| A | B |
|---|
| 1607 - First Successful English Colony | Jamestown |
| 1619 - established in Virginia to represent the settlers; setting rules and laws which were to govern the colonists | Virginia House of Burgesses |
| 1620 - describe the way in which they would govern themselves in the New World | Mayflower Compact |
| 1639 - first written plan of government for any of the colonies | Fundamental Orders of Connecticut |
| 1215 - guaranteed individuals the right to a fair trial by their peers and forced the king to obtain the consent of the council of nobles for most new taxes | Magna Carta (Great Charter) |
| 1689 - agreement between the English monarchs and the people placed the power of rule in the people’s hands | English Bill of Rights |
| 1619 - business of capturing, transporting, and selling people as slaves; treating them as property | Slave Trade |
| 1754 to 1763 - struggle for territory and power in the Ohio Valley. France v Britain | French and Indian War |
| 1763 - brought an end to the French and Indian War | Treaty of Paris (1763) |
| 1763 - keep colonists and Native Americans from killing each other, draw a line down the crest of the Appalachians Mountains | Proclamation of 1763 |
| 1764 - tax on molasses, sugar, coffee, and indigo | Sugar Act |
| 1765 - law required colonists to buy a stamp for every piece of paper they used | Stamp Act |
| 1765 - law ordered colonial assemblies to provide British troops with quarters, or housing | Quartering Act |
| 1767 - duty, or tax, on certain goods included such popular items as glass, paint, paper, and tea | Townshend Acts |
| 1773 - aimed to bail the British East India Company out of financial trouble by giving it a monopoly, or complete control, over tea sales in the colonies | Tea Act |
| 1773 - Bostonians lamely disguised as Indians boarded three ships in Boston harbor and dumped a cargo of 342 chests (about 90,000 pounds) of tea overboard | Boston Tea Party |
| 1774 - designed to punish Massachusetts for the Boston Tea Party | Intolerable Acts (also known as the Coercive Acts) |
| 1774 - delegates agreed to send a respectful message to King George, the message urged the king to consider their complaints | First Continental Congress |
| 1775 - first battle of the Revolution | Battle of Lexington |
| 1775 - debated the inevitable -- the push for independence | Second Continental Congress |
| 1776 - explained the reasons why the colonists were seeking independence from Great Britain, and it proclaimed a new theory of government | Declaration of Independence |
| 1777 - American victory persuaded France to enter the war and back the Patriot efforts | Battle of Saratoga |
| 1781 - last battle of the American Revolution | Battle of Yorktown |
| 1783 - King George was finally forced to accept the reality of defeat | Treaty of Paris in 1783 |
| 1781 - could make war and peace, raise an army and a navy, print money, and set up a postal system | Articles of Confederation |
| 1785 - western lands were divided into 6-mile squares called townships, each township was then divided into 36 sections of 640 acres each | Land Ordinance of 1785 |
| 1787 - system of settlement in the West | Northwest Ordinance |
| 1787 - farmers closed down courthouses to keep judges from taking their farms, then they marched on the national arsenal at Springfield to seize the weapons stored there | Shays’s Rebellion |
| 1787 - Each state sent delegates “for the sole and expressed purpose of revising the articles” | Constitutional Convention (Philadelphia Convention) |
| 1787 - States with a large number of people would have more representatives than smaller states | Virginia Plan |
| 1787 - each state would have an equal vote in Congress, no matter how big or small | New Jersey Plan |
| 1787 - To settle the dispute over state representation in Congress; and solve the problem of who would elect members of Congress | The Great Compromise |
| 1787 - provided for every five slaves to be counted as people for the purposes of representation | Three-Fifths Compromise |
| Supporters of the Constitution | Federalists |
| Opponents of the Constitution | Anti-Federalists |
| 1787 - combines a strong framework for the government with flexibility making it a "living document" | U. S. Constitution |
| believed the interpretation of the Constitution should not be flexible | Strict Constructionists |
| believed the interpretation of the Constitution should be flexible | Loose Constructionists |
