1. NEXT SLIDE

2. INDEX
* The first European Settlements
* The thirteen Original Colonies
* Independence
* Expansion
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3. THE FIRST EUROPEAN
SETTLEMENTS
In 1492, Genoese explorer Christopher Columbus,
under contract to the Spanish crown, reached
several Caribbean islands, making first contact
with the indigenous people. However, the first
successful English settlements were the Virginia
Colony in Jamestown in 1607 and the Pilgrims'
Plymouth Colony in 1620. The 1628 chartering of
the Massachusetts Bay Colony resulted in a wave
of migration; by 1634, New England had been
settled by some 10,000 Puritans. Between the late
1610s and the American Revolution, about 50,000
convicts were shipped to Britain's American
colonies. Beginning in 1614, the Dutch settled
along the lower Hudson River, including New
Amsterdam on Manhattan Island.
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4. THE THIRTEEN ORIGINAL
COLONIES
The Thirteen Colonies were the colonies on the Atlantic
coast of North America founded between 1607
(Virginia) and 1733 (Georgia). They revolted in the
American Revolution, starting in 1775, and in 1776
declared their independence from the British Empire
and formed a new nation, the United States of America.
The colonies were: Delaware, Pennsylvania, New
Jersey, Georgia, Connecticut, Massachusetts Bay,
Maryland, South Carolina, New Hampshire, Virginia,
New York, North Carolina, and Rhode Island and
Providence Plantations. Each colony developed its own
system of self government. The white Americans were
mostly independent farmers, who owned their own
land and voted for their local and provincial
government.
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5. INDEPENDENCE (I)
Tensions between American colonials and the British during the revolutionary
period of the 1760s and early 1770s led to the American Revolutionary War, fought
from 1775 to 1781. On June 14, 1775, the Continental Congress, convening in
Philadelphia, established a Continental Army under the command of George
Washington. Proclaiming that "all men are created equal" and endowed with
"certain unalienable Rights", the Congress adopted the Declaration of
Independence, drafted largely by Thomas Jefferson, on July 4, 1776. That date is now
celebrated annually as America's Independence Day. In 1777, the Articles of
Confederation established a weak confederal government that operated until 1789.
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6. INDEPENDENCE (II)
After the British defeat by American forces assisted by the
French and Spanish, Great Britain recognized the
independence of the United States and the states'
sovereignty over American territory west to the Mississippi
River. Those wishing to establish a strong federal
government with powers of taxation organized a
constitutional convention in 1787. The United States
Constitution was ratified in 1788, and the new republic's
first Senate, House of Representatives, and president—
George Washington—took office in 1789. The Bill of Rights,
forbidding federal restriction of personal freedoms and
guaranteeing a range of legal protections, was adopted in
1791.
Attitudes toward slavery were shifting; a clause in the
Constitution protected the transatlantic slave trade only
until 1808. The Northern states abolished slavery between
1780 and 1804, leaving the slave states of the South as
defenders of the "peculiar institution". The Second Great
Awakening, beginning about 1800, made evangelicalism a
force behind various social reform movements, including
abolitionism.
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7. EXPANSION
Americans' eagerness to expand westward prompted a long series of Indian Wars.
The Louisiana Purchase of French-claimed territory under President Thomas
Jefferson in 1803 almost doubled the nation's size. The War of 1812, declared
against Britain over various grievances and fought to a draw, strengthened U.S.
nationalism. A series of U.S. military incursions into Florida led Spain to cede it
and other Gulf Coast territory in 1819. The Trail of Tears in the 1830s exemplified
the Indian removal policy that stripped the native peoples of their land. The
United States annexed the Republic of Texas in 1845, amid a period when the
concept of Manifest Destiny was becoming popular. The 1846 Oregon Treaty with
Britain led to U.S. control of the present-day American Northwest. The U.S. victory
in the Mexican-American War resulted in the 1848 cession of California and much
of the present-day American Southwest. The California Gold Rush of 1848–49
further spurred western migration. Over a half-century, up to 40 million American
bison, or buffalo, were slaughtered for skins and meat and to ease the railways'
spread. The loss of the buffalo, a primary resource for the plains Indians, was an
existential blow to many native cultures.
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8. THE END
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