A Treasury of Great American Scandals (37 page)

1513—
Spanish explorer Ponce de León begins his search for the fountain of youth in Florida.

1565—
Spain establishes the first permanent settlement in the present-day United States at St. Augustine, Florida.

1579—
Sir Francis Drake rounds Cape Horn and sails up the Pacific coast, possibly as far as the present state of Washington.

1607—
Jamestown, Virginia, becomes the first permanent British settlement in North America. (An earlier English colony off the coast of North Carolina, known as “the Lost Colony of Roanoke,” failed and all its inhabitants mysteriously vanished.)

1608—
Captain John Smith writes what is regarded as the first American book,
A True Relation of . . . Virginia,
which describes the settlement of Jamestown.

1619—
The House of Burgesses, the first representative legislative body in colonial America, convenes at Jamestown, then Virginia's capital.

1620—
Seeking freedom of religion, a band of English separatists, known as Pilgrims, set sail aboard the
Mayflower
and establish the Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts. The following year, the colonists and their Indian allies celebrate the first Thanksgiving.

1636—
Harvard College (now University) becomes the first institution of higher learning in the American colonies.

1649—
The first religious toleration act in America grants freedom of worship to both Protestants and Catholics in Maryland.

1733—
Benjamin Franklin's
Poor Richard's Almanack
is first published.

1763—
Britain defeats France in the French and Indian War, gaining all French territory east of the Mississippi River except New Orleans. It is an expensive victory, with unexpected consequences in the relationship between Britain and her colonies. Historian Carl Van Doren later writes, “The French and Indian War, which made the British government think of the colonies as important enough to be taxed, had made the Americans think of themselves as important enough to say how they should be taxed.”

1765—
The British Parliament passes the Stamp Act, imposing a tax on newspapers, legal documents, and other printed material. The act is bitterly opposed in the colonies, giving rise to organized resistance and the slogan, “No taxation without representation.” The act is repealed the following year, but Parliament reasserts its right to tax the colonies.

1770—
British soldiers stationed in Boston fire into a crowd of agitated colonists, killing three and wounding eight (two of whom later succumb to their injuries). The event, which colonial leaders call the Boston Massacre, is used to rally Americans against oppressive British policies.

1773—
Protesting the British importation of duty-free tea, American colonists dressed as Indians stage the Boston Tea Party, raiding three ships in Boston Harbor and dumping 342 chests of tea into the water.

1774—
The First Continental Congress, a convention of delegates from all the American colonies (except Georgia), meets in Philadelphia to address British injustices. These include what became known as the Intolerable Acts, which Parliament imposed as punishment for the Boston Tea Party. The Congress adopts a Declaration of Rights, establishing the colonial position on taxation and trade. Britain ignores it.

1775—
The Revolutionary War begins when British soldiers and Massachusetts minutemen clash at Lexington and Concord. The Second Continental Congress appoints George Washington as commander-in-chief of the colonial army, and makes a final, futile appeal to Britain to right matters without additional fighting.

1776—
The United States of America becomes a new nation when the Second Continental Congress adopts the Declaration of Independence, written by Thomas Jefferson. Britain offers a reward to learn the names of the Declaration's signers, asserting that the act constitutes high treason punishable by death.

1777—
American forces defeat the British at Saratoga, New York, turning the tide of the Revolutionary War and convincing France to form a military alliance with the new nation.

1781—
British forces are defeated at Yorktown, Virginia, in the last major battle of the Revolutionary War.

1783—
In what has been called the greatest diplomatic feat in American history, the United States and Britain sign the Treaty of Paris, officially ending the war between them and establishing the new nation's borders. U.S. territory is extended west to the Mississippi River, north to Canada, and south to Florida.

1787—
The Founding Fathers write the Constitution, establishing a unique system of government that survives to this day. “Our Constitution is so simple and practical that it is possible to meet extraordinary needs by changes in emphasis and arrangement without loss of essential form,” Franklin D. Roosevelt later states at his first inauguration. “That is why our constitutional system has proved itself the most superbly enduring political mechanism the modern world has produced.”

