| Battle of Fallen Timbers | Victory of
American forces over Native American ones in present-day
Toledo, Ohio, in 1794. Under the command of General "Mad"
Anthony Wayne, the Americans sent a larger Native American
force running in retreat. This battle was also significant
because the Native Americans who fought there that day
retreated to Fort Miami, where they thought they could find
British reinforcements. But the British, unwilling to risk
another war with the United States, did not help. |
| David Farragut | Union admiral ('Old
Salamander') who secured control of the Mississippi River for the
Union. He took New Orleans (the South's largest city and principal
seaport) in April, 1862 and then, more famously, Mobile Bay (the
largest remaining Southern seaport) in August, 1864. It was at Mobile
that he uttered the famous, 'Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!'
Also, he bombarded Vicksburg, making it easier for Grant to take the
city. |
| Federalist Papers | Series of 85
letters to newspapers in New York designed to convince the
people of New York ratify the Constitution. At the time of
their writing, the ratification of the Constitution was in
doubt. Most of the states had to approve the Constitution
before it could become law. Also, many people didn't know
the details of what was proposed by the Constitution. The
Federalist Papers explained all that, and New York approved
the Constitution. Once New York, a large and influential
state was on board, other states that had been reluctant
followed suit. Soon, the Constitution was the law of the
land and our government. |
| Federalist Party | One of the first two American political parties, together
with the Democratic-Republican Party. Founded by Alexander
Hamilton and John Adams. Met its demise soon after Hamilton
was killed in a duel. Adams was the only Federalist
President. Name came from the Federalist Papers and from the
idea that the federal government should be supreme. |
| Millard Fillmore | 13th
president. He was never inaugurated because he became
president when Zachary Taylor died in office. He began his
political career in the House of Representatives,
representing New York. He later became Comptroller of New
York. He was elected vice-president in 1848 and presided
over the debates that shaped the Compromise of 1850. Taylor
died in the middle of these debates, and Fillmore declared
that he would support the Compromise. It was eventually
passed by Congress and signed into law by Fillmore. His
support of the Fugitive Slave Law cost him the nomination of
his party, the Whigs, in 1852. He ran for president anyway,
on the Know Nothing party, but lost out to Democrat Franklin
Pierce. He retired from public life soon after, and he died
in 1874. |
| Battle of Five Forks | Last major battle of the Civil War (April 2, 1865). Union General Philip Sheridan repulsed a Southern assault by none other than General George Pickett. This victory cleared the way for Grant to push through at Petersburg. |
| Nathan Bedford Forrest | Confederate cavalry commander who fought at the Battle of Shiloh and made a name for himself as a hit-and-run, stand-and-fight commander who could just as easily tear up a railroad line as repulse an infantry charge. |
| Fort Crown Point | Fort on Lake
Champlain that was one of the most heavily fortified forts
France owned. They called it Fort St. Frederic and used it
to control operations on Lake Champlain and traffic to the
St. Lawrence River. British forces under Jeffery Amherst
captured the fort in summer 1759 and named it Fort Crown
Point. The later capture of Fort Ticonderoga, another Lake
Champlain fort, gave the British control of the lake and a
vital entry point to the St. Lawrence River itself. |
| Fort Duquesne | Fort that
changed hands several times during the two decades that made
up the French and Indian War. It was originally a British
fort that the French seized before it was finished. It was
the destination of George Washington before he was forced to
retreat to Fort Necessity in 1754. It was the site of a
great French victory over England's General Edward Braddock
in 1755. The British retook it for good in 1758 and named it
Fort Pitt. The importance of this fort site was that its
holder gained control of three rivers: the Ohio, the
Allegheny, and the Monongahela. Yes, Fort Duquesne was where
Pittsburgh is today. |
| Fort Frontenac | French fort
captured by British troops under James Bradstreet in August
1758. The fort was at the northeastern tip of Lake Ontario
and at the western mouth of St. Lawrence River. The fort was
also the main base of supplies for French forces in the
Great Lakes area and along the Ohio River. Without this
fort, the French could not reinforce any settlements to the
west. By seizing this fort, the British gave themselves
control of traffic up the St. Lawrence. This made the way
clear for an attack on Montreal, the last battle of the
war. |
| Fort Mackinac | American fort
on the island of Michilimackinac, a strategic outpost
guarding the fur trade outlets for both America and Canada.
