Section 1: History in the Elementary Grades
Individuals and Events that Have Influenced Economic, Social, and Political Institutions in the World, State, or Nation

This outline is designed to refresh your memory on the highlights, notable individuals, and significant events of American history, and to point out topics for further study.

Click on each heading to open/close additional outlined information.

  1. Colonial Period (1630-1750)
    1. Key People
      1. John Winthrop
      2. Thomas Hooker
      3. John Smith
      4. Anne Hutchinson
      5. Roger Williams
      6. William Penn
      7. Lord Baltimore
      8. James Oglethorpe
    2. Key Concepts
      1. House of Burgesses
      2. Mayflower Compact
      3. proprietary colony
      4. royal colony
      5. plantation
      6. slave codes
      7. mercantilism
      8. triangular trade
  1. Revolutionary Era (1745-1783)
    1. Key People
      1. George Washington
      2. John Adams
      3. Patrick Henry
      4. Paul Revere
      5. Minutemen
      6. patriots
      7. loyalists
      8. Thomas Paine
      9. Thomas Jefferson
    2. Key Concepts
      1. French and Indian War
      2. Pontiac's War
      3. Stamp Act
      4. Sons of Liberty
      5. Boston Massacre
      6. Boston Tea Party
      7. First Continental Congress
      8. Battle of Bunker Hill
      9. Declaration of Independence
      10. Battle of Yorktown
  1. Creation of Government (1775-1783)
    1. Key People
      1. James Madison
      2. Roger Sherman
    2. Key Concepts
      1. Articles of Confederation
      2. Shays' Rebellion
      3. Constitutional Convention
      4. Great Compromise
      5. federalism
      6. checks and balances
      7. republic
      8. Bill of Rights
  1. The New Republic (1789-1800)
    1. Key People
      1. John Jay
      2. Democratic Republicans
      3. Federalists
      4. George Washington
      5. John Adams
    2. Key Concepts
      1. national debt
      2. protective tariff
      3. Whiskey Rebellion
      4. XYZ Affair
      5. Alien and Sedition Act
  1. Age of Jefferson (1801-1816)
    1. Key People
      1. John Marshall
      2. Thomas Jefferson
      3. Lewis and Clark
      4. William Henry Harrison
      5. Henry Clay
      6. General Andrew Jackson
      7. Dolley Madison
    2. Key Concepts
      1. laissez faire
      2. judicial review
      3. Marbury v. Madison
      4. Louisiana Purchase
      5. impressments
      6. War of 1812
      7. Battle of New Orleans
  1. Industrial Developments (1790-1825)
    1. Key People
      1. Samuel Slater
      2. Eli Whitney
      3. Robert Fulton
      4. James Monroe
      5. Daniel Webster
      6. John C. Calhoun
      7. John Quincy Adams
    2. Key Concepts
      1. capitalist
      2. factory system
      3. interchangeable parts
      4. Erie Canal
      5. National Road
      6. sectionalism
      7. interstate commerce
      8. Monroe Doctrine
  1. Age of Jackson (1824-1840)
    1. Key People
      1. President Andrew Jackson
      2. Whigs
      3. Democrats
      4. Sequoyah
      5. Osceola
      6. Martin Van Buren
      7. William Henry Harrison
      8. John Tyler
    2. Key Concepts
      1. suffrage
      2. spoils system
      3. states’ rights
      4. Trail of Tears
      5. Seminole War
      6. depression
      7. Panic of 1837
  1. Nation Spreads West (1820-1860)
    1. Key People
      1. John Jacob Astor
      2. Stephen Austin
      3. Sam Houston
      4. Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna
      5. James K. Polk
      6. Zachary Taylor
      7. Winfield Scott
      8. Joseph Smith
      9. Brigham Young
    2. Key Concepts
      1. Alamo
      2. Lone Star Republic
      3. Manifest Destiny
      4. New Mexico Territory
      5. Bear Flag Republic
      6. Gadsden Purchase
      7. Mexican-American War
      8. Sutter’s Mill
  1. A Dividing North and South (1820-1860)
    1. Key People
      1. John Griffiths
      2. Cyrus McCormick
      3. Eli Whitney
      4. Nat Turner
    2. Key Concepts
      1. clipper ship
      2. telegraph
