-
"E Pluribus Unum"
"E Pluribus Unum" was the motto proposed for the first Great Seal of the United States by John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson in 1776. A latin phrase meaning "One from many," the phrase offered a strong statement of the American determination to form a single nation from a collection of states. -
Declaration of Independence
The Declaration of Independence is a document that was approved by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, and that announced the separation of 13 North American British colonies from Great Britain. -
US Constitution
The aim of the Constitution was to create a government with enough power to act on a national level, but without so much power that fundamental rights would be at risk. One way that this was accomplished was to separate the power of government into three branches, and then to include checks and balances on those powers to assure that no one branch of government gained supremacy. -
Bill of Rights
The Bill of Rights is the first 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution, adopted as a single unit in 1791. It spells out the rights of the people of the United States in relation to their government. -
Period: to
Alex de Tocqueville
As “Democracy in America” revealed, Tocqueville believed that equality was the great political and social idea of his era, and he thought that the United States offered the most advanced example of equality in action. -
Period: to
Tenements
Known as tenements, these narrow, low-rise apartment buildings–many of them concentrated in the city's Lower East Side neighborhood–were all too often cramped, poorly lit and lacked indoor plumbing and proper ventilation. -
Nativism
Nativism is a reaction against immigrants. Earlier inhabitants of an area or a country sometimes develop a dislike or fear of immigrants. -
Homestead Act
Passed on May 20, 1862, the Homestead Act accelerated the settlement of the western territory by granting adult heads of families 160 acres of surveyed public land for a minimal filing fee and five years of continuous residence on that land. -
Period: to
Political Machines
In the politics of representative democracies, a political machine is a party organization that recruits its members by the use of tangible incentives—money, political jobs—and that is characterized by a high degree of leadership control over member activity. -
Social Darwinism
the theory that individuals, groups, and peoples are subject to the same Darwinian laws of natural selection as plants and animals -
Period: to
Settlement House Movement
A group of enterprising settlement house movement leaders sought to achieve change by bridging the gaps between social classes. The middle-class leaders joined underserved urban neighborhoods and opened their homes to the local children, parents, families, and older adults. -
Period: to
Tin Pan Alley
Tin Pan Alley was a collection of music publishers and songwriters in New York City which dominated the popular music of the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. -
Eugenics
Eugenics is the scientifically erroneous and immoral theory of “racial improvement” and “planned breeding,” which gained popularity during the early 20th century. Eugenicists worldwide believed that they could perfect human beings and eliminate so-called social ills through genetics and heredity. -
Period: to
Muckrakers
A muckraker was any of a group of American writers identified with pre-World War I reform and exposé writing. The muckrakers provided detailed, accurate journalistic accounts of the political and economic corruption and social hardships caused by the power of big business in a rapidly industrializing United States. -
Klondike Gold Rush
The Klondike Gold Rush was a migration by an estimated 100,000 prospectors to the Klondike region of Yukon, in north-western Canada, between 1896 and 1899. -
Homestead Strike 1898
The Homestead Strike was a violent labour dispute between the Carnegie Steel Company and many of its workers that occurred in 1892 in Homestead, Pennsylvania. The striking workers were all fired on July 2, and on July 6 private security guards hired by the company arrived. -
Period: to
Spanish American War
The Spanish–American War was a period of armed conflict between Spain and the United States. Hostilities began in the aftermath of the internal explosion of USS Maine in Havana Harbor in Cuba, leading to United States intervention in the Cuban War of Independence. -
Big Stick Policy
Diplomatic policy developed by Roosevelt where the "big stick" symbolizes his power and readiness to use military force if necessary. It is a way of intimidating countries without actually harming them and was the basis of U.S. imperialistic foreign policy. -
Panama Canal
