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Jamestown
First permanent English colony, chartered in 1606 by King James I, supporting English national goals of countering the expansion of other European countries, seeking a northwest passage to China, and converting natives to Anglicanism.
Tobacco stimulated the rapid growth of the colony. Increased numbers of indentured servants..
Headright system: anyone who pays for passage to Virginia will receive 50 acres of land -
Mercantilism/Salutary Neglect
Mercantilism: economic theory that trade creates wealth, which a government should encourage by means of protectionism
Salutary Neglect: 17th and 18th century British policy of avoiding strict enforcement of parliamentary laws meant to keep American colonies obedient to England -
Pilgrims and Puritans
John Winthrop on the puritan Massachusetts. Bay colony: "We shall be as a city upon a hill, the eyes of all people are upon us."
Puritans and pilgrims fled to the colonies to escape persecution but did not necessarily display religious tolerance for beliefs that contradicted theirs.
Protestant work ethic: hard work, discipline and frugality will lead to religious fulfillment
Mayflower Compact: first agreement for self-government in America, written concerning the pilgrims -
Bacon's Rebellion
Armed rebellion led by Nathaniel Bacon in order to protest the refusal to confront Indians, joined by both African Americans and indentured servants. -
Great Awakening
Period of religious revival in American religious history during the first half of the 18th Century.
Effect: the uprising against established religious rule spilled over into other areas of colonial life, offered individuals a deep sense of spiritual conviction and redemption -
Deism
"Belief in the existence of a supreme being, specifically of a creator who does not intervene in the universe."
Idea that God was, to a certain degree, a kind of scientist/mathematician who designed the universe to run on its own and does not participate in its natural events -
French and Indian War: Effects
Marked the end of salutary neglect and led to stricter regulations on the colonies by the British.
Proclamation line of 1763: colonists are prohibited to settle past the Appalachian mountains, introduced to keep peace with the natives. Deliberately not followed by colonists, first signs of deliberate disobedience for the British.
Stamp act: direct tax on all printed goods, justified by the Declaratory Act -
Revolutionary War
Importance of French aid: long-term rivalry with Britain and to avenge motivated France to get revenge for territorial losses as a result of the French and Indian War. France secretly participates in the Revolution by sending supplies to the Americans after the Battle of Saratoga. -
Declaration of Independence
Written by Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Roger Sherman, Robert Livingston and Thomas Jefferson, divided into five sections: introduction, preamble, two sections of a body, and conclusion.
Effectively stated that seeking independence from Britain had become “necessary” for the colonies. -
Articles of Confederation
First American constitution with a weak central government because it granted too many powers to states.
Caused Shay's rebellion, where farmers took up arms to protest bad harvests, economic depression, and high taxes threatened which threatened them with the loss of their farms.
Main flaw: Federal government was left with little to no power, too weak to enforce their laws. -
British Violations of the treaty of Paris
Britain violated the treaty by occupying American territory in the Great Lakes region, not relinquishing their fortifications in America, and refusing to return confiscated slaves. -
Land Ordinances of 1785 and 1787
Both served to help the orderly creation and admission of states. This was important because Congress did not have the power to raise revenue by direct taxation, so land sales were an important way to raise money -
The United States Constitution
Strengthened the national government through federal taxes, the power to raise a national army with a single center of command, and the distribution of power using checks and balances.
Federalists supported ratification of the US Constitution because of the powers it gave the federal government, but democratic republicans disagreed because they felt as if the document was keeping the states from exercising the power they deserve.
Major amendments: Freedom, citizenship, and suffrage for blacks -
Founding Fathers' Attitudes toward Political Parties
The Federalists followed Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton. The Democratic-Republicans followed Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. The split was mainly due to the argument of whether states should be allowed more freedom to make decisions, and George Washington warned against bipartisan governments because he knew it would cause undue division. -
Hamilton's Economic Policies
Five Point Plan:
1. Establish a national bank with a common currency
2. Establish nation credit of the US through bonds
3. Assumption of state debt
4. Whiskey Tax to raise funds for the government
5. Place high protective tariffs to promote domestic manufacturing Anti-Federalists such as Thomas Jefferson objected to the plan and provided further reason for politics to split into two parties. -
Bill of Rights
Makes up the first 10 amendments to the US Constitution, written by James Madison in response to calls for greater protection of individual liberties, lists specific prohibitions on governmental power. -
Washington's Neutrality Proclamation
Washington stated that the US would refused to participate in external wars, alluding directly to the war between France and England at the time. -
Eli Whitney
American inventor who created the cotton gin, pushed the “interchangeable parts” mode of production. His invention pushed the use of slavery in the US into exponential growth. -
Washington's Farewell Address
Shows Washington's wish to refuse reelection for a third term and urged Americans to avoid being divided by political parties and geographical distinctions, and that Americans must avoid long-term alliances with other nations in order to avoid international conflicts. -
Alien and Sedition Acts
Strong steps John Adams took in response to the French foreign threat causing the severe repression of domestic protest.