1789—
The Electoral College unanimously chooses George Washington to serve as the first president of the United States. Washington and his wife move into the first presidential home at No. 1 Cherry Street in New York City, the nation's first capital.

1791—
The Bill of Rights is added to the Constitution, guaranteeing freedom of speech, religion, the press, and the rights, among others, to trial by jury and peaceful assembly.

1793—
Eli Whitney invents the cotton gin, allowing for a quicker, more economical means of separating cottonseeds from fiber. The invention helps make the fledgling United States the world's leading cotton producer, but “King Cotton” also leads to a greater dependence on slavery in the South.

1794—
President Washington sends in federal troops to quash the Whiskey Rebellion, a violent protest by whiskey producers in Pennsylvania against the federal tax on their product. The president's action establishes the federal government's authority to enforce its laws within the states.

1798—
Congress passes the Alien and Sedition Acts, designed to silence opposition to an expected war with France. The widely unpopular measures, which, among other things, make it a crime to criticize the president, contribute to the eventual demise of the Federalist Party.

1800—
Washington, D.C., carved out of Maryland and Virginia, becomes the nation's capital. First Lady Abigail Adams describes the mostly undeveloped federal city as “romantic but wild, a wilderness at present.”

1801—
John Marshall is appointed chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court by President John Adams. During his tenure of thirty-four years (the longest in court history), Marshall raises the Supreme Court to a level of importance equal to that of the executive and judicial branches of government. This is accomplished through such landmark decisions as
Marbury v. Madison
(1803), in which the court's authority to declare laws unconstitutional is established.

1803—
The Louisiana Purchase from France doubles the size of the United States, extending its western border to the Rocky Mountains. Part or all of fifteen states are later formed from the vast acquisition. In making the deal with Napoleon of France, President Jefferson later admits that he “stretched the Constitution until it cracked.”

1804—
Meriwether Lewis and William Clark embark upon their epic trek across the continent to explore the lands recently acquired in the Louisiana Purchase and beyond to the Pacific Ocean. They are introduced to many Native American tribes, as well as to previously unknown plant and animal species. “It seemed,” Lewis wrote, “as if those seens [sic] of visionary enchantment would never have an end.”

1807—
Robert Fulton's
Clermont
becomes the first financially successful steamboat, traveling up the Hudson River from New York City to Albany in about thirty hours. “Some imagined it to be a sea monster,” a witness of the first voyage later recalls, “while others did not hesitate to express their belief that it was a sign of the approaching judgement.”

1811—
A confederation of Indian tribes led by the charismatic Shawnee chief Tecumseh resists the westward movement of white settlers. Tecumseh's brother Tenskwatawa leads an attack on the forces of William Henry Harrison, governor of the Indiana Territory, and is defeated in the Battle of Tippecanoe. “The implicit obedience and respect which the followers of Tecumseh pay to him is astonishing,” writes Harrison, “and more than any other circumstance bespeaks him one of those uncommon geniuses which spring up occasionally to produce revolutions, and overturn the established order of things.”

1811—
Construction begins on what becomes known as the National Road, linking the East with the Midwest.

1812—
The War of 1812 begins after years of British interference with American shipping and other degradations.

1814—
British forces capture the nation's capital, burning the President's House, the U.S. Capitol, and other government buildings. “Few thought of going to bed,” a Washington resident later writes of the destruction. “They spent the night in gazing on the fires and lamenting the disgrace of the city.” The British are subsequently repelled after attacking Baltimore, prompting Francis Scott Key to compose “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

1819—
Spain cedes Florida to the United States.

1820—
With the issue of slavery creating deep divisions within the nation, the Missouri Compromise is reached. Under its terms, Missouri is admitted to the Union as a slave state and Maine as a free state, thus maintaining the balance of slave and free states in the U.S. Senate. The Compromise also bans slavery from the Louisiana Purchase north of the southern boundary of Missouri, except in Missouri itself. “If the Union must be dissolved, slavery is precisely the question upon which it ought to break,” writes John Quincy Adams. “For the present, however, this contest is laid asleep.”

1823—
The Monroe Doctrine warns European nations against interfering in the affairs of the Western Hemisphere and declares that the North and South American continents are “henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers.”