7 Key Moments From Our Founding

In this episode, we go over 7 key moments from America's founding you should always remember.

Episode Transcript

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This is the FCB podcast network.They freed us, solved the Jeremy state
of the thing, and they thought, so we work in America and of

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Hi, welcome back to the GrowingPatriot podcast American History for Kids. I'm
your host, Amelia Hamilton. We'vebeen talking about America's founding period for years
now and that is a lot toremember. So in this episode, we're
going to talk about seven moments Ireally don't want you to forget. First

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up is the landing at Jamestown.People came to America for a lot of
different reasons, but the first peopleto colonize America had one particular thing in
mind. Gold. The Spanish hadfound gold in South America, and so
the English were hoping to find goldin what they would come to call Virginia.

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So let's back up just a minute. So at the end of the
sixteenth century, that was the fifteenhundreds, Queen Elizabeth the First of England
was on the throne. She nevermarried, so she was called the Virgin
Queen. Sir Walter Raleigh was afamous adventurer and one of the Queen's favorites,
and historians think that Sir Walter Raleighsuggested the colony be named Virginia after

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her in around fifteen eighty four,which was the year she gave him permission
to colonize that region that would becomeVirginia. There were a couple of different
voyages before Jamestown, but none ofthem became permanent settlements. In fact,
those places that he first went endedup not even being Virginia. They're now
what we call North Carolina. AndEngland had spent a lot of money for

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those colonies that didn't even work,so they were a little bit nervous about
trying again. But then in sixteenoh three, Queen Elizabeth died and since
she didn't have any children, thecrown went to her cousin's son. He
became King James the First. Iknow this is all getting a little bit
confusing, but stick with me fora minute. So King James the first

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get it, James Jamestown. Soyes, he was willing to try that
whole American colony thing again, andthis time it was a little bit different.
It was something called a joint stockcompany with the Virginia Company of London,
so it was a way to makesure that the crown wouldn't lose as

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much money if the whole thing wentwrong. So in sixteen oh seven,
one hundred and forty four England buishmen and boys established the Jamestown Colony.
On May thirteenth of sixteen oh seven, three English ships they were called the
Susan Constant, the Godspeed and theDiscovery, they landed and planted the first

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permanent English colony in North America.They were established by that Virginia Colony of
London and would be called Jamestown afterKing James the First, and this time
it succeeded. By sixteen eighteen,people were paying money just to be able
to go to Jamestown and start anew life in that new world. So
the site for Jamestown was picked fora few different reasons. First of all,

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water, It was surrounded by wateron three sides, and now it's
actually fully an island. It's surroundedon four sides. But it was pretty
far inland, which meant they coulddefend it against the Spanish if they would
decide to attack. The water wasdeep enough that the English could tie their
ships at the shoreline, which basicallymeans good parking. And it was not
inhabited at that time by a nativepopulation, but things were still really hard.

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There was disease, drought, therewas not enough food. Things change
when a man named John Rolfe introduceda new crop called tobacco, and that
ended up making them enough money notjust to survive, but thrive, and
the Virginia Company even started recruiting womento move there so that the men of
Jamestown could start families. Like anysettlement, it had its ups and downs,

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but it did pretty well until afire in sixteen ninety eight, and
when the state House was destroyed inthat fire, Virginia's government was moved to
Williamsburg and that started a new erafor Virginia. But Jamestown was really the
beginning of the American colonies. Thesecond thing that I really want you to

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remember is the intolerable acts. Soit can be hard when you start to
grow and people still treat you likea kid, right, But it was
really hard for America because they werein ocean away from the king, and
that's who was treating them like alittle kid. He had no idea what
life was like in America, andhe was still trying to tell them what

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to do, and the colonists hadno voice at all. Remembered The big
phrase to remember is no taxation withoutrepresentation. And then things became intolerable,
which means it got so bad thatno normal person would be able to take
it. And it got to thatpoint with what the colonists called the Intolerable

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Acts in seventeen seventy four, butwhat they were really called were the Boston
Port Act, the Massachusetts Government Act, the Administration of Justice Act, and
the Quartering Act. So here's whateach of them were all about. First,
the Boston Port Act. Parliament passedthe bill for the Boston Port Act

