United States of America
United States origins
European philosophers form the bulk of United States government ideals.
The United States government has Indigenous origins in its form and ideals.
How did the thirteen colonies come together?
Why were other colonies part or not part of the Revolution?
How was the American Revolution fought?
Weapons included muskets and explosives.
How did Indigenous groups participate in the American Revolution?
How did slaves participate in the American Revolution?
How did women participate in the American Revolution?
What were attitudes toward the rest of the continent to the west?
The modern-day United States territory arose from an overlapping mix of First Nations and European colonies.
Postwar confederacy
| Abolitionism | 1780s | In the 1780s, every state government except South Carolina and Georgia passed laws banning slave importation. |
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| Ordinance of 1785 | 1785 | Established a grid system for dividing land. |
| Shays' Rebellion | 1786 | Amid the postwar depression, poor farmers and state governments were in tension, as the farmers demanded that state government issue paper currency and increase the money supply. In Massachusetts, Daniel Shays led a rebellion arising from this tension. Shays' Rebellion accelerated the US Constitution's adoption. |
Constitutional Convention
Led by Alexander Hamilton's efforts, in 1787 the United States replaced the Articles of Confederation with the United States Constitution.
| US Constitution | adopted 1787 | Later called the Founding Fathers, state delegates met in Philadelphia to plan a stronger national government.
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| Northwest Ordinance | 1787 | The Northwest Ordinance primarily addressed two related problems: Congress favored land companies over ordinary settlers; and property prices were too high for most ordinary settlers. It abolished the ten districts established in the Ordinance of 1784; guaranteed freedom of religion and right to a jury trial in the new territory; and prohibited slavery throughout the new territory. |
President Washington
| President Washington | i.o 1789 - 1796 e.1788, 1792 | |||||
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| Judiciary Act | 1789 | |||||
| Washington, DC | 1800 | United States capital moves to Washington, DC in 1800. | ||||
| Second Great Awakening | begins 1801 ends 1820s | Second Great Awakening Begins. | ||||
| 1790 | Samuel Slater builds a spinning mill in Rhode Island, first modern factory in America. | |||||
| First Bank of US | chartered 1791 | |||||
| Nov 4, 1791 | Little Turtle defeated US forces near what is today the western border of Ohio. | |||||
| 1793 | Eli Whitney invents cotton gin. | |||||
| Genet Affair | 1793 | |||||
| Jay's Treaty | 1794 | |||||
| Whiskey Rebellion |
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| Treaty of Greenville | 1795 | It formally acknowledged Indigenous claims to territories they retained; affirmed that only tribes could cede their lands to Europeans; and transferred substantial Indigenous-controlled lands to the United States government. |
President John Adams
| President John Adams | i.o. 1797 - 1800 e. 1796 | |
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| Pinckney's Treaty | signed 1795 ratified 1796 | |
| XYZ Affair | 1797, Paris | Later precipitated a semi-war with France. |
| Alien and Sedition Acts | 1797 | |
| Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions | passed 1798 | The Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions were based on John Locke's ideas and argued for a federal government that was existed by the states' permission and possessed only certain allocated powers. |
| Americans argued the Britain failed to abide the 1783 peace treaty, because Britain maintained a military presence in the Great Lakes region, and refused to compensate owners for confiscated slaves. | ||
| Non-War with France | 1798 - 1799 | |
| 1800 | Gabriel Posser's plans for slave rebellion foiled. |
Jeffersonian Democracy
Several enormous transformations in this era.
Westward Expansion, the War of 1812.
High foreign demand for American farm goods led to exceptionally high prices for American farmers. This prompted a land boom in the western United States. Fueled by speculation, land prices soared. "The availability of easy credit to settlers and speculators -- from the government (under the land acts of 1800 and 1804), from state banks and wildcat banks, even for a time from the rechartered Bank of the United States -- fueled the land boom" Brinkley, p 204.
Thomas Jefferson was in office 1801 to 1809. His platform envisioned a sharply limited federal government and a society of independent farmers (as opposed to industrial laborers in dense cities).
