History of the United States
History of the United
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The date of the start of the history
of the United States is a subject of debate among historians. Older
textbooks start with the arrival of
Christopher Columbus on October 12, 1492 and emphasize the
European background of the colonization
of the Americas, or they start around 1600 and emphasize the American frontier. In recent decades American
schools and universities typically have shifted back in time to include more on
the colonial period and much more on the prehistory of the Native Americans.[1][2]
Indigenous
people lived in what is now the United States for thousands of years
before European colonists began to arrive, mostly from England, after 1600. The
Spanish built small settlements in Florida and the Southwest,
and the French along the Mississippi River and the Gulf Coast.
By the 1770s, thirteen British colonies contained
two and a half million people along the Atlantic coast east of the Appalachian Mountains.
After the end of the French and Indian
Wars in the 1760s, the British government imposed a series of
new taxes, rejecting the colonists' argument that any new taxes had to be
approved by them (see Stamp Act 1765). Tax resistance, especially
the Boston Tea Party (1773),
led to punitive laws (the Intolerable Acts) by Parliament designed to
end self-government in Massachusetts. American
Patriots (as they called themselves) adhered to a political
ideology called republicanism that
emphasized civic duty, virtue, and opposition to corruption, fancy luxuries and
aristocracy.
Armed conflict began in 1775 as Patriots
drove the royal officials out of every colony and assembled in mass meetings
and conventions. In 1776, the Second
Continental Congress declared that there was a new, independent
nation, the United States of America, not just a collection of disparate
colonies. With large-scale military and financial support from France and the
military leadership of General George Washington, the American Patriots won
the Revolutionary
War.
The peace treaty of 1783 gave
the new nation the land east of the Mississippi River (except Florida and
Canada). The central government established by the Articles of
Confederation proved ineffectual at providing stability, as it
had no authority to collect taxes and had no executive officer. Congress called
a convention to
meet secretly in Philadelphia in 1787. It wrote a new
Constitution, which was adopted in 1789. In 1791, a Bill of Rights was
added to guarantee inalienable rights.
With Washington as the first president and Alexander Hamilton his
chief political and financial adviser, a strong central government was created.
When Thomas Jefferson became
president he purchased the Louisiana Territory from
France, doubling the size of the United States. A second and final war with
Britain was fought in 1812.
Encouraged by the notion of Manifest Destiny, federal territory expanded
all the way to the Pacific. The U.S. always was large in terms of area, but its
population was small, only 4 million in 1790. Population
growth was rapid, reaching 7.2 million in 1810, 32 million in 1860,
76 million in 1900, 132 million in 1940, and 321 million in 2015. Economic
growth in terms of overall GDP was even faster. However, compared to European
powers, the nation's military strength was relatively limited in peacetime
before 1940. The 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
to profit off the institution, producing high-value cotton exports to feed
increasing high demand in Europe. The 1860
presidential election of Republican Abraham Lincoln was on a platform of ending
the expansion of slavery and putting it on a path to extinction.
Seven cotton-based deep South slave states
seceded and later founded the Confederacy months
before Lincoln's
inauguration. No nation ever recognized the Confederacy, but it
opened the war by attacking Fort Sumter in
1861. A surge of nationalist outrage in the North fueled a long, intense American Civil War (1861–1865).
It was fought largely in the South as the overwhelming material and manpower
advantages of the North proved decisive in a long war. The war's result was
restoration of the Union, the impoverishment of the South, and the abolition of
slavery. In the Reconstruction
era (1863–1877), legal and voting rights were extended to the freed slave. The national government emerged
much stronger, and because of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868, it gained
the explicit duty to protect individual rights. However, when white Democrats
regained their power in the South during the 1870s, often by paramilitary
suppression of voting, they passed Jim Crow laws to maintain white supremacy, and new disfranchising constitutions
that prevented most African Americans and many poor whites
from voting, a situation that continued for decades until gains of the civil
rights movement in the 1960s and passage of federal legislation to enforce
constitutional rights.
The United States became the world's
leading industrial power at the turn of the 20th century due to an outburst of
entrepreneurship in the Northeast and Midwest and the arrival of millions of
immigrant workers and farmers from Europe. The national railroad network was
completed with the work of Chinese immigrants and large-scale mining
and factories industrialized the Northeast and Midwest. Mass dissatisfaction
with corruption, inefficiency and traditional politics stimulated the Progressive movement, from the 1890s to 1920s,
which led to many social and political reforms. In 1920, the 19th Amendment to
the Constitution guaranteed women's
suffrage (right to vote). This followed the 16th and 17th
amendments in 1913, which established the first national income tax and direct
election of US senators to Congress. Initially neutral during World War I, the US declared
war on Germany in 1917 and later 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 worldwide Great
Depression. Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt ended
the Republican dominance of the White House and implemented his New Deal programs for relief, recovery,
and reform. The New Deal, which defined modern American
liberalism, included relief for the unemployed, support for farmers, Social
Security and a minimum wage. After the Japanese attack on
Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the United States entered the
ongoing World War II along
with Britain, the Soviet Union, China,
and the smaller number of Allied nations.
The U.S. financed the Allied war effort and helped defeat Nazi Germany in the European
theater. Its involvement culminated in using the newly invented nuclear weapons on
Japanese cities that helped defeat Imperial Japan in the Pacific theater.
The United States and the Soviet Union
emerged as rival superpowers after World War II. During the Cold War, the US and the USSR confronted each
other indirectly in the arms race, the Space Race, proxy wars, and propaganda campaigns. US
foreign policy during the Cold War was built around the support
of Western Europe and Japan along
with the policy of containment, stopping
the spread of communism. The US joined
the wars in Korea and Vietnam to try to stop its spread. In the
1960s, in large part due to the strength of the civil rights movement,
another wave of social reforms were enacted by enforcing the constitutional
rights of voting and freedom of movement to African-Americans and other racial
minorities. Native American activism also rose. The Cold War ended when the Soviet
Union officially dissolved in 1991, leaving the United States
as the world's only superpower. International conflict began to center around
the Middle East following the Gulf War. The beginning of the 21st century
saw the September 11 attacks by Al-Qaeda on the United States in 2001,
which was followed by US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. In 2008, the United States had its worst
economic crisis since the Great Depression, which has been followed
by slower than usual rates of economic growth during the 2010s.
Contents
[hide]
Pre-Columbian Era
Main articles: Prehistory
of the United States, History of Native Americans in the United States,
and Pre-Columbian era
See also: Native
Americans in the United States
This map shows the
approximate location of the ice-free corridor and specific Paleoindian sites (Clovis theory).
It is not definitively known how or when
the Native Americans first settled the
Americas and the present-day United States. The prevailing
theory proposes that people migrated from Eurasia across Beringia, a land bridge that connected Siberia to present-day Alaska during the Ice Age,
and then spread southward throughout the Americas and possibly going as far
south as the Antarctic Peninsula.[citation needed] This migration may
have begun as early as 30,000 years ago[3] and continued
through to about 10,000+ years ago, when the land bridge became submerged by
the rising sea level caused by the ending of the last glacial period.[4] These early
inhabitants, called Paleoamericans,
soon diversified into many hundreds of culturally distinct nations and tribes.
The pre-Columbian era incorporates all period
subdivisions in the history and
prehistory of the Americas before the appearance of significant
European influences on the American continents,
spanning the time of the original
settlement in the Upper Paleolithic period to European
colonization during the Early Modern period.
While technically referring to the era before Christopher Columbus'
voyages of 1492 to 1504, in practice the term usually includes the history of American
indigenous cultures until they were conquered or significantly
influenced by Europeans, even if this happened decades or even centuries after
Columbus' initial landing.
Native
development prior to European contact
Main article: History of Native Americans in the United States
The Cultural areas of pre-Columbian
North America, according to Alfred Kroeber.
Native American cultures are not normally
included in characterizations of advanced stone age cultures as "Neolithic," which is a category that more
often includes only the cultures in Eurasia, Africa, and other regions. The archaeological
periods used are the classifications of archaeological periods
and cultures established in Gordon Willey and Philip
Phillips' 1958 book Method and Theory in American
Archaeology. They divided the archaeological record in the Americas into
five phases;[5] see Archaeology of
the Americas.
The Clovis culture, a megafauna hunting culture, is primarily
identified by use of fluted spear points. Artifacts
from this culture were first excavated in 1932 near Clovis, New Mexico.
The Clovis culture ranged over much of North America and also appeared in South
America. The culture is identified by the distinctive Clovis point, a flaked flint spear-point with
a notched flute, by which it was inserted into a shaft. Dating of Clovis
materials has been by association with animal bones and by the use of carbon dating methods. Recent
reexaminations of Clovis materials using improved carbon-dating methods
produced results of 11,050 and 10,800 radiocarbon years B.P. (roughly 9100 to 8850 BCE).
Numerous Paleoindian cultures occupied North
America, with some arrayed around the Great Plains and Great Lakes of the modern United States of
America and Canada, as well as adjacent
areas to the West and Southwest. According to the oral histories of many of the
indigenous peoples of the Americas, they have been living on this continent
since their genesis, described by a wide range of traditional creation stories. Other tribes have stories
that recount migrations across long tracts of land and a great river, believed
to be the Mississippi River.[6] Genetic and
linguistic data connect the indigenous people of this continent with ancient
northeast Asians. Archeological and linguistic data has enabled scholars to
discover some of the migrations within the Americas.
A Folsom point for a spear.
The Folsom Tradition was characterized by use
of Folsom points as
projectile tips, and activities known from kill sites, where slaughter and
butchering of bison took place. Folsom tools were left
behind between 9000 BCE and 8000 BCE.[7]
Na-Dené-speaking peoples entered North America
starting around 8000 BCE, reaching the Pacific Northwest by 5000 BCE,[8] and from there
migrating along the Pacific Coast and
into the interior. Linguists, anthropologists and archeologists believe their
ancestors comprised a separate migration into North America, later than the
first Paleo-Indians. They migrated into Alaska and northern Canada, south along
the Pacific Coast, into the interior of Canada, and south to the Great Plains
and the American Southwest.
They were the earliest ancestors of the Athabascan- speaking peoples, including the
present-day and historical Navajo and Apache. They constructed large multi-family
dwellings in their villages, which were used seasonally. People did not live
there year-round, but for the summer to hunt and fish, and to gather food
supplies for the winter.[9] The Oshara Tradition people lived from 5500
BCE to 600 CE. They were part of the Southwestern
Archaic Tradition centered in north-central New Mexico, the San Juan Basin, the Rio Grande Valley, southern Colorado, and southeastern Utah.
Since the 1990s, archeologists have
explored and dated eleven Middle Archaic sites
in present-day Louisiana and Florida at which early cultures built complexes
with multiple earthwork mounds;
they were societies of hunter-gatherers rather than the settled
agriculturalists believed necessary according to the theory of Neolithic Revolution to
sustain such large villages over long periods. The prime example is Watson Brake in northern Louisiana, whose
11-mound complex is dated to 3500 BCE, making it the oldest, dated site in
the Americas for such complex construction. It is nearly 2,000 years older
than the Poverty Point site.
Construction of the mounds went on for 500 years until was abandoned about
2800 BCE, probably due to changing environmental conditions.[10]
Poverty Point culture is
a Late Archaic archaeological
culture that inhabited the area of the lower Mississippi Valley
and surrounding Gulf Coast. The culture thrived from 2200 BCE to
700 BCE, during the Late Archaic period.[11] Evidence of this
culture has been found at more than 100 sites, from the major complex at Poverty Point,
Louisiana (a UNESCO World
Heritage Site) across a 100-mile (160 km) range to the Jaketown Site near Belzoni, Mississippi.
Totem poles in Wrangell, Alaska.
Poverty Point is a 1 square mile
(2.6 km2) complex of six major
earthwork concentric rings, with additional platform mounds at the site.
Artifacts show the people traded with other Native Americans located from
Georgia to the Great Lakes region. This is one among numerous mound sites of
complex indigenous cultures throughout the Mississippi and Ohio valleys. They
were one of several succeeding cultures often referred to as mound builders.
The Woodland period of North American pre-Columbian cultures refers to the time
period from roughly 1000 BCE to 1,000 CE in the eastern part of North
America. The term "Woodland" was coined in the 1930s and refers to
prehistoric sites dated between the Archaic
period and the Mississippian
cultures. The Hopewell tradition is
the term for the common aspects of the Native American culture that flourished
along rivers in the northeastern and midwestern United States from 200 BCE to 500 CE.[12]
The indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast were
of many nations and tribal affiliations, each with distinctive cultural and
political identities, but they shared certain beliefs, traditions and
practices, such as the centrality of salmon as a resource and spiritual
symbol. Their gift-giving feast, potlatch, is a highly complex event where
people gather in order to commemorate special events. These events, such as,
the raising of a Totem pole or
the appointment or election of a new chief. The most famous artistic feature of
the culture is the Totem pole, with carvings of animals and other characters to
commemorate cultural beliefs, legends, and notable events.
The Hopewell tradition was not a single culture or society, but a widely
dispersed set of related populations, who were connected by a common network of
trade routes,[13] known as the
Hopewell Exchange System. At its greatest extent, the Hopewell exchange system
ran from the Southeastern United States into the southeastern Canadian shores of Lake Ontario. Within this area, societies
participated in a high degree of exchange; most activity was conducted along
the waterways that served as their major transportation routes. The Hopewell
exchange system traded materials from all over the United States.
Grave Creek Mound, located in Moundsville,
West Virginia, is one of the largest conical mounds in the United States. It was built by the Adena culture.