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in March of seventeen seventy four,and then King George the Third gave it
his royal assent to make it officialin May. Basically, it said that
the Port of Boston, where theships go, couldn't do business anymore,
mostly, but it could still receivethings that the British Army needed, and
they said that it couldn't reopen untilBoston paid back the cost of what they

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destroyed in the Boston Tea Party,and the King decided that they were obeying
British law as well enough, andthen Britain decided it was safe to use
the harbor again. So it wasreally all up to the King still.
Second was the Massachusetts Government Act,so Massachusetts, like all the other colonies,

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had their own representatives that governed thecolony. Well, not anymore.
This Act was passed again in Mayof seventeen seventy four, but they got
royal ascent the same day, thesame day that the Boston Port Act was
passed, so King George had abusy day. It used to be that
the Massachusetts Council was elected by thepeople to represent them. Now it was

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going to be chosen by the King. And not only that, but the
new Royal governor would choose governors andsheriffs without the council's approval. And not
only that, but those sheriffs wouldchoose the jurors that decided if someone was
innocent or guilty in a trial,and they didn't want anybody talking about that
in town meetings, so those wereonly allowed to happen once a year.

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Now, basically, the King wantedtotal control over everything that happened, So
there was going to be no freedomin Massachusetts. And if that wasn't enough,
here's another thing the King did thatday, the third Intolerable Act,
the Administration of Justice Acts, andthat gave the king the power to move
a trial to another colony or evenall the way to Britain. So that

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took away any chance to get afair trial of your peers, like choosing
the sheriffs and the jurors wasn't alreadyenough. And now for the fourth of
the intolerable Acts, the Quartering Act. This one was a little bit later
and got royal assent on June second, and this is the only one that
applied to every colony, not justMassachusetts. This one is a little bit

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misunderstood. What it actually said wasthat high ranking military officials were allowed to
demand a better place to stay andrefuse that the troops be given inconvenient places
to stay. So a lot ofpeople think it means that people were forced
to let soldiers stay in their houses, but it didn't really say that.

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What it did say was that theyhad to be allowed to stay in any
empty houses, barns, or extrabuildings, and colonists did have to pay
for it, which is already prettygross. So those are the four intolerable
acts. Would you be able tolive like that, especially if you were
in Massachusetts? I don't think Icould. And the colonists weren't going to
stand for it either. And keepin mind that even though most of them

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only applied to Massachusetts, the colonistscould see that it could apply to any
of them if they misbehaved like thepeople in Massachusetts had, or like the
King thought they had, and anyof them could be next. If they
did something that the King or theroyal government didn't like, any colony could
be next. So if they didn'tstand together as the thirteen colonies, there

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would be nobody to stand up forthem. When the time came. They
all had to stand up for eachother. The third thing I want you
to remember is a big one thatI doubt you would forget, the declaration
of independence. So the colonies,they didn't just decide to declare independence out

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of nowhere. They actually tried reallyhard to make things work and not declare
independence. The First Continental Congress metin the fall of seventeen seventy four after
those intolerable acts to talk about whatthey were going to do. It did
show Britain that they were united,but it also showed that they were willing
to compromise and and try to cometo some agreement. They first sent a

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different declaration the Declaration of Rights andGrievances. It told the King that the
American colonists were equal to all Britishcitizens and that taxation without representation wasn't okay,
and they refused to be taxed withoutrepresentation. But of course Britain didn't
change their ways, and things onlygot worse. So there was a second

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Continental Congress, which met in Mayof seventeen seventy five, and that was
really different. First, they sentan olive branch petition in July of seventeen
seventy five, and an olive branchis sort of a peace offering. It
was a last try to avoid war, even though honestly a lot of our

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founders knew it wasn't going to work, but they really wanted to try.
And then, of course, aswe all know, a year later,
in seventeen seventy six, America declaredindependence. And it's hard to say what
a huge deal that was put downin writing the idea that all men were
created equal and that we all havethe right to life, liberty, and

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the pursuit of happiness. We're reallyused to that idea now, but at
the time it was brand new.People had never heard of such a thing
before. So the declaration did afew things. As for what it did,
the name is in the title.It declared that we were independent,
but it also explained why we wantedindependence, and since we were independent,

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it meant we were able to getallies like France. There are three main
things I want you to remember aboutthis. It told the world the way
a government should be. It listedthe complaints the colonists had against Great Britain
and let the world know that thecolonies were now quote free and independent states.

