Merchants defy Sugar and Stamp Acts

Patriots mount three boycotts of British goods, in 1765, 1767, and 1774

Boycotts spur Patriot women to make textiles

Migration into the Ohio Valley after Pontiac’s Rebellion

Quebec Act (1774) allows Catholicism

Stamp Act Congress (1765)

First Continental Congress (1774)

Second Continental Congress (1775)

Patriots call for American unity

The idea of natural rights poses a challenge to the institution of chattel slavery

Concept of popular sovereignty gains force in the colonies

Colonists lay claim to rights of Englishmen

Manufacturing expands during the war

Cutoff of trade and severe inflation threaten economy

War debt grows

Declining immigration from Europe (1775–1820) enhances American identity

African American slaves seek freedom through military service

The Declaration of Independence (1776)

States adopt republican constitutions (1776 on)

Articles of Confederation ratified (1781)

Treaty of Paris (1783)

Judith Sargent Murray publishes “On the Equality of the Sexes” (1779)

Emancipation of slaves begins in the North

Virginia enacts religious freedom (1786)

Thomas Paine’s Common Sense (1776) causes colonists to rethink political loyalties

States rely on property qualifications to define citizenship rights in their new constitutions

Bank of North America founded (1781)

Land speculation increases in the West

State cessions, land ordinances, and Indian wars create national domain in the West

The Alien Act makes it harder for immigrants to become citizens and allow for deporting aliens (1798)

U.S. Constitution drafted (1787)

Conflict over Alexander Hamilton’s economic policies

First national parties: Federalists and Republicans

Politicians and ministers deny vote to women; praise republican motherhood

Bill of Rights ratified (1791)

Sedition Act limits freedom of the press (1798)

Indians form Western Confederacy (1790)

Second Great Awakening (1790–1860)

Emerging political divide between South and North

Cotton output and demand for African labor expands

Farm productivity improves

Embargo encourages U.S. manufacturing

Second Bank of the United States chartered (1816–1836)

Supreme Court guards property

Suffrage for white men expands; New Jersey retracts suffrage for propertied women (1807)

Atlantic slave trade ends (1808)

American Colonization Society founded (1817)

Jefferson reduces activism of national government

Chief Justice Marshall asserts federal judicial powers

Triumph of Republican Party and end of Federalist Party

Free blacks enhance sense of African American identity

Religious benevolence engenders social reform movements

Tenskwatawa and Tecumseh revive Western Indian Confederacy

War of 1812 tests national unity

State constitutions democratized