Ken Kersch - American Political Thought

It was with great sadness that I learned of Isaac Kramnick’s death as I was completing this manuscript. But it is with a resolute happiness that I dedicate it to his memory.

Chapter 2 Settlement, the Road to Revolution, the Founding, and the Early Republic

1565:First permanent European settlement established by Spain at St. Augustine, Florida

1607:First permanent English settlement established at Jamestown, Virginia

1619:First African laborers imported to British North America

1620:English Puritans settle at Plymouth, Massachusetts

1624:First Dutch Settlement at New Amsterdam (seized by the British in 1664, when its name was changed to New York)

1630–1637:Massachusetts Bay colony established

1675–1678: King Philip’s War

1688–1689:Glorious Revolution (England)

1689:Publication of John Locke’s Second Treatise on Civil Government

1689:English Bill of Rights

1730–1755 (circa):First Great Awakening

1769:Spanish Catholic Franciscan missionaries establish twenty-one permanent missions along the California coast

1775:Pennsylvania Abolition Society founded

1775–1783:American Revolution

1776 (July 4):US Declaration of Independence

1781:Articles of Confederation ratified

1785:New York Society for the Promotion of the Manumission of Slaves founded

1787–1789:Constitutional ratification debates

1789 (September 17):US Constitution adopted

1789–1799:French Revolution

Chapter 3 Antebellum Political Thought

1790–1840 (circa):Second Great Awakening

1791:US Bill of Rights adopted

1791–1804:Saint-Domingue Slave Rebellion/Haitian Revolution

1793:Fugitive Slave Act of 1793

1800:First peaceful transition of power between national political parties

1803:Louisiana Purchase

1804–1806:Lewis and Clark expedition

1808:Atlantic slave trade ended

1812:War of 1812

1814–1815:Hartford Convention

1819–1821:Missouri Crises

1821:Mexican independence from Spain shifts large parts of what later will become the American West from Spanish to Mexican control

1822:Denmark Vesey Rebellion (aborted)

1823:Monroe Doctrine

1830:Indian Removal Act/Trail of Tears

1831: The Liberator founded

1831:Nat Turner Rebellion

1833:American Anti-Slavery Society founded

1845 (July 4):Henry David Thoreau begins residence at Walden Pond

1845:US annexation of Texas

1846–1848:Mexican–American War

1848:California Gold Rush

1848:Seneca Falls Convention

Chapter 4 Secession/Civil War/Reconstruction

1850:Fugitive Slave Act of 1850

1852:Publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin

1854:Republican Party founded

1857: Dred Scott v. Sandford

1858 (August–October):Lincoln–Douglas Debates

1859:Radical abolitionist John Brown’s raid on US arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia

1860 (December):South Carolina secedes

1861 (April 12):South Carolina fires upon Fort Sumter; hostilities begin

1861–1865:Abraham Lincoln presidency

1861–1865:US Civil War

1862:Homestead Act

1863:Emancipation Proclamation

1863:Gettysburg Address

1864:Sand Creek massacre

1865 (April 9):Robert E. Lee surrenders to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse

1865 (April 15):Abraham Lincoln assassinated

1865 (June 19):First African-American Juneteenth celebration commemorating the Emancipation Proclamation

1865:First Ku Klux Klan founded

1865–1870:Civil War Amendments adopted

1865–1877:Reconstruction

1866:Civil Rights Act of 1866

Chapter 5 Industrial Capitalism, Reformism, and the New American State

1869:Transcontinental Railroad completed

1869–1874:Granger Laws passed

1871:Indian Appropriations Act

1872:First National Park established at Yellowstone

1875:Civil Rights Act of 1875 (voided by Civil Rights Cases , 1883)

1876:Alexander Graham Bell invents telephone

1876:Battle of Little Big Horn

1877–1880:Thomas Edison invents the phonograph, the electric light bulb, and electric power generation

1882:Chinese Exclusion Act

1886 (May 4):Haymarket Affair, Chicago

1887:Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) established

1887:Dawes Act (Native American land allotments)

1890:Sherman Anti-trust Act

1890:Wounded Knee massacre

1890:American Frontier closed

1890:“Jim Crow” white supremacy re-established in South

1890s (circa):Populist movement

1890–1920:Progressive era

1892:Homestead Strike, Pittsburgh

1896: Plessy v. Ferguson

1898:Spanish–American War

1901–1909:Theodore Roosevelt presidency

1903:Wright Brothers invent airplane and fly at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina

1908:Introduction of the Model T automobile by the Ford Motor Company

1909:National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) founded

1912:Theodore Roosevelt’s third-party “Bull Moose” presidential campaign

1913:Federal Reserve established

1913–1921:Woodrow Wilson presidency

1914–1918:World War I

1917 (April)–1918 (November):US joins World War I

1918–1920:Spanish flu pandemic

1920:Nineteenth Amendment ratified

1920–1933:Prohibition

1921:Tulsa Race massacre

1921:Equal Rights Amendment proposed

1924:Immigration Act

1924:Indian Citizenship Act

Chapter 6 The New Deal Liberal Order: Collapse, Culmination, or “Great Exception”?

1929–1939:The Great Depression

1932:Great Plains dust storms

1933–1934:First New Deal

1933–1945:Franklin Delano Roosevelt presidency

1935:National Labor Relations Act

1935:Social Security Act

1935–1936:Second New Deal

1938:Fair Labor Standards Act