GA Milestones US History cheat sheet
GA Milestones US History · Keep the key ideas within reach.
North American contact, colonial societies and the US founding
Native societies were diverse and adapted to specific environments; avoid treating them as one culture.
Disease caused the deadliest demographic impact of the Columbian Exchange.
Spanish colonization used encomienda, missions, and casta hierarchy.
French and Dutch colonization centered on trade and alliances more than settlement.
1607 is the period boundary; later events such as the Pueblo Revolt belong to Period 2.
Chesapeake society rested on tobacco, headrights, and eventually racial slavery.
New England developed family towns, town meetings, and Puritan control.
Relate Bacon's Rebellion to labor demand, law and political control without treating it as the only cause of racial slavery.
Navigation Acts expressed mercantilism; enforcement was uneven before the 1760 s.
The Great Awakening divided churches and encouraged individual religious choice.
The French and Indian War created the debt and territory disputes that drove imperial conflict.
Stamp Act resistance linked taxation to representation and organized colonial protest.
The Articles of Confederation lacked taxing and commerce power and were replaced by the Constitution.
The Great Compromise and Three-Fifths Compromise resolved representation disputes.
The Bill of Rights initially limited only the federal government.
US expansion, sectional conflict, Civil War and Reconstruction
Marbury v. Madison established judicial review.
The market revolution linked regions through transportation, credit, and cotton.
Jacksonian democracy widened white male participation while excluding others.
The Second Great Awakening inspired antebellum reform movements.
The Missouri Compromise and Wilmot Proviso showed slavery's extension dividing the nation.
The Compromise of 1850 and Fugitive Slave Act intensified sectional conflict.
Dred Scott undermined congressional authority over slavery in territories.
The Emancipation Proclamation was a war measure that did not free border-state slaves.
The Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments transformed citizenship and suffrage.
The Compromise of 1877 ended federal Reconstruction.
US industrial society, reform, world wars and depression
Railroads and integration strategies built national industrial markets.
Social Darwinism and the Gospel of Wealth justified inequality.
Labor unions faced hostile public opinion after Haymarket, Homestead, and Pullman.
Populists demanded free silver, income tax, and direct Senate election.
Plessy v. Ferguson gave legal sanction to racial segregation.
Progressive amendments: Sixteenth (income tax), Seventeenth (Senate election), Eighteenth (Prohibition), Nineteenth (women's suffrage).
World War I brought mobilization and suppression of dissent under the Espionage and Sedition Acts.
The Senate rejected the Versailles Treaty and League of Nations.
The New Deal created lasting regulatory and welfare institutions but did not end the Depression.
World War II mobilized the economy and led to Japanese American internment.
The United States after1945: Cold War, civil rights and political change
Containment was implemented through the Truman Doctrine, Marshall Plan, NATO, and Korean War.
McCarthyism and the Red Scare restricted domestic dissent.
Brown v.Board rejected segregated public schooling and helped advance the civil-rights struggle; wider segregation required additional challenges.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965 addressed different forms of discrimination.
Vietnam, Watergate, and stagflation eroded postwar confidence in government.
Reagan pushed tax cuts, deregulation, and anti-communist policy.
The Cold War ended with Soviet internal decay, Gorbachev's reforms, and 1989–1991 events.
9/11 shifted foreign policy toward counterterrorism and wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The 2008 financial crisis produced bailouts, the Great Recession, and stimulus.
The Affordable Care Act expanded insurance coverage through subsidies and regulation.
Historical evidence, chronology and justified interpretation
Identify provenance, audience, genre and transmission before judging evidentiary value.
A normative text does not by itself establish actual compliance.
Chronological sequence alone does not prove a causal mechanism.
Periodization is an interpretation with explicit criteria.
Different perspectives remain subject to evidence and contextual evaluation.