The historical patterns of the United States between 1608 and 1819 relate to colonial expansion, slavery, and the Indigenous peoples.

Throughout the first part of this period, there was a pattern of establishing new colonies. The first permanent colony was called Jamestown. It was created one year before 1608 in Virginia by people associated with the London Company. Nearly thirteen years later, a group of English Protestants known as Puritans created the Plymouth Colony. Around 1630, Puritans founded the Massachusetts Bay Colony. In the following decades, New York, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and the Carolinas would become colonies.

As the colonists were not occupying empty land, there was a pattern of violence with the Indigenous peoples. Tribes fought colonists and other tribes to try to preserve their hegemony and territory. One war, the Pequot War, took place between 1636-37 in the colonies of Connecticut and Rhode Island. More than 180 years later, the United States, now an independent country, was still fighting the Indigenous peoples. In 1813-14, Andrew Jackson lead attacks against the British-aligned Creeks.

Meanwhile, throughout this period, the colonies and the United States modified and managed the institution of slavery. The first African slaves came to the Jamestown Colony in 1619. By 1790, 697,624 slaves were in the United States. As slavery and the nation expanded, the United States developed a pattern of trying to simultaneously preserve and limit the institution of slavery