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On December 6, 1606, the journey to Virginia began on three ships. In 1607, 104 English men and boys arrived in North America to start a settlement. On May 13, they picked Jamestown, Virginia, for their settlement, this settlement became the first permanent English settlement in North America. -
The starving time was the winter of 1609-1610, when food shortages, fractured leadership, and a siege by Powhatan Indian warriors killed two of every three colonists at James Fort. -
Rolfe's success in growing a profitable tobacco crop transformed the colony, leading directly to Virginia's most successful cash crop and forming the basis of the colony's economy. -
On August 20, 1619, "20 and odd" Angolans, kidnapped by the Portuguese, arrive in the British colony of Virginia and are then brought to the English colonists. The arrival of the enslaved Africans in the New World marks the beginning of two and a half centuries of slavery in North America. -
Mayflower Compact, a document signed on the English ship Mayflower on November 21, 1620, prior to its landing at Plymouth, Massachusetts. It was the first framework of government written and enacted in the territory that is now the United States of America. -
This refers to a series of civil wars and political machinations between Royalists and Parliamentarians in the Kingdom of England from 1642 to 1651. -
The Maryland Toleration Act, also known as the Act Concerning Religion, was the first law in North America requiring religious tolerance for Christians. -
The Virginia Colony passed a law incorporating the principle of partus sequitur ventrem, ruling that children of enslaved mothers would be born into slavery, regardless of their father's race or status. -
Bacon's Rebellion was an armed rebellion held by Virginia settlers that took place from 1676 to 1677. It was led by Nathaniel Bacon against Colonial Governor William Berkeley after Berkeley refused Bacon's request to drive Native American Indians out of Virginia. -
The Salem witch trials were a series of hearings and prosecutions of people accused of witchcraft in colonial Massachusetts between February 1692 and May 1693. More than 200 people were accused. Thirty people were found guilty, 19 of whom were executed by hanging. -
Defines all slaves as real estate, acquits masters who kill slaves during punishment, forbids slaves, and freed colored people from physically assaulting white persons, and denies slaves the right to bear arms or move abroad without written permission. -
New York slave rebellion of 1712, a violent insurrection of slaves in New York City that resulted in brutal executions and the enactment of harsher slave codes. The population of New York City in 1712 numbered between 6,000 and 8,000 people, of whom approximately 1,000 were slaves. -
The Plantation Duty Act of 1673 was an act of Parliament intended to eliminate the smuggling of articles enumerated in the Navigation Act of 1660 and to induce the colonists to export those articles directly to England by allowing them to be traded to other colonies with the payment of the usual English import duty. -
The French and Indian War was the North American conflict in a larger imperial war between Great Britain and France known as the Seven Years' War. The French and Indian War began in 1754 and ended with the Treaty of Paris in 1763. -
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. -
The Boston Massacre was a confrontation in Boston on March 5, 1770, in which nine British soldiers shot several of a crowd of three or four hundred who were harassing them verbally and throwing various projectiles -
The Boston Tea Party was an American political and mercantile protest on December 16, 1773, by the Sons of Liberty in Boston in colonial Massachusetts. -
The Midnight Ride was the alert to the American colonial militia in April 1775 to the approach of British forces before the battles of Lexington and Concord. The ride occurred on the night of April 18, 1775, immediately before the first engagements of the American Revolutionary War. -
The Second Continental Congress was the late-18th-century meeting of delegates from the Thirteen Colonies that united in support of the American Revolution and its associated Revolutionary War that established American independence from the British Empire. -
First President of the United States. By the end of his terms he was sad to see that two parties were developing. Wearied of politics, feeling old, he retired at the end of his second. In his Farewell Address, he urged his countrymen to forswear excessive party spirit and geographical distinctions. In foreign affairs, he warned against long-term alliances. -
On December 15, 1791, three-fourths of the existing State legislatures ratified the first 10 Amendments of the Constitution—the Bill of Rights. These Amendments protect some of the most indispensable rights and liberties that define us as Americans. -
The Louisiana Purchase was the acquisition of the territory of Louisiana by the United States from the French First Republic in 1803. This consisted of most of the land in the Mississippi River's drainage basin west of the river. -
The War of 1812 was fought by the United States of America and its indigenous allies against the United Kingdom and its own indigenous allies in British North America, with limited participation by Spain in Florida. It began when the United States declared war on 18 June 1812. -
The Panic of 1819 was the first widespread and durable financial crisis in the United States that slowed westward expansion in the Cotton Belt and was followed by a general collapse of the American economy that persisted through 1821. -
The Indian Removal Act was signed into law by President Andrew Jackson on May 28, 1830, authorizing the president to grant unsettled lands west of the Mississippi in exchange for Indian lands within existing state borders. A few tribes went peacefully, but many resisted the relocation policy. -
The Trail of Tears was an ethnic cleansing and forced displacement of approximately 60,000 people of the "Five Civilized Tribes" between 1830 and 1850 by the United States government. -
The California Gold Rush was a gold rush that began on January 24, 1848, when gold was found by James W. Marshall at Sutter's Mill in Coloma, California. The news of gold brought approximately 300,000 people to California from the rest of the United States and abroad -
The Seneca Falls Convention was the first women's rights convention. It advertised itself as "a convention to discuss the social, civil, and religious condition and rights of woman". Held in the Wesleyan Chapel of the town of Seneca Falls, New York, it spanned two days over July 19–20, 1848. -
Abraham Lincoln became the United States’ 16th President in 1861, issuing the Emancipation Proclamation that declared forever free those slaves within the Confederacy in 1863. -
The American Civil War was a civil war in the United States between the Union and the Confederacy, formed by states that had seceded from the Union. -
Yellowstone National Park is a nearly 3,500-sq.-mile wilderness recreation area atop a volcanic hot spot. Mostly in Wyoming, the park spreads into parts of Montana and Idaho too. Yellowstone features dramatic canyons, alpine rivers, lush forests, hot springs and gushing geysers, including its most famous, Old Faithful. It's also home to hundreds of animal species, including bears, wolves, bison, elk and antelope. -
The Civil Rights Act of 1875, sometimes called the Enforcement Act or the Force Act, was a United States federal law enacted during the Reconstruction era in response to civil rights violations against African Americans. This bill guaranteed all citizens, regardless of color, access to accommodations, theatres, public schools, churches, and cemeteries.