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Founding of Jamestown
Money and Glory. The Spanish and Portuguese were very successful in South America, so England wanted to try. They wanted to find some big natural resources to sell in Europe and they wanted to use the land for agriculture. They found neither in Jamestown and they found out the land was poor. They also had 3/4 of the people die in the first Winter. John Smith was the founder of Jamestown. -
House of Burgesses
The House of Burgesses was the first assembly of elected representatives of English colonists in North America. -
Founding of Plymouth Colony and Mayflower Compact
The Mayflower Compact was the first governing document of the Plymouth Colony. It was written by the Seperatists fleeing religious persecution from James VI and I. They traveled aboard the Mayflower in 1620 along with adventurers, tradesmen, and servants. Founded by a group of Separatists and Anglicans, who together later came to be known as the Pilgrims. -
Founding of Massachusetts Bay
Founding of Massachusetts Bay was an English settlement on the east coast of North America in the 17th century, in New England, situated around the present-day cities of Salem and Boston. The colony was founded by the owners of the Massachusetts Bay Company. -
Pequot War
The Pequot War was an armed conflict spanning the years 1634–1638 between the Pequot tribe against an alliance of the Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, and Saybrook colonies who were aided by their Native American allies. -
King Philip’s War
King Philips War was an armed conflict between Native American inhabitants of present-day New England and English colonists and their Native American allies in 1675–78. -
Bacon’s Rebellion
Bacon's Rebellion was an uprising in 1676 in the Virginia Colony in North America, led by a 29-year-old planter, Nathaniel Bacon. -
Salem Witch Trials
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. -
French and Indian War
The French and Indian War (1754–1763) is the American name for the North American theater of the Seven Years' War. The war was fought primarily between the colonies of British America and New France, with both sides supported by military units from their parent countries of Great Britain and France. -
Quartering Act
The Quartering Act is the name of at least two 18th-century Acts of the Parliament of Great Britain. These Quartering Acts ordered the local governments of the American colonies to provide housing and provisions for British soldiers. -
Stamp Act
The Stamp Act was a direct tax imposed by the British Parliament specifically on the colonies of British America. The act required that many printed materials in the colonies be produced on stamped paper produced in London, carrying an embossed revenue stamp. -
Boston Massacre
The Boston Massacre, called the Incident on King Street by the British, was an incident on March 5, 1770, in which British Army soldiers killed five civilian men and injured six others. -
Tea Act
The Tea Act was an Act of the Parliament of Great Britain. Its principal overt objective was to reduce the massive surplus of tea held by the financially troubled British East India Company in its London warehouses and to help the struggling company survive. -
Boston Tea Party
The Boston Tea Party was a political protest by the Sons of Liberty in Boston, a city in the British colony of Massachusetts, against the tax policy of the British government and the East India Company that controlled all the tea imported into the colonies. -
Intolerable Acts
The Intolerable Acts (called by the colonists) are names used to describe a series of laws passed by the British Parliament in 1774 relating to Britain's colonies in North America. -
Lexington and Concord
The Battles of Lexington and Concord were the first military engagements of the American Revolutionary War.[9][10] They were fought on April 19, 1775, in Middlesex County, Province of Massachusetts Bay, within the towns of Lexington, Concord, Lincoln, Menotomy (present-day Arlington), and Cambridge, near Boston. -
Declaration of Independence
The Declaration of Independence was a statement adopted by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, which announced that the thirteen American colonies, then at war with Great Britain, regarded themselves as independent states, and no longer a part of the British Empire. -
Shay's Rebellion
Shays' Rebellion was an armed uprising that took place in central and western Massachusetts in 1786 and 1787. The rebellion was named after Daniel Shays, a veteran of the American Revolutionary War and one of the rebel leaders. -
Constitutional Convention
The Constitutional Convention took place from May 25 to September 17, 1787, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to address problems in governing the United States of America, which had been operating under the Articles of Confederation following independence from Great Britain. Although the Convention was intended to revise the Articles of Confederation, the intention from the outset of many of its proponents, chief among them James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, was to create a new government rathe -
Judiciary Act 1789
The Judiciary Act 1789 was a landmark statute adopted on September 24, 1789 in the first session of the First United States Congress establishing the U.S. federal judiciary. Article III, section 1 of the Constitution prescribed that the "judicial power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court," and such inferior courts as Congress saw fit to establish. It made no provision, though, for the composition or procedures of any of the courts, leaving this to Congress to decide. -
Second Great Awakening
The Second Great Awakening was a Protestant revival movement during the early 19th century in the United States. The movement began around 1790, gained momentum by 1800, and, after 1820 membership rose rapidly among Baptist and Methodist congregations, whose preachers led the movement. -
