Must-know sheet

US History must-know sheet

The dates, laws, court cases, people and turning points you should know cold for AP US History, organized by the course's nine periods. The real exam gives you no reference sheet or timeline, so all of this comes from memory: you rarely need an exact year, but you do need to put events in the right period and order and explain why they mattered.

Period 1 (1491–1607): timeline

Unit 1

Before 1492: Native societies fit their environments: Maize farming spread north from Mexico and supported settled villages in the Southwest and the Mississippi Valley. Peoples of the Great Basin and Great Plains moved with the seasons to hunt and gather, Northwest peoples built permanent villages around fishing, and Northeast peoples such as the Iroquois mixed farming with hunting.
About 1050–1350: Cahokia: The biggest city of the Mississippian mound-building culture, near today's St. Louis. At its peak around 1100 it may have held 10,000–20,000 people, all fed by maize farming.
Pueblo peoples of the Southwest: Built multistory adobe towns and used irrigation to grow maize, beans and squash in a dry land. They are the people who later rose against Spain in the Pueblo Revolt of 1680.
1400s: Portugal leads the way by sea: Portugal explored the West African coast using the caravel, the compass and the astrolabe, and began the Atlantic trade in enslaved Africans. Dias rounded Africa's southern tip in 1488 and da Gama reached India in 1498.
Why Europeans sailed: God, gold and glory: Newly unified kingdoms wanted wealth from Asian trade, power over rivals and Christian converts. Spain finished driving out the last Muslim kingdom in 1492, the same year it paid for Columbus's voyage.
1492: Columbus reaches the Caribbean: Sailing for Spain while looking for a sea route to Asia, he landed in the Bahamas and Hispaniola. Lasting contact between the Eastern and Western Hemispheres begins here.
1494: Treaty of Tordesillas: Spain and Portugal split the newly claimed lands along a north–south line. Portugal got lands to the east of it, including Africa and later Brazil; Spain claimed most of the rest of the Americas.
After 1492: the Columbian Exchange: Maize, potatoes and tomatoes went to Europe, Africa and Asia; horses, cattle, pigs, wheat and sugarcane came to the Americas. Smallpox and other diseases killed the majority of Native people in many regions, while American silver and new crops helped Europe grow richer and shift from feudalism toward capitalism.
1519–1521: Cortés conquers the Aztec Empire: With a small Spanish force, Native allies who hated Aztec rule and a smallpox epidemic, Hernán Cortés took Tenochtitlan, which became Mexico City.
1532–1533: Pizarro conquers the Inca Empire: Francisco Pizarro captured the Inca ruler Atahualpa and took the Andes. Silver from Potosí and Mexico soon made Spain the richest power in Europe.
Encomienda system: The Spanish crown gave colonists the right to demand labor and tribute from Native people in an area, in return for supposedly protecting them and teaching them Christianity. In practice it was forced labor, and it later shifted toward enslaved African labor as Native populations collapsed.
Early 1500s onward: enslaved Africans brought to Spanish America: As Native workers died from disease and overwork, Spain and Portugal brought enslaved Africans to work on sugar plantations and in mines, starting the transatlantic slave trade to the Americas.
Casta system: Spain's ranking of people by ancestry: Spanish-born peninsulares at the top, then American-born Spaniards (creoles), mixed-race mestizos and mulattoes, and Native and African people at the bottom.
1550–1551: Valladolid debate: Bartolomé de las Casas argued that Native people were fully human and should not be enslaved or abused; Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda argued they were naturally inferior and could be conquered. It shows that Europeans argued over how to treat Native peoples.
1565: St. Augustine, Florida: Spain's fort and town, the oldest permanent European settlement in what is now the U.S.
Resistance and blending: Native and African peoples resisted through war, flight and keeping their own beliefs, but also mixed European goods, crops and Christianity with their own cultures. Spanish colonies had many mixed-ancestry people because few Spanish women came at first.

Period 2 (1607–1754): timeline

Unit 2

1607: Jamestown, Virginia: The first lasting English colony, run by the Virginia Company, a joint-stock company that wanted profit. It nearly failed until colonists began growing tobacco (John Rolfe, about 1612).
1608: Quebec and New France: Samuel de Champlain founded Quebec. The French built a fur-trade empire with few settlers, married into and allied with Native nations, and sent Jesuit missionaries.
1610: Santa Fe and New Mexico: Spain's capital in New Mexico. Spanish missions tried to convert Pueblo peoples and used their labor, which led to the Pueblo Revolt.
1619: House of Burgesses and the first Africans in Virginia: Virginia's House of Burgesses was the first elected assembly in English America. The same year, about 20 Africans arrived at Point Comfort, the start of Black life (and later slavery) in English North America.
1620: Plymouth and the Mayflower Compact: Pilgrims (Separatists who wanted to leave the Church of England) agreed to govern themselves by majority rule, an early step toward self-government.
1624–1626: New Netherland: The Dutch set up a trading colony centered on New Amsterdam (Manhattan). It was diverse and focused on the fur trade; England took it in 1664 and renamed it New York.
1630: Massachusetts Bay Colony: Puritans led by John Winthrop, who called it a "city upon a hill," came as families to build a model Christian community. New England had town meetings, family farms, fishing, shipbuilding and high literacy.
1634: Maryland: A colony owned by Lord Baltimore as a haven for Catholics. Its Toleration Act of 1649 protected freedom of worship for Christians.
1636–1638: Rhode Island and religious dissent: Roger Williams, banished from Massachusetts, founded Rhode Island with separation of church and state and fair land dealings with Native people. Anne Hutchinson was banished in 1638 for challenging Puritan ministers.
1639: Fundamental Orders of Connecticut: Often called the first written constitution in the colonies; it set up a representative government.
1651–1696: Navigation Acts: English laws under mercantilism: colonial trade had to use English or colonial ships, and key goods like tobacco could only be shipped to England. Weak enforcement (salutary neglect) let smuggling thrive.
Mercantilism: The idea that a nation grows rich by exporting more than it imports and holding gold and silver. Colonies existed to supply raw materials and buy the home country's finished goods.
1662: Virginia makes slavery hereditary: A child's status followed the mother's, so children of enslaved women were enslaved for life. Slave codes, such as Virginia's in 1705, turned slavery into a race-based, permanent system (chattel slavery).
1675–1676: Metacom's War (King Philip's War): Wampanoag leader Metacom led New England Native nations against English settlers pushing onto their land. It was one of the deadliest wars for its size in American history and broke Native power in southern New England.
1676: Bacon's Rebellion: Nathaniel Bacon led poor farmers and former indentured servants against Virginia's governor, demanding war on Native people for frontier land; they burned Jamestown. Afterward, planters relied more on enslaved Africans than on indentured servants.
1680: Pueblo Revolt: Popé led Pueblo peoples to drive the Spanish out of New Mexico for about 12 years. When Spain returned in 1692, it allowed more Pueblo religious practice and focused less on forced conversion.
1681: Pennsylvania: William Penn's colony for Quakers offered religious freedom and tried to buy land fairly from the Lenape. The Middle Colonies (New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware) were diverse, grew wheat and had busy ports.
1686–1689: Dominion of New England: King James II merged the northern colonies under one royal governor and canceled their assemblies. Colonists overthrew it after England's Glorious Revolution of 1688.
1692: Salem witch trials: Twenty people were executed in Massachusetts during a panic over witchcraft, showing tensions in Puritan society.
Chesapeake and Southern colonies: Tobacco in Virginia and Maryland, rice and indigo in the Carolinas: plantation economies built on indentured servants and then enslaved Africans. Carolina copied the slave codes of English sugar colonies like Barbados, and enslaved people became the majority there.
Triangular trade and the Middle Passage: Ships carried manufactured goods to Africa, enslaved Africans across the Atlantic (the deadly Middle Passage) and sugar, tobacco and rum back toward Europe and New England.
1732: Georgia: Founded by James Oglethorpe as a buffer against Spanish Florida and a fresh start for poor English people. It banned slavery at first but allowed it from 1751.
1735: Zenger trial: A New York jury acquitted printer John Peter Zenger of libel for criticizing the governor because what he printed was true, an early win for freedom of the press.
1730s–1740s: First Great Awakening: Emotional revivals led by Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield stressed a personal relationship with God. It challenged the authority of established churches and gave colonists a shared experience across colonies.
1700s: Enlightenment ideas reach the colonies: Ideas about reason, science and natural rights spread through books and newspapers. Benjamin Franklin was the best-known colonial example.
1739: Stono Rebellion: Enslaved people near Charleston, South Carolina, rose up and tried to reach Spanish Florida, which promised freedom. It was the largest slave revolt in Britain's mainland North American colonies and led to harsher slave codes.
About 1690s–1763: salutary neglect: Britain loosely enforced its trade laws and let the colonies largely run themselves, so elected colonial assemblies grew used to power, especially over taxes.
Anglicization: In the 1700s the colonies became more British in their goods, styles, politics and Protestant identity, even while developing their own self-government.