America remained an overwhelmingly rural and agrarian nation. Only 3 percent of the population lived in towns of more than 8,000 in 1800. Even the nation's largest cities could not begin to compare with such European capitals as London and Paris (although Philadelphia, with 70,000 residents, New York, with 60,000, and others were becoming centers of commerce, learning, and urban culture comparable to many of the secondary cities of Europe. Brinkley, p 174
Ever since 1800, the presidency seemed to have been the special possession of Virginians. After two terms in office, Jefferson chose his secretary of state, James Madison, to succeed him, and after two more terms, Madison secured the presidential nomination for his secretary of state, James Monroe. Brinkley, p 201
| Marbury v Madison | 1803 | Marbury v Madison established that the Supreme Court had the right of judicial review, meaning it could declare Congressional acts to be unconstitutional. |
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| Louisiana Purchase | 1803 | Louisiana Territory purchased from France. |
| Lewis and Clark Expedition | 1804 - 1806 | |
| Embargo | 1807 |
President James Madison was in office 1809 to 1817.
| Non-Intercourse Act | 1809 | |||||||||
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| Tecumash Confederacy | est 1809 | Tecumseh establishes tribal confederacy. | ||||||||
| Macon's Bill № 2 | ||||||||||
| War of 1812 |
The War of 1812 produced chaos in shipping and banking, and it exposed dramatically the inadequacy of the existing transportation and financial systems. The aftermath of the war, therefore, saw the emergence of a series of political issues connected with national economic development. Brinkley, p 195 Another reason for the growing interest in internal improvements ... was the dramatic surge in westward expansion. By 1820, white settlers had pushed well beyond the Mississippi River, ad the population of western regions was increasing more rapidly than that of the nation as a whole. Brinkley, p 198 | |||||||||
| Hartford Convention | met 1814-Dec Connecticut | The Hartford Convention was a meeting of New England Federalists to discuss grievances with and secession from the Union. | ||||||||
| 1815 | US signs treaty with the Indigenous, taking western lands. | |||||||||
| Battle of New Orleans | 1815 | |||||||||
| Second Bank of the United States | 1816 | |||||||||
President Monroe held office from 1817 to 1825.
| 1818 | Seminole War ends. | |
| Adams-Onis Treaty | 1819 | Spain cedes Florida to the United States. |
| 1819 | Dartmouth College v Woodward; McCulloch v Maryland | |
| Panic of 1819 | 1819 | The economy of the early 19th century had boomed with high foreign demand for American goods, westward expansion and easy credit. But in 1819, "new management at the national bank began tightening credit, calling in loans, and foreclosing mortgages. This precipitated a series of failures by state banks, and the result was a financial panic. Six years of depression followed." Brinkley, p 204 Some in the United States worried that rapid economic growth and territorial expansion could destabilize the nation, but by 1820 it was clear that economic growth and territorial expansion were not to be stopped. |
| Missouri Compromise | 1820 | |
| Monroe Doctrine | 1823 | |
| 1824 | Gibbons v Ogden ruling. |
President John Quincy Adams held office 1828 to 1829.
| 1828 | Tariff of Abominations |
Jacksonian Democracy
President Jackson held office from 1829.
| Anti-Masonic Party |
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| Democrat Party |
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| Bank War |
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| Whig Party |
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Industrial Revolution
Agriculture
http://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/read/how-a-single-technology-decimated-98-percent-of-the-american-prairie
The prairies were eliminated.
Consumer culture
North-South sectionalism
President James K Polk (1841 - 1849) is known for diffusing the Oregon and Texas annexation questions.
