US History
261 flashcards by MentisLibrary
United States history in 261 cards, from before European contact through the 2020s. Every card carries the date, the era and why the event mattered, covering politics, war, law, labor, immigration, race and reform in one continuous timeline.
- How did people first reach the Americas?
- Migration from Asia, most likely along a land bridge and the Pacific coast during the last ice age
- What was Chaco Canyon?
- An Ancestral Puebloan center in New Mexico with great houses and roads across the desert
- What was the Haudenosaunee Confederacy?
- An alliance of Iroquois nations governed by a Great Law of Peace
- Roughly how many people lived in North America before contact?
- Estimates vary widely, commonly placed in the millions north of Mexico
- What was the first permanent European settlement in what is now the US?
- St. Augustine, Florida, founded by Spain
- What happened to the Roanoke colony?
- The settlers vanished, leaving only the word CROATOAN carved on a post
- What was Jamestown?
- The first permanent English settlement in North America, in Virginia
- What did tobacco do to Virginia?
- It made the colony viable and created demand for large amounts of cheap labor
- What was the House of Burgesses?
- The first representative legislative assembly in English America
- What happened at Point Comfort in 1619?
- About 20 captive Africans were brought to Virginia and sold
- How many enslaved Africans were brought directly to mainland North America?
- Roughly 390,000, a small share of the 10.7 million who survived the Atlantic crossing
- What was the Mayflower Compact?
- An agreement by the Plymouth settlers to form a government and abide by its laws
- Why did the Puritans found Massachusetts Bay?
- To build a purified Christian society they could model for England
- Who founded Rhode Island and why?
- Roger Williams, after Massachusetts banished him for challenging its church-state union
- What was the Pequot War?
- A war in which colonists and allies destroyed the Pequot as a political power in New England
- Why was Anne Hutchinson banished?
- She held religious meetings and taught doctrine that challenged Massachusetts ministers
- What did the Maryland Toleration Act do?
- Guaranteed freedom of worship to Trinitarian Christians in the colony
- What was the difference between northern and southern colonial economies?
- The South built on staple crops and enslaved labor; the North on small farms, shipping and trade
- What did Virginia's 1662 law establish?
- That a child's enslaved or free status followed the mother's
- How did New York become English?
- England took New Amsterdam from the Dutch and renamed it
- What was King Philip's War?
- A Native uprising led by Metacom against New England colonists
- What was Bacon's Rebellion?
- Frontier settlers led by Nathaniel Bacon burned Jamestown and challenged the colonial government
- What did William Penn intend for Pennsylvania?
- A Quaker colony with religious tolerance and fair dealing with Native nations
- What was salutary neglect?
- Britain's loose enforcement of trade laws in the colonies for much of the early 18th century
- What were the Salem witch trials?
- A panic in Massachusetts that executed twenty people on spectral evidence
- What was the Great Awakening?
- A wave of emotional religious revivals that cut across colonies and denominations
- Why does the Zenger trial matter?
- A jury acquitted a printer of libel because what he printed about the governor was true
- What was the French and Indian War?
- The North American theater of a global war between Britain and France
- What was the Albany Plan of Union?
- Franklin's proposal for a unified colonial government for defense
- What did the Proclamation of 1763 do?
- Barred colonial settlement west of the Appalachians