·
Adena culture: The Adena culture was a Native
American culture that existed from 1000 BC to 200 BC, in a time
known as the Early Woodland period.
The Adena culture refers to what were probably a number of related Native
American societies sharing a burial complex and ceremonial system.
A map showing the extent
of the Coles Creek cultural period and some important sites.
·
Coles Creek culture: The Coles Creek culture
is an indigenous development of the Lower Mississippi Valley that took place
between the terminal Woodland period and the later Plaquemine culture period.
The period is marked by the increased use of flat-topped platform mounds arranged around central
plazas, more complex political institutions, and a subsistence strategy still
grounded in the Eastern
Agricultural Complex and hunting rather than on the maize plant
as would happen in the succeeding Plaquemine
Mississippian period. The culture was originally defined by the
unique decoration on grog-tempered
ceramic ware by James A. Ford after
his investigations at the Mazique
Archeological Site. He had studied both the Mazique and Coles Creek
Sites, and almost went with the Mazique culture, but decided on the
less historically involved sites name. It is ancestral to the Plaquemine culture.
The Great House at the Casa
Grande Ruins National Monument.
·
Hohokam culture: The Hohokam was a
culture centered along American Southwest.[14] The early Hohokam
founded a series of small villages along the middle Gila River. They raised corn, squash and
beans. The communities were located near good arable land, with dry farming common in the earlier years
of this period.[14] They were known for
their pottery, using the paddle-and-anvil technique. The Classical period of
the culture saw the rise in architecture and ceramics. Buildings were grouped
into walled compounds, as well as earthen platform mounds. Platform mounds were
built along river as well as irrigation canal systems, suggesting these sites
were administrative centers allocating water and coordinating canal labor.
Polychrome pottery appeared, and inhumation burial replaced cremation. Trade
included that of shells and other exotics. Social and climatic factors led to a
decline and abandonment of the area after 1400 A.D.
|
Ancestral Puebloan archeological
sites
|
|
·
The Great Kiva of Chetro Ketl at the Chaco
Culture National Historical Park, UNESCO World
Heritage Site.
·
Cliff Palace, Mesa Verde
National Park, a UNESCO World
Heritage Site.
|
|
·
Taos Pueblo, a UNESCO World
Heritage site, is an Ancient Pueblo belonging to a Native American
tribe of Pueblo people,
marking the cultural development in the region during the Pre-Columbian era.
·
White House Ruins, Canyon
de Chelly National Monument
|
·
Ancestral Puebloan
culture: The Ancestral Puebloan culture covered present-day Four Corners region of the United States,
comprising southern Utah, northern Arizona, northwestern New Mexico, and southwestern Colorado.[15] It is believed that
the Ancestral Puebloans developed, at least in part, from the Oshara Tradition, who developed from the Picosa culture. They lived in a range of
structures that included small family pit houses, larger clan type structures,
grand pueblos, and cliff sited dwellings. The
Ancestral Puebloans possessed a complex network that stretched across the Colorado Plateau linking hundreds of
communities and population centers. The culture is perhaps best known for the
stone and earth dwellings built along cliff walls, particularly during the Pueblo II and Pueblo III eras.
·
Three UNESCO World
Heritage Sites located in the United States are credited to the
Pueblos: Mesa Verde
National Park, Chaco
Culture National Historical Park and Taos Pueblo.
·
The best-preserved examples of the stone
dwellings are in National Parks (USA),
examples being, Navajo National
Monument, Chaco Culture National Historical Park, Mesa Verde
National Park, Canyons
of the Ancients National Monument, Aztec Ruins
National Monument, Bandelier
National Monument, Hovenweep National
Monument, and Canyon
de Chelly National Monument.
Mississippian culture
Monks Mound of Cahokia (UNESCO World
Heritage Site) in summer. The concrete staircase follows the approximate
course of the ancient wooden stairs.
An artistic recreation of The
Kincaid Site from the prehistoric Mississippian culture as it
may have looked at its peak 1050-1400 AD.
·
Mississippian culture: The Mississippian
culture which extended throughout the Ohio and Mississippi valleys and built
sites throughout the Southeast, created the largest earthworks in
North America north of Mexico, most notably at Cahokia, on a tributary of the Mississippi
River in present-day Illinois.
·
The ten-story Monks Mound at Cahokia has a larger
circumference than the Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan or the Great Pyramid of Egypt.
The 6 square miles (16 km2) city complex was based
on the culture's cosmology; it included more than 100 mounds, positioned
to support their sophisticated knowledge of astronomy, and built with knowledge of varying
soil types. The society began building at this site about 950 CE, and
reached its peak population in 1,250 CE of 20,000–30,000 people, which was
not equalled by any city in the present-day United States until after 1800.
·
Cahokia was a major regional chiefdom, with trade and tributary chiefdoms
located in a range of areas from bordering the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico.
·
Kincaid[16] c. 1050-1400 AD,[17] is one of the
largest settlements of the Mississippian culture, it was located at the
southern tip of present-day U.S. state of Illinois. Kincaid Mounds has been notable for
both its significant role in native North American prehistory and
for the central role the site has played in the development of modern archaeological techniques. The site had at
least 11 substructure platform mounds (ranking fifth for
mound-culture pyramids). Artifacts from the settlement link its major
habitation and the construction of the mounds to the Mississippian period, but
it was also occupied earlier during the Woodland period.
·
The Mississippian culture developed the Southeastern
Ceremonial Complex, the name which archeologists have given to the
regional stylistic similarity of artifacts, iconography, ceremonies and mythology. The rise of the complex culture was
based on the people's adoption of maize agriculture,
development of greater population densities, and chiefdom-level complex social organization
from 1200 CE to 1650 CE.[18][19]
·
The Mississippian pottery are
some of the finest and most widely spread ceramics north of Mexico. Cahokian pottery was espically fine, with
smooth surfaces, very thin walls and distinctive tempering, slips and coloring.[20]
·
Iroquois Culture: The Iroquois League of Nations or
"People of the Long House", based in present-day upstate and western New York, had a confederacy model from the
mid-15th century. It has been suggested that their culture contributed to
political thinking during the development of the later United States
government. Their system of affiliation was a kind of federation, different
from the strong, centralized European monarchies.[21][22][23]
·
Leadership was restricted to a group of 50 sachem chiefs, each representing one clan within
a tribe. The Oneida and Mohawk people had nine seats each; the Onondagas held fourteen; the Cayuga had ten seats; and the Seneca had eight. Representation was not
based on population numbers, as the Seneca tribe greatly outnumbered the
others. When a sachem chief died, his successor was chosen by the senior woman
of his tribe in consultation with other female members of the clan; property
and hereditary leadership were passed matrilineally. Decisions were not made through
voting but through consensus decision making, with each sachem chief holding
theoretical veto power. The Onondaga were the "firekeepers", responsible for raising
topics to be discussed. They occupied one side of a three-sided fire (the
Mohawk and Seneca sat on one side of the fire, the Oneida and Cayuga sat on the
third side.)[23]
·
Elizabeth Tooker, an anthropologist, has said that it was unlikely
the US founding fathers were inspired by the confederacy, as it bears little
resemblance to the system of governance adopted in the United States. For
example, it is based on inherited rather than elected leadership, selected by
female members of the tribes, consensus decision-making regardless of
population size of the tribes, and a single group capable of bringing matters
before the legislative body.[23]
·
Long-distance trading did not prevent
warfare and displacement among the indigenous peoples, and their oral histories
tell of numerous migrations to the historic territories where Europeans
encountered them. The Iroquois invaded and attacked tribes in the Ohio River
area of present-day Kentucky and claimed the hunting grounds. Historians have
placed these events as occurring as early as the 13th century, or in the
17th century Beaver Wars.[24]
·
Through warfare, the Iroquois drove several
tribes to migrate west to what became known as their historically traditional
lands west of the Mississippi River. Tribes originating in the Ohio Valley who
moved west included the Osage, Kaw, Ponca and Omaha people. By the mid-17th century, they
had resettled in their historical lands in present-day Kansas, Nebraska, Arkansas and Oklahoma. The Osage warred with Caddo-speaking
Native Americans, displacing them in turn by the mid-18th century and
dominating their new historical territories.[24]
Main article: History of Hawaii
Kamehameha I, founder of the Kingdom of Hawaii.
Native development in Hawaii begins with the settlement of Polynesians between 1st century to 10th century. Around 1200 AD Tahitian explorers found and began
settling the area as well. This became the rise of the Hawaiian civilization
and would be separated from the rest of the world for another 500 years until
the arrival of the British. Europeans under the British explorer Captain James Cook arrived
in the Hawaiian Islands in 1778. Within five years of contact, European
military technology would help Kamehameha I conquer most of the people,
and eventually unify the islands for the first time; establishing the Kingdom of Hawaii.
Main article: Colonial
history of the United States
European territorial claims in North America, c. 1750
France
Great Britain
Spain
After a period of
exploration sponsored by major European nations, the first
successful English settlement was established in 1607. Europeans brought
horses, cattle, and hogs to the Americas and, in turn, took back to Europe
maize, turkeys, potatoes,
tobacco, beans, and squash. Many
explorers and early settlers died after being exposed to new diseases in the
Americas. The effects of new Eurasian diseases carried by the colonists,
especially smallpox and measles, were much worse for the Native Americans, as
they had no immunity to
them. They suffered
epidemics and died in very large numbers, usually before
large-scale European settlement began. Their societies were disrupted and
hollowed out by the scale of deaths.[25][26]
Main articles: Spanish
colonization of the Americas, Dutch
colonization of the Americas, and French
colonization of the Americas
Spanish conquests of Continental United
States
_1.083_JUAN_PONCE_DE_LE%C3%93N.jpg)
The
Spaniard Juan Ponce de León named
Florida.
The Spanish conquistadorCoronado explored
parts of the American
Southwest from 1540 to 1542.
Spanish explorers were the first Europeans
with Christopher Columbus' second
expedition, to reach Puerto Rico on November 19, 1493; others
reached Florida in 1513.[27] Spanish expeditions
quickly reached the Appalachian Mountains,
the Mississippi River,
the Grand Canyon[28] and the Great Plains. In 1540, Hernando de Soto undertook an extensive
exploration of the Southeast.[29]
In 1540, Francisco
Vásquez de Coronado explored from Arizona to central Kansas.[29] Small Spanish
settlements eventually grew to become important cities, such as San Antonio, Texas; Albuquerque, New
Mexico; Tucson, Arizona; Los Angeles,
California; and San Francisco,
California.[30]
New Netherland was a 17th-century Dutch
colony centered on present-day New York City and the Hudson River Valley; the Dutch traded furs
with the Native Americans to the north. The colony served as a barrier to
expansion from New England. Despite
being Calvinists and building the Reformed Church
in America, the Dutch were tolerant of other religions and cultures.[31]
The colony, which was taken over by Britain
in 1664, left an enduring legacy on American cultural and political life. This
includes secular broad-mindedness and mercantile pragmatism in the city as well
as rural traditionalism in the countryside (typified by the story of Rip Van Winkle). Notable Americans of Dutch
descent include Martin Van Buren, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Eleanor Roosevelt and the Frelinghuysens.[31]
New France was the area colonized
by France from 1534 to 1763. There were few permanent settlers
outside Quebec and Acadia, but the French had far-reaching
trading relationships with Native Americans throughout the Great Lakes and
Midwest. French villages along the Mississippi and Illinois rivers were based in farming
communities that served as a granary for Gulf Coast settlements. The French
established plantations in Louisiana along with settling New Orleans, Mobile and Biloxi.
The Wabanaki Confederacy were
military allies of New France through the four French and Indian Wars while the
British colonies were allied with the Iroquois Confederacy.
During the French and Indian War –
the North American theater of the Seven Years' War – New England fought
successfully against French Acadia. The British removed Acadians from Acadia (Nova Scotia) and replaced them with New England Planters.[32] Eventually, some
Acadians resettled in Louisiana, where they developed a distinctive rural Cajun culture
that still exists. They became American citizens in 1803 with the Louisiana Purchase.[33] Other French
villages along the Mississippi and Illinois rivers were absorbed when the
Americans started arriving after 1770, or settlers moved west to escape them.[34] French influence
and language in New Orleans, Louisiana and the Gulf Coast was more
enduring; New Orleans was notable for its large population of free people of color before
the Civil War.
Further information: British
colonization of the Americas
The Mayflower, which transported Pilgrims to
the New World. During the first winter at Plymouth, about half of the Pilgrims
died.[35]
The strip of land along the eastern
seacoast was settled primarily by English colonists in the 17th century along
with much smaller numbers of Dutch and Swedes.
Colonial America was defined by a severe labor shortage that employed forms of unfree labor such as slavery and indentured servitude and
by a British policy of benign neglect (salutary neglect). Over half of all European
immigrants to Colonial America arrived as indentured servants.[36] Salutary neglect
permitted the development of an American spirit distinct from that of its
European founders.[37]
The first successful English colony, Jamestown,
was established in 1607 on the James River in Virginia. Jamestown languished for decades
until a new wave of settlers arrived in the late 17th century and established
commercial agriculture based on tobacco. Between the late 1610s and the
Revolution, the British shipped an estimated 50,000 convicts to their American
colonies.[38] A severe instance
of conflict was the 1622 Powhatan uprising in
Virginia in which Native Americans killed hundreds of English settlers. The
largest conflicts between Native Americans and English settlers in the 17th
century were King Philip's War in New England[39] and the Yamasee War in South Carolina.[40]
The Indian massacre of
Jamestown settlers in 1622. Soon the colonists in the South
feared all natives as enemies.
