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The United States ranges from the Atlantic Ocean on
the nation's east coast to the Pacific Ocean bordering the west, and
also includes the state of Hawaii, a series of islands located in the
Pacific Ocean, the state of Alaska located in the northwestern part of
the continent above the Yukon, and numerous other holdings and
territories.
The first known inhabitants of modern-day United States territory are
believed to have arrived over a period of several thousand years
beginning sometime prior to 15,000 years ago by crossing Beringia into
Alaska. Solid evidence of these cultures settling in what would become
the US is dated to at least 14,000 years ago.
Relatively little is known of these early settlers compared to the
Europeans who colonized the area after the first voyage of navigator
Christopher Columbus in 1492 for Spain. Columbus' men were also the
first documented Old Worlders to land in the territory of the United
States when they arrived in Puerto Rico during their second voyage in
1493. Juan Ponce de León, who arrived in Florida in 1513, is credited as
being the first European to land in what is now the continental United
States, although some evidence suggests that John Cabot might have
reached what is presently New England in 1498.
In its beginnings, the United States consisted only of the Thirteen
Colonies, which consisted of states occupying the same lands as when
they were British colonies. American colonists fought off the British
army in the American Revolutionary War of the 1770s and issued a
Declaration of Independence in 1776. Seven years later, the signing of
the Treaty of Paris officially recognized independence from Britain. In
the nineteenth century, westward expansion of United States territory
began, upon the belief of Manifest Destiny, in which the United States
would occupy all the North American land east to west, from the Atlantic
to the Pacific Oceans. By 1912, with the admission of Arizona to the
Union, the U.S. reached that goal. The outlying states of Alaska and
Hawaii were both admitted in 1959.
Ratified in 1788, the Constitution serves as the supreme American law in
organizing the government; the Supreme Court is responsible for
upholding Constitutional law. Many social progresses came up starting in
the nineteenth century; those advancements have been widely reflected in
the Constitution. Slavery was abolished in 1865 by the Thirteenth
Amendment to the United States Constitution; the following Fourteenth
and Fifteenth Amendments respectively guaranteed citizenship for all
persons naturalized within U.S. territory and voting for people of all
races. In later years, civil rights were extended to women and black
Americans, following effective lobbying from social activists. The
Nineteenth Amendment prohibited gender discrimination in voting rights;
later, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed racial segregation in
public places.
The Progressive Era marked a time of economic growth for the United
States, advancing to the Roaring Twenties. However, the Wall Street
Crash of 1929 led to the Great Depression, a time of economic downturn
and mass unemployment. Consequently, the U.S. government established the
New Deal, a series of reform programs that intended to assist those
affected by the Depression. The New Deal has varied success. However,
once the U.S. entered World War II in December 1941, the economy quickly
recovered, so much that the U.S. became a world superpower by the dawn
of the Cold War. During the Cold War, the U.S. and the Soviet Union were
the world's two superpowers, but with the end of the Cold War and the
collapse of the Soviet Union, United States became the world's only
superpower. |
