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https://padlet.com/lua_wee_suan/p6-1-social-studies-project-9a5csp91gqisiztj

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The Shang cast bronze objects by creating molds out of clay, carving a design into the clay, and then pouring molten bronze into the mold.
The Shang Dynasty is the earliest ruling dynasty of China to be established in recorded history, though other dynasties predated it. The Shang ruled from 1600 to 1046 B.C. and heralded the Bronze Age in China. They were known for their advances in math, astronomy, artwork and military technology.
the Shang had a number of religious practices, one of which was a veneration of dead ancestors.
Shang people made sacrifices to and asked questions of their ancestors.

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THE MUGHAL EMPIRE WAS AN EARLY -MODERN MUSLIM EMPIRE THAT CONTROLLED MUCH OF SOUTH ASIA BETWEEN THE 16th AND 19th CENTURIES.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wik

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By the 1760s, the thirteen British colonies contained 2.5 million people and were established along the Atlantic Coast east of the Appalachian Mountains. The Southern Colonies built an agricultural system on slave labor, enslaving millions from Africa for this purpose. After defeating France, the British government imposed a series of taxes, including the Stamp Act of 1765, rejecting the colonists' constitutional argument that new taxes needed their approval. Resistance to these taxes, especially the Boston Tea Party in 1773, led to Parliament issuing punitive laws designed to end self-government. Armed conflict began in Massachusetts in 1775.

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

Encouraged by the notion of manifest destiny, the United States expanded to the Pacific Coast. While the nation was large in terms of area, its population in 1790 was only four million. Westward expansion was driven by a quest for inexpensive land for yeoman farmers and slave owners. The expansion of slavery was increasingly controversial and fueled political and constitutional battles, which were resolved by compromises. Slavery was abolished in all states north of the Mason-Dixon line by 1804, but states in the south continued the institution, to support the kinds of large scale agriculture that dominated the southern economy. Precipitated by the election of Abraham Lincoln as president in 1860, the Civil War began as the southern states seceded from the Union to form their own pro-slavery country, the Confederate States of America. The defeat of the Confederates in 1865 led to the abolition of slavery. In the Reconstruction era following the war, legal and voting rights were extended to freed male slaves. The national government emerged much stronger, and gained explicit duty to protect individual rights. However, when white southern Democrats regained their political power in the South in 1877, often by paramilitary suppression of voting, they passed Jim Crow laws to maintain white supremacy, as well as new state constitutions that legalized discrimination based on race and prevented most African Americans from participating in public life.

The United States became the world's leading industrial power at the turn of the 20th century, due to an outburst of entrepreneurship and industrialization and the arrival of millions of immigrant workers and farmers. A national railroad network was completed and large-scale mines and factories were established. Mass dissatisfaction with corruption, inefficiency, and traditional politics stimulated the Progressive movement, from the 1890s to the 1920s, leading to reforms, including the federal income tax, direct election of Senators, granting of citizenship to many indigenous people, alcohol prohibition, and women's suffrage. Initially neutral during World War I, the United States declared war on Germany in 1917 and funded the Allied victory the following year. After the prosperous Roaring Twenties, the Wall Street Crash of 1929 marked the onset of the decade-long worldwide Great Depression. President Franklin D. Roosevelt implemented his New Deal programs, including relief for the unemployed, support for farmers, social security, and a minimum wage. The New Deal defined modern American liberalism. Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States entered World War II and financed the Allied war effort, and helped defeat Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy in the European theater. Its involvement culminated in using newly invented American nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to defeat Imperial Japan in the Pacific War.

The United States and the Soviet Union emerged as rival superpowers in the aftermath of World War II. During the Cold War, the two countries confronted each other indirectly in the arms race, the Space Race, propaganda campaigns, and proxy wars. In the 1960s, in large part due to the strength of the civil rights movement, another wave of social reforms was enacted which enforced the constitutional rights of voting and freedom of movement to African Americans. In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan's presidency realigned American politics towards reductions in taxes and regulations. The Cold War ended when the Soviet Union was dissolved in 1991, leaving the United States as the world's sole superpower. Foreign policy after the Cold War has often focused on many conflicts in the Middle East, especially after the September 11 attacks. Early in the 21st century, the United States experienced the Great Recession and the COVID-19 pandemic, which had a negative effect on communities.

It is not definitively known how or when Native Americans first settled the Americas and the present-day United States. The prevailing theory proposes that people from Eurasia followed game across Beringia, a land bridge that connected Siberia to present-day Alaska during the Ice Age, and then spread southward throughout the Americas. 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 melting glaciers. These early inhabitants, called Paleo-Indians, soon diversified into hundreds of culturally distinct settlements and countries.

This pre-Columbian era incorporates all periods in the history of the Americas before the appearance of European influences on the American continents, spanning from the original settlement in the Upper Paleolithic period to European colonization during the early modern period. While the term technically refers to the era before Christopher Columbus' voyage in 1492, 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 centuries after Columbus's initial landing.

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

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

The First Corn, folktale from the Pawnee people. Maize was the staple crop for Native American agriculture.

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

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

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

The K'alyaan Totem pole of the Tlingit Kiks.ádi Clan, erected at Sitka National Historical Park to commemorate the lives lost in the 1804 Battle of Sitka

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

The exact date for the settling of Hawaii is disputed but the first settlement most likely took place between 940 and 1130 CE. Around 1200 CE, Tahitian explorers found and began settling the area as well establishing a new caste system. This marked the rise of the Hawaiian civilization, which would be largely separated from the rest of the world until the arrival of the British 600 years later. Europeans under the British explorer James Cook arrived in the Hawaiian Islands in 1778, and within five years of contact, European military technology would help Kamehameha I conquer most of the island group, and eventually unify the islands for the first time; establishing the Hawaiian Kingdom.

The island of Puerto Rico has been settled for at least 4,000 years dating back to the remains of Puerto Ferro man. Starting with the Ortoiroid culture, successive generations of native migrations arrived replacing or absorbing local populations. By the year 1000 Arawak people had arrived from South America via the Lesser Antilles, these settlers would become the Taíno encountered by the Spanish in 1493. Upon European contact a native population between 30,000 and 60,000 was likely, led by a single chief called a Cacique. Colonization resulted in the decimation of the local inhabitants due to the harsh Encomienda system and epidemics caused by Old World diseases. Puerto Rico would remain a part of Spain until American annexation in 1898.

