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Columbus started his voyage to the Americas on August 3, 1492. Then he took a quick stop at the Canary Islands and continued on September 6. His three ships were called the Nina, the Piñata and the Santa Maria. To keep his crew quiet he kept two ship logs one that showed the actual length they traveled and one that showed a shorter amount of time. Finely the crew was ready to mutiny but Columbus said that if they waited two more days then they would turn back, they found land the next day.

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Columbus started his voyage to the Americas on August 3, 1492. Then he took a quick stop at the Canary Islands and continued on September 6. His three ships were called the Nina, the Piñata and the Santa Maria.

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In 1492 the Italian explorer Christopher Columbus landed in the Caribbean islands-a momentous event in world history. Although Europeans would not realize it for several...

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War began in 1754, when British colonial troops under George Washington tried to drive the French from what is now western Pennsylvania. They failed. British soldiers arrived in 1755. They lost a battle for Fort Duquesne, near what is now Pittsburgh.

The next few years of the war continued to be difficult for the British. The French had a better army, and the Native Americans knew how to fight in the woodlands.

By the end of 1757, however, the British had begun to gain ground. They had collected more money and better supplies than France. They also had become experts in wilderness fighting. By 1760 the British had captured all of New France. The war ended when Britain and France signed the Treaty of Paris on February 10, 1763.

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War began in 1754, when British colonial troops under George Washington tried to drive the French from what is now western Pennsylvania. They failed. British soldiers arrived in 1755. They lost a battle for Fort Duquesne, near what is now Pittsburgh. The next few years of the war continued to be difficult for the British.

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Explorers for Kids: Christopher Columbus

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Kids learn about the biography and life of explorer Christopher Columbus. He discovered the Americas for Spain.

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Colonial America for Kids: Jamestown Settlement

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Kids learn about the Jamestown Settlement of colonial America including the first settlers, John Smith, the Powhatan tribe, the Staving Time, interesting facts, and Pocahontas.

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The Great Awakening was a religious movement that swept across parts of the British colonies in North America in the mid-1700s. Protestant Christian preachers taught that good behavior and individual faith were more important than book learning and Bible reading. The Great Awakening had a strong influence on colonial and U.S. religion, culture, and politics.

Followers of the Great Awakening had very emotional church services. They believed that people showed their faith through their emotions. To them faith was more important than doctrine, or official church teachings. They also believed that ordinary people could know just as much about God as church officials did.

Traveling preachers spread the movement throughout the American colonies. Beginning in 1738 an English preacher named George Whitefield made several trips to the colonies. He preached in open fields because the churches were not big enough to hold the crowds he attracted. Jonathan Edwards, a minister in Massachusetts, also spread the ideas of the Great Awakening.

The Great Awakening was one of the first important movements against slavery. Whitefield criticized brutal slaveholders and welcomed African Americans at services.

Some historians believe that the Great Awakening also helped lead to the American Revolution. First, the movement encouraged democracy because everyone could participate in it. Second, colonists with strong religious beliefs began to question taxes that benefited only the Church of England. Taxes soon became one of the American revolutionaries' biggest complaints against the British.

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The Great Awakening was a religious movement that swept across parts of the British colonies in North America in the mid-1700s. Protestant Christian preachers taught that...

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Introduction
Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Washington, D.C. (object no. 2008.10.4)

Beginning about 1500, millions of Black Africans were taken from their homes and sold into slavery in the New World. European colonial powers, working with African rulers, shipped their human cargo across the Atlantic Ocean to work on plantations in their American colonies. As many as 10 million people endured the forced journey, and many more died in transport. After nearly four centuries, humanitarian efforts finally brought an end to the Atlantic slave trade in the second half of the 1800s.

Slavery was practiced in Africa long before the arrival of Europeans on the continent. The practice was widespread both in the Islamic societies of North Africa and in the Black African states south of the Sahara. Black Africans were traded across the Sahara, across the Red Sea (from Ethiopia and Somalia), and out of East Africa to supply the Islamic world and the Indian Ocean region with slaves.

In Europe, slavery had nearly died out in the Middle Ages. It was revived by Portugal in the mid-15th century. The Portuguese populated their colonies of Cape Verde, Fernando Po (now Bioko), and São Tomé-all islands off the coast of western Africa-largely with enslaved Black people and took many back to Portugal. When Spain and Portugal began establishing colonies in the New World about 1500, they initially forced the local Indigenous people to work their plantations. The violence of conquest, however, combined with the impact of European diseases, devastated Indigenous populations. The result was a labor shortage that caused the Europeans to look to Africa for a solution. In the Spanish West Indies and in Portuguese Brazil, enslaved Indigenous people were gradually replaced by Africans.

As the English, French, and Dutch colonized the smaller West Indian islands in the 17th century, they created plantation settlements. At first, the bulk of manual labor-especially on the English-held islands-was done by poor whites. Some of them were indentured servants; others were convicts. Black slavery eventually surpassed white servitude in these colonies as well.

The Triangular Trade
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc./Kenny Chmielewski

The Atlantic slave trade has been called the triangular trade because it had three stages that roughly form the shape of a triangle when viewed on a map. The first stage began in Europe, where manufactured goods such as metals, cloth, guns, and spirits were loaded onto ships bound for ports on the African coast. There the goods were exchanged for enslaved people. Many of the enslaved people were taken from the region bordering the Gulf of Guinea; in fact, a section of the African coast in what are now the countries of Togo, Benin, and Nigeria became known as the Slave Coast. Many more enslaved people were taken from west-central Africa, centered on the Portuguese colony in what is now Angola. A smaller number came from Portuguese-controlled parts of southeastern Africa.