New England was initially settled
primarily by Puritans. The Pilgrims established a settlement in 1620
at Plymouth Colony,
which was followed by the establishment of the Massachusetts Bay
Colony in 1630. The Middle Colonies, consisting of the
present-day states of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania,
and Delaware,
were characterized by a large degree of diversity. The first attempted English
settlement south of Virginia was the Province of Carolina,
with Georgia Colony –
the last of the Thirteen Colonies –
established in 1733.[41]
The colonies were characterized by
religious diversity, with many Congregationalists in New England, German and
Dutch Reformed in the Middle Colonies, Catholics in Maryland, and Scots-Irish Presbyterians
on the frontier. Sephardic Jews were
among early settlers in cities of New England and the South. Many immigrants
arrived as religious refugees: French Huguenots settled in New York,
Virginia and the Carolinas. Many royal officials and merchants were Anglicans.[42]
Religiosity expanded greatly after the First Great Awakening,
a religious revival in the 1740s led by preachers such as Jonathan
Edwards and George Whitefield. American Evangelicals
affected by the Awakening added a new emphasis on divine outpourings of the
Holy Spirit and conversions that implanted within new believers an intense love
for God. Revivals encapsulated those hallmarks and carried the newly created
evangelicalism into the early republic, setting the stage for the Second Great
Awakening beginning in the late 1790s.[43] In the early
stages, evangelicals in the South such as Methodists and Baptists preached for
religious freedom and abolition of slavery; they converted many slaves and
recognized some as preachers.
Each of the 13 American colonies had a
slightly different governmental structure. Typically, a colony was ruled by a
governor appointed from London who controlled the executive administration and
relied upon a locally elected legislature to vote taxes and make laws. By the
18th century, the American colonies were growing very rapidly as a result of
low death rates along with ample supplies of land and food. The colonies were
richer than most parts of Britain, and attracted a steady flow of immigrants,
especially teenagers who arrived as indentured servants.[44]
The tobacco and rice plantations imported
African slaves for
labor from the British colonies in the West Indies, and by the 1770s African
slaves comprised a fifth of the American population. The question of
independence from Britain did not arise as long as the colonies needed British
military support against the French and Spanish powers. Those threats were gone
by 1765. London regarded the American colonies as existing for the benefit of
the mother country. This policy is known as mercantilism.[44]
An upper-class, with wealth based on large
plantations operated by slave labor, and holding significant political power
and even control over the churches, emerged in South Carolina and Virginia. A
unique class system operated in upstate New York, where Dutch tenant farmers
rented land from very wealthy Dutch proprietors, such as the Rensselaer family.
The other colonies were more equalitarian, with Pennsylvania being
representative. By the mid-18th century Pennsylvania was basically a
middle-class colony with limited deference to its small upper-class. A writer
in the Pennsylvania Journal in 1756 summed it up:
The People of this Province are generally
of the middling Sort, and at present pretty much upon a Level. They are chiefly
industrious Farmers, Artificers or Men in Trade; they enjoy in are fond of
Freedom, and the meanest among them thinks he has a right to
Civility from the greatest.[45]
Join, or Die: This 1756 political cartoon by Benjamin Franklin urged the colonies to
join together during the French and Indian War.
The French and Indian War (1754–63)
was a watershed event in the political development of the colonies. It was also
part of the larger Seven Years' War. The influence of the main
rivals of the British Crown in the colonies and Canada, the French and North
American Indians, was significantly reduced with the territory of the Thirteen Colonies expanding into New France both in Canada and the Louisiana Territory.
Moreover, the war effort resulted in greater political integration of the
colonies, as reflected in the Albany Congress and symbolized by Benjamin Franklin's call for the colonies to
"Join or Die". Franklin was a man of many inventions – one of
which was the concept of a United States of America, which emerged after 1765
and was realized in July 1776.[46]
Following Britain's acquisition of French
territory in North America, King George III issued the Royal
Proclamation of 1763 with the goal of organizing the new North
American empire and protecting the native Indians from colonial expansion into
western lands beyond the Appalachian Mountains. In ensuing years, strains
developed in the relations between the colonists and the Crown. The British Parliament passed
the Stamp Act of 1765,
imposing a tax on the colonies without going through the colonial legislatures.
The issue was drawn: did Parliament have this right to tax Americans who were
not represented in it? Crying "No
taxation without representation", the colonists refused to pay
the taxes as tensions escalated in the late 1760s and early 1770s.[47]
An 1846 painting of the
1773 Boston Tea Party.
The Boston Tea Party in 1773 was a direct
action by activists in the town of Boston to protest against the new tax on
tea. Parliament quickly responded the next year with the Coercive Acts, stripping Massachusetts of its
historic right of self-government and putting it under army rule, which sparked
outrage and resistance in all thirteen colonies. Patriot leaders from all 13
colonies convened the First
Continental Congress to coordinate their resistance to the
Coercive Acts. The Congress called for a boycott of British
trade, published a list of rights and
grievances, and petitioned the
king for redress of those grievances.[48] The appeal to the
Crown had no effect, and so the Second
Continental Congress was convened in 1775 to organize the
defense of the colonies against the British Army.
Ordinary folk became insurgents against the
British even though they were unfamiliar with the ideological rationales being
offered. They held very strongly a sense of "rights" that they felt
the British were deliberately violating – rights that stressed local
autonomy, fair dealing, and government by consent. They were highly sensitive
to the issue of tyranny, which they saw manifested in the arrival in Boston of
the British Army to punish the Bostonians. This heightened their sense of
violated rights, leading to rage and demands for revenge. They had faith that
God was on their side.[49]
The American
Revolutionary War began at Concord and Lexington in April 1775
when the British tried to seize ammunition supplies and arrest the Patriot
leaders.
The population density in
the American Colonies in
1775.
In terms of political values, the Americans
were largely united on a concept called Republicanism,
that rejected aristocracy and emphasized civic duty and a fear of corruption.
For the Founding Fathers, according to one team of historians,
"republicanism represented more than a particular form of government. It
was a way of life, a core ideology, an uncompromising commitment to liberty,
and a total rejection of aristocracy."[50]
Main articles: American Revolution and History
of the United States (1776–89)
Washington's
surprise crossing of the Delaware River in Dec. 1776 was a
major comeback after the loss of New York City; his army defeated the British
in two battles and recaptured New Jersey.
The Thirteen Colonies began a rebellion
against British rule in 1775 and proclaimed their independence in 1776 as the
United States of America. In the American
Revolutionary War (1775–83) the American captured the British
invasion army at Saratoga in 1777,
secured the Northeast and encouraged the French to make a military alliance
with the United States. France brought in Spain and the Netherlands, thus
balancing the military and naval forces on each side as Britain had no allies.[51]
General George Washington (1732–99) proved an
excellent organizer and administrator, who worked successfully with Congress
and the state governors, selecting and mentoring his senior officers,
supporting and training his troops, and maintaining an idealistic Republican
Army. His biggest challenge was logistics, since neither Congress nor the
states had the funding to provide adequately for the equipment, munitions, clothing, paychecks, or even the
food supply of the soldiers.
As a battlefield tactician, Washington was
often outmaneuvered by his British counterparts. As a strategist, however, he
had a better idea of how to win the war than they did. The British sent four
invasion armies. Washington's strategy forced the first army out of Boston in
1776, and was responsible for the surrender of the second and third armies at
Saratoga (1777) and Yorktown (1781). He limited the British control to New York
City and a few places while keeping Patriot control of the great majority of the
population.[52]
The Loyalists, whom the British counted
upon too heavily, comprised about 20% of the population but never were well
organized. As the war ended, Washington watched proudly as the final British
army quietly sailed out of New York City in November 1783, taking the Loyalist
leadership with them. Washington astonished the world when, instead of seizing
power for himself, he retired quietly to his farm in Virginia.[52] Political scientist Seymour Martin Lipset observes,
"The United States was the first major colony successfully to revolt
against colonial rule. In this sense, it was the first 'new nation'."[53]
On July 4, 1776, the Second
Continental Congress, meeting in Philadelphia, declared the independence of
"the United States of America" in the Declaration
of Independence. July 4 is celebrated as the nation's birthday. The
new nation was founded on Enlightenment ideals
of liberalism in what Thomas Jefferson called the unalienable
rights to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness", and dedicated
strongly to republican principles.
Republicanism emphasized the people are sovereign (not hereditary kings),
demanded civic duty, feared corruption, and rejected any aristocracy.[54]
Main article: History
of the United States (1789–1849)
See also: First Party System and Second Party System
Economic growth in
America per capita income. Index with 1700 set as 100.
Further information: Articles of
Confederation and History
of the United States Constitution
In the 1780s the national government was
able to settle the issue of the western territories, which were ceded by the
states to Congress and became territories. With the migration of settlers to
the Northwest, soon they became states. Nationalists worried that the new
nation was too fragile to withstand an international war, or even internal
revolts such as the Shays' Rebellion of 1786 in
Massachusetts.[55]
Nationalists – most of them war
veterans – organized in every state and convinced Congress to call the Philadelphia
Convention in 1787. The delegates from every state wrote a new Constitution that
created a much more powerful and efficient central government, one with a
strong president, and powers of taxation. The new government reflected the
prevailing republican ideals of guarantees of individual liberty and of constraining
the power of government through a system of separation of powers.[55]
The Congress was given authority to ban the
international slave trade after
20 years (which it did in 1807). A compromise gave the South Congressional
apportionment out of proportion to its free population by allowing it to
include three-fifths of the number of slaves in each state's total population.
This provision increased the political power of southern representatives in
Congress, especially as slavery was extended into the Deep South through
removal of Native Americans and transportation of slaves by an extensive
domestic trade.
To assuage the Anti-Federalists who feared
a too-powerful national government, the nation adopted the United States
Bill of Rights in 1791. Comprising the first ten amendments of
the Constitution, it guaranteed individual liberties such as freedom of speech
and religious practice, jury trials, and stated that citizens and states had
reserved rights (which were not specified).[56]
George Washington – a renowned hero of
the American
Revolutionary War, commander-in-chief of the Continental Army, and president of the Constitutional
Convention – became the first President of the United States
under the new Constitution in
1789. The national capital moved from New York to Philadelphia and finally
settled in Washington DC in 1800.
The major accomplishments of the Washington
Administration were creating a strong national government that
was recognized without question by all Americans.[57] His government,
following the vigorous leadership of Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton,
assumed the debts of the states (the debt holders received federal bonds), created
the Bank of the
United States to stabilize the financial system, and set up a
uniform system of tariffs (taxes on imports) and other taxes to pay off the
debt and provide a financial infrastructure. To support his programs Hamilton
created a new political party – the first in the world based on
voters – the Federalist
Party.
Thomas Jefferson and James Madison formed an opposition
Republican Party (usually called the Democratic-Republican
Party by political scientists). Hamilton and Washington
presented the country in 1794 with the Jay Treaty that reestablished good
relations with Britain. The Jeffersonians vehemently protested, and the voters
aligned behind one party or the other, thus setting up the First Party System.
Federalists promoted business, financial and commercial interests and wanted
more trade with Britain. Republicans accused the Federalists of plans to
establish a monarchy, turn the rich into a ruling class, and making the United
States a pawn of the British.[58] The treaty passed,
but politics became intensely heated.[59]
The Whiskey Rebellion in 1794, when western
settlers protested against a federal tax on liquor, was the first serious test
of the federal government. Washington called out the state militia and
personally led an army, as the insurgents melted away and the power of the
national government was firmly established.[60]
Washington refused to serve more than two
terms – setting a precedent – and in his famous farewell
address, he extolled the benefits of federal government and
importance of ethics and morality while warning against foreign alliances and
the formation of political parties.[61]
John Adams, a Federalist, defeated Jefferson
in the 1796 election. War loomed with France and the Federalists used the
opportunity to try to silence the Republicans with the Alien and Sedition
Acts, build up a large army with Hamilton at the head, and prepare
for a French invasion. However, the Federalists became divided after Adams sent
a successful peace mission to France that ended the Quasi-War of 1798.[58][62]
Main article: Slavery in the
United States
During the first two decades after the
Revolutionary War, there were dramatic changes in the status of slavery among
the states and an increase in the number of freed blacks. Inspired by revolutionary ideals
of the equality of men and influenced by their lesser economic reliance on
slavery, northern states abolished slavery.
States of the Upper South made manumission easier,
resulting in an increase in the proportion of free blacks in the Upper South (as a
percentage of the total non-white population) from less than one percent in
1792 to more than 10 percent by 1810. By that date, a total of 13.5 percent of
all blacks in the United States were free.[63] After that date,
with the demand for slaves on the rise because of the Deep South's expanding
cotton cultivation, the number of manumissions declined sharply; and an
internal U.S. slave trade became an important source of wealth for many
planters and traders.
In 1809, president James Madison severed the U.S.A.'s
involvement with the Atlantic slave trade.
Jefferson saw himself as
a man of the frontier and a scientist; he was keenly interested in expanding
and exploring the West.
Territorial expansion; Louisiana Purchase in
white.
Thomas Jefferson defeated Adams for the
presidency in the 1800
election. Jefferson's major achievement as president was the Louisiana Purchase in
1803, which provided U.S. settlers with vast potential for expansion west of
the Mississippi River.[64]
Jefferson, a scientist himself, supported
expeditions to explore and map the new domain, most notably the Lewis and Clark
Expedition.[65]Jefferson believed deeply
in republicanism and
argued it should be based on the independent yeoman farmer and planter; he distrusted
cities, factories and banks. He also distrusted the federal government and
judges, and tried to weaken the judiciary. However he met his match in John Marshall, a Federalist from Virginia.