| branch make laws, consists of the Senate and the House of Representatives | Legislative Branch |
| branch carries out, or executes, the laws passed by the legislature, the President and the Vice President, who serve four-year terms, head it | Executive Branch |
| branch consists of the system of federal courts and judges | Judicial Branch |
| 1791 - first ten amendments to the U. S. Constitution | Bill of Rights |
| 1794 - challenge to the new nation’s ability to enforce its laws when several hundred Whiskey Boys refused to pay a federal whiskey tax | Whiskey Rebellion |
| 1789 - purpose of the Acts was to make life difficult for the Federalists’ rivals, the Republicans | Alien and Sedition Acts |
| 1798 - States had the right to judge whether a law passed by Congress was unconstitutional | States’ Rights |
| 1795 - Britain agreed to leave the Ohio Valley, Britain also agreed that under certain conditions, American ships could trade in the West Indies | Jay’s Treaty |
| 1795 - end dispute between the United States and Spain over possession of the Florida's and the mouth of the Mississippi River | Pinckney's Treaty (Treaty of San Lorenzo) |
| 1798 - attempt to end French attacks on American ships, U.S. representatives met with secret French agents | "XYZ" Affair |
| 1812 - Great Britain and France were taking U.S. ships & led to war | War of 1812 |
| 1814 - treaty that ended War of 1812 | Treaty of Ghent |
| 1823 - President Monroe tells Europe to stay out of the Americas | Monroe Doctrine |
| late 1700's - inventors started to devise machines to make products more quickly and cheaply | Industrial Revolution |
| completed 1825 - artificial inland waterway extended from Lake Erie to the Hudson River | Erie Canal |
| 1829 - practice of giving government jobs to political backers | Spoil System |
| 1837 - result of the Indian Removal Act | Trail of Tears |
| began in 1899's - drive to expand toward the West | Manifest Destiny |
| 1803 - purchased land west of the Mississippi River for $15 million | Louisiana Purchase |
| war over boundary dispute, Rio Grande River v. Nueces River | Mexican War |
| 1853 - strip of land purchased in southern New Mexico and Arizona | Gadsden Purchase |
| 1849 - forty-niners made their way to California looking for gold | California Gold Rush |
| movement opposed alcoholic drinks | Temperance Movement |
| movement opposed slavery | Abolitionist Movement |
| movement for free public schools | Education Movement |
| movement sought suffrage for women | Women's Rights Movement |
| 1830's - network for slaves to escape | Underground Railroad |
| 1848 - convention initiating Women's Rights Movement | Seneca Falls Convention |
| 1820 - Congress drew an imaginary line across the Louisiana Territory | Missouri Compromise |
| 1850 - compromise let California enter the Union as a free state | Compromise of 1850 |
| 1850 - law to return escaped slaves to their owners | Fugitive Slave Law |
| 1854 - resulted in "Bloody Kansas" | Kansas-Nebraska Act |
| 1858 - debates for the U.S. Senate seat from the state of Illinois | Lincoln-Douglas Debate |
| 1859 - planned slave revolt across the South | John Brown's Raid |
| 1861 - fort which was captured by the Confederacy beginning the Civil War | Fort Sumter |
| 1863 - declared slaves in all Confederate states to be free | Emancipation Proclamation |
| 1863 - Lincoln delivered address to dedicate battleield as cemetery | Gettysburg Address |
| 1865 - discussed the terms of surrender for the Confederate Army | Appomattox Courthouse |
| 1865 through 1877 - rebuilding process following the American Civil War | Reconstruction |
| 1865 - amendment freed the slaves | 13th Amendment |
| 1866 - declared that all persons born in the U.S. were citizens | Civil Rights Act of 1866 |
| 1868 - amendment made all former slaves U.S. citizens | 14th Amendment |
| 1870 - amendment gave African-American men the right to vote | 15th Amendment |
| act protected African-Americans from acts of terrorism | Force Acts of 1870 and 1871 |
| 1875 - Act was aimed at ending Jim Crow laws | Civil Rights Act of 1875 |
| 1877 - compromise settled an undecided Presidential election and ended Reconstruction | Compromise of 1877 |
| 1867 - act placing the South under military occupation | Reconstruction Act of 1867 |
| 1862 - act to link the Atlantic and Pacific coasts | Pacific Railroad Act (Transcontinental Railroad) |
