Overview
The United States of America developed into a republic from its colonial beginnings in the 16th century. Victory in the American Revolution (1775-1783), a conflict between the colonies and Great Britain, established the United States as an independent nation. The American Civil War, a military conflict between the United States of America and the Confederate States of America, took place from 1861 to 1865. In the next 150 years, the United States emerged as a global military and economic force.
The first known inhabitants of modern-day United States territory are believed to have arrived over a period of several thousand years beginning sometime prior to 15,000 - 50,000 years ago by crossing the Bering land bridge into Alaska. Solid evidence of these cultures settling in what would become the US is dated to at least 14,000 years ago.
Research has revealed much about the early Native American settlers of North America. Christopher Columbus' men were the first documented Old Worlders to land in the territory of the United States when they arrived in Puerto Rico during their second voyage in 1493. Juan Ponce de León, who arrived in Florida in 1513, is credited as being the first European to land in what is now the continental United States, although some evidence suggests that John Cabot might have reached what is presently New England in 1498.
In its beginnings, the United States consisted only of the Thirteen Colonies, on the Eastern coast, which consisted of states occupying the same lands as when they were British colonies. American colonists fought off the British army in the American Revolutionary War of the 1770s and issued a Declaration of Independence in 1776. Seven years later, the signing of the Treaty of Paris officially recognized independence from Britain. In the nineteenth century, westward expansion of United States territory began, upon the belief of Manifest Destiny, in which the United States would occupy all the North American land east to west, from the Atlantic to the Pacific Oceans. By 1912, with the admission of Arizona to the Union, the U.S. reached that goal. The outlying states of Alaska and Hawaii were both admitted in 1959.
In the middle of the 19th century, white Americans of the North and South were unable to reconcile fundamental differences in their approach to government, economics, society and African American slavery. After Abraham Lincoln won the 1860 Election, eleven Southern states seceded from the union between late 1860 and 1861, establishing a rebel government, the Confederate States of America. The social, political, economic and racial issues of the Civil War decisively shaped the reconstruction era that lasted to 1877, and continued into the 20th century.
Many social progresses came up starting in the nineteenth century; those advancements have been widely reflected in the Constitution. Slavery was abolished in 1865 by the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution; the following Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments respectively guaranteed citizenship for all persons naturalized within U.S. territory and voting for people of all races. In later years, civil rights were extended to women and black Americans, following effective lobbying from social activists. The Nineteenth Amendment prohibited gender discrimination in voting rights; later, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed racial segregation in public places.
The Progressive Era marked a time of economic growth for the United States. However, the Wall Street Crash of 1929 led to the Great Depression, a time of economic downturn and mass unemployment. Consequently, the U.S. government established the New Deal, a series of reform programs that intended to assist those affected by the Depression. The New Deal has varied success. However, once the U.S. entered World War II in December 1941, the economy quickly recovered, so much that the U.S. became a world superpower by the dawn of the Cold War. During the Cold War, the U.S. and the Soviet Union were the world's two superpowers, but with the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, United States became the world's only superpower. New events however brought many challenges to this position in recent years: the Gulf War, the terrorist atack of 9/11 or the current economic crisis among the most important. A historical moment was considereded the recent election of the first African-American president.
Pre-Columbian period
The earliest known inhabitants of what is now the United States are thought to have arrived in Alaska from Eurasia, at least 14,000 - 30,000 years ago. Some of these groups migrated south and over time spread throughout the Americas. These were the ancestors to modern Native Americans in the United States and Alaskan Native peoples, as well as all indigenous peoples of the Americas.
Many indigenous peoples were semi-nomadic tribes of hunter-gatherers; others were sedentary and agricultural civilizations. Many formed new tribes or confederations in response to European colonization. Well-known groups included the Huron, Apache Tribe, Cherokee, Sioux, Delaware, Algonquin, Choctaw, Mohegan, Iroquois and Inuit. Though not as technologically advanced as the Mesoamerican civilizations further south, there were extensive pre-Columbian sedentary societies in what is now the US. The Iroquois had a politically advanced and unique social structure that was at the very least inspirational if not directly influential to the later development of the democratic United States government, a departure from the strong monarchies from which the Europeans came.
