U.S. Timeline

  • Plymouth Colony

  • Britain gains control of territory

  • Colonists closes down Boston harbour

  • American Revolution

    George Washington leads Continental Army to fight against British rule.
  • Declaration of Independence

  • Battle of Yorktown.

  • Treaty of Paris.

    Britain accepts loss of colonies
  • New constitution for United States of America

  • George Washington elected first president of USA.

  • France sells Louisiana territories to USA.

  • Atlantic slave trade abolished.

  • War of 1812 between the US and Britain,

    Partly over the effects of British restrictions on US trade during the Napoleonic Wars.
  • US acquires vast tracts of Mexican territory

    In wake of Mexican War including California and New Mexico.
  • Abraham Lincoln elected president.

  • Lincoln issues Emancipation Proclamation

    declaring slaves in Confederate states to be free.
  • Lincoln is assassinated

  • US gains Puerto Rico, Guam, the Philippines and Cuba following the Spanish-American war.

  • Women given the right to vote under the Nineteenth Amendment.

  • Congress gives indigenous people right to citizenship.

  • The Wall Street crash

  • Japanese warplanes attack US fleet at Pearl Harbour in Hawaii

  • US drops two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

  • The Truman Doctrine

    US enunciates policy of aid for nations it deems threatened by communism
  • President John F Kennedy assassinated

  • Black civil rights leader Martin Luther King assassinated.

  • Neil Armstrong becomes the first person to walk on the Moon.