-
Jamestown
Jamestown is the first English colony in Virginia, North America founded by the Virgina company. The reason for establishment is that groups of puritans wanted to live without persecution and they wanted to colonize this new land. Tobacco became Virginia's first profitable export. The head right system is a policy that new settlers who paid there way into the colony would get 50 acres of land.
Link text -
Pilgrims/Puritans
Future governor John Winthrop stated their purpose quite clearly: "We shall be as a city upon a hill, the eyes of all people are upon us." The middle colonies saw a mixture of religions. The Half-Way Covenant is a form of partial church membership created by New England in 1662. The Mayflower Compact was the first written framework of government established in what is now the United States.
Link text -
Bacon's Rebellion
Nathaniel Bacon rebelled against Sir William Berkeley. The discovery of tobacco started the plantation economy in Virginia and created a demand for cheap labor filled at first by poor, white Indentured servants and then by black slaves. The indentured servants and slaves had joined in Bacon's Rebellion.
Link text -
Great Awakening
The Great Awakening or First Great Awakening was an evangelical and revitalization movement that swept Protestant Europe and British America, especially the American colonies, in the 1730s and 1740s. It had an impact in reshaping the Congregational church, the Presbyterian church, the Dutch Reformed Church, and the German Reformed denominations, and strengthened the small Baptist and Methodist Anglican denominations.
Link text -
French and Indian War
The British attempt to reverse their policy of Salutary Neglect in the 1760's and end illegal trading was to tighten their control. The stamp act was issued in 1765.
Link text -
Proclamation of 1763
The Royal Proclamation of 1763 was made to calm the fears of Native Indians by halting the westward expansion of colonists while expanding fur trade. The consequences were the beaver war.
Link text -
Period: to
Revolutionary War
The American Revolution was a war for independence by the American colonies against Great Britain. It began in 1775 and lasted until 1783, with the Americans winning the war. According to historians, the British had the superior army but America got great help from the French Navy.
Link text -
Declaration of Independence
The Declaration of Independence, written by Thomas Jefferson and adopted by the Second Continental Congress, states the reasons the British colonies of North America sought independence in July of 1776.
Link text -
Article of confederation
The Articles of Confederation was the first written constitution of the United States. The states remained sovereign and independent and the central government was weak. Another major flaw was they were unable to tax. Shays rebellion showed that we did not have a military power to stop rebellions.
Link text -
Treaty of Paris
The Treaty of Paris of 1783, negotiated between the United States and Great Britain, ended the revolutionary war and recognized American independence.
Link text -
Land Ordinance of 1785
The Ordinance of 1785 put the 1784 resolution in operation by providing a mechanism for selling and settling the land. The 1785 ordinance laid the foundations of land policy until passage of the Homestead Act in 1862. The Land Ordinance established the basis for the Public Land Survey System.
Link text -
Beginning of political parties
The first two-party system consisted of the Federalist Party, who supported the ratification of the Constitution, and the Democratic-Republican Party or the Anti-Federalists, who opposed the powerful central government, among others, that the Constitution established when it took effect in 1789.
Link text -
North West Ordinance of 1787
An act of the Congress of the Confederation of the United States. The ordinance created the Northwest Territory, the first organized territory of the United States.
Link text -
Constitution of United States of America
The United States Constitution is the supreme law of the United States of America. The Constitution delineates the national frame of government. Its first three articles entrench the doctrine of the separation of powers, whereby the federal government is divided into three branches: the legislative, consisting of the bicameral Congress; the executive, consisting of the President; and the judicial, consisting of the Supreme Court and other federal courts.
Link text -
Alexander Hamilton
Hamilton attacked debt with a revenue of taxes that helped secure respect of foreign nations. He introduced plans for the First Bank of the United States, established in 1791 which he believed should be a centrally controlled treasury. Thomas Jefferson greatly opposed this.
