-
Federal Judiciary Act
The Judiciary Act of 1789 represented a compromise between those who wanted the federal courts to exercise the full jurisdiction allowed under the Constitution and those who opposed any lower federal courts or proposed restricting them to admiralty jurisdiction. One of Washington's first official actions was to sign Congress's Federal Judiciary Act into law. This act created the federal court system, with its district and circuit courts that we still live under today. -
Tax on Whiskey
This was a legislation that proved wildly unpopular with farmers and eventually precipitated the "Whiskey Rebellion". The measure levied a tax on domestic and imported whiskey. Farmers refused to pay and in 1794 they attacked federal officials. Washington sent a militia force across the Appalachians to stamp out the protests. -
Jefferson purchases Louisiana Territory from France
Jefferson had bought the Louisiana Territory from france fr 15 million dollars, which was a large sum of money at the time. The Louisiana Purchase Treaty pushed the western boundary of the US from the Mississippi River to the distant Rocky Mountains, at a cost of about four cetns an acre. On July 4th 1803 the purchase was announced in the United States. -
Charles Sumner was beaten
Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts was savagely beaten on the floor of the senate. The attack happened after Sumner's speech was given called, "The Crime Against Kansas." In the speech he blasted his fellow senators that allowed slavery in the Kansas territory. -
Anaconda Plan
The Anaconda Plan was the Union’s strategic plan to defeat the Confederacy at the start of the American Civil War. The goal was to defeat the rebellion by blockading southern ports and controlling the Mississippi river. This would cut off and isolate the south from the outside world. -
General Lee invaded the North for the second time
Lee could launch his second invasion of the north in the summer of 1863 with some hope of winning a significant victory on Northern soil. For once, Lee was not hugely outnumbered. His own army was as large as it had ever been, while thousands of Union soldiers who had enrolled for nine months in the summer of 1862 left the army when their period of enlistment ended. On July 1st the army met at Gettysburg and fought. -
Elizabeth Van Lew
Elizabeth Van Lew was a Richmond Unionist and abolitionist who spied for the United States government during the American Civil War (1861–1865). Leading a network of a dozen or so white and African American women and men, she relayed information on Confederate operations to Union generals and assisted in the care and sometimes escape of Union prisoners of war being held in the Confederate capital. -
Antietam Creek
General Joseph Hooker’s Union corps mounted a powerful assault on Lee’s left flank that began the Battle of Antietam, and the single bloodiest day in American military history. Repeated Union attacks, and equally vicious Confederate counterattacks, swept back and forth across Miller’s cornfield and the West Woods. -
Bread riot in Richmond
April 2, 1863, was the largest and most destructive in a series of civil disturbances throughout the South during the third spring of the American Civil War. The women gathered at the equestrian statue of George Washington and made their way to the governor's mansion. -
Sherman's March to the Sea.
Union General William T. Sherman led some 60,000 soldiers on a 285-mile march from Atlanta to Savannah, Georgia. The purpose of this “March to the Sea” was to frighten Georgia’s civilian population into abandoning the Confederate cause. Sherman’s soldiers did not destroy any of the towns in their path, but they stole food and livestock and burned the houses and barns of people who tried to fight back.