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Jamestown
The First permanent English Settlement in what is now the United States. -
Virginia House of Burgesses
First form of representation in the Colonies. -
Mayflower Compact
First written framework of Government in what is now the United States.
Written by Puritian and Pilgrims to establish order in the colony of Plymouth. -
Fundamental Orders of Connecticut
This document was the first written constitution in North America. Written by Puritan clergymen, The Fundamental Orders of Connecticut was adopted by the residents of Hartford, Windsor, and Wethersfield and remained the colony’s law until 1662. -
French and Indian War
The French and Indian War was the North American conflict that was part of a larger imperial conflict between Great Britain and France known as the Seven Years’ War. The French and Indian War began in 1754 and ended with the Treaty of Paris in 1763. The war provided Great Britain enormous territorial gains in North America, but disputes over subsequent frontier policy and paying the war’s expenses led to colonial discontent, and ultimately to the American revolution. -
Treaty of Paris of 1763
The Treaty of Paris of 1763 ended the French and Indian War/Seven Years’ War between Great Britain and France, as well as their respective allies. In the terms of the treaty, France gave up all its territories in mainland North America, effectively ending any foreign military threat to the British colonies there. -
The War Ends
The French and Indian war comes to an end -
Proclamation of 1763
The proclamation, in effect, closed off the frontier to colonial expansion. -
Currency Act
Parliament passed the Currency Act, effectively assuming control of the colonial currency system. The act prohibited the issue of any new bills and the reissue of existing currency. -
Stamp Act
The Stamp Act was Parliament's first serious attempt to assert governmental authority over the colonies. Great Britain was faced with a massive national debt following the Seven Years War. That debt had grown from £72,289,673 in 1755 to £129,586,789 in 1764*. English citizens in Britain were taxed at a rate that created a serious threat of revolt. -
Quartering Act
Provided that Great Britain would house its soliders in American barracks and public houses. -
Towsend Act
Taxes on glass, paint, oil, lead, paper, and tea were applied to the Colonies -
Boston Massacre
The Boston Massacre, known as the Incident on King Street by the British,[citation needed] was an incident on March 5, 1770, in which British Army soldiers killed five male civilians and injured six others. -
Tea Act
The Tea Act, passed by Parliament on May 10, 1773, would launch the final spark to the revolutionary movement in Boston. The act was not intended to raise revenue in the American colonies, and in fact imposed no new taxes. It was designed to prop up the East India Company which was floundering financially and burdened with eighteen million pounds of unsold tea. This tea was to be shipped directly to the colonies, and sold at a bargain price. -
Coevice Acts
The Coercive Acts were a series of four acts established by the British government. The aim of the legislation was to restore order in Massachusetts and punish Bostonians for their Tea Party, in which members of the revolutionary-minded Sons of Liberty boarded three British tea ships in Boston Harbor and dumped 342 crates of tea—nearly $1 million worth in today's money—into the water to protest the Tea Act. -
1st Continental Congress
In response to the British Parliament's enactment of the Coercive Acts in the American colonies, the first session of the Continental Congress convenes at Carpenter's Hall in Philadelphia. Fifty-six delegates from all the colonies except Georgia drafted a declaration of rights and grievances and elected Virginian Peyton Randolph as the first president of Congress. Patrick Henry, George Washington, John Adams, and John Jay were among the delegates. -
Battle of Lexington and Concord
The Battles of Lexington and Concord, fought on April 19, 1775, kicked off the American Revolutionary War (1775-83). Tensions had been building for many years between residents of the 13 American colonies and the British authorities, particularly in Massachusetts. On the night of April 18, 1775, hundreds of British troops marched from Boston to nearby Concord in order to seize an arms cache. Paul Revere and other riders sounded the alarm, and colonial militiamen began mobilizing to intercept the -
2nd Continental Congress
the Second Continental Congress convened after the American Revolutionary War (1775-83) had already begun. In 1776, it took the momentous step of declaring America's independence from Britain. Five years later, the Congress ratified the first national constitution, the Articles of Confederation, under which the country would be governed until 1789, when it was replaced by the current U.S. Constitution. -
Declaration of Independence
When armed conflict between bands of American colonists and British soldiers began in April 1775, the Americans were ostensibly fighting only for their rights as subjects of the British crown. By the following summer, with the Revolutionary War in full swing, the movement for independence from Britain had grown, and delegates of the Continental Congress were faced with a vote on the issue. In mid-June 1776, a five-man committee including Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and Benjamin Franklin was tas -
Battle of Saratoga
Fought eighteen days apart in the fall of 1777, the two Battles of Saratoga were a turning point in the American Revolution. -
Valley Forge
Things looked bleak for General George Washington's Continental Army at the end of 1777. After marching from New Jersey to confront 17,000 British forces recently landed at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay, they lost two key battles at Brandywine and Germantown, and saw the hated Redcoats occupy Philadelphia. Rather than meet the Continental Congress' demand for a mid-winter attack at Philadelphia, Washington decided to fall back with his 11,000 men and make winter quarters at Valley Forge, locat -
