American History Book1775- 1865

The American Revolution (1775-83) is also known as the American Revolutionary War and the U.S. War of Independence

The conflict arose from growing tensions between residents of Great Britain's 13 North American colonies and the colonial government. After French assistance helped the Continental Army force the British surrender at Yorktown, Virginia, in 1779, the Americans had effectively won their independence, though fighting would not formally end until 1783.

The Second Continental Congress convened after the American Revolutionary War (1775-83) had already begun. In 1776, it took the momentous step of declaring America's independence from Britain. Five years later, the Congress ratified the first national constitution, the Articles of Confederation, under which the country would be governed until 1789, when it was replaced by the current U.S. Constitution.

From 1774 to 1789, the Continental Congress served as the government of the 13 American colonies and later the United States.

The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the United States of America.

The Constitution was adopted on September 17, 1787, by the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and ratified by conventions in eleven states. It went into effect on March 4, 1789. The United States Constitution can be changed through the amendment process. Constitutional amendments are added to it, altering its effect. The first ten amendments, ratified by three-fourths of the states in 1791, are known as the Bill of Rights.

The Bill of Rights is the collective name for the first ten amendments to the United States Constitution.

These limitations serve to protect the natural rights of liberty and property. They guarantee a number of personal freedoms, limit the government's power in judicial and other proceedings, and reserve some powers to the states and the public. While originally the amendments applied only to the federal government, most of their provisions have since been held to apply to the states by way of the Fourteenth Amendment.

George Washington crossing the Delaware river in the American Revolution

George Washington commanded the Continental Army in American Revolutionary War (1775–1783), and was the first President of the United States, serving from 1789 to 1797.

John Adams (1797-1801) was a leader of the American Revolution, and served as the second U.S. president from 1797 to 1801.

An American Founding Father, he was a statesman, diplomat, and a leading advocate of American independence from Great Britain. Well educated, he was an Enlightenment political theorist who promoted republicanism and wrote prolifically about his often seminal ideas, both in published works and in letters to his wife and key adviser Abigail as well as to other Founding Fathers.

The government moves from Philadelphia, PA to Washington, DC in 1800.

Congress opened its session in Washington, D.C. on November 17th. Adams moved into the White House, only to find the walls still wet. In a letter to his wife, Adams wrote: "I pray Heaven to bestow the best of blessings on this house and all that shall hereafter inhabit it. May none but the wise and honest men ever rule under this roof."

Thomas Jefferson (1801-1809), author of the Declaration of Independence and the third U.S. president.

Jefferson, who thought the national government should have a limited role in citizens' lives, was elected president. During his two terms in office (1801-1809), the U.S. purchased the Louisiana Territory and Lewis and Clark explored the vast new acquisition. Although Jefferson promoted individual liberty, he was also a slave owner. After leaving office, he retired to his Virginia plantation, Monticello, and helped found the University of Virginia.

With the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, the United States purchased territory to enlarge the United States of America.

With the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, the United States purchased approximately 828,000,000 square miles of territory from France, thereby doubling the size of the young republic. What was known as Louisiana Territory stretched from the Mississippi River in the east to the Rocky Mountains in the west and from the Gulf of Mexico in the south to the Canadian border in the north. Part or all of 15 states were eventually created from the land deal, which is considered one of the most important achievements of Thomas Jefferson’s presidency.

James Madison (1809-1817) was an American statesman and political theorist, the fourth President of the United States.

He is hailed as the “Father of the Constitution” for being instrumental in the drafting of the United States Constitution and as the key champion and author of the United States Bill of Rights. He served as a politician much of his adult life.

James Monroe (1817-1825) was the fifth President of the United States.

Monroe was the last president who was a Founding Father of the United States, the third of them to die on Independence Day, and the last president from the Virginia dynasty and the Republican Generation. He was injured in the Battle of Trenton with a musket ball to his shoulder. After studying law under Thomas Jefferson from 1780 to 1783, he served as a delegate in the Continental Congress.

Missouri Compromise was passed in 1820 between the pro-slavery and anti-slavery factions in the United States Congress

Involving primarily the regulation of slavery in the western territories. It prohibited slavery in the former Louisiana Territory north of the parallel 36°30 north except within the ′boundaries of the proposed state of Missouri. To balance the number of "slave states" and "free states," the northern region of what was then Massachusetts was admitted into the United States as a free state to become Maine. Prior to the agreement, the House of Representatives had refused to accept this compromise, and a conference committee was appointed.

John Quincy Adams (1825–1829) was the sixth President of the United States.

He served as American diplomat, Senator, and Congressional representative. He was a member of the Federalist, Democratic-Republican, National Republican, and later Anti-Masonic and Whig parties. Adams was the son of former President John Adams and Abigail Adams.

Andrew Jackson (1829–1837) was the seventh President of the United States.

Based in frontier Tennessee, Jackson was a politician and army general who defeated the Creek Indians at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend (1814), and the British at the Battle of New Orleans (1815). Dismantled the Second Bank of the United States and initiated forced relocation

The California Gold Rush (1848–1855) began on January 24, 1848, when gold was found by James W. Marshall at Sutter's Mill in Coloma, California.

The first to hear confirmed information of the Gold Rush were the people in Oregon, the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii), and Latin America, who were the first to start flocking to the state in late 1848. All told, the news of gold brought some 300,000 people to California from the rest of the United States and abroad.[2]Of the 300,000, approximately half arrived by sea and half came from the east overland on the California Trail and the Gila River trail.

Franklin Pierce was the 14th President of the United States (1853–1857).

Pierce is the only President from New Hampshire. Pierce was a Democrat and a "doughface" (a Northerner with Southern sympathies) who served in the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate. Pierce took part in the Mexican-American War and became a brigadier general in the Army. He made many friends, but he suffered tragedy in his personal life; all of his children died young.

James Buchanan was the 15th President of the United States (1857–1861).

He is the only president from Pennsylvania and the only president who remained a lifelong bachelor.He represented Pennsylvania in the U.S. House of Representatives and later the Senate and served as Minister to Russia under President Andrew Jackson. He was also Secretary of State under President James K. Polk.

Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865.

Lincoln led the United States through its greatest constitutional, military, and moral crises—the American Civil War—preserving the Union, abolishing slavery, strengthening the national government and modernizing the economy. Reared in a poor family on the western frontier, Lincoln was self-educated, and became a country lawyer, a Whig Party leader,Illinois state legislator during the 1830s, and a one-term member of the United States House of Representatives during the 1840s.

The American Civil War, also known as the War between the States or simply the Civil War was a civil war fought from 1861 to 1865 aming), was a civil war fought from 1861 to 1865

The war had its origin in the fractious issue of slavery, and, after four years of bloody combat (mostly in the South), the Confederacy was defeated, slavery was abolished, and the difficult Reconstruction process of restoring unity and guaranteeing rights to the freed slaves began.