Although the Constitution specified a Supreme
Court, its functions were vague until Marshall, the Chief Justice
(1801–35), defined them, especially the power to overturn acts of Congress or
states that violated the Constitution, first enunciated in 1803 in Marbury v. Madison.[66]
Main article: War of 1812
Americans were increasingly angry at the
British violation of American ships' neutral rights in order to hurt France,
the impressment (seizure) of 10,000 American
sailors needed by the Royal Navy to fight Napoleon, and British support for
hostile Indians attacking American settlers in the Midwest. They may also have
desired to annex all or part of British North America.[67][68][69][70][71] Despite strong
opposition from the Northeast, especially from Federalists who did not want to
disrupt trade with Britain, Congress declared war on June 18, 1812.[72]
The war was frustrating for both sides.
Both sides tried to invade the other and were repulsed. The American high
command remained incompetent until the last year. The American militia proved
ineffective because the soldiers were reluctant to leave home and efforts to
invade Canada repeatedly failed. The British blockade ruined American commerce,
bankrupted the Treasury, and further angered New Englanders, who smuggled
supplies to Britain. The Americans under General William Henry
Harrison finally gained naval control of Lake Erie and defeated
the Indians under Tecumseh in Canada,[73] while Andrew
Jackson ended the Indian threat in the Southeast. The Indian threat to
expansion into the Midwest was permanently ended. The British invaded and
occupied much of Maine.
The British raided and burned Washington,
but were repelled at Baltimore in 1814 – where the "Star Spangled
Banner" was written to celebrate the American success. In
upstate New York a major British invasion of New York State was turned back.
Finally in early 1815 Andrew Jackson decisively defeated a
major British invasion at the Battle of New Orleans,
making him the most famous war hero.[74]
With Napoleon (apparently) gone, the causes
of the war had evaporated and both sides agreed to a peace that left the prewar
boundaries intact. Americans claimed victory on February 18, 1815 as news came
almost simultaneously of Jackson's victory of New Orleans and the peace treaty that left the prewar
boundaries in place. Americans swelled with pride at success in the
"second war of independence"; the naysayers of the antiwar Federalist
Party were put to shame and it never recovered. The Indians were the big
losers; they never gained the independent nationhood Britain had promised and
no longer posed a serious threat as settlers poured into the Midwest.[74]
Main article: Era of Good Feelings
As strong opponents of the war, the
Federalists held the Hartford Convention in
1814 that hinted at disunion. National euphoria after the victory at New
Orleans ruined the prestige of the Federalists and they no longer played a
significant role.[75] President Madison
and most Republicans realized they were foolish to let the Bank of the United
States close down, for its absence greatly hindered the financing of the war.
So, with the assistance of foreign bankers, they chartered the Second
Bank of the United States in 1816.[76][77]
The Republicans also imposed tariffs
designed to protect the infant industries that had been created when Britain
was blockading the U.S. With the collapse of the Federalists as a party, the
adoption of many Federalist principles by the Republicans, and the systematic
policy of President James Monroe in
his two terms (1817–25) to downplay partisanship, the nation entered an Era of Good Feelings,
with far less partisanship than before (or after), and closed out the First Party System.[76][77]
The Monroe Doctrine, expressed in 1823, proclaimed
the United States' opinion that European powers should no longer colonize or
interfere in the Americas. This was a defining moment in the foreign
policy of the United States. The Monroe Doctrine was adopted in
response to American and British fears over Russian and French expansion into
the Western Hemisphere.[78]
In 1832, President Andrew Jackson, 7th President of the United
States, ran for a second term under the slogan "Jackson and no bank"
and didn't renew the charter of the Second Bank of the United States of
America.[79] Jackson was
convinced that central banking was used by the elite to take advantage of the
average American.[79]
Main article: Indian removal
Settlers crossing the Plains of Nebraska.
In 1830, Congress passed the Indian Removal Act,
which authorized the president to negotiate treaties that exchanged Native
American tribal lands in the eastern states for lands west of the Mississippi
River.[80] Its goal was
primarily to remove Native Americans, including the Five Civilized Tribes,
from the American Southeast; they occupied land that settlers wanted. Jacksonian Democrats demanded
the forcible removal of native populations who refused to acknowledge state
laws to reservations in the West; Whigs and religious leaders opposed the move
as inhumane. Thousands of deaths resulted from the relocations, as seen in the Cherokee Trail of Tears.[81] Many of the Seminole Indians in Florida refused to
move west; they fought the Army for years in the Seminole Wars.
Main articles: Second Party System and Presidency of
Andrew Jackson
After the First Party System of
Federalists and Republicans withered away in the 1820s, the stage was set for
the emergence of a new party system based on very well organized local parties
that appealed for the votes of (almost) all adult white men. The former
Jeffersonian party split into factions. They split over the choice of a
successor to President James Monroe, and
the party faction that supported many of the old Jeffersonian principles, led
by Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren, became the Democratic Party.
As Norton explains the transformation in 1828:
Jacksonians believed the people's will had
finally prevailed. Through a lavishly financed coalition of state parties,
political leaders, and newspaper editors, a popular movement had elected the
president. The Democrats became the nation's first well-organized national
party...and tight party organization became the hallmark of nineteenth-century
American politics.[82]
Opposing factions led by Henry Clay helped form the Whig Party.
The Democratic Party had a small but decisive advantage over the Whigs until
the 1850s, when the Whigs fell apart over the issue of slavery.
Behind the platforms issued by state and
national parties stood a widely shared political outlook that characterized the
Democrats:
The Democrats represented a wide range of
views but shared a fundamental commitment to the Jeffersonian concept of an agrarian
society. They viewed the central government as the enemy of individual liberty.
The 1824 "corrupt bargain" had strengthened their suspicion of
Washington politics. ... Jacksonians feared the concentration of economic
and political power. They believed that government intervention in the economy
benefited special-interest groups and created corporate monopolies that favored
the rich. They sought to restore the independence of the individual—the artisan
and the ordinary farmer—by ending federal support of banks and corporations and
restricting the use of paper currency, which they distrusted. Their definition
of the proper role of government tended to be negative, and Jackson's political
power was largely expressed in negative acts. He exercised the veto more than
all previous presidents combined. Jackson and his supporters also opposed
reform as a movement. Reformers eager to turn their programs into legislation
called for a more active government. But Democrats tended to oppose programs
like educational reform mid the establishment of a public education system.
They believed, for instance, that public schools restricted individual liberty
by interfering with parental responsibility and undermined freedom of religion
by replacing church schools. Nor did Jackson share reformers' humanitarian
concerns. He had no sympathy for American Indians, initiating the removal of
the Cherokees along the Trail of Tears.[83][84]
Main article: Second Great
Awakening
A drawing of a Protestant
camp meeting, 1829.
The Second Great Awakening was a Protestant
revival movement that affected the entire nation during the early 19th century
and led to rapid church growth. The movement began around 1790, gained momentum
by 1800, and, after 1820 membership rose rapidly among Baptist and Methodist
congregations, whose preachers led the movement. It was past its peak by the
1840s.[85]
It enrolled millions of new members in
existing evangelical denominations and led to the formation of new
denominations. Many converts believed that the Awakening heralded a new millennial age. The Second Great Awakening
stimulated the establishment of many reform movements – including abolitionism and temperance designed
to remove the evils of society before the anticipated Second Coming of Jesus Christ.[86]
Main article: Abolitionism
in the United States
After 1840 the growing abolitionist
movement redefined itself as a crusade against the sin of slave ownership. It
mobilized support (especially among religious women in the Northeast affected
by the Second Great
Awakening). William Lloyd
Garrison published the most influential of the many
anti-slavery newspapers, The
Liberator, while Frederick Douglass,
an ex-slave, began writing for that newspaper around 1840 and started his own
abolitionist newspaper North Star in
1847.[87] The great majority
of anti-slavery activists, such as Abraham Lincoln, rejected Garrison's
theology and held that slavery was an unfortunate social evil, not a sin.[88][89]
Main article: American frontier
The American colonies and the new nation
grew very rapidly in population and area, as pioneers pushed the frontier of
settlement west.[90] The process finally
ended around 1890–1912 as the last major farmlands and ranch lands were
settled. Native American tribes in some places resisted militarily, but they
were overwhelmed by settlers and the army and after 1830 were relocated to
reservations in the west. The highly influential "Frontier Thesis" argues that the frontier
shaped the national character, with its boldness, violence, innovation, individualism, and democracy.[91]
Recent historians have emphasized the
multicultural nature of the frontier. Enormous popular attention in the media
focuses on the "Wild West" of the second half of the 19th century. As
defined by Hine and Faragher, "frontier history tells the story of the
creation and defense of communities, the use of the land, the development of
markets, and the formation of states". They explain, "It is a tale of
conquest, but also one of survival, persistence, and the merging of peoples and
cultures that gave birth and continuing life to America."[91]
Through wars and treaties, establishment of
law and order, building farms, ranches, and towns, marking trails and digging
mines, and pulling in great migrations of foreigners, the United States
expanded from coast to coast fulfilling the dreams of Manifest Destiny. As the American frontier
passed into history, the myths of the west in fiction and film took firm hold
in the imagination of Americans and foreigners alike. America is exceptional in
choosing its iconic self-image. "No other nation," says David
Murdoch, "has taken a time and place from its past and produced a
construct of the imagination equal to America's creation of the West."[92]
From the early 1830s to 1869, the Oregon Trail and its many offshoots were
used by over 300,000 settlers. '49ers (in the California Gold Rush),
ranchers, farmers, and entrepreneurs and their families headed to California,
Oregon, and other points in the far west. Wagon-trains took five or six months
on foot; after 1869, the trip took 6 days by rail.[93]
Manifest Destiny was the belief that
American settlers were destined to expand across the continent. This concept
was born out of "A sense of mission to redeem the Old World by high
example ... generated by the potentialities of a new earth for building a new
heaven."[94] Manifest Destiny
was rejected by modernizers, especially the Whigs like Henry Clay and Abraham
Lincoln who wanted to build cities and factories – not more farms.[95] Democrats strongly favored expansion, and they won the
key election of 1844. After a bitter debate in Congress the Republic of Texas was annexed in 1845,
which Mexico had warned meant war.[96]
The American occupation
of Mexico City in 1848
The Mexican–American War (1846–48)
broke out with the homefront polarized as Whigs opposed and Democrats supported
the war. The U.S. army, using regulars and large numbers of volunteers,
defeated the Mexican armies, invaded at several points, captured Mexico City
and won decisively. The 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe
Hidalgo made peace. Many Democrats wanted to annex all of
Mexico, but that idea was rejected by southerners who argued that by
incorporating millions of Mexican people, mainly of mixed race, would undermine
the United States as an exclusively white republic.[97] Instead the U.S.
took Texas and the lightly settled northern parts (California and New Mexico).
The Hispanic residents were given full citizenship and the Mexican
Indians became American
Indians. Simultaneously gold was discovered, pulling over 100,000
men to northern California in a matter of months in the California Gold Rush.
A peaceful compromise with Britain gave the U.S. ownership of the Oregon Country, which was renamed the Oregon Territory.[96]
Main article: Origins
of the American Civil War
.png)
Union states: navy blue (free)
and yellow (slave[also known as Border
states])
Confederacy states: brown (slave)
U.S. territories: lighter shades of blue and brown
Confederacy states: brown (slave)
U.S. territories: lighter shades of blue and brown
The central issue after 1848 was the
expansion of slavery, pitting the anti-slavery elements that were a majority in
the North, against the pro-slavery elements that overwhelmingly dominated the
white South. A small number of very active Northerners were abolitionists who
declared that ownership of slaves was a sin (in terms of Protestant theology)
and demanded its immediate abolition. Much larger numbers were against the
expansion of slavery, seeking to put it on the path to extinction so that
America would be committed to free land (as in low-cost farms owned and
cultivated by a family), free labor (no slaves), and free speech (as opposed to
censorship rampant in the South). Southern whites insisted that slavery was of
economic, social, and cultural benefit to all whites (and even to the slaves
themselves), and denounced all anti-slavery spokesmen as
"abolitionists."[98]
Religious activists split on slavery, with
the Methodists and Baptists dividing into northern and southern denominations.
In the North, the Methodists, Congregationalists, and Quakers included many
abolitionists, especially among women activists. (The Catholic, Episcopal and
Lutheran denominations largely ignored the slavery issue.)[99]
The issue of slavery in the new territories
was seemingly settled by the Compromise of 1850,
brokered by Whig Henry Clay and
Democrat Stephen Douglas;
the Compromise included the admission of California as a free state.
The point of contention was the Fugitive Slave Act,
which increased federal enforcement and required even free states to cooperate
in turning over fugitive slaves to their owners. Abolitionists pounced on the
Act to attack slavery, as in the best-selling anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe.[100]
The Compromise of 1820 was
repealed in 1854 with the Kansas–Nebraska Act,
promoted by Senator Douglas in the name of "popular
sovereignty" and democracy. It permitted voters to decide on
slavery in each territory, and allowed Douglas to say he was neutral on the
slavery issue. Anti-slavery forces rose in anger and alarm, forming the new Republican Party. Pro- and anti- contingents rushed to
Kansas to vote slavery up or down, resulting in a miniature civil war called Bleeding Kansas. By the late 1850s, the young
Republican Party dominated nearly all northern states and thus the electoral
college. It insisted that slavery would never be allowed to expand (and thus
would slowly die out).[101]
The Southern slavery-based societies had
become wealthy based on their cotton and other agricultural commodity production, and some
particularly profited from the internal slave trade. Northern cities such as
Boston and New York, and regional industries, were tied economically to slavery
by banking, shipping, and manufacturing, including textile mills. By 1860, there were four
million slaves in the South,
nearly eight times as many as there were nationwide in 1790. The plantations were
highly profitable, because of the heavy European demand for raw cotton. Most of
the profits were invested in new lands and in purchasing more slaves (largely
drawn from the declining tobacco regions).