Period 3 (1754–1800): timeline

Unit 3

1754: Albany Plan of Union: Benjamin Franklin's plan for the colonies to unite for defense and Native diplomacy ("Join, or Die"). The colonies rejected it, but it was an early idea of union.
1754–1763: French and Indian War (Seven Years' War): Britain and France fought over the Ohio River Valley; young George Washington fought in its opening battles. Britain won but was left with a huge war debt, which it then asked the colonies to help pay.
1763: Treaty of Paris (1763): France lost its North American mainland empire: Canada and the land east of the Mississippi went to Britain, and Louisiana went to Spain. Spain gave Florida to Britain.
1763: Pontiac's Rebellion and the Proclamation of 1763: Native nations led by Pontiac attacked British forts in the Great Lakes region. Britain then banned colonial settlement west of the Appalachian Mountains, which angered colonists who wanted that land.
1769 onward: Spanish missions in California: Spain pushed north into California, building missions run by Franciscan priests such as Junípero Serra and relying on the forced labor of local Native people. Mission life mixed Spanish and Native cultures, while disease and harsh treatment cut Native populations sharply.
1764: Sugar Act: Lowered the duty on molasses but actually enforced it, with smugglers tried in courts without juries.
1765: Stamp Act: A direct tax on printed paper such as newspapers and legal documents. Colonists protested "no taxation without representation," the Stamp Act Congress met, Sons of Liberty organized and boycotts forced repeal in 1766.
1766: Declaratory Act: Passed when the Stamp Act was repealed: Parliament claimed the right to make laws for the colonies "in all cases whatsoever."
1767: Townshend Acts: Taxes on imported glass, lead, paint, paper and tea. Colonists answered with boycotts; Daughters of Liberty spun homespun cloth. All but the tea tax were repealed in 1770.
1770: Boston Massacre: British soldiers fired into a crowd and killed five colonists. Patriots like Paul Revere used it as propaganda.
1773: Tea Act and Boston Tea Party: The Tea Act gave the British East India Company a monopoly on cheap tea that still carried the tax. Sons of Liberty dumped 342 chests into Boston Harbor.
1774: Coercive (Intolerable) Acts: Punished Massachusetts by closing Boston's port and limiting town meetings. The First Continental Congress met and organized a boycott of British goods.
1775: Lexington and Concord: The first shots of the Revolution (April). The Second Continental Congress formed the Continental Army under Washington and sent the Olive Branch Petition, which the king rejected.
1775: Dunmore's Proclamation: Virginia's royal governor promised freedom to enslaved people who escaped Patriot owners and fought for Britain. Thousands of Black Americans sided with the British for the chance of freedom.
1776: Common Sense: Thomas Paine's pamphlet (January) argued in plain language for independence and against monarchy; it sold widely and swung opinion.
July 4, 1776: Declaration of Independence: Written mainly by Thomas Jefferson, it drew on John Locke's natural rights (life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness) and listed grievances against King George III. Its ideal of equality was later used by women, abolitionists and civil rights activists.
1777: Battle of Saratoga: The American victory that convinced France to sign an alliance with the U.S. in 1778. French money, troops and navy were key to winning.
1781: Yorktown: Washington's army and the French fleet trapped Cornwallis, who surrendered, ending major fighting.
1783: Treaty of Paris (1783): Britain recognized U.S. independence, with land west to the Mississippi River. Native allies of both sides were left out of the treaty.
1781–1789: Articles of Confederation: The first national government: a one-house Congress where each state had one vote, with no power to tax, regulate trade or enforce laws, no executive and no national courts. Changes needed all 13 states.
1785 and 1787: Land Ordinance and Northwest Ordinance: The Articles' big success. The Land Ordinance surveyed western land into townships with land set aside for schools; the Northwest Ordinance set the process for territories to become equal states and banned slavery north of the Ohio River.
1786–1787: Shays' Rebellion: Massachusetts farmers in debt closed courts to stop foreclosures. The weak national government could not respond, which convinced leaders to rewrite the Articles.
1787: Constitutional Convention: Delegates in Philadelphia wrote a new Constitution with a stronger national government. Key deals: the Great Compromise (House by population, Senate equal), the Three-Fifths Compromise and a ban on ending the slave trade before 1808.
1787–1788: Ratification debate: Federalists (Hamilton, Madison, Jay, who wrote The Federalist Papers) backed the Constitution; Anti-Federalists feared a strong central government and demanded a bill of rights. Ratified in 1788; the new government began in 1789.
1789: Washington's presidency begins: Washington set precedents like a cabinet and two terms. The Judiciary Act of 1789 set up the federal courts.
1790–1791: Hamilton's financial plan: The federal government took on state war debts, created the Bank of the United States (1791) and used tariffs and an excise tax on whiskey. Jefferson and Madison opposed the bank as unconstitutional, splitting leaders into the first parties.
1791: Bill of Rights: The first ten amendments, added to win over Anti-Federalists, protect rights like speech, religion, press and fair trials.
1789–1799: French Revolution and its effects: Americans split over it: Democratic-Republicans cheered it, Federalists feared its violence. Washington's Neutrality Proclamation (1793) kept the U.S. out of the war between Britain and France.
1791–1804: Haitian Revolution: Enslaved people in French Saint-Domingue overthrew slavery and created Haiti, the second independent nation in the Americas. It inspired enslaved Americans and frightened slaveholders.
1794: Whiskey Rebellion: Western Pennsylvania farmers rebelled against the whiskey tax. Washington led militia to end it, showing the new government could enforce its laws.
1794–1795: Fallen Timbers and the Treaty of Greenville: After the U.S. Army defeated a Native alliance at Fallen Timbers, Native nations gave up most of present-day Ohio.
1794–1795: Jay's Treaty and Pinckney's Treaty: Jay's Treaty got Britain to leave its forts in the Northwest but did little about British seizures of American ships, so many Americans hated it. Pinckney's Treaty with Spain opened the Mississippi River and New Orleans to American trade.
1796: Washington's Farewell Address: Warned against permanent alliances with foreign nations, political parties and sectional (regional) divisions.
1797–1798: XYZ Affair: French officials demanded bribes from American diplomats, leading to an undeclared naval war with France (the Quasi-War).
1798: Alien and Sedition Acts: Federalist laws that made it harder to become a citizen, let the president deport foreigners and made criticizing the government a crime. Jefferson and Madison answered with the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions, arguing states could judge federal laws unconstitutional.
1800: "Revolution of 1800": Jefferson defeated John Adams, and power passed peacefully from one party to another for the first time.
Republican motherhood: The idea that women served the republic by raising virtuous, educated citizens. It expanded girls' education but kept women in the home and out of politics.
1777–1804: gradual emancipation in the North: Northern states began ending slavery, mostly gradually: Vermont banned it in 1777, Pennsylvania passed the first gradual emancipation law in 1780 and New Jersey was the last, in 1804. Slavery grew in the South at the same time.
Early American identity: Writers and artists such as Noah Webster (an American dictionary) and Charles Willson Peale promoted a distinct American culture, and buildings borrowed Greek and Roman styles to suggest a republic.

Period 4 (1800–1848): timeline

Unit 4

1793: Eli Whitney's cotton gin: Made cleaning short-staple cotton fast, so cotton spread across the Deep South and slavery expanded rather than dying out. By the 1830s cotton was the nation's top export (King Cotton).
1801–1835: John Marshall's Supreme Court: Chief Justice Marshall's decisions strengthened the federal government and the courts and protected contracts and property (see Marbury, McCulloch and Gibbons below).
1803: Louisiana Purchase: Jefferson bought Louisiana from France for $15 million, doubling the nation's size, even though the Constitution did not clearly allow it. Lewis and Clark explored it in 1804–1806 with help from Sacagawea.
1807: Embargo Act: Jefferson banned trade with foreign countries to stay out of the British–French wars. It wrecked American shipping, especially in New England, and was repealed in 1809.
1808: Atlantic slave trade banned: Congress outlawed bringing enslaved people from abroad, the earliest date the Constitution allowed. The domestic slave trade from the Upper South to the Deep South grew instead.
1812–1815: War of 1812: Causes: British impressment (forcing American sailors into its navy), trade restrictions, British support for Native resistance led by Tecumseh, and War Hawks who wanted land. The Treaty of Ghent (1814) changed no borders, but Jackson's win at New Orleans (1815) boosted nationalism.
1814–1815: Hartford Convention: New England Federalists who opposed the war met to demand changes. The war ended just then, they looked disloyal and the Federalist Party died out.
1817–1825: Era of Good Feelings: With the Federalists gone, the Democratic-Republicans ran things under James Monroe, but regional quarrels were growing.
1816: Second Bank and the Tariff of 1816: Part of Henry Clay's American System: a national bank, a protective tariff to help Northern factories and federally funded roads and canals (internal improvements).
1819: Adams–Onís Treaty: Spain gave Florida to the U.S. and set the border between U.S. and Spanish lands to the Pacific.
1819: Panic of 1819: The first major U.S. depression, after land speculation and a credit crunch. Many blamed the national bank.
1820: Missouri Compromise: Missouri joined as a slave state and Maine as a free state, and slavery was banned in the rest of the Louisiana Purchase north of 36°30′. Jefferson called the crisis "a fire bell in the night."
1823: Monroe Doctrine: Told Europe not to start new colonies or interfere in the Western Hemisphere, while the U.S. stayed out of European affairs. It was mostly words until later presidents enforced it.
1824: The "corrupt bargain": Jackson won the most popular and electoral votes but not a majority, so the House chose John Quincy Adams, who named Henry Clay secretary of state. Jackson's supporters formed the Democratic Party.
1825: Erie Canal: Linked the Hudson River to Lake Erie, cutting shipping costs and making New York City the nation's top port. It sparked a canal boom and tied the Northeast to the Midwest.
1820s–1840s: Market Revolution: Canals, steamboats, railroads and the telegraph (Morse, 1844) linked farms to faraway markets. Factories like the Lowell mills (young New England women in boardinghouses) and interchangeable parts moved work from homes to wage labor.
Separate spheres and the middle class: In the growing Northern middle class, men worked for wages outside the home and women were expected to run the home and raise moral children (the cult of domesticity).
1828: Jackson elected and the Tariff of Abominations: Jackson's win stood for the common man and expanded democracy: most states had dropped property requirements for white men. The high 1828 tariff angered the South.
1830: Indian Removal Act: Let Jackson trade land in the West for Native lands in the East. The Cherokee fought it in court and won Worcester v. Georgia (1832), but Jackson ignored it.
1838–1839: Trail of Tears: The U.S. Army forced about 16,000 Cherokee to march to Indian Territory (Oklahoma); thousands died. The Choctaw, Creek, Chickasaw and Seminole were also removed.
1831: Nat Turner's rebellion: An enslaved preacher led a revolt in Virginia that killed about 55 to 60 white people. Southern states passed harsher slave codes and banned teaching enslaved people to read.
1831: The Liberator: William Lloyd Garrison's newspaper demanded immediate, uncompensated abolition, not gradual emancipation or colonization.
1832: Jackson vetoes the bank: In the Bank War, Jackson called the Second Bank a tool of the rich and vetoed its recharter, then moved federal money to state "pet banks." His Specie Circular (1836) and the bank's end helped cause the Panic of 1837.
1832–1833: Nullification Crisis: South Carolina, backed by John C. Calhoun, declared the tariffs of 1828 and 1832 void in the state. Jackson threatened force (the Force Bill) while Clay's Compromise Tariff of 1833 lowered rates, ending the crisis.
1834: Whig Party forms: Opponents of "King Andrew" Jackson, led by Clay and Daniel Webster, backed the American System and moral reform. Democrats vs. Whigs made up the Second Party System.
1836: Texas independence: American settlers in Mexican Texas rebelled, partly over Mexico's ban on slavery, and won at San Jacinto after losing the Alamo. Annexation was delayed because Texas would be a slave state.
About 1800–1840s: Second Great Awakening: Revivals led by preachers like Charles Grandison Finney taught that anyone could choose salvation and improve society. It fueled reform movements and new faiths such as the Mormons (Joseph Smith, 1830).
1820s–1850s: Age of Reform: Temperance (cutting back on alcohol), public schools (Horace Mann), better treatment of the mentally ill and prisoners (Dorothea Dix), abolition and utopian communities such as Brook Farm and Oneida.
1816: American Colonization Society and the AME Church: The Colonization Society wanted to send free Black Americans to Africa (Liberia), which most free Black people rejected. Richard Allen founded the African Methodist Episcopal Church, a center of free Black community life.
1833: American Anti-Slavery Society: Garrison and others organized a national abolition movement; Frederick Douglass became its best-known speaker after escaping slavery in 1838.
Transcendentalism and Romanticism: Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau stressed intuition, nature and individual conscience; Thoreau's "Civil Disobedience" (1849) protested slavery and the Mexican–American War. The Hudson River School painted dramatic American landscapes.
1840s: Irish and German immigration: The Irish potato famine (1845–1849) and unrest in Germany brought millions of immigrants, many Catholic. Nativists (anti-immigrant Protestants) later formed the Know-Nothing Party.
Southern society: A small planter elite owned most enslaved people; most white Southerners were yeoman farmers who owned few or none. Defenders like Calhoun began calling slavery a "positive good" instead of a necessary evil.
1848: Seneca Falls Convention: Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott led the first women's rights convention. Its Declaration of Sentiments copied the Declaration of Independence ("all men and women are created equal") and called for women's right to vote.