Whiskey Rebellion
The Whiskey Rebellion was a tax protest in the United States beginning in 1791, during the presidency of George Washington. Farmers who used their leftover grain and corn in the form of whiskey as a medium of exchange were forced to pay a new tax. The tax was a part of treasury secretary Alexander Hamilton's program to increase central government power, in particular to fund his policy of assuming the war debt of those states which had failed to pay. The farmers who resisted, many war veterans, -
Alien and Sedition Acts
The Alien and Sedition Acts were four bills passed in 1798 by the Federalists in the 5th United States Congress in the aftermath of the French Revolution and during an undeclared naval war with France, later known as the Quasi-War. They were signed into law by President John Adams. Opposition to Federalists among Democratic-Republicans reached new heights at this time since the Democratic-Republicans had supported France. Some even seemed to want an event similar to the French Revolution to come -
Revolution of 1800
The Revolution of 1800 Thomas Jefferson defeated John Adams. The election was a realigning election that ushered in a generation of Democratic-Republican Party rule and the eventual demise of the Federalist Party in the First Party System. It was a long, bitter re-match of the 1796 election between the pro-French and pro-decentralization Republicans under Jefferson and Aaron Burr, against incumbent Adams and Charles Pinckney's pro-British and pro-centralization Federalists. The chief political i -
Louisiana Purchase
The Louisiana Purchase was the acquisition by the United States of America in 1803 of 828,000 square miles (2,140,000 km2) of France's claim to the territory of Louisiana. The U.S. paid 50 million francs ($11,250,000) plus cancellation of debts worth 18 million francs ($3,750,000), for a total sum of 15 million dollars (less than 3 cents per acre) for the Louisiana territory ($233 million in 2011 dollars, less than 42 cents per acre). -
Marbury v. Madison
Marbury v. Madison was a landmark United States Supreme Court case in which the Court formed the basis for the exercise of judicial review in the United States under Article III of the Constitution. The landmark decision helped define the boundary between the constitutionally separate executive and judicial branches of the American form of government. -
Embargo Act 1807
The Embargo Act 1807 was a general embargo enacted by the United States Congress against Great Britain and France during the Napoleonic Wars. -
War of 1812
The War of 1812 was a 32 month military conflict between the United States and the British Empire and their allies which resulted in no territorial change, but a resolution of many issues remaining from the American War of Independence. The United States declared war in 1812 for several reasons, including trade restrictions brought about by Britain's ongoing war with France, the impressment of American merchant sailors into the Royal Navy, British support of American Indian tribes against Americ -
Election of 1816
The Election of 1816 came at the end of the two-term presidency of Democratic-Republican James Madison. With the Federalist Party in collapse, Madison's Secretary of State, James Monroe, had an advantage in winning the presidency against very weak opposition. Monroe won the electoral college by the wide margin of 183 to 34. -
Election of 1824
The Election of 1824 John Quincy Adams was elected President on February 9, 1825, after the election was decided by the House of Representatives. The previous years had seen a one-party government in the United States, as the Federalist Party had dissolved, leaving only the Democratic-Republican Party as a national political entity. In this election, the Democratic-Republican Party splintered as four separate candidates sought the presidency. This process did not yet lead to formal party organi -
Election of 1828
The Election of 1828 featured a rematch between John Quincy Adams, now incumbent President, and Andrew Jackson, the runner-up in the 1824 election. With no other major candidates, Jackson and his chief ally Martin Van Buren consolidated their bases in the South and New York and easily defeated Adams. The Democratic Party merged its strength from the existing supporters of Jackson and their coalition with the supporters of Crawford (the "Old Republicans") and Vice-President Calhoun. Jackson was t -
Indian Removal Act 1830
The Indian Removal Act 1830 was signed into law by President Andrew Jackson on May 28, 1830. The act authorized him to negotiate with the Indians in the Southern United States for their removal to federal territory west of the Mississippi River in exchange for their homelands. -
Nullification Crisis 1832
The Nullification Crisis 1832 was a sectional crisis during the presidency of Andrew Jackson created by South Carolina's 1832 Ordinance of Nullification. This ordinance declared by the power of the State that the federal Tariffs of 1828 and 1832 were unconstitutional and therefore null and void within the sovereign boundaries of South Carolina. The controversial and highly protective Tariff of 1828 (known to its detractors as the "Tariff of Abominations") was enacted into law during the presiden -
Texas Independence
Texas Independence Day is the celebration of the adoption of the Texas Declaration of Independence on March 2, 1836. With this document, settlers in Mexican Texas officially broke from Mexico, creating the Republic of Texas. -
Mexican-American War
The Mexican–American War, also known as the Mexican War, or the U.S.–Mexican War was an armed conflict between the United States of America and Mexico from 1846 to 1848 in the wake of the 1845 U.S. annexation of Texas, which Mexico considered part of its territory despite the 1836 Texas Revolution. -
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo officially Treaty of Peace, Friendship, Limits and Settlement between the United States of America and the Mexican Republic,[1] is the peace treaty between the U.S. and Mexico that ended the Mexican–American War (1846–48). -
