Pre-Columbian period (before 1492) Further information: Native Americans in the United States and Pre-Columbian era Aerial view of the Cliff Palace Cliff Palace, located in present-day Colorado, was built by the Ancestral Puebloans between AD 1190 and 1260. It is generally accepted that the first inhabitants of North America migrated from Siberia by way of the Bering land bridge and arrived at least 12,000 years ago; however, some evidence suggests an even earlier date of arrival.[34][35][36] The Clovis culture, which appeared around 11,000 BC, is believed to represent the first wave of human settlement of the Americas.[37][38] This was likely the first of three major waves of migration into North America; later waves brought the ancestors of present-day Athabaskans, Aleuts, and Eskimos.[39] Over time, indigenous cultures in North America grew increasingly sophisticated, and some, such as the pre-Columbian Mississippian culture in the southeast, developed advanced agriculture, architecture, and complex societies.[40] The city-state of Cahokia is the largest, most complex pre-Columbian archaeological site in the modern-day United States.[41] In the Four Corners region, Ancestral Puebloan culture developed from centuries of agricultural experimentation.[42] The Algonquian are one of the most populous and widespread North American indigenous peoples. This grouping consists of the peoples who speak Algonquian languages.[43] Historically, these peoples were prominent along the Atlantic Coast and into the interior along the Saint Lawrence River and around the Great Lakes. Before Europeans came into contact, most Algonquian settlements lived by hunting and fishing, although many supplemented their diet by cultivating corn, beans and squash (the "Three Sisters"). The Ojibwe cultivated wild rice.[44] The Haudenosaunee confederation of the Iroquois, located in the southern Great Lakes region, was established at some point between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries.[45] Estimating the native population of North America during European contact is difficult.[46][47] Douglas H. Ubelaker of the Smithsonian Institution estimated a population of 93,000 in the South Atlantic states and a population of 473,000 in the Gulf states,[48] but most academics regard this figure as too low.[46] Anthropologist Henry F. Dobyns believed the populations were much higher, suggesting around 1.1 million along the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, 2.2 million people living between Florida and Massachusetts, 5.2 million in the Mississippi Valley and tributaries, and around 700,000 people in the Florida peninsula.[46][47] Colonial period (1492–1763) Further information: Colonial history of the United States, European colonization of the Americas, and Slavery in the colonial history of the United States The Mayflower Compact signed on the Mayflower in 1620 set an early precedent for self-government and constitutionalism. Claims of very early colonization of coastal New England by the Norse are disputed and controversial.[49][50][failed verification] Christopher Columbus had landed in Puerto Rico on his 1493 voyage, and San Juan was settled by the Spanish a decade later.[51] The first documented arrival of Europeans in the continental United States is that of Spanish conquistadors such as Juan Ponce de León, who made his first expedition to Florida in 1513.[citation needed] The Italian explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano, sent by France to the New World in 1525, encountered Native American inhabitants of what is now called New York Bay.[52] The Spanish set up the first settlements in Florida and New Mexico, such as Saint Augustine, often considered the nation's oldest city,[53] and Santa Fe. The French established their own settlements along the Mississippi River and Gulf of Mexico, notably New Orleans and Mobile.[54] Successful English colonization of the eastern coast of North America began with the Virginia Colony in 1607 at Jamestown and with the Pilgrims' colony at Plymouth in 1620.[55][56] The continent's first elected legislative assembly, Virginia's House of Burgesses, was founded in 1619. Harvard College was established in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1636 as the first institution of higher education. The Mayflower Compact and the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut established precedents for representative self-government and constitutionalism that would develop throughout the American colonies.[57][58] Many English settlers were dissenting Christians who came seeking religious freedom. The native population of America declined after European arrival for various reasons,[59][60][61] primarily from diseases such as smallpox and measles.