For 50 of the nation's first 72 years, a
slaveholder served as President of the United States and, during that period,
only slaveholding presidents were re-elected to second terms.[102] In addition,
southern states benefited by their increased apportionment in Congress due to
the partial counting of slaves in their populations.
Slave rebellions were planned or actually
took place – including by Gabriel Prosser (1800), Denmark Vesey (1822), Nat Turner (1831), and John
Brown (1859) – but they only involved dozens of people and
all failed. They caused fear in the white South, which imposed tighter slave
oversight and reduced the rights of free blacks.
The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 required the states to cooperate with slave
owners when attempting to recover escaped slaves, which outraged Northerners.
Formerly, an escaped slave, having reached a non-slave state, was presumed to
have attained sanctuary and freedom. The Supreme Court's 1857 decision in Dred Scott v.
Sandford ruled that the Missouri Compromise was
unconstitutional; angry Republicans said this decision threatened to make
slavery a national institution.
After Abraham Lincoln won the 1860 election,
seven Southern states seceded from the
union and set up a new nation, the Confederate
States of America (C.S.A.), on February 8, 1861. It attacked Fort Sumter, a U.S. Army fort in South
Carolina, thus igniting the war. When Lincoln called for troops to suppress the
Confederacy in April 1861, four more states seceded and joined the Confederacy.
A few of the (northernmost) "slave states"
did not secede and became known as the border
states; these were Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri.
During the war, the northwestern portion of
Virginia seceded from the C.S.A. and became the new Union state of West Virginia.[103] West Virginia is
usually grouped with the border
states.
Main article: American Civil War
The Union had large
advantages in men and resources at the start of the war. The ratio grew
steadily in favor of the Union.
The Civil War began on April 12, 1861, when Confederate forces
attacked a U.S. military installation at Fort Sumter in South Carolina. In response to the attack, on
April 15, Lincoln called on the states to send detachments totaling 75,000
troops to recapture forts, protect the capital, and "preserve the
Union", which in his view still existed intact despite the actions of the
seceding states. The two armies had their first major clash at the First Battle of
Bull Run, ending in a Union defeat, but, more importantly, proved to
both the Union and Confederacy that the war would be much longer and bloodier
than originally anticipated.[104]
Lincoln with Allan Pinkerton and Major General John Alexander
McClernand at the Battle of Antietam.
The war soon divided into two theaters: Eastern and Western.
In the western theater, the Union was quite successful, with major battles,
such as Perryville and Shiloh, producing strategic Union victories
and destroying major Confederate operations.[105]
Irish anger at the draft led
to the New York Draft Riots of
1863, one of the worst incidents of civil unrest in American history.
Warfare in the Eastern theater started
poorly for the Union as the Confederates won at Manassas Junction (Bull Run),
just outside Washington. Major General George B. McClellan was
put in charge of the Union armies. After reorganizing the new Army of the Potomac,
McClellan failed to capture the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia in
his Peninsula Campaign and retreated after attacks from newly
appointed Confederate General Robert E. Lee.[106]
Feeling confident in his army after
defeating the Union at Second Bull Run, Lee embarked on an invasion of the north that was stopped by
McClellan at the bloody Battle of Antietam.
Despite this, McClellan was relieved from command for refusing to pursue Lee's
crippled army. The next commander, General Ambrose Burnside, suffered a humiliating
defeat by Lee's smaller army at the Battle of
Fredericksburg late in 1862, causing yet another change in
commanders. Lee won again at the Battle of
Chancellorsville in May 1863, while losing his top aide, Stonewall Jackson. But Lee pushed too hard and
ignored the Union threat in the west. Lee invaded Pennsylvania in search of
supplies and to cause war-weariness in
the North. In perhaps the turning
point of the war, Lee's army was badly beaten at the Battle of Gettysburg,
July 1–3, 1863, and barely made it back to Virginia.[107]
The Battle of Franklin,
November 30, 1864.
Simultaneously on July 4, 1863, Union
forces under the command of General Ulysses S. Grant gained control of the
Mississippi River at the Battle of Vicksburg,
thereby splitting the Confederacy. Lincoln made General Grant commander of all
Union armies.
The last two years of the war were bloody
for both sides, with Grant launching a war of attrition against General Lee's Army of Northern
Virginia. This war of attrition was divided into three main
campaigns. The first of these, the Overland Campaign forced Lee to retreat
into the city of Petersburg where Grant launched his second major offensive,
the Richmond-Petersburg
Campaign in which he besieged Petersburg.
After a near ten-month siege, Petersburg surrendered. However, the defense of Fort
Gregg allowed Lee to move his army out of Petersburg. Grant
pursued and launched the final, Appomattox Campaign which
resulted in Lee surrendering his Army of Northern Virginia on April 9, 1865, at Appomattox Court House. Other Confederate armies followed
suit and the war ended with no postwar insurgency.
Based on 1860 census figures,
about 8% of all white males aged 13 to 43 died in the war, including 6% from
the North and 18% from the South,[108] establishing the
American Civil War as the deadliest war in American history. Its legacy
includes ending slavery in the United States, restoring the Union, and
strengthening the role of the federal government.
See also: Military history of African Americans in the American
Civil War and Emancipation
Proclamation
The Emancipation
Proclamation was an executive order issued by President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863. In a
single stroke it changed the legal status, as recognized by the U.S.
government, of 3 million slaves in designated areas of the Confederacy from
"slave" to "free." It had the practical effect that as soon
as a slave escaped the control of the Confederate government, by running away
or through advances of federal troops, the slave became legally and actually
free. The owners were never compensated. Plantation owners, realizing that
emancipation would destroy their economic system, sometimes moved their slaves
as far as possible out of reach of the Union army. By June 1865, the Union Army
controlled all of the Confederacy and liberated all of the designated slaves.[109] Large numbers moved
into camps run by the Freedmen's Bureau,
where they were given food, shelter, medical care, and arrangements for their
employment were made.
The severe dislocations of war and
Reconstruction had a large negative impact on the black population, with a
large amount of sickness and death.[110]
Main article: Reconstruction Era
See also: History
of the United States (1865–1918)
Freedmen voting in New Orleans, 1867.
Reconstruction lasted from Lincoln's Emancipation
Proclamation of January 1, 1863 to the Compromise of 1877.[111]
The major issues faced by Lincoln were the
status of the ex-slaves (called "Freedmen"), the loyalty and civil
rights of ex-rebels, the status of the 11 ex-Confederate states, the powers of
the federal government needed to prevent a future civil war, and the question
of whether Congress or the President would make the major decisions.
The severe threats of starvation and
displacement of the unemployed Freedmen were met by the first major federal
relief agency, the Freedmen's Bureau,
operated by the Army.[112]
Three "Reconstruction
Amendments" were passed to expand civil rights for black
Americans: the Thirteenth Amendment outlawed slavery;
the Fourteenth Amendment guaranteed equal
rights for all and citizenship for blacks; the Fifteenth Amendment prevented race from
being used to disfranchise men.
Ex-Confederates remained in control of most
Southern states for over two years, but that changed when the Radical Republicans gained
control of Congress in the 1866 elections. President Andrew Johnson, who sought easy terms for
reunions with ex-rebels, was virtually powerless; he escaped by one vote
removal through impeachment. Congress enfranchised black men and temporarily
stripped many ex-Confederate leaders of the right to hold office. New
Republican governments came to power based on a coalition of Freedmen made up
of Carpetbaggers (new
arrivals from the North), and Scalawags (native white Southerners).
They were backed by the US Army. Opponents said they were corrupt and violated
the rights of whites.[113]
State by state they lost power to a
conservative-Democratic coalition, which gained control of the entire South by
1877. In response to Radical Reconstruction, the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) emerged in 1867 as a
white-supremacist organization opposed to black civil rights and Republican
rule. President Ulysses Grant's vigorous enforcement of the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1870 shut down the
Klan, and it disbanded. Paramilitary groups, such as the White League and Red
Shirts emerged about 1874 that worked openly to use
intimidation and violence to suppress black voting to regain white political
power in states across the South during the 1870s. Rable described them as the
military arm of the Democratic Party.[113]
Reconstruction ended after the disputed 1876
election. The Compromise of 1877 gave
Republican candidate Rutherford B. Hayes the
White House. The federal government withdrew its troops from the South, and
Southern Democrats took control of every Southern state.[114] From 1890 to 1908,
southern states effectively disfranchised most
black voters and many poor whites by making voter registration more difficult
through poll taxes, literacy tests, and other arbitrary devices.
They passed segregation laws and imposed second-class status on blacks in a
system known as Jim Crow that
lasted until the Civil Rights Movement.[115][116]
Deeply religious Southerners saw the hand
of God in history, which demonstrated His wrath at their sinfulness, or His
rewards for their suffering. Historian Wilson Fallin has examined the sermons
of white and black Baptist preachers after the War. Southern white preachers
said:
God had chastised them and given them a
special mission – to maintain orthodoxy, strict biblicism, personal piety,
and traditional race relations. Slavery, they insisted, had not been sinful.
Rather, emancipation was a historical tragedy and the end of Reconstruction was
a clear sign of God's favor.
In sharp contrast, Black preachers
interpreted the Civil War as:
God's gift of freedom. They appreciated
opportunities to exercise their independence, to worship in their own way, to
affirm their worth and dignity, and to proclaim the fatherhood of God and the
brotherhood of man. Most of all, they could form their own churches,
associations, and conventions. These institutions offered self-help and racial
uplift, and provided places where the gospel of liberation could be proclaimed.
As a result, black preachers continued to insist that God would protect and
help him; God would be their rock in a stormy land.[117]
The completion of the
Transcontinental Railroad (1869) at First
Transcontinental Railroad, by Andrew J. Russell.
Main article: Gilded Age
The latter half of the nineteenth century
was marked by the rapid development and settlement of the far West, first by
wagon trains and riverboats and then aided by the completion of the transcontinental
railroad. Large numbers of European immigrants (especially from
Germany and Scandinavia) took up low-cost or free farms in the Prairie States.
Mining for silver and copper opened up the Mountain West. The United States
Army fought frequent small-scale wars with Native Americans as settlers
encroached on their traditional lands. Gradually the US purchased the Native
American tribal lands and extinguished their claims, forcing most tribes onto
subsidized reservations.
According to the U.S. Bureau of
the Census (1894), from 1789 to 1894:
The Indian wars under
the government of the United States have been more than 40 in number. They have
cost the lives of about 19,000 white men, women and children, including those
killed in individual combats, and the lives of about 30,000 Indians. The actual
number of killed and wounded Indians must be very much higher than the given...
Fifty percent additional would be a safe estimate...[118]
The "Gilded Age" was a term that Mark Twain used to describe the period of
the late 19th century when there had been a dramatic expansion of American
wealth and prosperity. Reform of the Age included the Civil
Service Act, which mandated a competitive examination for applicants
for government jobs. Other important legislation included the Interstate Commerce
Act, which ended railroads' discrimination against small shippers,
and the Sherman Antitrust Act,
which outlawed monopolies in business. Twain believed that this age was
corrupted by such elements as land speculators, scandalous politics, and
unethical business practices.[119]Since the days of Charles A. Beard and Matthew Josephson, some historians have argued
that the United States was effectively plutocratic for at least part of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era.[120][121][122][123][124] As financiers and
industrialists such as J.P. Morgan and John D. Rockefeller began
to amass vast fortunes, many US observers were concerned that the nation was
losing its pioneering egalitarian spirit.[125]
By 1890 American industrial production and
per capita income exceeded those of all other world nations. In response to
heavy debts and decreasing farm prices, wheat and cotton farmers joined the Populist
Party.[126] An unprecedented
wave of immigration from
Europe served to both provide the labor for American industry and create
diverse communities in previously undeveloped areas. From 1880 to 1914, peak
years of immigration, more than 22 million people migrated to the United
States.[127] Most were unskilled
workers who quickly found jobs in mines, mills, factories. Many immigrants were
craftsmen (especially from Britain and Germany) bringing human skills, and
others were farmers (especially from Germany and Scandinavia) who purchased
inexpensive land on the Prairies from railroads who sent agents to Europe.
Poverty, growing inequality and dangerous working conditions, along with socialist and anarchist ideas
diffusing from European immigrants, led to the rise of the labor
movement, which often included violent strikes.[128][129]
Skilled workers banded together to control
their crafts and raise wages by forming labor unions in industrial areas of the
Northeast. Before the 1930s few factory workers joined the unions
in the labor movement. Samuel Gompers led the American
Federation of Labor 1886–1924, coordinating multiple unions.
Industrial growth was very rapid, led by John D. Rockefeller in
oil and Andrew Carnegie in
steel; both became leaders of philanthropy, giving away their fortunes to
create the modern system of hospitals, universities, libraries, and
foundations.