The earliest recorded European mention of America is in a historical treatise by the medieval chronicler Adam of Bremen, circa 1075, where it is referred to as Vinland. It is also extensively referred to in the 13th-century Norse Vinland sagas, which relate to events which occurred around 1000. Whilst the strongest archaeological evidence of the existence of Norse settlements in America is located in Canada, most notably at L'Anse aux Meadows and dated to circa 1000, there is significant scholarly debate as to whether Norse explorers also made landfall in New England and other east-coast areas. In 1925, President Calvin Coolidge declared that a Norse explorer called Leif Erikson (c. 970 - c. 1020) was the first European to discover America.

The Spaniards then rediscovered America in 1492. After a period of exploration sponsored by major European states, the first successful English settlement was established in 1607. Europeans brought horses, cattle, and hogs to the Americas and, in turn, took back maize, turkeys, tomatoes, potatoes, tobacco, beans, and squash to Europe. Many explorers and early settlers died after being exposed to new diseases in the Americas. However, 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 explorers were the first Europeans, after the Norse, to reach the present-day United States, after Christopher Columbus's expeditions (beginning in 1492) established possessions in the Caribbean, including the modern-day U.S. territories of Puerto Rico, and parts of the U.S. Virgin Islands. Juan Ponce de León landed in Florida in 1513. Spanish expeditions quickly reached the Appalachian Mountains, the Mississippi River, the Grand Canyon, and the Great Plains.

In 1539, Hernando de Soto extensively explored the Southeast, and a year later Francisco Coronado explored from Arizona to central Kansas in search of gold. Escaped horses from Coronado's party spread over the Great Plains, and the Plains Indians mastered horsemanship within a few generations. Small Spanish settlements eventually grew to become important cities, such as San Antonio, Albuquerque, Tucson, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.

The Dutch East India Company sent explorer Henry Hudson to search for a Northwest Passage to Asia in 1609. New Netherland was established in 1621 by the company to capitalize on the North American fur trade. Growth was slow at first due to mismanagement by the Dutch and Native American conflicts. After the Dutch purchased the island of Manhattan from the Native Americans for a reported price of US$24, the land was named New Amsterdam and became the capital of New Netherland. The town rapidly expanded and in the mid-1600s it became an important trading center and port. Despite being Calvinists and building the Reformed Church in America, the Dutch were tolerant of other religions and cultures and traded with the Iroquois to the north.

The colony served as a barrier to British expansion from New England, and as a result a series of wars were fought. The colony was taken over by Britain as New York in 1664 and its capital was renamed New York City. New Netherland left an enduring legacy on American cultural and political life of religious tolerance and sensible trade in urban areas and 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.

In the early years of the Swedish Empire, Swedish, Dutch, and German stockholders formed the New Sweden Company to trade furs and tobacco in North America. The company's first expedition was led by Peter Minuit, who had been governor of New Netherland from 1626 to 1631 but left after a dispute with the Dutch government, and landed in Delaware Bay in March 1638. The settlers founded Fort Christina at the site of modern-day Wilmington, Delaware, and made treaties with the indigenous groups for land ownership on both sides of the Delaware River.

Over the following seventeen years, 12 more expeditions brought settlers from the Swedish Empire (which also included contemporary Finland, Estonia, and portions of Latvia, Norway, Russia, Poland, and Germany) to New Sweden. The colony established 19 permanent settlements along with many farms, extending into modern-day Maryland, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. It was incorporated into New Netherland in 1655 after a Dutch invasion from the neighboring New Netherland colony during the Second Northern War.

Giovanni da Verrazzano landed in North Carolina in 1524, and was the first European to sail into New York Harbor and Narragansett Bay. In the 1540s, French Huguenots settled at Fort Caroline near present-day Jacksonville in Florida. In 1565, Spanish forces led by Pedro Menéndez destroyed the settlement and established the first Spanish settlement in what would become the United States - St. Augustine.

In some areas, Native Americans taught colonists how to plant and harvest the native crops. In others, they attacked the settlers. Virgin forests provided an ample supply of building material and firewood. Natural inlets and harbors lined the coast, providing easy ports for essential trade with Europe. Settlements remained close to the coast due to this as well as Native American resistance and the Appalachian Mountains that were found in the interior.

In 1624, after years of disease and Indian attacks, including the Powhatan attack of 1622, King James I revoked the Virginia Company's charter and made Virginia a royal colony.

The First Thanksgiving at Plymouth, 1914, Pilgrim Hall Museum, Plymouth, Massachusetts

New England was initially settled primarily by Puritans fleeing religious persecution. The Pilgrims sailed for Virginia on the Mayflower in 1620, but were knocked off course by a storm and landed at Plymouth, where they agreed to a social contract of rules in the Mayflower Compact. During the first winter at Plymouth, about half of the Pilgrims died. Like Jamestown, Plymouth suffered from disease and starvation, but local Wampanoag Indians taught the colonists how to farm maize.

Plymouth was followed by the Puritans and Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630. They maintained a charter for self-government separate from England, and elected founder John Winthrop as the governor for most of its early years. Roger Williams opposed Winthrop's treatment of Native Americans and religious intolerance, and established the colony of Providence Plantations, later Rhode Island, on the basis of freedom of religion. Other colonists established settlements in the Connecticut River Valley, and on the coasts of present-day New Hampshire and Maine. Native American attacks continued, with the most significant occurring in the 1637 Pequot War and the 1675 King Philip's War.

New England became a center of commerce and industry due to the poor, mountainous soil making agriculture difficult. Rivers were harnessed to power grain mills and sawmills, and the numerous harbors facilitated trade. Tight-knit villages developed around these industrial centers, and Boston became one of America's most important ports.

The last colony in this region was Pennsylvania, established in 1681 by William Penn as a home for religious dissenters, including Quakers, Methodists, and the Amish. The capital of the colony, Philadelphia, became a dominant commercial center in a few short years, with busy docks and brick houses. While Quakers populated the city, German immigrants began to flood into the Pennsylvanian hills and forests, while the Scots-Irish pushed into the far western frontier.

Religiosity expanded greatly after the First Great Awakening, a religious revival in the 1740s which was 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 new believers with 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 in the late 1790s. 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 on 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.

18th century certificate of Indentured Servitude. At least 500,000 Europeans arrived in North America as indentured servants, this practice declined after the rise of slavery in the colonies.

The first African slaves were brought to Virginia in 1619, just twelve years after the founding of Jamestown. Initially regarded as indentured servants who could buy their freedom, the institution of slavery began to harden and the involuntary servitude became lifelong as the demand for labor on tobacco and rice plantations grew in the 1660s.[citation needed ] Slavery became identified with brown skin color, at the time seen as a " black race", and the children of slave women were born slaves (partus sequitur ventrem). By the 1770s African slaves comprised a fifth of the American population.

