American Presidents

Early US History

·         Colonial beginnings

•      English brought honeybees to the Americas for honey but the bees pollinated orchards, leading to the spread of plants, such as apples and peaches
•      animals, such as mammoths, horses etc. vanished
•      the south american potato helped spark a population explosion in Europe
•      in 1491 more people lived in the Americas than in Europe
•      in 1492 the Americas were not a pristine wilderness but a crowded and managed landscape
•      by 1500 beans, potatoes, and maize from the Americas became major crops in Europe
•      Christopher Columbus = 1492 voyage
•      He left Italy
•      The nobles grew wealthy by trading. Europeans lost silk road to the Turks and the wealth was in danger. Isabella wanted a route to India.
•       Mesoamerica = most populated. Large cities existed. 
•       staple crop in America is corn.
•      Inca empire in the Andes. Famed for their gold. In 1491, hundreds of varieties of potato grown.
•       In 1491, American farmers grow corn in Mesopotamia and potatoes in the Andes.
•     Europe grew wheat, barley, rye. Europe also combined farming and animal husbandry which was not the case for America. The animals provided manure, which fertilized the lands, the pastures acted like agricultural reserves, etc.
•      by 1491 horses, cattle, goats, and sheep domesticated the European landscape. They are essential to Europe's prosperity.
•      Inca had the llama, which was the biggest domesticated animal in America. This provided them with wool. But major disadvantages: not big enough to ride.
•      Aztecs (mexico and guatemala) = had the turkey
•      the mammals in America died out in the Ice Age. The arrival of hunters, which came across the ice when it froze over. When it thawed and grew hot, the vegetation died and the animals that were reliant on them died as well.
•      1491 animals not domesticated. Natives burned the forest regularly to attract game. They domesticate the land to attract wild animals.
•      Europe hunt is for sport, pleasure and prestige, but in America it is for survival. Only the nobles are allowed to hunt but peasants would be arrested for poaching. Less wild animals in Europe because of urbanification.
•      Agriculture is hurting Europe's fish supply, which is causing it to dwindle fast. Huge amounts of sedement went into the rivers and streams because trees were being cut down and dams were being built.
•      in the America's fishing is not an industry as it is in Europe. Their rivers are not polluted by farming.
•      The incas trade seafood from all over the pacific and atlantic.
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·         Indigenous history

o    French and Indian War (1754-1763)

·         Formation of the US

•       the US began to become more populated, and 13 colonies began to form and become more autonomous
•       British taxation and the continuous presence of British troops posed a threat to US self government. E..g the Stamp Act of 1765: imposing a tax on the colonies to help pay for troops stationed in North America following the victory of the Seven Years War.
•       Led to uproar because there was “no taxation without representation” because Americans were not represented in British government
•      Benjamin Franklin said “join or die” = the colonies had to join together or they would be too weak   
•      Creation of the Boston Tea Party in 1773, which was a response to British taxation
•      Britain retaliated with the coercive acts, which stripped Massachusetts of its right of self government and put it under army rule, which sparked resistance in all 13 colonies and led to the first Continental Congress where they got together to resist the Coercive Acts. 
•       This war broke out in April 1775. They boycotted British trade and published a list of grievances and petitioned the king for redress for the grievances.
•        July 4^th, 1776 = US declaration of Independence
•       There was a weak federal government held together by Articles of Confederation. When these became unworkable, a new constitution was written in 1789 and it became the basis for the US federal government with George Washington becoming the first US president

List of U.S. Presidents

Name	Year	Vice President	Political Party	Achievements and Shortcomings
George Washington	1789-1797			-  Commander and chief of the Continental Army -  Led the Americans against the British in the American revolutionary war. Victorious in 1783. - Alexander Hamilton was his chief advisor
John Adams	1797-1801
Thomas  Jefferson	1801-1809			- Louisiana Purchase: purchased Louisiana from France, doubling the size of America's territory - a division between democrats and whigs. The democrats functioned under the belief of Manifest Destiny and they tried to find inexpensive land for yeoman farmers and slave owners who promoted democracy and expansion, at the cost of violence. Whigs wanted to deepen and modernize the economy and society rather than merely expand the geography - slavery was abolished by 1804, but it fluorished in the south because of the European demand for cotton
James Madison	1809-1817			- war of 1812: a second and last war was fought with Britain - the main result of the war was the end of European support for Indian attacks on Western settlers
John Quincy Adams	1817-1825
Andrew Jackson	1825-1829
Martin Van Buren	1829-1837
William H. Harrison	1837-1841
John Tyler	1841-1845
James K. Polk	1845-1849
Zachary Taylor	1849-1850
Millard Fillmore	1850-1853
Franklin Pierce	1853-1857
James Buchanan	1857-1861			- conflicts over the issue of slavery culminated in the US civil war, as 11 slave states seceded to found the confederacy in 1861
Abraham Lincoln	1861-1865			- Abe Lincoln led the union to defeat the South - US was in a reconstruction era from 1863-77. The US ended slavery, extended legal and voting rights
Andrew Johnson	1865-1869
Ulysses S. Grant	1869-1877
Rutherford B. Hayes	1877-1881			- the reconstruction era ended in 1877
James Garfield	1881-1881
Chester A. Arthur	1881-1885
Grover Cleveland	1885-1889
Benjamin Harrison	1889-1893			- 1890s to the 1960s, the system of Jim Crow (segregation) kept blacks suppressed - dissatisfaction with corruption and traditional politics stimulated the Progressive movement from the 1890s to 1920s, which pushed for reforms and allowed for women's suffrage and the prohibition of alcohol (which was repealed in 1933)
Grover Cleveland	1893-1897
William McKinley	1897-1901
Theodore Roosevelt	1901-1909
William H. Taft	1909-1913
Woodrow Wilson	1913-1921			- US declared war in 1917 against germany after a long period of neutrality
Warren G. Harding	1921-1923			- prosperous decade of the 1920s
Calvin Coolidge	1923-1929
Herbert Hoover	1929-1933			- wall street crash of 1929, marking the onset of the great depression
Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR)	1933-1945
Harry S. Truman	1945-1953
Dwight D. Eisenhower	1953-1961
John F. Kennedy	1961-1963
Lyndon B. Johnson	1963-1969
Richard Nixon	1969-1974
Gerald Ford	1974-1977		Republican
Jimmy Carter	1977-1981		Democrat
Ronald Reagan	1981-1989		Republican
George H.W. Bush	1989-1993		Republican
Bill Clinton	1993-2001		Democrat
George W.Bush	2001-2009		Republican
Barack Obama	2009-		Democrat

Died in office=orange,

Assassinated=yellow

Resigned = blue