Link text -
Bill of Rights
The bill of rights was made to ensure citizens rights: freedom of religion, speech, press, assembly, and petition, right to keep and bear arms in order to maintain a well regulated militia, right to due process of law, freedom from self-incrimination, double jeopardy. This was made after the Declaration of independence because people wanted their rights from the British in 1776.
Link text -
Proclamation of Neutrality
The Proclamation of Neutrality was a formal announcement issued by U.S. President George Washington on April 22, 1793, declaring the nation neutral in the conflict between France and Great Britain. It threatened legal proceedings against any American providing assistance to any country at war.
Link text -
Washington's Farewell address
A letter written by the first president when he is leaving office, encouraging citizens to avoid excessive political party spirit and geographical distinctions. In foreign affairs, he warned against long-term alliances with other nations. The address was printed in Philadelphia's American Daily Advertiser on September 19, 1796.
Link text -
Alien and sedition act
A series of laws passed by the federalist congress, that included new powers to deport foreigners as well as making it harder for new immigrants to vote. By placing states rights above those of the federal government, Kentucky and Virginia had established a precedent that would be used to justify the secession of southern states in the Civil War.
Link text -
Manifest Destiny
Manifest destiny was a widely held belief in the United States that its settlers were destined to expand across North America. Most Whig Party candidates ardently opposed the expansionism proposed in the idea of Manifest Destiny. The Democrats supported it as a god given right.
Link text -
John Brown
John Brown was a radical abolitionist who believed in the violent overthrow of the slavery system. He attacked pro-slavery men and became a hero to the north and a terrorist to the south. In 1859, Brown and 21 of his followers attacked and occupied the federal arsenal in Harpers Ferry. Their goal was to capture supplies and use them to arm a slave rebellion. -
Election of 1800
The election of 1800 was between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson . It was significant because overall, the Federalists wanted strong federal authority to restrain the excesses of popular majorities, while the Democratic-Republicans wanted to reduce national authority and increase state governments control. Jefferson won over all.
Link text -
Marbury vs. Madison
In Marbury v. Madison (1803) the Supreme Court announced for the first time the principle that a court may declare an act of Congress void if it is inconsistent with the Constitution. William Marbury had been appointed a justice of the peace for the District of Columbia in the final hours of the Adams administration.
Link text -
Louisiana Purchase
The Louisiana purchase was a territory of western North American land bought by America from Napoleon (France). The acquisition of the Louisiana Territory for less than three cents an acre was among Jefferson’s best achievements as president. American expansion westward into the new lands began immediately.
Link text -
William Lloyd Garrison
Originally a supporter of colonization, Garrison changed his position and became the leader of the emerging anti-slavery movement, and called the voice of Abolitionism. Garrison Published a book named The Liberator which had reached thousands of individuals worldwide. His uncompromising position on the moral outrage that was slavery made him loved and hated by many Americans. Garrison met with delegates from around the nation to form the American Anti-Slavery Society. -
Period: to
War of 1812
The War of 1812 was a military conflict that lasted from June 1812 to February 1815, fought between the United States of America and the United Kingdom, its North American colonies, and its Native American allies. It was caused by the Royal Navy’s impressment of American seamen and America’s desire to expand its territory.
Link text -
Transcendentalism
Transcendentalism was a philosophical movement in the 1820s-1830s. Transcendentalist were educated citizens who believed that society and its institutions had corrupted the purity of the individual, and they had faith that people are at their best when truly independent.
Link text -
Period: to
Irish Immigration
The Know-Nothing movement was a national American political movement during the mid 1850s, promising to purify American politics by ending the influence of Irish Catholics and other immigrants.
Link text -
Missouri Compromise
The Missouri compromise allowed Missouri to enter the union as a slave state as long as Maine entered as a free. The purpose was to keep the balance between the North and the South. It also passed an amendment that drew an imaginary line across the former Louisiana Territory (36'30' line).
Line text -
Monroe Doctrine
The Monroe Doctrine was another document that stated neutrality and involvement with foreign relations and rules. European creditors of a number of Latin American countries threatened armed intervention to collect debts. President Theodore Roosevelt promptly proclaimed the right of the United States to exercise an “international police power” to curb such “chronic wrongdoing.”
