User:Purplebackpack89/American History

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The United States is a country in North America. It was originally inhabited by Native Americans, but in the 1600s and 1700s it was settled by people from England and other countries. It declared its independence from England in 1776. Since then, it has grown into the world power it is today.

Pre-Columbian America[change | change source]

A Native American hunting buffalo
See also: History of North America and Native American

The Pre-Columbian period is the time before Christopher Columbus went to America in 1492. At that time, Native Americans lived in the United States. They had different cultures: Native Americans in the Eastern United States hunted deer; Native Americans in the Northwest fished; Native Americans in the Southwest grew corn and built houses called pueblos; and Native Americans in the Great Plains hunted buffalo

Colonial America[change | change source]

Jamestown, Virginia

In 1607, the first permenant English settlement was made at Jamestown, Virginia by John Smith, John Rolfe and other Englishman interested in money and adventure. Though the colony of Virginia almost did not make it due to disease and starvation, it eventually was sucessful because it planted tobacco.

In 1621, a group of English named the Pilgrims settled at Plymouth, Massachusetts. A bigger colony was built at Massachusetts Bay by the Puritans in 1630. Rather than finding the gold, the Pilgrims and the Puritans were interested in making a better society, which they called a "city on a hill." Roger Williams, who was kicked out of Massachusetts, founded the colony of Rhode Island in 1636.

England was not the only country to settle what would become the United States. In the 1500s, Spain built a fort at Saint Augustine, Florida. France settled Canada and the area around the Great Lakes. The Dutch settled New York, which they called New Netherland, and other areas were settled by Scotch-Irish, Germans, and Swedes. However, eventually England controlled all of the colonies.

In the 1700s, there was a religious movement in the United States called the Great Awakening.

The Thirteen Colonies (red) before the American Revolution

By 1733, there were 13 colonies. The colonies are often grouped into New England (New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut), the Middle Colonies (New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware), and the South (Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia). New England had small farms, and focused on fishing, trees and small industry for making money. The South had large plantation farms that grew tobacco and latter in cotton. These were farmed first by indentured servants (people who would work for a period of years in return for passage to America and land), and later by slaves. The middle colonies had medium-sized farms, and were known for having people of many different cultures and beliefs.

All three regions were tied to the "Atlantic Economy", which involved using ships to trade slaves, tobacco, sugar, rum, gold, spices, lumber, and manufactured goods between America, the West Indies, Europe and Africa. Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston were the main ports at that time.

From 1754 to 1763, England and France fought a war over their land in America called the Seven Years' War or the French and Indian War. The English won. After the war, they issued the Proclamation of 1763 which said that people who lived in the thirteen colonies couldn't live west of the Appalachian Mountains.

American Revolution[change | change source]

A cartoon by Benjamin Franklin urging for the thirteen colonies to band together
See the main article: American Revolution

After the French and Indian War, the colonists began to think that they weren't getting their "rights as freeborn Englishman". Part of this was due to the Proclamation of 1763, but most of it was due to new taxes the British made the colonies pay to pay for the war. Americans called this "No Taxation Without Representation", meaning that the colonists should not be taxed unless they had votes in the British Parliament. These taxes included the Sugar Act (1764), Stamp Act (1765), Townsend Duties (1767), and Tea Act (1773). Each tax led to more unity between the colonies. In 1770, colonists in Boston known as the Sons of Liberty got in a fight with British soldiers known as the Boston Massacre. After the Tea Act, the Sons of Liberty dumped hundreds of boxes of tea in a river in an act known as the Boston Tea Party (1773). This led to the British Army taking over Boston, which in turn led to the creation of the Continental Congress, a group of leaders from each of the 13 colonies. Many people were members of the Continental Congress, but some of the more important ones were Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, John Hancock, Roger Sherman and John Jay.

The presentation of the Declaration of Independence. Three of the men standing are John Adams, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson

In 1776, a man named Thomas Paine wrote in Common Sense that the colonies should be free of English rule. On July 4, 1776, people from 13 colonies agreed to the United States Declaration of Independence. This said that they were free and independent states, and were not part of England any more. The colonists were already fighting Britian in the Revolutionary War at this time. Though American soldiers under George Washington lost many battles to the British, they won the war after an American victory at Yorktown helped by the French led Britian to decide to stop fighting and give up the colonies.

