History of The United States

The history of the United States as covered in American schools and universities typically begins with either Christopher Columbus's 1492 voyage to the Americas or with the prehistory of the Native peoples, with the latter approach having become increasingly common in recent decades.

Indigenous populations lived in what is now the United States before European colonists began to arrive, mostly from England, after 1600. By the 1770s, thirteen British colonies contained two and a half million people. They were prosperous and growing rapidly, and had developed their own autonomous political and legal systems. The British Parliament asserted its authority over these colonies by imposing new taxes, which the Americans insisted were unconstitutional because they were not represented in Parliament. Growing conflicts turned into full-fledged war beginning in April 1775. On July 4, 1776, the colonies declared independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain and became the United States of America.

With major military and financial support from France and military leadership by General George Washington, the Patriots won the Revolutionary War and peace came in 1783. During and after the war, the 13 states were united under a weak federal government established by the Articles of Confederation. When these proved unworkable, a new Constitution was adopted in 1789; it remains the basis of the United States federal government, and later included a Bill of Rights. With Washington as the nation's first president and Alexander Hamilton his chief advisor, a strong national government was created. When Thomas Jefferson became president he purchased the Louisiana Territory from France, expanding American territorial holdings. A second and last war with Britain was fought in 1812.

U.S. territory expanded westward across the continent, displacing Native American populations along the way. Slavery of Africans was abolished in all the Northern states at the turn of the 19th century, but it flourished in the Southern states because of heavy European demand for cotton. Mounting tensions between the Northern and Southern states over the issue of slavery and states' rights finally erupted into civil war from 1861-1865. Eleven slave states seceded and formed the Confederacy in response to the election of the Republican Party, led by Abraham Lincoln, which opposed the expansion of slavery. After four years of hard fighting the South was overwhelmed by the much larger Union, and the slaves were freed. Reconstruction (1863-77) was the difficult process of guaranteeing the success of the Union goals of eradicating separatism, guaranteeing the legal and political rights of the Freedmen (freed slaves), and strengthening the Federal Government so a civil war could never happen again and (in the 14th Amendment) giving federal protection to individual rights.

The United States became the leading industrial power at the turn of the 20th century due to an outburst of entrepreneurship in the North and the arrival of millions of immigrant workers and farmers from Europe. The national railroad network was completed, and large scale mining and factories industrialized the Northeast and Midwest. Dissatisfaction with corruption and traditional politics stimulated the Progressive movement from the 1890s to 1920s, which pushed for reforms and allowed for women's suffrage and the prohibition of alcohol (the latter repealed in 1933). Initially neutral in World War I, the U.S. declared war on Germany in 1917, and funded the Allied victory the following year. After a prosperous decade in the 1920s, the Wall Street Crash of 1929 marked the onset of the decade-long world-wide Great Depression. Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt became president and implemented his New Deal programs for relief, recovery, and reform, defining modern American liberalism. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the United States entered World War II alongside the Allies and helped defeat Nazi Germany in Europe and, with the detonation of newly-invented atomic bombs, Japan in the Far East.

The United States and the Soviet Union emerged as opposing superpowers after World War II and began the Cold War, confronting one another indirectly in the arms race and Space Race. U.S. foreign policy during the Cold War was built around the containment of Communism, and the country participated in the wars in Korea and Vietnam to achieve this goal. Liberalism won numerous victories in the days of the New Deal and again in the mid-1960s, especially in the success of the civil rights movement, but conservatism made its comeback in the 1980s under Ronald Reagan. The Cold War ended when the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, leaving the United States the only superpower. International conflict in the 21st century mostly centers around the Middle East following the September 11 attacks and the United States entered a period of economic stagnation beginning in the late 2000s.