History of the United States |
Pre-Colonial America
See Pre-Colonial America article.
Native Americans arrived on the North American continent in about the 9th
millennium BC, give or take 5,000 years, and dominated the area until the influx of European settlers began in the early
17th century.
Colonial America (1493-1776)
For details, see the main Colonial America article.
Colonial America was defined by ongoing battles with Native Americans, a severe labor shortage which birthed forms of unfree labor such as slavery and indentured servitude, and a British policy of
benign neglect which permitted the development of an American spirit and culture which was distinct from that of its European
founders.
History of the United States (1776-1789)
For details, see the main History of the United States (1776-1789) article.
During this period the United States won its independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain during the American Revolutionary War and established itself as the United States of America.
History of the United States (1789-1861)
For details, see the main History of the United States (1789-1861) article.
The Louisiana Purchase in 1803 gave Western farmers use of
the important Mississippi River waterway, removed the French presence from the western border of the United States, and provided
U.S. farmers with vast expanses of land.
A few weeks afterwards, war broke out between Britain and Napoleonic France. The United States, dependent on European revenues
from the export of agricultural goods, tried to export food and raw materials to both warring great powers and to profit off
transporting goods between their home markets and Caribbean colonies. Both sides permitted this trade when it benefited them, but
opposed it when it did not.
Following the 1805 destruction of the French navy at the Battle of Trafalgar, Britain sought to impose a stranglehold over French overseas trade ties. Thus, in
retaliation against U.S. trade practices, Britain imposed a loose blockade of the American coast.
Believing that Britain could not rely on other sources of food than the United States, Congress and President Jefferson suspended all U.S. trade with foreign nations in 1807, hoping to
get the British to end their blockade of the American coast. The embargo, however, devastated American agricultural exports while
Britain found other sources of food.
Under the pretext of opposing British interference with American shipping, and British aid to Native Americans in Canada and west of the Mississippi, Congress - led by Southern and Western Jeffersonians -
declared war on Britain in 1812. Westerners and Southerners were the most ardent supporters of the war, given their concerns
about expanding settlement in Native American lands beyond the Mississippi and access to world markets for their agricultural
exports. The New England Federalists opposed the war. Their reputation would suffer in the aftermath of the U.S. victory, causing
the party to fade away.
The United States prevailed in the War of 1812 after bitter fighting,
which lasted until January 8, 1815 (ironically after the peace treaty) on many fronts. The Treaty of Ghent officially ended the war.
After Napoleon's defeat and the Congress of Vienna in 1815, an era of relative stability began in Europe. U.S. leaders paid less
attention to European trade and conflict, and more to the internal development in North America. With the end of the wartime
British alliance with Native Americans east of the Mississippi
River, white settlers were determined to colonize indigenous lands beyond the Mississippi. In the 1830s the federal
government forcibly deported the Southeastern tribes to less fertile territories to the west. It should be noted, however, that
the Supreme Court had actually ruled in support of native claims to land. Andrew Jackson, president at the time of the rulings,
simply ignored the Supreme Court in favor of his own agenda.
Americans did not question their right to colonize vast expanses of North America beyond their country's borders, especially
into Oregon, California, and Texas. By the mid-1840s U.S. expansionism was articulated in terms of the ideology of "manifest destiny."
In May 1846 Congress declared war on Mexico. The U.S. defeated Mexico, unable to
withstand the assault of the American artillery, short on resources, and plagued by a divided command. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848 ceded Texas (with
the Rio Grande boundary), California, and New Mexico to the United States. In the next thirteen years, the territories ceded by
Mexico became the focal point of sectional tensions over the expansion of slavery.
History of the United States (1865-1918)
For details, see the main History of the United States (1865-1918) article.
The United States began its rise to international power in this period. A ceaseless flood of European immigrants and the
development of an industrial base the likes of which the world had not yet seen.
Interwar America and World War II (1918-1945)
For details, see the main History of the United States (1918-1945) article.
The Allied Powers imposed severe economic penalties on Germany in the Treaty of Versailles. Despite President Woodrow Wilson's calls for agreeable terms, the economic impact of the
reparations mandated by the Treaty were severe. The misery they helped produce in Germany helped Adolf Hitler to seize power in Germany in 1933. The United States Senate did not ratify the Treaty of
Versailles; instead, the United States signed separate peace treaties with Germany and her allies.
Disillusioned by the failure of the war to achieve the high ideals promised by President Woodrow Wilson, the American people chose isolationism: they turned their attention inward, away from international relations and solely toward domestic
affairs.
