50 States




50 States in Alphabetical Order

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State: a region of the United States that has its own government for some matters. Each state is a territorial division of America and elects members to congress to represent their state, forming a branch of the federal government. There are 48 conterminous states in North America plus Alaska in northwest North America and the Hawaiian Islands in the Pacific Ocean.

List of 50 States In Alphabetical Order.

Click on any state below to visit their official website.

Alabama

Hawaii

Massachusetts

New Mexico

South Dakota

Alaska

Idaho

Michigan

New York

Tennessee

Arizona

Illinois

Minnesota

North Carolina

Texas

Arkansas

Indiana

Mississippi

North Dakota

Utah

California

Iowa

Missouri

Ohio

Vermont

Colorado

Kansas

Montana

Oklahoma

Virginia

Connecticut

Kentucky

Nebraska

Oregon

Washington

Delaware

Louisiana

Nevada

Pennsylvania

West Virginia

Florida

Maine

New Hampshire

Rhode Island

Wisconsin

Georgia

Maryland

New Jersey

South Carolina

Wyoming


Official U.S. Government Sites
The White House Congress Washington D.C. U.S. Senate U.S. House of Representatives

The Cabinet

The Executive Branch

The Legislative Branch

The Judicial Branch

Library of Congress
Congressional Record
National Archives

The Constitution

Amendments to The Constitution
The Supreme Court

Documents of Democracy
(Wikipedia)
Mayflower Compact The Declaration of Independence The Constitution The Bill of Rights Articles of Confederation

Emancipation Proclamation

19th Amendment

The Federalist Papers

Magna Carta

The French Declaration of the Rights

Museums and Memorials
Smithsonian Museums D.A.R. Museum National Archives Museum Aviation Museum The Henry Ford Museum

Washington Monument

Lincoln Memorial

The Jefferson Memorial

Grant's Tomb

Mount Rushmore

Benjamin Franklin Memorial

Federal Hall

Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial

World War II Memorial

Vietnam Veterans Memorial
Presidential Libraries and Museums
Herbert Hoover Library Franklin D. Roosevelt Library Harry S. Truman Library Dwight D. Eisenhower Library John F. Kennedy Library

Lyndon B. Johnson Library

Richard Nixon Library

Gerald R. Ford Library

Jimmy Carter Library

Ronald Reagan Library

George H. W. Bush Library

William J. Clinton Library

George W. Bush Library
Click on any link above to learn more about that subject.
Scroll down and click on the state outline below to visit that state's Wikipedia page


Perspective
It may be hard for some of you to imagine, but there was a time when we didn't have Cars, Computers, and Televisions. How did we ever get along without our Tablets, Smart Phones, or Text Messaging. No iTunes, cd's, or iPads to listen to our music. What did people do? How did they find their way without a GPS system, or even a simple map?

Yes, we do have an easy life compared to those who paved the way for America. We should never forget the struggles and hardships people had to endure in order to survive, let alone progress. Sometimes people went days without food or water, things we take for granted today, don't forget, back then they had no grocery stores or 7-11's.

Still, they persevered and explored the world around them, discovering new lands and opportunities as they went. Allowing us, in the 21st Century, to live like royalty did in their times; with an abundance of food, drink, freedom, and entertainment. Be appreciative of their efforts as you study about the history of America and the formation of The United States.
The Beginning
On a November morning in 1620, just 98 days out of England, the 180-ton Mayflower completed her rendezvous with history. She had arrived in America, bearing the bright hopes and meager possessions of the original Pilgrims, a resolute band of a hundred-plus men and women pursuing the dream of liberty. While the party paused at what is now Provincetown on Cape Cod, Captain Miles Standish went exploring in a large shallop and found a harbor across the bay. There at Plymouth the Pilgrims settled-and barely in time.

In the full fury of that first New England winter, half the settlers died. Yet those who survived sank their roots deep. And years later, looking back to the desperate times, their tough-minded governor, William Bradford, could write: "Thus out of small beginnings greater things have been produced by His hand that made all things of nothing, and gives being to all things that are; and, as one small candle may light a thousand, so the light here kindled hath shone unto many, yea in some sort to our whole nation."

Bradford and his Pilgrims had indeed kindled an extraordinary light on their barren coasts-a light that was eventually to illumine something more than the economic sinews of the most fabulously prolific land ever worked by man. "Those coasts," observed the prescient Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville in 1835 in his book 'Democracy in America', "so admirably adapted for commerce and industry; those wide and deep rivers; that inexhaustible valley of the Mississippi...seemed prepared to be the abode of a great nation yet unborn. In that land the great experiment of the attempt to construct society upon a new basis was to be made...there, for the first time...theories hitherto unknown, or deemed impracticable, were to exhibit a spectacle for which the world had not been prepared."

Now the nation is full-grown, and the westward movement which brought it to fruition is over. But the Pilgrims' light nevertheless burns on. "No man" wrote the 20th Century American poet Archibald MacLeish, "can come to the Pacific coast of this continent...and feel that he has come to the end of anything. The American journey has not ended. America is never accomplished, America is always still to build; for men, as long as they are truly men, will dream of man's fulfillment."