      3. Know-Nothing Party
  1. Attempts at Reform (1820-1860)
    1. Key People
      1. Dorothea Dix
      2. Horace Mann
      3. Frederick Douglass
      4. William Lloyd Garrison
      5. Harriet Tubman
      6. Sojourner Truth
      7. Lucretia Mott
      8. Elizabeth Cady Stanton
      9. Susan B. Anthony
      10. Washington Irving
      11. James Fenimore Cooper
      12. Ralph Waldo Emerson
      13. Henry David Thoreau
      14. Walt Whitman
      15. Emily Dickinson
    2. Key Concepts
      1. social reform
      2. temperance movement
      3. abolition
      4. underground railroad
      5. women’s rights movement
      6. transcendentalism
  1. Nation Splits (1820-1861)
    1. Key People
      1. Harriet Beecher Stowe
      2. Franklin Pierce
      3. John Brown
      4. John C. Fremont
      5. James Buchanan
      6. Abraham Lincoln
      7. Jefferson Davis
    2. Key Concepts
      1. sectionalism
      2. secede
      3. Fugitive Slave Law
      4. Compromise of 1850
      5. Missouri Compromise
      6. Wilmot Proviso
      7. Dred Scott decision
      8. Bleeding Kansas
      9. Fort Sumter
  1. Civil War (1861-1865)
    1. Key People
      1. Robert E. Lee
      2. Stonewall Jackson
      3. George McClellan
      4. Ulysses S. Grant
      5. William Tecumseh Sherman
    2. Key Concepts
      1. border states
      2. martial law
      3. Battle of Bull Run
      4. Battle of Antietam
      5. Battle of Fredricksburg
      6. Battle of Chancellorsville
      7. Battle of Shiloh
      8. Emancipation Proclamation
      9. habeas corpus
      10. Battle of Gettysburg
      11. Gettysburg Address
  1. Appomattox Courthouse Reconstruction (1864-1877)
    1. Key People
      1. John Wilkes Booth
      2. Andrew Johnson
      3. Hiram Revels
      4. Ku Klux Klan
      5. Rutherford B. Hayes
    2. Key Concepts
      1. Freedman’s Bureau
      2. Thirteenth Amendment
      3. Fourteenth Amendment
      4. Reconstruction Act
      5. Fifteenth Amendment
      6. sharecropper
      7. carpetbagger
      8. Plessy v. Ferguson
      9. Jim Crow laws
      10. poll tax
      11. literacy test
  1. Industrial Boom (1865-1914)
    1. Key People
      1. William Jennings Bryant
      2. William McKinley
      3. George Pullman
      4. Cornelius Vanderbilt
      5. John D. Rockefeller
      6. Andrew Carnegie
      7. J. Pierpont Morgan
      8. Henry Ford
      9. Wright brothers
      10. American Federation of Labor
      11. Samuel Gompers
    2. Key Concepts
      1. transcontinental railroad
      2. Comstock Lode
      3. Cattle Kingdom
      4. Homestead Act
      5. Sherman Antitrust Act
      6. free enterprise system
      7. monopoly
      8. assembly line
      9. mass production
      10. sweatshop
      11. collective bargaining
  1. Urban Push and Immigration (1865-1914)
    1. Key People
      1. Emma Lazarus
      2. Jane Addams
      3. Mother Cabrini
      4. Joseph Pulitzer
      5. William Randolph Hearst
      6. Scott Joplin
      7. John Philip Sousa
      8. Will Rogers
      9. James Naismith
      10. Horatio Alger
      11. Stephen Crane
      12. Mark Twain
      13. Winslow Homer
    2. Key Concepts
      1. Ellis Island
      2. Chinese Exclusion Act
      3. tenement
      4. settlement house
      5. Hull House
      6. yellow journalism
  1. Progressives and Suffragists (1876-1914)
    1. Key People
      1. James Garfield
      2. Chester Arthur
      3. Grover Cleveland
      4. Benjamin Harrison
      5. William Tweed
      6. Upton Sinclair
      7. John Dewey
      8. Robert La Follette
      9. Theodore Roosevelt
      10. William Howard Taft
      11. Woodrow Wilson
      12. Ida B. Wells
      13. Carrie Chapman Catt
      14. Booker T. Washington
      15. W.E.B. Du Bois
      16. George Washington Carver
    2. Key Concepts
      1. Gilded Age
      2. Interstate Commerce Commission
      3. Sixteenth Amendment
      4. Pure Food and Drug Act
      5. Federal Reserve Act
      6. Federal Trade Commission
      7. Eighteenth Amendment
      8. Nineteenth Amendment
      9. barrio
