Narrated by Simon Whistler, this YouTube video by the channel Megaprojects goes over the establishment and the eventual destruction of the Jamestown Colony in the New World. This video has a run time of about eighteen minutes.

Jamestown was the first attempted settlement attempt by England in the New World. Established May 14, 1607, an English settlement was founded on the James River called forth by the Virginia Company. This attempt ultimately led to drastic failure and souring relations with the surrounding native tribes.

The American Revolution

The Revolutionary War (1775-83), also known as the American Revolution, arose from growing tensions between residents of Great Britain’s thirteen North American colonies and the colonial government, which represented the British crown. Skirmishes between British troops and colonial militiamen in Lexington and Concord in April 1775 kicked off the armed conflict, and by the following summer, the rebels were waging a full-scale war for their independence. France entered the American Revolution on the side of the colonists in 1778, turning what had essentially been a civil war into an international conflict. After French assistance helped the Continental Army force the British surrender at Yorktown, Virginia, in 1781, the Americans had effectively won their independence, though fighting would not formally end until 1783.

As a resource for students, the videos attached from OverSimplified are a good way to start getting into the details for the American Revolution.

Students can read more about the American Revolution from the Encyclopedia Britannica HERE and the History Channel's page HERE.

Charles Cornwallis

Narrated by Simon Whistler, this video on YouTube by the channel Biographics discusses the life and military career of Charles Cornwallis. The video has a length of twenty-five minutes. Cornwallis failed to control the uprising in the colonies during the Revolution and found himself an envoy to Frederick the Great in Prussia and later became the governor-general and commander-in-chief of India for nearly a decade. Proving that although holding the colonies overall failed, his reputation as a military leader did not falter.

Learning about Cornwallis is an excellent way to understand not only the colonies during the Revolution but to get into the mind of the British. Understanding both sides help complete a puzzle that seems empty without the whole story available.

You can read more about Cornwallis' career from the History Channel's description HERE.

In 1786, in the western reaches of Massachusetts, a violent rebellion took place that turned into an insurrection that targeted courthouses and other government buildings. This began as an opposition movement to the state's economic policies that led to poverty and property foreclosures angering the many farmers in the region, many of whom that served in the Revolutionary Army. Daniel Shays, one of the leaders of the insurrection, was a farmer and former soldier that the rebellion was named after. This insurrection turned into a fully blown military confrontation later in 1787.

Many Union generals mobilized their troops to help deal with this rebellion as other groups began to emerge in hopes of joining Shays. The rebellion ultimately led to the attempted raid of the Springfield Arsenal, which failed and later made the rebels scatter into different states with Shays and his wife running to Vermont. There were many attempts to resurrect a rebellious movement that all eventually ended in failure. Daniel Shays later received a pardon thanks to the governor John Hancock, newly-elected in 1787. Shays rebellion stoked up enough fears of a lack of strength in the new nation that George Washington came out of retirement and a Constitutional Convention was called. This led to the creation of the U.S. Constitution and the election of Washington as the first President of the United States.

For more information, click HERE for the History Channel's section on Shays Rebellion, HERE for the Encyclopedia Britannica and HERE for the page on Shays Rebellion in Washington's life from the George Washington Library at Mount Vernon. 

For Washington's retirement in 1796, at the end of his second term as President of the United States, he published a letter first drafted by James Madison and later Alexander Hamilton. The American Daily Advertiser out of Philadelphia published the letter to the people on September 19, 1796.

Washington warned the people of the United States about rising tensions with Great Britain and urged the United States to not interfere with foreign nations or get involved within their affairs. Washington also warned Americans of the dangers of polarization and geographic loyalties. He mentioned political parties and the fracturing that they can cause within the United States as people would be inclined to vote party loyalty rather than for the "common good".

So there are three main takeaways and warnings from Washington's Farewell Address: Regionalism, Partisanship and Foreign Entanglements.

Below, there are links to the summary of the Farewell Address and then a link to the address in its entirety:

George Washington's Mount Vernon

Library of Congress: Washington's Farewell Address

This video by CrashCourse on YouTube covers the basics and the "need-to-knows" about the Industrial Revolution and its impact on the society of the time and humanity as a whole.

What was the Industrial Revolution?

The Industrial Revolution taking place in the latter half of the 18th century, marked a period of development that transformed largely rural, agrarian societies in Europe and America into industrialized, urban ones. Many of the goods that required the skills and tools of craftsmen and artisans now became manufactured in mass scale through machines in factories.

