IMPORTANT ACTS EXPLANATION
Homestead act of 1862 Second wave of immigration – land givaways
Norwegian settlers in 1898 North Dakota in front of their
homestead, a sod hut
The Homestead Acts were several laws in the United States by
which an applicant could acquire ownership of land, typically
called a "homestead.” In all, more than 270 million acres of
public land, or nearly 10% of the total area of the U.S., was
given away free to 1.6 million homesteaders; most of the
homesteads were west of the Mississippi River
An extension of the Homestead Principle in law, the Homestead
Acts were an expression of the "Free Soil" policy of Northerners
who wanted individual farmers to own and operate their own
farms, as opposed to Southern slave-owners who wanted to
buy up large tracts of land and use slave labor, thereby shutting
out free white farmers
Signed by president Lincoln
The sugar act Taxlaw – to improve the revenues of the kingdom, to cover the
1764 costs to protect the kingdom etc… after that Molasses act
tax per gallon of sugar (6 pence).
The stamp act was an Act of the Parliament of Great Britain that imposed a
1765 direct tax on the Thirteen Colonies and required that many
printed materials in the colonies be produced on stamped
paper produced in London, carrying an embossed revenue
stamp. Printed materials included legal documents, magazines,
playing cards, newspapers, and many other types of paper used
throughout the colonies. Like previous taxes, the stamp tax had
to be paid in valid British currency, not in colonial paper money.
The tea act The principal objective was to reduce the massive amount of
1773 tea held by the financially troubled British East India Company
in its London warehouses and to help the financially struggling
company survive. A related objective was to undercut the price
of illegal tea, smuggled into Britain's North American colonies.
This was supposed to convince the colonists to purchase
Company tea on which the Townshend duties were paid
The coercive acts The laws were meant to punish the Massachusetts colonists for
1774 their defiance in the Boston Tea Party protest in reaction to
changes in taxation by the British to the detriment of colonial
goods. In Great Britain, these laws were referred to as the
Coercive Acts.
The gulf of Tonkin resolution also known as the USS Maddox incident, was an international
confrontation that led to the United States engaging more
directly in the Vietnam War. It involved either one or two
separate confrontations involving North Vietnam and the
United States in the waters of the Gulf of Tonkin.
The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution or the Southeast Asia Resolution,
Pub.L. 88–408, 78 Stat. 384, enacted August 10, 1964, was a
joint resolution that the United States Congress passed on
, August 7, 1964, in response to the Gulf of Tonkin incident.
The tet offensive One of the largest military campaigns : north Vietnam vs south
Vietnam / campaign of surprise attacks against military civilians