U.S. History For Dummies Cheat Sheet

This Cheat Sheet provides key dates that outline some of the most important events in U.S. history, which is as complex and fascinating as the people who populate the country.

Key dates in US history

You may think U.S. history starts with the American Revolution, but before that pivotal event came the hunters who first explored the continent and the Europeans who tried to colonize it.

Of course, after John Hancock and his colleagues signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776, things got really interesting, and historically significant people and events contributed to the making of the country we have today.

The following timeline offers a few of the significant milestones:

Causes and consequences of the Great Depression

America had gone through hard times before, including a bank panic and depression in the early 1820s and other economic hard times in the late 1830s, the mid-1870s, and the early and mid-1890s. But never did it suffer an economic illness so deep and so long as the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Economists have argued ever since as to just what caused it. But it’s safe to say that a bunch of intertwined factors contributed. Among them were:

• The stock market crash. The stock market soared throughout most of the 1920s, and the more it grew, the more people were eager to pour money into it. Many people bought on margin, which meant they paid only part of a stock’s worth when they bought it and the rest when they sold it. That worked fine as long as stock prices kept going up.
  But when the market crashed in late October 1929, they were forced to pay up on stocks that were worth far less than what they had paid for them. Many had borrowed to buy stock, and when the stock market went belly-up, they couldn’t repay their loans and the lenders were left holding the empty bag.
• Bank failures. Many small banks, particularly in rural areas, had overextended credit to farmers who, for the most part, had not shared in the prosperity of the 1920s and often could not repay the loans. Big banks, meanwhile, had foolishly made huge loans to foreign countries. Why? So the foreign countries could repay their earlier debts from World War I.
  When times got tough, and U.S. banks stopped lending, European nations simply defaulted on their outstanding loans. As a result, many banks went bankrupt. Others were forced out of business when depositors panicked and withdrew their money. The closings and panics almost completely shut down the country’s banking system.
• Too many poor people. That may sound sort of goofy, but it’s a real reason. While the overall economy had soared in the 1920s, most of the wealth was enjoyed by relatively few Americans. In 1929, 40 percent of the families in the country were still living at or below the poverty level.
  That made them too poor to buy goods and services and too poor to pay their debts. With no markets for their goods, manufacturers had to lay off tens of thousands of workers, which, of course, just created more poor people.
• Farm failures. Many American farmers were already having a hard time before the Depression, mostly because they were producing too much and farm product prices were too low. The situation was so bad in some areas that farmers burned corn for fuel rather than sell it.
• Environmental disasters. The production of vast crops during World War I and the decade that followed resulted in the over-plowing of much of America’s farmland. The prairie grasses that held topsoil in place were stripped.
  Coupled with one of the worst droughts in recorded history, the unprotected soil turned the Great Plains into what would become known as the “Dust Bowl.” Dry winds picked up tons of topsoil and blew it across the prairies, creating huge, suffocating clouds of dirt that buried towns and turned farms into deserts.
• Government inaction. Rather than try to jumpstart the economy by pushing the Federal Reserve System to lend money to banks at low interest rates and pumping money into the economy through federal public works projects, the Hoover Administration did nothing at first, then took small and tentative actions that weren’t enough to head things off.

Bread lines were established to prevent people from starving. And more than a million families lost their houses and took up residence in shantytowns made up of tents, packing crates, and the hulks of old cars. They were called “Hoovervilles,” a mocking reference to President Hoover, whom many blamed (somewhat unfairly) for the mess the country was experiencing.

Under orders of President Hoover, federal troops commanded by Gen. Douglas MacArthur used bayonets and gas bombs to rout the squatters. The camp was burned. No one was killed, but the episode left a bad taste in the mouths of many Americans.

Thousands of farmers left their homes in states like Oklahoma and Arkansas and headed for the promise of better days in the West, especially California. What they found there, however, was most often a backbreaking existence as migrant laborers, living in squalid camps and picking fruit for starvation wages.

Hurricanes Katrina and Ike devastate the southern United States

Although the war on terrorism dominated George W. Bush’s presidency, he did attempt to make changes on domestic issues as well. Near the end of his final term, the blustery rhetoric in Washington was like a gentle summer breeze when compared to the hurricanes that blew into the South.

Hurricane Katrina devastates the Big Easy

On August 23, 2005, a hurricane formed over the Bahamas and headed toward the southeastern United States. Called Katrina, it crossed Florida, picked up strength over the Gulf of Mexico, and made landfall in southeast Louisiana on August 29.