Made it easier to deport foreigners and made it harder for new immigrants to vote, prohibited public opposition to the government.
Kentucky Resolution: protested against the federal government for choosing the needs of other states before Kentucky. -
The Election of 1800
First peaceful transfer of power from the federalists to the democratic republicans, pronouncing Thomas Jefferson the winner over Aaron Burr. -
Louisiana Purchase
Jefferson wanted the purchase because Americans thought that Napoleon might withdraw the offer at any time, preventing the United States from acquiring New Orleans, and the vast amounts of land would cause expansion and promote the agrarian economy Jefferson desired. -
Marbury v. Madison
The Supreme Court decided that they may declare an act of Congress void if it is inconsistent with the Constitution -
Lowell System
Labor and production model in New England, during the early years of the American industry in the early 1800s.
Made possible by inventions such as the spinning jenny, spinning mule, and water frame, used domestic labor through mill girls, who came to the new textile centers from rural towns to earn more money than they could at home. -
War of 1812
The main causes of the war were the British impressment of American sailors, and a series of economic decisions taken by the British and French against the US during the Napoleonic Wars. -
Hartford Convention
Series of meetings in which the New England Federalist Party met to discuss their grievances.
Discussed removing the three-fifths compromise which gave slave states more power in Congress
Discussed requiring a two-thirds majority in Congress for the admission of new states, declarations of war, and laws restricting trade.
Discussed their grievances with the Louisiana Purchase and the Embargo of 1807
Andrew Jackson's sweeping victory eliminates the Federalist party -
The American System
Made by Henry Clay consisting of three parts:
1. Tariff to protect and promote American industry
2. National bank to promote commerce
3. Internal improvements of infrastructure to promote agriculture. -
Compromise of 1820 / Missouri Compromise
Effort to preserve the balance of power in Congress between slave and free states admitting Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state. Created the Missouri Compromise in which no slavery would be allowed in the Louisiana Territory north of the 36°30' line, except for Missouri itself, which would remain a slave state. -
Monroe Doctrine
Warns European nations that the United States would not tolerate further colonization in the western hemisphere. It freed the newly independent colonies of Latin America from European intervention, ensuring that the western hemisphere would not become a battleground for European powers.
Roosevelt corollary: addition to the Monroe Doctrine by Theodore Roosevelt in his State of the Union address in 1904 after the Venezuela Crisis of 1902–1903. -
Transcendentalism
Idealistic American philosophical and social movement believing that divinity is present all nature and humanity, and transcendentalists held progressive views on feminism and communal living. Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau were notable transcendentalist authors. -
Tariff of Abominations / Nullification Crisis
Tariff of Abominations: protective tariff passed by the Congress of the United States on May 19, 1828 after Calhoun resigned, designed to protect industry in the northern United States.
Nullification Crisis: United States sectional political crisis in 1832–1833 involving a confrontation between South Carolina and the federal government. -
Andrew Jackson
Indian Policy: forceful relocation of Indians to reservations to the west, led to the Trail of Tears.
Expansion of suffrage: Made it possible for non-landowners to vote as long as they were a white male.
Bank War: Campaign to destroy the Second Bank of the US
Promoted pet banks (state banks) instead. -
William Lloyd Garrison
Abolitionist, journalist, suffragist, and social reformer.
Best known as the editor of The Liberator until slavery was abolished
One of the founders of the American Anti-Slavery Society
Promoted immediate emancipation of slaves
Later moved on to the womens' suffrage movement. -
Mexico
Election of 1844: Democrat James Knox Polk defeated Whig Henry Clay in contest that turned on foreign policy. Polk favored the annexation of Texas, which Clay opposed. -
Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo
Added Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming to US territory after the end of the Mexican war. -
Seneca Falls Convention
First women's rights convention
Organized by Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, after which Susan B. Anthony emerges as a prominent women's suffrage figure. -
Compromise of 1850
Attempt by Henry Clay to seek a compromise and avert a crisis between North and South after the Mexican-American war. Abolished the slave trade in Washington, D.C. -
Manifest Destiny
Term for the attitude prevalent during the period of American expansion that the United States not only could, but was destined to, stretch from coast to coast.