Period 5 (1844–1877): timeline

Unit 5

1845: Manifest Destiny: Editor John O'Sullivan's phrase for the belief that the U.S. was meant by God to spread across North America. It justified taking land from Mexico and Native nations.
1845: Texas annexed: Texas joined as a slave state. Mexico rejected Texas's claim to the Rio Grande as its border, setting up war.
1846: Oregon Treaty: President James K. Polk and Britain split Oregon Country at the 49th parallel.
1846–1848: Mexican–American War: Began after a clash in land claimed by both countries between the Nueces River and the Rio Grande. Critics like Abraham Lincoln and Thoreau called it a land grab to spread slavery.
1846: Wilmot Proviso: A proposal to ban slavery in any land won from Mexico. It passed the House but failed in the Senate, and it split Congress along North–South lines.
1848: Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo: Mexico gave up the Mexican Cession (California and most of the Southwest) for $15 million and accepted the Rio Grande border. Mexicans living there were promised citizenship and property rights, which were often not honored.
1848: Free-Soil Party: Wanted to keep slavery out of the western territories, mostly to protect white farmers and free labor, not to end slavery where it already existed.
1848–1849: California Gold Rush: Gold drew huge numbers of migrants, including from China and Latin America. California grew so fast it asked to join as a free state, setting off a crisis.
1850: Compromise of 1850: California joined as a free state; Utah and New Mexico territories would decide on slavery by popular sovereignty (a vote of settlers); the slave trade ended in Washington, D.C.; and a much stricter Fugitive Slave Act passed. Henry Clay and Stephen Douglas pushed it through.
1850: Fugitive Slave Act: Required Northerners to help catch freedom seekers, who got no jury trial. It turned many Northerners against slavery; some states passed personal liberty laws, and the Underground Railroad grew.
1852: Uncle Tom's Cabin: Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel showed slavery's cruelty and won huge numbers of Northerners to the antislavery side; Southerners called it lies.
1854: Kansas–Nebraska Act: Stephen Douglas let settlers in Kansas and Nebraska choose slavery by popular sovereignty, which repealed the Missouri Compromise line. Outrage destroyed the Whig Party and created the Republican Party (1854), which opposed slavery's spread.
1850s: Know-Nothing (American) Party: A nativist party against Catholic and immigrant influence. It rose fast in 1854–1856, then split over slavery.
1856: Bleeding Kansas and the caning of Sumner: Pro-slavery and free-state settlers fought in Kansas (the sack of Lawrence; John Brown's killings at Pottawatomie). In the Senate, Representative Preston Brooks beat Senator Charles Sumner with a cane after an antislavery speech.
1857: Dred Scott decision: The Court ruled that Black Americans were not citizens and that Congress could not ban slavery in the territories. It made compromise nearly impossible.
1858: Lincoln–Douglas debates: In an Illinois Senate race, Lincoln argued slavery must not spread ("A house divided against itself cannot stand"). Douglas's Freeport Doctrine said settlers could keep slavery out by not protecting it, which cost him Southern support. Douglas won the seat; Lincoln became famous.
1859: John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry: Brown tried to seize a federal arsenal in Virginia to arm an uprising of enslaved people. He was hanged; Northerners who praised him as a martyr horrified the South.
1860: Lincoln elected: The Democrats split North and South, and Lincoln won with about 40 percent of the popular vote and no Southern electoral votes, on a promise to stop slavery's spread.
1860–1861: Secession: South Carolina seceded in December 1860; six more Deep South states followed and formed the Confederate States of America (February 1861) under Jefferson Davis. The Crittenden Compromise failed.
April 1861: Fort Sumter: Confederates fired on the federal fort in Charleston Harbor, starting the war. Four more states seceded, but the slave-holding border states (Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri) stayed in the Union.
Union and Confederate advantages: The North had far more people, factories and railroads and a navy for the Anaconda Plan (blockade the South and seize the Mississippi). The South fought on home ground, had skilled generals like Robert E. Lee, and hoped Britain and France would help.
1862: Homestead Act, Pacific Railway Act and Morrill Act: Passed once Southern members had left Congress: 160 acres of free western land for settlers who farmed it 5 years, federal land and loans for a transcontinental railroad, and federal land to fund state colleges.
September 1862: Antietam: The bloodiest single day of the war stopped Lee's invasion of Maryland. It kept Britain and France from recognizing the Confederacy and let Lincoln announce the Emancipation Proclamation.
January 1, 1863: Emancipation Proclamation: Freed enslaved people in areas still in rebellion, not in the loyal border states. It made ending slavery a war aim and opened the Union Army to Black men; about 180,000 served by the war's end.
July 1863: Gettysburg and Vicksburg: The turning point: Lee's invasion of the North was beaten at Gettysburg, and Grant's capture of Vicksburg gave the Union the Mississippi River and split the Confederacy.
1863: Draft riots and wartime powers: Both sides drafted soldiers; wealthier Northerners could pay $300 to avoid service, and New York City saw deadly draft riots aimed largely at Black residents. Lincoln suspended habeas corpus, jailing some critics without trial.
November 1863: Gettysburg Address: Lincoln described the war as a test of whether a nation built on equality could survive and promised "a new birth of freedom."
1864: Sherman's March to the Sea: After taking Atlanta, which helped Lincoln win reelection, Sherman's army destroyed railroads, crops and property from Atlanta to Savannah (total war).
1865: Freedmen's Bureau: Federal agency that gave formerly enslaved people food, medical care, schools and help with labor contracts. Its schools helped found colleges like Howard and Fisk.
April 1865: Appomattox and Lincoln's assassination: Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Court House on April 9. Lincoln was shot on April 14 and died the next day, so Andrew Johnson led Reconstruction.
1863–1867: Presidential Reconstruction: Lincoln's Ten Percent Plan and then Andrew Johnson let Southern states rejoin quickly once a share of voters swore loyalty. Johnson pardoned many Confederate leaders and the new Southern governments passed Black Codes.
1865–1866: Black Codes: Southern laws limiting freedpeople's rights, such as requiring yearly labor contracts and arresting unemployed Black people for "vagrancy." They pushed Congress to take over Reconstruction.
1867–1877: Congressional (Radical) Reconstruction: Radical Republicans such as Thaddeus Stevens and Charles Sumner passed the Reconstruction Acts (1867), placing the South under military rule until states wrote new constitutions, allowed Black men to vote and ratified the 14th Amendment. Black men served in state governments and Congress, such as Senator Hiram Revels (1870).
1868: Johnson impeached: The House impeached Andrew Johnson for blocking Reconstruction and breaking the Tenure of Office Act; the Senate fell one vote short of removing him.
1865–1870s: The first Ku Klux Klan: A white terrorist group that used violence to stop Black voting and Republican rule. Congress passed the Enforcement Acts and Ku Klux Klan Act (1870–1871), which weakened it for a time.
Sharecropping: Landowners rented plots to Black and poor white families in exchange for a share of the crop. With crop-lien debt to local stores, many families were trapped in poverty for generations.
1873: Panic of 1873: A long depression that turned Northern attention to the economy and away from protecting Black rights in the South.
1870s: Redeemers retake the South: White Democrats called Redeemers won back Southern state governments with violence and fraud, cut public spending and later took away Black voting rights.
1877: Compromise of 1877: Settled the disputed 1876 election: Republican Rutherford B. Hayes became president, and the last federal troops left the South. Reconstruction ended with the Constitution changed but Black rights left unprotected.

Period 6 (1865–1898): timeline

Unit 6

1864–1890: Wars on the Plains: As settlers, miners and railroads moved west, the U.S. Army fought Plains nations and forced them onto reservations. Key events: the Sand Creek Massacre (1864), the destruction of the buffalo herds and the Battle of the Little Bighorn (1876), where Lakota and Cheyenne warriors led by Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse defeated Custer.
1867: The Grange: Farmers' organization that pushed state Granger laws to regulate railroad and grain-elevator rates. Later Farmers' Alliances (1880s) led to the Populist Party.
1867: Alaska purchased: Secretary of State William Seward bought Alaska from Russia for $7.2 million; critics called it "Seward's Folly."
1869: Transcontinental railroad completed: The Union Pacific and Central Pacific met at Promontory Summit, Utah, built largely by Irish and Chinese workers with federal land grants and loans. Railroads tied the nation into one market and sped settlement of the West.
1869: Knights of Labor founded: A union open to almost all workers, including women, Black workers and unskilled workers, aiming to reform the whole wage system. It peaked around 1886 and faded after the Haymarket affair.
1870s–1890s: Second Industrial Revolution: Steel (the Bessemer process), oil, electricity (Edison's light bulb, 1879), the telephone (Bell, 1876) and railroads made the U.S. the world's leading industrial economy by about 1900.
1870s–1880s: Rockefeller and Carnegie: John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil used horizontal integration (buying out rivals) and trusts to control about 90 percent of U.S. oil refining. Andrew Carnegie used vertical integration (owning every stage from mines to mills).
1877: Great Railroad Strike: The first nationwide strike, over wage cuts; federal troops put it down. It began decades of violent labor clashes.
1879: Carlisle Indian School: The model for boarding schools that took Native children from their families to force assimilation ("Kill the Indian in him, and save the man").
1880–1920: The "new immigrants": Millions came from Southern and Eastern Europe (Italians, Poles, Jews, Greeks), many Catholic or Jewish, and settled in crowded city tenements and ethnic neighborhoods. Ellis Island (1892) processed arrivals in New York.
1882: Chinese Exclusion Act: The first U.S. law to ban immigration by one national group. It was renewed and made permanent and was not repealed until 1943.
1883: Pendleton Civil Service Act: Passed after a disappointed office seeker killed President Garfield (1881). Some federal jobs were filled by merit exams instead of the spoils system.
1886: Haymarket affair: A bomb at a Chicago labor rally killed police officers; anarchists were convicted and unions were blamed, hurting the Knights of Labor.
1886: American Federation of Labor: Samuel Gompers organized skilled workers by craft and focused on "bread and butter" goals: higher wages, shorter hours and better conditions.
1887: Interstate Commerce Act: Created the Interstate Commerce Commission, the first federal regulatory agency, to make railroad rates fair; it was weak at first.
1887: Dawes Act: Broke up reservation land into individual plots (160 acres to a family head) to turn Native people into farmers and assimilate them. "Surplus" land was sold to white settlers, and Native landholding fell from about 138 million acres to 48 million by 1934.
1889: Hull House: Jane Addams's settlement house in Chicago offered immigrants classes, child care and help adjusting to city life. Settlement workers became key Progressive reformers.
1889: The Gospel of Wealth: Andrew Carnegie argued the rich had a duty to use their fortunes for public good, such as libraries. It sits alongside Social Darwinism, which said success showed the "fittest" and that government should not help the poor.
1890: Sherman Antitrust Act: Banned trusts and monopolies "in restraint of trade," but courts at first used it more against unions than corporations.
1890: Wounded Knee: The U.S. Army killed about 250–300 Lakota, many of them women and children, after the spread of the Ghost Dance. It marked the end of armed Native resistance on the Plains.
1890: The frontier "closes": The census said there was no longer a clear line of settlement. Historian Frederick Jackson Turner argued in 1893 that the frontier had shaped American democracy.
1890s: Jim Crow and the loss of Black voting: Southern states used poll taxes, literacy tests, grandfather clauses and white-only primaries to keep Black men from voting, and passed segregation laws upheld in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). Lynching spread; Ida B. Wells exposed it starting in 1892.
The New South: Leaders like Henry Grady called for Southern factories, railroads and textile mills, but the South stayed mostly poor, rural and dependent on cotton and sharecropping.
1892: Homestead Strike: Steelworkers at Carnegie's Homestead, Pennsylvania, plant fought hired Pinkerton guards; the state militia broke the strike and the union.
1892: Populist (People's) Party and the Omaha Platform: Farmers demanded free coinage of silver (to raise prices and ease debt), a graduated income tax, government ownership of railroads and telegraphs, and direct election of senators. Many of these ideas later became law in the Progressive Era.
1893: Panic of 1893: The worst depression up to that time; unemployment soared and Coxey's Army of jobless men marched on Washington (1894).
1894: Pullman Strike: Eugene Debs's American Railway Union stopped trains nationwide. President Cleveland sent troops and a court injunction ended the strike; Debs was jailed.
1895: Atlanta Compromise speech: Booker T. Washington urged Black Southerners to focus on job training and economic progress and put off demands for equality. W. E. B. Du Bois later rejected this approach.
1896: Election of 1896: Democrat and Populist William Jennings Bryan ("Cross of Gold" speech for free silver) lost to Republican William McKinley, backed by business and cities. Populism faded and Republicans led national politics for most of the next 36 years.
Gilded Age politics: Close elections, high voter turnout and fights over tariffs, money and civil service. City political machines such as Tammany Hall (Boss Tweed) traded jobs and help for immigrant votes, often with corruption.
Gilded Age reformers: The Social Gospel movement applied Christian ethics to city problems; Henry George (Progress and Poverty, 1879) and Edward Bellamy (Looking Backward, 1888) criticized inequality; the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (1874) fought alcohol and backed women's suffrage.
Middle class and leisure: White-collar jobs, department stores, mail-order catalogs, professional sports and amusement parks grew as cities did. More women went to college and into jobs like teaching, nursing and office work.

