TIMELINE

1782

  • St. Jean de Crèvecoeur publishes Letters from an American Farmer

  • Virginia manumission law (repealed 1792)

1783

  • Noah Webster publishes his “blue-back speller”

1784

  • Slavery ends in Massachusetts

  • Northern states begin gradual emancipation

1787

  • Benjamin Rush writes Thoughts on Female Education

1790s

  • States grant corporations charters and special privileges

  • Private companies build roads and canals to facilitate trade

  • Merchants expand rural outwork system

  • Chesapeake blacks adopt Protestant beliefs

  • Parents limit family size as farms shrink

  • Second Great Awakening expands church membership

1791

  • Congress charters first Bank of the United States

1792

  • Mary Wollstonecraft publishes A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

1795

  • Massachusetts Mill Dam Act

1800

  • Gabriel Prosser plots slave rebellion in Virginia

1800s

  • Rise of sentimentalism and of companionate marriages

  • Women’s religious activism

  • Founding of female academies

  • Religious benevolence sparks social reform

1801

  • Cane Ridge revival in Kentucky

1816

  • Congress charters Second Bank of the United States

1817

  • Prominent whites create American Colonization Society

1819

  • Plummeting agricultural prices set off financial panic

1819–1821

  • Missouri Compromise

1820s

  • States reform education

  • Women become schoolteachers