American History: Colonial Era to Civil War

Posted on Feb 12, 2025 in History and Heritage

The Colonial Era

  • The first successful English colony was founded at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607.
  • English Puritans came to America to escape religious persecution for their opposition to the Church of England.
  • In 1620, the Puritans founded Plymouth Colony in what later became Massachusetts. Plymouth was the second permanent British settlement in North America and the first in New England.
  • An English clergyman named Roger Williams left Massachusetts and founded the colony of Rhode Island, based on the principles of religious freedom and separation of church and state, two ideals that were later adopted by framers of the U.S. Constitution.
  • By 1733, English settlers had founded 13 colonies along the Atlantic Coast, from New Hampshire in the North to Georgia in the South.
  • The French controlled Canada and Louisiana, which included the vast Mississippi River watershed.
  • The end of the Seven Years’ War in 1763 left England in control of Canada and all of North America east of the Mississippi.
  • Colonial leaders convened the First Continental Congress in 1774 to discuss the colonies’ opposition to British rule.
  • War broke out on April 19, 1775, when British soldiers confronted colonial rebels in Lexington, Massachusetts.
  • On July 4, 1776, the Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence.
  • The last major battle of the American Revolution took place at Yorktown, Virginia, in 1781. A combined force of American and French troops surrounded the British and forced their surrender. Fighting continued in some areas for two more years.
  • The war officially ended with the Treaty of Paris in 1783, by which England recognized American independence.

Slavery and the Civil War

  • In 1828, Andrew Jackson became the first “outsider” elected president.
  • Although on the surface the Jacksonian Era was one of optimism and energy, the young nation was entangled in a contradiction.
  • In 1820, southern and northern politicians debated the question of whether slavery would be legal in the western territories. Congress reached a compromise: Slavery was permitted in the new state of Missouri and the Arkansas Territory but barred everywhere west and north of Missouri.
  • In 1850, California was admitted as a free state, with the citizens of Utah and New Mexico being allowed to decide whether they wanted slavery within their borders or not (they did not).
  • After Abraham Lincoln, a foe of slavery, was elected president in 1860, 11 states left the Union and proclaimed themselves an independent nation, the Confederate States of America: South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina. The American Civil War had begun.
  • The Confederate Army did well in the early part of the war, and some of its commanders, especially General Robert E. Lee, were brilliant tacticians.
  • In 1863, Lee took a gamble by marching his troops north into Pennsylvania. He met a Union Army at Gettysburg, and the largest battle ever fought on American soil ensued.
  • After three days of desperate fighting, the Confederates were defeated. At the same time, on the Mississippi River, Union General Ulysses S. Grant captured the city of Vicksburg, giving the North control of the entire Mississippi Valley and splitting the Confederacy in two.
  • Two years later, after a long campaign involving forces commanded by Lee and Grant, the Confederates surrendered. The Civil War was the most traumatic episode in American history, but it resolved two matters that had vexed Americans since 1776. It put an end to slavery, and it decided that the country was not a collection of independent states but an indivisible whole.