Early encounters/colonies
This massive transatlantic swap of plants, animals, cultures, and terrifying diseases followed Columbus's landing in 1492.
Columbian exchange
The catchy, rhyming slogan colonists used to express their deep hatred for British taxes imposed by a Parliament across the ocean.
No taxation without representation
America's first, highly dysfunctional constitution that forgot to give the federal government the power to tax or raise an army.
Articles of Confederation
The 19th-century belief that America was divinely ordained by God to expand all the way from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean.
Manifest Destiny
Abraham Lincoln issued this executive order after the Battle of Antietam, technically freeing zero slaves on day one but shifting the war's purpose entirely to abolition.
Emancipation Proclamation
The Spanish labor system that essentially granted conquistadors the right to force Native Americans into labor, theoretically in exchange for converting them to Christianity.
Encomienda
Thomas Paine’s wildly popular, aggressively written 1776 pamphlet that convinced ordinary colonists that keeping a king was just plain stupid.
Common Sense
This 1823 foreign policy statement told European empires to keep their hands off the Western Hemisphere.
Monroe Doctrine
This religious revival swept the nation in the early 1800s, sparking a wave of reform movements like abolition, temperance, and women's rights.
2nd Great Awakening
This horrific 1857 Supreme Court ruling declared that Black Americans were not citizens and that Congress had no right to ban slavery in the territories
Dred Scott v. Sanford
This colony, founded as a haven for Catholics, passed a famous 1469 Act of Toleration... which was actually only tolerant if you were a Christian.
Maryland
This British decree told colonists they couldn't move west of the Appalachian Mountains, which completely backfired and just made them furious.
Proclamation of 1763
Henry Clay's massive economic plan to unite the country using high tariffs, a National Bank, and federal funding for roads and canals
American System
Organized by Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, this 1848 convention is widely considered the birthplace of the women's rights movement.
Seneca Falls
This concept allowed the voters of a new territory to decide for themselves whether to allow slavery
Popular sovereignty
This religious dissenter was kicked out of the Massachusetts Bay Colony for claiming people didn't need ministers to understand God, later helping to settle Rhode Island.
Anne Hutchinson
Written largely by John Dickinson, this 1775 document was the Second Continental Congress's final, desperate attempt to profess loyalty to King George III and prevent all-out war, which the King promptly ignored.
Olive Branch Petition
This highly unpopular 1794 treaty with Great Britain managed to avert a major war and secure the evacuation of British forts in the Northwest Territory, but completely failed to stop the British from seizing American merchant ships or impressing sailors.
Jay's Treaty
This short-lived, single-issue political party emerged in the late 1840s opposing the expansion of slavery into the western territories primarily to protect white workers from slave labor competition.
Free Soil Party
Reconstruction officially ended because of this shady backroom political deal, which pulled federal troops out of the South in exchange for putting Rutherford B. Hayes in the White House.
Compromise of 1877
This devastating 1675 conflict in New England pitted a coalition of Native American tribes against English colonists, resulting in the destruction of dozens of towns and ending effective native resistance in the region.
King Philip's War
Proposed by Benjamin Franklin back in 1754 to coordinate colonial defense against French and Native threats, this rejected plan was the very first formal attempt to unite the thirteen colonies under a single centralized government.
Albany Plan
Thomas Jefferson and James Madison responded to the Alien and Sedition Acts by writing these two anonymous resolutions, which introduced the dangerous constitutional theory that states could "nullify" unconstitutional federal laws.
VA and Kentucky Resolutions
This controversial 1846 legislative proposal argued that slavery should be entirely banned in any territory won from Mexico, splitting both major political parties along strictly geographic lines.
Wilmot Proviso
Passed by Congress over President Andrew Johnson's veto, this 1867 law prohibited the president from removing civil officials without Senate approval—the exact law Johnson violated by firing his Secretary of War, leading to his impeachment.
Tenure of Office Act