While Katrina’s 125-mile-per-hour winds — sending beds flying out of hotel windows — and 10 inches of rain were bad enough, a storm surge of more than 28 feet devastated the Mississippi coastal cities of Gulfport and Biloxi. But the greatest damage was reserved for the region’s largest city — New Orleans.

Nicknamed the Big Easy, most of New Orleans is below sea level. Under Katrina’s onslaught, levees that were supposed to protect the city gave way in more than 50 places, and 80 percent of the city was flooded. While most of New Orleans’s 1.2 million residents were evacuated (many to the city of Houston, Texas), thousands either refused to leave or could not.

The disaster claimed more than 1,800 lives and destroyed 200,000 homes. Damage estimates ranged as high as $125 billion, making it the most expensive hurricane in U.S. history. It wasn’t until October 11 that the last of the floodwaters were pumped out.

Hurricane Ike hits Texas

In September 2008, New Orleans was again evacuated when threatened by Hurricane Gustav. This time, the preparations and responses were better, and the levees held. But on the heels of Gustav came Ike.

The hurricane hit the Gulf Coast of Texas on September 13, dragging up a massive storm surge that drowned much of the city of Galveston. The storm killed 82 in the United States, with as many as 200 people missing, and did an estimated $27 billion worth of property damage.

Once again, the federal government was criticized for its post-storm performance. Texas officials complained that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) had been slow to provide housing for those left homeless by the hurricane and to provide funds for cleaning up the mess. “The response from Washington has been pretty underwhelming,” Texas Gov. Rick Perry said in mid-November, two months after the storm. “This is really irritating.”

But hurricanes — and even irritated governors — paled in the face of another kind of storm, an economic tempest that enveloped the nation and most of the rest of the world.

The 9/11 Terrorist Attacks on the U.S.

On September 11, 2001, the United States suffered the worst terrorist attack on its soil in its history. The attack was heartbreaking to U.S. citizens and prompted immediate political reaction. The U.S. government launched a War on Terror, specifically targeting the individuals who perpetrated the attack on 9/11.

At 8:46 a.m.(EDT) on September 11, 2001, a hijacked commercial jet (American 11) crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center (WTC) in New York City. Seventeen minutes later, at 9:03 a.m., a second hijacked passenger jet (United 175) flew into the WTC South Tower. Both towers soon collapsed, pulling down or heavily damaging surrounding buildings.

At 9:37, a third jet (American 77) plowed into the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., followed 26 minutes later by the crash of a fourth flight (United 93) into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, about 70 miles southeast of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Passengers aboard the fourth plane, having learned the fate of the other three planes through cell phone calls, apparently attempted to retake the plane before it could reach its intended target, believed to be the White House or U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. The hijackers crashed the plane before the passengers could regain control.

Reacting to the 9/11 attacks

The attacks, carried out by 19 members of a fundamentalist Islamist group called Al-Qaeda (“the base”), killed a total of about 3,000 people, including 415 New York City police and firefighters who responded to the disaster at the World Trade Center. More than 6,000 people were injured.

Americans — and much of the rest of the world — were shocked. Millions had watched horrified as television cameras that had been focusing on the North Tower after the first attack captured the second plane hitting the South Tower.

The subsequent collapse of the towers was also carried live. National, state, and local officials scrambled to prepare for more attacks. Air travel was shut down. Stock markets in the United States and around the world were badly shaken and posted severe losses.

On September 17, President Bush formally identified Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden as the mastermind behind the attacks. A wealthy member of a prominent Saudi Arabian family, bin Laden had operated out of Afghanistan since the mid-1990s under the protection of a group called the Taliban. The Taliban (which means “student”) followed an extreme version of Islamic law and seized control in Afghanistan in 1998.

Governments around the world denounced the attacks and offered support and solidarity. Most Middle Eastern countries (including Saudi Arabia) and Afghanistan expressed strong negative reactions to the attacks, Iraq being the notable exception.

United Nations (U.N.) Security Council Resolution 1368 condemned the attacks and determined to combat all forms of terrorism in accordance with the U.N. Charter.

Muslim organizations in the U.S., including the Islamic Society of North America, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, and the American Muslim Alliance, also condemned the attacks and asked Muslim Americans to lend aid and resources to help alleviate the suffering of those affected by the attacks.

Identifying the attackers – Al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden

Speaking to a joint session of Congress on September 20, Bush demanded the Taliban hand over bin Laden and other Al-Qaeda leaders and dismantle terrorist training camps within Afghanistan. “They will hand over the terrorists or share their fate,” Bush warned.

