Black Tuesday is when the stock market took its final plunge, a precipitating event of the Great Depression. Although there are entire courses on the Great Depression, and stock trading is likely far beyond the scope of your course, a brief overview is helpful. Essentially, many investors and traders were trading stocks “on margin”—that is (basically) using borrowed money to invest. Think of it like this: you borrow $100 dollars in order to invest it. If you get a 10% rate of return, and you lose nothing, you can repay the $100 and you’ve made $10. Think of the flipside, however: what if you borrow $100, invest it poorly, and then lose it all. Now you owe someone $100; it’s almost like borrowing money to gamble (although that would be considerably more risky). When the stock market crashed, the end result was multiplied tenfold by the fact that many people were trading on margin (thus they lost everything, and then were in debt for more money than they could possibly ever repay).

Throughout the seventeenth century and the first half of the eighteenth century, the British government employed a policy of lax enforcement of Parliamentary laws. Many British politicians, most notably Prime Minister Robert Walpole, felt that the colonies would flourish if left to their own devices. Many ministers felt that enforcement of the Navigation Acts – which stated that the colonies should only trade with mainland British merchants – would ultimately cause economic stagnation in the colonies and that it was therefore in the best interest of the Empire as a whole to ignore many of the Parliamentary restrictions employed by previous administrations. This is referred to as the policy of salutary neglect.

The Repartimento system of forced labor was prevalent throughout much of Spain’s American Empire during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The system was established whenever a Spanish settlement happened to be set up near an existing native community. The native people were rotated between various jobs, mostly agriculture, construction and mining. Due to the high rate of desertion, the system was largely replaced by the more permanent Encomienda system, which even more closely resembled slavery.

French settlers primarily occupied the southern regions of what is now Canada, establishing fur trading communities with the Native American tribes who already existed in the region. The French rarely attacked or plundered Native American communities, preferring to establish positive trading rights. Likewise, the French expended little effort to permanently settle new communities, and their objections to English and Spanish settlements were voiced only when the English threatened the lucrative fur trade. 

In the years between the end of the Revolutionary War and the outbreak of The War of 1812 the American merchant fleet grew dramatically. Although the majority of its trade continued to be with the British, the British public and government resented the added competition—in particular America’s trade with Britain’s perennial enemy, the French. During the Napoleonic Wars British ships often took to impressing American sailors to work aboard their ships—a provocative violation of American neutrality. In America the general response was outrage, and many prominent American politicians, like James Madison and Andrew Jackson, called for a “Second War of Independence” to finish the break with the Empire. Finally, many Americans living on the frontier were fighting a near constant conflict with displaced Native American populations and were offended to find that the British had been providing many Native American groups with weapons and supplies. The only false statement here is that it was the ascension of the Federalist Party that contributed to the outbreak of war. On the contrary, Federalist power was on the decline at the time. It was the Democratic-Republicans, and their significantly more staunch Anti-British feeling, that was in the ascension. 

The popular phrase "Remember the Maine, to Hell with Spain!" was influential in beginning the Spanish-American War later that year, even though Spanish involvement in the sinking of the Maine was not conclusively determined.

In the years immediately after the French revolution, diplomatic tensions between the United States and France were growing very quickly and seemed to be precipitating war. In an attempt to avoid war President Adams sent a delegation of diplomats to negotiate with the famous French diplomat Talleyrand. Talleyrand demanded a bribe to even meet with the American representatives; when word spread back to Adams, the United States’ politicians were outraged.  Many Federalists called for war and pressed Adams to release a copy of the report filed to him. Adams did release the report, but changed the names of the French diplomats to W, X, Y, and Z thus earning the whole business the title “The XYZ Affair.” In response to the public outrage over this seeming affront to American dignity Federalists were able to push through a massive upgrade to the United States’ Navy. However, Adams steadfastly refused to declare war and tensions ultimately died down. 

The Battle of Gettysburg finished an effort by Robert E. Lee and the Confederate Army to invade the North in Pennsylvania and create panic among the Union's populace.  The Union victory made Lee take his forces back into Southern territory, and from that point forward, the Southern Army was pushed further back on its heels.  The other significance of the Union victory was that it occurred on July 4, 1863, which was also the date that the Union won a victory at Vicksburg, MS, freeing up the Mississippi River.  The two victories brought an increasing focus on a smaller amount of Confederate Territory, and helped slowly bring the war to a close nearly two years later.

The Battle of Fort Sumter broke out in the early morning of April 12, 1860, with Confederate troops bombarding the tiny island fort in Charleston Harbor. Confederates claimed that it was their property, as it was in Confederate territory, while Lincoln refused to let go of Union Army installations. Forces led by Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard bombarded the fort for two days, until the Union troops surrendered, and the Confederates took control of the fort and the harbor. The Battle marked the official start of the Civil War, and many northern volunteers came forward. In slave states that had not joined the Confederacy, secession debates were enflamed once more, with Virginia, Tennesee, North Carolina, and Arkansas rounding out the Confederacy.

The Mexican-American War was initially incited by the United States' annexation of the Republic of Texas, which Mexico still claimed much of as its own territory. President James K. Polk had been elected by promising to spread American territory to the Pacific, and war with Mexico brought this about most easily. The United States won quite handily, quickly occupying New Mexico and California, and eventually occupying Mexico City. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo established peace by giving the present day American Southwest to the United States, and giving America a coast to coast territorial presence.