Key Figures in American Expansion and Reform

Daniel Boone

Frontiersman who explored the Cumberland Gap.

John Sutter

Established Sutter's Fort; site of gold discovery.

Lewis and Clark

Explorers of the Louisiana Purchase (1804-1806).

John Jay

First Chief Justice; negotiated Jay's Treaty.

Sam Houston

First President of the Republic of Texas.

Andrew Jackson

Seventh U.S. president; expanded presidential power.

Alexander Hamilton

First Secretary of the Treasury; financial system architect.

James Madison

Father of the Constitution; fourth U.S. president.

James Monroe

Fifth U.S. president; authored Monroe Doctrine.

Thomas Jefferson

Third U.S. president; wrote Declaration of Independence.

John Marshall

Longest-serving Chief Justice; established judicial review.

Francis Scott Key

Wrote the national anthem during War of 1812.

Robert Fulton

Invented the Clermont, first successful steamboat.

Samuel F. B. Morse

Invented telegraph and Morse code for communication.

Samuel Slater

Brought British textile technology to America.

Horace Mann

Advocate for public education and schooling reforms.

Dorothea Dix

Reformer for mental health and prison conditions.

Joseph Smith

Founder of the Mormon Church in the 1820s.

Brigham Young

Led Mormons to Utah; established Salt Lake City.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Women's rights leader; organized Seneca Falls Convention.

George Washington

First U.S. president; set important national precedents.

Metacom(King Philip)

Wampanoag chief who led a brutal campaign against Puritan settlements in New England between 1675 and 1676. Though he himself was eventually captured and killed, his wife and son sold into slavery, his assault halted New England's westward expansion for several decades.

Phyllis Wheatley

(1753-1784); a slave girl brought to Boston at age eight and never formally educated; she was taken to England when, at twenty years of age, she published a book of verse and later wrote other polished poems that revealed the influence of Alexander Pope. Pro independence.