History of the United States
The history of the United States is what happened in the past in the United States, a country in North America. Native Americans have lived there for thousands of years, long before Europeans went there. English people in 1607 went to the territory nowadays called Jamestown, Virginia. Other European settlers went to the colonies, mostly from England and later Great Britain. France, Spain, and the Netherlands also colonized North America. Many Native Americans were killed, died of disease or lost their land.By 1733, there were 13 colonies. In 1775, a war between the colonies and Britain called the Revolutionary War started. This war started because the American colonists were upset over changes in British policies. On July 4, 1776, people from the thirteen colonies created the United States Declaration of Independence. This said that they were free from Great Britain. George Washington helped lead the Revolutionary War, which the Americans won.
After the Revolution, the leaders of the states created a constitution in 1787 and a Bill of Rights in 1791. These were based on the idea of "social contracts". George Washington became its first president. In the early 1800s, the new nation faced many controversial issues, such as slavery.
During the 1800s, the United States gained much more land in the West and began to become industrialized. In 1861, several states in the South left the United States to start a new country called the Confederate States of America. This caused the American Civil War. After the war, Immigration resumed. Some Americans became very rich in this Gilded Age and the country developed one of the largest economies in the world.
In the early 20th century, the United States became a world power, fighting in World War I and World War II. Between the wars, there was an economic boom called the Roaring Twenties when people became richer and a bust called the Great Depression when most were much poorer. The Great Depression ended with World War II.
The United States and the Soviet Union entered the Cold War. This was very expensive. The wars in Korea and Vietnam cost even more. During this time, African-Americans, Chicanos, and women fought for more rights. In 1974, President Richard Nixon resigned as president due to the Watergate Scandal. In the 1970s and 1980s, the United States started to make fewer things in factories than they used to. The United States then went through the worst recession it had since the Great Depression.
During the 1980s, the American economy grew and American-Soviet relations became better during the presidency of Ronald Reagan. The Cold War ended, helping the United States out of recession by reducing inflation. The Middle East became more important in American foreign policy, especially after the September 11 attacks in 2001.
Pre-Columbian America
Young Omahaw, War Eagle, Little Missouri, and Pawnees
The Pre-Columbian Era is the time before Christopher Columbus went to America in 1492. At that time, Native Americans lived on the land that is now the United States. They had different cultures: Native Americans in the Eastern United States hunted game and deer; Native Americans in the Northwest fished; Native Americans in the Southwest grew corn and built houses called pueblos; and Native Americans in the Great Plains hunted buffalo. Around the year 1000, many people think that the Vikings visited Newfoundland. However, they did not settle there.
Colonial America
The English tried to settle at Roanoke Island in 1585. The settlement at Roanoke Island did not last, and no one knows what happened to the people there. In 1607, the first lasting English settlement was made at Jamestown, Virginia, by John Smith, John Rolfe and other Englishmen interested in money and adventure. In its early years, many people in Virginia died of disease and starvation. The colony lasted because it made money by planting tobacco.In 1621, a group of Englishmen called the Pilgrims settled at Plymouth, Massachusetts. A bigger colony was built at Massachusetts Bay by the Puritans in 1630. The Pilgrims and the Puritans were interested in making a better society, not looking for gold. They called this ideal society a "city on a hill". A man named Roger Williams left Massachusetts after disagreeing with the Puritans, and started the colony of Rhode Island in 1636.
England was not the only country to settle what would become the United States. In the 1500s, Spain built a fort at Saint Augustine, Florida. France settled Louisiana, and the area around the Great Lakes. The Dutch settled New York, which they called New Netherland. Other areas were settled by Scotch-Irish, Germans, and Swedes. However, in time England controlled all of the colonies, and most American colonists adopted the English way of life. The growth of the colonies was not good for Native Americans. Many of them died of smallpox, a disease brought to America by the Europeans. The ones who lived lost their lands to the colonists.
The Thirteen Colonies (red) before the American Revolution
In the early 1700s, there was a religious movement in the colonies called the Great Awakening. Preachers such as Jonathan Edwards preached sermons. One of them was called "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God". The Great Awakening may have led to the thinking used in the American Revolution.
By 1733, there were thirteen colonies. New York City, Philadelphia, Boston, and Charleston were the largest cities and main ports at that time.
From 1754 to 1763, England and France fought a war over their land in America called the Seven Years' War or the French and Indian War, which the English won. After the war, they issued the Proclamation of 1763. It said that people who lived in the thirteen colonies could not live west of the Appalachian Mountains. Many colonists who wanted to move to the frontier did not like the Proclamation.
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