Colonial period
After a period of exploration by people from various European countries, Spanish, Dutch, English, French, Swedish, and Portuguese settlements were established. Christopher Columbus was the first European to set foot on what would one day become U.S. territory when he came to Puerto Rico on November 19, 1493, during his second voyage. Colonial America was defined by a severe labor shortage that gave birth to forms of unfree labor such as slavery and indentured servitude, and by a British policy of benign neglect (salutary neglect) that permitted the development of an American spirit distinct from that of its European founders. Over half of all European migrants to Colonial America arrived as indentured servants. Spanish colonization created the first permanent European settlement in the continental United States at St. Augustine, Florida in 1565. Later Spanish settlements included Santa Fe, Albuquerque, San Antonio, Tucson, San Diego, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Most Spanish settlements were along the California coast or the Santa Fe River in New Mexico. French colonization at its peak, in 1712, extended a territory from Newfoundland to the Rocky Mountains and from Hudson Bay to the Gulf of Mexico. The territory was divided in five colonies, each with its own administration: Canada, Acadia, Hudson Bay, Newfoundland and Louisiana.
The strip of land along the eastern seacoast was settled primarily by English colonists in the 17th century, along with much smaller numbers of Dutch and Swedes. British colonization started in 1607, when the Virginia Company of London established the Jamestown Settlement on the James River, both named after King James. Founded by a group of separatists who later came to be known as the Pilgrims, in 1629, Plymouth Colony was, along with Jamestown, Virginia, one of the earliest colonies to be founded by the English in North America. The area of what was called New England was initially settled primarily by Puritans who established the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630. The first attempted English settlement south of Virginia was the Province of Carolina, with Georgia Colony the last of the Thirteen Colonies established in 1733.
Formation of the United States of America and Westward expansion (1776-1849)
The Thirteen Colonies (New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island, Connecticut Colony, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia) began a rebellion against British rule in 1775 and proclaimed their independence in 1776. They subsequently constituted the first thirteen states of the United States of America, which became a nation in 1781 with the ratification of the Articles of Confederation. The 1783 Treaty of Paris represented Great Britain's formal acknowledgement of the United States as an independent nation.
Side by side with the states' efforts to gain independence through armed resistance, a political union was being developed and agreed upon by them. The first step was to formally declare independence from Great Britain. On July 4, 1776, the Second Continental Congress, still meeting in Philadelphia, declared the independence of "the United States of America" in the Declaration of Independence. Although the states were still independent entities and not yet formally bound in a legal union, July 4 is celebrated as the nation's birthday. The new nation was dedicated to principles of republicanism, which emphasized civic duty and a fear of corruption and hereditary aristocracy. The system of republicanism borrowed heavily from the Enlightenment ideas and classical western philosophy: a primacy was placed upon individual liberty and upon constraining the power of government through a system of separation of powers. Additionally, the United States Bill of Rights was ratified on December 15, 1791 to guarantee individual liberties such as freedom of speech and religious practice and consisted of the first ten amendments of the Constitution.
During the 1789-1849 the first presidents of the United States were elected (Samuel Huntington, George Washington - the first under the new constitution, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson); The Louisiana Purchase was made (by Thomas Jefferson from Napoleon Bonaparte, by removing the French presence from the western border of the United States and providing U.S. settlers with vast potential for expansion west of the Mississippi River); The Monroe Doctrine, was expressed (proclaiming the United States' opinion that European powers should no longer colonize or interfere in the Americas); the Indian Removal Act was passed by the Congress (authorizing the president to negotiate treaties that exchanged Indian tribal lands in the eastern states for lands west of the Mississippi River, which resulted most notably in the forced migration of several native tribes to the West, with several thousand Indians dying en route); the abolitionist movement continued its mission to end slavery (The American Anti-Slavery Society, anti-slavery newspapers such as The Liberator or North Star); and the Mexican-American War ended with the singing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848) with meant the cedation California, New Mexico, and adjacent areas to the United States - soon, the discovery of gold in California enhanced westward expansion in what was called the Gold Rush; land-demanding European immigrants also contributed to the rising Western population.