Click on a state outline below
and learn more about each individual state.
The States
The United States is a federal union of fifty states. The original thirteen states were the successors of the thirteen colonies that rebelled against British rule. Early in the country's history, three new states were organized on territory separated from the claims of the existing states: Kentucky from Virginia; Tennessee from North Carolina; and Maine from Massachusetts.
Most of the other states have been carved from territories obtained through war or purchase by the U.S. government. One set of exceptions comprises Vermont, Texas, and Hawaii: each was an independent republic before joining the union. During the American Civil War, West Virginia broke away from Virginia. The most recent state—Hawaii—achieved statehood on August 21, 1959. The states do not have the right to secede from the union.
At 3.79 million square miles (9.83 million km2) and with about 307 million people, the United States is the third or fourth largest country by total area (the ranking varies depending on how two territories disputed by China and India are counted and how the total size of the United States is calculated), and the third largest by land area and population. The United States is one of the world's most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, the product of large-scale immigration from many countries.
 The two most traumatic experiences in the nation's history were the Civil War (1861-65), in which a northern Union of states defeated a secessionist Confederacy of 11 southern slave states, and the Great Depression of the 1930s, an economic downturn during which about a quarter of the labor force lost its jobs. Buoyed by victories in World Wars I and II and the end of the Cold War in 1991, the US remains the world's most powerful nation state. Since the end of World War II, the economy has achieved relatively steady growth, low unemployment and inflation, and rapid advances in technology.