Articles of Cofederation Written
The Articles of Cofederation was written -
Battle of Yorktown
General George Washington, commanding a force of 17,000 French and Continental troops, begins the siege known as the Battle of Yorktown against British General Lord Charles Cornwallis and a contingent of 9,000 British troops at Yorktown, Virginia, in the most important battle of the Revolutionary War. -
Articles of Confrederation were in force
Articles of Confrederation were in force -
Treaty of Paris of 1783
The Treaty of Paris of 1783, negotiated between the United States and Great Britain, ended the revolutionary war and recognized American independence -
Constitutional Convention
delegates to the Constitutional Convention begin to assemble in Philadelphia to confront a daunting task: the peaceful overthrow of the new American government as defined by the Article of Confederation. Although the convention was originally supposed to begin on May 14, James Madison reported that a small number only had assembled. Meetings had to be pushed back until May 25, when a sufficient quorum of the participating states—Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Virgin -
Constitution Written
The U.S. Constitution was written -
The 3/5 Compromise
Was when a slave was counted as 3/5 of a person for taxation and representation purposes. -
The Great Compromise
was an agreement that large and small states reached during the Constitutional Convention of 1787 that in part defined the legislative structure and representation that each state would have under the United States Constitution. It retained the bicameral legislature as proposed by Roger Sherman, along with proportional representation in the lower house, but required the upper house to be weighted equally between the states. Each state would have two representatives in the upper house. -
Washington takes Office
President George Washington takes office. -
Bill of Rights
Although 12 amendments were originally proposed, the 10 that were ratified became the Bill of Rights in 1791. They defined citizens' rights in relation to the newly established government under the Constitution. -
Genet Affair
Citizen Genêt Affair incident precipitated by the military adventurism of Citizen Edmond-Charles Genêt, a minister to the United States dispatched by the revolutionary Girondist regime of the new French Republic, which at the time was at war with Great Britain and Spain. His activities violated an American proclamation of neutrality in the European conflict and greatly embarrassed France’s supporters in t -
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. -
Pinckney's Treaty
was signed in San Lorenzo de El Escorial on October 27, 1795 and established intentions of friendship between the United States and Spain. -
Jay's Teaty
was a treaty between the United States of America and the Kingdom of Great Britain that is credited with averting war,[3] resolving issues remaining since the Treaty of Paris of 1783, which ended the American Revolution,[4] and facilitating ten years of peaceful trade between the United States and Britain in the midst of the French Revolutionary Wars, which began in 1792. -
Adams Takes office
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XYZ Affair
The XYZ Affair was a political and diplomatic episode in 1797 and 1798, early in the administration of John Adams, involving the United States and Republican France. Its name derives from the substitution of the letters X, Y and Z for the names of French diplomats in documents released by the Adams administration -
Alien and Sedition Acts
Passed in preparation for an anticipated war with France, the Alien and Sedition Acts tightened restrictions on foreign-born Americans and limited speech critical of the Government. -
Quasi War
The Quasi-War (French: Quasi-guerre) was an undeclared war fought mostly at sea between the United States and the French Republic from 1798 to 1800. In the United States, the conflict was sometimes also referred to as the Undeclared War With France, the Pirate Wars and the Half-War. -
Jefferson Takes Office
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Louisiana Purchase
The Louisiana Purchase (1803) [1] 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 dollars. -
Marbury v.Madison
Thomas Jefferson refused to honor the commissions, claiming that they were invalid because they had not been delivered by the end of Adams’s term. William Marbury (P) was an intended recipient of an appointment as justice of the peace. Marbury applied directly to the Supreme Court of the United States for a writ of mandamus to compel Jefferson’s Secretary of State, James Madison (D), to deliver the commissions. The Judiciary Act of 1789 had granted the Supreme Court original jurisdiction to iss -
Lewis & Clark Expedition
The Lewis and Clark Expedition, also known as the Corps of Discovery Expedition, was the first American expedition to cross what is now the western portion of the United States, departing in May, 1804 from St. Louis on the Mississippi River, making their way westward through the continental divide to the Pacific coast. -
Embargo Act of 1807
The Embargo Act of 1807 was a general embargo enacted by the United States Congress against the United Kingdom and France during the Napoleonic Wars. -
McCulloch v. Maryland
The Second Bank of the United States was established pursuant to an 1816 act of Congress. McCulloch (D), the cashier of the Baltimore branch of the Bank of the United States, issued bank notes without complying with the Maryland law. Maryland sued McCulloch for failing to pay the taxes due under the Maryland statute and McCulloch contested the constitutionality of that act. The state court found for Maryland and McCulloch appealed -
Gibbons v. Ogden
Ogden (P) brought this lawsuit seeking an injunction to restrain Gibbons (D) from operating steam ships on New York waters in violation of his exclusive privilege