| Wilmot Proviso | 1846 | |
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| Compromise of 1850 | 1850 | The bill had many provisions including: admission of California as a free state; that former Mexican lands would have territorial (not state) governments; abolition of the slave trade, but not slavery itself, in the District of Columbia; and a new, stricter fugitive slave policy. |
| Kansas-Nebraska Act | 1854 | Legislation attempting to balance the free/slave status of new United States territories. |
| Dred Scott decision | 1857 | |
| Republican Party | est 1854 | |
| Democratic Party splits | 1846 | |
| Lecompton Constitution | Defeated 1858 | |
| John Brown | Raids Harper's Ferry in 1859 | |
Civil War
| South Carolina secedes | 1860 | |||||||
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| Confederate States of America | est 1861 | |||||||
| West Virginia | Admitted to union in 1863. | |||||||
| Confederate draft | est 1862 | |||||||
| Union draft | est 1863 |
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| Emancipation Proclamation | signed 1863 Jan 1 | An order signed by President Abraham Lincoln, that freed all slaves in Confederate states. It did not apply to slaves in states that had not seceded, nor in the territories. | ||||||
| Lee surrenders | 1865 |
Reconstruction
| Joint Committee on Reconstruction | est 1865 | Created by Congress. | |||||||||||
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| Black Codes | 1865 | Enacted in the South. | |||||||||||
| Freedmen's Bureau | est 1865 | Directed by General Oliver O Howard, this army agency was responsible for providing relief to newly freed slaves and destitute white people in the south. | |||||||||||
| Congressional Reconstruction | began 1867 | ||||||||||||
| Reconstruction Amendments |
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| Panic of 1873 | 1873 - 1877 | An economic depression. | |||||||||||
| Compromise of 1877 | Federal agreement to remove its troops from the South. | ||||||||||||
Transcontinental railroad
Railroad magnates
American West boom
The Rancho Era came to an end with the mass influx of wealth land-owning Western European diaspora from the eastern United States.
Jim Crow laws
| Plessy v Ferguson | 1896 | Separate but equal. The Supreme Court held that separate accommodations for blacks did not deprive blacks of equal rights, if those accommodations were equal. This was the legal basis for segregated schools. |
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Modern technology
Telegraph
Telephone
Telephone and telegraph networks created the infrastructure that would later be additionally used by the internet.
Light bulb
Remington Typewriter
Computing
Hollerith machine
IBM
Founded by Charles Flint, who later became known as the Father of Trusts.
First-wave feminism
Nineteenth Amendment
Modern finance
New York Stock Exchange
Sixteenth Amendment
World War I
Roaring Twenties
The 1920s were a time of gender and sexual freedom.
Household appliances
Automobiles
Great Depression
1929 was also the year that Anne Frank and Martin Luther King, Jr were born.
Someone just pointed out to me how Anne Frank and Martin Luther King JR. were both born in the same year, but most people associate them as being in complete different points in history. lolathelost.tumblr.com
Economic pain brought a wave of repression against women and sexual minorities.
New Deal
World War II
European beginnings
Pearl Harbor attack
How did people let the United States round up the Japanese into concentration camps?
How many people were killed in World War II and how did this impact families?
Post-War culture
American Dream
The basic tenets of the American Dream were rooted in the egalitarian, simple-man ideals of property ownership, but now expanded to include a cult of domesticity.
Plastics
Mainframe computing
Feminine mystique
Second Red Scare
Cold War
Central Intelligence Agency founded
McCarthyism
Korean War
Vietnam War
Great Society
African-American Civil Rights Era
War on Drugs
Incarceration
Stagflation
New Economy
Privatization
Financial instruments
The credit default swap originated in 1981 and would later give way to a tremendous growth in credit availability that morphed into the housing bubble.
Globalization
WalMart
Chain stores
Personal computing
Personal computer
Networked computing
Graphic arts
Mobile phones
Internet
Web marketplaces
Craig's List and eBay.
