On June 13th, the leaders of the colonial forces learned that the British were planning to send troops into Charlestown. In response, 1,200 colonial troops under the command of Col. William Prescott quickly occupied Bunker Hill on the north end of the peninsula and Breed's Hill closer to Boston. By the morning of the 16th, they had constructed a strong redoubt on Breed's Hill and other entrenchments across the peninsula. The next day, the British army under General William Howe, supported by Royal Navy warships, attacked the colonial defenses. The British troops moved up Breeds Hill in perfect battle formations. One of the commanders of the improvised garrison, William Prescott, allegedly encouraged his men to “not fire until you see the whites of their eyes.” Two assaults on the colonial positions were repulsed with significant British casualties; the third and final attack carried the position after the defenders ran out of ammunition. The colonists retreated to Cambridge over Bunker Hill, leaving the British in control of Charlestown but still besieged in Boston. The battle was a tactical victory for the British, but it proved to be a sobering experience, involving more than twice the casualties than the Americans had incurred, including many officers. The battle demonstrated that inexperienced Continental militia could stand up to regular British army troops in battle.
The country of France was in severe debt after helping to finance the American Revolution. Also, food shortages, especially bread, led to inflation of prices in the years just before the French Revolution broke out. (See image: Courtesy of weebly.com)
Black codes attempted to restrict freedom and get African Americans into labor because of their low wages and/or debt. Jim Crow Laws were racial segregation laws. Plessy v. Ferguson is a Supreme Court case that racially segregated public places
D. W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation chronicled the early days of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) and had its premiere at Woodrow Wilson’s White House in 1915. The statements that describe the movie are as follow:
The movie depicted African-Americans as unworthy of participation in government and dangerous to white women.
The movie glorified the Ku Klux Klan not as racist terrorists, but as heroes protecting virtuous white southerners from "uncivilized" blacks.