The Federal Period, 1781-1815[change | change source]

See also: United States Constitution and War of 1812
The United States Constitution

In 1781, the colonies prepared a Union with the Articles of Confederation, but it only lasted six years. It gave almost all the power to the states and very little to the central government. It had no president. It could not stop Native Americans or British on the wikt:frontier, nor could it stop mob uprisings such as Shays Rebellion. After Shays Rebellion, many people thought the Articles of Confederation weren't working.

In 1787, a constitution was written. It created a stronger national government that had three branches: executive (the President and his staff), legislative (the House of Representatives and the Senate), and judicial (the federal courts).

The Constitution was ratified (passed by the states) in 1788. Very soon after, the Bill of Rights was added. This was a set of 10 amendments (changes), that limited the government's power and guaranteed rights to the citizens. The US Constitution has been changed and added to many times since then. The main idea is that the government is a representative democracy elected by the people, who all have the same rights. However, this was not true at first, when only white males who owned property could vote. Thanks to state laws as well as the 14th, 15th, 19th, 24th and 26th amendment, almost all American citizens who are at least 18 can vote.

In 1789, Washington was elected the first President. He defined how a person should act as President and retired after two terms. John Adams defeated Jefferson in the election of 1796, in the first election that was between two political parties. As president, Adams made the army and navy larger, but also got laws passed to shut down people and newspapers who said. These were called the Alien and Sedition Acts.

Territorial expansion of the United States

In the election of 1800, Jefferson defeated Adams. One of the the most important things he did as President was to buy the Louisiana Purchase from France, which made the United States twice as big. Jefferson sent Lewis and Clark to map the Louisiana Purchase. Another thing Jefferson did was push for an embargo against England and France, who were fighting a war that the United States did not want. Unfortunately, fighting eventually broke out between the United States and England in 1812 when James Madison was President. This was called the War of 1812

Reconstruction and the Gilded Age[change | change source]

At the end of the Civil War, Lincoln was shot and killed. The new president, Andrew Johnson, had to go through the process of Reconstruction, or putting the United States back together after the Civil War. During this time, the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendents to the Constitution were passed, freeing slaves, making them citizens and allowing them to vote. Congress was run at this time by "Radical Republicans", who wanted to punish the South after the Civil War. They did not like Johnson, and almost kicked him out of office. They also sent many soldiers to the South, installed unpopular "Redeemer" governors, and made the South pass the 14th and 15th Amendments. The South did not like this, so they responded by making "Jim Crow" laws that placed blacks in lower roles and forced them to work as poor farmers called sharecroppers, and founded a group called the Ku Klux Klan.

Tenements on the Lower East Side in New York City

During this time, many people moved to the United States from other countries, such as Ireland, Italy, and Eastern Europe. Many of them lived in big cities, such as New York City, Chicago, and Boston, often in small, poor, close-together houses called "tenements" or "slums". They often were used by "political machines", who gave them jobs and money in exchange for votes.

"Political machines" had control of the government in the last decades of the nineteenth century. Most of the Presidents were chosen by political machines, and were corrupt. The government could do little . Leaders of big businesses often had more power than the government. At this time, there were several very big businesses called trusts. People who ran trusts made millions of dollars while paying workers low wages. Some of these people were John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, and J.P. Morgan.


  1. Reconstruction and the Gilded Age
    • Big Business
    • Populism
  2. The Progressive Era
    • Spanish-American War
    • Roosevelt's
    • Muckrakers
    • Trust-Busting
    • Wilsonian Progressivism
  3. World War I (main|World War I)
  4. Boom and Bust: 1919-1939
    • Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover
    • Rise of a Consumer Culture
    • Prohibition
    • The Jazz Age
      • Culture
      • Arts and Literature
    • The Great Depression
    • The New Deal
    • Foreign Policy in the 1920s and 1930s
  5. World War II (main|World II)
  6. The Cold War, 1945-1991
    • Marshall Plan
    • Arms and Space Races
    • Cold-War Prosperity
    • Civil Rights
    • Vietnam War
    • The Counterculture
    • Foreign Policy in the 1970s
      • "Detente"
      • Latin America
    • Reagan's Domestic
  7. The Post-Cold War Era
    • The United States and the Middle East
    • Clinton
    • The War on Terror
    • Bush's Domestic Policy
  8. Current Issues in America

Before the Civil War[change | change source]

The United States was mostly farm land before the industrial revolution around the mid 19th century. That led to enormous economic growth. Many new states were added to the original 13, as the nation grew.

