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“100 ESSENTIAL FACTS IN U. S. HISTORY”
Certain facts are basic to building and understanding of a specific discipline. The basic goal of this initiative is
building a mastery of subject specific knowledge. The following essential facts are based on the Virginia
Standards of Learning for 11th grade Virginia and United States History.
1. The first agreement for self-government in America was the Mayflower Compact.
2. A joint stock company is made up of a group of shareholders who each contribute some money to the
company and receive a share of the company’s profits.
3. Captain John Smith helped found and govern the English colony of Jamestown.
4. The first African slaves arrived in the Jamestown colony in 1619.
5. The Virginia House of Burgesses was the first legislative body in colonial America.
6. Staple crops in the South included tobacco, grown in Virginia, Maryland, and North Carolina. Rice was
grown in South Carolina and Georgia. Indigo was grown mainly in South Carolina.
7. People who could not afford passage to the colonies could become indentured servants. Another
person would pay their passage, and in exchange, the indentured servant would serve that person for a
set length of time (usually five to seven years) and then would be free.
8. John Locke was an English philosopher whose ideas helped inspire the American Revolution. He
wrote that all humans have the right to life, liberty, and property.
9. The French and Indian War was a war between the French and British over control of the Ohio River
Valley. The war, which lasted from 1756-1763, ended in an English victory and established Great
Britain as the dominant European power in America.
10. The Proclamation of 1763 forbade British colonists from settling west of the Appalachian Mountains.
11. The American Revolution began in April 1775 when the British marched to Lexington and Concord in
Massachusetts in search of colonial weapons. They were met with armed resistance by colonial
minutemen.
12. The Second Continental Congress met in Philadelphia in 1776 and drafted and signed the Declaration
of Independence.
13. George Washington led British troops in the French and Indian War and was later appointed
commander-in-chief of the Continental Army during the Revolution.
14. Thomas Paine wrote Common Sense in January 1776. It helped turn public opinion in favor of
revolution in America.
15. George III became king of England in 1760 and reigned during the American Revolution.
16. Thomas Jefferson was a delegate from Virginia to the Second Continental Congress and was the main
author of the Declaration of Independence.
17. The Declaration of Independence was ratified by the Second Continental Congress on July 4, 1776.
18. Patriots were colonists who believed in complete independence from England.
19. Loyalists (Tories) remained loyal to Britain based on cultural and economic ties.
20. The Treaty of Paris (1783) ended the Revolutionary War, recognized the independence of the
American colonies, and granted the colonies the territory from the southern border of Canada to the
northern border of Florida, and from the Atlantic coast to the Mississippi River
21. The Articles of Confederation was the first governing document of the United States.
22. The system set up in the U.S. Constitution to guarantee all branches of the federal government remained
equal in power was called Checks and Balances.
23. The three branches of the federal government outlined in the Constitution are the legislative, executive,
and judicial.
24. The person responsible for drafting most of the language in the Constitution was James Madison.
25. The Great Compromise divided the national legislature into two parts, the House of Representatives
and the U.S. Senate.
26. When it came to determining the population in slave states, slaves were counted as 3/5 of a person.
27. Supporters of the Constitution were known as Federalists.
28. Opponents of the Constitution were called Anti-Federalists.
29. The first ten amendments to the Constitution were called the Bill of Rights, which guarantee basic
individual rights.
30. In 1803 the United States purchased the Louisiana Territory from France for $15 million.
31. Meriwether Lewis and William Clark were commissioned by President Thomas Jefferson to explore
the Louisiana Territory. Their journey lasted from 1804-1806.
32. The War of 1812 against England lasted two years. An American victory increased nationalism and
economic independence.
33. In 1819 the United States purchased Florida from Spain under the Adams-Onis Treaty.
34. The Monroe Doctrine declared that Europe should not interfere in the affairs of the western
hemisphere.
35. In the ruling on the case of Marbury v. Madison Chief Justice John Marshall established the Supreme
Court’s power of judicial review, which allows the high court to declare laws unconstitutional.
36. The Missouri Compromise was the first attempt by Congress to legislate slavery. It created a dividing
line at the 36 30” parallel for ownership of slaves.
37. Eli Whitney developed a manufacturing system which used standardized parts which were all identical
and thus, interchangeable.
38. The election of Andrew Jackson in 1828 led to the rise of the “Common Man.”
39. During the winter of 1838-1839, Cherokee Indians were removed from their homes in Georgia and
moved to the Oklahoma Indian Territory. Many died on the trail, and the journey became known as the
“Trail of Tears.”
40. A tariff is a tax on imported goods.
41. Manifest Destiny is the term used in the 1840s and 1850s to describe the inevitable expansion of the
U.S. to the Pacific Ocean.
42. Abolition is the term used to describe the militant effort to do away with slavery.
43. Sectionalism refers to the different parts of the country developing unique and separate cultures, such as
the North, South, and West.
44. Nat Turner was a slave who led an uprising in Southhampton County, VA in 1831. 60 whites and 100
blacks were killed.
45. Frederick Douglass was a self-educated slave who became the best known abolitionist speaker.
46. The Compromise of 1850 was hailed as a solution to the threat of national division over slavery.
47. The Underground Railroad was a secret shifting network that aided slaves escaping to the North and
Canada, mainly after 1840.
48. Harriet Tubman was one of the shrewdest conductors of the Underground Railroad.
49. Uncle Tom’s Cabin, written by Harriet Beecher Stowe, helped crystallize the rift between North and
South and help bring about the Civil War.