Period 7 (1890–1945): timeline

Unit 7

1890: Mahan's The Influence of Sea Power upon History: Alfred Thayer Mahan argued that great nations need a strong navy, overseas bases and coaling stations. It helped convince leaders to build a modern navy and seek colonies.
1893–1898: Hawaii: American sugar planters overthrew Queen Liliuokalani in 1893 backed by U.S. Marines whom the American minister sent ashore. The U.S. annexed Hawaii in 1898.
1898: Spanish–American War: Sparked by Cuba's revolt against Spain, yellow journalism (Hearst and Pulitzer) and the explosion of the USS Maine. The Teller Amendment promised not to annex Cuba, and the U.S. won quickly in Cuba and the Philippines.
1898: Treaty of Paris (1898): Spain gave the U.S. Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines (for $20 million), and Cuba was freed from Spain but stayed under U.S. military rule until 1902. The Anti-Imperialist League, including Mark Twain and Andrew Carnegie, opposed taking colonies.
1899–1902: Philippine–American War: Filipinos led by Emilio Aguinaldo fought for independence against U.S. rule. It was brutal, and an estimated 200,000 or more Filipinos died, mostly civilians.
1899–1900: Open Door Policy: Secretary of State John Hay asked the powers to let all nations trade equally in China rather than carve it up. U.S. troops also helped crush China's Boxer Rebellion (1900).
1901: Platt Amendment: Forced into Cuba's constitution: the U.S. could intervene in Cuba and got a naval base at Guantánamo Bay, making Cuba a protectorate.
1901: Theodore Roosevelt becomes president: After McKinley's assassination, TR's Square Deal promised fairness for business, labor and consumers; he settled the 1902 coal strike, sued trusts like Northern Securities and protected forests and parks.
1903–1914: Panama Canal: TR backed Panama's revolt against Colombia, then got the land to build the canal, which opened in 1914.
1904: Roosevelt Corollary: Added to the Monroe Doctrine: the U.S. would act as an "international police power" in Latin America to keep Europeans out ("speak softly and carry a big stick"). Taft's dollar diplomacy used investment instead.
Progressive Era (about 1890–1920): Mostly middle-class reformers used government and experts to fix problems of industry and cities. Muckraking journalists exposed them: Ida Tarbell on Standard Oil, Lincoln Steffens on city corruption, Jacob Riis (How the Other Half Lives, 1890) on tenements.
Progressive political reforms: The initiative (voters propose laws), referendum (voters approve laws), recall (voters remove officials), direct primaries and the secret ballot aimed to take power from machines. Wisconsin's Robert La Follette was a leading example.
1906: The Jungle, Pure Food and Drug Act and Meat Inspection Act: Upton Sinclair's novel about Chicago meatpacking disgusted readers, and Congress quickly required federal meat inspection and honest labels on food and medicine.
1905–1909: Niagara Movement and NAACP: W. E. B. Du Bois and others demanded full civil and political rights now. They helped found the NAACP (1909), which fought segregation in court.
1911: Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire: 146 garment workers, mostly young immigrant women, died behind locked doors in New York, leading to new workplace safety laws.
1912: Election of 1912: Woodrow Wilson (New Freedom: break up trusts, lower tariffs) beat TR's Progressive "Bull Moose" Party (New Nationalism: regulate big business), Taft and socialist Eugene Debs.
1913–1914: Wilson's reforms: The 16th Amendment (income tax) and 17th Amendment (direct election of senators) were ratified in 1913. Wilson then signed the Underwood Tariff (lower rates), Federal Reserve Act (central banking system), Clayton Antitrust Act (unions are not trusts) and the Federal Trade Commission. Wilson also segregated federal offices.
Conservation: TR and Gifford Pinchot wanted wise use of resources and added national forests; John Muir wanted wilderness preserved. They clashed over damming the Hetch Hetchy Valley.
1914–1917: U.S. neutrality in World War I: The U.S. traded mostly with Britain and France. Germany's submarines sank the Lusitania (1915), killing 128 Americans; Wilson won reelection in 1916 with "He kept us out of war."
1917: The U.S. enters World War I: Germany restarted unrestricted submarine warfare, and the Zimmermann Telegram offered Mexico U.S. land if it joined Germany. Congress declared war in April 1917; Wilson promised to make the world "safe for democracy."
1917–1918: The home front: The draft, Liberty Bonds and the War Industries Board ran the economy; George Creel's Committee on Public Information sold the war. The Espionage (1917) and Sedition (1918) Acts jailed critics such as Debs, and German Americans faced suspicion.
1910s–1970: The Great Migration: About 6 million Black Southerners moved to Northern and Western cities for factory jobs and to escape Jim Crow. It began in earnest during World War I, and race riots followed, such as the Chicago riot of 1919.
1918: Fourteen Points: Wilson's peace plan: open diplomacy, freedom of the seas, free trade, arms cuts, self-determination for nations and a League of Nations. The war ended with the armistice of November 11, 1918.
1919–1920: Treaty of Versailles rejected: Senate Republicans led by Henry Cabot Lodge feared the League's Article X would drag the U.S. into wars without Congress. The Senate rejected the treaty, and the U.S. never joined the League.
1919–1920: First Red Scare: After the Russian Revolution, strikes and bombings, the Palmer Raids arrested thousands of suspected radicals and deported hundreds of immigrants. Sacco and Vanzetti, Italian anarchists convicted of murder in 1921 on weak evidence, were executed in 1927.
1920: Prohibition and women's suffrage: The 18th Amendment (in force 1920) banned alcohol, which led to bootlegging and organized crime. The 19th Amendment (1920) gave women the vote after decades of work by Susan B. Anthony, Carrie Chapman Catt and Alice Paul.
1920s: A new consumer culture: Henry Ford's moving assembly line (1913) made the Model T affordable; radio, movies, advertising and buying on credit created a national mass culture. Republican presidents Harding, Coolidge and Hoover favored business.
1920s: Harlem Renaissance: A flowering of Black art, writing and music in Harlem: Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong. Marcus Garvey's UNIA promoted Black pride and a return to Africa.
1920s: Cultural clashes: Flappers and jazz versus traditional values. The Ku Klux Klan revived (1915) with millions of members, attacking Black Americans, Catholics, Jews and immigrants; the Scopes Trial (1925) pitted teaching evolution against religious fundamentalism.
1921 and 1924: Immigration quotas: The Emergency Quota Act (1921) and the Immigration Act of 1924 set quotas by national origin that cut immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe and banned almost all immigration from Asia.
1921–1922: Washington Naval Conference: The U.S., Britain, Japan, France and Italy agreed to limit battleship building, a sign that the U.S. stayed involved abroad without joining the League.
1924: Indian Citizenship Act: Made all Native Americans born in the U.S. citizens, though some states still blocked them from voting for decades.
1928: Kellogg–Briand Pact: Dozens of nations promised not to use war to settle disputes, with no way to enforce it.
October 1929: Stock market crash: Prices collapsed after years of speculation and buying stocks on margin (with borrowed money). Deeper causes of the Great Depression: unequal income, overproduction, weak farms, shaky banks and falling world trade.
1930: Smoot–Hawley Tariff: Raised tariffs to among the highest levels in U.S. history; other countries retaliated and world trade shrank, deepening the Depression.
1929–1933: Hoover and the Depression: Hoover relied on voluntary cooperation and later loans to banks and businesses (Reconstruction Finance Corporation, 1932) but opposed direct relief to people. Shantytowns were called Hoovervilles, and troops drove the Bonus Army of veterans out of Washington (1932).
1930s: Dust Bowl: Drought and over-plowing turned the southern Plains into dust storms; many "Okies" migrated to California.
1933: First New Deal (the Hundred Days): FDR's relief, recovery and reform: a bank holiday and the Emergency Banking Act, the FDIC to insure deposits, the Civilian Conservation Corps, the Agricultural Adjustment Act, the Tennessee Valley Authority and the National Industrial Recovery Act. The 21st Amendment ended Prohibition.
1935: Second New Deal: The Works Progress Administration hired millions; the Social Security Act created old-age pensions and unemployment insurance; the Wagner Act protected the right to unionize. Critics: Huey Long (Share Our Wealth) and Father Coughlin wanted more, while the American Liberty League called it socialism.
1935–1937: Unions grow: The Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) organized whole industries, including unskilled workers; the Flint sit-down strike (1936–1937) won union recognition from General Motors.
1936: The New Deal coalition: FDR won in a landslide with urban workers, union members, immigrants and their children, Black voters (who switched from the Republicans), farmers and white Southerners. Democrats stayed the majority party for decades.
1937: Court-packing plan: After the Supreme Court struck down the NIRA and the AAA, FDR proposed adding up to six justices. Congress refused, but the Court began upholding New Deal laws.
1938: Fair Labor Standards Act: Set a federal minimum wage and 40-hour workweek and limited child labor. It was the last major New Deal law; a 1937–1938 recession had slowed recovery.
1933: Good Neighbor Policy: FDR promised not to intervene militarily in Latin America; U.S. troops left Haiti in 1934 and the Platt Amendment was repealed that year (Marines had already left Nicaragua in 1933).
1935–1939: Neutrality Acts: Banned arms sales and loans to nations at war to avoid repeating World War I; in 1939 Britain and France could buy arms on a cash-and-carry basis.
1940–1941: Steps toward war: The destroyers-for-bases deal with Britain, the first peacetime draft (1940), Lend-Lease (March 1941) to supply the Allies, and the Atlantic Charter (August 1941) with Churchill on goals for the postwar world.
1941: Executive Order 8802: FDR banned racial discrimination in defense industries after A. Philip Randolph threatened a march on Washington.
December 7, 1941: Pearl Harbor: Japan's surprise attack on the U.S. fleet in Hawaii killed about 2,400 Americans. The U.S. declared war on Japan, and Germany and Italy then declared war on the U.S.
1942: Executive Order 9066: Forced about 120,000 Japanese Americans on the West Coast, about two-thirds of them U.S. citizens, into incarceration camps. Upheld in Korematsu v. United States (1944); Congress apologized and paid survivors in 1988.
1941–1945: Mobilization: War production ended the Depression. Women ("Rosie the Riveter") and Black and Mexican American workers took factory jobs; the Bracero Program (1942–1964) brought Mexican farmworkers; the Double V campaign sought victory over fascism abroad and racism at home.
1942–1945: Military strategy: The Allies agreed to defeat Germany first. Midway (1942) turned the Pacific war; D-Day (June 6, 1944) opened a western front in France; island hopping moved U.S. forces toward Japan. Germany surrendered on May 8, 1945.
August 1945: Atomic bombs: After the Manhattan Project, the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima (August 6) and Nagasaki (August 9), and Japan surrendered. Historians still debate whether the bombs were necessary.
1945: Yalta, Potsdam and the United Nations: At Yalta (February) FDR, Churchill and Stalin agreed on occupation zones in Germany, Soviet entry into the war against Japan and a United Nations; Stalin promised free elections in Eastern Europe but did not hold them. The UN was founded in 1945 with the U.S. as a leading member.