The Panama Canal is an artificial 82 km waterway in Panama that connects the Atlantic Ocean with the Pacific Ocean and divides North and South America. The Panama Canal was built to lower the distance, cost, and time it took for ships to carry cargo between the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans. More than a century ago, the opening of the Panama Canal revolutionized international trade by making it much quicker and easier to travel between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. -
16th Amendment
The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration. -
17th Amendment
The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, elected by the people thereof, for six years; and each Senator shall have one vote. The electors in each State shall have the qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the State legislatures. -
Establishment of the National Park System
The National Park Service is an agency of the United States federal government that manages all national parks, most national monuments, and other natural, historical, and recreational properties with various title designations. -
US Entry to WWII
On April 2, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson went before a joint session of Congress to request a declaration of war against Germany. Wilson cited Germany’s violation of its pledge to suspend unrestricted submarine warfare in the North Atlantic and the Mediterranean, as well as its attempts to entice Mexico into an alliance against the United States, as his reasons for declaring war. -
18th Amendment
After one year from the ratification of this article the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes is hereby prohibited. -
19th Amendment
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 sex. -
Period: to
Harlem Renaissance
The Harlem Renaissance was an intellectual and cultural revival of African American music, dance, art, fashion, literature, theater, politics and scholarship centered in Harlem, Manhattan, New York City, spanning the 1920s and 1930s. -
Immigration Act of 1924
The Immigration Act of 1924, or Johnson–Reed Act, including the Asian Exclusion Act and National Origins Act, was a United States federal law that prevented immigration from Asia and set quotas on the number of immigrants from the Eastern Hemisphere. -
American Indian Citizenship Act of 1924
Approved on June 2, 1924, this act of Congress granted citizenship to any Native Americans born within the United States. At the time many were still denied voting rights by individual state or local laws. -
Period: to
Deportation of people of Mexican heritage during Great Depression
The U.S. Deported a Million of Its Own Citizens to Mexico During the Great Depression. Up to 1.8 million people of Mexican descent—most of them American-born—were rounded up in informal raids and deported in an effort to reserve jobs for white people. -
Bracero Program
The Bracero program was a series of laws and diplomatic agreements, initiated on August 4, 1942, when the United States signed the Mexican Farm Labor Agreement with Mexico. -
Executive Order 9066
Executive Order 9066 was a United States presidential executive order signed and issued during World War II by United States president Franklin D. Roosevelt on February 19, 1942. -
Flying Tigers
The First American Volunteer Group of the Republic of China Air Force, nicknamed the Flying Tigers, was formed to help oppose the Japanese invasion of China. Operating in 1941–1942, it was composed of pilots from the United States Army Air Corps, Navy, and Marine Corps, and was commanded by Claire Lee Chennault. -
Bataan Death March
Bataan Death March, forced march of 70,000 U.S. and Filipino prisoners of war, captured by the Japanese in the Philippines. From the southern end of the Bataan Peninsula, the starving and ill-treated prisoners were force-marched 63 mi (101 km) to a prison camp. -
Manhattan Project
The Manhattan Project was the code name for the American-led effort to develop a functional atomic weapon during World War II. The weapons produced were based solely upon the principles of nuclear fission of uranium 235 and plutonium 239, chain reactions liberating immense amounts of destructive heat energy. -
Korematsu v. U.S.
United States, legal case in which the U.S. Supreme Court, on December 18, 1944, upheld the conviction of Fred Korematsu—a son of Japanese immigrants who was born in Oakland, California—for having violated an exclusion order requiring him to submit to forced relocation during World War II. -
Period: to
Nuremberg Trials
Held for the purpose of bringing Nazi war criminals to justice, the Nuremberg trials were a series of 13 trials carried out in Nuremberg, Germany, between 1945 and 1949. The defendants, who included Nazi Party officials and high-ranking military officers along with German industrialists, lawyers and doctors, were indicted on such charges as crimes against peace and crimes against humanity. -
"In God We Trust"
"In God We Trust" is the official motto of the United States. It was adopted by the U.S. Congress in 1956, replacing "E pluribus unum", which had been the de facto motto since the initial 1776 design of the Great Seal of the United States.