On October 7, after Taliban leaders had rejected Bush’s demands, U.S. and British aircraft unleashed a massive bombing attack on major Afghan cities. By mid-November, the Afghan capital of Kabul had fallen. By mid-December, air attacks coupled with allied nations’ ground forces that included about 30,000 troops from the United States and anti-Taliban Afghan militia had toppled the Taliban regime.

While out of power, the Taliban was not out of business. After a year of licking their wounds, Taliban forces began an insurgency. Their efforts were fueled by funds from control of much of Afghanistan’s vast production of poppies from which opium was manufactured. It was the nation’s largest cash crop, providing most of the world’s opium and 400,000 Afghans with work. The enemy also took advantage of safe havens in mountainous areas along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border by scampering into Pakistan, where it was logistically and politically difficult for U.S. troops to follow.

President Barack Obama, Bush’s successor, countered in 2009 by gradually building U.S. forces to more than 100,000 while warning that “our troop commitment in Afghanistan cannot be open-ended.” By mid-2013, U.S. forces were down to 65,000, and by the end of 2016, 8,400. The number climbed to 14,000 by mid-2018 under President Donald Trump, however, with no indication that a complete withdrawal would happen in the foreseeable future.

Bin Laden was killed by Navy SEALs in his Pakistan hiding place in May 2011, and Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar died two years later, apparently of tuberculosis. But after suffering more than 2,300 military deaths, spending at least $1 trillion, and fighting for three times longer than it had in World War II, the prognosis for peace in Afghanistan remained, at best, uncertain.

Fighting terrorism on the U.S. home front

The Bush administration never formally declared war on Afghanistan (which allowed it to claim it didn’t have to treat those captured as prisoners of war). But it did declare war on terrorism, and Bush proclaimed the war would continue and be fought on every front “until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped, and defeated.”

The far-reaching “temporary” act (most of which was made permanent by Congress in 2006) greatly expanded the authority of the FBI and other law enforcement agencies to conduct searches, look at medical and other personal records (such as what materials an individual took out from public libraries), and spy without court approval on those suspected of potential terrorist acts. It also allowed foreigners to be held for up to seven days without charges or deportation proceedings.

The act was approved 357–66 in the House of Representatives. In the Senate, the vote was 98–1, with only Sen. Russell Feingold, D-WI, opposed.

In July 2002, Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency (NSA) to listen in on phone calls American citizens made to other countries and to monitor e-mails. (See Chapter 25 for more on the NSA and electronic surveillance.) The order wasn’t made public until 2005, and Congress didn’t sanction the actions until 2008. In November, Bush signed a bill creating the Department of Homeland Security, consolidating dozens of government agencies, from the Secret Service to the Coast Guard, into one super-agency.

Imprisoning “non-POWs” at Guantanamo Bay

Because America had not actually declared war against Afghanistan, it didn’t treat captured Al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters as prisoners of war (POWs). Instead, they were taken to a prison erected on the U.S. Naval base at Guantanamo Bay on the island of Cuba. Administration officials contended that because the prison wasn’t on U.S. soil, the prisoners had no rights and could be held indefinitely without trial or even formal charges being filed.

Defending controversial tactics

Civil libertarians complained that such actions were counter to American ideals and violated basic human rights. But administration officials, notably Vice President Dick Cheney, defended the practices as justifiable and necessary to fight terrorism. They also pointed out that no terrorist attacks had occurred on U.S. soil since September 11, while several terrorist plots had been sniffed out and stopped.

In 2008, Congress approved a bill to ban some of the interrogation methods used, but Bush vetoed it. Of the 780 people held at the detention camp, most were eventually released without charges being filed or repatriated to other countries. When Bush left office, an estimated 242 prisoners were still at Guantanamo.

His successor, Barack Obama, had promised during his campaign to close the base and repeated variations of that pledge in subsequent years. Shortly after taking office in January 2009, he signed an executive order closing down the CIA’s secret prisons in other countries. But Congress repeatedly blocked efforts to completely close Guantanamo, and as of late 2018, 40 prisoners still remained there.

Slavery in early America

How did slavery in America begin? Actually, slavery was the first cash crop of the first permanent English colony in America. Jamestown settlers bought 20 human beings from Africa to work in the tobacco fields.

