NY Regents U.S. History cheat sheet

Jamestown, founded in 1607 by the Virginia Company, was the first permanent English settlement in North America; tobacco cultivation made it profitable.

The Mayflower Compact (1620) bound Plymouth settlers to majority rule and is an early example of self-government.

Virginia's House of Burgesses (1619) was the first elected representative assembly in English North America.

New England colonies relied on town meetings and Puritan congregations; the Middle Colonies were ethnically and religiously diverse; the Southern Colonies developed plantation economies.

Mercantilism held that colonies existed to supply raw materials and buy manufactured goods; the Navigation Acts regulated colonial trade.

The Great Awakening (1730s–1740s) was a religious revival that challenged established authority and encouraged new denominations.

Bacon's Rebellion (1676) exposed tensions between poor frontier farmers and Virginia's elite and contributed to the shift from indentured servitude to racial slavery.

The French and Indian War (1754–1763) ended with Britain gaining territory but also a large debt, leading to new colonial taxes.

The Stamp Act (1765) taxed printed materials and sparked colonial protests based on 'no taxation without representation.'

The Boston Tea Party (1773) and the Intolerable Acts escalated conflict between Britain and Massachusetts.

The Declaration of Independence (July 4, 1776) asserted natural rights and the consent of the governed.

The American victory at Saratoga (1777) brought France into the war as an American ally.

Yorktown (1781) ended major fighting; the Treaty of Paris (1783) recognized U.S. independence and set boundaries.

The Articles of Confederation created a weak central government; Shays' Rebellion (1786–87) highlighted its inability to maintain order.

The Constitution (1787) included the Great Compromise and the Three-Fifths Compromise; the Bill of Rights was added in 1791.

Federalists supported a strong national government and the Constitution; Democratic-Republicans favored states' rights and strict construction.

Washington's Farewell Address warned against permanent alliances and political factions.

Marbury v. Madison (1803) established judicial review, the power of courts to declare laws unconstitutional.

The Louisiana Purchase (1803) doubled U.S. territory and spurred westward exploration.

The War of 1812 increased American nationalism; the Era of Good Feelings followed.

The Monroe Doctrine (1823) warned European powers against new colonization in the Americas.

The Missouri Compromise (1820) admitted Missouri as a slave state and Maine as free, and banned slavery north of 36°30' in the Louisiana Territory.

The Indian Removal Act (1830) led to the Trail of Tears, the forced relocation of Cherokee and other southeastern nations.

Manifest Destiny justified westward expansion; Texas was annexed in 1845, and the Mexican-American War (1846–1848) added the Mexican Cession.

The Compromise of 1850 included a stricter Fugitive Slave Act; the Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854) repealed the Missouri Compromise and led to 'Bleeding Kansas.'

The Dred Scott decision (1857) held that African Americans were not citizens and that Congress could not ban slavery in the territories.

Lincoln's election in 1860 prompted Southern secession; the Civil War began with the attack on Fort Sumter in April 1861.

The Emancipation Proclamation (January 1, 1863) declared slaves in Confederate-held territory free and made emancipation a Union war aim.

Gettysburg (1863) and Vicksburg (1863) were turning points that shifted momentum to the Union.

The Thirteenth Amendment (1865) abolished slavery; the Fourteenth (1868) granted citizenship and equal protection; the Fifteenth (1870) protected voting rights by race.

Radical Republicans in Congress imposed Reconstruction Acts (1867), dividing the South into military districts and requiring new state constitutions.

Black Codes and later Jim Crow laws restricted African Americans' rights; the Freedmen's Bureau aided former slaves and poor whites.

Sharecropping and crop-lien systems tied many freedpeople to land in economic dependency.

The Compromise of 1877 withdrew federal troops from the South and ended Reconstruction.

The Transcontinental Railroad, completed in 1869, linked the nation's coasts and accelerated western settlement and trade.

The Bessemer process made steel cheap; Carnegie dominated steel, and Rockefeller dominated oil.

Trusts and holding companies concentrated economic power; the Sherman Antitrust Act (1890) was an early federal response.

The Great Railroad Strike (1877), Haymarket affair (1886), and Pullman strike (1894) showed labor unrest.

New immigrants from southern and eastern Europe arrived through Ellis Island (opened 1892); Asian immigrants arrived at Angel Island (1910).

The Chinese Exclusion Act (1882) restricted Chinese immigration and reflected nativist sentiment.

Urban political machines, such as Tammany Hall, provided services to immigrants in exchange for political support.

The Populist Party (1892) demanded free silver, railroad regulation, and income tax; William Jennings Bryan ran on free silver in 1896.

Muckrakers exposed corruption and unsafe conditions; Upton Sinclair's The Jungle led to the Meat Inspection Act and Pure Food and Drug Act (1906).

