US History

  • 1607 Jamestown Virginia

    First successful English colony was founded
  • Period: to

    US History

  • 1620 Plymouth Colony

    Puritans found the second permanent British settlement
  • 1636

    Roger Williams left Massachusetts and found the colony of Rhode Island
  • 1763

    End of the Seven Years' War leaving England in control of Canada and all of North America east of the Mississippi
  • 1773 Boston Tea Party

    A group of patriots disguised as Indians, boarded British merchant ships and dumped 342 crates of tea into Boston harbor
  • 1774

    Colonial leaders convened the First Continental Congress to discuss the colonies' opposition to British rule
  • 1775 Lexington and Concord

    War broke out when British soldiers confronted colonial rebels in Lexington, Massachusetts
  • 1776

    Continental Congress adopted a Declaration of Independence
  • 1777

    The turning point in the Revolutionary War when American soldiers defeated the British Army at Saratoga, New York
  • 1781

    The last major battle of the American Revolution in Yorktown, Virginia
  • 1783

    When the war officially ended with the Treaty of Paris by which England recognized American independence
  • 1801

    Thomas Jefferson became the third president of the United States
  • 1803

    Thomas Jefferson purchased the vast Louisiana Territory from France, almost doubling the size of the United States
  • 1820

    Southern and northern politicians debated the question of whether slavery would be legal in the western territories
  • 1828

    Andrew Jackson became the first "outsider" elected president
  • 1846

    The outcome of the Mexican War brought more territory into American hands -- and with it the issue of whether to extend slavery
  • 1850

    A compromise admitting California as a free state, leaving the citizens of Utah and New Mexico being allowed to choose whether they wanted slavery within their borders or not.
  • 1865

    Assisination of Abraham Lincoln