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.
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.

1786	Annapolis Conference. spearheaded by Alexander Hamilton and James Madison.
1787	Constitutional Convention. Alarmed by Shays' Rebellion and the needed for a strong central government, the Constitutional Convention (in Philadelphia) was a success.
1787	US Constitution adopted.
1787 - 1788	States ratify Constitution.
1789	Bill of Rights adopted by Congress

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

i.o 1789 - 1796
e.1788, 1792

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

1794	Quelled in Pennsylvania.

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
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.
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

Tecumash Confederacy

est 1809

Tecumseh establishes tribal confederacy.

Macon's Bill № 2

War of 1812

1812	United States declares war on Great Britain.


1814	Treaty of Ghent, signed in Belgium, ended the 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 19^th 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

1831	Established

Democrat Party

1832	Democrats' national convention.

Bank War

1832	Jackson vetoes bill to recharter Bank of the United States
1836	Jackson issues specie circular.
1840	Independent Treasury Act passed

Whig Party

1839	First national convention.

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
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

Confederate States of America

est 1861

West Virginia

Admitted to union in 1863.

Confederate draft

est 1862

Union draft

est 1863


1863	Anti-draft riots in New York City.

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.

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

13th Amendment	1865
14th Amendment	1868	Defined birthright citizenship. This was the first Constitutional definition of United States citizenship.
15th Amendment	1870

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.

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.

mySpace

Facebook

MMORPGs

War on Terror

September 11th

Homeland Security founded

Surveillance

Iraq War

Afghanistan War

Transnational-warfare

Credit boom

Great Recession

Current events

Income redistribution

Twitter

Tumblr

Instagram

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).
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 20^th century, Jim Crow refers to the many laws designed to segregate and subjugate blacks.
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.
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.