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