US History Timeline Notes

BASIC TIMELINE

  • COLONIZATION
  • AMERICAN REVOLUTION
  • AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE
  • WESTWARD EXPANSION
  • MEXICAN AMERICAN WAR
  • ANTEBELLUM
  • THE CIVIL WAR
  • RECONSTRUCTION
  • THE GILDED AGE
  • IMPERIALISM
  • SPANISH AMERICAN WAR
  • THE PROGRESSIVE ERA
  • WORLD WAR I
  • THE GREAT DEPRESSION
  • WORLD WAR II
  • THE COLD WAR
  • KOREAN WAR
  • VIETNAM WAR
  • CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT
  • CURRENT POLITICS

FULL YEAR TIMELINE

  • Voyage of Columbus to the Americas (1542)
  • Smallpox Epidemic on Native Americans (1520-1530)
  • Spanish Explorers Enter Southwestern US (1542)
  • Jamestown Founded (1607)
  • VA House of Burgesses (1619)
  • Plymouth Colony Founded (1620)
  • Massachusetts Bay Colony Founded (1629)
  • Navigation Acts (1651)
  • Bacon’s Rebellion (1675)
  • The Glorious Revolution - James II Removed (1688)
  • The Salem Witch Trials (1692)
  • Salutary Neglect (1690 - 1760)
  • First Great Awakening (1730)
  • The Molasses Act (1733)
  • Stono Slave Rebellion (1739)
  • Albany Congress (1754)
  • The French and Indian War (1754 - 1763)
  • Republican Motherhood (1760 - 1790)
  • The Peace of Paris (1763)
  • The Proclamation Line (1763)
  • The Sugar Act (1764)
  • The Currency Act (1764)
  • The Stamp Act (1765)
  • The Stamp Act Congress (1765)
  • The Sons of Liberty (1795)
  • The Declaratory Act (1766)
  • The Townshend Act (1767)
  • The Boston Massacre (1770)
  • The Tea Act (1773)
  • The Boston Tea Party (1773)
  • The Intolerable Acts (1774)
    • Boston Port Bill
    • Massachusetts Government Act
    • Administration of Justice Act
    • Quartering Act
  • The Continental Congress (1774 - 1781)
  • The Revolutionary War (1775 - 1783)
  • The Battle of Lexington and Concord (1775)
  • The Second Continental Congress (1775)
  • Common Sense (1776)
  • The Declaration of Independence (1776)
  • The Battle of Saratoga (1777)
  • Surrender of the British (1777)
  • The Articles of Confederation (1777)
  • The Battle of Yorktown (1781)
  • The Treaty of Paris (1783)
  • Shays Rebellion (1786)
  • The Constitutional Congress (1787)
  • The Constitutional Convention (1787)
    • 4 Compromises
      • NJ, VA, CT, ⅗
  • The Northwest Ordinances (1787)
  • Federalist and Antifederalist Papers (1787)
  • The Constitution (1788)
  • The Bill of Rights (1789)
  • 1st President - George Washington (1789)
    • Unaffiliated with a Party
    • Compromise of 1790
    • Second Great Awakening (1790-1840)
    • National Bank (1791)
    • Whisky Rebellion (1791)
    • Proclamation of Neutrality (1793)
  • 2nd President - John Adams (1796)
    • Federalist
    • Abigail Adams (women's rights advocate)
    • French Revolution (1789-1799)
    • Jay’s Treaty (1794)
    • Quasi War (1798-1800)
    • XYZ Affair (1798-1800)
    • Barbary Pirates (1800s)
    • Alien and Sedition Acts (1798)
    • The Ketucky and Virginia Resolutions (1798)
    • Logan Affair (1799)
  • 3rd President - Thomas Jefferson (1800)
    • Democratic Republican
    • Twelfth Amendment (1803)
    • Louisiana Purchase (1803)
    • Lewis and Clark and Sacajewea (1804)
    • Marbury vs Madison (1803)
    • Judicial Review (1803)
    • The Embargo (1807)
  • 4th President - James Madison (1808)
    • Democratic Republican
    • Tecumseh + Tippecanoe (1811)
    • War of 1812
    • Treaty of Ghent (1814)
    • Native American Removal (1814)
    • Hartford Convention (1814)
    • Henry Clay’s American System (1815)
    • The Second National Bank (1816)
  • 5th President - James Monroe (1816)
    • Democratic Republican