During most of the 1920s the United States enjoyed a period of unbalanced prosperity:
prices for agricultural commodities and wages fell at the end of the war while new industries (radio, movies, automobiles, and chemicals) flourished. The unevenness was also
geographic: the standard of living in rural areas fell increasingly behind that of urban and suburban areas which saw dramatic
improvements in housing and urban planning. The boom was reflected by the extension of credit to a dangerous degree, including in
the Stock Market, which rose to dangerously inflated levels.
In 1920, the manufacture, sale, import and export of alcohol was prohibited by an
amendment to the constitution in order to alleviate various social
problems. It was enacted through the Volstead Act. Prohibition ended in
1933 by another change to the constitution; it is considered to have been a failure by
most: consumption of alcohol did not decrease markedly while organized crime was strengthened. But it did represent the first
instance of a constitutional amendment that directly regulated social activity. The 18th Amendment, then, represented the growing
strength of the state in the early 20th century.
The Stock Market crash in 1929 and the ensuing economic depression have been
endlessly debated, often along ideological lines. The limited amount of reliable economic information suggests that construction
and housing stagnated after 1926, joining declines in the agriculture, mining, and petroleum industries. In all of these overproduction dragged down prices and profits. Wages did not rise fast
enough to enable consumers to purchase all the new homes and home products available. Foreign trade was constrained by growing
protectionism in the industrialized world. The Stock Market crash drained away remaining consumer confidence and, more
importantly, the confidence of financial institutions. They were extremely reluctant to invest. Thus, the economy sank into a
severe depression, referred to by Americans as the "Great
Depression", marked by punishing levels of unemployment, negligible investment, and falling prices and wages.
In response to the depression, Congress and the Hoover
administration enacted a somewhat isolationist Smoot-Hawley
tariff and, with its public works acts, tried to fix prices for farmers, and enacted a public works program based on the
belief that the federal government was obliged to maintain high employment levels. These efforts were unprecedented, but the
Depression overwhelmed them: indices of prices, profits, production, and unemployment worsened.
With millions unemployed, political ferment and discontent greatly increased among the working classes. An unsympathetic or
repressive response from the U.S. government might well have sparked a socialist
uprising, but President Franklin D. Roosevelt, elected in
1932, implemented a number of programs to aid the poor and unemployed. He also contributed to the future stability of the economy
by instituting new regulations in business, particularly banking. Over the past twenty years, historians have de-emphasized the
"revolutionary" legislation of the Roosevelt administration, seeing instead a logical, and even conservative, outgrowth of Hoover
administration policies.
The recovery, however, was very slow. The nadir of the Great Depression was in 1933, but
the economy showed very little improvement through the end of the decade, and remained grim until it was dramatically reshaped
through America's involvement in World War II.
Isolationist sentiment in America had ebbed, but the United States at first declined to enter the war, limiting itself to
giving supplies and weapons to Britain, China, and the Soviet Union. American feeling changed
drastically with the sudden Japanese attack on Pearl
Harbor, and the United States quickly joined the British-Soviet alliance against Japan, Fascist Italy, and Nazi
Germany, known as the "Axis Alliance". Even with American participation, it took nearly
four more years to defeat Germany and Japan. Though the Soviet Union suffered far more casualties than its allies, America's
active involvement in the war was vital to preventing an eventual Axis victory.
After the second world war, America experienced a period of great economic growth characterized by the growth of suburban
housing, etc. The United States financed the reconstruction of Germany and Japan and eventually turned the former foes into
allies.
History of the United States (1945-1964)
For details, see the main History of the United States (1945-1964) article.
The post-war era in the United States was defined by the ever more challenging Cold War, the arms race and the space race.
Meanwhile, the American people completed their great migration from the farms into the cities, began shifting the economy from an
industrial base to a service economy, and enjoyed the prosperity of triumphalist America, all while the sowing within themselves
the seeds of the discontent that would flower into the social revolution of the late 1960s.
History of the United States (1964-1980)
For details, see the main History of the United States (1964-1980) article.
As the Cold War dragged on, the United States entered a very hot war in Vietnam, found itself fragmenting socially as women,
minorities and young people rebelled against the status quo, and therein faced its greatest crisis since the Civil War. And then
suddenly, it was all over and the country found itself in the doldrums of the 1970s, battling stagflation, Watergate and the
first appearances of international terrorism.
Contemporary United States History (1980-present)
For details, see the main History of the United States (1980-1988) and History of the United
States (1988-present) articles.
As the Soviet Union collapsed and the Eastern bloc shattered, the wealth of the United States grew to unprecedented
proportions, as did its debt and international entanglements. Social change continued, albeit more slowly than in the '60s, as
the baby boomers put the finishing touches on their revolution. And as the 21st century was born, the United States came to
realize that its Cold War victory was anything but the end of history, as battling islamic terrorism, at home and abroad, became
the country's newest raison d'être.
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