50. The term popular sovereignty means that the people of a territory had the right to decide their own laws
by voting.
51. In 1859, the militant abolitionist John Brown seized the federal arsenal in Harper’s Ferry, VA.
52. In 1857 the Supreme Court ruled that slaves were not citizens and had no right to sue for freedom. The
case centered around a slave named Dred Scott.
53. Border states were states that had slavery but did not secede from the Union during the Civil War.
54. The first shots of the Civil War were fired at Fort Sumter, South Carolina.
55. Generals Robert E. Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson were major leaders and generals for the
Confederacy during the Civil War.
56. General Ulysses S. Grant became the commanding general for all U.S. forces during the Civil War.
57. Three battles that were turning points in the Civil War were fought at Antietam, Gettysburg, and
Vicksburg.
58. In September 1862, Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed the slaves
in states that had seceded.
59. Abraham Lincoln served as President of the United States during the Civil War.
60. Jefferson Davis served as President of the Confederate States of America during the Civil War.
61. The plan to reunite the state after the end of the Civil War was commonly called Reconstruction.
62. The thirteenth amendment to the Constitution outlawed slavery in all states.
63. The fifteenth amendment to the Constitution gave former male slaves the right to vote.
64. The term segregation refers to the separation of whites and blacks, mostly in the South, in public
facilities, transportation, schools, etc.
65. The first transcontinental railroad was completed on May 10, 1869 in Promontory Point, Utah.
66. Thomas Edison was one of the most prolific inventors in U.S. history. He invented the phonograph, the
light bulb, electric battery, and moving pictures.
67. Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone.
68. The Sherman Antitrust Act was a federal law passed in 1890 that outlawed the combination of
companies into monopolies, thus restraining trade.
69. Booker T. Washington was an educator who urged blacks to better themselves through education and
economic advancement. In 1881 he founded the first normal school for blacks, the Tuskegee Institute.
70. William E. B. DuBois was a black orator and essayist who helped found the National Association for
the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
71. In the decision on the court case of Plessy v. Ferguson, the Supreme Court ruled that “separate but
equal” facilities were constitutional.
72. Jim Crow laws were state laws created to separate whites and blacks in the South.
73. Upton Sinclair was a progressive writer who wrote a book called The Jungle, which exposed the
horrors of food production in the United States.
74. President Woodrow Wilson’s plan for peace after World War I was contained in a peace treaty called
the Fourteen Points.
75. The Palace at Versailles in France was the site of the signing of the peace treaty that ended World War
I.
76. November 11, 1918 was the date on which an armistice was signed, effectively ending the fighting in
World War I.
77. President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s plan for getting the nation out of the Great Depression was called the
New Deal.
78. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation is a federal agency that insures bank deposits, created by
the Glass-Stegall Banking Reform Act of 1933.
79. The Social Security Act established a retirement account for persons over 65 funded by a tax on wages
paid equally by employee and employer.
80. Benito Mussolini was the fascist dictator of Italy from 1922-1943. He wanted to create a new Roman
Empire.
81. Adolf Hitler was the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party, or Nazis. He was elected
chancellor of Germany in 1933.
82. Germany used a series of “Lightning campaigns” or Blitzkrieg to invade Poland in 1939.
83. The Axis Powers in World War II were Italy, Germany, and Japan.
84. On December 7, 1941 the Japanese navy attacked the American fleet stationed at Pearl Harbor,
Hawaii.
85. Franklin D. Roosevelt issued executive order 9066 shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor. This order
moved all Japanese and people of Japanese descent living on the west coast of the U.S. into internment
camps in the interior of the country.
86. Genocide is the destruction of a racial group.
87. On June 6, 1944 the Allies (Great Britain, the United States, Canada, and Australia) launched an
invasion of France with over a million troops. This invasion came to be known as D-Day.
88. Socialism is the social theory advocating community control of the means of production.
89. Communism is the social system based on the collective ownership of all productive property.
90. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was chartered in 1949 as a defensive alliance. It
established an international military force.
91. In the 1954 ruling on the case of Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court declared that
racially segregated facilities are inherently unequal and ordered all public schools desegregated.
92. In December 1955 Rosa Parks, a worker for the local NAACP in Montgomery, Alabama started a
nationwide bus boycott when she refused to give up her seat on the bus to a white man.
93. In a speech in support of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his
famous “I Have a Dream” speech in Washington DC.
94. In October 1962 the United States blockaded Cuba after Soviet nuclear missile sites were discovered
there. Although the Cuban Missile Crisis was settled peacefully, it brought the world closer to nuclear
war than ever before.
95. The domino theory states that if one country falls to communism, it would undermine another and that
one would fall, creating a domino effect.
96. In 1972 five men were arrested for breaking into the Democratic National Committee headquarters
located in the Watergate complex in Washington DC. As a result of an extensive investigation
President Richard Nixon resigned from office rather than face impeachment charges.
97. In 1978 52 Americans working at the U.S. embassy in Tehran, Iran were taken hostage and held 443
days.
98. In the 1973 case of Roe v. Wade the Supreme Court ruled that a state could not prevent a woman from
having an abortion during the first three months of pregnancy.
99. In 1998 President William Jefferson Clinton became the second president in U.S. history to face
impeachment charges. He was found not guilty by the Senate.
100. On September 11, 2001 the United States came under attack by terrorists, who used hijacked airplanes
to destroy targets in New York City and Washington DC.