Attitude helped fuel western settlement, removal of natives and war with Mexico.
Whigs opposed and Democrats favored -
Popular Sovereignty
"Rule by the people":
The authority of a state and its government is created and sustained by its people through the representatives they elect -
Kansas-Nebraska Act
Allowed people in the territories of Kansas and Nebraska to decide through popular sovereignty whether or not to allow slavery within their borders.
Served to repeal the Missouri Compromise. -
Irish Immigration
Irishmen made up the majority of European immigrants in the time, largely as a result of the potato famine.
Nativist party emerges to oppose this, pushing for laws to require a longer waiting period between immigration and naturalization. -
Dred Scott v. Sandford
Questioned the constitutionality of the missouri compromise and ultimately decided it wasn't constitutional. Held that no African American (free or not) had the right to sue in court, and that the federal court would not regulate slavery in US territories. -
John Brown
Abolitionist in charge of raiding Harpers Ferry, leading a group of insurrectionists during Bleeding Kansas
Portrayed as a martyr by the North and a violent radical in the South. -
Lincoln's Republican Policy on Slavery
Platform of 1860: stated that slavery should not be allowed to expand into any more territories. Lincoln believed that the extension of slavery in new western lands would block "free labor on free soil". Wanted a peaceful, enduring end to slavery, which is made impossible when the south secedes. -
Civil War
The causes of the Civil War were the disputes against federal over state power and the issue of slavery.
The North had more soldiers, resources, weapons, better infrastructure, and better strategists; the South had more knowledge of the terrain, a stronger sense of morale, and food.
France sympathized with the Union because of their hatred of slavery and Britain supported the Confederacy. Both remained neutral. -
Emancipation Proclamation
Purpose: to free more than 3 million enslaved African Americans in the South
Terms: this could only occur to its full extent if the Union won the Civil War -
Republican Reconstruction
Presdenial election of 1876- Tilden led Hayes by more than 260,000 popular votes, and preliminary returns showed Tilden with 184 electoral votes to Hayes’s 165, with the 19 electoral votes of three states and one elector from Oregon still in doubt. The U.S. Congress subsequently created an Electoral Commission, which by early March 1877 had resolved all the disputed electoral votes in favour of Hayes, ... (100 of 1,354 words) -
Post Civil War Southern Society
African Americans made a living renting small plots of land from large landowners who were usually white and pledging a percentage of their crops to the landowners at harvest—a system known as sharecropping. Landowners provided sharecroppers with land, seeds, tools, clothing, and food. Charges for the supplies were deducted from the sharecroppers’ portion of the harvest, leaving them with substantial debt to landowners in bad years. Sharecroppers would become caught in continual debt -
Social Darwinism
Theory that persons, groups, and races are subject to the same laws of natural selection as Charles Darwin had perceived in nature.
Weak were diminished and their cultures delimited, while the strong grew in power and in cultural influence over the weak.
Held that the life of humans in society was a struggle for existence ruled by “survival of the fittest,” a phrase proposed by the British philosopher and scientist Herbert Spencer. -
Cult of Domesticity
"Cult of true womanhood"
Belief surrounding women in the 1800s. They believed that women should stay at home and shouldn't work outside of the home.
Believed women should be:
More religious than men
Maintaining their physical and spiritual purity
Submissive to their husbands
Staying at home -
Southern and Eastern European Immigrants
New immigrants came from southern or eastern Europe, were not Protestant (mainly Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Jewish), were less skilled workers, reluctant to assimilate, more radical, arrived impoverished, and originated usually from Italian, Polish, or Jewish roots. -
Growth of the Cities
Urban political machines, built largely on the votes of diverse immigrant populations, dispensed jobs and assorted welfare benefits while offering avenues of social mobility at a time when local governments provided a paucity of such services.
