A Brief Historical Overview of the United States: 1600-1865

1607   Settlement at Jamestown, Virginia (see John Smith)

1619   Negro Slavery introduced into Virginia

1620   Pilgrims land at Plymouth (see William Bradford)

1627  Thomas Morton sets up Maypole at Merry-Mount: reflects opposition to Puritans

1630   Massachusetts Bay Colony established at Salem (see John Winthrop)

1636   Roger Williams founds Providence: all sects tolerated

1637   Pequot War

1638   Anne Hutchinson is banished from the Bay Colony for challenging Puritan beliefs

1656   Quakers arrive in Massachusetts (see John Woolman)

1682   William Penn settles Pennsylvania

1692   Salem Witchcraft Trials (see Samuel Sewall)

1733   Jonathan Edwards conducts his first great revival meetings at Northampton

1740-1745   The “Great Awakening” (religious revival)

1765   The Stamp Act

1774   First Continental Congress

1775-1783   Revolutionary War

1776   Declaration of Independence

1787   Constitutional Convention

1789   Federal Government is established

1803   Louisiana Purchase

1812-1815   War with England

1820   Missouri Compromise

1820   Washington Irving publishes The Sketch Book

1830   The “Second Revolution,” or the Ascendancy of “Jacksonian Democracy”

1831   New England Anti-Slavery Society Founded

1836   Ralph Waldo Emerson publishes Nature

1850   Nathaniel Hawthorne publishes The Scarlet Letter

1851   Herman Melville publishes Moby Dick

1852   Harriet Beecher Stowe publishes Uncle Tom’s Cabin

1854   Henry David Thoreau publishes Walden

1855   Walt Whitman publishes Leaves of Grass

1857   Dred Scott Decision

1860-1865   American Civil War