An upper class emerged in South Carolina and Virginia, with wealth based on large plantations operated by slave labor. A unique class system operated in upstate New York, where Dutch tenant farmers rented land from very wealthy Dutch proprietors, such as the Van Rensselaer family. The other colonies were more egalitarian, with Pennsylvania being representative. By the mid-18th century Pennsylvania was basically a middle-class colony with limited respect for its small upper-class. A writer in the Pennsylvania Journal in 1756 wrote:

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 and are fond of Freedom, and the meanest among them thinks he has a right to Civility from the greatest.

Join, or Die: This 1756 political cartoon by Benjamin Franklin urged the colonies to join during the French and Indian War.

The French and Indian War (1754-1763), part of the larger Seven Years' War, was a watershed event in the political development of the colonies. The influence of the French and Native Americans, the main rivals of the British Crown in the colonies and Canada, was significantly reduced and the territory of the Thirteen Colonies expanded into New France, both in Canada and Louisiana. [citation needed ] The war effort also 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 would be realized a decade later.

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 Intolerable Acts, stripping Massachusetts of its historic right of self-government and putting it under military rule, which sparked outrage and resistance in all thirteen colonies. Patriot leaders from every colony convened the First Continental Congress to coordinate their resistance to the Intolerable Acts. The Congress called for a boycott of British trade, published a list of rights and grievances, and petitioned the king to rectify those grievances. This appeal to the Crown had no effect, though, and so the Second Continental Congress was convened in 1775 to organize the defence of the colonies against the British Army.

Common people 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 by 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, and they had faith that God was on their side.

John Trumbull's Declaration of Independence (1819)

The Second Continental Congress voted to declare independence on July 2, 1776, and the Declaration of Independence was drafted by the Committee of Five. The Declaration of Independence presented arguments in favor of the rights of citizens, stating that all men are created equal, supporting the rights of Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness, and demanding the consent of the governed. It also listed grievances against the crown. The Founding Fathers were guided by the ideology of republicanism, rejecting the monarchism of Great Britain. The Declaration of Independence was signed by members of the Congress on July 4. This date has since been commemorated as Independence Day.

The American Revolutionary War began with the Battles of Lexington and Concord when American and British forces clashed on April 19, 1775. George Washington was appointed general of the Continental Army. The New York and New Jersey campaign was the first major campaign of the war, beginning in 1776. Washington's crossing of the Delaware River began a series of victories that expelled British forces from New Jersey. The British began the Saratoga campaign in 1777 to capture Albany, New York, as a choke point. After American victory at Saratoga, France, the Netherlands, and Spain began providing support to the Continental Army. Britain responded to defeat in the northern theater by advancing in the southern theater, beginning with the Capture of Savannah in 1778. American forces reclaimed the south in 1781, and the British Army was defeated in the Siege of Yorktown on October 19, 1781.

King George III formally ordered the end of hostilities on December 5, 1782, recognizing American independence. The Treaty of Paris was negotiated between Great Britain and the United States to establish terms of peace. It was signed on September 3, 1783, and it was ratified by the Congress of the Confederation on January 14, 1784. Washington resigned his commission as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army on December 23, 1783.

Reading of the United States Constitution of 1787

The Articles of Confederation were ratified as the governing law of the United States, written to limit the powers of the central government in favor of state governments. This caused economic decline, as the government was unable to pass economic legislation and pay its debts. Nationalists worried that the confederate nature of the union was too fragile to withstand an armed conflict with any adversarial states, or even internal revolts such as the Shays' Rebellion of 1786 in Massachusetts.

In the 1780s the national government was able to settle the issue of the western regions of the young United States, which were ceded by the states to Congress and became territories. With the migration of settlers to the Northwest, soon they became states. The American Indian Wars continued in the 1780s as settlers moved west, prompting Native American attacks on American civilians and in turn prompting American attacks on Native American civilians. The Northwestern Confederacy and American settlers began fighting the Northwest Indian War in the late 1780s; the Northwestern Confederacy received British support, but the settlers received little assistance from the American government.

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 federal government 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. A national debate took place over whether the constitution should be ratified, and it was ratified by a sufficient number of states in 1788 to begin forming a federal government. The United States Electoral College chose George Washington as the first President of the United States in 1789.

Economic growth in America per capita income. Index with 1700 set as 100.

Reading of the Farewell address of President George Washington, 1796

The major accomplishment of the Washington Administration was creating a strong national government that was recognized without question by all Americans. 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[vague ] - 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. The treaty passed, but politics became intensely heated.

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.

Slaves Waiting for Sale: Richmond, Virginia (by Eyre Crowe)

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.

Chapter IV of The Journal of Lewis and Clarke (1840), describes the upper Missouri River and its tributaries

Jefferson defeated Adams massively 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. Jefferson, a scientist, supported expeditions to explore and map the new domain, most notably the Lewis and Clark Expedition. 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 of the United States (1801-1835), defined them, especially the power to overturn acts of Congress or states that violated the Constitution, first enunciated in 1803 in Marbury v. Madison.

Americans were increasingly angry at the British violation of American ships' neutral rights 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 American Midwest with the goal of creating a pro-British Indian barrier state to block American expansion westward. They may also have desired to annex all or part of British North America, although this is still heavily debated. 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.

Oliver Hazard Perry's message to William Henry Harrison after the Battle of Lake Erie began with: "We have met the enemy and they are ours" (by William H. Powell, 1865)[86]

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, 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.

Britain never achieved the war goal of granting the Indians a barrier state to block further American settlement and this allowed settlers to pour into the Midwest without fear of a major threat. The War of 1812 also destroyed America's negative perception of a standing army, which had proven useful in many areas against the British as opposed to ill-equipped and poorly-trained militias in the early months of the war, and War Department officials instead decided to place regular troops as the main military capabilities of the government.

As strong opponents of the War of 1812, 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 as a political party. President Madison and most Republicans realized they were foolish to let the First 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.

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 (1817-1825) to downplay partisanship, society entered an Era of Good Feelings, with far less partisanship than before (or after), and closed out the First Party System.

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. 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. The Trail of Tears resulted in approximately 2,000-8,000 of the 16,543 relocated Cherokee perishing along the way. Many of the Seminole Indians in Florida refused to move west; they fought the Army for years in the Seminole Wars.

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.

Horace Greeley's New York Tribune-the leading Whig paper-endorsed Clay for President and Fillmore for Governor, 1844.

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.

The American colonies and the newly formed union grew rapidly in population and area, as pioneers pushed the frontier of settlement west. 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" of Wisconsin historian Frederick Jackson Turner argues that the frontier shaped the national character, with its boldness, violence, innovation, individualism, and democracy.