Dawes Act
The Dawes Act adopted by Congress in 1887, authorized the President of the United States to survey Indian tribal land and divide it into allotments for individual Indians. Dawes Act was amended in 1891 and again in 1906 by the Burke Act. -
Wounded Knee Massacre
It was the last battle of the American Indian Wars. On the day before, a detachment of the U.S. 7th Cavalry Regiment commanded by Major Samuel M. Whitside intercepted Spotted Elk's band of Miniconjou Lakota and 38 Hunkpapa Lakota near Porcupine Butte and escorted them five miles westward (8 km) to Wounded Knee Creek where they made camp. -
Spanish-American War
The Spanish–American War was a conflict in 1898 between Spain and the United States, effectively the result of American intervention in the ongoing Cuban War of Independence. -
Founding of the NAACP
The Founding of the NAACP is an African-American civil rights organization in the United States, formed in 1909. Its mission is “to ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to eliminate racial hatred and racial discrimination”. Its name, retained in accordance with tradition, uses the once common term colored people. -
First Red Scare
The First Red Scare was marked by a widespread fear of Bolshevism and anarchism. Concerns over the effects of radical political agitation in American society and alleged spread in the American labor movement fueled the paranoia that defined the period. -
Red Summer
Red Summer describes the race riots that occurred in more than three dozen cities in the United States during the summer and early autumn of 1919. In most instances, whites attacked African Americans. In some cases groups of blacks fought back, notably in Chicago, where, along with Washington, D.C. and Elaine, Arkansas, the greatest number of fatalities occurred. -
Harlem Renaissance
The Harlem Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned the 1920s and 1930s. At the time, it was known as the "New Negro Movement", named after the 1925 anthology by Alain Locke. Though it was centered in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City, many French-speaking black writers from African and Caribbean colonies who lived in Paris were also influenced by the Harlem Renaissance. -
Election of 1932
The Election of 1932 took place in the midst of the Great Depression that had ruined the promises of incumbent President Herbert Hoover to bring about a new era of prosperity. Economics was dominant, and the sort of cultural issues that had dominated previous elections including Catholicism and the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) were dormant. Prohibition was a favorite Democratic target, as few Republicans tried to defend it. There was a mounting demand to end prohibition and bring back beer, liquor, and th -
New Deal
The New Deal was a series of economic programs enacted in the United States between 1933 and 1936. They involved presidential executive orders or laws passed by Congress during the first term of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The programs were in response to the Great Depression, and focused on what historians call the "3 Rs": Relief, Recovery, and Reform. That is, Relief for the unemployed and poor; Recovery of the economy to normal levels; and Reform of the financial system to prevent a repe -
Attack on Hiroshima and Nagasaki
The Attack on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan were conducted by the United States during the final stages of World War II in 1945. These two events represent the only use of nuclear weapons in war to date. -
Truman Doctrine
The Truman Doctrine was the American foreign policy in 1947 of providing economic and military aid to Greece and Turkey because they were threatened by communism. It was the start of the containment policy to stop Soviet expansion; it was a major step in beginning the Cold War. -
Fall of China to Communism
The Fall of China to Communism was a civil war fought between the Kuomintang (KMT), or the Chinese Nationalist Party-led Nationalist Government of the Republic of China, and the Communist Party of China (CPC), for the control of each other's territory which eventually led to two de facto states, the Republic of China (ROC) in Taiwan and the People's Republic of China (PRC) in mainland China both claiming to be the legitimate government of China. The war began in April 1927, amidst the Northe -
Creation of NATO 1949
The Creation of NATO 1949 is an intergovernmental military alliance based on the North Atlantic Treaty which was signed on 4 April 1949. The organization constitutes a system of collective defence whereby its member states agree to mutual defense in response to an attack by any external party. NATO's headquarters are in Brussels, Belgium, one of the 28 member states across North America and Europe, the newest of which, Albania and Croatia, joined in April 2009. An additional 22 countries partic -
Korean War
The Korean War was a war between the Republic of Korea and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. It was primarily the result of the political division of Korea by an agreement of the victorious Allies at the conclusion of the Pacific War at the end of World War II. The Korean Peninsula was ruled by the Empire of Japan from 1910 until the end of World War II. Following the surrender of the Empire of Japan in September 1945, American administrators divided the peninsula along the 38th paralle -
Election of 1952
The Election of 1952 took place in an era when Cold War tension between the United States and the Soviet Union was escalating rapidly. In the United States Senate, Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin had become a national figure after chairing congressional investigations into the issue of Communist spies within the U.S. government. McCarthy's so-called "witch hunt", combined with national tension and weariness after two years of bloody stalemate in the Korean War, the Communist Revo
