History of the United States

 

Contents

• 1 Pre-Columbian era
• 2 Colonial period
  • 2.1 Spanish, Dutch, and French colonization
  • 2.2 British colonization
• 3 18th century
  • 3.1 Political integration and autonomy
• 4 American Revolution
• 5 Early years of the republic
  • 5.1 Confederation and Constitution
  • 5.2 The New Chief Executive
  • 5.3 Slavery
• 6 19th century
  • 6.1 Jeffersonian Republican Era
  • 6.2 War of 1812
  • 6.3 Era of Good Feelings
  • 6.4 Indian removal
  • 6.5 Second Party System
  • 6.6 Second Great Awakening
  • 6.7 Abolitionism
  • 6.8 Westward expansion and Manifest Destiny
  • 6.9 Divisions between North and South
  • 6.10 Civil War
  • 6.11 Reconstruction
  • 6.12 The West and the Gilded Age
• 7 20th century
  • 7.1 Progressive Era
  • 7.2 Imperialism
  • 7.3 World War I
  • 7.4 Women's suffrage
  • 7.5 Roaring Twenties and the Great Depression
  • 7.6 World War II
  • 7.7 The Cold War, counterculture, and civil rights
    • 7.7.1 Climax of liberalism
    • 7.7.2 Civil Rights Movement
    • 7.7.3 The Women's Movement
    • 7.7.4 The Counterculture Revolution and Cold War Détente
  • 7.8 Close of the 20th century
• 8 21st century
  • 8.1 9/11 and the War on Terror
  • 8.2 The Great Recession
  • 8.3 Recent events
• 9 See also
• 10 References
• 11 Textbooks
• 12 Further reading
  • 12.1 Primary sources
• 13 External links
  

  Pre-Columbian era

  Main articles: Prehistory of the United States and Pre-Columbian era
  See also: Native Americans in the United States
  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. This migration may have begun as early as 30,000 years ago 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. 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.
  

  Colonial period

  
  
  The Spanish conquistador Coronado explored parts of the American Southwest from 1540 to 1542.
  Main article: Colonial history of the United States
  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.
  

  Spanish, Dutch, and French colonization

  
  
  Juan Ponce de León (Santervás de Campos, Valladolid, Spain). He was the first European to arrive to the current U.S., leading the first European expedition to Florida, which he named.
  Main articles: Spanish colonization of the Americas, Dutch colonization of the Americas and French colonization of the Americas
  Spanish explorers were the first Europeans with Christopher Columbus' second expedition, to reach Puerto Rico on November 19, 1493; others reached Florida in 1513. Spanish expeditions quickly reached the Appalachian Mountains, the Mississippi River, the Grand Canyon and the Great Plains. In 1540, Hernando de Soto undertook an extensive exploration of Southeast. That same year, Francisco Vásquez de Coronado explored from Arizona to central Kansas. 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.
  
  
  
  European territorial claims in North America, c. 1750
  

    France

    Great Britain

    Spain
  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. 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.
  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. 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. 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. 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.

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