Native American and European settlement
The
indigenous peoples of the U.S. mainland, including
Alaska Natives, are believed to have
migrated from Asia, beginning between 40,000 and 12,000 years ago.
[32] Some, such as the
pre-Columbian Mississippian culture, developed advanced agriculture, grand architecture, and state-level societies. After
Europeans began settling the Americas,
many millions of indigenous Americans died from epidemics of imported diseases such as smallpox.
[33]
In 1492,
Genoese explorer
Christopher Columbus, under contract to the Spanish crown, reached several Caribbean islands, making
first contact with the indigenous people. On April 2, 1513, Spanish conquistador
Juan Ponce de León landed on what he called "
La Florida"—the
first documented European arrival on what would become the U.S.
mainland. Spanish settlements in the region were followed by ones in the
present-day
southwestern United States that drew thousands through Mexico. French fur traders established outposts of
New France
around the Great Lakes; France eventually claimed much of the North
American interior, down to the Gulf of Mexico. The first successful
English settlements were the
Virginia Colony in
Jamestown in 1607 and the
Pilgrims'
Plymouth Colony in 1620. The 1628 chartering of the
Massachusetts Bay Colony resulted in a wave of migration; by 1634,
New England had been settled by some 10,000
Puritans. Between the late 1610s and the American Revolution, about 50,000 convicts were shipped to Britain's American colonies.
[34] Beginning in 1614, the Dutch settled along the lower
Hudson River, including
New Amsterdam on
Manhattan Island.
In 1674, the Dutch ceded their American territory to England; the province of
New Netherland was renamed New York. Many new immigrants, especially to
the South, were indentured servants—some two-thirds of all Virginia immigrants between 1630 and 1680.
[35] By the turn of the 18th century,
African slaves were becoming the primary source of bonded labor. 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. 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. With high birth rates, low death rates, and steady immigration, the colonial population grew rapidly. The
Christian revivalist movement 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
(popularly known as "American Indians"), who were being displaced,
those thirteen colonies had a population of 2.6 million in 1770, about
one-third that of Britain; nearly one in five Americans were black
slaves.
[36] Though
subject to British taxation, the American colonials had no representation in the
Parliament of Great Britain.
Independence and expansion
Tensions between American colonials and the British during the
revolutionary period of the 1760s and early 1770s led to the
American Revolutionary War, fought from 1775 to 1781. On June 14, 1775, the
Continental Congress, convening in
Philadelphia, established a
Continental Army under the command of
George Washington. 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
confederal government that operated until 1789.
After the
British defeat by American forces
assisted by the French and
Spanish, Great Britain
recognized the independence of the United States and the states' sovereignty over American territory west to the
Mississippi River. Those wishing to establish a strong federal government with powers of taxation organized a
constitutional convention in 1787. The
United States Constitution was ratified in 1788, and the new republic's
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.
Attitudes toward
slavery were shifting; a
clause in the Constitution protected the
Atlantic slave trade only until 1808. The Northern states abolished slavery between 1780 and 1804, leaving the
slave states of the South as defenders of the "
peculiar institution". The
Second Great Awakening, beginning about 1800, made
evangelicalism a force behind various social reform movements, including
abolitionism.
Territorial acquisitions by date
Americans' eagerness to
expand westward prompted a long series of
Indian Wars. The
Louisiana Purchase of French-claimed territory under President Thomas Jefferson in 1803 almost doubled the nation's size.
[37] The
War of 1812,
declared against Britain over various grievances and fought to a draw,
strengthened U.S. nationalism. A series of U.S. military incursions into
Florida led
Spain to cede it and other Gulf Coast territory in 1819. The
Trail of Tears in the 1830s exemplified the
Indian removal policy that stripped the native peoples of their land. The United States annexed the
Republic of Texas in 1845, amid a period when the concept of
Manifest Destiny was becoming popular.
[38] The 1846
Oregon Treaty with Britain led to U.S. control of the present-day
American Northwest. The U.S. victory in the
Mexican-American War resulted in the
1848 cession of
California and much of the present-day
American Southwest. The
California Gold Rush of 1848–49 further spurred western migration.
New railways made relocation easier for settlers and increased conflicts with Native Americans. Over a half-century, up to 40 million
American bison,
or buffalo, were slaughtered for skins and meat and to ease the
railways' spread. The loss of the buffalo, a primary resource for the
plains Indians, was an existential blow to many native cultures.
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.
Abraham Lincoln, candidate of the largely antislavery
Republican Party,
was elected president in 1860. Before he took office, seven slave
states declared their secession—which the federal government maintained
was illegal—and formed the
Confederate States of America. With the Confederate
attack upon Fort Sumter, the
Civil War began and four more slave states joined the Confederacy. 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,
[39] made them citizens, and
gave them voting rights. The war and its resolution led to a substantial increase in
federal power.
[40] The war remains the deadliest conflict in American history, resulting in the deaths of 620,000 soldiers.
[41]
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. The resolution of
the disputed
1876 presidential election by the
Compromise of 1877 ended Reconstruction;
Jim Crow laws soon
disenfranchised many African Americans. 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 1929, provided labor and
transformed American culture. National infrastructure development
spurred economic growth. 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.
[42] The Philippines gained independence a half-century later; Puerto Rico and Guam remain U.S. territories.
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.
[43] In 1917, the United States joined the
Allies, and the
American Expeditionary Forces helped to turn the tide against the
Central Powers. After the war, the Senate did not ratify the
Treaty of Versailles, which established the
League of Nations. The country pursued a policy of unilateralism, verging on
isolationism.
[44] In 1920, the women's rights movement won passage of a
constitutional amendment granting
women'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.
[45] 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 materiel 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 the
internment of Japanese Americans by the thousands.
[46]
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.
[47] Allied conferences at
Bretton Woods and
Yalta outlined a new system of international organizations that placed the
United States and
Soviet Union at the center of world affairs. As
victory was won in Europe, a 1945
international conference held in
San Francisco produced the
United Nations Charter, which became active after the war.
[48] 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.
[49]
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. Resisting leftist land and income
redistribution projects around the world, the United States often
supported authoritarian governments. American troops fought Communist
Chinese forces in the
Korean War of 1950–53. The
House Un-American Activities Committee pursued a series of investigations into suspected leftist subversion, while Senator
Joseph 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. A growing
civil rights movement, symbolized and led by African Americans such as
Rosa Parks and
Martin Luther King, Jr., used
nonviolence to confront segregation and discrimination. Following
Kennedy's assassination in 1963, the
Civil Rights Act of 1964 and
Voting Rights Act of 1965 were passed under President
Lyndon B. Johnson.
[50][51] He also signed into law the
Medicare and
Medicaid programs.
[52] 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 significant
diplomatic 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.
[53] 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 in Iraq on
controversial grounds.
[54] 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 ended with the pullout of the remaining U.S. troops from the country.
Tuesday, June 12, 2012
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