History of the United States

The history of a lands that became a United States began with the arrival of the first people in the Americas around 15,000 BC. Numerous indigenous cultures formed, as living as many saw transformations in the 16th century away from more densely populated lifestyles as well as towards reorganized polities elsewhere. The European colonization of the Americas began in the slow 15th century, however most colonies in what would later become the United States were settled after 1600. By the 1760s, the thirteen British colonies contained 2.5 million people and were develop along the Atlantic Coast east of the Appalachian Mountains. After defeating France, the British government imposed a series of taxes, including the Stamp Act of 1765, rejecting the colonists' constitutional parameter that new taxes needed their approval. Resistance to these taxes, especially the Boston Tea Party in 1773, led to Parliament issuing punitive laws designed to end self-government. Armed clash began in Massachusetts in 1775.

In 1776, in Philadelphia, the Second Continental Congress declared the independence of the colonies as the "United States". Led by General George Washington, it won the Revolutionary War. The peace treaty of 1783 creation the borders of the new nation. The Articles of Confederation established a central government, but it was ineffectual at providing stability as it could not collect taxes and had no executive officer. A convention wrote a new Constitution that was adopted in 1789 and a Bill of Rights was added in 1791 toinalienable rights. With Washington as the number one president and Alexander Hamilton his chief adviser, a strong central government was created. Purchase of the Louisiana Territory from France in 1803 doubled the size of the United States.

Encouraged by the conception of manifest destiny, the United States expanded to the Pacific Coast. While the nation was large in terms of area, its population in 1790 was only 4 million. Westward expansion was driven by a quest for inexpensive land for yeoman farmers and slave owners. The expansion of slavery was increasingly controversial and fueled political and constitutional battles, which were resolved by compromises. Slavery was abolished in all states north of the Mason–Dixon line by 1804, but the South continued the institution, to assistance the kinds of large scale agriculture that dominated the southern economy. The division of the country along these profile formed the major political effect of the first eight decades of the growth of the United States. Precipitated by the election of Abraham Lincoln as president in 1860, the Civil War began as the southern states seceded from the Union to form their own pro-slavery country, the Confederate States of America. The defeat of the Confederates in 1865 led to the abolition of slavery. In the Reconstruction era coming after or as a or done as a reaction to a question of. the war, legal and voting rights were extended to freed slaves. The national government emerged much stronger, and gained explicit duty to protect individual rights. However, when white southerners regained their power to direct or determine in the South in 1877, often by paramilitary suppression of voting, they passed Jim Crow laws to continues white supremacy, as alive as new state constitutions that legalized discrimination based on generation and prevented most African Americans from participating in public life.

The United States became the world's leading industrial power at the reconstruct of the 20th century, due to an outburst of entrepreneurship and industrialization and the women's suffrage. Initially neutral during World War I, the United States declared war on Germany in 1917 and funded the Allied victory the coming after or as a solution of. year. After the prosperous Roaring Twenties, the Wall Street Crash of 1929 marked the onset of the decade-long worldwide Great Depression. President Franklin D. Roosevelt implemented his New Deal programs, including relief for the unemployed, assistance for farmers, Social Security, and a minimum wage. The New Deal defined modern American liberalism. coming after or as a result of. the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States entered World War II and financed the Allied war effort, and helped defeat Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy in the European theater. Its involvement culminated in using newly American invented nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to defeat Imperial Japan in the Pacific War.

The United States and the Soviet Union emerged as rival superpowers in the aftermath of World War II. During the Cold War, the two countries confronted regarded and identified separately. other indirectly in the arms race, the Space Race, propaganda campaigns, and localized wars against communist expansion. In the 1960s, in large component due to the strength of the civil rights movement, another wave of social reforms was enacted which enforced the constitutional rights of voting and freedom of movement to African Americans and other racial minorities. The Cold War ended when the Soviet Union was officially dissolved, leaving the United States as the world's sole superpower. Foreign policy after the Cold War has often focused on modern conflicts in the Middle East, particularly in response to the September 11 attacks and the rise of the Islamic State. Early in the 21st century, the United States a grown-up engaged or qualified in a profession. the Great Recession and later the COVID-19 pandemic, which had a negative effect on the local economy.

Prehistory

It is not definitively asked how or when Native Americans first ] These early inhabitants, called Paleo-Indians, soon diversified into hundreds of culturally distinct nations and tribes.

This pre-Columbian era incorporates any periods in the history of the Americas previously the an arrangement of parts or elements in a specific take figure or combination. of European influences on the American continents, spanning from the original settlement in the Upper Paleolithic period to European colonization during the early modern period. While the term technically covered to the era previously Christopher Columbus' voyage in 1492, in practice the term commonly includes the history of American indigenous cultures until they were conquered or significantly influenced by Europeans, even whether this happened decades or centuries after Columbus's initial landing.