    • Era of Good Feelings (1815)
    • Panic of 1819
    • Missouri Compromise (1820)
    • The Monroe Doctrine (1823)
    • The Market Revolution (1820 - 1830)
  • 6th President - John Quincy Adams (1824)
    • Democratic Republican
    • Corrupt Bargain (1824)
  • 7th President - Andrew Jackson (1828)
    • Democrat
    • Spoils System (1828)
    • Jacksonian Democracy (1828)
    • Indian Removal Act (1830)
    • The Trail of Tears (Part of Indian Removal Act) (1831-1850)
    • Nullification Crisis (1832 - 1833)
    • The Force Bill (1833)
    • The Lowell Mill Strike (1834)
  • 8th President - Martin Van Buren (1836)
    • Democrat
    • Texas Rebels Against Mexico (1836)
    • The Second National Bank War (1837)
    • The Panic of 1837
  • 9th President - William Henry Harrison (1840)
    • Whig
    • Henry Harrison Dies and John Tyler is elected (1841)
  • 10th President - John Tyler (1841)
    • Whig
    • Manifest Destiny (1840s)
    • Expansion into Oregon Trail (1841)
  • 11th President - James K. Polk (1844)
    • Democrat
    • Texas Becomes a US State (1845)
    • 54, 40 or Fight (1846)
    • The Donner Party (1846)
    • Mexican American War (1846 - 1848)
    • Wilmot Proviso (1846)
  • 12th President - Zachery Taylor (1848)
    • Whig
    • California Gold Rush (1848)
    • Treaty of Guadelupe and Hilgago (1848)
    • Formation of the Free-Soil Party (1848)
  • 13th President - Millard Fillmore (1850)
    • Whig
    • Formation of the Know Nothing Party (1850)
    • Compromise of 1850
  • 14th President - Franklin Pierce (1852)
    • Democrat
    • Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852)
    • Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854)
    • Popular Sovereignty (1854)
    • Formation of the Republican Party (1854)
  • 15th President - James Buchanan (1856)
    • Democrat
    • Bleeding Kansas (1854-1859)
    • Border Ruffians (1854 - 1859)
    • Caning of Charles Sumner (1856)
    • Dred Scott Decision (1857)
    • John Brown and Harpers Ferry (1859)
    • Lincoln Douglas Debates (1858 - 1860)
  • 16th President - Abraham Lincoln (1860)
    • Republican
    • Confederate States of America (1861)
    • Southern Secession (1861)
    • Attack on Fort Sumter (1861)
    • First Battle Bull Run (1861)
    • The Anaconda Plan (1861)
    • Sectionalism (1861)
      • The Union - Lincoln/Ulysses S. Grant
      • The Confederacy - Jefferson Davis/Robert E. Lee
    • The Homestead Act (1862)
    • Morrill Land - Grant Act (1862)
    • Emancipation Proclamation (1863)
    • The Battle of Gettysburg (1863)
    • The Gettysburg Address (1863)
    • Confederate Surrender at Appomattox (1865)
    • Abraham Lincoln Assassinated (1865)
  • 17th President - Andrew Johnson (1865)
    • Democrat
    • Reconstruction
    • The Transcontinental Railroad (1863 - 1869)
    • The Freedmen's Bureau (1865)
    • The 13th Amendment (1865)
    • Black Codes, Poll Taxes, Sharecropping, and Literacy Tests (1865)
    • The Civil Rights Act (1866)
    • The 14th Amendment (1866)
    • Radical Reconstruction (1866)
    • The KKK (1866)
    • The Reconstruction Acts and Military Reconstruction (1867)
    • Tenure of Office Act (1867)
    • The Grange (1867)
    • United States Purchase of Alaska (1867)
    • Impeachment of Johnson (1868)
  • 18th President - Ulysses S. Grant (1868)
    • Republican
    • The Transcontinental Railroad (1869)
    • The Knights of Labor (1869)
    • The 15th Amendment (1870)
    • Enforcement Acts (1870 - 1871)
    • Begin of the Scramble for Africa (1871)
    • Trade Agreement with Hawaii (1875)
  • 19th President - Rutherford B. Hayes (1876)
    • Republican