Period 8 (1945–1980): timeline

Unit 8

1946–1947: Containment: George Kennan argued the U.S. should contain Soviet communism where it was rather than roll it back; Churchill warned of an "iron curtain" across Europe (1946). Containment guided U.S. policy for the whole Cold War.
1947: Truman Doctrine: Truman asked for $400 million to help Greece and Turkey resist communism, promising to support "free peoples" against takeover.
1947–1948: Marshall Plan: About $13 billion in U.S. aid rebuilt Western Europe's economies so communism would be less appealing; the Soviets refused it for Eastern Europe.
1947: National Security Act: Created the CIA, the National Security Council and a unified military command that became the Department of Defense.
1947: Taft–Hartley Act: Passed over Truman's veto, it limited union power by banning closed shops and letting states pass right-to-work laws.
1947: Truman's loyalty program and HUAC: Federal workers were screened for loyalty, and the House Un-American Activities Committee investigated Hollywood, leading to blacklists. These started the Second Red Scare.
1948–1949: Berlin Airlift: When the Soviets blockaded West Berlin, the U.S. and Britain flew in supplies for almost a year until the blockade ended.
1948: Executive Order 9981: Truman desegregated the armed forces. Southern Democrats who opposed civil rights ran Strom Thurmond as a "Dixiecrat" that year.
1949: NATO, the Soviet bomb and communist China: The U.S. joined its first peacetime military alliance, NATO. The same year the Soviets tested an atomic bomb and Mao's communists won China's civil war, raising fears at home.
1950: NSC-68: A secret plan calling for a huge military buildup to contain communism worldwide; the Korean War made it happen.
1950–1953: Korean War: North Korea invaded South Korea; UN forces led by the U.S. pushed back, China entered and Truman fired General MacArthur for wanting a wider war. It ended in a 1953 armistice near the 38th parallel, a limited war.
1950–1954: McCarthyism: Senator Joseph McCarthy claimed communists filled the State Department and ruined careers with unproven charges. The Rosenbergs were executed as atomic spies (1953). McCarthy fell after the televised Army–McCarthy hearings and Senate censure (1954).
1944–1950s: Postwar boom and the GI Bill: The GI Bill paid for veterans' college and home loans, helping build a huge middle class. The baby boom, suburbs like Levittown (whites only at first) and the Interstate Highway Act (1956) reshaped the country.
Suburbs, redlining and the Sun Belt: Federal housing loans favored white suburbs and refused loans in Black and mixed neighborhoods (redlining), deepening segregation. Air conditioning and defense jobs helped the Sun Belt in the South and West grow fast.
1950s: Conformity and its critics: Television spread a shared mass culture and ideals of suburban family life. Critics included Beat writers like Jack Kerouac, and rock and roll drew on Black music and worried parents.
1953–1954: CIA covert actions: Under Eisenhower, the CIA helped overthrow elected leaders in Iran (1953) and Guatemala (1954) seen as threats to U.S. interests.
1954: Brown v. Board of Education: The Supreme Court ruled school segregation unconstitutional. Southern leaders answered with massive resistance, including the Southern Manifesto (1956).
1954: Geneva Accords and the domino theory: After the French lost at Dien Bien Phu, Vietnam was split at the 17th parallel. Eisenhower argued that if one country fell to communism, its neighbors would fall like dominoes, so the U.S. backed South Vietnam.
1955–1956: Montgomery Bus Boycott: Sparked by Rosa Parks's arrest, Black residents boycotted city buses for over a year and won integrated buses. It made Martin Luther King Jr. a national leader of nonviolent protest; the murder of Emmett Till (1955) had also shocked the nation.
1957: Little Rock Nine: Eisenhower sent federal troops to protect nine Black students integrating Central High School after Arkansas's governor tried to block them.
1957: Sputnik: The Soviet satellite scared Americans into the space race; Congress created NASA and funded science and math education (National Defense Education Act, 1958).
1960: Greensboro sit-ins and SNCC: Black college students sat at a whites-only lunch counter, and sit-ins spread across the South. Ella Baker helped them found the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.
1961: Eisenhower's farewell address: Warned against the growing power of the "military-industrial complex."
1961: Bay of Pigs and the Berlin Wall: A CIA-trained force of Cuban exiles failed to overthrow Fidel Castro. Later that year the Soviets and East Germany built the Berlin Wall.
1961: Freedom Rides: Black and white activists rode buses across the South to test court rulings against segregated bus terminals and were attacked by mobs.
October 1962: Cuban Missile Crisis: The closest the world came to nuclear war. The Soviets removed missiles from Cuba in exchange for a U.S. promise not to invade Cuba (and secretly removing U.S. missiles from Turkey). A hotline and the Limited Test Ban Treaty (1963) followed.
1962: Silent Spring and the Port Huron Statement: Rachel Carson's book on pesticides like DDT launched the modern environmental movement. Students for a Democratic Society's Port Huron Statement started the New Left.
1963: Birmingham and the March on Washington: Police attacked marchers in Birmingham, and King wrote his "Letter from Birmingham Jail." At the March on Washington, about 250,000 people heard King's "I Have a Dream" speech.
1963: The Feminine Mystique: Betty Friedan described the frustration of educated suburban housewives and helped launch second-wave feminism. The Equal Pay Act passed the same year.
November 22, 1963: Kennedy assassinated: Lyndon B. Johnson became president and used the moment to pass Kennedy's civil rights bill and his own programs.
1964: Civil Rights Act: Banned segregation in public places like restaurants and hotels and job discrimination by race, color, religion, sex or national origin. The 24th Amendment also banned poll taxes in federal elections.
1964: Gulf of Tonkin Resolution: After reported attacks on U.S. ships, Congress let Johnson use military force in Vietnam without declaring war. He sent combat troops in 1965 and bombed the North.
1964–1965: The Great Society: Johnson's War on Poverty (Job Corps, Head Start), Medicare (health care for older people), Medicaid (for the poor), federal aid to schools and the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which ended national-origin quotas and led to more immigrants from Asia and Latin America.
1965: Selma and the Voting Rights Act: State troopers beat marchers at Selma, Alabama. The Voting Rights Act suspended literacy tests in states and counties with low Black registration (a nationwide ban followed in 1970) and sent federal examiners to register Black voters, and Black voter registration in the South soared.
1965–1968: Black Power and urban unrest: Malcolm X (killed 1965) and Stokely Carmichael urged self-defense and Black pride; the Black Panthers formed in 1966. Riots broke out in Watts (1965), Detroit and other cities over poverty and police abuse.
1965 onward: Rights movements expand: César Chávez and Dolores Huerta's United Farm Workers led grape boycotts; NOW (1966) fought sex discrimination; the American Indian Movement (1968) demanded sovereignty; the Stonewall uprising (1969) launched the gay rights movement.
1968: Year of turmoil: The Tet Offensive (January) shook faith in the war and widened the credibility gap; Johnson declined to run again; Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated; protesters and police clashed at the Democratic convention in Chicago. Richard Nixon won with "law and order."
1960s: Counterculture: Young people rejected mainstream values through rock music, drugs, communes and protest; the Woodstock festival (1969) was a high point. Antiwar protest spread on campuses.
1969–1973: Vietnamization and withdrawal: Nixon pulled out U.S. troops while training South Vietnam's army, but widened the war into Cambodia, sparking protests where National Guard troops killed four students at Kent State (1970). The Paris Peace Accords (1973) ended U.S. fighting; Saigon fell to North Vietnam in 1975.
1970: Earth Day, the EPA and the Clean Air Act: Millions joined the first Earth Day; Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency; the Clean Air Act (1970), Clean Water Act (1972) and Endangered Species Act (1973) followed.
1971: Pentagon Papers and the 26th Amendment: The leaked study showed leaders had misled the public about Vietnam; the Supreme Court allowed newspapers to publish it. The 26th Amendment lowered the voting age to 18.
1972: Détente: Nixon visited communist China and signed the SALT I arms limit with the Soviets, easing Cold War tensions.
1972: Title IX and the ERA: Title IX banned sex discrimination in schools that get federal money, opening up girls' sports. Congress passed the Equal Rights Amendment, but Phyllis Schlafly's campaign helped stop it from being ratified.
1973: Roe v. Wade and the War Powers Resolution: Roe made abortion a constitutional right and sparked a powerful anti-abortion movement. The War Powers Resolution required the president to tell Congress within 48 hours of sending troops and to bring them home within 60 days (plus 30 to withdraw) unless Congress approves.
1973: Oil embargo: Arab members of OPEC cut off oil to the U.S. for backing Israel, causing gas shortages and soaring prices. With inflation and unemployment both high (stagflation), the long postwar boom ended.
1972–1974: Watergate: Nixon's campaign broke into Democratic offices and Nixon tried to cover it up. After the Supreme Court forced him to release his tapes, he resigned (August 1974), and Gerald Ford pardoned him. Trust in government fell.
1977–1980: Carter's presidency: Carter stressed human rights in foreign policy, returned the Panama Canal by treaty and brokered the Camp David Accords (1978) between Egypt and Israel. Stagflation, an energy crisis and the Iran hostage crisis (1979–1981) hurt him.
1979: Iran hostage crisis: After Iran's revolution, militants seized the U.S. embassy and held 52 Americans for 444 days, released only as Reagan took office.
1979: Soviet invasion of Afghanistan: Ended détente: Carter halted grain sales, withdrew a new arms treaty from the Senate and boycotted the 1980 Moscow Olympics.
1970s: Rise of the New Right: Evangelical Christians (Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority, 1979), opponents of busing and the ERA, and tax revolts like California's Proposition 13 (1978) built a conservative movement that helped elect Reagan.

