History
Main article: History of the United States
Native American and European settlement
The indigenous peoples of the U.S. mainland, migrated from Asia, beginning between 40,000 and 12,000 years ago.[27] Some, such as the pre-Columbian Mississippian culture, developed advanced agriculture, grand architecture, and state-level societies. After European explorers and traders made the first contacts, many millions died from epidemics of imported diseases such as smallpox.[28]
The first Spanish explorers landed in "La Florida" in 1513. Spain set up settlements in California and New Mexico that were eventually merged into the U.S. There were also some French settlements along the Mississippi River.
The English settlements up and down the Atlantic coast were by far the most important in shaping the history of the United States. The Virginia Colonybegan 1607 and the Pilgrims' Plymouth Colony in 1620. Some 100,000 Puritans came to New England, especially the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Beginning in 1614, the Dutch settled in modern New York State; their colony of New Netherland was taken over by England in 1674, but a strong Dutch influence persisted in the Hudson Valley north of New York City for generations. Many new immigrants, especially to the South, were indentured servants—some two-thirds of all Virginia immigrants between 1630 and 1680.[29]By the turn of the 18th century, African slaves were becoming the primary source of bonded labor in many regions.[30]
With the 1729 division of the Carolinas and the 1732 colonization of Georgia, the thirteen British colonies that would become the United States of America were established.[31] All had local governments with elections open to most free men, with a growing devotion to the ancient rights of Englishmen and a sense of self-government stimulating support for republicanism. All legalized the African slave trade.[32] With high birth rates, low death rates, and steady immigration, the colonial population grew rapidly. The Christian revivalistmovement of the 1730s and 1740s known as the Great Awakening fueled interest in both religion and religious liberty.
In the French and Indian War, British forces seized Canada from the French, but the francophone population remained politically isolated from the southern colonies. Excluding the Native Americans, who were being displaced, those thirteen colonies had a population of 2.6 million in 1770, about one-third that of Britain. Nearly one-fifth of those living in what would become the United States were black slaves.[33]
English expansion westward saw incorporation of disparate pre-established cultures it met. But it also found Amerindian resistance to that settlement. Their opposition took various forms across the continent, as allies with Europeans, multi-tribe nations, and alone—by relocation and warring, by treaties and in court. On the other hand, English North American colonials were subject to British taxation, they had no representation in the Parliament of Great Britain.
Independence and expansion
The American Revolution was the first successful colonial war of independence against a European power. Americans had developed a democratic system of local government and a an ideology of "republicanism that held government rested on the will of the people (not the king), which strongly opposed corruption and demanded civic virtue. They demanded their rights as Englishmen and rejected British efforts to impose taxes without the approval of colonial legislatures. The British insisted and the conflict escalated to full-scale war in 1775, the American Revolutionary War.[34] On June 14, 1775, the Continental Congress, convening in Philadelphia, established aContinental Army under the command of George Washington.[35] Proclaiming that "all men are created equal" and endowed with "certain unalienable Rights", the Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence, drafted largely by Thomas Jefferson, on July 4, 1776. That date is now celebrated annually as America's Independence Day. In 1777, the Articles of Confederation established a weak government that operated until 1789.[36]
After the British defeat at Yorktown by American forcesassisted by the French the United States was independent. In the Peace treaty OF 1783 Britain recognized American sovereignty over most territory east of the Mississippi River. Nationalists calling for a much stronger federal government with powers of taxation led the constitutional convention in 1787. After intense debate the United States Constitution was ratified in 1788 by all 13 states. The first Senate, House of Representatives, and president—George Washington—took office in 1789.The Bill of Rights, forbidding federal restriction of personal freedoms and guaranteeing a range of legal protections, was adopted in 1791. [37]
Attitudes toward slavery were shifting; all states outlawed the international slave trade,[38] and the federal government criminalized the import or export of slaves in 1807.[39] All the Northern states abolished slavery between 1780 and 1804, leaving the slave states of the South as defenders of the "peculiar institution". With cotton a highly profitable plantation crop after 1820, Southern whites increasingly decided slavery was a positive good for everyone, including the slaves.[40] The Second Great Awakening, beginning about 1800, converted millions to evangelical Protestantism. In the North energized multiple social reform movements, including abolitionism.[41]
Americans' eagerness to expand westward prompted a long series of Indian Wars.[42] The Louisiana Purchase of French-claimed territory under President Thomas Jefferson in 1803 almost doubled the nation's size.[43] The War of 1812, declared against Britain over various grievances and fought to a draw, strengthened U.S. nationalism.[44] A series of U.S. military incursions into Florida led Spain to cede it and other Gulf Coast territory in 1819.[45]
President Andrew Jackson took office in 1829, and began a set of reforms which led to the era of Jacksonian democracy, which is considered to have lasted from 1830 to 1850. This included many reforms, such as wider male suffrage, and various adjustments to the power of the Federal government. This also led to the rise of the Second Party System, which refers to the dominant parties which existed from 1828 to 1854.