    • Industrialization (1876 - 1900)
    • Gilded Age (1877 - 1900)
    • Compromise of 1877
    • End of Military Reconstruction (1877)
  • 20th President - James Garfield (1881)
    • Republican
    • Assassination of Garfield (1881)
  • 21st President - Chester A. Arthur (1881)
    • Republican
    • The Chinese Exclusion Act (1882)
    • Pendleton Civil Service Act (1883)
  • 22nd President - Grover Cleveland (1885)
    • Democrat
    • Interstate Commerce Act (1887)
    • Dawes Act (1887)
  • 23rd President - Benjamin Harrison (1889)
    • Republican
    • Sherman Antitrust Act (1890)
    • Battle of Wounded Knee (1890)
    • National American Woman Suffrage Association (1889)
    • The Populist Party (1891)
    • Ellis Island Immigration (1892)
    • Homestead Strike (1892)
  • 24th President - Grover Cleveland (1893)
    • Democrat
    • The Progressive Era (1896–1917)
    • Revolt Against Spanish in Cuba (1895)
    • William Jennings Bryan and The Gold Standard (1896)
  • 25th President - William McKinley (1897)
    • Republican
    • Explosion of the U.S.S. Maine (1898)
    • Beginning of Spanish-American War (1898)
    • Annexation of Hawaii (1898)
    • Assasination of William McKinley (1901)
    • Yellow Journalism
  • 26th President - Theodore Roosevelt (1901)
    • Republican
    • The Square Deal (1901)
    • Founding of Women’s Trade Union League (1903)
    • Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine (1904)
    • Industrial Workers of the World Formed (1905)
    • Publication of The Jungle (1906)
    • Meat Inspection Act (1906)
    • Pure Food and Drug Act (1906)
  • 27th President - William Howard Taft (1908)
    • Republican
    • Talk Dollar Diplomacy (1909 - 1913)
    • Foundation of the NAACP (1909)
    • Isolationism (1910s - 1930s)
    • Progressive Party Founded (1912)
  • 28th President - Woodrow Wilson (1912)
    • Democrat
    • Establishment of Federal Reserve System (1913)
    • 16th Amendment (1913)
    • 17th Amendment (1913)
    • The Great Migration (1914-1918)
    • Official Proclamation of Neutrality (1914)
    • Clayton Antitrust Act (1914)
    • Completion of Panama Canal (1914)
    • Start of World War I (1914)
    • Lusitania (1915)
    • The Zimmerman Telegram (1917)
    • Committee of Public Information (1917–1919)
    • The First Red Scare (1917)
    • The Espionage Act (1917)
    • The Sedition Act (1918)
    • Wilson’s 14 Points (1918)
    • Armistice (1917)
    • The Treaty of Versailles (1919)
    • The Anarchist Bombings (1919)
    • Palmer Raids (1919)
    • Eugene V Debs (1919)
    • Schenck v. United States (1919)
    • The 18th Amendment (1919)
    • The 19th Amendment (1919)
    • League of Nations (1920)
  • 29th President - Warren Harding (1920)
    • Republican
    • Flappers (1920s)
    • Prohibition (1920)
    • The Harlem Renaissance (1920s-1930s)
    • Sacco and Vanzetti (1920)
    • The Teapot Dome Scandal (1921)
    • Death of Harding (1923)
  • 30th President - Calvin Coolidge (1923)
    • Republican
    • Immigration Act #1 - Emergency Quotas (1921)
    • Immigration Act #2 - Johnson Reed Act (1924)
    • KKK at Most Powerful Height (1924)
    • Scopes Trial (1925)
    • Black Tuesday (1929)
  • 31st President - Herbert Hoover (1928)
    • Republican
    • Hawley Smoot Tariff (1930)
    • Dust Bowl (1930)
    • Hooverville (1930s)
    • Bankruns and Brealines (1930s)
    • Glass Steagall Banking Act (1932)
    • The Bonus Army (1932)
  • 32nd President - FDR (1933)
    • Democrat
    • Critics of FDR (1930s)
    • Prohibition Ends (1933)
    • Hitler Comes to Power (1933)
    • The First New Deal (1933)
    • CCC (1933)