[62][63] By the mid-1670s, the British had defeated and seized the territory of Dutch settlers in New Netherland, in the mid-Atlantic region. Map of the U.S. showing the original Thirteen Colonies along the eastern seaboard The United Colonies in 1775: * Dark Red = New England colonies. * Bright Red = Middle Atlantic colonies. * Red-brown = Southern colonies In the early days of colonization, many European settlers experienced food shortages, disease, and conflicts with Native Americans, such as in King Philip's War. Native Americans were also often fighting neighboring tribes and European settlers. In many cases the natives and settlers came to depend on each other. Settlers traded for food and animal pelts; natives for guns, tools and other European goods.[64] American Indians taught many settlers to cultivate corn, beans, and other foodstuffs. European missionaries and others felt it was important to "civilize" the Native Americans and urged them to adopt European agricultural practices and lifestyles.[65][66] However, with the increased European colonization of North America, Native Americans were displaced and often killed during conflicts.[67] European settlers also began trafficking African slaves into Colonial America via the transatlantic slave trade.[68] By the turn of the 18th century, slavery had supplanted indentured servitude as the main source of agricultural labor for the cash crops in the American South.[69] Colonial society was divided over the religious and moral implications of slavery, and several colonies passed acts for or against the practice.[70][71] The Thirteen Colonies[l] that would become the United States of America were administered by the British as overseas dependencies.[72] All nonetheless had local governments with elections open to white male property owners, except Jews and Catholics in some areas.[73][74] With very high birth rates, low death rates, and steady settlement, the colonial population grew rapidly, eclipsing Native American populations.[75] The Christian revivalist movement of the 1730s and 1740s known as the Great Awakening fueled interest both in religion and in religious liberty.[76] During the Seven Years' War (1756–1763), known in the U.S. as the French and Indian War, British forces captured Canada from the French. The Treaty of Paris (1763) created a much smaller Province of Quebec, which still included the Ohio valley and the upper Mississippi valley, thereby isolating Canada's francophone population from the English-speaking colonial dependencies of Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and the Thirteen Colonies.[relevant?] Excluding the Native Americans who lived there, the Thirteen Colonies had a population of over 2.1 million in 1770, about a third that of Britain. Despite continuing new arrivals, the rate of natural increase was such that by the 1770s only a small minority of Americans had been born overseas.[77] The colonies' distance from Britain had allowed the development of self-government, but their unprecedented success motivated British monarchs to periodically seek to reassert royal authority.[78] Revolutionary period (1763–1789) Main articles: History of the United States (1776–1789) and 1789–1849 Further information: American Revolution, American Revolutionary War, Confederation period, and Territorial evolution of the United States See caption Declaration of Independence, a painting by John Trumbull, depicts the Committee of Five[m] presenting the draft of the Declaration to the Continental Congress, June 28, 1776, in Philadelphia. The American Revolution separated the Thirteen Colonies from the British Empire, and included the first successful war of independence by a non-European entity against a European power in modern history. By the 18th century the American Enlightenment and the political philosophies of liberalism were pervasive among leaders. Americans began to develop an ideology of "republicanism", asserting that government rested on the consent of the governed. They demanded their "rights as Englishmen" and "no taxation without representation".[79][80] The British insisted on administering the colonies through a Parliament that did not have a single representative responsible for any American constituency, and the conflict escalated into war.[81] In 1774, the First Continental Congress passed the Continental Association, which mandated a colonies-wide boycott of British goods. The American Revolutionary War began the following year, catalyzed by events like the Stamp Act and the Boston Tea Party that were rooted in colonial disagreement with British governance.[citation needed] The Second Continental Congress, an assembly representing the United Colonies, unanimously adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776 (annually celebrated as Independence Day).[82] The Declaration declared: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." Stephen Lucas called it "one of the best-known sentences in the English language",[83] with historian Joseph Ellis writing that the document contains "the most potent and consequential words in American history".[84] In 1781, the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union established a decentralized government that operated until 1789.