US city population exploded, causing sanitation issues. George Waring made much-needed reforms that would become the foundations for modern recycling, street sweeping and garbage collection. -
Dawes Act
Authorized the President of the United States to survey American Indian tribal land and divide it into allotments for individual Indians. Those who accepted allotments and lived separately from the tribe would be granted United States citizenship.
he objectives of the Dawes Act were to lift the Native Americans out of poverty, to stimulate assimilation of them into mainstream American society, and to transfer lands under Indian control to white settlers -
Transcontinental Railroad
Helped open up unpopulated interior regions of continents to exploration and settlement that would not otherwise have been feasible. In many cases they also formed the backbones of cross-country passenger and freight transportation networks, promoting industry. -
Laissez faire economics
An economic system in which transactions between private parties are free from government intervention such as regulation, privileges, tariffs, and subsidies. -
Gospel of Wealth
Describes the responsibility of philanthropy by the new upper class of self-made rich. Carnegie proposed that the best way of dealing with the new phenomenon of wealth inequality was for the wealthy to redistribute their surplus means in a responsible and thoughtful manner.
Argues against wasteful use of capital in the form of extravagance, instead promoting the administration of capital over the course of one's lifetime toward the cause of reducing the stratification between the rich and poor. -
Titans of Industry
A horizontal integration consists of companies that acquire a similar company in the same industry, while a vertical integration consists of companies that acquire a company that operates either before or after the acquiring company in the production process.
Vertical- Standard Oil Co -
Populism
Populists thought that common people are exploited by a privileged elite. Its goal was uniting the uncorrupt and the unsophisticated against the corrupt dominant elites. It is guided by the belief that political and social goals are best achieved by the direct actions of the masses. -
Sherman Anti-Trust Act
First legislation enacted by US Congress to curb concentrations of power that interfere with trade and reduce economic competition. It was named for U.S. Senator John Sherman of Ohio, who was an expert on the regulation of commerce. -
Frederick Jackson Turner Thesis
The Frontier Thesis pointed to expansion as the most important factor in American history. He claimed that “the existence of an area of free land, its continuous recession, and the advance of American settlement westward explain American development... the frontier has gone, and with its going has closed the first period of American history,” -
Plessy v. Ferguson
Seperate but Equal. African-American Homer Plessy refused to sit in a Jim Crow car, breaking a Louisiana law. Rejecting Plessy’s argument that his constitutional rights were violated, the Court ruled that a state law that “implies merely a legal distinction” between whites and blacks did not conflict with the 13th and14th Amendments. Restrictive legislation based on race continued following the Plessy decision, its reasoning not overturned until Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka in 1954. -
Spanish-American War
Yellow journalism exploits, distorts, or exaggerates the news to create sensations and attract readers; popularized in the late nineteenth century by Jospeh Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst
The Philippines are given to the US by Spain as a result of the end of the Spanish-American War -
Open Door Policy
The policy aimed to secure international agreement to the U.S. policy of promoting equal opportunity for international trade and commerce in China, and respect for China’s administrative and territorial integrity. British and American policies toward China had long operated under similar principles, but once Hay put them into writing, the “Open Door” became the official U.S. policy towards the Far East in the first half of the 20th century. -
Progressivism
The Progressive Era was a period of widespread social activism and political reform across the United States, from the 1890s to the 1920s. The main objectives of the Progressive movement were eliminating problems caused by industrialization, urbanization, immigration, and corruption in government.
Muckrakers were reform-minded American journalists who attacked established institutions and leaders as corrupt -
ford assembly line
First moving assembly line for the mass production of an entire automobile.
Reduced the time it took to build a car from more than 12 hours to two hours and 30 minutes.
Ford’s Model T was inexpensive In order to lower the price of his cars, Ford figured, he would just have to find a way to build them more efficiently. -
League of Nations
The League of Nations was an international organization, headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, created after the First World War to provide a forum for resolving international disputes. Though first proposed by President Woodrow Wilson as part of his Fourteen Points plan for an equitable peace in Europe, the United States never became a member. -
Scopes Trial
The Scopes Trial was an American legal case in July 1925 in which a substitute high school teacher, John T. Scopes, was accused of violating Tennessee's Butler Act, which had made it unlawful to teach human evolution in any state-funded school.