Mulberry Street, along
which Manhattan's Little Italy is
centered. Lower East Side,
circa 1900. Almost 97% of residents of the 10 largest American cities of 1900
were non-Hispanic whites.[130]
A severe nationwide depression broke out in
1893; it was called the Panic of 1893 and impacted farmers,
workers, and businessmen who saw prices, wages, and profits fall.[131] Many railroads went
bankrupt. The resultant political reaction fell on the Democratic Party, whose
leader President Grover Cleveland shouldered
much of the blame. Labor unrest involved numerous strikes, most notably the
violent Pullman Strike of
1894, which was shut down by federal troops under Cleveland's orders. The Populist
Party gained strength among cotton and wheat farmers, as well
as coal miners, but was overtaken by the even more popular Free Silver movement, which demanded
using silver to enlarge the money supply, leading to inflation that the silverites
promised would end the depression.[132]
The financial, railroad, and business
communities fought back hard, arguing that only the gold standard would save the
economy. In the most intense election in the nation's history, conservative
Republican William McKinley defeated
silverite William Jennings
Bryan, who ran on the Democratic, Populist, and Silver Republican
tickets. Bryan swept the South and West, but McKinley ran up landslides among
the middle class, industrial workers, cities, and among upscale farmers in the
Midwest.[133]
Prosperity returned under McKinley, the
gold standard was enacted, and the tariff was raised. By 1900 the US had the
strongest economy on the globe. Apart from two short recessions (in 1907 and
1920) the overall economy remained prosperous and growing until 1929.
Republicans, citing McKinley's policies, took the credit.[134]
American children of many
ethnic backgrounds celebrate noisily in a 1902 Puck cartoon.
Main article: Progressive Era
Dissatisfaction on the part of the growing
middle class with the corruption and inefficiency of politics as usual, and the
failure to deal with increasingly important urban and industrial problems, led
to the dynamic Progressive Movement starting
in the 1890s. In every major city and state, and at the national level as well,
and in education, medicine, and industry, the progressives called for the
modernization and reform of decrepit institutions, the elimination of
corruption in politics, and the introduction of efficiency as a criterion for
change. Leading politicians from both parties, most notably Theodore Roosevelt, Charles Evans Hughes,
and Robert La
Follette on the Republican side, and William Jennings
Bryan and Woodrow Wilson on the Democratic side,
took up the cause of progressive reform. Women became especially involved in
demands for woman suffrage, prohibition, and better schools; their most
prominent leader was Jane Addams of
Chicago. "Muckraking" journalists such
as Upton Sinclair, Lincoln Steffens and Jacob Riis exposed corruption in business
and government along with rampant inner city poverty. Progressives implemented
anti-trust laws and regulated such industries of meat-packing, drugs, and
railroads. Four new constitutional amendments – the Sixteenth through Nineteenth – resulted from progressive
activism, bringing the federal income tax, direct election of Senators,
prohibition, and woman suffrage.[135] The Progressive
Movement lasted through the 1920s; the most active period was 1900–18.[136]
Further information: American imperialism
The United States emerged as a world
economic and military power after 1890. The main episode was the Spanish–American War,
which began when Spain refused American demands to reform its oppressive
policies in Cuba.[137] The "splendid
little war", as one official called it, involved a series of quick
American victories on land and at sea. At the Treaty of Paris peace
conference the United States acquired the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Guam.[138]
Cuba became an independent country, under
close American tutelage. Although the war itself was widely popular, the peace
terms proved controversial. William Jennings Bryan led his Democratic Party in
opposition to control of the Philippines, which he denounced as imperialism unbecoming
to American democracy.[138] President William McKinley defended the acquisition
and was riding high as the nation had returned to prosperity and felt
triumphant in the war. McKinley easily defeated Bryan in a rematch in the 1900
presidential election.[139]
After defeating an insurrection by
Filipino nationalists, the United States engaged in a large-scale
program to modernize the economy of the Philippines and dramatically upgrade
the public health facilities.[140] By 1908, however,
Americans lost interest in an empire and turned their international attention
to the Caribbean, especially the building of the Panama Canal. In 1912 when Arizona became the
final mainland state,
the American Frontier came
to an end. The canal opened in 1914 and increased trade with Japan and the rest
of the Far East. A key innovation was the Open Door Policy, whereby the imperial powers
were given equal access to Chinese business, with not one of them allowed to
take control of China.[141]
Main articles: American
entry into World War I and United
States home front during World War I
As World War I raged in Europe from 1914,
President Woodrow Wilson took full control of foreign policy, declaring
neutrality but warning Germany that resumption of unrestricted
submarine warfare against American ships supplying goods to
Allied nations would mean war. Germany decided to take the risk and try to win
by cutting off supplies to Britain; the U.S. declared war in April 1917.[142] American money,
food, and munitions arrived quickly, but troops had to be drafted and trained;
by summer 1918 American soldiers under General John J. Pershing arrived at the rate of
10,000 a day, while Germany was unable to replace its losses.[143]
The result was Allied victory
in November 1918. President Wilson demanded Germany depose the Kaiser and
accept his terms, the Fourteen Points. Wilson dominated the 1919 Paris
Peace Conference but Germany was treated harshly by the Allies
in the Treaty of Versailles (1919)
as Wilson put all his hopes in the new League of Nations. Wilson refused to
compromise with Senate Republicans over the issue of Congressional power to
declare war, and the Senate rejected the Treaty and the League.[144]
Further information: Women's
suffrage in the United States
Alice Paul wrote the Equal Rights
Amendment, whose passage became an unachieved goal of the feminist
movement in the 1970s
The women's suffrage movement began with
the June 1848 National Convention of the Liberty Party.
Presidential candidate Gerrit Smith argued
for and established women's suffrage as a party plank. One month later, his
cousin Elizabeth Cady
Stanton joined with Lucretia Mott and other women to organize
the Seneca Falls
Convention, featuring the Declaration of
Sentiments demanding equal rights for women, and the right to
vote.[145] Many of these
activists became politically aware during the abolitionist movement. The
women's rights campaign during "first-wave feminism"
was led by Stanton, Lucy Stone and Susan B. Anthony, among many others. Stone and Paulina Wright Davis organized
the prominent and influential National
Women's Rights Convention in 1850. The movement reorganized
after the Civil War, gaining experienced campaigners, many of whom had worked
for prohibition in the Women's
Christian Temperance Union. By the end of the 19th century a few
western states had granted women full voting rights,[146] though women had
made significant legal victories, gaining rights in areas such as property and
child custody.[147]
Around 1912 the feminist movement, which had grown sluggish,
began to reawaken, putting an emphasis on its demands for equality and arguing
that the corruption of American politics demanded purification by women because
men could not do that job.[148] Protests became
increasingly common as suffragette Alice Paul led parades through the
capital and major cities. Paul split from the large National
American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), which favored a
more moderate approach and supported the Democratic Party and Woodrow Wilson,
led by Carrie Chapman Catt,
and formed the more militant National Woman's
Party. Suffragists were arrested during their "Silent Sentinels" pickets at the White
House, the first time such a tactic was used, and were taken as political prisoners.[149]
The old anti-suffragist argument that only
men could fight a war, and therefore only men deserve the right to vote, was
refuted by the enthusiastic participation of tens of thousands of American
women on the home front in World War I. Across the world, grateful nations gave
women the right to vote. Furthermore, most of the Western states had already
given the women the right to vote in state and national elections, and the
representatives from those states, including the first woman Jeannette Rankin of Montana, demonstrated
that woman suffrage was a success. The main resistance came from the south,
where white leaders were worried about the threat of black women voting.
Congress passed the Nineteenth Amendment in 1919, and women
could vote in 1920.[150]
NAWSA became the League of Women
Voters, and the National Woman's Party began lobbying for full
equality and the Equal Rights
Amendment, which would pass Congress during the second wave of the
women's movement in 1972. Politicians responded to the new electorate by
emphasizing issues of special interest to women, especially prohibition, child
health, and world peace.[151][152] The main surge of
women voting came in 1928, when the big-city machines realized they needed the
support of women to elect Al Smith, a Catholic
from New York City. Meanwhile, Protestants mobilized women to support
Prohibition and vote for Republican Herbert Hoover.[153]
Main article: History
of the United States (1918–45)
Further information: Great Depression, Causes of
the Great Depression, and New Deal
.jpg)
Prohibition agents
destroying barrels of alcohol in Chicago, 1921.
Money supply decreased a
lot between Black Tuesday and
the Bank Holiday in March
1933 when there were massive bank runs across the United States.
In the 1920s the U.S. grew steadily in
stature as an economic and military world power. The United States Senate did
not ratify the Treaty of Versailles imposed
by its Allies on
the defeated Central Powers;
instead, the United States chose to pursue unilateralism.[154] The aftershock of
Russia's October Revolution resulted
in real fears of Communism in the United States, leading to a Red Scare and the deportation of aliens
considered subversive.
While public health facilities grew rapidly
in the Progressive Era, and hospitals and medical schools were modernized,[155] the nation in 1918
lost 675,000 lives to the Spanish flu pandemic.[156]
In 1920, the manufacture, sale, import and
export of alcohol were prohibited by the Eighteenth Amendment, Prohibition.
The result was that in cities illegal alcohol became a big business, largely
controlled by racketeers. The second Ku Klux Klan grew rapidly in 1922–25,
then collapsed. Immigration laws were passed to strictly limit the number of
new entries. The 1920s were called the Roaring Twenties due to the great
economic prosperity during this period. Jazz became
popular among the younger generation, and thus the decade was also called the Jazz Age.
Dorothea Lange's Migrant Mother depicts
destitute pea pickers in California, centering on Florence Owens
Thompson, a mother of seven, age 32, in Nipomo, California,
March 1936.
The Great Depression (1929–39) and the New
Deal (1933–36) were decisive moments in American political, economic, and
social history that reshaped the nation.[157]
During the 1920s, the nation enjoyed
widespread prosperity, albeit with a weakness in agriculture. A financial
bubble was fueled by an inflated stock market, which later led to the Stock Market
Crash on October 29, 1929.[158] This, along with many other
economic factors, triggered a worldwide depression known
as the Great Depression.
During this time, the United States experienced deflation as
prices fell, unemployment soared from 3% in 1929 to 25% in 1933, farm prices
fell by half, and manufacturing output plunged by one-third.
In 1932, Democratic presidential nominee Franklin D. Roosevelt promised
"a New Deal for the American people",
coining the enduring label for his domestic policies. The desperate economic
situation, along with the substantial Democratic victories in the 1932
elections, gave Roosevelt unusual influence over Congress in the "First
Hundred Days" of his administration. He used his leverage to win rapid
passage of a series of measures to create welfare programs and regulate the
banking system, stock market, industry, and agriculture, along with many other
government efforts to end the Great Depression and reform the American economy.
The New Deal regulated much of the economy, especially the financial sector. It
provided relief to the unemployed through numerous programs, such as the Works
Progress Administration (WPA) and (for young men) the Civilian
Conservation Corps. Large scale spending projects designed to
provide high paying jobs and rebuild the infrastructure were under the purview
of the Public Works
Administration. Roosevelt turned left in 1935–36, building up labor
unions through the Wagner Act. Unions
became a powerful element of the merging New Deal Coalition,
which won reelection for Roosevelt in 1936, 1940, and 1944 by mobilizing union
members, blue collar workers, relief recipients, big city machines, ethnic, and
religious groups (especially Catholics and Jews) and the white South, along
with blacks in the North (where they could vote). Some of the programs were
dropped in the 1940s when the conservatives regained power in Congress through
the Conservative Coalition.
Of special importance is the Social
Security program, begun in 1935.[159]
Further information: World War II, Military history of the United States during World War II,
and United
States home front during World War II
The Japanese crippled
American naval power with the attack on Pearl
Harbor, knocking out all the battleships
In the Depression years, the United States
remained focused on domestic concerns while democracy declined across the world
and many countries fell under the control of dictators. Imperial Japan asserted dominance in East
Asia and in the Pacific. Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy militarized
too and threatened conquests, while Britain and France attempted appeasement to avert another war in
Europe. US legislation in the Neutrality Acts sought
to avoid foreign conflicts; however, policy clashed with increasing anti-Nazi feelings
following the German invasion of Poland in
September 1939 that started World War II. Roosevelt positioned the US as the
"Arsenal of Democracy",
pledging full-scale financial and munitions support for the Allies – but
no military personnel.[160] Japan tried to
neutralize America's power in the Pacific by attacking Pearl
Harbor on December 7, 1941, which catalyzed American support to
enter the war and seek revenge.[161]
The main contributions of the US to the
Allied war effort comprised money, industrial output, food, petroleum,
technological innovation, and (especially 1944–45), military personnel. Much of
the focus in Washington was maximizing the economic output of the nation. The
overall result was a dramatic increase in GDP, the export of vast quantities of
supplies to the Allies and to American forces overseas, the end of
unemployment, and a rise in civilian consumption even as 40% of the GDP went to
the war effort. This was achieved by tens of millions of workers moving from
low-productivity occupations to high efficiency jobs, improvements in
productivity through better technology and management, and the move into the
active labor force of students, retired people, housewives, and the unemployed,
and an increase in hours worked.
Into the Jaws of Death: The Normandy landings began the Allied march
toward Germany from the west.
American corpses sprawled
on the beach of Tarawa,
November 1943.
It was exhausting; leisure activities
declined sharply. People tolerated the extra work because of patriotism, the
pay, and the confidence that it was only "for the duration", and life
would return to normal as soon as the war was won. Most durable goods became
unavailable, and meat, clothing, and gasoline were tightly rationed. In
industrial areas housing was in short supply as people doubled up and lived in
cramped quarters. Prices and wages were controlled, and Americans saved a high
portion of their incomes, which led to renewed growth after the war instead of
a return to depression.[162][163]
The Allies –
the US, Britain, and the Soviet Union, China, as well as Poland, Canada and
other countries – fought the Axis powers of Germany, Italy, and Japan.