Social media
mySpace
MMORPGs
War on Terror
September 11th
Homeland Security founded
Surveillance
Iraq War
Afghanistan War
Transnational-warfare
Credit boom
Great Recession
Current events
Income redistribution
Social capital
Tumblr
Drug policy
Same-sex marriage
Gender equality
Abortion
Condemnation
| Guatemala | US syphilis experiment. |
Ethnic cleansing
Manzanar
Glossary
A through I
| John Adams | Revolutionary leader, diplomat and US president (1797 - 1801). |
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| The Alamo | San Antonio mission where a Texas garrison fought against and was massacred by Mexican forces. |
| Alien and Sedition Acts | Controversial legislation that Federalists used to try and silence their Republican opposition. |
| Antifederalists | Name the federalists gave to their opposition |
| Anti-Masons | Anti-Masons emerged as a formal group in the 1820s, out of widespread resentment against Freemasons for being secretive, exclusive and supposedly undemocratic. |
| Aroostook War | Violent brawl between (mostly lumberjacks) Canadians and Americans over the United States and Canada boundary. |
| Atlanta Compromise | A thesis on race relations, developed by Booker T Washington and communicated in a speech he gave in 1895. |
| Stephen Austin | Originally from Missouri, he immigrated to Texas and in 1822 he established the first legal American settlement in that territory. |
| Bank War | President Jackson's fight against the Bank of the United States. |
| Nicholas Biddle | President of the Bank of the United States from 1823 until its expiration in 1836. |
| Bill of Rights | The US Constitution's first ten amendments. |
| Black Codes | In 1865 and early 1866, Southern state legislatures enacted laws designed to give whites control over former slaves. |
| John Brown | Kansas abolitionist whose militancy prompted him to raid the United States army arsenal at Harper's Ferry, Virgnia. |
| Aaron Burr | A Vice-President, and the greatest political rival of Alexander Hamilton. Burr killed Hamilton in a duel. |
| John Calhoun | One of the Great Triumvirate along with Clay and Webster. He was the leading proponent of nullification. |
| Cane Ridge, Kentucky | In summer 1801, Eangelicals met here at the nation's first camp meeting. |
| Checks and balances | A system to separate government powers into legislative, executive and judicial branches. The branches check one another, thus keeping power balanced. |
| Caroline Affair | Dispute between the US and Great Britain over an United States steamship chartered by Canadian rebels. |
| Carpetbaggers | During the Reconstruction, white Northern men who served in the South as Republican leaders. Compare to scalawags. |
| Civilized Tribes | The Five Civilized Tribes were the Cherokee, Creek, Seminole, Chickasaw and Choctaw. |
| Crop-lien system | Farmers borrowed money against their crops, but bad yields and extraordinary interest rates often plummeted the debtors into inescapable debt. |
| Jefferson Davis | The one and only president that the Confederate State of America ever had. |
| Stephen A Douglas | His career was not dedicated to broad national goals, but to self-promotion and his section's economic gain. Specifically, he advocated for his section's economic needs, and especially railroad construction. |
| Dred Scott decision | In it, Congress was found to possess no authority to pass a law depriving persons of their slave property in the territories. |
| Enforcement Acts | Prohibited the states from discriminating against voters on the basis of race and gave the federal government power to supersede state courts and prosecute violators of the law. |
| Federalists | Supporters of the Constitution, they chose this name for themselves to distance themselves from their thinly concealed nationalism. |
| Federalist Papers | Writings by Hamilton, Madison and Jay under the joint pseudonym Publius. |
| Federal structure | Division of power between national and state government. |
| Hamilton Fish | Two-term Secretary of State under President Grant. |
| Forty-Niners | Migrants to California for the Gold Rush. They were almost all white men. |
| Free-Soil Party | In the 1848 presidential election, slavery opponents found the presidential candidates unsatisfying and this led to the Free-Soil Party. |
| Gadsden Purchase | The United States purchased a thin strip of Mexican territory toward a potential southern transcontinental railroad. |
| Great Compromise | The Great Compromise resolved the problem of representation in the new Constitution. |
| Great Triumvirate | Henry Clay, John Calhoun and Daniel Webster. |
| Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo | Mexico ceded California and New Mexico to the United States, and acknowledged the Rio Grande as Texas' boundary. |
| Alexander Hamilton | Reformer, politician and lawyer. He was the illegitimate son of a Scottish merchant in the West Indies. Killed in a duel with Aaron Burr. |
| Handsome Lake | Native American who abandoned his alcoholism when he become a born-again Christian. He effectively preached to the Iroquois and called for changes to Indigenous traditions. |
| Harper's Ferry | A United States weapons arsenal in Virginia that was the target of a raid by anti-slavery activist John Brown. |