[82] In 1777, the American victory at the Battle of Saratoga resulted in the capture of a British army, and led to France and their ally Spain joining in the war against them. After the surrender of a second British army at the siege of Yorktown in 1781, Britain signed a peace treaty. American sovereignty became internationally recognized, and the new nation took possession of substantial territory east of the Mississippi River, from what is today Canada in the north and Florida in the south.[85] As it became increasingly apparent that the Confederation was insufficient to govern the new country, nationalists advocated for and led the Philadelphia Convention of 1787 in writing the United States Constitution to replace it, ratified in state conventions in 1788. Early national period (1789–1861) The U.S. Constitution is the oldest and longest-standing written and codified national constitution in force today.[86] Going into force in 1789, it reorganized the government into a federation administered by three branches (executive, judicial and legislative), on the principle of creating salutary checks and balances. George Washington, who had led the Continental Army to victory and then willingly relinquished power, was the first President elected under the new constitution. The Bill of Rights, forbidding federal restriction of personal freedoms and guaranteeing a range of legal protections, was adopted in 1791.[87] The 1803 Louisiana Purchase almost doubled the nation's area.[88] Tensions with Britain remained, leading to the War of 1812, which was fought to a draw.[89] Spain ceded Florida and other Gulf Coast territory in 1819.[90] During the British Colonial era, slavery was legal in all of the American colonies, composed a longstanding institution in world history, and "challenges to its moral legitimacy were rare". However, during the Revolution, many in the colonies began to question the practice.[91] Regional divisions over slavery grew in the proceeding decades. In the North, several prominent Founding Fathers such as John Adams, Roger Sherman, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and Benjamin Franklin advocated for the abolition of slavery, and by the 1810s every state in the region had, with these emancipations being the first in the Atlantic World.[92] In the South, the invention of the cotton gin spurred entrenchment of slavery, with regional elites and intellectuals increasingly viewing the institution as a positive good instead of a necessary evil.[93] The Missouri Compromise (1820) admitted Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state and declared a policy of prohibiting slavery in the remaining Louisiana Purchase lands north of the 36°30′ parallel. The outcome de facto sectionalized the country into two factions: free states, which forbid slavery; and slave states, which protected the institution; it was controversial, widely seen as dividing the country along sectarian lines.[94] Although the federal government outlawed American participation in the Atlantic slave trade in 1807, after 1820, cultivation of the highly profitable cotton crop exploded in the Deep South, and along with it, the use of slave labor.[95][96][97] The Second Great Awakening, especially in the period 1800–1840, converted millions to evangelical Protestantism. In the North, it energized multiple social reform movements, including abolitionism;[98] in the South, Methodists and Baptists proselytized among slave populations.[99] An animation of US territorial expansion over time. As it expanded further into land inhabited by Native Americans, the federal government often applied policies of Indian removal or assimilation.[100][101] In the late 18th century, American settlers began to expand further westward, some of them with a sense of manifest destiny.[102][103] The 1803 Louisiana Purchase almost doubled the nation's area,[104] Spain ceded Florida and other Gulf Coast territory in 1819,[105] the Republic of Texas was annexed in 1845 during a period of expansionism,[103] and the 1846 Oregon Treaty with Britain led to U.S. control of the present-day American Northwest.[106] Additionally, the Trail of Tears in the 1830s exemplified the Indian removal policy that forcibly resettled Indians, further expanding acreage under mechanical cultivation and increasing surpluses for international markets. The displacement prompted a long series of American Indian Wars west of the Mississippi River[107] and eventually conflict with Mexico.[108] Most of these conflicts ended with the cession of Native American territory and their confinement to Indian reservations. Victory in the Mexican–American War resulted in the 1848 Mexican Cession of California and much of the present-day American Southwest, with the U.S. now spanning the continent.[102][109] The California Gold Rush of 1848–1849 spurred migration to the Pacific coast, which led to the California Genocide[110] and the creation of additional western states.[111] Economic development was spurred by giving vast quantities of land, nearly 10% of the total area of the United States, to white European settlers as part of the Homestead Acts, as well as making land grants to private railroad companies and colleges.