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1492
Columbus first lands in America
begins sustained European contact -
founding of Jamestown, Va.
first permanent English colony -
Pilgrims at Plymouth
beginning of permanent settlement of New England -
French and Indian War
Britain ends French presence in the colonies -
Revolutionary War
U.S. wins independence from Britain -
Declaration of Independence
The centrality of the Declaration of Independence (1776) to the developments of the 1770s is self-evident. From the Boston Tea Party to the shot heard round the world, Washington’s Crossing of the Delaware, and the Valley Forge winter, the American Revolution’s pursuit of liberty was made meaningful by the founding document of the great American experiment in democracy. -
Articles of Confederation
first attempt at national government -
Constitution of the United States of America
The centrality of the Declaration of Independence (1776) to the developments of the 1770s is self-evident. From the Boston Tea Party to the shot heard round the world, Washington’s Crossing of the Delaware, and the Valley Forge winter, the American Revolution’s pursuit of liberty was made meaningful by the founding document of the great American experiment in democracy. -
First textile mill in U.S.
Industrial Revolution comes to America -
Whiskey Rebellion
As the new country began finding its feet, U.S. Pres. George Washington sent troops to western Pennsylvania in 1794 to quell the Whiskey Rebellion, an uprising by citizens who refused to pay a liquor tax that had been imposed by Secretary of Treasury Alexander Hamilton to raise money for the national debt and to assert the power of the national government. -
Louisiana Purchase
The Louisiana Territory, the huge swath of land (more than 800,000 square miles) that made up the western Mississippi basin, passed from French colonial rule to Spanish colonial rule and then back to the French before U.S. Pres. Thomas Jefferson pried it away from Napoleon in 1803 for a final price of some $27 million. -
War of 1812 with Britain
U.S. maintains independence -
Battle of New Orleans
On January 8, 1815, a ragtag army under the command of Andrew Jackson decisively defeated British forces in the Battle of New Orleans, even though the War of 1812 had actually already ended. News of the Treaty of Ghent (December 24, 1814) had yet to reach the combatants. -
Monroe Doctrine
The Era of Good Feelings (roughly 1815–25), a period of American prosperity and isolationism, was in full swing when U.S. Pres. James Monroe articulated a set of principles in 1823 that decades later would be called the Monroe Doctrine. According to the policy, the United States would not intervene in European affairs, but likewise it would not tolerate further European colonization in the Americas or European interference in the governments of the American hemisphere. -
Era of the Common Man
Andrew Jackson, the U.S. president from 1829–37, was said to have ushered in the Era of the Common Man. But while suffrage had been broadly expanded beyond men of property, it was not a result of Jackson’s efforts. Despite the careful propagation of his image as a champion of popular democracy and as a man of the people, he was much more likely to align himself with the influential not with the have-nots, with the creditor not with the debtor. -
Indian removal—Trail of Tears
Eastern native nations (especially Cherokee) forced west -
Nullification Crisis
South Carolina threatens to secede -
telegraph invented
long distance communication unites country -
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
Signed on February 2, 1848, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo brought to a close the Mexican-American War (1846–48) and seemingly fulfilled the Manifest Destiny of the United States championed by Pres. James K. Polk by adding 525,000 square miles (1,360,000 square km) of formerly Mexican land to the U.S. territory. -
Dred Scott Decision
The 1850s were awash in harbingers of the American Civil War to come—from the Compromise of 1850, which temporarily forestalled North-South tensions, to John Brown’s Harpers Ferry Raid, which ramped them up. Arguably, though, by stoking abolitionist indignation in an increasingly polarized country, the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision set the table for the 1860 election of Abraham Lincoln as president, which ultimately precipitated secession and war. -
Civil War
the Union is preserved and slavery ends -
Battle of Gettysburg
In July 1863, the year of the Emancipation Proclamation, in the small Pennsylvania crossroads town of Gettysburg, Robert E. Lee’s invading Army of Northern Virginia sustained a defeat so devastating that it sealed the fate of the Confederacy and its “peculiar institution.” Within two years the war was over, and before the end of the decade the South was temporarily transformed by Reconstruction. -
first transcontinental railroad completed
faster travel coast to coast -
Battle of the Little Bighorn
While the country celebrated its anniversary at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition, on June 25, 1876, the 7th Cavalry under the command of Col. George Armstrong Custer was vanquished by Lakota and Northern Cheyenne warriors led by Sitting Bull in the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Although it was a major victory for the Northern Plains people against U.S. expansionism, the battle marked the beginning of the end of Native American sovereignty over the West. -
telephone invented
long distance voice communication -
end of Reconstruction
South begins era of segregation -
electric light bulb
inexpensive form of light for homes and businesses -
American Federation of Labor formed
first effective group of labor unions; still active today as AFL-CIO -
Battle of Wounded Knee
end of Indian Wars in the West -
Populist Party formed
farmers unite against railroads and big business -
Plessy v. Ferguson
With the end of Reconstruction in the 1870s, the enactment of Jim Crow laws enforced racial segregation in the South. In its 7–1 decision in the Plessy v. Ferguson case in May 1896, the U.S. Supreme Court gave constitutional sanction to laws designed to achieve racial segregation by means of separate and supposedly equal public facilities and services for African Americans and whites, thus providing a controlling judicial precedent that would endure until the 1950s. -
