The beginnings of US and early literature

 1450 - Guttenberg invents the printer

1492 - Columbus lands on Hispaniola (the Caribbean islands) - "America" (metonymy) described with exotic flourishes, enhanced by the hope of finding gold (Eldorado)
1516 - Thomas More, Utopia 
1552 - Bartolomé de las Casas, Brevísima relación de la destruición de las Indias Ocidentales
1607 - Jamestown
1620 - Plymouth (William Bradford) 
1624 - John Smith, The General History of Virginia
1626 - Francis Bacon, The New Atlantis
1630 - Massachusetts Bay (John Winthrop) - absorbs Plymouth, becoming the central community for the Pilgrims (Puritans)
1630 - John Winthrop's sermon A Model of Christian Charity (self-explanatory name)
1643 - Roger Williams (banned from Massachusetts, founds the Rhode Island Comunnity), A Key into the Language of America 

1630-1651 (printed only 1856) - William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation (the text as testimonial of the wonders of God in the name of His chosen people, with a plan of the city of New Jerusalem; also tells of the failure of the communal experience and of the pragmatic response to 'man's corruption) - important diary / journal form in "plain style". "Let them [the Puritans] confess before the Lord his loving Kindness and His wonderful works before the sons of men" (32) - institution of public confession

1682 - Mary Rowlandson, A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. M. Rowlandson
1689 - John Locke, Treatises of Goovernment 
1702 - Cotton Mather, Magnalia Christi Americana (sums up conservative vision of Puritan New England, with an account of the Salem Trials; need for scientific knowledge and sanitary measures)
1765 - Stamp Act
1773 - Tea Act
1773, Dec. - Boston Tea Party
1776 - Thomas Paine, Common Sense and the Rights of Man

July 4, 1776 - "A Declaration of the Representatives of the United States of America"  
1782 - St. John de Crèvecoeur, Letters from an American Farmer.
1793 (published) - Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography
1802-1807 (written) - Diary and Autobiography of John Adams
1821 (published) - Autobiography of Thomas Jefferson