Civil War, Reconstruction and the Rise of industrialization (1849-1890)
In the middle of the 19th century, white Americans of the North and South were unable to reconcile fundamental differences in their approach to government, economics, society and African American slavery. The issue of slavery in the new territories was settled by the Compromise of 1850 which included admission of California as a free state and the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act to make it easier for masters to reclaim runaway slaves. After Abraham Lincoln won the 1860 Election, becasue he had campaigned against the expansion of slavery beyond the states in which it already existed, eleven Southern states seceded from the union between late 1860 and 1861, establishing a rebel government, the Confederate States of America. Hostilities began on April 12, 1861, when Confederate forces attacked a U.S. military installation at Fort Sumter in South Carolina. Lincoln responded by calling for a volunteer army from each state, leading to declarations of secession by four more Southern slave states. The war, the deadliest in American history, caused 620,000 soldier deaths and an undetermined number of civilian casualties, ended slavery in the United States, restored the Union, and strengthened the role of the federal government.
Reconstruction took place for most of the decade following the Civil War. During this era, the "Reconstruction Amendments" were passed to expand civil rights for black Americans. Those amendments included the Thirteenth Amendment, which outlawed slavery, the Fourteenth Amendment that guaranteed citizenship for all people born or naturalized within U.S. territory, and the Fifteenth Amendment that granted the vote for all men regardless of race. While the Civil Rights Act of 1875 forbade discrimination in the service of public facilities, the Black Codes denied blacks certain privileges readily available to whites. In response to Reconstruction, the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) emerged around the late 1860s as a white-supremacist organization opposed to black civil rights.
Following was the Gilded Age, a term that author Mark Twain used to describe the period of the late nineteenth century when there had been a dramatic expansion of American industry. Reform of the Age included the Civil Service Act, which mandated a competitive examination for applicants for government jobs. Other important legislation included the Interstate Commerce Act, which ended railroads' discrimination against small shippers, and the Sherman Antitrust Act, which outlawed monopolies in business. By century's end, American industrial production and per capita income exceeded those of all other world nations and ranked only behind Great Britain. Later, an unprecedented wave of immigration served both to provide the labor for American industry and create diverse communities in previously undeveloped areas. Abusive industrial practices led to the often violent rise of the labor movement in the United States. Influential figures of the period included John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie.
Progressivism, Imperialism, Great Depression and the World Wars (1890-1945)
After the Gilded Age came the Progressive Era, whose followers called for reform over perceived industrial corruption. Viewpoints taken by progressives included greater federal regulation of anti-trust laws and the industries of meat-packing, drugs, and railroads. Four new constitutional amendments-the Sixteenth through Nineteenth-resulted from progressive activism. U.S. Federal government policy, since the James Monroe Administration, had been to move the indigenous population beyond the reach of the white frontier into a series of Indian reservations. Tribes were generally forced onto small reservations as Caucasian farmers and ranchers took over their lands.
The United States began its rise to international power in this period with substantial population and industrial growth domestically and numerous military ventures abroad, including the Spanish-American War ended with the signing of Treaty of Paris, with Cuba becoming an independent nation and Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines becoming U.S. territories.
President Woodrow Wilson declared U.S. entry into World War I in April 1917 following a yearlong neutrality policy; the U.S. had previously shown interest in world peace by participating in the Hague Conferences. American participation in the war proved essential to the Allied victory.
Following World War I, the U.S. grew steadily in stature as an economic and military world power and chose to pursue unilateralism, if not isolationism. In 1920, the manufacture, sale, import and export of alcohol was prohibited by the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Prohibition encouraged illegal breweries and dealers to make substantial amounts of money selling alcohol illegally. The Prohibition ended in 1933, a failure. Additionally, the KKK re-formed during that decade and gathered nearly 4.5 million members by 1924, and the U.S. government passed the Immigration Act of 1924 restricting foreign immigration. The 1920s were also known as the Roaring Twenties, due to the great economic prosperity during this period. Jazz became popular among the younger generation, and therefore, it was also called the Jazz Age.