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."

The first settlers in the west were the Spanish in New Mexico; they became U.S. citizens in 1848. The Hispanics in California (" Californios") were overwhelmed by over 100,000 California Gold Rush miners. California grew explosively. San Francisco by 1880 had become the economic hub of the entire Pacific Coast with a diverse population of a quarter million.

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". 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. Democrats strongly favored expansion, and won the key election of 1844. After a bitter debate in Congress the Republic of Texas was annexed in 1845, leading to war with Mexico, who considered Texas to be a part of Mexico due to the large numbers of Mexican settlers.

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 in California in 1848, attracting over 100,000 men to northern California in a matter of months in the California Gold Rush. To clear the state for settlers, the U.S. government began a policy of extermination since termed the California genocide. A peaceful compromise with Britain gave the U.S. ownership of the Oregon Country, which was renamed the Oregon Territory.

United States map, 1863

Union territories not permitting slavery

Border Union states, permitting slavery

Union territories permitting slavery (claimed by Confederacy)

Justifications of slavery included economics, history, religion, legality, social good, and even humanitarianism. Defenders of slavery argued that the sudden end to the slave economy would have had a profound and fatal economic impact in the South where reliance on slave labor was the foundation of their economy. They also argued that if all the slaves were freed, there would be widespread unemployment and chaos.

Religious activists were 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.)

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 in exchange for no federal restrictions on slavery placed on Utah or New Mexico. A 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 highlighted the Act as particularly harmful in their fight against slavery, as evinced in the best-selling anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe.

For the 50 of the country'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. In addition, southern states benefited by their increased apportionment in Congress due to the partial counting of slaves in their populations.

Remember Your Weekly Pledge, collection box for Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, 1850

Abolitionism grew in the north in the decades before the Civil War, while southern states entrenched themselves on upholding slavery fiercely. Former slaves Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman became leading advocates for abolition. However, before 1860 only a minority of northern whites supported abolition, which was often seen as a 'radical' measure. There were violent reactions to abolitionist advocates in the north, notably the burning of an anti slavery society in Pennsylvania Hall.

With political power in Congress being a key flash-point between slave and free states 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 that reached a non-slave state was presumed to have attained sanctuary and freedom under the Missouri Compromise. The Supreme Court's 1857 decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford ruled that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional and that free blacks were not citizens of the United States; the decision enraged all major political forces except for southern states. The Republicans worried the decision could be used to expand slavery throughout all states and territories. With senator Abraham Lincoln leading criticism of the ruling, the stage was set for the 1860 presidential election.

After Abraham Lincoln won the 1860 election, seven Southern states seceded from the union and set up a newly formed sovereign state, the Confederate States of America (Confederacy), 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 Confederacy, which became the new Union state of West Virginia. West Virginia is usually associated with the border states.

Warfare in the eastern theater began poorly for the Union. U.S. General George B. McClellan failed to capture the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia, in his Peninsula campaign and retreated after attacks from Confederate General Robert E. Lee. Meanwhile, both sides concentrated in 1861-1862 on raising and training new armies. The main action was Union success in controlling the border states, with Confederates largely driven out of border states.

Lee's smaller Army of Northern Virginia won battles in late 1862 and spring 1863, but he 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 by the Army of the Potomac at the July 1863 Battle of Gettysburg and barely made it back to Virginia. Survivors of the Battle of Gettysburg were immediately redeployed to suppress the New York City draft riots by Irish Americans first resisting Civil War conscription but later out of racism against the city's free black population.

On the homefront, industrial expansion in the North expanded dramatically, using its extensive railroad service, and moving industrial workers into munitions factories. Foreign trade increased, with the United States providing both food and cotton to Britain, and Britain sending in manufactured products and thousands of volunteers for the Union Army (plus a few to the Confederate army). The British operated blockade runners bringing in food, luxury items and munitions to the Confederacy, bringing out tobacco and cotton. The Union blockade increasingly shut down Confederate ports, and by late 1864 the blockade runners were usually captured before they could make more than a handful of runs.

The last two years of the war were bloody for both sides, with Sherman marching almost unopposed through southern states, burning cities, destroying plantations, ruining railroads and bridges, but avoiding civilian casualties. Sherman demonstrated that the South was unable to resist a Union invasion. Much of the Confederate heartland was destroyed, and could no longer provide desperately needed supplies to its armies. In spring 1864, Grant launched a war of attrition and pursued Lee to the final, Appomattox campaign which resulted in Lee surrendering in April 1865.

The American Civil War was the world's earliest industrial war. Railroads, the telegraph, steamships, and mass-produced weapons were employed extensively. The mobilization of civilian factories, mines, shipyards, banks, transportation and food supplies all foreshadowed the impact of industrialization in World War I. It remains the deadliest war in American history, resulting in the deaths of about 750,000 soldiers and an undetermined number of civilian casualties. About ten percent of all Northern males 20-45 years old, and 30 percent of all Southern white males aged 18-40 died. Its legacy includes ending slavery in the United States, restoring the Union, and strengthening the role of the federal government.

According to historian Allan Nevins, the Civil War had a major long-term impact on the United States in terms of developing its leadership potential and metaphorically moving the country beyond the adolescent stage:

The fighting and its attendant demands upon industry, finance, medicine, and law also helped train a host of leaders who during the next 35 years, to 1900, made their influence powerfully felt on most of the social, economic, and cultural fronts. It broke down barriers of parochialism; it ended distrust of large-scale effort; it hardened and matured the whole people emotionally. The adolescent land of the 1850s...rose under the blows of battle to adult estate. The nation of the post-Appomattox generation, though sadly hurt (especially in the South) by war losses, and deeply scarred psychologically (especially in the North) by war hatreds and greeds, had at last the power, resolution, and self-trust of manhood.

First Reading of the Emancipation Proclamation of President Lincoln by Francis Bicknell Carpenter[134]
(People in the image are clickable.)

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. 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.

Reconstruction lasted from Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863, to the Compromise of 1877.

The major issues faced by Lincoln were the status of the ex-slaves ("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.

Atlanta's railyard and roundhouse in ruins shortly after the end of the Civil War

Reconstruction ended after the disputed 1876 election. The Compromise of 1877 gave Republican candidate Rutherford B. Hayes the White House in exchange for removing all remaining federal troops in the South. The federal government withdrew its troops from the South, and Southern Democrats took control of every Southern state. In 1882, the United States passed its first major exclusionary immigration acts, the Chinese Exclusion Act (which barred all Chinese immigrants except for students and businessmen), and the Immigration Act of 1882 (which barred all immigrants with mental health issues).