Below, Encyclopedia Britannica has a detailed list of the six major features of the Industrial Revolution that students should know:

The main features involved in the Industrial Revolution were technological, socioeconomic, and cultural. The technological changes included the following: first was the use of new basic materials, chiefly iron and steel, second was the use of new energy sources, including both fuels and motive power, such as coal, the steam engine, electricity, petroleum, and the internal-combustion engine, third was the invention of new machines, such as the spinning jenny and the power loom that permitted increased production with a smaller expenditure of human energy, fourth was a new organization of work known as the factory system, which entailed increased division of labor and specialization of function, fifth was important developments in transportation and communication, including the steam locomotive, steamship, automobile, airplane, telegraph, and radio, and sixth was the increasing application of science to industry. These technological changes made possible a tremendously increased use of natural resources and the mass production of manufactured goods.

Wish to know more? HERE is the History Channel link and HERE is the link to the full Encyclopedia Britannica page on the Industrial Revolution.

On December 2, 1823 President of the United States James Monroe implemented the Monroe Doctrine that aimed at securing the Western hemisphere away from the imperial powers in Europe. This established the notion that the United States could not interfere in the Americas. This position implied that any European nation seeking to colonize any portion of the Americas was a direct threat and action against the U.S.. This stance included the notion that the U.S. would not get involved in European conflict. This was an attempt of the United States wanting to stay neutral on the world stage. This can be seen as the beginning of the long term of U.S. isolationism. This helped the U.S. develop on its own terms rather than at the behest or competition with the European nations. This was a major move a call for European nations to stay out of American affairs across both the North and Southern continents. However at the signing of the Doctrine, the U.S. was still under the influence of international trade and relations with global policies. The U.S. was not actually powerful enough to enforce the Doctrine for almost thirty years after its adoption.

This is important to note as the Monroe Doctrine began a period of U.S. foreign and global policy in attempted isolation. Monroe explained to Congress the importance of keeping the Europeans out of creating more American colonies and stopping any further subjugation of American nations. Although the Monroe Doctrine is abandoned at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, the U.S. attempted to be the guard dog for the American continents versus the more imposing European imperial nations.

This was one of the first steps in U.S. foreign policy of isolationism from the European nations and a way to attempt to protect the American continents from further European colonization and subjugation. If you would like to know more, HERE is a link to the Milestones page of the U.S. Department of State's Office of the Historian, HERE is a link to the History Channel and HERE is a link for the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Coined in 1845, the phrase and idea of Manifest Destiny came from the United States during the 19th-century in the belief that the United States was destined to expand throughout the American continents. This doctrine provoked that the idea of expansion across the Americas was both justified and inevitable.

The Louisiana Purchase

In many ways, the United States' purchase of the Louisiana Territories from France in 1803 made a large area, 828,000 square miles, in terms of the amount of land gained by the United States for the increasing population to be able to settle. This led to massive movements westward as Americas sought was to find news lands and new opportunities.

Looking South

American presidents used the Monroe Doctrine to enforce their newly laid claims on the rest of the Americas by warning European nations that any new colonization of the Americas would be considered an act of war against the United States. By having this newfound aggressiveness, the United States soon acquired Spanish Florida as a territory, in which Andrew Jackson led an army to take and would later be appointed military governor of Florida. 

The Oregon Trail

Americans also focused on that taking the northern route around the Mexican territories to the south became essential in between the British in the north, seizing the Dakotas, Montana and the Pacific Northwest, later to be Idaho, Washington and Oregon. The Oregon Trail was a roughly 2,000-mile route from Independence, Missouri, to Oregon City, Oregon, which was used by hundreds of thousands of American pioneers in the mid-1800s to emigrate west. The trail was arduous and snaked through Missouri and present-day Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming, Idaho and finally into Oregon. Without the Oregon Trail and the passing of the Oregon Donation Land Act in 1850, which encouraged settlement in the Oregon Territory, American pioneers would have been slower to settle the American West in the 19th century.

Texas Independence and Statehood

Later, once Texas declared its independence from Mexico, the United States seized the opportunity as many believed that the United States missed its chance of gaining the Texas territory while it was still controlled by Spain. During the admittance of Texas into the Union after its war for independence, the tensions between the United States and Mexico ran high, making war almost inevitable between the two nations.

Post Mexican-American War

After the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the United States now made another land gain of that included Texas, Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada and California. This acquisition finalized the United States' plans to reach the Pacific coastline to control the majority of the North American Continent. This eventually led to the expansion of Pacific trade routes and the forcing of the isolationist Japanese to trade with the West.

More Information and Links

For more information, visit the History Channel website HERE, the Encyclopedia Britannica HERE and Khan Academy HERE. Narrated by Simon Whistler, the YouTube video in this section by the channel Geographics goes over the westward movement and settlement of the American West. This video explains the hardships and the experiences about the people who decided to leave everything behind and attempt to take their family and move out West.

The Mexican-American War (April 25, 1846 - February 2, 1848) can be slated as the first war the United States fought primarily on foreign soil. Forced under the Polk administration through the expansionist means specifically through "Manifest Destiny", the idea that the United States' destiny is to push and hold all territories across the American continent to the Pacific Ocean.