Progressive reforms included initiative, referendum, and recall to increase citizen control over government.

The Sixteenth Amendment (1913) allowed a federal income tax; the Seventeenth (1913) provided for direct election of senators.

The Federal Reserve Act (1913) created a central banking system to regulate the money supply.

Theodore Roosevelt's Square Deal included trust-busting, conservation, and consumer protection.

The Nineteenth Amendment (1920) granted women the right to vote.

The NAACP (1909) pursued legal challenges to segregation; W.E.B. Du Bois led the Niagara Movement.

Settlement houses, such as Jane Addams's Hull House, provided social services to immigrants and the poor.

The Spanish-American War (1898) ended with the Treaty of Paris; the U.S. acquired Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines and gained influence over Cuba.

The Open Door Policy (1899) sought equal commercial access to China.

The Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine asserted U.S. police power in the Western Hemisphere; the Panama Canal opened in 1914.

The U.S. remained neutral when World War I began in 1914; unrestricted submarine warfare, the Lusitania sinking (1915), and the Zimmermann Telegram (1917) led to U.S. entry.

World War I home-front agencies included the War Industries Board; the Espionage and Sedition Acts limited dissent.

The Great Migration was the movement of African Americans from the rural South to northern cities during and after World War I.

Wilson's Fourteen Points proposed a League of Nations; the Senate rejected the Treaty of Versailles in 1919.

The Red Scare (1919–1920) targeted radicals and immigrants after the Russian Revolution.

The 1920s saw mass consumer culture, Ford's assembly line, radio, and installment credit; the Harlem Renaissance flourished.

Prohibition (Eighteenth Amendment, 1919) was repealed by the Twenty-First Amendment (1933).

The Scopes Trial (1925) reflected conflict between modern science and religious fundamentalism; quota laws restricted immigration.

The stock market crash of October 1929 and bank failures triggered the Great Depression; the Smoot-Hawley Tariff (1930) worsened trade.

Hoover's response included the Reconstruction Finance Corporation; the Bonus Army march (1932) highlighted distress.

FDR's New Deal created the CCC, WPA, TVA, FDIC, SEC, and Social Security Act (1935).

The Wagner Act (1935) protected collective bargaining; the Fair Labor Standards Act (1938) set minimum wage and maximum hours.

The Dust Bowl forced migration from the southern Plains, dramatized in The Grapes of Wrath.

The Neutrality Acts of the 1930s limited U.S. involvement; Lend-Lease (1941) aided Allies before U.S. entry.

The attack on Pearl Harbor (December 7, 1941) brought the United States into World War II.

Executive Order 9066 led to Japanese American internment; Korematsu v. United States (1944) upheld it.

D-Day (1944) and the island campaigns in the Pacific led to Allied victory; atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

Containment guided U.S. Cold War policy; the Truman Doctrine (1947) and Marshall Plan (1948) addressed communist threats in Europe.

NATO (1949) was a collective defense alliance; the Berlin Airlift (1948–49) countered the Soviet blockade.

The Korean War (1950–1953) ended in stalemate; McCarthyism and HUAC investigated alleged communists.

The Cuban Missile Crisis (1962) and Vietnam War (Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, 1964) were major Cold War confrontations.

Brown v. Board of Education (1954) declared school segregation unconstitutional and overturned Plessy v. Ferguson.

The Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955–56) brought Martin Luther King Jr. to national prominence.

The Civil Rights Act (1964) banned discrimination in public accommodations and employment; the Voting Rights Act (1965) protected voting rights.

The March on Washington (1963) and Selma marches built pressure for civil rights legislation.

Black Power advocates, including Malcolm X and SNCC, emphasized racial pride and self-determination.

Johnson's Great Society created Medicare and Medicaid (1965), Head Start, and VISTA.

The women's movement used Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique (1963); Title IX (1972) barred sex discrimination in education.

Cesar Chavez organized farmworkers; the Stonewall riots (1969) accelerated the gay rights movement.

Reaganomics in the 1980s emphasized tax cuts, deregulation, and reduced domestic spending; the Cold War ended with the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991.

The Persian Gulf War (1991) expelled Iraqi forces from Kuwait; NAFTA (1994) and the WTO (1995) expanded trade.

The Clinton impeachment (1998) followed by acquittal; Bush v. Gore (2000) resolved the presidential election.

The September 11, 2001 attacks led to the War on Terror, the Patriot Act, and wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The 2008 financial crisis led to TARP; the Affordable Care Act (2010) expanded health insurance.

Debates over immigration included DACA (2012); demographic change increased diversity.

Climate policy included the Paris Agreement (2015); technology and social media accelerated globalization.