson. The law authorized the president to negotiate with southern Native American tribes for their removal to federal territory west of the Mississippi River in exchange for white settlement of their ancestral lands. -
Worcester v. Georgia
Worcester v. Georgia was a landmark case of the Supreme Court. Although it did not prevent the Cherokee from being removed from their land, the decision was often used to craft subsequent Indian law in the United States. -
Jackson’s veto of the Bank of the US
Andrew Jackson vetoed the bill re-chartering the Second Bank in July 1832 by arguing that in the form presented to him it was incompatible with “justice,” “sound policy” and the Constitution. -
Ordinance of Nullification
The Ordinance of Nullification declared the Tariffs of 1828 and 1832 null and void within the state borders of South Carolina, beginning on February 1, 1833. ... In the face of the military threat, and following a Congressional revision of the law which lowered the tariff, South Carolina repealed the ordinance. -
Whig Party
The Whig Party was a political party active in the middle of the 19th century in the United States. Alongside the slightly larger Democratic Party, it was one of the two major parties in the United States between the late 1830s and the early 1850s as part of the Second Party System. -
Republic of Texas’ Independence
On March 2, 1836, a delegation at Washington-on-the-Brazos adopted the Texas Declaration of Independence, and thus was born the Republic of Texas. Santa Anna had brought his army to Texas to put down the rebellion, and events followed in quick succession -
Underground Railroad
The Underground Railroad was a network of secret routes and safe houses established in the United States during the early to mid-19th century, and used by enslaved African-Americans to primarily escape into free states and Canada. -
Amistad Case
United States v. Schooner Amistad, 40 U.S. 518, was a United States Supreme Court case resulting from the rebellion of Africans on board the Spanish schooner La Amistad in 1839. It was an unusual freedom suit that involved international issues and parties, as well as United States law -
Dorothea Dix
Dorothea Dix played an instrumental role in the founding or expansion of more than 30 hospitals for the treatment of the mentally ill. She was a leading figure in those national and international movements that challenged the idea that people with mental disturbances could not be cured or helped.