Period 9 (1980–present): timeline

Unit 9

1980: Reagan elected: Ronald Reagan won with a coalition of business conservatives, the Religious Right, Sun Belt voters and "Reagan Democrats" (white working-class voters), promising smaller government, lower taxes and a tougher stand on the Soviets.
1981: Reaganomics: Supply-side economics: big tax cuts, especially for top earners, plus deregulation, on the theory that growth would trickle down. Inflation fell, but military spending and tax cuts produced record deficits.
1981: PATCO strike: Reagan fired over 11,000 striking air traffic controllers, a major blow to organized labor.
1983: Strategic Defense Initiative: Reagan called the Soviet Union an "evil empire" and proposed a space-based missile shield ("Star Wars"), part of a large military buildup.
1985: Gorbachev takes power: The new Soviet leader opened up debate (glasnost) and tried to reform the economy (perestroika).
1986: Iran–Contra affair: Officials secretly sold arms to Iran and used the money to fund the Contras fighting Nicaragua's leftist government, against a ban passed by Congress.
1986: Immigration Reform and Control Act: Gave legal status to about 2.7 million undocumented immigrants who had lived in the U.S. since before 1982 and punished employers who hired undocumented workers.
1987: INF Treaty: Reagan and Gorbachev eliminated a whole class of nuclear missiles for the first time.
1989: Fall of the Berlin Wall: East Germans opened the wall in November as communist governments across Eastern Europe fell; Germany reunified in 1990.
1990: Americans with Disabilities Act: Banned discrimination against people with disabilities and required accessible public places.
1991: Persian Gulf War: After Iraq invaded Kuwait (1990), a U.S.-led UN coalition drove Iraq out in a short war under President George H. W. Bush.
1991: Soviet Union collapses: The USSR broke into 15 countries in December, ending the Cold War and leaving the U.S. the only superpower.
1990s: Digital revolution and globalization: Personal computers and the internet transformed work, communication and shopping. Factory jobs moved overseas (deindustrialization), service and tech jobs grew, and the gap between rich and poor widened.
1994: NAFTA: The North American Free Trade Agreement (signed 1992, in force 1994) ended most tariffs among the U.S., Canada and Mexico. Business welcomed it; unions blamed it for lost factory jobs.
1994: Contract with America: Newt Gingrich's Republicans promised smaller government and won control of the House for the first time in 40 years.
1996: Welfare reform: President Bill Clinton, a centrist "New Democrat," signed a law that replaced the main federal welfare program with block grants to states, work requirements and time limits. The federal budget ran surpluses in 1998–2001.
1990s–2000s: Changing population: Immigration from Latin America and Asia grew, the population moved to the Sun Belt, and debates over undocumented immigration, bilingual education and border security grew sharper.
1998–1999: Clinton impeached: The House impeached Clinton for lying under oath about an affair; the Senate acquitted him.
2000: Bush v. Gore: The Supreme Court stopped the Florida recount, so George W. Bush won the presidency despite losing the national popular vote.
September 11, 2001: Terrorist attacks: Al-Qaeda hijackers crashed planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, killing nearly 3,000 people. The U.S. invaded Afghanistan (October 2001) to topple the Taliban, who sheltered al-Qaeda.
2001: USA PATRIOT Act: Expanded government power to watch and search suspected terrorists, starting debates over security versus civil liberties, along with the Guantánamo detention camp and harsh interrogations. The Department of Homeland Security was created in 2002.
2003: Iraq War: The U.S. invaded Iraq claiming it had weapons of mass destruction, which were never found. The war toppled Saddam Hussein but led to a long, costly occupation.
2007–2009: Great Recession: A housing bubble and risky mortgage lending caused a financial crisis. The government bailed out banks (TARP, 2008) and passed a stimulus (2009) and new bank rules (Dodd–Frank, 2010).
2008: Obama elected: Barack Obama became the first Black president. His Affordable Care Act (2010) expanded health insurance coverage and divided the parties sharply.
Climate change and energy: Debates grew over fossil fuels, global warming and international agreements such as the Kyoto Protocol (1997, never ratified by the U.S.) and the Paris Agreement (2015).

Key laws, traced by theme

Units 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9

Slavery in the territories: 1787 → 1820 → 1850 → 1854 → 1857: Northwest Ordinance (no slavery north of the Ohio) → Missouri Compromise (36°30′ line) → Compromise of 1850 (popular sovereignty in Utah and New Mexico) → Kansas–Nebraska Act (popular sovereignty, line repealed) → Dred Scott (Congress can't ban slavery in any territory). Each deal broke down faster than the last.
Western land: 1785 → 1862 → 1887: Land Ordinance (survey into townships) → Homestead Act (160 free acres), Pacific Railway Act (land grants to railroads) and Morrill Act (land-grant colleges) → Dawes Act (Native reservation land split up and "surplus" sold).
Native American policy: 1830 → 1850s–1880s → 1887 → 1924 → 1934 → 1950s → 1975: Removal (Indian Removal Act) → reservations and wars → assimilation (Dawes Act, boarding schools) → citizenship (Indian Citizenship Act) → tribal self-government restored (Indian Reorganization Act, the "Indian New Deal") → termination of tribes and relocation to cities → self-determination (Indian Self-Determination Act, after AIM protests).
Immigration: 1882 → 1907 → 1921–1924 → 1942 → 1965 → 1986: Chinese Exclusion Act → Gentlemen's Agreement limiting Japanese immigration → national-origin quotas (Emergency Quota Act, Immigration Act of 1924) → Bracero Program → Immigration and Nationality Act (quotas ended) → Immigration Reform and Control Act (legal status plus employer penalties).
Tariffs and trade: 1816 → 1828 → 1890 → 1913 → 1930 → 1994: Tariff of 1816 (first protective tariff) → Tariff of Abominations (Nullification Crisis) → McKinley Tariff (very high) → Underwood Tariff (lowered, with an income tax) → Smoot–Hawley (among the highest ever, deepened the Depression) → NAFTA (free trade). Generally the North and business wanted high tariffs, the South and farmers low.
Banking and money: 1791 → 1816 → 1832 → 1890s → 1913 → 1933 → 2008: First Bank of the U.S. (Hamilton) → Second Bank → Jackson's veto (no central bank for decades) → free silver vs. gold standard (Bryan, 1896) → Federal Reserve → FDIC and bank regulation → TARP bank bailout and Dodd–Frank.
Regulating big business: 1887 → 1890 → 1906 → 1914 → 1934 → 1970s–1980s: Interstate Commerce Act → Sherman Antitrust Act → Pure Food and Drug Act, Meat Inspection Act and stronger railroad rules → Clayton Act and Federal Trade Commission → Securities and Exchange Commission (New Deal) → deregulation of airlines, trucking and banking under Carter and Reagan.
Labor: 1842 → 1914 → 1935 → 1938 → 1947 → 1981: Commonwealth v. Hunt (unions legal) → Clayton Act (unions not trusts) → Wagner Act (right to organize and bargain) → Fair Labor Standards Act (minimum wage, 40-hour week) → Taft–Hartley (limits on unions) → PATCO firings (labor's decline).
Civil liberties in wartime: 1798 → 1861 → 1917–1918 → 1942 → 1950 → 2001: Alien and Sedition Acts → Lincoln suspends habeas corpus → Espionage and Sedition Acts (Schenck) → Executive Order 9066 (Korematsu) → McCarran Internal Security Act (registration of communist groups) → USA PATRIOT Act. Each war or scare brought limits on dissent or on targeted groups.
Civil rights laws: 1866 → 1870–1875 → 1941–1948 → 1957 → 1964 → 1965 → 1968: Civil Rights Act of 1866 → Enforcement Acts and the Civil Rights Act of 1875 (struck down in 1883) → Executive Orders 8802 and 9981 → Civil Rights Act of 1957 (weak, but the first since Reconstruction) → Civil Rights Act of 1964 → Voting Rights Act → Fair Housing Act (Civil Rights Act of 1968).
Women's rights: 1848 → 1920 → 1963 → 1964 → 1972 → 1973: Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments → 19th Amendment → Equal Pay Act and The Feminine Mystique → Title VII of the Civil Rights Act (bans job discrimination by sex) → Title IX and the ERA (passed by Congress, never ratified) → Roe v. Wade.
The safety net: 1935 → 1944 → 1965 → 1996 → 2010: Social Security Act → GI Bill → Medicare and Medicaid → welfare reform (work requirements, time limits) → Affordable Care Act. It grew in liberal eras (New Deal, Great Society) and was trimmed in conservative ones.
The environment: 1872 → 1900s → 1962 → 1970–1973 → 1997–2015: Yellowstone, the first national park → TR's conservation (national forests, Forest Service) → Silent Spring → EPA, Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act and Endangered Species Act → climate agreements (Kyoto, Paris).
Foreign policy and war powers: 1796 → 1823 → 1904 → 1935–1941 → 1947 → 1964 → 1973: Washington's warning against permanent alliances → Monroe Doctrine → Roosevelt Corollary → Neutrality Acts, then Lend-Lease → Truman Doctrine and containment → Gulf of Tonkin Resolution (blank check in Vietnam) → War Powers Resolution (Congress pushes back).
Who could vote: 1820s → 1870 → 1890s → 1920 → 1964–1965 → 1971: Property tests dropped for white men → 15th Amendment (Black men) → poll taxes, literacy tests and white primaries take Black votes away → 19th Amendment (women) → 24th Amendment and Voting Rights Act → 26th Amendment (age 18).

