History 250

Articles of Confederation

The first national constitution, drafted in 1777 and ratified in 1781, created a weak central government with no power to tax; it was replaced by the Constitution in 1789.

U.S. Constitution

Signed September 17, 1787, and ratified in 1788 after a fierce debate between Federalists and Anti-Federalists; the new government began in 1789.

First Bank of the United States

Chartered at Treasury Secretary Hamilton's urging over objections from Jefferson and Madison; Congress let its 20-year charter expire in 1811.

Jay Treaty

A treaty with Britain backed by the pro-treaty Federalists and fiercely opposed by Democratic-Republicans; the fight helped crystallize the first two-party system.

Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions

Written secretly by Vice President Jefferson and James Madison, the resolutions declared the Alien and Sedition Acts unconstitutional and asserted a role for the states in judging federal laws.

Louisiana Purchase

The United States bought about 828,000 square miles from France for $15 million, roughly doubling the nation's size.

Ban on Importing Enslaved People

Outlawed the transatlantic slave trade into the U.S. effective January 1, 1808, the earliest date the Constitution allowed; the domestic slave trade continued.

Hartford Convention

Federalist delegates met to air grievances over the war and propose constitutional changes; after the victory at New Orleans many saw them as disloyal, and the party collapsed.

Missouri Compromise

Admitted Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state and barred slavery north of 36°30′ in the Louisiana Territory; repealed by the Kansas–Nebraska Act in 1854.

Indian Removal Act

Passed the Senate 28–19 and the House 101–97 and signed by Jackson on May 28, 1830, it authorized the removal of Native nations from the Southeast to lands west of the Mississippi.

Nullification Crisis

South Carolina declared federal tariffs void within its borders; Jackson won the Force Bill authorizing military enforcement, and a compromise tariff ended the standoff.

Whig Party

Formed in opposition to Andrew Jackson, the Whigs were one of the two major parties until they split over slavery in the 1850s.

Annexation of Texas

Texas was annexed by joint resolution of Congress and admitted as a slave state on December 29, 1845; Whigs and abolitionists opposed adding another slave state.

Contested: Tyler was nominally unaffiliated; annexation was carried mainly by Democrats.

Wilmot Proviso

Proposed banning slavery in any territory won from Mexico; it passed the House on sectional lines and failed in the Senate.

Free Soil Party

Opposed slavery's spread into the West; Martin Van Buren won 10.1% as its 1848 candidate, and the party merged into the Republicans in 1854.

Fugitive Slave Act of 1850

Required citizens and officials in free states to help capture people fleeing slavery and denied the accused a jury trial; formally repealed in June 1864.

Contested: Pushed by Southern members of both parties and signed by a Whig president.

Kansas–Nebraska Act

Repealed the Missouri Compromise line and let settlers vote on slavery ("popular sovereignty"); it passed the House 113–100, with all 45 Northern Whigs opposed.

Bleeding Kansas

Violence over whether Kansas would allow slavery included electoral fraud, raids and 56 documented political killings.

Dred Scott v. Sandford

Ruled 7–2 that Black Americans could not be citizens and that Congress could not ban slavery in the territories; overturned by the 13th and 14th Amendments.

John Brown's Raid on Harpers Ferry

Brown's October 16–18, 1859, attack on a federal armory, meant to ignite a slave revolt, failed, and he was hanged; it deepened sectional fear.

Secession & the Confederacy

Eleven slave states seceded to protect slavery and formed the Confederate States; secession conventions were led largely by Democrats, with many former Whigs among the Unionists.

Contested: Secession was a sectional movement; most leaders were Southern Democrats, but not all Southern Democrats supported it.

Homestead Act

Offered 160 acres of public land to settlers who farmed it; homesteading ended in 1976 (1986 in Alaska).

Emancipation Proclamation

Issued January 1, 1863, it declared enslaved people in rebelling states free and opened the Union Army to Black soldiers.

Black Codes

Restrictive laws passed under Andrew Johnson's lenient Reconstruction to control freedmen's labor and movement; historians describe them as part of Democrats' effort to keep power and suppress freedmen.

