Key Figures and Events in American History
Posted on Mar 7, 2025 in History
Pilgrim Fathers – Settlers of Plymouth, Massachusetts, the first permanent colony in New England (1620). Of the 102 colonists, 35 were members of the English Separatist Church (a radical faction of Puritanism) who had earlier fled to Leiden, the Netherlands, to escape persecution at home.
Anti-Federalists – A movement that opposed the creation of a stronger U.S. federal government and which later opposed the ratification of the Constitution of 1787. The previous constitution, called the Articles of Confederation, gave state governments more authority. Led by Patrick Henry of Virginia, Anti-Federalists worried, among other things, that the position of president, then a novelty, might evolve into a monarchy.
Tecumseh – A Native American leader of the Shawnee and a large tribal confederacy (known as Tecumseh’s Confederacy) which opposed the United States during Tecumseh’s War and the War of 1812 (in this war he joined British forces for the capture of Detroit and the invasion of Ohio). He has become an icon and heroic figure in American Indian and Canadian history.
Manifest Destiny – The 19th-century American belief that the nation was destined to expand across the continent (America should stretch from Atlantic to Pacific). It was often used by American expansionists to justify U.S. annexation of Texas, Oregon, New Mexico, and California and later U.S. involvement in Alaska, Hawaii, and the Philippines.
Fourteen Points – (1918) Declaration by U.S. President Woodrow Wilson during World War I outlining his proposals for a postwar peace settlement.
Lend-Lease Act – The program under which the United States of America supplied the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, China, Free France, and other Allied nations with material between 1941 and 1945. It was signed into law on March 11, 1941, a year and a half after the outbreak of World War II in Europe in September 1939, but nine months before the U.S. entered the war in December 1941.
John Smith – (1580—1631), English explorer and early leader of the Jamestown Colony, the first permanent English settlement in North America. Smith played an equally important role as a cartographer and a prolific writer who vividly depicted the natural abundance of the New World.
Sons of Liberty – Organizations formed in the American colonies in the summer of 1765 to oppose the Stamp Act. They rallied support for colonial resistance through the use of petitions, assemblies, and propaganda, and they sometimes resorted to violence against officials of the mother country. Instrumental in preventing the enforcement of the Stamp Act, they remained an active pre-Revolutionary force against the crown.
Federalists – Supporters of ratification of the proposed Constitution of the United States between 1787 and 1789.
Francis Scott Key – An American lawyer, author, and amateur poet, from Georgetown, who wrote the lyrics to the United States’ national anthem, “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
Oregon Trail – One of the great emigrant routes to the Northwest, running from Independence, Missouri, to the Columbia River region of Oregon.
New Deal – The domestic program of the administration of U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt between 1933 and 1939, which took action to bring about immediate economic relief as well as reforms in industry, agriculture, finance, waterpower, labour, and housing, vastly increasing the scope of the federal government’s activities. The term was taken from Roosevelt’s speech accepting the Democratic nomination for the presidency on July 2, 1932.
