The Compromise of 1877 settled a disputed presidential election. In exchange for Rutherford B. Hayes becoming president, federal troops were removed from the South. Reconstruction ended, and Jim Crow segregation laws soon followed. Review: Essential Question Revisited How did the struggle for freedom and unity define the United States from its beginnings through 1877?

Southern states passed Black Codes to restrict freedoms. Sharecropping trapped many Black families and poor whites in debt. Violent groups like the Ku Klux Klan terrorized Black voters.

The Great Awakening (1730s–1740s) was a religious revival led by preachers like Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield. It encouraged questioning authority and fostered a shared colonial identity. Part 3: Road to Revolution (1754–1775) Key Vocabulary: French and Indian War, Proclamation of 1763, Taxation without representation, Stamp Act, Boston Tea Party, Intolerable Acts

Conquistadors like Hernán Cortés (Aztecs) and Francisco Pizarro (Inca) conquered large empires. Spain established a strict colonial system with the encomienda (forced Native labor) and created settlements in Florida, Texas, and California.

The first national government was weak—no president, no courts, no power to tax or raise an army. Shays’ Rebellion (1786) —an uprising of indebted farmers in Massachusetts—showed the Articles were failing.

In April 1775, British troops marched to Concord, Massachusetts, to seize colonial weapons. At Lexington and Concord , the “shot heard ‘round the world” started the war.

The United States was born from a fight for independence and the ideal that “all men are created equal.” Yet from the start, the nation was divided over slavery, Native American lands, and the power of government. The Revolution created the nation; the Constitution created a government; the Civil War tested whether that nation could survive; and Reconstruction attempted—but ultimately failed—to secure true freedom for all. By 1877, the U.S. remained a country still struggling to fulfill its founding promises.

Seeking a sea route to Asia, Christopher Columbus (sailing for Spain) landed in the Caribbean in 1492. This contact began the Columbian Exchange —a vast transfer of plants, animals, diseases, and people between the Eastern and Western Hemispheres. Europeans brought horses, wheat, and sugar; they took back maize, potatoes, and tobacco. Devastating diseases like smallpox wiped out up to 90% of some Native populations.