THE HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

For people to understand the American experience, they must look at the past. The
history of the United States as covered in American schools and universities typically
begins with either Christopher Columbuss 1492 voyage to the Americas or with the
prehistory of the Native peoples; the latter approach has become increasingly common in
recent decades.
Indigenous peoples lived in what is now the United States for thousands of years
and developed complex cultures before European colonists began to arrive, mostly from
England, after 1600. The Spanish had early settlements in Florida and the Southwest, and
the French along the Mississippi River and 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 driving the French out of North America in 1763, the
British imposed a series of new taxes while rejecting the American argument that taxes
required representation in Parliament. All 13 colonies united in a Congress that led to
armed conflict in April 1775. On July 4, 1776, the Congress adopted the Declaration of
Independence drafted by Thomas Jefferson, proclaimed that all men are created equal,
and founded a new nation, the United States of America.
With large-scale military and financial support from France and military
leadership by General George Washington, the American Patriots won the Revolutionary
War1. The peace treaty of 1783 gave the new nation most of the land east of the
Mississippi River (except Florida). The national government established by the Articles
of Confederation proved ineffectual at providing stability to the new nation, as it had no
authority to collect taxes and had no executive. A convention called in Philadelphia in
1787 to revise the Articles of Confederation instead resulted in the writing of a new
Constitution, which was adopted in 1789. In 1791 a Bill of Rights was added to
guarantee rights that justified the Revolution. With George Washington as the nation's
first president and Alexander Hamilton his chief political and financial adviser, a strong
national government was created. When Thomas Jefferson became president he
1

T he American War of Independence or simply the Revolutionary War began as a war between the
Kingdom of Great Britain and the Thirteen Colonies. American independence was achieved and European
powers recognized the independence of the United States (1775-1783).

purchased the Louisiana Territory from France, doubling the size of American territorial
holdings. A second and last war with Britain was fought in 1812.
In time, the nation expanded beyond the Louisiana Purchase, all the way to
California and Oregon. The expansion was driven by a quest for inexpensive land for
yeoman farmers and slave owners. This expansion came at the cost of violence against
indigenous native peoples and fueled the unresolved differences between the North and
South over the institution of slavery. Slavery was abolished in all northern states by 1804,
but the South continued to profit off the institution, producing cotton exports to feed high
demand in Europe. The 1860 presidential election of anti-slavery Republican Abraham
Lincoln (16th president) triggered the secession of seven (later eleven) slave states to
found the Confederacy in 1861. The American Civil War (1861-1865) ensued, with the
victory of the Union and the abolition of slavery. In the Reconstruction era (186377)
legal and voting rights were extended to the Freedmen 2. The national government
emerged much stronger and had the explicit duty to protect individual rights. However,
legal racial discrimination in the form of Jim Crow laws 3 continued in the South until the
mid-20th century.
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 North 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 movement4, 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).
Initially neutral in World War I, the U.S. declared war on Germany in 1917, and
funded the Allied victory the following year. After a prosperous decade in the 1920s, the
Wall Street Crash of 1929 marked the onset of the decade-long world-wide Great
Depression. Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt ended the Republican dominance of the
2

A freedman is a former slave who has been released from slavery, usually by legal means.
Racial segregation laws enacted between 1876 and 1965 in the United States at the state and local level.
4
A period of political reform in the United States that flourished from the 1890s to the 1920s. One main
goal of the Progressive movement was purification of government, as Progressives tried to eliminate
corruption.
3

White House and implemented his New Deal programs for relief, recovery, and reform.
They defined modern American liberalism. These 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 World War II alongside the
Allies especially Britain and the Soviet Union. It financed the Allied war effort and
helped defeat Nazi Germany in Europe and, with the detonation of newly invented atomic
bombs, Japan in the Far East.
The United States and the Soviet Union emerged as rival superpowers after World
War II. Around 1947 they began the Cold War, confronting one another indirectly in the
arms race and Space Race. U.S. foreign policy during the Cold War was built around the
support of Western Europe and Japan, and the policy of containment or stopping the
spread of Communism. The U.S. became involved in wars in Korea and Vietnam to stop
the spread. In the 1960s, especially due to the strength of the civil rights movement,
another wave of social reforms were enacted during the administrations of Kennedy and
Johnson, enforcing the constitutional rights of voting and freedom of movement to
African Americans and other minorities. Native American activism also rose. The Cold
War ended when the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, leaving the United States the
worlds only superpower. As the 21st century began, international conflict centered on the
Middle East and spread to Asia and Africa following the September 11 attacks by AlQaeda against the United States. 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.

UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT

Much admired in most parts of the world, the system of government devised by
Americans over nearly four centuries is integral to the American experience. Like all
societies, Americans have wrestled with timeless questions: What is the proper source of
political authority? Who has the power to make and enforce rules by which all must live?
Over the course of human history, people around the globe have invented many forms of
government to answer these questions: monarchy, aristocracy, fascism, communism,

democracy, and even anarchism. In the United States the one basic principle is
representative democracy, which defines a system in which the people govern
themselves by electing their own leaders. The American government functions to
secure this principle and to further the common interests of the people.
Democracy in America is based on six essential ideals: (1) People must accept
the principle of majority rule. (2) The political rights of minorities must be
protected. (3) Citizens must agree to a system of rule by law. (4) The free exchange
of opinions and ideas must not be restricted. (5) All citizens must be equal before the
law. (6) Government exists to serve the people, because it derives its power from the
people. These ideals form the basis of the democratic system in the United States, which
seeks to create a union of diverse peoples, places, and interests.
To implement its essential democratic ideals, the United States has built its
government on four elements: (1) popular sovereignty, meaning that the people are
the ultimate source of the governments authority; (2) representative government;
(3) checks and balances; and (4) federalism, an arrangement where powers are shared
by different levels of government.
Every government has a source of its sovereignty or authority, and most of the
political structures of the U.S. government apply the doctrine of popular sovereignty. In
previous centuries the source of sovereignty in some countries was the monarchy-the
divine right of kings to rule. Americans place the source of authority in the people who,
in a democratic society, reign. In this idea the citizens collectively represent the nations
authority. They then express that authority individually by voting to elect leaders to
represent them in government. I know no safe repository of the ultimate powers of the
society but the people themselves, wrote Thomas Jefferson in 1820, and if we think
them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the
remedy is not to take it from them but to inform their discretion.
The second principle of U.S. democracy is representative government. In a
representative government, the people delegate their powers to elected officials. In the
United States, candidates compete for the presidency, the Senate, and the House of
Representatives, as well as for many state and local positions. In turn these elected
officials represent the will of the people and ensure that the government is accountable to

its citizens. In a democracy, the people exercise power through elections, which allow
adult citizens of the United States the chance to have their voices heard and to influence
government. With their vote, they can remove officials who ignore their intentions or who
betray their trust. Political leaders are accountable as agents of the people; this
accountability is an important feature of the American system of representative
government.
The third principle of American democracy is the system of checks and
balances. The three branches of governmentthe legislative, the executive, and the
judicialrestrain and stabilize one another through their separated functions. The
legislative branch, represented by Congress, must pass bills before they can become law.
The executive branchnamely, the presidentcan veto bills passed by Congress, thus
preventing them from becoming law. In turn, by a two-thirds vote, Congress can override
the presidents veto. The Supreme Court may invalidate acts of Congress by declaring
them contrary to the Constitution of the United States, but Congress can change the
Constitution through the amendment process.
The fourth principle of democracy in the United States is federalism. In the
American federal system, the states and the national government divide authority. This
division of power helps curb abuses by either the national or the state governments.