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Battle of Lexington & Concord
The Battle of Lexington and Concord is significant because they were the first battles of the Revolutionary War. The battles started because the British commander in Boston had heard of supplies of powder and weapons being kept by Patriots in the towns of Lexington and Concord. The Americans won the war & the British retreated back to Boston. The Battle of Concord proved to the British that we were a strong army, not some army just randomly thrown together. A army that deserved respect. -
Battle of Saratoga
The significance: "His surrender to American forces at the Battle of Saratoga marked a turning point in the Revolutionary War. The Battle of Saratoga was the turning point of the Revolutionary War. The scope of the victory is made clear by a few key facts: On October 17, 1777, 5,895 British and Hessian troops surrendered their arms."
Winning the Battle of Saratoga was good for the U.S. because it showed we were strong, and that could give us potential foreign partners, like France. -
Battle of Yorktown
Significance of the Battle of Yorktown: The significance of the conflict was that Cornwallis surrendered to George Washington as French and American forces trapped the British at Yorktown. The British surrender at the Battle of Yorktown ended the American Revolutionary War.
In other words, George Washington's (U.S.) army surrounded General Lord Charles Cornwallis army, and they were forced to surrender. -
Northwest Ordinance
The Northwest Ordinance was an act of the Congress of the Confederation of the United States. The significance of the Northwest Ordinance was that is banned slavery in the territory, making it the first major act of Congress to abolish slavery from new lands added to the United States.
The Northwest Ordinance of 1787, the most important of the three acts, laid the basis for the government of the Northwest Territory and for the admission of its constituent parts as states into the union. -
Alien and Sedition Acts
The Alien and Sedition Acts was passed by the Federalist Congress and signed into law by President Adams. The Alien and Sedition Acts made it to where we had to deport foreigners, and it made it hard for immigrants to vote. -
Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions
The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions were political statements drafted in 1798 and 1799, in which the Kentucky and Virginia legislatures took the position that the federal Alien and Sedition Acts were unconstitutional. They said the Alien and Sedition acts were unconstitutional because they infringed on the reserved powers of the states.
Overall, the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions was a protest against the Alien and Sedition acts. -
Marbury v. Madison
Marbury v. Madison established the principle of judicial review - the power of the federal courts to declare legislative and executive acts unconstitutional.
The Marbury v. Madison of 1803 was important because it was the first Supreme Court case to apply the principle of judicial review, the power of federal courts to void acts of Congress that were in conflict with the Constitution. -
Louisiana Purchase
The Louisiana Purchase was a land deal between the United States and France, in which the U.S. acquired approximately 827,000 square miles of land west of the Mississippi River for $15 million.
The U.S. wanted control of the Mississippi for transportation purposes.
The Louisiana Purchase is important because it gave the U.S. control of the Mississippi River and the port city of New Orleans, both of which were used by farmers to ship their crops and get paid. -
Missouri Compromise
In an effort to preserve the balance of power in Congress between slave and free states, the Missouri Compromise was passed in 1820 admitting Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state.
The purpose of the Missouri Compromise was to keep a balance between the number of slave states and the number of free states in the Union. It allowed Missouri to enter as a slave state at the same time Maine entered as a free state, thus maintaining a balance in numbers of free and slave states. -
Monroe Doctrine
The Monroe Doctrine was a foreign policy statement. It kept the Europeans hemisphere away from the Western Hemisphere (U.S.), and away from interfering with any business. Vice versa; Western hemisphere had to stay away from the Eastern hemisphere. This was placed so no problems would come around. Everyone is staying within their territory. -
Nullification Crisis
The Nullification Crisis was a United States sectional political crisis in 1832–33, during the presidency of Andrew Jackson, which involved a confrontation between South Carolina and the federal government. The Nullification Crisis was caused by the introduction of a series of protective tariffs
The 1828 Tariff of Abominations which sparked the Nullification Crisis was the third protective tariff implemented by the government. -
Texas Annexation
Trying to annex Texas led to war with Mexico (1846) because Texas was apart of Mexico at the time. The U.S. was in the process of expanding our land. It took 10 years for Texas to finally join the U.S. because of the controversy with free and slaves states at the time. We weren't sure where new states would fit in yet (slave or free) because we were trying to keep the states balanced. But after 10 years, Texas was officially apart if the United States. -
Oregon Treaty
The Oregon Treaty was signed between the US and Britain to settle the boundary dispute. This agreement set the boundary between the United States and Canada at the 49th parallel west of the Rocky Mountains, veering around Vancouver Island and then proceeding through the Strait of San Juan de Fuca. -
Mexican Cession (Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo)
The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo officially titled the Treaty of Peace, Friendship, Limits and Settlement between the United States of America and the Mexican Republic, is the peace treaty signed on February 2, 1848, in the Villa de Guadalupe Hidalgo. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the U.S. Mexican War. It is the oldest treaty still in force between the United States and Mexico. -
Compromise of 1850
The significance of of the Compromise of 1850, the Fugitive Slave Act was amended and the slave trade in Washington, D.C., was abolished.
