Colonial Era
This document from 1620 which was signed by the Pilgrims before they landed at Plymouth, was an early step toward colonial self-government.
What is the Mayflower Compact.
This 1776 pamphlet, written by Thomas Paine, used plain language to argue that it was "absurd" for a small island like Britain to rule a vast continent like America
What is Common Sense
The 1848 treaty that ended the Mexican-American war, giving the U.S. California, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, and Nevada
What is the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
The president during the entirety of the civil war
Who was Abraham Lincoln
After reading Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, Theodore Roosevelt pushed for the passage of these two 1906 laws to regulate the food and drug industries.
What are the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act
This region, including Virginia and Maryland, developed an economy centered on tobacco and relied heavily on indentured servitude.
What is the Chesapeake
Often called the "turning point" of the Revolution, this 1777 victory in New York convinced the French to form a formal military alliance with the United States.
What is the Battle of Saratoga
The 1848 convention where Elizabeth Cady Stanton presented the Declaration of Sentiments.
What is the Seneca Falls Convention
These amendments were made during the reconstruction era to help ensure legal equality
What are the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments
These investigative journalists, such as Ida Tarbell and Lincoln Steffens, used mass-circulation magazines to expose corruption and social injustices.
Who are the Muckrakers?
This uprising in 1676 in Virginia, against Governor William Berkeley, was started because of frustrations over Indian attacks on the frontier and resulted in a shift from indentured labor to African slavery.
What is Bacon's Rebellion.
This 1787 ordinance made a process for admitting new states to the Union prohibited slavery in the territory north of the Ohio River.
What is the Northwest Ordinance
A religious and social reform movement of the 1830-40s, sparking reforms like abolition and women’s rights
What is the Second Great Awakening
This battle in Pennsylvania in 1863 was considered one of the turning points of the civil war
What is the Battle of Gettysburg
This 1882 legislation was the first significant federal law to restrict immigration into the United States based on a specific nationality or ethnic group.
What is the Chinese Exclusion Act?
This religious revival in the 18th century, led by people like Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield, challenged traditional church authority and created a shared national experience across the thirteen colonies.
What is the First Great Awakening.
Federalists promised to add these first ten amendments to the Constitution immediately after ratification.
What is the Bill of Rights
This political party emerged to oppose Andrew Jackson, supporting the American System and a stronger federal government
What are the Whigs
This document written by Abraham Lincoln declared slaves free in confederate-held territories
What is the Emancipation Proclamation
This Constitutional amendment, ratified in 1920, finally guaranteed women the right to vote across the United States.
What is the 19th Amendment?
This English policy, which lasted from the late 17th century until 1763, involved a relaxed enforcement of the Navigation Acts, allowing the colonies to develop independent trade patterns and political autonomy.
What is Salutary Neglect.
In George Washingtons 1796 Farewell Address, he issued a warning to the nation against these two specific developments: "permanent alliances" and "the spirit of party."
What are Foreign Entanglements and Factionalism
This 19th-century social ideology defined “true womanhood” through piety, purity, and domesticity, creating "separate spheres"
What is the Cult of Domesticity
These laws created segregation in public spaces in the South
What are Jim Crow Laws
Andrew Carnegie articulated this philosophy, arguing that the rich had a moral obligation to distribute their wealth for the public good through philanthropy.
What is The Gospel of Wealth?