Supreme Court cases

Units 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9

Marbury v. Madison (1803): William Marbury sued for a judgeship Adams gave him at the last minute. The Court struck down part of the Judiciary Act of 1789, establishing judicial review: the power of courts to declare laws unconstitutional.
McCulloch v. Maryland (1819): Maryland tried to tax the Second Bank of the United States. The Court said the bank was constitutional under the necessary and proper clause (implied powers) and a state cannot tax the federal government ("the power to tax involves the power to destroy").
Gibbons v. Ogden (1824): Struck down a New York steamboat monopoly: only Congress can regulate interstate commerce, defined broadly to include navigation. It helped build a national market.
Cherokee Nation v. Georgia (1831): The Court called the Cherokee a "domestic dependent nation," not a foreign country, so it said it could not hear their case against Georgia.
Worcester v. Georgia (1832): Georgia's laws had no force in Cherokee territory; only the federal government could deal with Native nations. Jackson refused to enforce it, and removal went ahead.
Commonwealth v. Hunt (1842): A Massachusetts state court (not the U.S. Supreme Court) ruled that labor unions were legal and could strike, as long as they used peaceful means.
Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857): Chief Justice Roger Taney ruled that Black Americans were not citizens and could not sue, and that Congress could not ban slavery in the territories because enslaved people were property under the Fifth Amendment. The Missouri Compromise line was void; the 13th and 14th Amendments overturned the ruling.
Ex parte Milligan (1866): Civilians cannot be tried by military courts where regular civilian courts are open, even in wartime.
Slaughterhouse Cases (1873): Read the 14th Amendment's protection of citizens' "privileges or immunities" very narrowly, covering only a few national rights. It weakened the amendment as a shield for freedpeople.
Munn v. Illinois (1877): Upheld Granger laws: states can regulate private businesses, like grain elevators, that serve the public interest.
Civil Rights Cases (1883): Struck down the Civil Rights Act of 1875: the 14th Amendment stops discrimination by states, not by private businesses such as hotels and theaters.
Wabash v. Illinois (1886): States cannot regulate railroad rates for trips that cross state lines; only Congress can. Congress responded with the Interstate Commerce Act (1887).
United States v. E. C. Knight Co. (1895): The sugar trust controlled about 98 percent of refining, but the Court said manufacturing is not commerce, so the Sherman Act did not apply. It made antitrust law weak for years.
In re Debs (1895): Upheld the court order that broke the Pullman Strike: the federal government could stop strikes that blocked interstate commerce and the mail.
Plessy v. Ferguson (1896): Homer Plessy challenged a Louisiana law segregating train cars. The Court upheld "separate but equal" facilities, which legalized Jim Crow segregation until Brown (1954). Justice Harlan's dissent said "our Constitution is color-blind."
Insular Cases (1901): The Constitution does not fully apply in new territories like Puerto Rico and the Philippines ("the Constitution does not follow the flag"), so their people did not automatically get full rights.
Northern Securities Co. v. United States (1904): Upheld TR's breakup of a railroad holding company under the Sherman Act, reviving antitrust law.
Lochner v. New York (1905): Struck down a New York limit on bakers' hours as violating "liberty of contract" under the 14th Amendment. It blocked many labor laws until 1937.
Muller v. Oregon (1908): Upheld a 10-hour workday for women, based on Louis Brandeis's brief of social science data. It protected women workers but rested on the idea that women were weaker.
Schenck v. United States (1919): Upheld the Espionage Act conviction of a socialist who handed out anti-draft leaflets. Free speech can be limited when it creates a "clear and present danger," like falsely shouting fire in a crowded theater.
Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States (1935): The "sick chicken" case struck down the National Industrial Recovery Act: Congress gave the president too much lawmaking power, and a local poultry business was not interstate commerce.
West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish (1937): Upheld a state minimum wage for women, ending the Lochner era. Coming right after FDR's court-packing plan, it was called "the switch in time that saved nine."
Korematsu v. United States (1944): Fred Korematsu refused to report for removal. The Court upheld Japanese American exclusion as a wartime necessity. In 2018 the Court said Korematsu had been wrong the day it was decided.
Brown v. Board of Education (1954): With Thurgood Marshall arguing for the NAACP, a unanimous Court under Earl Warren ruled that segregated public schools are "inherently unequal" and violate the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause, overturning Plessy for schools. Brown II (1955) ordered desegregation "with all deliberate speed."
Mapp v. Ohio (1961): Evidence from an illegal search cannot be used in state courts (the exclusionary rule).
Engel v. Vitale (1962): Official prayer in public schools violates the First Amendment's establishment clause, even if it is voluntary. Religious conservatives were outraged.
Gideon v. Wainwright (1963): States must provide a lawyer to people accused of serious crimes who cannot afford one.
Griswold v. Connecticut (1965): Struck down a ban on birth control for married couples and recognized a constitutional right to privacy, the basis for Roe.
Miranda v. Arizona (1966): Police must tell suspects in custody that they have the right to stay silent and to have a lawyer before questioning them.
Loving v. Virginia (1967): Struck down state bans on interracial marriage under equal protection and due process.
Tinker v. Des Moines (1969): Students who wore black armbands to protest the Vietnam War were protected by free speech, as long as they did not disrupt school.
Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education (1971): Allowed busing to desegregate schools, which led to angry protests in many cities, North and South.
New York Times Co. v. United States (1971): The government could not block newspapers from publishing the Pentagon Papers; this kind of prior restraint is almost never allowed.
Roe v. Wade (1973): The right to privacy covers a woman's choice to have an abortion, especially early in pregnancy. It mobilized the anti-abortion movement and the New Right; Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization (2022) overturned it.
United States v. Nixon (1974): Executive privilege is not absolute, so Nixon had to hand over the Watergate tapes. He resigned about two weeks later.
Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978): Racial quotas in college admissions are unconstitutional, but race could be one factor among many (affirmative action). The Court ended race-conscious admissions in 2023.
Bush v. Gore (2000): Stopped Florida's recount of the close presidential vote, so George W. Bush won Florida's electoral votes and the presidency.
Citizens United v. FEC (2010): Corporations and unions may spend unlimited money on independent political ads as free speech, adding to debates over money in politics.
Obergefell v. Hodges (2015): Same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry under the 14th Amendment.

The Constitution and its amendments

Units 3, 4, 5, 7, 8

The Constitution (written 1787, in effect 1789): Created a stronger federal government with federalism (power shared with the states), separation of powers into three branches, and checks and balances. It protected slavery without naming it: the Three-Fifths Clause, the fugitive slave clause and no ban on the slave trade before 1808.
Great Compromise: Settled the fight between big and small states: representation in the House by population and two senators per state.
Three-Fifths Compromise: Three-fifths of enslaved people were counted for a state's House seats and electoral votes, giving slaveholding states extra power in Congress and presidential elections.
Necessary and proper (elastic) clause: Lets Congress make laws needed to carry out its listed powers. Hamilton used it to defend the national bank, and McCulloch v. Maryland upheld that reading (loose construction); Jefferson favored strict construction.
Commerce clause: Gives Congress power over trade among the states and with other nations. It was the basis for Gibbons v. Ogden, railroad and antitrust laws, New Deal rules and the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
Supremacy clause: Federal laws and treaties outrank state laws, which is why nullification and secession were rejected.
First Amendment (1791): Freedom of religion (no established church), speech, press, assembly and petition. Key cases: Schenck, Engel, Tinker and New York Times v. U.S.
Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Amendments (1791): Protection from unreasonable searches; the right not to testify against yourself and to due process; and the right to a lawyer and a speedy jury trial. Key cases: Mapp, Miranda and Gideon.
Tenth Amendment (1791): Powers not given to the federal government belong to the states or the people. It is the basis for states' rights arguments.
12th Amendment (1804): Electors vote separately for president and vice president, after the 1800 tie between Jefferson and his running mate Aaron Burr.
13th Amendment (1865): Abolished slavery everywhere in the U.S., except as punishment for a crime.
14th Amendment (1868): Made everyone born in the U.S. a citizen (overturning Dred Scott) and barred states from denying due process or equal protection of the laws. It is the basis for Brown and most later civil rights cases.
15th Amendment (1870): Barred denying the vote because of race, color or having been enslaved. Women were left out, which split the women's movement; Southern states later got around it with poll taxes and literacy tests.
16th Amendment (1913): Allowed a federal income tax, a Populist and Progressive goal.
17th Amendment (1913): Voters, not state legislatures, elect senators.
18th Amendment (1919, in force 1920): Banned making, selling and transporting alcohol (Prohibition).
19th Amendment (1920): Women's right to vote nationwide.
21st Amendment (1933): Repealed Prohibition, the only amendment that cancels another.
22nd Amendment (1951): Limits presidents to two terms, a reaction to FDR's four election wins.
24th Amendment (1964): Banned poll taxes in federal elections.
26th Amendment (1971): Lowered the voting age to 18, partly because 18-year-olds were being drafted for Vietnam.
Equal Rights Amendment (failed): Would have banned denying equal rights because of sex. Congress passed it in 1972, but it fell short of the 38 states needed by the 1982 deadline.