During American General William Hull's failed Fort Detroit
campaign, the British were able to capture Fort Mackinac and
use it a base of operations for further attacks on American
interests in the Northwest Territory. |
| Fort McHenry | American fort
built in Baltimore harbor in 1799. The British bombed the
fort on September 13-14 (during the War of 1812). This
bombardment (and the survival of the fort) inspired Francis
Scott Key to write the Star-Spangled Banner, America's
national anthem. |
| Fort Necessity | Hastily
constructed fort (which really wasn't much of a fort at all)
done so at the orders of George Washington, a young officer
fighting for England, after his failure to take Fort
Duquesne, an important French fort near present-day
Pittsburgh. In the 1754 battle, the French easily overcame
the small English force and demanded Washington's surrender.
Washington was allowed to lead his men away after he agreed
to leave two English officers behind as hostages. |
| Fort Niagara | French fort
seized by the British in July 1759. The fort was ideally
situated to control both Lake Erie and Lake Ontario. It was
also a main supply center for western French forts in North
America. By gaining control of the fort, the British gained
control of all of these things. This was one of the last
battles of the war. |
| Fort Sumter | Federal fort commanded by Major Robert Anderson and taken by Confederate forces under the command of General Pierre G.T. Beauregard on April 12, 1861. This action began the Civil War. |
| Fort Ticonderoga | New York fort
on the western shore of Lake Champlain that was originally a
French fort, called Carillion, that was seized by the
British in the French and Indian War. The fort was later
captured by the Americans in their first "official" victory
of the Revolutionary War. The fort wasn't garrisoned very
well but still held a stock of British weapons. Ethan Allen
and the Green Mountain Boys, along with Benedict Arnold,
captured the fort on May 10, 1775. The capture stalled a
planned British invasion from Canada and also enabled
American troops to invade Canada themselves. The British
recaptured the fort in 1777 but abandoned it in 1780. |
| Fort William Henry | English fort
seized and destroyed by the French in July 1757. The fort
was at the southern end of Lake Champlain, a battleground
during the war. The fort was important because it gave the
holder command of the Hudson River and northern New York. It
also protected the two other Lake Champlain forts, St.
Frederic and Ticonderoga. The French under the Marquis de
Montcalm overwhelmed the British and forced a surrender. The
terms of the surrender were that the British could leave
peacefully. Native Americans who fought with the French
killed many retreating British, including the sick and
wounded, before they were stopped. Despite this victory,
however, France had a difficult time gaining the upper hand
in the war. |
| Benjamin Franklin | Statesman, publisher, inventor, and patriot known for writing Poor Richard's Almanac, keeping France on the side of America during the Revolutionary War, and inventing all kinds of useful things, including bifocal glasses and the lightning rod. He was the American representative to England for a few years. He was also minister to France for many years and became a national hero there. His last great deed was serving as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention. |
| Battle of Fredericksburg | Extreme folly committed by Army of the Potomac General Ambrose Burnside, who marched wave after wave of troops across open ground into the teeth of Confederate batteries ensconced on the high ground of Marye's Heights on Dec. 13, 1862. More than 12,000 Union soldiers died, compared to less than 6,000 Confederates. |
| John C. Fremont | Explorer and California Senator who was the first presidential candidate of the Republican Party (in 1856) and also served in the Union Army and Navy. He was commander of the Western Department before Henry Halleck. |
| French and Indian War | War fought
between Great Britain and its two enemies, the French and
the Indians of North America. Most of the battles were in
Canada. American colonists, including George Washington,
fought with the British in this war, which lasted from 1754
to 1763. The British won the war and won the right to keep
Canada and several other possessions in the New
World. |
| Fugitive Slave Law | law passed as part of the Compromise of 1850. This law made it tougher on slaves who ran away and demanded stricter punishment for those helping slaves run away. |
| Robert Fulton | Engineer and
inventor best known for developing the steamboat, in
particular, the Clermont. Fulton was originally an
artist and studied painting under the great Benjamin West.