Reading of an excerpt of The Story of the First Trans-Continental Railroad by William Francis Bailey

The United States Army fought frequent small-scale wars with Native Americans as settlers encroached on their traditional lands. Gradually the U.S. 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.

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. As financiers and industrialists such as J.P. Morgan and John D. Rockefeller began to amass vast fortunes, many U.S. observers were concerned that the nation was losing its pioneering egalitarian spirit.

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. Most were unskilled workers who quickly found jobs in mines, mills, and 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. By 1890 American industrial production and per capita income exceeded those of all other countries.

The Panic of 1893 broke out and was a severe nationwide depression impacting farmers, workers, and businessmen who saw prices, wages, and profits fall. 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 brutally shut down by federal troops under Cleveland's orders. One of the disillusioned leaders of the Pullman strike, Eugene V. Debs went on to become the leader of the Socialist Party of America, eventually going on to win almost 1 million votes in the 1912 presidential election. 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.

Prosperity returned under McKinley, the gold standard was enacted, and the tariff was raised. By 1900 the U.S. 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.

This cartoon reflects the view of Judge magazine regarding America's imperial ambitions following a quick victory in the Spanish-American War of 1898.[165] The American flag flies from the Philippines and Hawaii in the Pacific to Cuba and Puerto Rico in the Caribbean.

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. 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.

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. President William McKinley defended the acquisition and was riding high as society had returned to prosperity and felt triumphant in the war. McKinley easily defeated Bryan in a rematch in the 1900 presidential election.

After defeating an insurrection by Filipino nationalists, the United States achieved little in the Philippines except in education, and it did something in the way of public health. It also built roads, bridges, and wells, but infrastructural development lost much of its early vigor with the failure of the railroads. By 1908, however, Americans lost interest in an empire and turned their international attention to the Caribbean, especially the building of the Panama Canal. 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.

American children of many ethnic backgrounds celebrate noisily in a 1902 Puck cartoon.

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 female suffrage, prohibition, and better schools. Their most prominent leader was Jane Addams of Chicago, who created settlement houses.

Chapter 9 of , a 1906 muckraking novel by Upton Sinclair describing corruption in the Gilded Age

The period also saw a major transformation of the banking system with the creation of the Federal Reserve System in 1913 and the arrival of cooperative banking in the US with the founding of the first credit union in 1908. The Progressive Movement lasted through the 1920s; the most active period was 1900-1918.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman (pictured) wrote these articles about feminism for the Atlanta Constitution, published on December 10, 1916.

Around 1912 the feminist movement began to reawaken, putting an emphasis on its demands for equality and arguing that the corruption of American politics demanded purification by women. 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.

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. 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.

American money, food, and munitions arrived in Europe quickly, but troops had to be drafted and trained. By the summer of 1918 soldiers in General John J. Pershing's American Expeditionary Forces arrived at the rate of 10,000 a day, while Germany was unable to replace its losses. Dissent against the war was suppressed by the Sedition Act of 1918 & Espionage Act of 1917. German language, leftist & pacifist publications were suppressed, and over 2,000 were imprisoned for speaking out against the war. The political prisoners were later released by U.S. President Warren G. Harding.

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. 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, the country in 1918 and 1919 lost approximately 675,000 lives to the Spanish flu pandemic.

I Got The Ritz From The One I Love, 1932

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.

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 (1929-1939) and the New Deal (1933-1936) were decisive moments in American political, economic, and social history that reshaped the nation. 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. 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 an effort to denounce past U.S. interventionism and subdue any subsequent fears of Latin Americans, Roosevelt announced on March 4, 1933, during his inaugural address, "In the field of World policy, I would dedicate this nation to the policy of the good neighbor, the neighbor who resolutely respects himself and, because he does so, respects the rights of others, the neighbor who respects his obligations and respects the sanctity of his agreements in and with a World of neighbors."

To create a friendly relationship between the United States and Central as well as South American countries, Roosevelt sought to stray from asserting military force in the region. This position was affirmed by Cordell Hull, Roosevelt's Secretary of State at a conference of American states in Montevideo in December 1933. For Hispanics in the United States, however, the Great Depression was a difficult period, as the Mexican Repatriation resulted in the dislocation of an estimated 400,000 Mexicans and Mexican Americans.

Into the Jaws of Death: The Normandy landings began the Allied march toward Germany from the west.

Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima: Photographed by Joe Rosenthal, depicts six United States Marines raising a US flag atop Mount Suribachi on February 23, 1945.

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 and threatened conquests, while Britain and France attempted appeasement to avert another war in Europe. U.S. 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.

At first, Roosevelt positioned the U.S. as the " Arsenal of Democracy", pledging full-scale financial and munitions support for the Allies and Lend-Lease agreements - but no military personnel. Japan tried to neutralize America's power in the Pacific by attacking Pearl Harbor in 1941, but instead it catalyzed American support to enter the war.

The main contributions of the U.S. to the Allied war effort comprised money, industrial output, food, petroleum, technological innovation, and (especially 1944-1945), military personnel. Much of the focus the U.S. government was in maximizing the national economic output, causing 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.

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. Americans on the home front tolerated the extra work because of patriotism, increased pay, and the confidence that it was only "for the duration," and life would return to normal as soon as the war was won.

War fervor also inspired anti-Japanese sentiment, leading to internment of Japanese Americans. Roosevelt's Executive Order 9066 resulted in over 120,000 Americans of Japanese descent being removed from their homes and placed in internment camps. Two-thirds of those interned were American citizens and half of them were children.

Military research and development also increase, leading to the Manhattan Project, a secret effort to harness nuclear fission to produce atomic bombs. The first nuclear device ever detonated was conducted July 16, 1945.

The Allies pushed the Germans out of France but the western front stopped short, leaving Berlin to the Soviets as the Nazi regime formally capitulated in May 1945, ending the war in Europe. In the Pacific, the U.S. implemented an island hopping strategy toward Tokyo. The Philippines was eventually reconquered, after Japan and the United States fought in history's largest naval battle, " The Battle of Leyte Gulf". However, the war wiped out all the development the United States invested in the Philippines as cities and towns were completely destroyed. After the devastation of the war, the United States granted its colony, the Philippines, independence.

The United States then established airfields for bombing runs against mainland Japan from the Mariana Islands, achieving hard-fought victories at Iwo Jima and Okinawa in 1945. 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, compelling Japan to surrender and ending World War II. The U.S. occupied Japan (and part of Germany), and restructured Japan along American lines.