But then a serious problem developed. Several southern states disagreed with the others about policies like slavery in the new territories, and how much power the states should have to make their own laws. They therefore created a confederation separate from the central government. The northern states that still followed the national government were calles union states. The Civil War between these two groups lasted from 1861 until 1865. The union states won the war and slavery ended in the United States.

After the Civil War, there developed problems between the white settlers and the native Indians as more people began to move west. Because of this, many more Indians were killed.

After 1900[change | change source]

In the 20th century, the US had more contact with other countries. In 1917, the US got involved in World War I and helped quickly defeat Germany and its allies, the Central Powers. After World War I, the United States was the world's second richest and most powerful country.

The Great Depression happened in the early 1930s, when a lot of people could not find a job. There were a lot of reasons for the Great Depression, but one of the main things that made it come as quickly as it did was the stock market crash of 1929, in which a lot of people lost a lot of money in a very short amount of time. Some people lost all their money in only a few days, since the stocks they had bought in the years leading up to it were now worth almost nothing.

Later, the US was involved in World War II, and was and important part of several other wars and military activities, including:

In 1991, the US led other countries in what it calls the Persian Persian Gulf War, after Iraq invaded Kuwait.

On September 11, 2001, the United States was struck by a major terrorist attack. About 3,000 people died. Terrorists took control of four airplanes, in what is called a hijacking. They crashed all four of the planes on purpose.

Two of the planes crashed into the World Trade Center, a pair of skyscrapers in New York City. One plane crashed into the Pentagon, the main office for the U.S. military, in Virginia. The fourth plane crashed in a field in Pennsylvania after the passengers fought back.

Most of the hijackers were from Saudi Arabia and thought the US army should not be in Saudi Arabia, because they thought it was holy ground where only Muslims should be. A group called al-Qaeda, led by Osama bin Laden, admitted they were behind these attacks, and they were based in Afghanistan, where they were supported by the Taliban Afghan government.

The attack led to big changes. The United States government responded by going to war against Afghanistan and driving out the Taliban. After that, it went to war against Iraq (2003 invasion of Iraq). The Iraq war was against the will of the majority of the world, because the Iraqi government was never involved with Afghanistan. The war caused massive demonstrations all over the world.

Immigrants from many nations now live in United States. Today's immigrants are mostly people from Latin America (especially Mexico) and Asia, with smaller groups of people from Europe and Africa.

See also[change | change source]

There are hundreds of articles about United States history. Here are a few that might be of interest to you:

References[change | change source]

  • The American Pageant: A History of the Republic (12th Ed.), Bailey, Thomas A., Lizabeth Cohen, and David M. Kennedy. (2006) ISBN 0618479406
  • America: the last best hope in 2 volumes / William Bennett (2007) ISBN 1595550550 and ISBN 1595550577
  • The National Experience: A History of the United States' (8th edition), Blum, John M., William S. McFeely, Edmund S. Morgan, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., Kenneth M. Stampp, C. Vann Woodward (1993)
  • Steven M. Gillon and Cathy D. Matson. The American Experiment: A History of the United States, 2nd ed. (2006) ISBN 061859583X
  • Johnson, Paul. A History of the American People, (1999) ISBN 0-06-093034-9
  • David C. King. Children's Encyclopedia of American History (2003)
  • Schweikart, Larry and Michael Allen. A Patriot's History of the United States: From Columbus's Great Discovery to the War on Terror (2007) ISBN 1595230327
  • George Tindall and David Shi. America: A Narrative History, Seventh Edition, (2006) ISBN 0393928209
  • Steve Wiegand. U.S. History for Dummies (2001)
  • Zinn, Howard. A People's History of the United States, (2003) ISBN 0-06-052837-0

Other websites[change | change source]

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Book-length histories of the United States[change | change source]

General sites[change | change source]

U. S. National Archives[change | change source]

Other sites[change | change source]

Specialized topics[change | change source]

Other resources[change | change source]

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