The Trail of Tears in the 1830s exemplified the Indian removal policy that moved Indians to their own reservations with annual government subsidies. The United States annexed the Republic of Texas in 1845, amid a period when the concept of Manifest Destinywas becoming popular.[46] The 1846 Oregon Treaty with Britain led to U.S. control of the present-day American Northwest.[47] The U.S. victory in the Mexican-American War resulted in the 1848 cession of California and much of the present-day American Southwest.[48]
The California Gold Rush of 1848–49 further spurred western migration.[49] New railways made relocation easier for settlers and increased conflicts with Native Americans.[50] Over a half-century, up to 40 million American bison, or buffalo, were slaughtered for skins and meat and to ease the railways' spread.[51] The loss of the buffalo, a primary resource for the plains Indians, was an existential blow to many native cultures.[51]
Slavery, civil war and industrialization
Tensions between slave and free states mounted with arguments about the relationship between the state and federal governments, as well as violent conflicts over the spread of slavery into new states.[52] Abraham Lincoln, candidate of the largely antislavery Republican Party, was elected president in 1860.[53] Before he took office, seven slave states declared their secession—which the federal government maintained was illegal—and formed the Confederate States of America.[54]
With the Confederate attack upon Fort Sumter, the Civil War began and four more slave states joined the Confederacy.[54] Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 declared slaves in the Confederacy to be free. Following the Union victory in 1865, three amendments to the U.S. Constitution ensured freedom for the nearly four million African Americans who had been slaves,[55]made them citizens, and gave them voting rights. The war and its resolution led to a substantial increase infederal power.[56] The war remains the deadliest conflict in American history, resulting in the deaths of 620,000 soldiers.[57]
After the war, the assassination of Abraham Lincoln radicalized Republican Reconstruction policies aimed at reintegrating and rebuilding the Southern states while ensuring the rights of the newly freed slaves.[58] The resolution of the disputed 1876 presidential election by the Compromise of 1877 ended Reconstruction; Jim Crow laws soon disenfranchised many African Americans.[58]
In the North, urbanization and an unprecedented influx of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe hastened the country's industrialization. The wave of immigration, lasting until 1924, provided labor and transformed American culture.[59] National infrastructure development spurred economic growth. The end of the Civil War spurred greater settlement and development of the American Old West. This was due to a variety of social and technological developments, including the completion of the First Transcontinental Telegraph in 1861 and the First Transcontinental Railroad in 1869.
The 1867 Alaska Purchase from Russia completed the country's mainland expansion. The Wounded Knee Massacre in 1890 was the last major armed conflict of the Indian Wars. In 1893, the indigenous monarchy of the Pacific Kingdom of Hawaii was overthrown in a coup led by American residents; the United States annexed the archipelago in 1898. Victory in the Spanish–American War the same year demonstrated that the United States was a world power and led to the annexation of Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines.[60]The Philippines gained independence a half-century later; Puerto Rico and Guam remain U.S. territories.
The emergence of many prominent industrialists at the end of the 19th Century gave rise to the Gilded Age, a period of growing affluence and power among the business class. This helped to produce the Progressive Era, a period of great reforms in many societal areas, including regulatory protection for the public, greater antitrust measures, and attention to living conditions for the working classes. President Theodore Roosevelt was one leading proponent of progressive reforms
World War I, Great Depression, and World War II
At the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the United States remained neutral. Most Americans sympathized with the British and French, although many opposed intervention.[61] In 1917, the United States joined the Allies, and the American Expeditionary Forces helped to turn the tide against the Central Powers. President Woodrow Wilson took a leading diplomatic role at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 which helped to shape the post-war world. Wilson advocated strongly for the U.S. to join the League of Nations. However, the Senate refused to approve this, and did not ratify the Treaty of Versailles, which established the League of Nations.[62]
The country pursued a policy of unilateralism, verging onisolationism.[62] In 1920, the women's rights movement won passage of a constitutional amendment grantingwomen's suffrage. The prosperity of the Roaring Twenties ended with the Wall Street Crash of 1929 that triggered the Great Depression.