Spanish-American War
U.S. gains an empire in Caribbean and Philippines -
Breakup of Northern Securities
In 1902 U.S. Pres. Theodore Roosevelt pursued the Progressive goal of curbing the enormous economic and political power of the giant corporate trusts by resurrecting the nearly defunct Sherman Antitrust Act to bring a lawsuit that led to the breakup of a huge railroad conglomerate, the Northern Securities Company (ordered by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1904). Roosevelt pursued this policy of “trust-busting” by initiating suits against 43 other major corporations during the next seven years. -
NAACP formed
African Americans organize to achieve equality -
Great Migration of African Americans
growth of large African-American communities in Northern
cities; racial tensions develop -
Ford produces one auto every 2 hours
mass production techniques make U.S. world industrial leader -
Panama Canal completed
travel between Caribbean and the Pacific eased -
Panama Canal completed
travel between Caribbean and the Pacific eased -
Sinking of the Lusitania
As World War I raged in Europe, most Americans, including U.S. Pres. Woodrow Wilson, remained determined to avoid involvement and committed to neutrality, though the U.S. economy had benefited greatly from supplying food, raw material, and guns and ammunition to the Allies. More than any other single event, the sinking of the unarmed British ocean liner, the Lusitania, by a German submarine on May 7, 1915 (killing, among others, 128 Americans), prompted the U.S. to join -
U.S. enters World War I
tips the balance of power to the Allies; Central Powers defeated -
League of Nations chartered
agreement to settle differences without war -
women get the right to vote
women achieve political equality sought since 1848 -
stock market crash
“The chief business of the American people is business,” U.S. Pres. Calvin Coolidge said in 1925. And with the American economy humming during the “Roaring Twenties” (the Jazz Age), peace and prosperity reigned in the United States…until it didn’t. The era came to a close in October 1929 when the stock market crashed, setting the stage for years of economic deprivation and calamity during the Great Depression. -
FDR’s First Fireside Chat
In 1933 at least one-fourth of the U.S. workforce was unemployed when the administration of Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt first took on the ravages of the Great Depression with the New Deal, a federal government program that sought to bring about immediate economic relief as well as reforms in industry, agriculture, finance, labor, and housing. On March 12, 1933, Roosevelt gave the first in a long series (1933–44) of straightforward informal radio addresses, the fireside chats. -
The Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Having again stayed out of the initial stages of another worldwide conflict, the U.S. entered World War II on the side of the Allies following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor (December 1941). In August 1945, with the war in Europe over and U.S. forces advancing on Japan, U.S. Pres. Harry S. Truman ushered in the nuclear era by choosing to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, in the hope that the terrible destruction. -
U.S. Army–McCarthy Hearings
With the Cold War as a backdrop, U.S. Sen. Joseph McCarthy gave his name to an era (McCarthyism) by fanning the flames of anti-communist hysteria with sensational but unproven charges of communist subversion in high government circles, while the House Un-American Activities Committee investigated alleged communist activities in the entertainment industry. McCarthy’s influence waned in 1954 when a nationally televised 36-day hearing on his charges of subversion by U.S. Army. -
Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.
At the center of the widespread social and political upheaval of the 1960s were the civil rights movement, opposition to the Vietnam War, the emergence of youth-oriented counterculture, and the establishment and reactionary elements that pushed back against change. The April 4, 1968, assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., the most prominent civil rights leader, revealed the tragic, violent consequences that could result from a country’s political polarization. -
Watergate Scandal
On August 9, 1974—facing likely impeachment for his role in covering up the scandal surrounding the break-in at the Democratic National Committee (DNC) headquarters in the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C., in June 1972—Republican Richard Nixon became the only U.S. president to resign. The loss of faith in government officials that resulted from the scandal suffused both popular and political culture with paranoia and disillusionment for the remainder of the decade. -
PATCO Strike
U.S. Pres. Ronald Reagan’s triumph over the strike by the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) in August 1981 played a pivotal role in the long-term weakening of the power of labor unions and helped set the tenor for his administration. Reagan’s ascent to the presidency in 1980 had much to do with his rhetorical ability to break the cloud of gloom caused by Watergate. -
The Monica Lewinsky Affair
Having failed to push through a number of high-profile policy initiatives early in his first term as president and confronted with Republican majorities in both houses of Congress after the 1994 midterm election, Democrat Bill Clinton pivoted toward political accommodation, oversaw a robust economy, and reversed the spiraling budget deficit. Nonetheless, his affair with a White House intern, Monica Lewinsky, led to his impeachment in December 1998 -
September 11 Attacks
Although terrorist attacks had been directed at the United States at the end of the 20th century, a new sense of vulnerability was introduced into American life on September 11, 2001, when Islamist terrorists crashed hijacked planes into the World Trade Center in New York City, the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and the Pennsylvania countryside, resulting in the deaths of nearly 3,000 people.