Key people

Units 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9

Bartolomé de las Casas (1500s): Spanish priest who exposed Spanish cruelty to Native people and argued they should be treated as fully human.
John Winthrop (1630): Puritan governor of Massachusetts Bay who called the colony a "city upon a hill."
Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson (1630s): Dissenters banished from Massachusetts. Williams founded Rhode Island with religious freedom; Hutchinson challenged ministers' authority.
William Penn (1681): Quaker founder of Pennsylvania, with religious tolerance and fair land purchases from Native people.
Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield (1730s–1740s): Preachers of the First Great Awakening.
Benjamin Franklin (1700s): Printer, scientist and diplomat; proposed the Albany Plan and won the French alliance.
John Locke (1600s): English philosopher whose ideas of natural rights (life, liberty, property) and government by consent shaped the Declaration of Independence.
Thomas Paine (1776): Wrote Common Sense, which turned many colonists toward independence.
George Washington (1775–1797): Commanded the Continental Army, led the Constitutional Convention and served as the first president.
Thomas Jefferson (1776–1809): Wrote the Declaration of Independence, led the Democratic-Republicans, favored strict construction and farmers, and made the Louisiana Purchase.
Alexander Hamilton (1787–1795): Federalist Papers co-author and first treasury secretary; created the national bank and wanted a strong central government and commerce.
James Madison (1787–1817): "Father of the Constitution" and Federalist Papers co-author who later co-founded the Democratic-Republicans and was president in the War of 1812.
John and Abigail Adams: John was the second president (Alien and Sedition Acts); Abigail urged him to "remember the ladies."
John Marshall (1801–1835): Chief justice whose rulings strengthened the federal government and the Court (Marbury, McCulloch, Gibbons).
Tecumseh (1805–1813): Shawnee leader who, with his brother the Prophet, built a Native alliance to resist American expansion; killed in the War of 1812.
Henry Clay (1810s–1850): Kentucky senator, the "Great Compromiser": the American System, the Missouri Compromise, the 1833 tariff and the Compromise of 1850.
John C. Calhoun (1820s–1850): South Carolina leader of states' rights and nullification who defended slavery as a "positive good."
Andrew Jackson (1829–1837): Hero of New Orleans and champion of the "common man" who used the spoils system, removed Native nations, killed the national bank and faced down nullification.
Frederick Douglass (1840s–1890s): Escaped slavery and became the most famous Black abolitionist through his speeches, autobiography (1845) and newspaper.
Harriet Tubman (1850s): Escaped slavery and led dozens of others to freedom on the Underground Railroad; later a Union spy.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony: Leaders of the women's rights movement from Seneca Falls (1848) onward.
Dorothea Dix and Horace Mann (1840s): Reformers: Dix for better care of the mentally ill, Mann for free public schools.
Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau (1840s): Transcendentalist writers; Thoreau's "Civil Disobedience" defended breaking unjust laws.
James K. Polk (1845–1849): Expansionist president who got Oregon and the Mexican Cession.
Stephen Douglas (1850s): Illinois senator who championed popular sovereignty and the Kansas–Nebraska Act; lost to Lincoln in 1860.
Abraham Lincoln (1861–1865): Republican president who led the Union, issued the Emancipation Proclamation and pushed the 13th Amendment.
Andrew Johnson (1865–1869): Southern Democrat who became president after Lincoln's death; his lenient Reconstruction and vetoes led to his impeachment.
Thaddeus Stevens and Charles Sumner (1860s): Radical Republican leaders who pushed for Black rights during Reconstruction.
Ulysses S. Grant (1864–1877): Union's top general and president during Reconstruction; fought the Klan, but his administration had scandals.
Sitting Bull and Chief Joseph (1870s): Native leaders who resisted U.S. expansion: Sitting Bull at Little Bighorn (Lakota), Chief Joseph in the Nez Perce flight (1877).
Andrew Carnegie (1870s–1901): Steel magnate who used vertical integration and wrote the Gospel of Wealth.
John D. Rockefeller (1870s–1911): Standard Oil founder who used horizontal integration and trusts.
J. P. Morgan (1890s–1910s): Banker who reorganized railroads, created U.S. Steel (1901) and helped rescue the Treasury in 1895 and the banks in the Panic of 1907.
Samuel Gompers (1886–1924): Founder and longtime leader of the American Federation of Labor.
Eugene V. Debs (1894–1920): Led the Pullman Strike, then became the Socialist Party's presidential candidate; jailed under the Espionage Act.
Jane Addams (1889): Founded Hull House and led the settlement house movement.
Ida B. Wells (1890s): Black journalist who led the campaign against lynching.
Booker T. Washington (1881–1915): Founded Tuskegee Institute and urged economic progress before demands for equality.
W. E. B. Du Bois (1903–1960s): Scholar (The Souls of Black Folk) who demanded full equality now and helped found the NAACP.
William Jennings Bryan (1896–1925): Populist-Democratic "Cross of Gold" candidate for free silver; later helped prosecute the Scopes Trial.
Theodore Roosevelt (1901–1909): Progressive president: Square Deal, trust-busting, conservation, the Panama Canal and the Roosevelt Corollary.
Woodrow Wilson (1913–1921): Progressive president who created the Federal Reserve, led the U.S. into World War I and proposed the Fourteen Points and League of Nations.
Marcus Garvey (1920s): Led the UNIA, promoting Black pride, Black-owned businesses and a return to Africa.
Henry Ford (1908–1920s): Used the moving assembly line to make the Model T affordable and paid high wages so workers could buy cars.
Herbert Hoover (1929–1933): President when the Depression began; believed in voluntary cooperation and limited direct federal relief.
Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933–1945): President who created the New Deal and led the U.S. through most of World War II; elected four times.
Eleanor Roosevelt (1933–1962): First lady who championed the poor, women and Black Americans, and later helped write the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
A. Philip Randolph (1941–1963): Labor and civil rights leader whose threatened march won Executive Order 8802; helped organize the 1963 March on Washington.
Harry S. Truman (1945–1953): Dropped the atomic bombs, started containment (Truman Doctrine, Marshall Plan, NATO), desegregated the military and fought the Korean War.
Joseph McCarthy (1950–1954): Senator whose reckless accusations of communism gave McCarthyism its name.
Dwight D. Eisenhower (1953–1961): World War II commander and president: the Interstate Highway Act, troops to Little Rock, the domino theory and the warning about the military-industrial complex.
Earl Warren (1953–1969): Chief justice of a Court that expanded civil rights and the rights of accused people (Brown, Gideon, Miranda).
Thurgood Marshall (1954–1991): NAACP lawyer who won Brown, then the first Black Supreme Court justice (1967).
Rosa Parks (1955): Activist whose arrest for refusing to give up her bus seat started the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
Martin Luther King Jr. (1955–1968): Leader of nonviolent civil rights protest: Montgomery, Birmingham, the March on Washington and Selma.
Malcolm X (1950s–1965): Nation of Islam spokesman who urged Black self-defense and separatism; later moved toward broader cooperation before he was killed.
John F. Kennedy (1961–1963): President during the Bay of Pigs and Cuban Missile Crisis; proposed the civil rights bill before his assassination.
Lyndon B. Johnson (1963–1969): President of the Great Society, the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts and the escalation of the Vietnam War.
César Chávez and Dolores Huerta (1960s–1970s): Founded the United Farm Workers and led nonviolent strikes and boycotts for farmworkers.
Richard Nixon (1969–1974): President of Vietnamization, détente, the opening to China and the EPA; resigned over Watergate.
Jimmy Carter (1977–1981): President of the Camp David Accords, human rights diplomacy, stagflation and the Iran hostage crisis.
Ronald Reagan (1981–1989): Conservative president: tax cuts, deregulation, a military buildup and talks with Gorbachev that eased the Cold War.
Mikhail Gorbachev (1985–1991): Soviet leader whose reforms and refusal to crush Eastern Europe's revolutions helped end the Cold War.
Bill Clinton (1993–2001): Centrist Democrat: NAFTA, welfare reform, budget surpluses and impeachment.
George W. Bush (2001–2009): President during 9/11, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the 2008 financial crisis.
Barack Obama (2009–2017): First Black president: the stimulus, the Affordable Care Act and the end of U.S. combat in Iraq.

Political parties over time

Units 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9

1790s–1815: Federalists vs. Democratic-Republicans (First Party System): Federalists (Hamilton, John Adams): strong central government, national bank, loose construction, commerce, friendly to Britain. Democratic-Republicans (Jefferson, Madison): states' rights, strict construction, farmers, friendly to France. The Federalists died out after the Hartford Convention, leaving one party in the Era of Good Feelings until the 1824 election split it.
1830s–1850s: Democrats vs. Whigs (Second Party System): Jackson's Democrats: limited federal government, no national bank, expansion, the "common man"; strong among Southerners, Western farmers and Irish Catholics. Whigs (Clay, Webster): the American System, moral reform, a stronger Congress; strong among Northern business and evangelical Protestants. The Whigs collapsed over slavery in the 1850s.
1840s–1850s: Third parties over slavery and immigration: The Liberty Party (abolition, 1840), Free-Soil Party (no slavery in the territories, 1848) and Know-Nothings (anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant) drew voters from the old parties.
1854: Republican Party: Formed against the Kansas–Nebraska Act to stop slavery's spread, with a free-labor ideology. It won the presidency in 1860 and led the Union and Reconstruction.
1877–1896: Gilded Age stalemate: Republicans (the Union, tariffs, business; "waving the bloody shirt") vs. Democrats (the "Solid South" and urban immigrant machines). Elections were close and turnout was high.
1892–1896: Populists: The People's Party of Western and Southern farmers backed free silver and government ownership of railroads; it merged into the Democrats behind Bryan in 1896 and faded.
1896–1932: Republican era: After McKinley's win, Republicans held the White House except for Wilson's two terms. In 1912 TR's Progressive (Bull Moose) Party split the vote, and Debs's Socialists won about 6 percent.
1932–1968: The New Deal coalition: Democrats united urban workers, unions, immigrants' children, Black voters, farmers and the white South behind an active federal government. Southern Dixiecrats walked out over civil rights in 1948.
1964–1980: Realignment: After the Civil Rights Act, white Southern voters moved toward the Republicans (Goldwater in 1964, Nixon's "Southern strategy," George Wallace's third-party run in 1968). The New Right of religious and economic conservatives grew.
1980–1990s: The Reagan coalition and New Democrats: Republicans united tax cutters, anti-communists and the Religious Right. Democrats under Clinton moved toward the center ("New Democrats"); Ross Perot won about 19 percent as an independent in 1992.

Turning points for change-over-time essays

Units 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9

1492: Contact: Before: separate hemispheres with diverse Native societies. After: the Columbian Exchange, the collapse of Native populations, European empires and the Atlantic slave trade.
1675–1680: The colonial labor and power shift: Bacon's Rebellion pushed Chesapeake planters from indentured servants to enslaved Africans, and the Pueblo Revolt and Metacom's War reshaped Native–European relations.
1763: End of salutary neglect: Victory in the French and Indian War led Britain to tax and control the colonies, which set off the Revolution.
1776–1789: Revolution and Constitution: From British subjects to a republic built on natural rights and popular sovereignty, though slavery and limits on women's and Native rights remained.
1800–1828: Peaceful transfer of power and mass democracy: The election of 1800 showed parties could hand off power peacefully; by 1828 most white men could vote and parties ran mass campaigns.
1820s–1840s: From household production to a market economy: From local, household production to a national market economy with factories, wage labor, canals and railroads; the North and South grew apart economically.
1854–1861: Collapse of compromise: The Kansas–Nebraska Act, Dred Scott and the election of 1860 broke the party system and led to secession.
1863–1877: Emancipation and Reconstruction: Slavery ended and the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments redefined citizenship, but the Compromise of 1877 left Black Southerners to Jim Crow for nearly a century.
1865–1898: Industrialization: From a farm nation to the world's top industrial power, with big corporations, mass immigration, cities and labor conflict.
1898: Overseas empire: The Spanish–American War turned the U.S. into a colonial power in the Caribbean and Pacific.
1917–1919: World power, briefly: The U.S. helped win World War I, then turned away from the League of Nations toward limited involvement abroad.
1933–1938: The New Deal: The federal government took responsibility for the economy and for people's basic security, which most Americans then came to expect.
1941–1947: Global superpower: World War II ended isolationism; the U.S. led the UN, the postwar economy and the Cold War alliance against the Soviet Union.
1954–1965: Civil rights revolution: Brown, mass protest, the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act ended legal segregation and inspired other rights movements.
1968–1974: Loss of trust: Tet, assassinations, urban riots, the oil shock and Watergate shook confidence in government and ended the postwar liberal consensus.
1980: Conservative turn: Reagan's election shifted policy toward tax cuts, deregulation and a smaller federal role, which shaped both parties for decades.
1989–1991: End of the Cold War: The fall of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet collapse left the U.S. the only superpower in a globalizing world.
2001: September 11: Started the war on terrorism, wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and lasting debates over security and civil liberties.