    • NIRA (1933)
    • AAA (1933)
    • PWA (1933)
    • The Second New Deal (1935)
    • WPA (1935)
    • SSA (1935)
    • Wagner Act (1935)
    • CIO (1935)
    • Early Neutrality Acts (1935 + 1937)
    • Keynesian Economics (1936)
    • Court Packing (1937)
    • Beginning of WWII (1939)
    • Allied Powers and Axis Powers (1939)
    • Cash and Carry (1939)
    • Propaganda (1940s)
    • Lend-Lease Act (1941)
    • Four Freedoms (1941)
    • Pearl Harbor (1941)
    • Executive Order 99066 - Internment Camps (1942)
    • The Bataan Death March (1942)
    • D-Day (1944)
    • Battle of the Bulge (1944)
    • The GI Bill (1944)
  • 33rd President - Harry Truman (1945)
    • Democrat
    • The Manhattan Project (1945)
    • Hiroshima and Nagasaki (1945)
    • The Yalta Conference (1945 - Before Bombs)
    • The Potsdam Conference (1945)
    • Iron Curtain Speech (1946)
    • HUAC (1947)
    • The Truman Doctrine (1947)
    • Desegregation of Armed Forces (1948)
    • Berlin Airlift (1948)
    • Marshall Plan (1948)
    • Creation of the Nation of Israel (1948)
    • NATO (1949)
    • China Turns Communist (1949)
    • McCarthyism and McCarthy speech (1950)
    • Beginning of the Korean War (1950)
  • 34th President - Eisenhower (1952)
    • Republican
    • Defense Budget at $47 billion (1953)
    • Death of Stalin (1953)
    • Execution of the Rosenbergs (1953)
    • Brown v Board of Education (1954)
    • The Geneva Convention (1954)
    • Bus Boycott (1955)
    • The Warsaw Pact (1955)
    • Interstate Highway Act (1956)
    • Baby Boom Peaks (1957)
    • Sputnik launched (1957)
    • Castro Comes to Power in Cuba (1959)
    • U-2 Spy Plane Incident (1960)
  • 35th President - JFK (1960)
    • Democrat
    • Sit-ins (1960)
    • SDS Formed (1960)
    • SNCC Formed (1960)
    • Freedom Rides (1961)
    • Bay of Pigs (1961)
    • Berlin Wall (1961)
    • First American In Space (1961)
    • Cuban Missile Crisis (1962)
    • JFK Assassinated (1963)
  • 36th President - Lyndon B. Johnson (1963)
    • Democrat
    • The Civil Rights March on Washington (1963)
    • The Great Society (1964)
    • Tonkin Gulf Resolution (1964)
    • The US Enters the Vietnam War (1965)
    • Voting Rights Act (1965)
    • Medicare (1965)
    • Black Panther Party (1966)
    • NOW (1966)
    • Anti War Riots (1967)
  • 27th President - Richard Nixon (1969)
    • Republican
    • AIM (1968)
    • Tet Offensive (1968)
    • My Lai Massacre (1968)
    • Woodstock (1969)
    • The Pentagon Papers (1971)
    • Wage and Price Control (1971)
    • SALT I Signed (1972)
    • Watergate Scandal (1972)
    • American Troops Leave Vietnam (1973)
    • Roe v Wade (1973)
    • Peak of Inflation (1974)
    • Nixon Resigns (1974)
  • 28th President - Gerald Ford (1974)
    • Republican
    • South Vietnam falls to North Vietnam Ending the War (1975)
  • 29th President - Jimmy Carter (1976)
    • Democrat
    • Panama Canal Treaty (1977)
    • Camp David Accords (1978)
    • Iran Hostage Crisis (1979)
  • 30th President - Ronald Reagan (1981)
    • Republican
    • Major Tax Cuts (1981-1983)
    • American Victorious in Grenada (1983)
    • Iran Contra Affair (1968)
    • INF Treaty (1988)
  • 31st President - George H. W. Bush (1989)
    • Republican
    • Berlin Wall Opened (1989)
    • Persian Gulf War (1991)
    • Breakup of the Soviet Union (1991)
    • Economic Recession (1991)
  • 32nd President - Bill Clinton (1993)
    • Democrat
    • NAFTA (1993)
    • Terrorist Bombings at World Trade Center (1993)
    • US enters Haiti (1994)
    • Federal Budget Surplus (1998)
    • A r ticle s o f Im p e a c h m e n t P a s s e d ( 1 9 9 8 )