The Allies saw Germany as the main threat and gave highest priority to Europe.
The US dominated the war against Japan and stopped Japanese expansion in the
Pacific in 1942. After losing Pearl Harbor and in the Philippines to the
Japanese, and drawing the Battle of the Coral
Sea (May 1942), the American Navy inflicted a decisive blow at Midway (June 1942). American ground
forces assisted in the North African
Campaign that eventually concluded with the collapse of
Mussolini's fascist government in 1943, as Italy switched to the Allied side. A
more significant European front was opened on D-Day,
June 6, 1944, in which American and Allied forces invaded Nazi-occupied France
from Britain.
On the home
front, mobilization of the US economy was managed by Roosevelt's War Production Board.
The wartime production boom led to full employment, wiping out this vestige of
the Great Depression. Indeed, labor shortages encouraged industry to
look for new sources of workers, finding new roles for women and blacks.[165]
However, the fervor also inspired anti-Japanese
sentiment, which was handled by removing
everyone of Japanese descent from the West Coast war zone.[166] Research and
development took flight as well, best seen in the Manhattan Project, a secret effort to harness nuclear fission to produce highly
destructive atomic bombs.[167]
The Allies pushed the Germans out of France
but faced an unexpected counterattack at the Battle of the Bulge in
December. The final German effort failed, and, as Allied armies in East and
West were converging on Berlin, the Nazis hurriedly tried to kill the last
remaining Jews. The western front stopped short, leaving Berlin to the Soviets
as the Nazi regime formally capitulated in May 1945, ending the war in Europe.[168] Over in the
Pacific, the US implemented an island hopping strategy toward
Tokyo, establishing airfields for bombing runs against mainland Japan from the Mariana Islands and achieving hard-fought
victories at Iwo Jima and Okinawa in 1945.[169] Bloodied at
Okinawa, the U.S. prepared to invade Japan's home
islands when B-29s dropped
atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, forcing the empire's surrender in a
matter of days and thus ending World War II.[170] The US occupied
Japan (and part of Germany), sending Douglas MacArthur to restructure the
Japanese economy and political system along American lines.[171] During the war,
Roosevelt coined the term "Four Powers" to refer four major Allies
of World War II, the United States, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union and
China, which later became the foundation of the United Nations Security
Council.[172]
Though the nation lost more than 400,000
military personnel,[173] the mainland
prospered untouched by the devastation of war that inflicted a heavy toll on
Europe and Asia.
Participation in postwar foreign affairs
marked the end of predominant American isolationism. The awesome threat of
nuclear weapons inspired both optimism and fear.
Nuclear weapons were never used after 1945, as both sides drew back from the
brink and a "long peace" characterized the Cold War years, starting with the Truman Doctrine in May 22, 1947. There were,
however, regional wars in Korea and Vietnam.[174]
Main articles: History
of the United States (1945–64), History
of the United States (1964–80), and United States in
the 1950s
President Kennedy's Civil Rights Address,
June 11, 1963.
Following World War II, the United States
emerged as one of the two dominant superpowers, the USSR being
the other. The U.S. Senate on
a bipartisan vote approved U.S. participation in the United Nations (UN), which
marked a turn away from the traditional isolationism of the U.S. and toward
increased international involvement.
The primary American goal of 1945–48 was to
rescue Europe from the devastation of World War II and to contain the expansion
of Communism, represented by the Soviet Union. The Truman Doctrine of 1947 provided military
and economic aid to Greece and Turkey to counteract the threat of Communist
expansion in the Balkans. In 1948, the United States replaced piecemeal
financial aid programs with a comprehensive Marshall Plan, which pumped money into the
economy of Western Europe, and removed trade barriers, while modernizing the
managerial practices of businesses and governments.[175]
The Plan's $13 billion budget was in the
context of a US GDP of $258 billion in 1948 and was in addition to the $12
billion in American aid given to Europe between the end of the war and the
start of the Marshall Plan. Soviet head of state Joseph Stalin prevented his satellite states from participating,
and from that point on, Eastern Europe, with inefficient centralized economies,
fell further and further behind Western Europe in terms of economic development
and prosperity. In 1949, the United States, rejecting the long-standing policy
of no military alliances in peacetime, formed the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) alliance, which continues
into the 21st century. In response the Soviets formed the Warsaw Pact of communist states.[175]
Cuban Missile Crisis a
meeting with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev in Vienna in 1961
In August 1949 the Soviets tested their
first nuclear weapon, thereby escalating the risk of warfare. Indeed, the
threat of mutually
assured destruction prevented both powers from going too far,
and resulted in proxy wars, especially in Korea and Vietnam, in which the two sides did not
directly confront each other.[174]Within the United States,
the Cold War prompted concerns about Communist influence. The unexpected
leapfrogging of American technology by the Soviets in 1957 with Sputnik, the first Earth satellite, began the Space Race, won by the Americans as Apollo 11 landed astronauts on the moon
in 1969. The angst about the weaknesses of American education led to
large-scale federal support for science education and
research.[176]
In the decades after World War II, the
United States became a global influence in economic, political, military,
cultural, and technological affairs. Beginning in the 1950s, middle-class
culture became obsessed with consumer goods. White Americans made up nearly 90% of the
population in 1950.[177][clarification
needed]
In 1960,
the charismatic politician John F. Kennedy was elected as the first
and – thus far – only Roman Catholic President of the United States.
The Kennedy family brought a new life and vigor to the atmosphere of the White House. His time in office was marked by
such notable events as the acceleration of the United States' role in the Space Race, escalation of the American role in
the Vietnam War, the Cuban missile crisis,
the Bay of Pigs Invasion,
the jailing of Martin Luther King,
Jr. during the Birmingham campaign,
and the appointment of his brother Robert F. Kennedy to his Cabinet as Attorney
General. Kennedy was
assassinated in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963, leaving
the nation in profound shock.[178]
Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King,
Jr., June 22, 1963, Washington, D.C.
The climax of liberalism came
in the mid-1960s with the success of President Lyndon B. Johnson (1963–69) in securing
congressional passage of his Great Society programs.[179] They included civil
rights, the end of segregation, Medicare,
extension of welfare, federal aid to education at all levels, subsidies for the
arts and humanities, environmental activism, and a series of programs designed
to wipe out poverty.[180][181] As recent
historians have explained:
Gradually, liberal intellectuals crafted a
new vision for achieving economic and social justice. The liberalism of the
early 1960s contained no hint of radicalism, little disposition to revive new
deal era crusades against concentrated economic power, and no intention to fast
and class passions or redistribute wealth or restructure existing institutions.
Internationally it was strongly anti-Communist. It aimed to defend the free
world, to encourage economic growth at home, and to ensure that the resulting plenty
was fairly distributed. Their agenda-much influenced by Keynesian economic
theory-envisioned massive public expenditure that would speed economic growth,
thus providing the public resources to fund larger welfare, housing, health,
and educational programs.[182]
Johnson was rewarded with an electoral
landslide in 1964 against conservative Barry Goldwater, which broke the decades-long
control of Congress by the Conservative
coalition. However, the Republicans bounced back in 1966 and elected Richard Nixon in 1968. Nixon largely
continued the New Deal and Great Society programs he inherited; conservative
reaction would come with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980.[183] Meanwhile, the
American people completed a great migration from farms into the cities and
experienced a period of sustained economic expansion.
Main article: Civil Rights Movement
Duncan West speaking with Cesar Chavez. The Delano UFW rally.
Duncan represented the Teamsters who were supporiting the UFW and condeming
their IBT leadership for working as thugs against a fellow union. Duncan and
his wife Mary were the branch organizers of the LA IS.
Starting in the late 1950s, institutionalized racism across
the United States, but especially in the South,
was increasingly challenged by the growing Civil Rights Movement. The activism
of African-American leaders Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King,
Jr. led to the Montgomery Bus
Boycott, which launched the movement. For years African Americans
would struggle with violence against them but would achieve great steps toward
equality with Supreme Court decisions, including Brown v. Board
of Education and Loving v. Virginia,
the Civil Rights Act
of 1964, the Voting Rights Act
of 1965, and the Fair Housing Act
of 1968, which ended the Jim Crow laws that legalized racial segregation between
whites and blacks.[184]
A member of the Warrior
Society Mitakuye Oyasin wears an AIM jacket
at the raising of the John T. Williams Memorial Totem Pole, Seattle Center
Martin Luther King, Jr., who had won the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to
achieve equality of the races, was assassinated
in 1968. Following his death others led the movement, most notably
King's widow, Coretta Scott King,
who was also active, like her husband, in the Opposition to
the Vietnam War, and in the Women's
Liberation Movement. There were 164 riots in 128 American cities in
the first nine months of 1967.[185] Black Power emerged during the late 1960s
and early 1970s. The decade would ultimately bring about positive strides
toward integration, especially in government service, sports, and
entertainment. Native
Americans turned to the federal courts to fight for their land
rights. They held protests highlighting the federal government's failure to
honor treaties. One of the most outspoken Native American groups was the American Indian
Movement (AIM). In the 1960s, Cesar Chavez began organizing poorly paid Mexican-American farm workers in
California. He led a five-year-long strike by grape pickers. Then Chávez formed
the nation's first successful union of farm workers. His United Farm
Workers of America (UFW) faltered after a few years but after
Chavez died in 1993 he became an iconic "folk saint" in the pantheon
of Mexican Americans.[186]
Further information: Second-wave feminism
Gloria Steinem at a meeting of the Women's Action
Alliance, 1972.
A new consciousness of the inequality of
American women began sweeping the nation, starting with the 1963 publication of Betty Friedan's best-seller, The Feminine Mystique,
which explained how many housewives felt
trapped and unfulfilled, assaulted American culture for its creation of the
notion that women could only find fulfillment through their roles as wives,
mothers, and keepers of the home, and argued that women were just as able as
men to do every type of job. In 1966 Friedan and others established the National
Organization for Women, or NOW, to act for women as the NAACP did
for African Americans.[147][187]
Protests began, and the new Women's
Liberation Movement grew in size and power, gained much media attention, and,
by 1968, had replaced the Civil Rights Movement as the US's main social
revolution. Marches, parades, rallies, boycotts, and pickets brought out
thousands, sometimes millions. There were striking gains for women in medicine,
law, and business, while only a few were elected to office. The Movement was
split into factions by political ideology early on, however (with NOW on the
left, the Women's Equity
Action League (WEAL) on the right, the National
Women's Political Caucus (NWPC) in the center, and more radical
groups formed by younger women on the far left). The proposed Equal Rights
Amendment to the Constitution, passed by Congress in 1972 was
defeated by a conservative coalition mobilized by Phyllis Schlafly. They argued that it degraded
the position of the housewife and made young women susceptible to the military
draft.[188][189]
However, many federal laws (i.e., those equalizing pay, employment, education, employment
opportunities, and credit; ending
pregnancy discrimination; and requiring NASA,
the Military Academies,
and other organizations to admit women), state laws (i.e., those ending spousal abuse and marital rape), Supreme Court rulings (i.e.
ruling that the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment applied to
women), and state ERAs established women's equal status under the law, and
social custom and consciousness began to change, accepting women's equality.
The controversial issue of abortion, deemed by the Supreme Court as a fundamental right in Roe v. Wade (1973), is still a point of debate today.[190]
Main article: History
of the United States (1964–80)
Amid the Cold War, the United States
entered the Vietnam War, whose
growing unpopularity fed already existing social movements, including those
among women, minorities, and young people. President Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society social programs and
numerous rulings by the Warren Court added to the wide range of social reform during the 1960s and 1970s. Feminism and the environmental
movement became political forces, and progress continued toward civil rights for all Americans. The Counterculture
Revolution swept through the nation and much of the western
world in the late sixties and early seventies, further dividing Americans in a
"culture war" but also bringing forth more liberated social views.[191]
United States Navy F-4 Phantom II shadows a Soviet Tu-95 Bear D aircraft in the early 1970s
Johnson was succeeded in 1969 by Republican Richard Nixon, who attempted to gradually turn the war over to the South Vietnamese forces. He negotiated
the peace treaty in 1973 which
secured the release of POWs and led to the withdrawal of U.S. troops. The war
had cost the lives of 58,000 American troops. Nixon manipulated the fierce
distrust between the Soviet Union and China to the advantage of the United
States, achieving détente (relaxation;
ease of tension) with both parties.[192]
Nixon departs
The Watergate scandal, involving Nixon's cover-up
of his operatives' break-in into the Democratic
National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office complex destroyed his
political base, sent many aides to prison, and forced Nixon's resignation on
August 9, 1974. He was succeeded by Vice President Gerald Ford. The Fall of Saigon ended the Vietnam War and
resulted in North and South Vietnam being
reunited. Communist victories in neighboring Cambodia and Laos occurred
in the same year.[192]
The OPEC oil embargo marked a long-term
economic transition since, for the first time, energy prices skyrocketed, and
American factories faced serious competition from foreign automobiles,
clothing, electronics, and consumer goods. By the late 1970s the economy
suffered an energy crisis,
slow economic growth, high unemployment, and very high inflation coupled with
high interest rates (the term stagflation was coined). Since economists
agreed on the wisdom of deregulation, many of the New Deal era
regulations were ended, such as in transportation, banking, and telecommunications.[193]
Jimmy Carter, running as someone who was not a
part of the Washington political establishment, was elected president in 1976.[194]On the world stage,
Carter brokered the Camp David Accords between
Israel and Egypt. In 1979, Iranian students stormed the US embassy in Tehran and took 66 Americans hostage,
resulting in the Iran hostage crisis.
