The Chappaquiddick Incident refers to the personal history of Senator Edward Kennedy, and his direct involvement in the death of former assistant to Robert Kennedy, Mary Jo Kopechne. Kennedy and Kopechne were in a car accident in the early hours…
The Virginia Plan was a proposal put forward at the Philadelphia Convention held in 1787 to improve the Articles of Confederation that the United States had been operating under since it achieved independence from Britain. Many of the ideas in…
The Treaty of Paris is the agreement between the Kingdom of Great Britain and its 13 former colonies in North America, now known as the United States of America. Signed on 3 September 1783, the treaty officially brought an end…
The Second Great Awakening was a period of religious revival in the United States between 1790 and the 1840s. It followed the First Great Awakening of colonial America. Characteristics of this period include widespread conversions, increased church activity, social activism,…
The Non-Intercourse Act was a law passed in 1809 by the United States Congress to ban all commerce between Americans and the European nations of France and Great Britain. It was designed to replace the unpopular Embargo Act of 1807,…
The Lone Gunman Theory is the official explanation for the John F. Kennedy assassination, as arrived at by the Warren Commission after a review of the available evidence. According to this theory, the 1963 assassination involved a single gunman, Lee…
The Kansas-Nebraska Act was a bill that was passed into law in 1854 and established the territories of Kansas and Nebraska in the United States. It also had the effect of repealing the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which had banned…
During the Great Depression, United States President Franklin Delano Roosevelt proposed a series of programs, laws, and other economic stimulants to help the country get back on its feet again. Roosevelt called this course of action the New Deal, and…
An anti-slavery movement is a movement for the abolition of slavery. In United States history, it was called abolitionism, or the abolition movement. The anti-slavery movement is most commonly associated with the transatlantic slave trade, which involved the transportation of…
Lincoln’s reconstruction plan strove to readmit the Confederate states into the Union as quickly and easily as possible following the US Civil War. His plan, known as the 10 Percent Plan, involved promoting the loyalty of the southern states and…