[112] Prior to the Civil War, the prohibition or expansion of slavery into these territories exacerbated tensions over the debate around abolitionism. Civil War and Reconstruction (1861–1877) Main article: History of the United States (1849–1865) Further information: Slave states and free states, American Civil War, and Reconstruction era See also: Lost Cause of the Confederacy Map of U.S. showing two kinds of Union states, two phases of secession and territories Status of the states, 1861 Slave states that seceded before April 15, 1861 Slave states that seceded after April 15, 1861 Union states that permitted slavery (border states) Union states that banned slavery Territories Irreconcilable sectional conflict regarding the enslavement of those of black African descent[113] was the primary cause of the American Civil War.[114] With the 1860 election of Republican Abraham Lincoln, conventions in eleven slave states—all in the Southern United States—declared secession and formed the Confederate States of America, while the federal government (the "Union") maintained that secession was unconstitutional and illegitimate.[115] On April 12, 1861, the Confederacy initiated military conflict by bombarding Fort Sumter, a federal garrison in Charleston harbor, South Carolina. The ensuing Civil War (1861–1865) was the deadliest military conflict in American history resulting in the deaths of approximately 620,000 soldiers from both sides and upwards of 50,000 civilians, almost all of them in the South.[116] Reconstruction began in earnest following the defeat of the Confederates. While President Lincoln attempted to foster friendship and forgiveness between the Union and the former Confederacy, his assassination on April 14, 1865 drove a wedge between North and South again.[citation needed] Republicans in the federal government made it their goal to oversee the rebuilding of the South and to ensure the rights of African Americans. They persisted until the Compromise of 1877, when the Republicans agreed to cease enforcing the rights of African Americans in the South in order for Democrats to concede the presidential election of 1876.[citation needed] Influential Southern whites, calling themselves "Redeemers", took local control of the South after the end of Reconstruction, beginning the nadir of American race relations. From 1890 to 1910, the Redeemers established so-called Jim Crow laws, disenfranchising almost all blacks and some impoverished whites throughout the region. Blacks would face racial segregation nationwide, especially in the South.[117] They also lived under constant threat of vigilante violence, including lynching.[118] Gilded Age and Progressive Era (1877–1920) Main article: History of the United States (1865–1918) Further information: Economic history of the United States, Immigration to the United States, Technological and industrial history of the United States, Gilded Age, and Progressive Era National infrastructure, including telegraph and transcontinental railroads, spurred economic growth and greater settlement and development of the American Old West. After the American Civil War, new transcontinental railways made relocation easier for settlers, expanded internal trade, and increased conflicts with Native Americans.[119] Electric light and the telephone drastically changed communication and urban life.[120] 2:43 Film by Edison Studios showing immigrants at Ellis Island in New York Harbor, that was a major entry point for European immigration into the U.S.[121] Mainland expansion also included the purchase of Alaska from Russia in 1867.[122] In 1893, pro-American elements in Hawaii overthrew the Hawaiian monarchy and formed the Republic of Hawaii, which the U.S. annexed in 1898. Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines were ceded by Spain in the same year, by the Treaty of Paris (1898) following the Spanish–American War.[123] Neither the Foraker Act (1900), nor the Insular Cases (1901) accorded US citizenship to Puerto Ricans. One month prior to American entry into World War I, citizenship was extended to Puerto Ricans via the Jones–Shafroth Act (1917).[124]: 60–63 In November 1903, the US acquired a perpetual lease of the Panama Canal Zone via the Hay–Bunau-Varilla Treaty after providing naval aid preventing Colombia from putting down the rebellion which led to the creation of an independent Panama. The logistics of the November uprising were prepared in New York.[124]: 67 American Samoa was acquired by the United States in 1900 after the end of the Second Samoan Civil War.[125] The U.S. Virgin Islands were purchased from Denmark in 1917.[126] Workers mass producing automobiles on an assembly line in Chicago in 1913. This model ofmanufacturing and economic growth became known as Fordism.