Fulton first designed a submarine, the Nautilus,
which was operating for France in 1800. After testing a
steamboat in France, Fulton returned to America and tested
the Clermont in New York harbor in 1807. He later
built a steamship that was a warship. Even though Robert
Fulton didn't invent the steamship, he proved that it could
be used for business and commerce. |
| Gadsden Purchase | 1853
agreement to buy a strip of land in what is now the southern
United States so that a railroad line could be built to the
Gulf of California. James Gadsden was the U.S. Minister to
Mexico and the man responsible for the deal. This was only
five years after the end of the Mexican War and the delivery
of the Mexican Cession. He agreed to pay Mexico $10 million
for 45,535 square miles of territory that was almost as big
as Pennsylvania. (By contrast, the Louisiana Purchase
828,000 and cost $15 million.) |
| Thomas Gage | Governor of
Massachusetts who also was a general in the British army. As
governor, he tried to enforce the Intolerable Acts. He
ordered the arrests of Samuel Adams and John Hancock. It was
his order to seize the colonists' weapons depot at Concord
that brought about the Battle of Lexington and Concord. Gage
was the commanding officer at the Battle of Bunker Hill. He
was called home shortly thereafter and returned to Britain,
where he later resigned. |
| William Lloyd Garrison | Journalist who was a pioneering abolitionist. His newspaper The Liberator was very influential in gathering support for his cause. In 1832, he formed the first society for the immediate abolition of slavery. He distrusted the U.S. government because it permitted slavery but eventually approved of Lincoln's handling of the slavery question and of the Civil War. |
| Horatio Gates | American
general who fought in the French and Indian War and then
was, at different times, commander of both the Northern Army
of the U.S. and the Southern Army of the U.S. He was the
commanding officer of the American force that retreated from
the recaptured Fort Ticonderoga, and he was in command at
the pivotal Battle of Saratoga. This success, coupled with
George Washington's recent failures, prompted a movement to
replace Washington with Gates as commander-in-chief.
Washington, however, stayed on. Gates retired to his farm in
1789 but was called back a year later and given the command
of the Southern Army. The defeat at Camden proved
disastrous, and Gates was replaced by Nathanael
Greene. |
| King George III | King of Great
Britain from 1760 to 1820. Under his guidance, Britain won
the French and Indian War but lost the Revolutionary War. He
was mentally unstable because of a disease called porphyria,
and he was given to bouts of madness and unpredictability.
He also didn't like his government officials very
much. |
| Germantown | Second battle
between British and Americans in and around Philadelphia.