First Ku Klux Klan

Founded December 24, 1865, in Pulaski, Tennessee, by six former Confederate officers; historian Eric Foner described it as a military force serving "the interests of the Democratic party, the planter class" and white supremacy.

14th Amendment: Citizenship & Equal Protection

Passed the Senate 33–11 and the House 138–36 in June 1866 and ratified in July 1868, guaranteeing citizenship, due process and equal protection.

Impeachment of Andrew Johnson

The House impeached Johnson; the Senate voted 35–19 to convict, one vote short of the two-thirds required.

Enforcement Acts (Ku Klux Klan Act)

Three laws making it a federal crime to interfere with voting, office-holding or jury service; federal prosecutions broke the first Klan.

White League & Red Shirts

Openly operating white paramilitaries in Louisiana, Mississippi and the Carolinas used intimidation and violence to drive Republicans from power and suppress Black voters.

Compromise of 1877

An informal deal settled the disputed 1876 election for Republican Rutherford B. Hayes; he withdrew the last federal troops from the South, ending Reconstruction.

The "Solid South"

After Reconstruction, the South voted as a near-unanimous Democratic bloc, built on the disenfranchisement of Black voters, until the civil rights era.

Pendleton Civil Service Act

Passed after President Garfield's assassination by a disappointed office-seeker, it began hiring federal workers by merit exam instead of patronage.

Interstate Commerce Act

Created the first federal regulatory agency to oversee railroad rates.

Southern Disenfranchisement Constitutions

Starting with Mississippi in 1890, Southern states adopted poll taxes, literacy tests and white primaries that stripped most Black and many poor white citizens of the vote.

Populist (People's) Party

A farmer-labor party demanding railroad regulation and looser money; James Weaver won 8.5% in 1892.

Wilmington Coup & Massacre

White Democrats led a mob of about 2,000 that overthrew the elected biracial Fusionist government of Wilmington, N.C., killing at least 14 and possibly far more Black residents.

Pure Food and Drug Act

A landmark Progressive law, signed the same day as the Meat Inspection Act, that banned adulterated and mislabeled food and drugs.

16th Amendment: Federal Income Tax

Proposed by Congress in 1909 at President Taft's urging during the tariff debate and ratified in 1913, it allowed an income tax without apportionment among the states.

Federal Reserve Act

Signed December 23, 1913, after Democrats won Congress and the presidency, it created the Federal Reserve System.

Second Ku Klux Klan

Refounded at Stone Mountain, Georgia, in 1915, the Klan spread nationwide with anti-Black, anti-Catholic, anti-Jewish and anti-immigrant views, peaking at an estimated 3–8 million members in the mid-1920s.

Contested: The second Klan had members in both parties, especially outside the South.

First Red Scare & Palmer Raids

After a wave of anarchist bombings, Justice Department raids in November 1919 and January 1920 arrested about 6,000 suspected radicals, and 556 foreign citizens were deported.

19th Amendment: Women's Suffrage

Passed the House 304–89 and the Senate 56–25 (36 Republicans and 20 Democrats in favor) after Southern Democrats dropped a filibuster; ratified August 1920.

Klan Fight at the Democratic Convention

A motion to condemn the Ku Klux Klan in the party platform was narrowly defeated at the convention, which took a record 103 ballots to pick a nominee.

Smoot–Hawley Tariff

Raised tariffs on agricultural and industrial imports; the House passed it 264–147 with 244 Republicans in favor, trading partners retaliated, and economists widely regard it as a misstep.

The New Deal

A series of programs, agencies and reforms responding to the Great Depression, from relief and public works to banking and labor regulation.

FDR's Court-Packing Plan

Roosevelt's bid to add up to six justices failed after members of his own party, including the Democratic Senate Judiciary chairman, opposed it.

Japanese American Internment

Signed February 19, 1942, the order led to the forced removal and incarceration of about 120,000 people of Japanese descent, most of them U.S. citizens; Reagan signed a formal apology and reparations in 1988.

Taft–Hartley Act

Restricted union practices after the 1945–46 strike wave; many Democrats joined Republicans to override Truman's veto.