[Link text](https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?doc=23} -
Andrew Jackson
Andrew Jackson and his supporters opposed the bank, seeing it as a privileged institution and the enemy of the common people. The Indian Removal Act was signed into law, authorizing the president to grant unsettled lands west of the Mississippi in exchange for Indian lands.
Link text -
Tariff of Abominations/nullification crisis
In 1828, Congress passed a high protective tariff that infuriated the southern states because they felt it only benefited the industrialized north.This tariff benefited American producers of cloth (mostly in the north), but it shrunk English demand for southern raw cotton. Calhoun argued for a less drastic solution — the doctrine of Nullification.
Link text -
Popular Sovereignty
Popular Sovereignty was the political doctrine that the people who lived in a particular region should decide for themselves the nature of their government. This had been applied to the idea that settlers of territorial lands should be able to determine the rules under which they would join the Union. This was primarily applied to the status as free or slave. -
Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo
The war officially ended with the February 2, 1848, signing in Mexico of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. The treaty added an additional 525,000 square miles to United States territory.
Link text -
Seneca Falls Convention
Advertised itself as a convention to discuss the social, civil, and religious condition and rights of woman. The First Women’s Rights Convention. Elizabeth Cady Stanton was barred from the convention floor, and the common indignation that this aroused in her and Lucretia Mott was the impetus for their founding of the women’s rights movement in the United States. Susan B Anthony was also a great leader.
Link text -
Compromise of 1850
he compromise was drafted by Whig Senator Henry Clay of Kentucky and carried by Clay and Democratic Senator Stephen Douglas of Illinois, to reduce sectional conflict.
It consisted of laws in which admitted California as a free state. Because of the Compromise of 1850 it heightened the fear in the North of a “slave power conspiracy".
Link text -
Kansas Nebraska Act
It allowed people in the territories of Kansas and Nebraska to decide for themselves whether or not to allow slavery within their borders.The Act served to repeal the Missouri Compromise of 1820 which prohibited slavery north of latitude 36°30´.
The Kansas-Nebraska Act infuriated many in the North who considered the Missouri Compromise to be a long-standing binding agreement.
Link text -
Dred Scott Case
Scott who was a slave that lived with his owner in a free state before returning to the slave state of Missouri, brought forth the case and argued that his time spent in these locations entitled him to emancipation.The Court also ruled that Congress never had the right to prohibit slavery in any territory. This infuriated Abolitionists and increased Tensions between the North and the South greatly.
Link text -
Lincoln Republican Policy on Slavery in 1860
Sectional conflicts over the expansion of slavery into the territories exploded when the Democratic Party officially split into Northern and Southern factions. The Republican Party secured enough electoral votes to put Lincoln in the White House with very little support from the South. Both John Bell of Tennessee and Douglas had campaigned on a platform stating that they could save the Union from secession.
Link text -
Period: to
Civil War
The Civil War started because of uncompromising differences between the free and slave states over the power of the national government to prohibit slavery in the territories that had not yet become states. North was named the Union, industry based, against slavery and South were named the Confederates, plantation/agriculture based, depended on slavery. Lincoln proclaimed neutrality against foreign affairs.
Link text -
Emancipation Proclomation
The Emancipation Proclamation was a document stating that all slaves were free in rebellious states controlled by the confederacy as of 1863. -
Republican Party of 1860
The Republican Party platform stated that slavery would not be allowed to spread any further into the territories. The Republicans also promised to support tariffs that protected Northern industry, a Homestead Act granting free farmland in the West to settlers, and the funding of a transcontinental railroad.
Link text -
Mexico- Election of 1844
The United States presidential election of 1844 saw Democrat James Knox Polk defeat Whig Henry Clay in a close contest that turned on foreign policy, with Polk favoring the annexation of Texas and Clay opposed.
Link text