An Outline of American History

of the US
Civil War and Post-war Reconstruction
Growth and Transformation

War II
Cold War, Korean Conflict, Vietnam
Cultural Change 1950-1980
The End of

the 20th Century

Greenland (Erik the Red) started a settlement in 985
Leif explored

Canada
Newfoundland

of a long, uncoiling serpent nearly a quarter of a

mile long. Created between 1000 and 1500 AD for unknown purposes, it is now protected in a state park in Ohio.

eastern Canada)
Juan Ponce de Leon (1513, Florida)
Hernando de Soto (1539,

Florida and all the way to the Mississippi River)
Francisco Vazquez de Coronado (1540, Mexico, Grand Canyon, the Great Planes)
Seven Cities of Cibola
Giovanni da Verrazano, Jacues Cartier, Amerigo Vespucci
St Augustine, Florida
Virginia and Massachusetts

New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland
Southern Colonies: Virginia,

Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina

land.
The Currency Act (1764) made it illegal to print paper

money.
The Quartering Act (1765) forced the colonists to provide food and housing for royal soldiers.
The Stamp Act (1765) taxed all legal papers, licenses, newspapers, and leases.

1722 – October 2, 1803) was an American statesman, political

philosopher, and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. As a politician in colonial Massachusetts, Adams was a leader of the movement that became the American Revolution, and was one of the architects of the principles of American republicanism that shaped the political culture of the United States. He was a second cousin to President John Adams.

to the king;
Moderates wanted to build a better relationship with

the British government;
Revolutionaries wanted complete independence.

Paine (Common Sense) argued for independence and against hereditary monarchy
Thomas

Jefferson
Declaration of Independence
July 4, 1776
Saratoga, New York
Princeton and Trenton, New Jersey

as an independent country
April 15, 1783 – the end of

the war
Thaddeus Kosciuszko (Poland)
Friedrich von Steuben (Prussia)
Marquis de Lafayette (France)
The Treaty of Paris turned the 13 colonies into states

with foreign countries, keep an army, create a postal system,

wage war.
Congress – a legislative branch;
President – an executive branch;
Supreme court – a judicial branch
September, 17 1787 the new Constitution was signed
September, 1789 10 amendments (the Bill of Rights) were added

an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;

or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

2. A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

3. No Soldier shall, in time of peace, be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.

4. The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

5. No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject, for the same offense, to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled, in any criminal case, to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial,

by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.

7. In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury shall be otherwise reexamined in any court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.

8. Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

9. The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

10. The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively or to the people.

first American president (April 30, 1789)
Created the Treasury, Justice, and

War departments (the cabinet)
The Supreme Court was made up by one chief justice and five (now eight) associate justices
Tree circuit courts and 13 district courts were created

– the Republicans

divided against itself cannot stand.”
“This government cannot endure permanently half-slave

and half-free.”

George McClellan (Union troops)
1862 Lincoln issued a preliminary Emancipation Proclamation
Less

than a week after the South surrendered President Lincoln was killed
Andrew Johnson
Segregation

law (1890)
The “Wild West”
Sioux (the Northern Plains) and Apaches (the

Southwest)
Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, the Philippines
Progressivism
Upton Sinclair, Ida M. Tarbell, Theodor Dreiser

Reverse Banking System, The Federal Trade Commission
The World War I
A

League of Nations
Economic depression (1929)

on October 29, 1929, a day known forever after as

“Black Tuesday,” when the American stock market crashed, plunging the country into its most severe economic downturn yet. Speculators lost their shirts; banks failed; the nation’s money supply diminished; and companies went bankrupt and began to fire their workers in droves.

Meanwhile, President Herbert Hoover urged patience and self-reliance. When he took office in 1933, he acted swiftly to try and stabilize the economy and provide jobs and relief to those who were suffering. Over the next eight years, the government instituted a series of experimental projects and programs, known collectively as the New Deal, that aimed to restore some measure of dignity and prosperity to many Americans. More than that, Roosevelt’s New Deal permanently changed the federal government’s relationship to the U.S. populace.

25, 1950, the Korean War began when soldiers from the

North Korean People’s Army poured across the boundary between the Soviet-backed Democratic People’s Republic of Korea to the north and the pro-Western Republic of Korea to the south. This invasion was the first military action of the Cold War. By July, American troops had entered the war on South Korea’s behalf. As far as American officials were concerned, it was a war against the forces of international communism itself. After some early back-and-forth across the boundary, the fighting stalled and casualties mounted with nothing to show for them. Meanwhile, American officials worked anxiously to fashion some sort of armistice with the North Koreans. The alternative, they feared, would be a wider war with Russia and China–or even, as some warned, World War III. Finally, in July 1953, the Korean War came to an end. In all, some 5 million soldiers and civilians lost their lives during the war. The Korean peninsula is still divided today.

War was a long, costly armed conflict that pitted the

communist regime of North Vietnam and its southern allies, known as the Viet Cong, against South Vietnam and its principal ally, the United States. The war began in 1954 (though conflict in the region stretched back to the mid-1940s), after the rise to power of Ho Chi Minh and his communist Viet Minh party in North Vietnam, and continued against the backdrop of an intense Cold War between two global superpowers: the United States and the Soviet Union. More than 3 million people (including 58,000 Americans) were killed in the Vietnam War; more than half were Vietnamese civilians. By 1969, at the peak of U.S. involvement in the war, more than 500,000 U.S. military personnel were involved in the Vietnam conflict. Growing opposition to the war in the United States led to bitter divisions among Americans, both before and after President Richard Nixon ordered the withdrawal of U.S. forces in 1973. In 1975, communist forces seized control of Saigon, ending the Vietnam War, and the country was unified as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam the following year.

Campbell
Cesar Chavez
The Earth Day (1970)