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Lost colony
After unsuccessful attempts to establish settlements in Newfoundland and at Roanoke, the famous "Lost Colony," off the coast of present-day North Carolina, England established its first permanent North American settlement, Jamestown, in 1607. Located in a swampy marshlands along Virginia's James River, Jamestown's residents suffered horrendous mortality rates during its first years. Immigrants had just a fifty-fifty chance of surviving five years. -
Virginia Creates Tobacco
Lacking valuable minerals or other products in high demand, it appeared that Jamestown was an economic failure. After ten years, however, the colonists discovered that Virginia was an ideal place to cultivate tobacco, which had been recently introduced into Europe. Since tobacco production rapidly exhausted the soil of nutrients, the English began to acquire new lands along the James River, encroaching on Indian hunting grounds. -
Black Slavery
Black slavery took root in the American colonies slowly. Historians now know that small numbers of Africans lived in Virginia before 1619, the year a Dutch ship sold some twenty blacks (probably from the West Indies) to the colonists. But it was not until the 1680s that black slavery became the dominant labor system on plantations there. As late as 1640, there were probably only 150 blacks in Virginia and in 1650, 300. But by 1680, the number had risen to 3,000 and by 1704, to 10,000. -
New England Puritans
No group has played a more pivotal role in shaping American values than the New England Puritans. The seventeenth-century Puritans contributed to our country's sense of mission, its work ethic, and its moral sensibility. Today, eight million Americans can trace their ancestry to the fifteen to twenty thousand Puritans who migrated to New England between 1629 and 1640. -
Dutch lost New Amsterdam
Between 1652 and 1674, the Dutch fought three naval wars with England. The English had hoped to wrest control of shipping and trading from the Dutch but failed. As a result of these conflicts, the Dutch won what is now Surinam from England, while the English received New Netherlands from the Dutch. In 1664, the English sent a fleet to seize New Netherlands, which surrendered without a fight. The English renamed the colony New York, after James, the Duke of York, who had received a charter to the -
French and Indian War
Half a century of conflict between Britain and France over North America culminated in the French and Indian War. When the war began, there were more than about 2 million British colonists in America and about 65,000 French in Canada -
Fundametal Constitution of Carolina
South Carolina's proprietors envisioned establishing a feudal society in their land grant. They kept huge landed estates for themselves, and, with the assistance of the English philosopher John Locke, drew up a plan, known as the Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina, which would have given them the power of feudal lords. The scheme called for a three-tiered hereditary nobility--consisting of "proprietors," "landgraves," and "caciques"--who would own forty percent of the colony's land and serve -
Declaration of Independence
During the Spring of 1776, as the historian Pauline Maier has shown, colonies, localities, and groups of ordinary Americans--including New York mechanics, Pennsylvania militiamen, and South Carolina grand juries--adopted resolutions endorsing independence. These resolutions encouraged the Continental Congress to appoint a five-member committee to draft a formal declaration of independence. Thomas Jefferson wrote the initial draft, which was then edited by other members of the committee and by Co -
French Revolution
On July 14, 1789, 20,000 French men and women stormed the Bastille, a hated royal fortress, marking the beginning of the French Revolution. For three years, France experimented with a constitutional monarchy. But in 1792, Austria and Prussia invaded France and French revolutionaries responded by deposing King Louis XVI, placing him on trial, and executing him. A general war erupted in Europe pitting revolutionary France against a coalition of monarchies, led by Britain. With two brief interrupti -
battle of fallen timbers
Washington acted decisively to end the crisis with Britain. He sent a 3000-troop army under Anthony Wayne (1745-1796) to the Ohio country. Wayne's army overwhelmed 1000 Native Americans at the Battle of Fallen Timbers in northwestern Ohio, after destroying every Indian village on their way to the battle. Under the Treaty of Greenville (1795), Native Americans ceded much of the present-day state of Ohio in return for cash and a promise of fair treatment in land dealings. -
Fort Sumter, Charleston, South Carolina Civil War Begins
With compromise unattainable, attention shifted to the federal installations located within the Confederate states, especially to a fort located in the channel leading to Charleston harbor. In November 1860, the U.S. government sent Colonel Robert A. Anderson (1805-1871), a pro-slavery Kentuckian and an 1825 West Point graduate, to Charleston to command federal installations there. On December 26, under cover of darkness, he moved his forces (10 officers, 76 enlisted men, 45 women and children, -
The Emancipation Proclamation
On September 22, 1862, less than a week after the Battle of Antietam, President Lincoln met with his cabinet. As one cabinet member, Samuel P. Chase, recorded in his diary, the President told them that he had "thought a great deal about the relation of this war to Slavery": -
Appomattox Courthouse, virginia War ends
By April 1865, Grant's army had cut off Lee's supply lines, forcing Confederate forces to evacuate Petersburg and Richmond. Lee and his men retreated westward, but Grant's troops overtook him about a hundred miles west of Richmond. Recognizing that further resistance would be futile, Lee surrendered at Appomattox Court House, Virginia. The aristocratic Lee wore a full-dress uniform, with a ceremonial sash and sword, while Grant wore a private's coat. -
The United States Becomes a World Power
From the Civil War until the 1890s, most Americans had little interest in territorial expansion. William Seward, the secretary of state under presidents Lincoln and Johnson, did envision American expansion into Alaska, Canada, Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean, Iceland, Greenland, Hawaii, and other Pacific islands. But he realized only two small parts of this vision. In 1867, the United States purchased Alaska from Russia for $72 million and occupied the Midway Islands in the Pacific. -
Great White Fleet
Hampton roads, Virgina United States battle fleet, "Great white fleet." begins global journeys.
