American Revolution
This event on April 19, 1775, marked the start of armed conflict between Britain and the colonies.
Battles of Lexington and Concord
This first written plan of government for the United States created a weak central government and was eventually replaced.
Articles of Confederation
This 1803 land deal doubled the size of the United States.
Louisiana Purchase
He was the commanding general of the Union Army by the end of the war and later became president.
Ulysses S. Grant
This engineering project, completed in 1914, connected the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and showcased U.S. influence in Latin America.
The Panama Canal
This winter encampment tested the strength and endurance of Washington’s troops, who suffered through freezing temperatures and lack of supplies.
Valley Forge
This 1787 meeting in Philadelphia was called to revise the Articles of Confederation but ended up creating a new Constitution.
Constitutional Convention
This idea justified American expansion across the continent, claiming it was the nation’s destiny.
Manifest Destiny
This 1862 executive order declared all slaves in Confederate states to be free
The Emancipation Proclamation
This policy, proposed by Secretary of State John Hay, aimed to ensure equal trading rights for all nations in China.
The Open Door Policy
This treaty officially ended the American Revolution in 1783
Treaty of Paris
This Enlightenment thinker’s ideas about natural rights—life, liberty, and property—influenced the Declaration of Independence.
John Locke
This 1830 law led to the forced removal of Native American tribes from their ancestral lands.
The Indian Removal Act
This general led the Confederate Army and surrendered at Appomattox Court House in 1865.
Robert E. Lee
In 1898, this war marked the beginning of the United States as a global power.
The Spanish American War
France became an ally to the American colonies after this 1777 turning point victory
Battle of Saratoga
This principle divides power between the national and state governments.
This act passed in 1862 offered 160 acres of free land to settlers willing to farm it for five years.
The Homestead Act
This Union general led a devastating “March to the Sea” through Georgia, using total war tactics.
William Tecumseh Sherman
This 1904 policy, an extension of the Monroe Doctrine, claimed the U.S. had the right to act as an “international police power” in Latin America.
Roosevelt Corollary
This pamphlet by Thomas Paine argued for independence and convinced many colonists to support the revolution.
Common Sense
These are the three branches of government.
Legislative, Executive, Judicial
This 1848 treaty ended the Mexican-American War and gave the U.S. a large amount of land in the Southwest.
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
This battle in 1862 was one of the bloodiest single-day battles in American history and led to the Emancipation Proclamation.
Battle of Antietam
This 1899–1902 conflict revealed deep divisions in the U.S. over imperialism, with figures like Mark Twain and Andrew Carnegie speaking out against it.
Philippine-American War