The Atlantic slave trade changed the nature of African slavery. Within Africa, enslavers wanted primarily women and children for labor and for incorporation into their societies. They tended to kill males because they were troublesome and likely to flee. The Europeans, however, demanded primarily adult males to work in the New World colonies. Thus, African rulers began selling males into the international slave trade. Most enslaved people were captured in raids on neighboring African peoples, though others were enslaved because of criminal convictions or failure to pay debts. African rulers transported the captives to the coast and kept them in holding pens until they could be sold to European ship captains who sailed up and down the coast looking for slave cargo.

© Everett Historical/Shutterstock.com

The second stage of the triangular trade was the shipment of enslaved people across the Atlantic Ocean, usually to Brazil or to an island in the Caribbean Sea. This trip, known as the Middle Passage, took a few weeks to several months. The ships were grossly overcrowded, with the captives wedged below decks and chained to platforms stacked in tiers. The average space allotted to an individual was just 6 feet long, 16 inches wide, and perhaps 3 feet high (183 by 41 by 91 centimeters). Unable to stand up or turn over, many captives died in this prone position. The almost continuous dangers faced by the captives included epidemic diseases, raids at port by hostile tribes, and attack by pirates, in addition to physical, sexual, and psychological abuse at the hands of their captors. Death rates on the Middle Passage ranged from about 10 to more than 20 percent.

The peak of the Atlantic slave trade seems to have been reached in the 1780s, when on average some 78,000 enslaved people were brought to the Americas each year. About half these captives were transported in the ships of British merchants. Their nearest competitors, the French and Portuguese traders, carried each about one-fifth of the total number of enslaved people.

After arriving in Brazil or the Caribbean, the enslaved Africans were sold at auction and were taken throughout the New World. They were put to work on plantations. The shipment to Europe of plantation crops and products made from them was the third leg of the triangular trade. Among the most valuable exports to Europe were sugar, tobacco, cotton, molasses, and rum.

Opposition to and End of the Slave Trade
There was no well-organized opposition to the slave trade before 1800, although some individuals and groups condemned it. The abolitionist movement in Britain began in 1783, when English Quakers presented the first important antislavery petition to Parliament. They were following the example of Quakers in the American colony of Pennsylvania, who had voiced opposition to slavery in 1688. By the turn of the 19th century, religious and humanitarian leaders and organizations had brought the issue of abolition to the forefront of British politics.

Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Washington, D.C. (object no. 2010.21.2ab)

In 1807 the British abolished the slave trade. They followed up this act by sending antislavery ships to patrol the African coast. Another law passed in 1833 freed all enslaved people in British colonies. Although the British were not the first to abolish the slave trade, their actions had an unprecedented impact on the policies of other countries. In 1817 Spain signed a treaty with Britain agreeing to abolish the slave trade in 1820. By the 1820s Holland, Sweden, and France had also passed laws against the slave trade. Such laws did not immediately stop the slave trade, however, as there was still strong demand for slaves and good profits from dealing in them. Ongoing enforcement efforts finally succeeded in ending the Atlantic slave trade in the 1860s.

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Beginning about 1500, millions of Black Africans were taken from their homes and sold into slavery in the New World. European colonial powers, working with African rulers,...

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The Battle of Lexington & Concord was the first battle of the American Revolution. No one who knows who fired the first shot, but it is known as the "shot heard 'round the world" because it started...

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Learn about the Causes of the American Revolution including the French and Indian War, taxes, the Intolerable Acts, Boston Massacre, and more.

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Constitution for Kids | What It Is and Why It Matters

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The War of 1812 was the second war between the United States and Great Britain. The United States won its independence in the first war-the American Revolution. Neither country won anything important in the War of 1812.

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The War of 1812 was the second war between the United States and Great Britain. The United States won its independence in the first war-the American Revolution. Neither country won anything important in the War of 1812.

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As the United States expanded in the 1800s, many Americans were inspired by an idea known as Manifest Destiny. They believed that the United States had a duty to stretch westward to the Pacific Ocean and even beyond. In doing so, the nation would spread Protestant and democratic ideals across the North American continent.

The phrase "Manifest Destiny" was introduced by journalist John L. O'Sullivan in an 1845 newspaper article. In that year the United States admitted Texas to the Union as the 28th state. Writing about the event, O'Sullivan spoke of America's "manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions." The idea of Manifest Destiny was later used to justify the addition of Oregon, New Mexico, California, Alaska, and Hawaii to the United States.

Expanding westward and taking more land as the population grew began almost as soon as white settlers claimed land. The biggest barriers to the white settlers were the Indigenous peoples who had lived on the land for thousands of years. The Indigenous peoples fought to keep the whites off their land, but most Native nations were eventually forced to give up their homelands.

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As the United States expanded in the 1800s, many Americans were inspired by an idea known as Manifest Destiny. They believed that the United States had a duty to stretch...

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The southwestern area of the United States was once owned by Spain. What we now recognize as Texas had been part of that area, and in 1821 Mexico became independent of Spain, and their territory included Texas. Those living in Texas were not in agreement with the Mexican government, and they declare…