The trial publicized the Fundamentalist–Modernist Controversy, which set Modernists against Fundamentalists. The case was thus seen as both a theological contest and a trial on whether "modern science" should be taught in schools. -
Kellogg-Briand Pact
An agreement to outlaw war signed on August 27, 1928. The pact was one of many international efforts to prevent another World War, but it had little effect in stopping the rising militarism of the 1930s or preventing World War II. -
The Great Depression
The Great Depression lasted from 1929 to 1939 and was the worst economic downturn of the industrialized world. Began after the stock market crash of October 1929, which sent Wall Street into a panic and wiped out millions of investors. Consumer spending and investment dropped, causing steep declines in industrial output and employment as failing companies laid off workers. At its lowest point 15 million Americans were unemployed and nearly half the country’s banks had failed. -
Isolationism
Good Neighbor Policy and the Neutrality Acts
The combination of the Great Depression and the memory of tragic losses in World War I contributed to pushing American public opinion and policy toward isolationism -
Labor Unions
Wagner act established the federal government as the regulator and ultimate arbiter of labour relations. Set up National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). Weakened the Taft-Hartley Act
Sherman antitrust act allowed certain business activities that federal government regulators deem to be competitive, and recommended the federal government to investigate and pursue trusts. -
Neutrality Acts
Neutrality Acts- laws passed in 1935, 1936, 1937, and 1939 to limit U.S. involvement in future wars. They were based on the widespread disillusionment with World War I in the early 1930s and the belief that the United States had been drawn into the war through loans and trade with the Allies. -
World War II
Executive order 9066 authorized exclusion of Japanese Americans and allowed for internment in camps.
Women in workforce due to militarization of industry- Rosie the Riveter
African Americans included in wartime jobs, allowed in US troops -
World War II Draft
Selective Training and Service Act of 1940 required all men between the ages of 21 and 45 to register for the draft. This was the first peacetime draft in United States' history. Those who were selected from the draft lottery were required to serve at least one year in the armed forces. Draft terms extended through the duration of the fighting. By the end of the war 50 million men between eighteen and forty-five had registered for the draft and 10 million had been inducted in the military. -
Post WWI American Attitude
The US began an economic boom and raised American standard of living. Raised awareness of the struggle for equality among women and minorities and the backlash that these struggles evoked
Growth of the suburbs
Shift in power from the older industrial states and cities of the Northeast and upper Midwest to the South and West
Belief that the U.S. had the economic and military power to maintain world peace and shape the behavior of other nations. -
Truman
Fair Deal recommended that all Americans have health insurance, that the minimum wage be increased, and that all Americans be guaranteed equal rights.
republican congress
Korean war, North-Communist
Containment policy wanted to prevent spread of communism
Cold War, arms race with Russia
Berlin Airlift- blockade -
McCarthyism
The practice of making accusations of subversion or treason without proper regard for evidence.
Named after U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy and the red scare and characterized by heightened political repression as well as a campaign spreading fear of influence on American institutions and of espionage by Soviet agents. -
The 1950s
Post-war brought the baby boom
Growth of suburbs due to mass production and affordability of cars
Rise of consumerism and cultural movements such as the introduction of rock and roll
Nuclear war scare- Russia
Period of domestic tranquility -
Brown v. Board of Education
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Vietnam War
Cold War-era proxy war- strategic bombing
North Vietnamese government and the Viet Cong were fighting to reunify Vietnam. U.S. government involved in containment policy, with the stated aim of stopping the spread of communism worldwide.
Gulf of Tonkin Resolution: allowed U.S. president to increase U.S. military presence.
Tet Offensive failed
Vietnamization ended American involvement in the war while transferring the task of fighting the communists to the South Vietnamese themselves. -
Civil Rights Movement
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 banned discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin in employment practices; ended unequal application of voter registration requirements; and prohibited racial segregation in schools, at the workplace, and in public accommodations.
Voting Rights Act of 1965 restored and protected voting rights for minorities
Black Power movement demanded political and economic self-sufficiency to be built in the black community. -
1960s Protests
The civil rights movement, student movement, anti-Vietnam War movement, women’s movement, gay rights movement, and environmental movement
Changed government policy and changed the country's future.
Supporters of these movements questioned traditional practices about how people were treated
Inspired people to begin organizing movements to fight against injustice and for equal rights for all people. -
Cuban Missile Crisis
13-day confrontation between the US and the USSR concerning American ballistic missile deployment in Italy and Turkey with consequent Soviet ballistic missile deployment in Cuba
Often considered the closest the Cold War came to becoming a full-scale nuclear war
Khrushchev and Castro placed nuclear missiles on Cuba to deter future invasions following the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion.
US' military blockade prevented further missiles from reaching Cuba.
Established the Moscow–Washington hotline. -
Lyndon B. Johnson
Designed the Great Society legislation by upholding civil rights, public broadcasting, Medicare, Medicaid, aid to education, the arts, urban and rural development, public services, and his War on Poverty
Escalated American involvement in the Vietnam War. The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, granting Johnson the power to use military force in Southeast Asia without having to ask for an official declaration of war. -
Franklin Delano Roosevelt
First 100 days
differences w hoover
court packing
good neighbor policy
lend lease
