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Jamestown
First successful English colony that was granted charter by King James I. The adventurers on the trip were from the Virginia Company. There instructions were to set up a colony in search of gold and find a water route to the Pacififc. -
Boston Tea Party
Was the protest against the tea act. The protest was organized by Sam Adams and the Sons Of Liberty. In the end the dumped 342 chests of the into the Boston harbor. The settlers were later punished by the Coercive Acts which pushed both sides closer to war. -
Lexington & Concord
When the British marched to seize the arms of the cache the colonist confronted them between Lexington and Concord. After "The Shot heard around the world" was fired a war for Independence had begun. -
Declaration of Independence
Was the declaration that the 13 colonies were no longer part of the British Empire. Was adopted by the Continental Congress during the war. -
Louisiana Purchase
The United States purchased approximately 828,000,000 square miles of territory from France that doubled the size of the young republic. What was known as Louisiana Territory stretched from the Mississippi River in the east to the Rocky Mountains in the west and from the Gulf of Mexico in the south to the Canadian border in the north. Part or all of 15 states were eventually created from the land deal, which is considered one of the most important achievments for Thomas Jefferson. -
Trail of Tears
125,000 Native Americans lived on millions of acres of land in Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, North Carolina and Florida–land their ancestors had occupied and cultivated for generations. By the end of the decade, very few natives remained anywhere in the southeastern United States. Working on behalf of white settlers who wanted to grow cotton on the Indians’ land, the federal government forced them to leave their homelands and walk thousands of miles to a specially designated “Indian territory”. -
Mexican-American War
President James K. Polk, who believed the United States had a “manifest destiny” to spread across the continent to the Pacific Ocean. A border skirmish along the Rio Grande started off the fighting and was followed by a series of U.S. victories. When the dust cleared, Mexico had lost about one-third of its territory, including nearly all of present-day California, Utah, Nevada, Arizona and New Mexico. -
California Gold Rush
As news spread of the discovery, thousands of prospective gold miners traveled by sea or over land to San Francisco and the surrounding area; by the end of 1849, the non-native population of the California territory was some 100,000. A total of $2 billion worth of precious metal was extracted from the area during the Gold Rush, which peaked in 1852. -
Civil War
In February 1861, delegates from those states convened to establish a unified government. Jefferson Davis of Mississippi was elected the first president of the Confederate States of America. When Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated on March 4, 1861, a total of seven states (Texas had joined the pack) had seceded from the Union, and federal troops held only Fort Sumter in South Carolina, Fort Pickens off the Florida coast, and a handful of minor outposts in the South. And so began the war. -
End of Civil War
Lee, having abandoned the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia, after the ten-month Siege of Petersburg, retreated west, hoping to join his army with the Confederate forces in North Carolina. Union forces pursued and cut off the Confederate retreat at the village of Appomattox Court House. Lee launched an attack to break through the Union force to his front, assuming the Union force consisted entirely of cavalry. He was wrong and had no choise but to surrender.