After his election as president in 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt responded with the New Deal, a range of policies increasing government intervention in the economy, including the establishment of the Social Security system.[63] The Dust Bowl of the mid-1930s impoverished many farming communities and spurred a new wave of western migration.
The United States, effectively neutral during World War II's early stages after Nazi Germany's invasion of Poland in September 1939, began supplying material to the Allies in March 1941 through the Lend-Lease program. On December 7, 1941, the Empire of Japan launched a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, prompting the United States to join the Allies against the Axis powers as well as theinternment of Japanese Americans by the thousands.[64] Participation in the war spurred capital investment and industrial capacity. Among the major combatants, the United States was the only nation to become richer—indeed, far richer—instead of poorer because of the war.[65]
Allied conferences at Bretton Woods and Yalta outlined a new system of international organizations that placed the United States andSoviet Union at the center of world affairs. As victory was won in Europe, a 1945 international conference held in San Franciscoproduced the United Nations Charter, which became active after the war.[66] The United States, having developed the first nuclear weapons, used them on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August. Japan surrendered on September 2, ending the war.[67]
Cold War and protest politics
The United States and the Soviet Union jockeyed for power after World War II during the Cold War, dominating the military affairs of Europe through NATO and the Warsaw Pact, respectively. While they engaged in proxy wars and developed powerful nuclear arsenals, the two countries avoided direct military conflict. The U.S. often opposed Third World left-wing movements that it viewed as Soviet-sponsored. American troops fought Communist Chinese and North Korean forces in the Korean War of 1950–53. The House Un-American Activities Committee pursued a series of investigations into suspected leftist subversion, while SenatorJoseph McCarthy became the figurehead of anticommunist sentiment.
The 1961 Soviet launch of the first manned spaceflight prompted President John F. Kennedy's call for the United States to be first to land "a man on the moon", achieved in 1969. Kennedy also faced a tense nuclear showdown with Soviet forces in Cuba. Meanwhile, the United States experienced sustained economic expansion. Amidst the presence of various white nationalist groups, particularly the Ku Klux Klan, a growing civil rights movement used nonviolence to confront segregation and discrimination. This was symbolized and led by black Americans such as Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr.. On the other hand, some black nationalist groups such as the Black Panther Party had a more militant scope.
Following Kennedy's assassination in 1963, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965 were passed under PresidentLyndon B. Johnson.[68][69] He also signed into law the Medicare and Medicaid programs.[70] Johnson and his successor, Richard Nixon, expanded a proxy war in Southeast Asia into the unsuccessful Vietnam War. A widespread countercultural movement grew, fueled by opposition to the war, black nationalism, and the sexual revolution. Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, and others led a new wave of feminism that sought political, social, and economic equality for women.
As a result of the Watergate scandal, in 1974 Nixon became the first U.S. president to resign, to avoid being impeached on charges including obstruction of justice and abuse of power. The Jimmy Carter administration of the late 1970s was marked by stagflation and the Iran hostage crisis. The election of Ronald Reagan as president in 1980 heralded a rightward shift in American politics, reflected in major changes in taxation and spending priorities. His second term in office brought both the Iran-Contra scandal and significantdiplomatic progress with the Soviet Union. The subsequent Soviet collapse ended the Cold War.
Contemporary era
Under President George H. W. Bush, the United States took a lead role in the UN–sanctioned Gulf War. The longest economic expansion in modern U.S. history—from March 1991 to March 2001—encompassed the Bill Clinton administration and the dot-com bubble.[71] A civil lawsuit and sex scandal led to Clinton's impeachment in 1998, but he remained in office. The 2000 presidential election, one of the closest in American history, was resolved by a U.S. Supreme Court decision—George W. Bush, son of George H. W. Bush, became president.
On September 11, 2001, al-Qaeda terrorists struck the World Trade Center in New York City and The Pentagon near Washington, D.C., killing nearly three thousand people. In response, the Bush administration launched the global War on Terror, invading Afghanistan and removing the Taliban government and al-Qaeda training camps. Taliban insurgents continue to fight a guerrilla war. In 2002, the Bush administration began to press for regime change inIraq on controversial grounds.[72]
Forces led by the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, ousting Saddam Hussein. In 2005, Hurricane Katrina caused severe destruction along much of the Gulf Coast, devastating New Orleans. In 2008, amid a global economic recession, the first African American president,Barack Obama, was elected. Major health care and financial system reforms were enacted two years later. In 2011, a raid by Navy SEALs in Pakistan killed al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. The Iraq War officially ended with the pullout of the remaining U.S. troops from the country in December 2011
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