Click on the state outline below to visit that state's Wikipedia page
 


Alabama
Alabama

Hawaii
Hawaii

Massachusetts
Massachusetts

New Mexico
New Mexico

South Dakota
South Dakota


Alaska
Alaska


Idaho
Idaho


Michigan
Michigan


New York
New York


Tennessee
Tennessee


Arizona
Arizona


Illinois
Illinois


Minnesota
Minnesota


North Carolina
North Carolina


Texas
Texas


Arkansas
Arkansas


Indiana
Indiana


Mississippi
Mississippi


North Dakota
North Dakota


Utah
Utah


California
California


Iowa
Iowa


Missouri
Missouri


Ohio
Ohio


Vermont
Vermont


Colorado
Colorado


Kansas
Kansas


Montana
Montana


Oklahoma
Oklahoma


Virginia
Virginia


Connecticut
Connecticut


Kentucky
Kentucky


Nebraska
Nebraska


Oregon
Oregon


Washington
Washington


Delaware
Delaware


Louisiana
Louisiana


Nevada
Nevada


Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania


West Virginia
West Virginia


Florida
Florida


Maine
Maine


New Hampshire
New Hampshire


Rhode Island
Rhode Island


Wisconsin
Wisconsin


Georgia
Georgia


Maryland
Maryland


New Jersey
New Jersey


South Carolina
South Carolina


Wyoming
Wyoming






Independence and Expansion

The American Revolutionary War was the first successful colonial war of independence against a European power. Americans had developed an ideology of "republicanism" that held government rested on the will of the people as expressed in their local legislatures. They demanded their rights as Englishmen, “no taxation without representation”. The British insisted on administering the empire through Parliament, and the conflict escalated into war. The Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence, on July 4, 1776, proclaiming that humanity is created equal in their inalienable rights. That date is now celebrated annually as America's Independence Day. In 1777, the Articles of Confederation established a weak government that operated until 1789.
Britain recognized the independence of the United States following their defeat at Yorktown. In the peace treaty of 1783, American sovereignty was recognized from the Atlantic coast west to the Mississippi River. Nationalists led the Philadelphia Convention of 1787 in writing the United States Constitution, and it was ratified in state conventions in 1788. The federal government was reorganized into three branches for their checks and balances in 1789. George Washington, who had led the revolutionary army to victory, was the first president elected under the new constitution. The Bill of Rights, forbidding federal restriction of personal freedoms and guaranteeing a range of legal protections, was adopted in 1791.
Although the federal government criminalized the international slave trade in 1808, after 1820 cultivation of the highly profitable cotton crop exploded in the Deep South, and along with it the slave population. The Second Great Awakening, beginning about 1800, converted millions to evangelical Protestantism. In the North it energized multiple social reform movements, including abolitionism, in the South, Methodists and Baptists proselytized among slave populations.
Americans' eagerness to expand westward prompted a long series of Indian Wars. The Louisiana Purchase of French-claimed territory in 1803 almost doubled the nation's size. The War of 1812, declared against Britain over various grievances and fought to a draw, strengthened U.S. nationalism. A series of U.S. military incursions into Florida led Spain to cede it and other Gulf Coast territory in 1819. Expansion was aided by steam power, when steamboats began traveling along America's large water systems, which were connected by new canals, such as the Erie and the I&M; then, even faster railroads began their stretch across the nation's land.
From 1820 to 1850, Jacksonian democracy began a set of reforms which included wider male suffrage, and it led to the rise of the Second Party System of Democrats and Whigs as the dominant parties from 1828 to 1854. The Trail of Tears in the 1830s exemplified the Indian removal policy that moved Indians into the west to their own reservations. The U.S. annexed the Republic of Texas in 1845 during a period of expansionist Manifest Destiny. The 1846 Oregon Treaty with Britain led to U.S. control of the present-day American Northwest. Victory in the Mexican-American War resulted in the 1848 Mexican Cession of California and much of the present-day American Southwest.
The California Gold Rush of 1848–49 spurred western migration and the creation of additional western states. After the American Civil War, new transcontinental railways made relocation easier for settlers, expanded internal trade and increased conflicts with Native Americans. Over a half-century, the loss of the buffalo was an existential blow to many Plains Indians cultures. In 1869, a new Peace Policy sought to protect Native-Americans from abuses, avoid further warfare, and secure their eventual U.S. citizenship.
Divisions and The Reconstruction Era
From the beginning of the United States, inherent divisions over slavery between the North and the South in American society ultimately led to the American Civil War. Initially states entering the Union alternated slave and free, keeping a sectional balance in the Senate, while free states outstripped slave states in population and in the House of Representatives. But with additional western territory and more free-soil states, tensions between slave and free states mounted with arguments over federalism and disposition of the territories, whether and how to expand or restrict slavery.
Following the 1860 election of Abraham Lincoln, the first president from the largely anti-slavery Republican Party, conventions in thirteen states ultimately declared secession and formed the Confederate States of America, while the U.S. federal government maintained secession was illegal. The ensuing war was at first for Union, then after 1863 as casualties mounted and Lincoln delivered his Emancipation Proclamation, a second war aim became abolition of slavery. The war remains the deadliest military conflict in American history, resulting in the deaths of approximately 620,000 soldiers as well as many civilians.
Following the Union victory in 1865, three amendments to the U.S. Constitution prohibited slavery, made the nearly four million African Americans who had been slaves[100] U.S. citizens, and promised them voting rights. The war and its resolution led to a substantial increase in federal power aimed at reintegrating and rebuilding the Southern states while ensuring the rights of the newly freed slaves. But following the Reconstruction Era, throughout the South Jim Crow laws soon effectively disenfranchised most blacks and some poor whites. Over the subsequent decades, in both the north and south blacks and some whites faced systemic discrimination, including racial segregation and occasional vigilante violence, sparking national movements against these abuses.

The Modern Era*
Foreign affairs (relationships with other countries) took up a great deal of President Woodrow Wilson's attention. In Europe, there was the outbreak of World War I, also known as the Great War, in 1914, and in Mexico, there was the Mexican Revolution. Although at first Americans did not want to get involved, they supported the Allies in their fight against the Central Powers. Finally, the U.S. entered the war in 1917. The war concluded in 1918 and the Treaty of Versailles was signed in 1919. The Allied Powers of the U.S., Great Britain, Japan, Italy, Russia, France, Belgium, Serbia and Montenegro had been victorious.
Back at home, young people were tired of the war. Women exercised their newly found freedom (having won the right to vote in 1920) and many whites took up an interest in African American culture. Harlem nightclubs thrived, spotlighting numerous artists such as jazz musicians Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington.
October 29, 1929, was a dark day in history. "Black Tuesday" is the day that the stock market crashed, officially setting off the Great Depression. Unemployment skyrocketed--a quarter of the workforce was without jobs by 1933 and many people became homeless. President Herbert Hoover attempted to handle the crisis but he was unable to improve the situation. In 1932, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected president and he promised a "New Deal" for the American people. Congress created The Works Progress Administration (WPA) which offered work relief for thousands of people. The end to the Great Depression came about in 1941 with America's entry into World War II.
The development and growth of the United States during this era was influenced by helping Europe recover from World War II and U.S. involvement in other wars--mainly the Cold War with the Soviet Union and the Vietnam and Korean Wars. (The Cold War was not a real war with the Soviet Union; this term refers to the chilly relations the U.S. had with the formerly communist nation, which, since its breakup, is called Russia.) In the States, the "Red Scare" of communism of 1950 resulted in the McCarthy hearings. Senator Joseph McCarthy accused many Americans of being communists, which led to loss of employment for many artists, teachers, and government employees.
Several prominent figures, including Eleanor Roosevelt, Martin Luther King Jr., John Kennedy, and Richard Nixon, helped shape America's modern era. During this time, Americans went to the moon, ushered in the civil rights movement and the fight for equal rights for women, established relations with China, and witnessed the fall of communism in Russia and Eastern Europe.
 

US Time Zones
USA Time Zones




 The Time Zones

Time in the United States, by law, is divided into nine standard time zones covering the states and its possessions, with most of the United States observing daylight saving time for approximately the summer months. The time zone boundaries and DST observance are regulated by the Department of Transportation. Official and highly precise timekeeping services (clocks) are provided by two federal agencies: the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) (an agency of the Department of Commerce); and its military counterpart, the United States Naval Observatory (USNO). The clocks run by these services are kept synchronized with each other as well as with those of other international timekeeping organizations.

It is the combination of the time zone and daylight saving rules, along with the timekeeping services, which determines the legal civil time for any U.S. location at any moment.

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