With the hostage crisis and continuing stagflation, Carter lost the 1980
election to the Republican Ronald Reagan.[195] On January 20,
1981, minutes after Carter's term in office ended, the remaining U.S. captives
held at the U.S. embassy in Iran were released, ending the 444-day hostage
crisis.[196]
Main article: History
of the United States (1980–91)
Ronald Reagan at the Brandenburg Gate challenges Soviet
premier Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall in 1987, shortly before the
end of the Cold War.
Ronald Reagan produced a major realignment with
his 1980 and 1984 landslide
elections. Reagan's economic policies (dubbed "Reaganomics") and the implementation of
the Economic
Recovery Tax Act of 1981 lowered the top marginal tax rate from
70% to 28% over the course of seven years.[197] Reagan continued to
downsize government taxation and regulation.[198] The US experienced
a recession in 1982, but the negative indicators reversed, with the inflation
rate decreasing from 11% to 2%, the unemployment rate decreasing from 10.8% in
December 1982 to 7.5% in November 1984,[199] and the economic
growth rate increasing from 4.5% to 7.2%.[200]
Reagan ordered a buildup of the US military,
incurring additional budget deficits. Reagan introduced a complicated missile
defense system known as the Strategic
Defense Initiative (SDI) (dubbed "Star Wars" by
opponents) in which, theoretically, the U.S. could shoot down missiles with
laser systems in space. The Soviets reacted harshly because they thought it
violated the 1972 Anti-Ballistic
Missile Treaty, and would upset the balance of power by giving the
U.S. a major military advantage. For years Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev argued vehemently
against SDI. However, by the late 1980s he decided the system would never work
and should not be used to block disarmament deals with the U.S.[201] Historians argue
how great an impact the SDI threat had on the Soviets – whether it was
enough to force Gorbachev to initiate radical reforms, or whether the
deterioration of the Soviet economy alone forced the reforms. There is
agreement that the Soviets realized they were well behind the Americans in
military technology, that to try to catch up would be very expensive, and that
the military expenses were already a very heavy burden slowing down their
economy.[202]
Reagan's Invasion of Grenada and bombing
of Libya were popular in the US, though his backing of the Contras rebels was mired in the
controversy over the Iran–Contra affair that
revealed Reagan's poor management style.[203]
Reagan met four times with Soviet leader
Mikhail Gorbachev, who ascended to power in 1985, and their summit conferences
led to the signing of the Intermediate-Range
Nuclear Forces Treaty. Gorbachev tried to save Communism in the
Soviet Union first by ending the expensive arms race with America,[204] then by shedding
the East European empire in 1989. The Soviet
Union collapsed on Christmas Day 1991, ending the US–Soviet Cold War.
The NASDAQ Composite index swelled with the dot-com bubble in the optimistic "New Economy". The bubble burst in 2000.
The United States emerged as the world's
sole remaining superpower and continued to intervene in international affairs
during the 1990s, including the 1991 Gulf War against Iraq.
Following his
election in 1992, President Bill Clinton oversaw one of the longest
periods of economic expansion and unprecedented gains in securities values, a
side effect of the digital revolution and
new business opportunities created by the Internet. He also worked with the
Republican Congress to pass the first balanced federal budget in 30 years.[205]
In 1998, Clinton was
impeached by the House of Representatives on charges of lying
about a sexual relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. He was acquitted by the
Senate. The failure of impeachment and the Democratic gains in the 1998
election forced House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a Republican, to resign from
Congress.[205]
The GOP expanded its base throughout the
South after 1968 (excepting 1976), largely due to its strength among socially conservative white
Evangelical Protestants and traditionalist Roman Catholics, added to its
traditional strength in the business community and suburbs. As white Democrats
in the South lost dominance of the Democratic Party in the 1990s, the region
took on the two-party apparatus
which characterized most of the nation. The Republican Party's central leader
by 1980 was Ronald Reagan,
whose conservative policies
called for reduced government spending and regulation, lower taxes, and a
strong anti-Soviet foreign
policy. His iconic status in the party persists into the 21st century, as
practically all GOP leaders acknowledge his stature. Social scientists Theodore
Caplow et al. argue, "The Republican party, nationally, moved from
right-center toward the center in 1940s and 1950s, then moved right again in
the 1970s and 1980s." They add: "The Democratic party, nationally,
moved from left-center toward the center in the 1940s and 1950s, then moved
further toward the right-center in the 1970s and 1980s."[206]
The presidential
election in 2000 between George W. Bush and Al Gore was one of the closest in US
history and helped lay the seeds for political polarization to come. The vote
in the decisive state of Florida was extremely close and produced a dramatic dispute over the
counting of votes. The US Supreme Court in Bush v. Gore ended the recount with a
5–4 vote. That meant Bush, then in the lead, carried Florida and the election.[207] Including 2000, the
Democrats outpolled the Republicans in the national vote in every election from
1992 to 2016, except for 2004.
Main article: History
of the United States (1991–2008)
Further information: September 11 attacks and War on Terror
The
former World Trade
Center in Lower Manhattan during September 11 attacks in
2001
One World Trade
Center, built in its place
On September 11, 2001 ("9/11"),
the United States was struck by a terrorist attack when 19 al-Qaeda hijackers commandeered four
airliners to be used in suicide attacks and intentionally crashed
two into both twin towers of the World Trade
Center and the third into the Pentagon, killing 2,937 victims—206 aboard
the three airliners, 2,606 who were in the World Trade Center and on the
ground, and 125 who were in the Pentagon.[208] The fourth plane
was re-taken by the passengers and crew of the aircraft. While they were not
able to land the plane safely, they were able to re-take control of the
aircraft and crash it into an empty field in Pennsylvania, killing all 44
people including the four terrorists on board, thereby saving whatever target
the terrorists were aiming for. All in all, a total of 2,977 victims perished
in the attacks. In response, President George W. Bush on September 20 announced
a "War on Terror". On October 7, 2001, the United States and NATO
then invaded
Afghanistan to oust the Taliban regime, which had provided safe
haven to al-Qaeda and its leader Osama bin Laden.[209]
The federal government established new
domestic efforts to prevent future attacks. The controversial USA PATRIOT Act increased the
government's power to monitor communications and removed legal restrictions on
information sharing between federal law enforcement and intelligence services.
A cabinet-level agency called the Department
of Homeland Security was created to lead and coordinate federal counter-terrorism activities.[210] Some of these
anti-terrorism efforts, particularly the US government's handling of detainees
at the prison at Guantanamo Bay,
led to allegations against the US government of human rights
violations.[211][212]
In 2003, from March 19 to May 1, the United
States launched an invasion of Iraq,
which led to the collapse of the Iraq government
and the eventual capture of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, with whom the US had
long-standing tense relations. The reasons for the invasion cited by the Bush
administration included the spreading of democracy, the elimination of weapons of mass
destruction[213] (a key demand of
the UN as well, though later investigations found parts of the intelligence
reports to be inaccurate),[214] and the liberation
of the Iraqi people. Despite some initial successes early in the invasion, the
continued Iraq War fueled international
protests and gradually saw domestic support decline as many people
began to question whether or not the invasion was worth the cost.[215][216] In 2007, after
years of violence by the Iraqi
insurgency, President Bush deployed more troops in a strategy dubbed
"the surge".
While the death toll decreased, the political stability of Iraq remained in
doubt.[217]
In 2008, the unpopularity of President Bush
and the Iraq war, along with the 2008 financial
crisis, led to the election of Barack Obama, the first African-American President of the United
States.[218] After his election,
Obama reluctantly continued the war effort in Iraq until August 31, 2010, when
he declared that combat operations had ended. However, 50,000 American soldiers
and military personnel were kept in Iraq to assist Iraqi forces, help protect
withdrawing forces, and work on counter-terrorism until December 15, 2011, when
the war was declared formally over and the last troops left
the country.[219] At the same time,
Obama increased American involvement in Afghanistan, starting a surge strategy
using an additional 30,000 troops, while proposing to begin withdrawing
troops sometime in December 2014. With regards to Guantanamo
Bay, President Obama forbade torture but in general retained Bush's
policy regarding the Guantanamo detainees, while also proposing that the prison
eventually be closed.[220][221]
In May 2011, after nearly a decade in
hiding, the founder and leader of Al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, was killed in Pakistan in a
raid conducted by US naval special forces acting under President Obama's direct
orders. While Al Qaeda was near collapse in Afghanistan, affiliated
organizations continued to operate in Yemen and
other remote areas as the CIA used drones to
hunt down and remove its leadership.[222][223]
The Boston Marathon Bombing was a bombing
incident, followed by subsequent related shootings, that occurred when two
pressure cooker bombs exploded during the Boston Marathon on April 15, 2013.
The bombs exploded about 12 seconds and 210 yards (190 m) apart at 2:49 pm EDT,
near the marathon's finish line on Boylston Street. They killed 3 people and
injured an estimated 264 others.
The Islamic
State of Iraq and the Levant - formerly known as Al-Qaeda in
Iraq - rose to prominence in September 2014. In addition to taking control of
much of Western Iraq and Eastern Syria, ISIS also beheaded three journalists,
two American and one British. These events lead to a major military offensive by the USA and
its allies in the region.
On December 28, 2014, President Obama
officially ended the combat mission in Afghanistan and promised a withdrawal of
all remaining troops at the end of 2016 with the exception of the embassy
guards.[224]
Main article: Great Recession
Lehman Brothers (headquarters pictured)
filed for bankruptcy in September 2008 at the height of the U.S. financial crisis.
In September 2008, the United States, and
most of Europe, entered the longest post–World War II recession, often called the "Great
Recession."[225][226] Multiple
overlapping crises were involved, especially the housing
market crisis, a subprime mortgage
crisis, soaring oil prices,
an automotive industry crisis, rising
unemployment, and the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. The financial crisis
threatened the stability of the entire economy in September 2008 when Lehman Brothers failed and other giant
banks were in grave danger.[227] Starting in October
the federal government lent $245 billion to financial institutions through the Troubled
Asset Relief Program[228] which was passed by
bipartisan majorities and signed by Bush.[229]
Following his election victory by a wide
electoral margin in November
2008, Bush's successor - Barack Obama - signed into law the American
Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, which was a $787 billion
economic stimulus aimed at helping the economy recover from the deepening
recession. Obama, like Bush, took steps to rescue the auto industry and prevent
future economic meltdowns. These included a bailout of General Motors and Chrysler, putting ownership temporarily in the
hands of the government, and the "cash for clunkers" program which
temporarily boosted new car sales.[230]
The recession officially ended in June
2009, and the economy slowly began to expand once again.[231] The unemployment
rate peaked at 10.1% in October 2009 after surging from 4.7% in November 2007,
and returned to 5.0% as of October 2015. However, overall economic growth has
remained weaker in the 2010s compared to expansions in previous decades.[232][233][234]
Main article: History
of the United States (2008–present)
President Barack Obama signs the Patient
Protection and Affordable Care Act.
From 2009 to 2010, the 111th Congress passed
major legislation such as the Patient
Protection and Affordable Care Act, the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act[235] and the Don't Ask,
Don't Tell Repeal Act, which were signed into law by President
Obama.[236] Following the 2010 midterm
elections, which resulted in a Republican-controlled House of
Representatives and a Democratic-controlled Senate,[237] Congress presided
over a period of elevated gridlock and heated debates over whether or not to
raise the debt ceiling,
extend tax cuts for citizens making over $250,000 annually, and many other key
issues.[238] These ongoing
debates led to President Obama signing the Budget Control
Act of 2011. In the Fall of 2012, Mitt Romney challenged Barack Obama for
the Presidency. Following Obama's reelection in November 2012, Congress passed
the American
Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012 - which resulted in an increase in
taxes primarily on those earning the most money. Congressional gridlock
continued as Congressional Republicans' call for the repeal of the Patient
Protection and Affordable Care Act - popularly known as
"Obamacare" - along with other various demands, resulted in the first
government shutdown since the Clinton administration and almost
led to the first default on U.S. debt since the 19th century. As a
result of growing public frustration with both parties in Congress since the
beginning of the decade, Congressional approval ratings fell to record lows,
with only 11% of Americans approving as of October 2013.[239]
Donald Trump and Mike
Pence in 2016
Other major events that have occurred
during the 2010s include the rise of new political movements, such as the conservative Tea Party movement and
the liberal Occupy movement. There was also unusually severe
weather during the early part of the decade. In 2012, over half the country
experienced record drought and Hurricane Sandy caused massive damage to
coastal areas of New York and New Jersey.
The ongoing debate over the issue of rights
for the LGBT
community, most notably that of same-sex marriage, began to shift in favor of
same-sex couples, and has been reflected in dozens of polls released in the
early part of the decade.[240] In 2012, President
Obama became the first president to openly support same-sex marriage, and the
2013 Supreme
Court decision in the case of United States v.
Windsor provided for federal recognition of same-sex unions. In
June 2015, the United States Supreme Court legalized gay marriage nationally in
the case of Obergefell v. Hodges.
Political debate has continued over issues
such as tax reform, immigration reform, income inequality and US foreign policy
in the Middle East,
particularly with regards to global terrorism, the rise of the Islamic
State of Iraq and the Levant, and an accompanying climate of Islamophobia.[241]
On November 8, 2016, GOP presidential
nominee Donald Trump defeated
Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton to
become the President-elect of the United States.
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