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