Colonial Foundations
These individuals agreed to work for a set number of years in exchange for passage to the colonies.
Indentured Servants
This act of defiance against British taxation involved colonists throwing tea into Boston Harbor.
The Boston Tea Party
The meeting held in Philadelphia in 1787 to revise the Articles of Confederation, which ultimately led to the drafting of a new Constitution.
Constitutional Convention
The belief that the United States was destined to expand its dominion and spread democracy across the North American continent.
Manifest Destiny
The primary cause of the Civil War
slavery
This religious group sought to purify the Church of England and established colonies like Massachusetts Bay.
Puritans
The author of the pamphlet "Common Sense," which advocated for American independence.
Thomas Paine
The compromise reached at the Constitutional Convention that created a bicameral legislature with representation in one house based on population and equal representation in the other.
The Great Compromise
The acquisition of a large territory from France in 1803 that doubled the size of the United States.
Louisiana Purchase
The proclamation issued by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863 that declared enslaved people in Confederate-held territory to be free.
Emancipation Proclamation
This document, signed by the Pilgrims in 1620, established a self-governing body in Plymouth Colony.
The Mayflower Compact
The main author of the Declaration of Independence.
The group of essays written by James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay to persuade the state of New York to ratify the Constitution.
The Federalist Papers
The forced relocation of several Native American tribes from the southeastern United States to west of the Mississippi River in the 1830s.
Trail of Tears
The period after the Civil War (1865-1877) focused on rebuilding the South and reintegrating it into the Union.
Reconstruction
The forced journey of enslaved Africans across the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas
The Middle Passage
This battle was the last major engagement of the Revolutionary War, leading to the British surrender.
The Battle of Yorktown
The first ten amendments to the Constitution that guarantee basic rights and freedoms.
Bill of Rights
The war between the United States and Mexico from 1846 to 1848 that resulted in significant territorial gains for the US.
Mexican-American War
Laws passed by Southern states after the Civil War to restrict the rights of African Americans.
Black Codes
This was the first permanent English settlement in North America, founded in 1607
Jamestown
The treaty that officially ended the American Revolutionary War in 1783
The Treaty of Paris
The principle enshrined in the Constitution that divides the powers of the federal government among the legislative, executive, and judicial branches.
Separation of Powers
Legislation passed by Congress in 1862 that provided settlers with 160 acres of public land in exchange for cultivating it for five years.
Homestead Act
The constitutional amendment that granted citizenship and equal protection under the law to all persons born or naturalized in the United States.
14th Amendment