      10. NAACP
  1. Flexing Overseas Muscle (1865-1916)
    1. Key People
      1. Matthew Perry
      2. William Seward
      3. George Dewey
      4. Rough Riders
      5. John J. Pershing
      6. Francisco “Pancho” Villa
    2. Key Concepts
      1. expansionism
      2. sphere of influence
      3. Great White Fleet and Open Door Policy
      4. Battle of San Juan Hill
      5. Platt Amendment
      6. protectorate
      7. Panama Canal
  1. World War I (1914-1919)
    1. Key People
      1. Triple Alliance
      2. Central Powers
      3. Allied Powers
      4. Herbert Hoover
      5. Bolsheviks
      6. V.I. Lenin
      7. League of Nations
      8. Henry Cabot Lodge
      9. Woodrow Wilson
    2. Key Concepts
      1. Lusitania
      2. U-boat
      3. trench warfare
      4. draft
      5. Selective Service Act
      6. Liberty Bonds
      7. armistice
      8. Treaty of Brest-Litovsk
      9. Battle of Argonne Forest
      10. Battle of Belleau Wood
      11. Treaty of Versailles, 1919
  1. Roaring Twenties (1919-1929)
    1. Key People
      1. Warren G. Harding
      2. Calvin Coolidge
      3. League of Women Voters
      4. Charlie Chaplin
      5. Louis Armstrong
      6. Ernest Hemingway
      7. F. Scott Fitzgerald
      8. Langston Hughes
      9. Zora Neale Hurston
      10. Babe Ruth
      11. Charles A. Lindbergh
      12. Herbert Hoover
    2. Key Concepts
      1. Teapot Dome Scandal
      2. Kellogg-Briand Pact
      3. bootlegger
      4. Equal Rights Amendment
      5. speakeasy
      6. Harlem Renaissance
      7. jazz
      8. flapper
      9. Sacco and Vanzetti trial
      10. Scopes trial
  1. Great Depression (1929-1941)
    1. Key People
      1. Franklin Roosevelt
      2. Eleanor Roosevelt
      3. Huey Long
      4. Mary McLeod Bethune
      5. John Steinbeck
      6. Richard Wright
    2. Key Concepts
      1. Black Tuesday
      2. Great Depression
      3. soup kitchen
      4. New Deal
      5. Works Progress Administration
      6. Tennessee Valley Authority
      7. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation
      8. Social Security Act
      9. Dust Bowl
  1. World War II (1935-1945)
    1. Key People
      1. Joseph Stalin
      2. Benito Mussolini
      3. Adolf Hitler
      4. Winston Churchill
      5. Navaho Code talkers
      6. Tuskegee Airmen
      7. Douglas McArthur
      8. Dwight D. Eisenhower
      9. Harry S. Truman
    2. Key Concepts
      1. Final Solution
      2. Nazis
      3. Axis
      4. Allies
      5. Lend-Lease Act
      6. appeasement
      7. blitzkrieg
      8. victory garden
      9. Operation Overlord
      10. D-Day
      11. Battle of the Bulge
      12. Holocaust
      13. Bataan Death March
      14. Nuremberg Trials
      15. island hopping
      16. atomic bomb
  1. Cold War Period (1945-1974)
    1. Key People
      1. Mao Zedong
      2. Chiang Kai-shek
      3. United Nations
      4. North Atlantic Treaty Organization
      5. Warsaw Pact
      6. Joseph McCarthy
      7. Nikita Khrushchev
      8. Fidel Castro
      9. John F. Kennedy
      10. Ho Chi Minh
      11. Vietcong
      12. Lyndon Johnson
      13. Richard Nixon
    2. Key Concepts
      1. Marshall Plan
      2. Truman Doctrine
      3. Berlin Wall
      4. Bay of Pigs
      5. Cuban missile crisis
      6. superpower
      7. Gulf of Ton kin Resolution
      8. Vietnam War
      9. Tet Offensive
      10. domino theory
  1. Civil Rights (1947-1980)
    1. Key People
      1. NAACP
      2. Thurgood Marshall
      3. Martin Luther King, Jr.
      4. Mohandas Gandhi
      5. Jackie Robinson
      6. Southern Christian Leadership Conference
      7. Lyndon Johnson
      8. Black Panthers
      9. Malcolm X
      10. Cesar Chavez
      11. National Organization of Women
    2. Key Concepts
      1. segregation
      2. Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas
      3. civil disobedience
      4. integration
      5. Montgomery Bus Boycott
      6. Great Society
      7. Medicare
      8. Medicaid
      9. Civil Rights Act of 1964
      10. Voting Rights Act of 1975