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And once this was out there inthe world, there was no going
back. It said that these Americancolonies were up against one of, if
not the most powerful military in theworld. Up next the Articles of Confederation.

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Sometimes these get lost in our history. But now that we'd declared ourselves
to be our own country, whichcame out of the Second Continental Congress,
we had to figure out how wewere going to govern ourselves. So we
became a confederacy, a group ofcolonies. So we created a name of
our thirteen states as the United Statesof America. The Articles of Confederation said

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that the governments of the states stillheld most of the power, and that
the states combined were responsible for helpingto protect each other from attacks. The
Articles of Confederation worked pretty well throughoutthe Revolutionary War, but afterwards they really
weren't strong enough to keep us together, which we'll talk about in a few

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more minutes. They failed because theywere crafted to keep the national government as
weak as possible, and there wasno power to enforce laws. There was
no judicial branch, no national courts. It was enough to keep us together
through the revolution, and what camenext would be even better. The surrender

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at Yorktown was a huge deal,and that happened on September twenty eighth of
seventeen eighty one, when America actuallywon the American Revolution. Well, that's
when Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown, whicheffectively ended the war, even though it
didn't officially end until seventeen eighty threewhen the Treaty of Paris was signed.

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But the surrender of Yorktown is whatyou really need to know about. It
was the end of the last majorbattle, the start of our real independence,
and it cemented Washington's reputation as agreat leader, and it put him
on the road to be the firstpresident of the United States. Washington himself
called Yorktown an important victory and aglorious event. Remember I said, when

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the thing that came after the Articlesof Confederation would be even better. Well,
here it is the Constitution, includingthe Bill of Rights. So,
like I said, when the revolutionwas over, we needed something stronger than
the Articles of Confederation. They justweren't working. So in seventeen eighty seven,
delegates met in Philadelphia again from almostevery state, and at first they

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thought about fixing the Articles of Confederation. That was the plan, but they
decided that they really needed to startover and started working on what would become
our constitution. Of course, wedid a ton of episodes on the Constitution,
so you can get all of thisdetails in there. But here's the
basic scoop. The Constitution is ahuge achievement because it gives us four big

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things. Checks and balances, whichprovides each branch of government with powers that
can check the other branches of governmentand stop them from becoming too powerful.
It separates the powers so that itbalances them out between each other. There's
also something called federalism, which againdivides those powers between the national government and

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the state governments. Also limits government, and it makes sure that the federal
big government only has the powers thatare given to it in the Constitution,
and it's not allowed to do anythingelse. The Constitution also has something called
popular sovereignty, and I know that'sa big word, but it really means

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something pretty simple. All of thepower comes from the people. They have
to give their permission to be governedby electing people. Now there's also something
called republicanism, and that's not political. It doesn't mean Republicans like Republicans and
Democrats. So John Adams, oneof our founding fathers, said that it

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means that the government in which allmen rich and poor, magistrates and subjects,
officers and people, masters and servants, the first citizen and the last
are equally subject to the laws.So it just means that we are all
equal. And then later in seventeenninety one, the Bill of Rights was

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added, which spells out some ofthe key rights that are protected, and
it just makes it super clear thatthe government cannot step all over the people.
And the last big moment that Iwant you to remember from our founding

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is George Washington's inauguration. This onealways seems to me like the moment when
America was really on its own,not that it wasn't before when we declared
independence or when cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown. But once it had its own leader,
it just feels different to me.The king wasn't just gone, he
was replaced. And this happened onThursday April thirtieth, seventeen eighty nine,

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on the balcony of Federal Hall inNew York City, even though Washington had
actually been president for almost two monthsat that point. He found out he
was elected on April fourteenth. Heleft his home in Mount Vernon in Virginia
two days later and headed to NewYork. But April thirtieth was the big
day. The oath was administered byRobert R. Livingston, the Chancellor of

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New York, and then he shouted, long Live George Washington, President of
the United States. So there youhave it, the big moments in our
founding history that I hope you willalways remember. Which five would you have

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chosen? As always, thank youfor listening. You can find out more
about us, more about the books, and find every episode at Growingpatriots dot
com or on social media on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at Growing Patriots.
Can't wait to see you next time. The Creed us solved for Jereanny

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stand the thing, and they thoughtso well, be working America. This
has been a presentation of the FCBpodcast Network where real talk lives. Visit
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