In the decades after World War II, the United States became a global influence in economic, political, military, cultural, and technological affairs. Following World War II, the United States emerged as one of the two dominant superpowers, the Soviet Union 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 1945-1948 was to rescue Europe from the devastation of World War II and to contain the expansion of Communism, represented by the Soviet Union. U.S. 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 U.S. joined the wars in Korea and Vietnam and toppled left-wing governments in the third world to try to stop its spread, such as Iran in 1953 and Guatemala in 1954.

Domestically, postwar America would enter into a period of untold prosperity. After the initial hurdles of the 1945-48 period were overcome, Americans found themselves flush with cash from wartime work, due to there being little to buy for several years. As a result of the postwar economic boom, 60% of the American population had attained a "middle-class" standard of living by the mid-1950s (defined as incomes of $3,000 to $10,000 in constant dollars), compared with only 31% in the last year of prosperity before the onset of the Great Depression in 1929. Between 1947 and 1960, the average real income for American workers increased by as much as it had in the previous half-century.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower, elected in a landslide as the first Republican president since 1932, had a lasting impact on American life and politics. He ended the Korean War, and avoided any other major conflict. He cut military spending by reliance on very high technology, such as nuclear weapons carried by long-range bombers and intercontinental missiles. He gave strong support to the NATO alliance and built other alliances along similar lines, but they never were especially effective.

President Kennedy American University Commencement Address June 10, 1963

In 1960, John F. Kennedy was elected President and his administration saw the acceleration of the country's role in the Space Race, escalation of the American role in the Vietnam War, the Bay of Pigs Invasion, and the Cuban Missile Crisis. President Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963, leaving the nation in profound shock. Lyndon B. Johnson then became President.

Johnson was rewarded with an electoral landslide in 1964 against conservative Barry Goldwater. He then secured congressional passage of his Great Society programs, dealing with civil rights, the end of legal 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.

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, civil rights activists were victims of violence, but they would achieve great steps toward equality with Supreme Court decisions, including Brown v. Board of Education and Loving v. Virginia, and laws like the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968. These ended the Jim Crow laws that legalized racial segregation between white and Black people. Native Americans protested federal courts, highlighting the federal government's failure to honor treaties involving them. 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 country's first successful union of farm workers, the United Farm Workers of America (UFW).

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. Feminism and the environmental movement became political forces, and progress continued toward civil rights for all Americans. A 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. Frustrations with the seemingly slow progress of the integration movement led to the emergence of more radical politics, such as Black Power movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s. The summer of 1967 saw opposing philosophies in two widespread movements, the more peaceful summer of love and the radical long, hot summer, which included nationwide riots. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968. Following his death, there were further riots, and others led the movement, most notably his wife, Coretta Scott King. The modern gay rights movement started after the Stonewall riots in 1969.

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 critiqued the American cultural idea that women could only find fulfillment through their roles as wives, mothers, and keepers of the home, arguing that women should join the workforce. In 1966, Friedan and others established the National Organization for Women (NOW) to act for women as the NAACP did for African Americans. Protests began, and the new women's liberation movement grew in size and power, gained much media attention. There were striking gains for women in medicine, law, and business, while only a few were elected to office.

The proposed Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution, passed by Congress in 1972 was defeated by a conservative coalition mobilized by Phyllis Schlafly. However, many federal laws stablished women's equal status under the law, such as those equalizing pay, employment, education, employment opportunities, and credit between genders, ending pregnancy discrimination, and requiring organizations like NASA to admit women. State laws criminalized spousal abuse and marital rape, and the Supreme Court ruled that the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment applied to women. 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 (1973), is still a point of debate today.

In March 1968, Johnson announced he would not run for a second full term in office. This was partially because Robert F. Kennedy, who was against the Vietnam War, entered the Democratic primary race. The war was increasingly controversial after the recent Tet Offensive. Kennedy was assassinated in June. The winner of the primaries was Hubert Humphrey; his policies regarding the Vietnam War led to riots at the party's convention that year. Humphrey was defeated by Republican Richard Nixon, who largely continued the New Deal and Great Society programs he inherited. The Republican Party expanded its base throughout the South after 1968, largely due to its strength among socially conservative white Evangelical Protestants and traditionalist Roman Catholics, adding to its traditional strength in the business community and suburbs. The Democratic party also started moving to the right-center.

Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency, opened relations with China, and attempted to gradually turn the Vietnam War effort 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 U.S., achieving with both parties. He was also president during the U.S.' landing on the moon in 1969.

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 his resignation on August 9, 1974. He was succeeded by Vice President Gerald Ford, who pardoned Nixon for Watergate.

The Fall of Saigon, on April 30, 1975, 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, with the fall of Cambodia's capital, Phnom Penh on April 17 and the taking of Laos's capital, Vientiane on December 2. In Central America, the U.S. government supported right-wing governments against left-wing groups, such as in El Salvador and Guatemala. In South America, they supported Argentina and Chile, who carried out Operation Condor, a campaign of assassinations of exiled political opponents by Southern Cone governments, which was created at the behest of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet in 1975.

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 to define these trends. Since economists agreed on deregulation, many of the New Deal era regulations were ended, such as in transportation, banking, and telecommunications. Meanwhile, the first mass-market personal computers were being developed in California's Silicon Valley.

Jimmy Carter, running as someone who was not a part of the Washington political establishment, was elected president in 1976. Carter brokered the Camp David Accords between Israel and Egypt. In 1979, Iranian students stormed the U.S. 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. On January 20, 1981, minutes after Carter's term ended, the remaining U.S. captives were released.

Monthly unemployment, inflation, and interest rates from January 1981 to January 1989

The Republican Party's central leader by 1980 was president Ronald Reagan, whose conservative policies produced a major political realignment with his 1980 and 1984 landslide elections. Reagan's neoliberal economic policies (dubbed " Reaganomics"), including 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. Reagan continued to downsize government taxation and regulation; New Deal and Great Society programs were ended. The U.S. experienced a recession in 1982, but after inflation decreased, unemployment then decreased, and the economic growth rate increased from 4.5% in 1982 to 7.2% in 1984. However, homelessness and economic inequality also rose.

The Reagan administration's expansion of the War on Drugs led to an increase in incarceration by millions, particularly among African Americans. Manufacturing industries moving out of inner cities increased poverty in those areas, increasing drug dealing and contributing to the crack epidemic, which led to increased crime and incarceration. The government also reacted slowly to the AIDS crisis, and banned reliable information on the disease, which lead to higher infection rates.

Ronald Reagan at the Brandenburg Gate challenges Soviet general secretary Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall in 1987, shortly before the end of the Cold War.