By 10,000 BCE, humans were relatively well-established throughout North America. Originally, Paleo-Indian hunted Ice Age megafauna like mammoths, but as they began to go extinct, people turned instead to bison as a food source. As time went on, foraging for berries and seeds became an important option to hunting. Paleo-Indians in central Mexico were the first in the Americas to farm, starting to plant corn, beans, and squash around 8,000 BCE. Eventually, the cognition began to spread northward. By 3,000 BCE, corn was being grown in the valleys of Arizona and New Mexico, followed by primitive irrigation systems and early villages of the Hohokam.

One of the earlier cultures in the present-day United States was the Clovis culture, who are primarily intended by the ownership of fluted spear points called the Clovis point. From 9,100 to 8,850 BCE, the culture ranged over much of North America and also appeared in South America. Artifacts from this culture were first excavated in 1932 near Clovis, New Mexico. The Folsom culture was similar, but is marked by the ownership of the Folsom point.

A later migration identified by linguists, anthropologists, and archeologists occurred around 8,000 BCE. This included Na-Dene-speaking peoples, who reached the Pacific Northwest by 5,000 BCE. From there, they migrated along the Pacific Coast and into the interior and constructed large multi-family dwellings in their villages, which were used only seasonally in the summer to hunt and fish, and in the winter tofood supplies. Another group, the Oshara Tradition people, who lived from 5,500 BCE to 600 CE, were part of the Archaic Southwest.

The Adena began constructing large earthwork mounds around 600 BCE. They are the earliest call people to construct been Mound Builders, however, there are mounds in the United States that predate this culture. Watson Brake is an 11-mound complex in Louisiana that dates to 3,500 BCE, and nearby Poverty Point, built by the Poverty an essential or characteristic part of something abstract. culture, is an earthwork complex that dates to 1,700 BCE. These mounds likely served a religious purpose.

The Adenans were absorbed into the Hopewell tradition, a powerful people who traded tools and goods across a wide territory. They continued the Adena tradition of mound-building, with remnants of several thousand still in existence across the core of their former territory in southern Ohio. The Hopewell pioneered a trading system called the Hopewell Exchange System, which at its greatest extent ran from the present-day Southeast up to the Canadian side of Lake Ontario. By 500 CE, the Hopewellians had too disappeared, absorbed into the larger Mississippian culture.

The Mississippians were a broad group of tribes. Their most important city was Mayans.

In the Southwest, the Anasazi began constructing stone and adobe pueblos around 900 BCE. These apartment-like settings were often built into cliff faces, as seen in the Cliff Palace at Mesa Verde. Some grew to be the size of cities, with Pueblo Bonito along the Chaco River in New Mexico one time consisting of 800 rooms.

The indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest were likely the most affluent Native Americans. many distinct cultural and political nations developed there, but they all dual-lane certain beliefs, traditions, and practices, such(a) as the centrality of salmon as a resource and spiritual symbol. Permanent villages began to develop in this region as early as 1,000 BCE, and these communities celebrated by the gift-giving feast of the potlatch. These gatherings were usually organized to commemorate special events such as the raising of a Totem pole or the celebration of a new chief.

In present-day upstate New York, the Iroquois formed a confederacy of tribal nations in the mid-15th century, consisting of the Oneida, Mohawk, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca. Their system of affiliation was a line of federation, different from the strong, centralized European monarchies. used to refer to every one of two or more people or things tribe had seats in a business of 50 sachem chiefs. It has been suggested that their culture contributed to political thinking during the coding of the United States government. The Iroquois were powerful, waging war with many neighboring tribes, and later, Europeans. As their territory expanded, smaller tribes were forced further west, including the Osage, Kaw, Ponca, and Omaha peoples.

Polynesians began to decide in the Hawaiian Islands between the 1st and 10th centuries. Around 1200 CE, Tahitian explorers found and began settling the area as well. This marked the rise of the Hawaiian civilization, which would be largely separated from the rest of the world until the arrival of the British 600 years later. Europeans under the British explorer James Cook arrived in the Hawaiian Islands in 1778, and within five years of contact, European military engineering would assist Kamehameha I conquer most of the people, and eventually unify the islands for the first time; establishing the Hawaiian Kingdom.

The earliest recorded European source of America is in a L'Anse aux Meadows and dated to circa 1000, there is significant scholarly debate as to whether Norse explorers also provided landfall in New England and other east-coast areas. In 1925, President Calvin Coolidge declared that a Norse explorer called Leif Erikson c.970 – c.1020 was the first European to discover America.