During most of the 1920s, the United States enjoyed a period of unbalanced prosperity: farm prices and wages fell, while new industries, and industrial profits grew. The boom was fueled by a rise in debt and an inflated stock market. The Hawley-Smoot Tariff, the Wall Street Crash of 1929, the Dust Bowl, and the ensuing Great Depression led to government efforts to restart the economy and help its victims with Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal. The recovery was rapid in all areas except unemployment, which remained fairly high until 1940.
On December 7, 1941 Japan launched a surprise attack on the American naval base in Pearl Harbor, citing America's recent trade embargo as justification. Four days after the attack on Pearl Harbor, on December 11, Nazi Germany declared war on the United States, drawing the country into a two-theater war. Upon entering the war, the United States and its allies decided to concentrate the bulk of their efforts on fighting Hitler in Europe. By early 1944, a planned invasion of Western Europe was underway. What followed on June 6, 1944, was Operation Overlord, or D-Day. Following this landing at Normandy, the Americans contributed greatly to the outcome of the war. The American forces were then poised to force the Japanese into unconditional surrender. On April 12, 1945, President Roosevelt died and Vice President Harry S. Truman succeded him. The decision to use nuclear weapons to end the conflict has been one of the most controversial decisions of the war. Bombs were dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 and on Nagasaki on August 9. On August 15, 1945, the Japanese surrendered unconditionally.
Cold War, Civil Rights Movement and the Post-1980 Era
Following World War II, the United States emerged as one of the two dominant superpowers. The U.S. Senate approved the participation in the United Nations (UN), which marked a turn away from the traditional isolationism of the U.S. and toward more international involvement. The post-war era in the United States was defined internationally by the beginning of the Cold War, in which the United States and the Soviet Union attempted to expand their influence at the expense of the other, checked by each side's massive nuclear arsenal and the doctrine of mutual assured destruction. The result was a series of conflicts during this period including the Korean War and the tense nuclear showdown of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Within the United States, the Cold War prompted concerns about Communist influence, and also resulted in government efforts like the space race.
John F. Kennedy was elected President in 1960. Known for his charisma, he brought a new life and vigor to the atmosphere of the White House. He was assassinated in 1963. Meanwhile, the American people completed their great migration from the farms into the cities and experienced a period of sustained economic expansion. At the same time, institutionalized racism across the United States, but especially in the American South, was increasingly challenged by the growing Civil Rights movement and African American leaders such as Martin Luther King, Jr. During the 1960s, the Jim Crow laws that legalized racial segregation between Whites and Blacks came to an end.
The Cold War continued through the 1960s and 1970s, and the United States entered the Vietnam War, whose growing unpopularity fed already existing social movements, including those among women, minorities and young people. President Lyndon Johnson's social programs and the judicial activism added to the wide range of social reform during the 1960s and 1970s. Feminism and the environmental movement became political forces, and progress continued toward civil rights for all Americans. The Counterculture Revolution swept through the nation and much of the western world in the late sixties, dividing the already hostile environment but also bringing forth more liberated social views. In the early 1970s, Johnson's successor, President Richard Nixon was forced by Congress to bring the Vietnam War to a close. Nixon's own administration was brought to an ignominious close with the political scandal of Watergate.
Widely regarded as a hard-line conservative, Ronald Reagan downsized government taxation, spending, and regulation, after 1980, and took a hard line against the Soviet Union. Communism finally collapsed in Russia in 1991 following the 1989 East-European revolutions, ending the US-Soviet Cold War. After the fall of the Soviet Union, the United States emerged as the world's sole remaining superpower and continued to involve itself in military action overseas, including the 1991 Gulf War. Following his election in 1992, President Bill Clinton oversaw unprecedented gains in securities values, a side effect of the digital revolution and new business opportunities created by the Internet.
At the beginning of the new millennium, the United States found itself attacked by Islamic terrorism, with the September 11, 2001 attacks in which 19 extremists hijacked four transcontinental airliners and intentionally crashed two of them into the twin towers of the World Trade Center and one into the Pentagon. In response to the attacks, under the administration of President George W. Bush, the United States launched Operation Enduring Freedom which overthrew the Islamic Taliban regime which had protected and harbored terrorists, operation wich continued with the War in Iraq.
(source: Wikipedia)