[127] Rapid economic development during the late 19th and early 20th centuries fostered the rise of many prominent industrialists. Tycoons like Cornelius Vanderbilt, John D. Rockefeller, and Andrew Carnegie led the nation's progress in the railroad, petroleum, and steel industries. Banking became a major part of the economy, with J. P. Morgan playing a notable role. The United States also emerged as a pioneer of the automotive industry in the early 20th century. General Motors Corporation (GM), the company that would soon become the world's largest automaker, was founded in 1908 by William Durant.[128] In the North, urbanization and an unprecedented influx of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe supplied a surplus of labor for the country's industrialization.[129] The American economy boomed, becoming the world's largest.[130] These dramatic changes were accompanied by significant increases in economic inequality, immigration, and social unrest, which prompted the rise of organized labor along with populist, socialist, and anarchist movements.[131][132][133] This period eventually ended with the advent of the Progressive Era, which saw significant reforms including health and safety regulation of consumer goods, the rise of labor unions, and greater antitrust measures to ensure competition among businesses and attention to worker conditions. The Great Migration beginning around 1910 also brought millions of African Americans to Northern urban centers from the rural South.[134] The last vestiges of the Progressive Era resulted in women's suffrage and alcohol prohibition.[135][136][137] The first state to grant women the right to vote had been Wyoming, in 1869, followed by some other states[138] before the women's rights movement won passage of a constitutional amendment granting nationwide women's suffrage in 1920.[139] The newly constructed Empire State Building in midtown Manhattan, 1932 Mushroom cloud formed by the Trinity Experiment in New Mexico, part of the Manhattan Project, the first detonation of a nuclear weapon in history, July 1945 The United States remained neutral from the outbreak of World War I in 1914 until 1917 when it joined the war as an "associated power" alongside the Allies of World War I, helping to turn the tide against the Central Powers. In 1919, President Woodrow Wilson took a leading diplomatic role at the Paris Peace Conference and 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 that established the League of Nations.[140] Roaring Twenties, Great Depression, New Deal, and World War II (1920–1945) Main article: History of the United States (1918–1945) Further information: United States in World War I, Roaring Twenties, Great Depression in the United States, and Military history of the United States during World War II The 1920s and 1930s saw the rise of radio for mass communication and the invention of early television.[141] The prosperity of the Roaring Twenties ended with the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the onset of the Great Depression. After his election as President in 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt responded with the New Deal economic policies.[142] The Dust Bowl of the mid-1930s impoverished many farming communities and spurred a new wave of western migration.[143] At first neutral during World War II, the United States began supplying hundreds of billions worth of materiel to the Allies in March 1941. A total of $50.1 billion (equivalent to $719 billion in 2021) worth of supplies was shipped in 1941–1945, or 17% of the total war expenditures of the U.S.[144] In all, $31.4 billion went to the United Kingdom, $11.3 billion to the Soviet Union, $3.2 billion to France, $1.6 billion to China, and the remaining $2.6 billion to other Allies. On December 7, 1941, the Empire of Japan launched a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, prompting the United States to militarily join the Allies against the Axis powers, and in the following year, to intern about 120,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans.[145][146] The U.S. pursued a "Europe first" defense policy,[147] with the Philippines being invaded and occupied by Japan until the country's liberation by the U.S.-led forces in 1944–1945. During the war, the United States was one of the "Four Policemen"[148] who met to plan the postwar world, along with Britain, the Soviet Union, and China.[149][150] The United States emerged relatively unscathed from the war, and with even greater economic and military influence.[151] The United States played a leading role in the Bretton Woods and Yalta conferences, which signed agreements on new international financial institutions and Europe's postwar reorganization. As an Allied victory was achieved in Europe, a 1945 international conference held in San Francisco produced the United Nations Charter, which became active after the war.[152] The United States developed the first nuclear weapons and used them on Japan in the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945; the Japanese subsequently surrendered on September 2, ending World War II.[153][154]
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