Marshall Plan

Sent $13.3 billion to rebuild 17 Western European countries; Vandenberg's internationalist Republicans outmaneuvered isolationists to pass it.

Dixiecrat Revolt

Southern Democrats bolted over Truman's civil rights program and ran Sen. Strom Thurmond for president; Thurmond switched to the Republican Party in 1964.

Rosenberg Atomic Spy Case

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were convicted of passing secrets to the Soviet Union and executed in 1953; Venona decrypts later corroborated Julius's role.

Contested: Ethel Rosenberg's degree of involvement remains debated.

Southern Manifesto

Signed by 19 senators and 82 representatives, it denounced Brown v. Board and pledged resistance to integration.

Civil Rights Act of 1957

The first civil rights law since 1875; then-Democratic Sen. Strom Thurmond filibustered it for a record 24 hours and 18 minutes.

Cuban Missile Crisis

Soviet nuclear missiles secretly placed in Cuba led to a 13-day standoff that President Kennedy resolved with a naval quarantine and negotiations.

Civil Rights Act of 1964

House: Republicans 138–34 (80%), Democrats 152–96 (61%); Senate: Republicans 27–6 (82%), Democrats 46–21 (69%). Southern Democrats filibustered for 60 working days, including Sen. Robert Byrd's 14-hour speech.

Great Society & War on Poverty

A broad domestic agenda of anti-poverty, education, health and civil rights programs.

Voting Rights Act of 1965

Final passage: House 328–74 (Democrats 217–54, Republicans 111–20); Senate 79–18 (Democrats 49–17, Republicans 30–1).

Weather Underground

A Marxist militant group that split from Students for a Democratic Society, staged the 1969 "Days of Rage" riot in Chicago, and carried out a bombing campaign.

Environmental Protection Agency

Nixon proposed the EPA in July 1970, and it opened December 2, 1970, after he had signed the National Environmental Policy Act that January.

Watergate

A break-in at Democratic headquarters and its cover-up led Nixon to become the first president to resign, on August 9, 1974; 69 people were charged.

Roe v. Wade

Found a constitutional right to abortion; the majority included Nixon appointees Burger, Blackmun and Powell, Eisenhower appointees Brennan and Stewart, and Democratic appointees Douglas and Marshall, while White (JFK) and Rehnquist (Nixon) dissented.

Reagan Tax Cuts (ERTA)

One of the largest tax cuts in U.S. history, passed the Senate 89–11 and the House 238–195 and signed August 13, 1981.

Tax Reform Act of 1986

Lowered income tax rates and cut the number of brackets while closing loopholes, passing with majorities of both parties.

End of the Cold War

The Berlin Wall fell on November 9, 1989, and the Soviet Union dissolved in December 1991.

Contested: Historians weigh U.S. pressure, Soviet economic decline and Gorbachev's reforms differently.

Gulf War

After Iraq invaded Kuwait, a U.S.-led coalition authorized by UN Resolution 678 drove Iraqi forces out in early 1991.

Welfare Reform (PRWORA)

Replaced AFDC with time-limited TANF block grants and work requirements; Clinton signed it August 22, 1996, after vetoing two earlier versions.

Impeachment of Bill Clinton

The House impeached Clinton for perjury (228–206) and obstruction (221–212); the Senate acquitted him 45–55 and 50–50.

USA PATRIOT Act

Expanded surveillance and investigative powers after 9/11; it passed the House 357–66 and the Senate 98–1.

Affordable Care Act

Passed the Senate 60–39 and the House 219–212 with no Republican votes.

Obergefell v. Hodges

Held that the 14th Amendment requires states to license and recognize same-sex marriages.

Tax Cuts and Jobs Act

Passed the Senate 51–48 and the House 224–201 without Democratic votes and was signed December 22, 2017.

January 6 Capitol Attack

Rioters breached the Capitol to try to stop Congress from counting the electoral votes for Joe Biden; Congress completed the count early the next morning.

Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health

Held that the Constitution confers no right to abortion and returned the issue to the states, overturning Roe and Casey.

One Big Beautiful Bill Act

Passed the Senate 51–50 on Vice President Vance's tie-breaking vote and the House 218–214, and was signed July 4, 2025.