-
Declaration of Independence
The Declaration of Independence of the United States of America, officially The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen United States of America, was adopted by the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania . -
“E Pluribus Unum”
E pluribus unum, Latin is a traditional United States motto that appears on the Great Seal beside Annuit coeptis and Novus ordo seclorum on the reverse; its presence on the seal was approved by an Act of Congress in 1782. -
U.S. Constitution
The United States of America's supreme law is the Constitution of the United States of America. It replaced the nation's original constitution, the Articles of Confederation. It defines the national framework of government and originally consisted of seven articles. The United States Constitution is the world's oldest written governing charter. Its first three words, "We the People," assert that the United States government exists to serve its people. -
Bill of rights
The first ten amendments of the United States Constitution are known as the Bill of Rights. It outlines the rights of Americans in connection to their government. Individual civil rights and liberties, such as freedom of speech, press, and religion, are guaranteed. -
Nativism
Nativism is the political policy of promoting or protecting the interests of native or indigenous inhabitants over those of immigrants, including the support of immigration-restriction measures.1 -
Alex de Tocqueville and his Five Principles
Alexis de Tocqueville's five values crucial to America's success as a constitutional republic: liberty, egalitarianism, individualism, populism, and laissez-faire. Alexis de Tocqueville was born in 1805 into an aristocratic family recently rocked by France’s revolutionary upheavals. Both of his parents had been jailed during the Reign of Terror. After attending college in Metz, Tocqueville studied law in Paris and was appointed a magistrate in Versailles , -
Homestead Act
The Homestead Act, enacted during the Civil War in 1862, provided that any adult citizen, or intended citizen, who had never borne arms against the U.S. government could claim 160 acres of surveyed government land. Claimants were required to live on and “improve” their plot by cultivating the land. -
Klondike Gold Rush
In August, 1896, Skookum Jim and his family found gold near the Klondike River in Canada's Yukon Territory. Their discovery sparked one of the most frantic gold rushes in history. Nearby miners immediately flocked to the Klondike to stake the rest of the good claims. Almost a year later, news ignited the outside world -
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
Social Darwinism refers to various theories and societal practices that purported to apply biological concepts of natural selection and survival of the fittest to sociology, economics and politics, and which were largely defined by scholars in Western Europe and North America in the 1870s. -
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. -
Tin Pan Alley
The term 'Tin Pan Alley' refers to the physical location of the New York City-centered music publishers and songwriters who dominated the popular music of the United States in the late 19th century and early 20th century. Tin Pan Alley was the popular music publishing center of the world between 1885 to the 1920's. -
Settlement House Movement
America's settlement house movement was born in the late 19th century. The Industrial Revolution; dramatic advances in technology, transportation, and communication; and an influx in immigrants caused significant population swells in urban areas. City slums emerged where families lived in crowded, unsanitary housing. -
The Homestead strike
The Homestead strike, also known as the Homestead steel strike, Homestead massacre, or Battle of Homestead was an industrial lockout and strike which began on July 1, 1892, culminating in a battle between strikers and private security agents on July 6, 1892. The battle was a pivotal event in U.S. labor history. -
The Spanish American
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
Big stick ideology, big stick diplomacy, or big stick policy refers to President Theodore Roosevelt's foreign policy: "speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far". -
Muckraker
The muckrakers were reform-minded journalists, writers, and photographers in the Progressive Era in the United States who claimed to expose corruption and wrongdoing in established institutions, often through sensationalist publications. The emergence of muckraking was heralded in the issue of McClure's Magazine by articles on municipal government, labour, and trusts, written by Lincoln Steffens, Ray Stannard Baker, and Ida M. Tarbell. -
Panama Canal
Americans knew they needed this to move ships from east to west quickly. If they did that, they would control power because they would control the oceans. The Canal was a geopolitical strategy to make the United States the most powerful nation on earth. Also, the economic impact was massive. -
17th Amendments
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. -
16th Amendment
The Sixteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution allows Congress to levy an income tax without apportioning it among the states on the basis of population. It was passed by Congress in 1909 in response to the 1895 Supreme Court case of Pollock v. Farmers' Loan & Trust Co. -
Establishment of the National Park System
It was established in 1916 by an act of the U.S. Congress that was signed into law by U.S. Pres. Woodrow Wilson. The law stipulated that the new service was to “conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wild life therein and leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.” -
19th Amendments
Passed by Congress June 4, 1919, and ratified on August 18, 1920, the 19th amendment granted women the right to vote. The 19th amendment legally guarantees American women the right to vote. -
18th Amendments
The Eighteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution established the prohibition of alcohol in the United States. The amendment was proposed by Congress on December 18, 1917, and was ratified by the requisite number of states on January 16, 1919. -
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. -
Teapot Dome Scandal
The Teapot Dome scandal was a bribery scandal involving the administration of United States President Warren G. Harding from 1921 to 1923. On April 15, 1922, Wyoming Democratic senator John Kendrick introduced a resolution that set in motion one of the most significant investigations in Senate history. -
American Indian Citizenship Act of 1924
Indian Citizenship Act. On June 2, 1924, Congress enacted the Indian Citizenship Act, which granted citizenship to all Native Americans born in the U.S. The right to vote, however, was governed by state law; until 1957, some states barred Native Americans from voting. -
Immigration Act of 1924
The Immigration Act of 1924 limited the number of immigrants allowed entry into the United States through a national origins quota. The quota provided immigration visas to two percent of the total number of people of each nationality in the United States as of the 1890 national census. -
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. -
Executive Order 9066
Issued by President Franklin Roosevelt on February 19, 1942, this order authorized the evacuation of all persons deemed a threat to national security from the West Coast to relocation centers further inland. -
Bataan Death March
The Bataan Death March was the forcible transfer by the Imperial Japanese Army of 60,000–80,000 American and Filipino prisoners of war from Saysain Point, Bagac, Bataan and Mariveles to Camp O'Donnell, Capas, Tarlac, via San Fernando, Pampanga, the prisoners being forced to march despite many dying on the journey. -
Bracero program
An executive order called the Mexican Farm Labor Program established the Bracero Program in 1942. This series of diplomatic accords between Mexico and the United States permitted millions of Mexican men to work legally in the United States on short-term labor contracts. -
Manhattan Project
The Manhattan Project was a research and development undertaking during World War II that produced the first nuclear weapons. It was led by the United States with the support of the United Kingdom and Canada. -
Korematsu v. U.S.
Korematsu v. United States, 323 U.S. 214, was a landmark decision by the Supreme Court of the United States to uphold the exclusion of Japanese Americans from the West Coast Military Area during World War II . -
Nuremberg Trials
The Nuremberg trials were held by the Allies against representatives of the defeated Nazi Germany for plotting and carrying out invasions of other countries and other crimes in World War II. -
Reasons for US entry into
The Lusitania. In early 1915, Germany introduced a policy of unrestricted submarine warfare in the Atlantic. ...
The German invasion of Belgium. ...
American loans. ...
The reintroduction of unrestricted submarine warfare. ...
The Zimmerman telegram. -
“In God We Trust”
The official motto of the United States and the state of Florida is "In God We Trust." It was adopted by the United States Congress in 1956, replacing E pluribus unum, which had been the de facto motto since the Great Seal of the United States was first designed in 1776. -
Tenement
These buildings were often incredibly shabby, poorly designed, unsanitary, and cramped. The typical New York City apartment, or tenement, a type first constructed in the 1830s, consisted of apartments popularly known as railroad flats because the narrow rooms were arranged end-to-end in a row like boxcars. -
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.