Reagan ordered a buildup of the U.S. military, incurring additional budget deficits. The 1983 Invasion of Grenada and 1986 bombing of Libya were popular in the U.S., though Reagan's backing of the Contra rebels was mired in the controversy over the Iran-Contra affair. Reagan also introduced a complicated missile defense system known as the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). 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, so they stopped negotiating disarmament deals until the late 1980s. Historians debate over if the SDI forced Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to initiate radical reforms, or whether the deterioration of the Soviet economy alone forced the reforms.

Reagan met four times with Gorbachev, 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 nuclear arms race with America. However, the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, ending the Cold War. For the remainder of the 20th century, 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. The war started when Iraq invaded neighboring Kuwait in 1990. After a "massive", international U.S.-led offensive, Kuwait was taken back.

Following his election in 1992, President Bill Clinton oversaw one of the longest periods of economic expansion and unprecedented gains in securities values. President Clinton worked with the Republican Congress to pass the first balanced federal budget in 30 years. Much of the economic boom was a side effect of the Digital Revolution, and new business opportunities created by the Internet (which started as the government project ARPANET).

As white Democrats in the South lost dominance of the Democratic Party in the 1990s, the region was split into Democrat and Republican control, rather than mostly Democrats. Conservative Republicans heavily won the 1994 midterm elections in a " Republican Revolution" which was built around the Contract with America policy agenda. Newt Gingrich was chosen as House Speaker, and he would heavily influence the Republican party to engage in "confrontational" political speech. In response, in June 1995, Clinton shifted his policies more towards the center from the left. This did not majorly increase his approval, but rather, his leadership after the Oklahoma City bombing in April did. In the 1996 presidential elections, he won against Bob Dole. In 1998, Clinton was impeached by the House of Representatives on charges of lying under oath 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 Gingrich to resign from Congress.

The close presidential election in 2000 between Governor George W. Bush and Al Gore helped lay the seeds for political polarization to come. The vote in the decisive states of New Mexico and Florida was extremely close and produced a dramatic dispute over the counting of votes. Bush ultimately won. Including 2000, the Democrats outpolled the Republicans in the national vote in every election from 1992 to 2020, except for 2004.

9/11 attacks and the War on Terror

On September 11, 2001 (9/11), the United States was struck by a terrorist attack, when 19 al-Qaeda hijackers commandeered four commercial planes to be used in suicide attacks. Two were crashed intentionally into both Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, and the third into the Pentagon. The fourth plane was re-taken by the passengers and crew of the aircraft, and it was crashed into an empty field in Pennsylvania, killing everyone on board and saving whatever target the terrorists were aiming for. Every building of the World Trade Center completely collapsed, causing massive damage to the surrounding area and blanketing Lower Manhattan in toxic dust clouds. All in all, a total of 2,977 victims died in the attacks. In response, on September 20, Bush announced a "war on terror".

Bush's address to the American people on the night of the September 11 attacks

The federal government established new domestic efforts to prevent future attacks. The USA PATRIOT Act increased the power of government to monitor communications and removed legal restrictions on information sharing between federal law enforcement and intelligence services. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security was created to lead and coordinate federal counter-terrorism activities. Since 2002, the U.S. government's indefinite detention of terrorism suspects captured abroad at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, a prison at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, led to allegations of human rights abuses and violations of international law.

In early 2003, 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 U.S. 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 (a key demand of the UN as well, though later investigations found parts of the intelligence reports to be inaccurate), 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. 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.

In December 2007, the unemployment rate rose from 5% to 10%. In September 2008, the United States and most of Europe entered the longest post-World War II recession, often called the " Great Recession". 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. Starting in October, the federal government lent $245 billion to financial institutions through the bipartisan Troubled Asset Relief Program.

In 2008, the unpopularity of Bush and the Iraq War, along with the financial crisis, led to the election of Barack Obama, the first multiracial president, with African-American or Kenyan ancestry. Following his election victory by a wide electoral margin, 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.

From 2009 to 2010, the 111th Congress passed major legislation such as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, informally known as Obamacare, the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act and the Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal Act, which were signed into law by Obama. The employment rate began falling as the economy and labor markets experienced a recovery. These changes to the economic system led to the rise of new political movements, such as the conservative Tea Party movement and the liberal Occupy movement.[citation needed ] The recession officially ended in June 2009, and the economy slowly began to expand once again. Following the 2010 midterm elections, which resulted in a Republican-controlled House of Representatives and a Democratic-controlled Senate, 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. These ongoing debates led to the Budget Control Act of 2011.

The economic expansion that followed the Great Recession was the longest in U.S. history; the unemployment rate reached a 50-year low in 2019. Despite the strong economy, increases in the cost of living surpassed increases in wages. The economic expansion came to an end in early 2020, largely caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Obama foreign policy, 2009-2011

In 2009, Obama issued an executive order banning the use of torture, a prohibition codified into law in 2016. He also ordered the closure of secret CIA-run prisons overseas. He sought to close the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, but his efforts were stymied by Congress, which in 2011 enacted a measure blocking him from transferring any Guantanamo detainees to U.S. facilities. The number of inmates nonetheless was decreased.

Obama announces the killing of Osama bin Laden in 2011

Obama reluctantly continued the war effort in Iraq until August 2010, when he declared that combat operations had ended. However, 50,000 American soldiers and military personnel were kept in Iraq to work on counter-terrorism and help protect withdrawing forces until December 15, 2011, when the war was declared formally over and the last troops left the country. At the same time, he increased American involvement in Afghanistan, starting a surge strategy using an additional 30,000 troops, while proposing to begin withdrawing troops in 2014. The U.S., with NATO, intervened in the Libyan Civil War for seven months in 2011. 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 U.S. 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 its leadership. In October, Obama sent troops to Central Africa to fight the Lord's Resistance Army.

In 2012, the Newtown school shooting in Connecticut led to unsuccessful attempts from Obama to promote gun reform. The Boston Marathon bombing of 2013 killed three people and injured more than 260. Also in 2013, NSA employee Edward Snowden leaked information regarding the NSA's widespread program of surveilling American citizens through the Internet. He then fled to Russia. The shooting of Black teen Michael Brown by police officer Darren Wilson, and a grand jury declining to charge Wilson with murder, led to the Ferguson unrest in Missouri in 2014 and 2015. The U.S. also joined the international Paris Agreement on climate change.

The debate over the issue of rights for the LGBT community, including same-sex marriage, began to shift in favor of same-sex couples. In 2012, President Obama became the first president to openly support same-sex marriage. The Supreme Court provided federal recognition of same-sex marriages in 2013, and then legalized gay marriage nationwide with Obergefell v. Hodges in 2015.