It’s pretty safe to say that the first permanent English colony in America was put together about as well as a soup sandwich. Those who set out to establish the colony weren’t sure where they were going or what to do when they got there.

A group of investors known as the Virginia Company of London was given a charter by King James I to settle somewhere in the southern part of the New World area known as Virginia. After a voyage on which roughly 27 percent of the original 144 settlers died, three ships arrived at the mouth of a river they ingratiatingly named the James, after the king. On May 14, 1607, they began the settlement of Jamestown.

Early troubles in Jamestown

Some of the settlers were indentured servants who had traded seven years of their labor for passage to America. Most of the others were far more interested in finding gold than creating a colony and lacked skills, such as hunting or farming, that might actually be useful in the wilderness. As one historian put it, “It was a colony of people who wouldn’t work, or couldn’t.”

Worse, the site they had chosen for a settlement was in a malaria-ridden swamp, and the local inhabitants were both suspicious and unfriendly. In fact, the Native Americans launched their first attack against the newcomers within two weeks of their arrival. Within six months, half of the 105 settlers who had survived the trip were dead of disease or starvation.

Native American friends of the earliest settlers

Those who survived did so largely because of a character named John Smith. An experienced and courageous adventurer, Smith was also a shameless self-promoter and a world-class liar, with a knack for getting into trouble. On the voyage over, for example, he was charged with mutiny, although he was eventually acquitted.

But whatever his faults, Smith was both gutsy and diplomatic. He managed to make friends with Powhatan, the chief of the local Native Americans, and the tribe provided the colonists with enough food to hold on. Smith provided much-needed leadership, declaring, “He that will not work neither shall he eat.” Without Smith, the colony may not have survived.

As it was, Jamestown came pretty close to disaster. In the winter of 1609, called “the starving time,” conditions got so bad colonists resorted to eating anything they could get — including each other. One man was executed after eating the body of his dead wife. In 1610, the survivors were actually on a ship and ready to head home when a military relief expedition showed up and took charge.

Finding a cash crop — slavery

One of the biggest problems the colonists faced was coming up with a product that people in England wanted and which could form the basis of a profitable economy. They found one in 1613 when a fellow named John Rolfe developed a variety of tobacco that was a huge hit in the mother country. Within a few years, Jamestown had a thriving cash crop.

The second was the meeting of the first legislative body of colonists on the continent. Known as the House of Burgesses, it met for about a week, passed laws against gambling and idleness, and decreed all colonists must attend two church services each Sunday — and bring their weapons with them. Then, the legislators adjourned because it was too hot to keep meeting.

The third event — three weeks after the House of Burgesses had become a symbol of representative government in the New World — was the arrival of a Dutch ship. From its cargo, Jamestown settlers bought 20 human beings from Africa to work in the tobacco fields.

The institution of slavery

While it was a Dutch ship that brought the first slaves to Virginia, no European nation had a monopoly on the practice. The Portuguese were the first Europeans to raid the African coast for slaves in the mid-15th century. They were quickly followed by the Spanish, who used Africans to supplant the New World Indians, who had either been killed or died of diseases. By the mid-16th century, the English sea dog John Hawkins was operating a thriving slave trade between Africa and the Caribbean.

Most slaves were seized from tribes in the continent’s interior and sold from West African ports to the New World. Some were hunted down by European and Arab slave traders. Many were sold by rival tribes after being captured in wars or on raids. Some were sold by their own tribes when they got into debt or ran afoul of tribal leaders.

Although the use of African slaves in the tobacco fields proved successful, and more slaves were gradually imported, slavery was by no means a strictly Southern colony phenomenon. While the Northern colonies had less use for slaves as agricultural workers, they put Africans to work as domestic servants or as unpaid laborers in various trades. One reason was that slaves represented more or less permanent labor, while indentured servants — people who traded five to seven years of work in return for passage to the New World — would eventually have to be freed.

But voices such as Sewall’s were few and far between. Although the total population of slaves was relatively low through most of the 1600s, colonial governments took steps to institutionalize slavery. In 1662, Virginia passed a law that automatically made slaves of slaves’ children. In 1664, Maryland’s assembly declared that all black people in the colony were slaves for life, whether they converted to Christianity or not. And in 1684, New York’s legislators recognized slavery as a legitimate practice.

As the 17th century ended, it was clear that African slaves were a much better bargain in terms of costs than European servants, and the numbers of slaves began to swell. In 1670, Virginia had a population of about 2,000 slaves. By 1708, the number was 12,000. Slavery had not only taken root; it was sprouting.

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