The United States’ newly annexed territory of Texas was only the beginning for the eager President Polk. His end game, the main goal of his presidency, was the expansion of the United States to the west coast. Polk’s dream was a United States that sprawled from the Atlantic to the Pacific, there was only one nation that had territory necessary for Polk to realize his dream, Mexico. The Second Great Awakening was the age of expansionism that would lead to the idea of Manifest Destiny and would revive “an almost millenarian belief that America had a uniquely Protestant and republican destiny.”[1] These beliefs in a purer faith, than that of the Catholic Mexico, will be developed into the volunteers that join the war in order to put the “others” in their place, but this will be covered during the role of religion during the Mexican-American War itself. Seeing the Mexican territory as the only stepping stone to achieving Manifest Destiny, Polk would offer to buy the territory from the Mexican government. Mexico would refuse as the territory that the United States wanted from them were not just pieces of land. The territories that would become California, New Mexico, and some of Utah were of a Mexican identity. The land was not that of the government’s to just sell off to their neighboring nation, the land was a part of the Mexican territory, a part of the culture and society. With the end of peaceful negotiations, the United States and Mexico soon entered a state of war. 

This war would last two years, ending with the with the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the United States gained present day California, Utah, Nevada, Arizona and New Mexico. Mexico lost a third of its territory during this conflict.

If you wish to read more about the Mexican-American War, you can click HERE to go to the Encyclopedia Britannica's website for a in-depth look.

The Beginning of Turmoil

The war itself beginning with the bombardment of Fort Sumter in South Carolina, led to a bloody conflict that horrified the nation yet ended with the liberation of the Freemen from the southern states. The war lasted from 1861 through 1865 beginning with the secession of the South through the surrender of at the Appomattox Court House and the surrender of all remaining Confederate troops.

1861

The first year of the Civil War saw the southern states succeed, Lincoln become the President of the United States and the Civil War itself kick off with the Battle of Fort Sumter. Below is a list of the events that took place in 1861: the South Secedes, the South Creates a Government, the South Seizes Federal Forts, Lincoln is Inaugurated, Attack on Fort Sumter, Four More States Join the Confederacy, Virginia Splits, First Battle of Bull Run and the North Blockades the South.

1862

In the second year of the Civil War, Lincoln began to take action against the Confederacy through military measures. He begins a more aggressive campaign after several loses by the Union's army. Below are a list of events during this period of the Civil War: Lincoln Takes Action, McClellan Loses Command, Battle of the "Monitor" and the "Merrimac", Battle of Shiloh, The Peninsular Campaign Begins, "Stonewall" Jackson Defeats Union Forces in the Shenandoah Valley, The Battle of Seven Pines, The Seven Days' Battles, Harper's Ferry, The Battle of Antietam, and The Battle of Fredericksburg.

1863

The third year of the war saw Lincoln call on the Union for complete abolition of slavery, the beginning of conscription and many more battles between the Union and the Confederacy. Below is a list of events during the third year: The Emancipation Proclamation, The First Conscription Act, The Battle of Chancellorsville, The Vicksburg Campaign, The Gettysburg Campaign, The Battle of Chickamauga, The Battle of Chattanooga and the Siege of Knoxville.

1864

Year four of the Civil War saw the Confederacy attempt to march on Washington D.C. in the hopes of occupying the capitol of the Union and force a peace treaty and Lincoln is elected President of the United States for the second time. Below is a list of other events that took place that same year: Winter Quarters at Brandy Station, Grant's Wilderness Campaign, The Battle of Spotsylvania, The Battle of Cold Harbor, The Siege of Petersburg, Confederate Troops Approach Washington, D.C., General Sherman Begins the Atlanta Campaign, General Sherman Begins the March to the Sea and Abraham Lincoln is Re-Elected as President of the United States.

1865

The fifth and final year of the Civil War saw the fall of the Confederacy and the assassination of the President. Below is a list of the events during the fifth year of the Civil War: The Fall of the Confederacy, Sherman Marches through North and South Carolina, A Chance of Reconciliation Lost, Richmond Falls, Washington Prepares Defenses, Surrender of Lee at the Appomattox Courthouse, the Assassination of President Lincoln, the Final Surrenders of the Remaining Confederate Troops and the Ratification of the 13th Amendment.

Something More

This is but a summarization of the events that took place during the Civil War and a simple timeline. The war was more unique and complex than a section here could do justice. Each of the dates above are links to the Library of Congress and their timeline with explanations of the events during the year. HERE is the Encyclopedia Britannica section on the American Civil War, another great resource for students to utilize and learn the background information and details regarding the war. HERE is the entire summary and background of the preludes and causes of the Civil War with deep explanations of the events that took place, also from the Encyclopedia Britannica.