In 2013, the U.S. started a counter-terrorist invention in Niger, which ended in 2024. The CIA also began a covert operation to train rebels in Syria fighting against the terrorist group ISIS. This program was publicized and expanded in 2014. That year, ISIS grew in scope in the Middle East, and inspired many terrorist attacks in the United States, including the 2015 San Bernardino attack. The U.S. and its allies began a significant military offensive against ISIS in Iraq which lasted from 2014 to 2021. In December 2014, Obama officially ended the combat mission in Afghanistan and promised a withdrawal of all remaining U.S. troops at the end of 2016 with the exception of the embassy guards.

Donald Trump's 2016 presidential election victory speech

In 2016, following a contentious election, Republican Donald Trump was elected president. The results of the election were called into question, and U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that associates of the Russian government interfered in the election "to undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process". This, along with questions about potential collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian officials, led to investigations by the FBI and Congress. However, these reports proved to be 'seriously flawed'.

Trump in front of his recent expansion of the U.S.-Mexico border wall in 2020

During Trump's presidency, he espoused an " America First" ideology, placing restrictions on asylum seekers, expanding the wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, and imposing a widely controversial ban on immigration from seven Muslim-majority countries. Many of his executive orders and other actions were challenged in court. He also imposed a wide range of tariffs on Chinese products, signed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, and removed the U.S. from the Paris Agreement. In 2018, controversy erupted over the Trump administration's " zero tolerance" policy towards illegal immigrants, which involved the separation of thousands of undocumented children from their parents. After public outcry, Trump rescinded the policy. Trump's term also saw the confirmation of three new Supreme Court justices, cementing a conservative majority. In 2019, a U.S. attack caused the suicide of the leader of ISIS, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. A whistleblower complaint alleged that Trump had withheld foreign aid from Ukraine under the demand that they investigate the business dealings of the son of Joe Biden, Trump's political opponent. As a result, Trump was impeached for abuse of power and obstruction of congress, becoming the third president to have been impeached, but he was acquitted.

The late 2010s were marked by widespread social upheaval and change in the United States. The #MeToo movement gained popularity, exposing alleged sexual harassment and abuse in the workplace. Multiple prominent celebrities were accused of misconduct or rape. During this period, the Black Lives Matter movement also gained support online, exacerbated by police killings of multiple black Americans. Multiple mass shootings, including the 2016 Pulse Nightclub shooting and the 2017 Las Vegas shooting, led to increased calls for gun control and reform. Following the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in 2018, gun control advocates organized the March for Our Lives, where millions of students across the country walked out of school to protest gun violence. The Women's March protest against Trump's presidency in 2017 was one of the largest protests in American history. Political debate has continued over tax reform, immigration reform, income inequality, U.S. foreign policy, and Islamophobia.

The COVID-19 disease started spreading in 2019. On March 11, the WHO declared its spread to be a pandemic. Many state and local governments imposed "stay at home" orders to slow the spread of the virus, with the goal of reducing patient overload in hospitals. By the end of March, the United States had the most cases of any country, at 100,000. At Trump's direction, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and Centers for Disease Control ordered additional preventive guidelines to the long-term care facility industry. On April 11, the U.S. death toll became the highest in the world at 20,000, surpassing that of Italy. By May 12, the U.S. suffered more official COVID-19 deaths than any other country, at 1 million. U.S. life expectancy fell by over a year in 2020, and unemployment rates rose to the worst rates since the Great Depression. In 2021, U.S. life expectancy decreased by around half a year. The biggest mass vaccination campaign in U.S. history started in December 2020, when the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine started being distributed to U.S. citizens. By October 2022, 613 million Americans had been administered a vaccine shot. Many Americans joined the anti-vaccine movement.

The May 2020 murder of George Floyd caused mass protests and riots in many major cities over police brutality, with many states calling in the National Guard. Many organizations attempted to rid themselves of institutionalized racism. 2020 was also marked by a rise in domestic terrorist threats and widespread conspiracy theories around mail-in voting and COVID-19. The QAnon conspiracy theory gained publicity due to greater Internet usage during the pandemic. Multiple major cities were hit by rioting and brawls between far-left anti-fascist affiliated groups and far-right groups such as the Proud Boys.

Trump's tweet insisting he won the 2020 election, despite Joe Biden being on track to win the election at this point[391][392]

Democrat Joe Biden defeated Trump in the 2020 presidential election, the first defeat of an incumbent president since 1992. The election, with an exceptional amount of voting by mail and early voting due to the COVID-19 pandemic, had historically high voter turnout. Trump then repeatedly made false claims of massive voter fraud and election rigging, leading to the January 6 United States Capitol attack by supporters of Trump and right-wing militias. That storming led to Trump's impeachment, as the only U.S. president to be impeached twice. The Senate later acquitted Trump despite some members of his own Republican party voting against him. Kamala Harris was inaugurated as both the first African-American and first woman vice president of the United States.

In 2021, Biden finished the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan which started under Trump. After an evacuation of over 120,000 American citizens, Afghanistan fell to the Taliban in August. Biden signed into law the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021; a $1.9 trillion stimulus bill that temporarily established expanded unemployment insurance and sent $1,400 stimulus checks to most Americans in response to continued economic pressure from COVID-19. He also proposed a significant expansion of the U.S. social safety net through the Build Back Better Act, but those efforts, along with voting rights legislation, failed in Congress. He then signed bills regarding infrastructure, gun reform (in the aftermath of the Uvalde school shooting), healthcare for veterans, and other issues. Significant inflation in the early 2020s led to signing of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, which included significant federal investment in pro-environment measures, and extended Affordable Care Act subsidies.

Protestors outside of the Supreme Court shortly after the announcement of the Dobbs v. Jackson decision in 2022

In the early 2020s, Republican-led states across the United States began sweeping rollbacks of LGBT rights, such as bans on gender transitions. In 2022, the Supreme Court determined that abortion is not a protected right under the Constitution. The ruling, Dobbs v. Jackson, overturned and Planned Parenthood v. Casey and sparked protests across the country. Biden also appointed Ketanji Brown Jackson to become the first black woman to serve on the Supreme Court. In 2023, Trump began appearing in court as a defendant in multiple notable criminal trials, including alleged federal crimes, and the U.S. began protecting shipping in the Red Sea from attacks by the Yemeni Houthis. In 2024, Trump became the first president convicted of a crime, when he was found guilty of 34 felony counts for falsifying business documents related to his paying off of Stormy Daniels in 2016.

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History of the United States - Wikipedia

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By the 1760s, the thirteen British colonies contained 2.5 million people and were established along the Atlantic Coast east of the Appalachian Mountains. The Southern Colonies built an agricultural system on slave labor, enslaving millions from Africa for this purpose.