The British had won the Battle of Brandywine and had
occupied Philadelphia. They then camped at Germantown, a
city nearby. On October 4, 1777, American Generals George
Washington and Nathanael Greene marched on Germantown from
different directions. The resulting battle caused the
British to fall back, but American attempts to finish off a
bunch of Redcoats hiding in a house resulted in more
American casualties than British. Still, the battle was an
American victory of sorts. |
| Gettysburg | Pennsylvania site of a
tremendously important three-day battle famous for such things as
Pickett's Charge, Cemetery Ridge, and Little Round Top. The great
battle that killed more than 40,000 happened by accident. Lee had
invaded the North in hopes of forcing attention from both Northern
troops and European observers watching from afar. General George
Gordon Meade caught up with Lee at the end of June, and July 1-3 the
armies threw themselves at each other. The North held the high ground
and made the advantage stick. Although Meade allowed Lee to escape
back southward, he achieved his goal of weakening the Army of
Northern Virginia so that it would never again have the strength to
launch a major assault. |
| Gettysburg Address | Delivered by President Abraham Lincoln on Nov. 19, 1863, at the dedication of the cemetery containing the men killed at the battle of Gettysburg. Widely considered to be one of the best speeches given in American history. |
| Gibbons | One of the
most important decisions of the early Supreme Court. Led by
Chief Justice John Marshall, the Court said that the federal
commerce clause, in effect, outranked a state law that had
granted a monopoly to one group of people. |
| Goliad | Another place
in which 342 American prisoners were executed by order of
Mexican President Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna. (The Alamo
was the other.) The Goliad Massacre took place on March 27,
1836. These two massacres made the American people very
angry and resulted, in part, in the American victory at San
Jacinto and, later, the Mexican War. |
| Gold Rush | Huge
immigration west after the discovery of gold at Sutter's
Mill in California in 1848. California's population grew
from nearly 14,000 in 1848 to almost 100,000 in 1850. Ten
years later, the population was 380,000. People from all
walks of life came to California, seeking their fortune. The
exhaustion of the supply of gold dust forced gold-seekers to
dig deep mines in search of the precious metal. The Gold
Rush is famous also for encouraging the construction of
wagon roads and railroads west. Another development was the
great success of farmers, merchants, and others who sold
goods and services to the gold-seekers. |
| Ulysses S. Grant | General who finally won the Civil War for the Union. Grant began his career in the West. Victories at Shiloh, Chattanooga and Vicksburg proved that he could win the tough fight. His refusal to retreat after heavy losses in the Wilderness and at Cold Harbor proved that he could stomach the tough loss. He accepted General Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865. Three years later, he was elected president. He was re-elected, then retired from politics. |
| Horace Greeley | Powerful newspaper editor who campaigned vigorously against slavery beginning in 1841. His New York Tribune reached thousands of people. He started The Log Cabin in 1840 to campaign for Whig Party presidential candidate William Henry Harrison. Greeley was one of the first editors to join the Republican Party and as a delegate to the 1860 national convention supported the nomination of Abraham Lincoln for president. After the war, he urged pardons for all members of Confederacy and even signed the bail bond of Confederate States of America President Jefferson Davis. |
| Nathanael Greene | American
general who had a large hand in bringing about the final
surrender of British General Charles Cornwallis at Yorktown.
Greene was first an aide to General George Washington,
serving at Trenton, Brandywine, Germantown, and Monmouth.
After the Battle of Charleston, Greene replaced General
Horatio Gates as commander of the Southern Army. He won a
smashing victory at Cowpens. Although the Battle of Guilford
Courthouse was technically a British victory, it weakened
the British forces so much that Cornwallis decided to
abandon the Carolinas and march to Virginia. Greene followed
and trapped Cornwallis into surrendering at Yorktown. |
| George Grenville | First Lord of
the Treasury and later Prime Minister who was responsible
for some of the most outlandish taxes on the American
colonies, including the Sugar Act and the Stamp Act. These
taxes were in part of a result of a strategy by Grenville to
boost his popularity in Britain by lowering taxes there. In
order to keep revenues coming in, he raised taxes on the
colonies. |
| Guadalupe Hidalgo | Treaty that
officially ended the Mexican-American War on February 2,
1848. Mexico agreed to give up about 55 percent of its
territory in exchange for $15 million. This territory was
called the Mexican Cession, and out of it came several
American states. |
| Battle of Guildford Courthouse | British
victory near a courthouse in North Carolina in March, 1781.
Together with the American victory at Cowpens, the
engagement at Guilford Courthouse weakened the British
forces in the South. General Charles Cornwallis, the
commander of the southern British forces, decided to abandon
North and South Carolina and march to Virginia. |
