AMERICAN HISTORY

“ Heaven and earth never agreed better to frame a place for man’s habitation.”                                                   -John Smith, Founder of the colony of Virginia 1607

The Third President of The United States-Thomas Jefferson Thomas Jefferson was the third President of the United States. He was the first President to be inaugurated in Washington DC, a city that he helped plan. The foremost spokesperson for Democracy of his time, he was the author of the Declaration of Independence. Although he kept slaves, Jefferson is famed as a champion of political and religious freedom. Jefferson loved liberty in every form and he worked for freedom of speech, press, religion, and civil liberties. Jefferson swore "eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind's of man." "Jeffersonian Democracy" refers to the ideal that the majority of people must govern themselves. He wanted to keep the government simple and free of waste. Background Jefferson was born in Virginia in 1743. His family was wealthy and gave him a classical education. He graduated from William and Mary C...

The Second President of The United States John Adams, a remarkable political philosopher, served as the second President of the United States (1797-1801), after serving as the first Vice President under President George Washington. Learned and thoughtful, John Adams was more remarkable as a political philosopher than as a politician. “People and nations are forged in the fires of adversity,” he said, doubtless thinking of his own as well as the American experience. Adams was born in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1735. A Harvard-educated lawyer, he early became identified with the patriot cause; a delegate to the First and Second Continental Congresses, he led in the movement for independence. During the Revolutionary War he served in France and Holland in diplomatic roles, and helped negotiate the treaty of peace. From 1785 to 1788 he was minister to the Court of St. James’s, returning to be elected Vice President under George Washington. Adams’ two terms as Vice Presid...

George Washington  Biography U.S. President (1732–1799) George Washington was a leader of the Continental Army in the American Revolution, and was the first to become U.S. president. Synopsis George Washington was born on February 22, 1732, in Westmoreland County, Virginia. Washington served as a general and commander-in-chief of the colonial armies during the American Revolution, and later became the first president of the United States, serving from 1789 to 1797. He died on December 14, 1799, in Mount Vernon, Virginia. Early Life and Family George Washington could trace his family's presence in North America to his great-grandfather, John Washington, who migrated from England to Virginia. The family held some distinction in England and was granted land by Henry VIII. Much of the family’s wealth was lost during the Puritan revolution and in 1657 George’s grandfather, Lawrence Washington, migrated to Virginia. Little information is available about the family ...

Louisiana Purchase,  1803 The Louisiana Purchase encompassed 530,000,000 acres of territory in North America that the  United States  purchased from  France  in 1803 for $15 million. The Louisiana Purchase As the United States spread across the Appalachians, the Mississippi River became an increasingly important conduit for the produce of America’s West (which at that time referred to the land between the Appalachians and the Mississippi). Since 1762,  Spain  had owned the territory of Louisiana, which included 828,000 square miles. The territory made up all or part of fifteen modern U.S. states between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains. The  Pinckney treaty of 1795  had resolved friction between Spain and the United States over the right to navigate the Mississippi and the right for Americans to transfer their goods to ocean-going vessels at New Orleans. With the Pinckney treaty in place and the weak Spanish empire in co...