Timeline (1770-1859)

1770--Boston Massacre

1772--Somerset case

1773--Tea Act; Boston Tea Party

1774--Intolerable Acts; Continental Congress convenes; Thomas Jefferson's "A Summary View of the Rights of British America"

1775--Lord Dunmore's Proclamation; Battles at Lexington and Concord

1776--Thomas Paine's "Common Sense"; Declaration of Independence; Adam Smith's "The Wealth of Nations"; John Adams's "Thoughts on Government"

1777--Battle of Saratoga; Vermont state constitution bans slavery; Articles of Confederation drafted

1778--French Treaty of Amity and Commerce; Rhode Island forms a black regiment in its state militia; Molly Pitcher serves during the Battle of Monmouth

1779--Thomas Jefferson writes "Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom"; Pittsburgh Proclamation

1780--Robert Morris becomes director of congressional fiscal policy

1781--Articles of Confederation ratified

1782--Deborah Sampson enlists in the Continental Army; "Letters from an American Farmer"

1786-87--Daniel Shay's Rebellion

1787--Northwest Ordinance of 1787; Constitutional Convention convenes; first Shaker community established in Upstate New York

1788--"The Federalist" papers; Constitution ratified

1789--Inauguration of George Washington; French Revolution begins

1790--Naturalization Act; first national census

1791-1804--Hatian Revolution

1791--Bill of Rights ratified; Little Turtle defeats Arthur St. Clair's forces

1792--Sarah Morton's "The African Chief"; Mary Wollstoncraft's "A Vindiction of the Rights of Woman"

1793--Washington's Neutrality Proclamation; King Louis XVI executed; British and French War begins; Eli Whitney invents the cotton gin

1794--Jay's Treaty; Whiskey Rebellion; Little Turtle defeated at the Battle of Fallen Timbers

1797--Inauguration of John Adams

1798--XYZ Affair; Alien and Sedition Acts

1799--John Fries's Rebellion

1800--Gabriel's Rebellion

1801--Inauguration of Thomas Jefferson

1803--Louisiana Purchase; Marbury v. Madison

1804--Hamilton-Burr duel

1804-1806--Lewis and Clark Expedition

1806--Congress approves funds for the Cumberland Road

1807--Embargo Act; Robert Fulton develops steamship

1808--Congress abolishes the Atlantic Slave Trade

1809--Inauguration of James Madison

1811--Battle of Tippecanoe; Bank of the United States charter expires

1812-1814--War of 1812

1814--Hartford Convention; Treaty of Ghent

1815--Battle of New Orleans

1816--Second Bank of the United States established; American Colonization Society founded

1817--inauguration of James Monroe

1819--Panic of 1819; McCulloch v. Maryland; Transcontinental Treaty with Spain; Darmouth College v. Woodward

1820--Missouri Compromise; Moses Austin receives Mexican land grant; Church of Jesus Christ and the Latter-Day Saints established

1823--Monroe Doctrine

1824--Gibbons v. Ogden; Owenite community established at New Harmony

1825--Erie Canal opens; inauguration of John Q. Adams

1826--American Temperance Society founded

1827--"Freedom's JOurnal", the first black newspaper, is established in the United States

1828--Construction begins on Baltimore and Ohio Railroad; "Tariff of abominations"

1829--Lydia Maria Child's "The Frugal Housewife"; David Walker's "An Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World"; Inauguration of Andrew Jackson

1831--Cyrus McCormick introduces the reaper; Cherokee Nation v. Georgia; William Lloyd Garrison's "The Liberator" debuts

1833--American Anti-Slavery Society founded; Lydia Maria Child's "An Appeal in Fovir of that Class of Americans Called Africans"

1834--Female Moral Reform Society organized

1836--The Alamo

1837--Texas declares its independence from Mexico; John Deere introduces the steel plow; Depression begins; Ralph Waldo Emerson's "The American Scholar"; Harriet Martineau's "Society in America"; Elijah Lovejoy killed

1839--Theodore Weld's "Salvery As It Is"

1840--Orestes Brownson's "The Laboring Class"; Second Great Awakening begins

1841--New England transcendentalists establish Brook Farm; inauguration of William Henry Harrison; Dorr War

1844--Telegraph put into commercial operation

1845--John L. O'Sullivan coins the phrase "Manifest Destiny"

1845-51--Ireland's potato famine

1846--Henry David Thoreau is jailed; Wilmot Proviso

1848--John Humphry Noyes founds Oneida community in New York; Free Soil Party organized; Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo; Gold discovered in foothills of Sierra, Nevada and California

1850--Compromise of 1850; Fugitive Slave Act of 1850

1852--Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin"; Frederick Douglass's speech "What, to the Slave, is the Fourth of July?"

1853--Gadsden Purchase

1854--Henry David Thoreau's "Walden"; Kansas-Nebraska Act; Know-Nothing Party established; Ostend Manifesto

1856--Bleeding Kansas

1857--Dred Scott decision

1858--Lincoln-Douglas debates

1859--John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry