America History of 1805 - 1809

1805

• May. Members of the Lewis and Clark expedition see the Rocky Mountains; in November, they see the Pacific Ocean.
• Lt. Zebulon Pike explores the Louisiana Territory.
• Painter Charles Willson Peale establishes the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where this trompe l'oeil picture by Peale, The Staircase Group (1795), is still exhibited.

1806

• Noah Webster issues his Compendious Dictionary of the English Language 
• Lewis and Clark expedition winters at Fort Clatsop in Oregon and ends its journey by returning to St. Louis in September. 
• The Cumberland Road is built to facilitate western settlement.

1807

• Embargo Act bans all trade with foreign countries and forbids American ships to set sail for foreign ports.  This act has a lasting negative effect on New England seaports.
• The Clermont, first reliable steamboat, travels from New York City to Albany, N.Y.
• The Chesapeake-Leopard incident in which three Americans are seized or "impressed" as seamen from the American ship Chesapeake stirs anti-British feeling.

1808

• The Osage, a Sioux tribe, sign the Osage Treaty ceding their lands in what is now Missouri and Arkansas to the U. S. 
• Thomas Jefferson refuses to run for a third term as president, naming James Madison as his successor.
  

 1809

• Shawnee leader Tecumseh begins to establish a defensive confederacy to resist the westward movement of white settlers. 
• New England governors refuse to supply militia to enforce the Embargo Acts (of 1807 and 1808) 
• Phoenix completes the first sea voyage by a steamboat by traveling around the shores of New Jersey.