| Homestead Act | Permitted any current or prospective citizen to claim 160 acres of public land and to purchase it for a small fee after living on it for five years. |
| Sam Houston | General of Texas forces that defeated the Mexican army in 1836. |
J through R
| Jim Crow laws | Solidified in the 1890s and early 20th century, Jim Crow refers to the many laws designed to segregate and subjugate blacks. |
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| Andrew Johnson | Abraham Lincoln's vice president, who succeeded Lincoln after his assassination. |
| Ku Klux Klan | A secretive Southern society that intimidated and physically barred blacks from voting and exercising other rights. |
| Abraham Lincoln | US president during the Civil War who signed the Emancipation Proclamation. Assassinated by John Wilkes Booth. |
| General Antonio Lopez de Santa Ana | 1830s Mexican dictator who began confrontations with established Texas populations. |
| James Madison | Author of the Virginia plan and the most important contributor to the US Constitution. |
| Manifest Destiny | The idea that America was destined by god and history to expand across a vast area, including (but not limited to) the entire North American continent. |
| John Marshall | Virginia lawyer who championed Federalism. Served as John Adams' Secretary of State, and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. |
| Morrill Act | Transferred public federal land to state governments, who could in turn sell it to finance public education. |
| Judith Sargent Murray | Author of 1784 essay defending women's right to education. |
| New Jersey Plan | The New Jersey plan preserved the bicameral legislature but expanded Congress' powers to tax and regulate commerce. |
| Nullification | Theory that since the states comprised the federal government, it was the states (not federal courts nor Congress) who decided the constitutionality of federal laws. |
| Oregon Trail | The first route west into the new United States territories. |
| Pinckney's Treaty | Spain recognized American rights to the Mississippi River; fixed Florida's northern boundary; and required Spanish authorities to prevent Florida Indians from making raids across the border. |
| Radical Republicans | They advocated punishment of Confederate leaders ; disenfranchisement of Southern whites; and protection of rights to freedom. |
| Redeemers | Conservative, oligarchical ruling class during Reconstruction. |
| Removal | Relocating the Indigenous to the West. |
| Republicans | Republicans promoted an agrarian Republic, opposed the Federalists, and gathered under the leadership of James Madison and Thomas Jefferson. |
| Revolution of 1800 | The election of 1800, so-called by Thomas Jefferson who barely won. |
S through Z
| US Sanitary Commission | US-government supported nursing corps, led by Dorothea Dix, that was an integral force to caring for injured Civil War soldiers. |
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| Scalawags | Critical name for Southern white Republicans. Compare to carpetbaggers. |
| Winfield Scott | Commander of American forces during the Mexican-American War. |
| William Seward | Lincoln's Secretary of State. Stabbed and wounded the same night as Lincoln's assassination, as part of the same conspiracy. |
| Sharecropping | A landowner and tenant relationship: the tenant cultivated and had responsibility for a plot of land, and payed the landowner in money or crop (sharing part of the crop is the etymology of the term). |
| Squatter sovereignty | Known also as popular sovereignty, this was the idea that new United States territories and states should be able to decide for themselves (as the squatters of that land) whether to be slaveholding or free states. |
| Zachary Taylor | Whig candidate in 1848 presidential election. |
| Thaddeus Stevens Charles Sumner | Co-leaders of the Radicals. Stevens was a Pennsylvania representative. Sumner was a Massachusetts senator. |
| Fort Sumter | US offshore military fort on an island in Charleston harbor. Confederate bombardment and US surrender of April 14, 1861 marked the beginning of the Civil War. |
| Roger Taney | Chief justice of the Supreme Court. He was appointed by Jackson and replaced Marshall. |
| Tejano | The Mexican residents of Texas. |
| Virginia Plan | The Virginia Plan proposed a new national government with a supreme Judiciary, Executive and bicameral Judiciary. |
| Wade-Davis bill | Authorized the president to appoint a provisional governor for each conquered Confederate state. |
| Booker T Washington | Founder and president of the Tuskegee Institute (an Alabama university) and progenitor of the Atlanta Compromise. |
| Daniel Webster | One of the Great Triumvirate alongside Clay and Calhoun. He was a nationalist Whig who served as Massachusetts senator. |
| Ida B Wells | After the lynching of three friends in Memphis, Tennessee, her work as an author and activist culminated with an international anti-lynching movement and significant contributions toward women's suffrage. |
| Eli Whitney | Inventor of the cotton gin (1793). |
| Wilmot Proviso | An 1846 amendment to several appropriation bills, that prohibited slavery in any territory acquired from Mexico. |
| Young America | Young America adherents saw the global expansion of American democracy as a way to distract attention from the slavery controversies. |