The 13 Colonies
These two European countries established the earliest permanent colonies in North America in the early 1600s.
What are England and Spain?
This 1775 battle, fought in Massachusetts, was the first major conflict between British troops and American colonists.
What is the Battle of Lexington and Concord?
This 1787 meeting in Philadelphia created the framework for the U.S. government.
What is the Constitutional Convention?
This 1803 purchase doubled the size of the United States and was negotiated with France.
What is the Louisiana Purchase?
This 1820 compromise admitted Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state to maintain balance in Congress.
What is the Missouri Compromise?
This 1607 settlement in Virginia was the first permanent English colony in North America.
What is Jamestown?
This document, adopted on July 4, 1776, declared the colonies' independence from British rule.
What is the Declaration of Independence?
This first Secretary of the Treasury established the nation's financial system and the National Bank.
Who is Alexander Hamilton?
These two explorers led the famous expedition from 1804-1806 to explore the newly acquired western territory.
Who are Lewis and Clark?
This event in 1833 saw South Carolina challenge federal authority over state rights.
What is the Nullification Crisis?
This Puritan movement believed in "a city upon a hill" as their model for a perfect Christian community.
What is Massachusetts Bay Colony?
This Founding Father wrote the Declaration of Independence and later became the third President.
Who is Thomas Jefferson?
This series of essays, written by Hamilton, Madison, and Jay, argued for ratification of the Constitution.
What are the Federalist Papers?
This Act of 1830 forced thousands of Native Americans to relocate west of the Mississippi River.
What is the Indian Removal Act?
This 1850 series of laws admitted California as a free state and included the controversial Fugitive Slave Act.
What is the Compromise of 1850?
The agricultural staple crop of the Southern colonies that became the basis of their economy and led to increased slavery.
What is tobacco?
The winter of 1777-1778 when Washington's troops suffered greatly at this Pennsylvania encampment during the Revolutionary War.
What is Valley Forge?
The first 10 amendments to the Constitution, which guarantee fundamental rights to all Americans.
What is the Bill of Rights?
This forced march of the Cherokee Nation in 1838-1839 resulted in thousands of deaths.
What is the Trail of Tears?
This 1854 law allowed territories to decide whether to allow slavery through popular sovereignty, repealing the Missouri Compromise.
What is the Kansas-Nebraska Act?
This 1620 agreement established self-governance for the Pilgrims and is considered one of the first democratic documents in America.
What is the Mayflower Compact?
This 1783 treaty officially ended the Revolutionary War and recognized American independence.
What is the Treaty of Paris?
This political party, led by Thomas Jefferson, opposed the Federalist policies of Alexander Hamilton.
What is the Democratic-Republican Party?
This doctrine, popular in the 1840s, claimed it was America's destiny to expand across the continent to the Pacific Ocean.
What is Manifest Destiny?
This 1857 Supreme Court decision ruled that enslaved people had no rights as citizens and that Congress could not ban slavery in territories.
What is the Dred Scott decision?