The Compromise of 1850 made California a free state.
the Compromise of 1850 included the following four pieces of legislation: the Texas and New Mexico Act, under which New Mexico became a territory without restrictions on slavery -
Kansas - Nebraska Act
The Kansas-Nebraska Act was passed by the U.S. Congress on May 30, 1854. 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 initial purpose of the Kansas–Nebraska Act was to open up thousands of new farms and make feasible a Midwestern Transcontinental Railroad. -
Bleeding Kansas
Bleeding Kansas, Bloody Kansas or the Border War was a series of violent civil confrontations in the United States between 1854 and 1861 which emerged from a political and ideological debate over the legality of slavery in the proposed state of Kansas.
Kansas is an important staging ground for what some people argue is the first battles of the Civil War, because it is this battlefield on which the forces of anti-slavery and the forces of slavery meet. -
Battle of Fort Sumter
The Battle of Fort Sumter was the bombardment of Fort Sumter near Charleston, South Carolina by the Confederate States Army. Fort Sumter is historically significant because it is the place where the first battle of the American Civil War was fought. The fort had been the source of tension between the Union and Confederacy for several months. He sent word to the Confederates in Charleston of his intentions on April 6. -
Battle of Bull Run
Prelude to the First Battle of Bull Run. By July 1861, two months after Confederate troops opened fire on Fort Sumter to begin the Civil War, the northern press and public were eager for the Union Army to make an advance on Richmond ahead of the planned meeting of the Confederate Congress there on July 20. The Battle of Bull Run was important because it was the first major battle of the Civil War and resulted in a Confederate victory. -
Battle of Antietam
Over 23,000 men fell as casualties in the 1-day Battle of Antietam, making it the bloodiest day in American history. The Union victory at Antietam resulted in President Abraham Lincoln issuing his Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation on September 22, 1862.
The end result of the invasion was the Battle of Antietam, one of the most important days of the Civil War. -
Emancipation Proclamation
President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, as the nation approached its third year of bloody civil war. The proclamation declared "that all persons held as slaves" within the rebellious states "are, and henceforward shall be free." The purpose of the Emancipation Proclamation was to encourage rebellious states to rejoin the Union. The Emancipation Proclamation did not free all slaves in the United States. -
Battle of Vicksburg
The consequences of Vicksburg were immense. Yet, Vicksburg's loss was in many ways more important to the war. Now, Union forces had complete control of the Mississippi River and had in effect cut the Confederacy in two. Confederate forces in Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas were now isolated from the rest of the South. The Battle of Vicksburg lasted 47 days. -
Battle of Gettysburg
The Battle of Gettysburg, fought from July 1 to July 3, 1863, is considered the most important engagement of the American Civil War. After a great victory over Union forces at Chancellorsville, General Robert E. Lee marched his Army of Northern Virginia into Pennsylvania in late June 1863. The biggest day of fighting was on the second day. Over 100,000 soldiers fought that day and there were over 20,000 casualties. Nine of the 120 generals at Gettysburg died, more than at any other battle. -
Gettysburg Address
The Gettysburg Address is a speech delivered by Abraham Lincoln at the November 19, 1863, dedication of Soldier's National Cemetery. A cemetery for Union soldiers killed at the Battle Of Gettysburg during the American Civil War. Lincoln's speech, which is now remembered as the Gettysburg Address, was unique in its own time because it was so short, but Lincoln wrote it in such a strong manner that every word was packed. -
13th Amendment Passed
The significance of the 13th Amendment is that it abolished slavery. This was a big deal since the South used slaves for almost everything. "The 13th amendment to the United States Constitution provides that "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." -
14th Amendment Passed
The 14th Amendment was adopted as one of the Reconstruction Amendments. The significance of the 14th Amendment was that it gave birthright citizenship. Birthright citizenship means if you were born in the U.S. then you are a citizen. It also provided equal protection under the law; everyone is equally protected. And punishment for the South. It responds to issues related to former slaves following the American Civil War. -
15th Amendment Passed
The significance of the 15th Amendment is that it allows all MEN to vote (not women yet, that's the 19th Amendment). But, all men of all colors are allowed to vote. The people still made it harder for black people to vote though. They made it to where you had to take a literacy test and pay poll tax. The blacks were poor, so they couldn't pay the tax. -
15th Amendment Passed (Con.)
And they had no education, and even if they did the harder version of the test was given to the black people. If they were able to pass the test and somehow pay the poll tax, the Grandfather Clause was a thing. The Grandfather Clause is when you are only allowed to vote if your grandfather was eligible to vote. At the time black people were just allowed to vote, so they didn't have any relatives who were able to vote before. So that now made it impossible for them to vote. -
Plessy v. Ferguson
"Homer Plessy refused to sit in a Jim Crow car, so he was brought to Judge John H. Ferguson of the Criminal Court for New Orleans, who upheld the state law. The law was challenged in the Supreme Court on grounds that it conflicted with the 13th and 14th Amendments." (abolishing slavery, equal protection, etc.) "An important Supreme Court decision made in 1896. The Court ruled on the concept of 'separate but equal' and set back civil rights in the United States for decades to come."
