The Usual Suspects

Jamestown Founding

Founded in 1607 by an investment company seeking profit and competition with European powers.

Arrival of First Africans

In 1619, the first African people were involuntarily brought to a colony that would become the United States.

Plymouth Colony

Founded in 1620 by religious dissidents seeking to build a city on a hill, later became Boston.

The First Great Awakening

A religious movement in the 1730s-1770s that led to the idea of making contracts around common principles and united colonies with a common cultural experience before the Revolution.

The Royal Proclamation of 1763

British rule prohibiting American colonists from moving west of the Appalachian Mountains after the French and Indian War.

Navigation Acts

British laws embodying mercantilism, restricting shipping from North American colonies to English ships only, contributing to colonial frustration.

Stamp Act

A 1765 British law taxing printing in the colonies to pay for housing British soldiers after the French and Indian War, resulting in colonial protests.

Articles of Confederation

The weak basis of federation between the 13 colonies maintained unity during the American Revolution and created a system by which territories became new states in the future.

Constitutional Compromises

Agreements at the Constitutional Convention of 1787 balanced the interests of large Southern slave states with smaller Northeastern states to replace the Articles of Confederation.

Bill of Rights

Ratified in 1791, this collection of amendments to the Constitution was designed to ensure individual and state's rights, as well as convince anti-federalists to ratify the Constitution.

Proclamation of Neutrality

Issued by George Washington in 1793, requiring the United States to stay out of conflicts between France and Spain, becoming a guiding principle of U.S. foreign policy for 100 years.

Election of 1800

The first peaceful transfer of power between opposing political ideals took place when Thomas Jefferson beat John Adams in 1800.

Marbury v. Madison

Supreme Court Justice John Marshall established judicial review, the ability of the courts to declare Acts of Congress unconstitutional, with this decision in 1803.

Louisiana Purchase

Thomas Jefferson bought this land from France and more than doubled the size of the United States of America in a move that was counter to his Republican value of a modest Executive.

War of 1812

The last international conflict fought on American land between England and the U.S. over England's impressments of American sailors. The War was basically a stalemate.

Monroe Doctrine

Presidential declaration in 1823 that any European effort to interfere with or colonize the Western Hemisphere would be considered a hostile act against the United States of America.

The Bank War

Disagreement between Democratic President Andrew Jackson and the Whigs over state or federal support of financial institutions. Jackson's victory caused the Panic of 1837.

The American System

Whig Henry Clay's economic strategy of high tariffs to promote domestic manufacturing growth and prevent England from economic domination of the U.S. Also included a focus on a national bank and government support for infrastructure.

Growth of Railroads

The Northeast led this transportation revolution, leading to industrial growth in the late 19th century.

William Lloyd Garrison

The leading abolitionist who published The Liberator in 1831. His advocacy of women's rights split the Abolitionist movement in 1839.

American Colonization Society

This 1816 organization implemented plans to have freed slaves emigrate to Liberia in Africa. This organization was made up of people who wanted blacks out of the U.S. as well as abolitionists.

Missouri Compromise

This 1820 deal allowed Maine to become part of the U.S. as a free state, Missouri as a slave state, land South of 36' 30° to have slavery, and all other territory in the Louisiana Purchase north of 36' 30° to be free except Missouri.

Dred Scott v. Sandford

This Supreme Court case declared that slaves were not citizens under the U.S. Constitution and therefore no state could afford them rights of persons. The backlash against this decision increased support for the anti-slavery cause.

Compromise of 1850

This deal admitted California as a free state and created the newly strengthened Fugitive Slave Act that led to violent reclaiming of escaped slaves.

Kansas-Nebraska Act

This law ended the Missouri Compromise by instituting popular sovereignty for states joining the Union, leading to Bleeding Kansas.

John Brown

Led an interracial assault on the institution of slavery at Harper's Ferry, Virginia, and was executed for inciting a slave rebellion.

Emancipation Proclamation

Abraham Lincoln's 1863 declaration that slaves in states that do not rejoin the Union are free. The declaration was more of a moral and political statement than a policy that had any immediate effect.

Sharecropping

Tenant farming by former slaves after the Civil War in economic and social conditions that were not much different than slavery.

Radical Republicans

A group of federal elected officials from Abraham Lincoln's Party who wanted severe punishment of Southern states after the Civil War. Their approach was abandoned after 1877.

W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington

Two leading African American scholars that had opposing views on how African Americans would overcome institutional racism. The first believed in integration and civil rights. The second believed in self-help.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Mid-19th Century American writer that advocated extreme individualism, self-reliance, and peaceful harmony with nature.

Sherman Anti-Trust Act

This 1890 law prohibited the vertical or horizontal integration of companies creating monopolistic domination of a market. It was first used to stop unions, though, instead of corporations.

Populism

Late 19th Century political movement supporting farmers and the working-class over the wealthy. They wanted an end to the gold standard, the implementation of a graduated income tax, and government controlled utilities.

1800s Immigration

Immigrants primarily came to the U.S. for better economic circumstances. Early immigrants were English and German. Mid-century were Irish, and late were Eastern Europeans.

Haymarket Square

Pivotal movement in the American labor movement. Police vs. labor protestors that wanted 8-hour workdays.

Fourteen Points

Woodrow Wilson's principles for world peace after the First World War, including forming the League of Nations. U.S. Senate failed to ratify the League of Nations, promoting isolationism instead.

Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover

Three Republican presidents in a row advocated a close, cooperative relationship between government and business.

The Great Depression

This economic crash of the 1930s led to the New Deal. It was caused by international trade restrictions, inflated stock market speculation, and failing farms in the 1920s.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Democratic candidate who disagreed with Hoover's comparatively hands-off approach to the failing economy. He led the greatest increase in federal power in U.S history and was president during the Great Depression.

The New Deal

FDR's plan to end the Great Depression. It created federal financing of electrical plants, social security, bank and securities regulations, and the right to form unions during the 1930s.

Rosie the Riveter

Character in government advertising symbolized a major consequence of WWII on the home front: the entrance of women into the industrial workforce.

Japanese-American Internment Camps

Imprisoned some Asian Americans to prevent domestic espionage during World War II; declared constitutional by the Supreme Court in Korematsu v. United States.

McCarthyism

An effort led by one U.S. Senator to expose Russian communist sympathizers during the 1950s. Investigations and interrogations were ultimately considered excessive.

Brown v. Board of Education

This 1954 Supreme Court case overturned Plessy v. Ferguson and found that educational opportunities could not be separate and equal under the U.S. Constitution.

Gulf of Tonkin Resolution

Congressional authorization used by Lyndon Johnson to justify military action in Vietnam after the U.S. Navy was allegedly attacked in Asia.

Civil Rights Act of 1964

Signed by Lyndon Johnson, this law seemed to represent a major civil rights achievement (along with the Voting Rights Act just a year later).

Equal Rights Amendment

Congress approved a Constitutional amendment that guaranteed equality regardless of sex, but not enough states voted to ratify it.

Roe v. Wade

This Supreme Court decision ruled that women had a right to an abortion in the first trimester of pregnancy, with states able to impose limitations after that, based on the 14th amendment.

Iran Hostage Crisis

In a country where the U.S. had earlier helped bring down a popularly elected government, American hostages were captured by Islamic revolutionaries from 1979-1981.

Watergate

Event that added to Americans' mistrust of the government, ending in Richard Nixon's resignation.

Ronald Reagan

Republican president who announced 'It's morning in America' in his 1980 campaign, representing a rise to power of American conservatism.