History of the United States

 

The land that would become the United States was inhabited by Native Americans for tens of thousands of years. Their descendants today include, but are not limited to, 574 federally recognized tribes. European colonization began in the late 15th century, bringing wars and epidemics that devastated Indigenous societies. The first permanent English settlement was established in 1607 at Jamestown, in present-day Virginia. By the 1760s, the Thirteen Colonies had taken shape under British rule. In the Southern Colonies, agriculture was built on enslaved labor, with millions of Africans forced into bondage.

Following Britain’s victory over France in the French and Indian War, Parliament imposed new taxes and, in 1773, enacted the Intolerable Acts to restrict colonial self-governance. These measures heightened tensions and sparked open conflict, beginning with the Battles of Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775. The Second Continental Congress soon created the Continental Army, appointing George Washington as its commander-in-chief in June 1775. On July 4, 1776, the Congress declared independence with the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. The Revolutionary War continued until the Treaty of Paris, signed on September 3, 1783, in which Britain formally recognized the independence and sovereignty of the Thirteen Colonies, marking the birth of the United States.

In the nation’s first presidential election of 1788–89, George Washington was unanimously elected as the United States’ first president. Together with Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton, he worked to strengthen the federal government, in contrast to the vision of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. On March 4, 1789, the U.S. Constitution took effect, becoming the world’s oldest written and continuously enforced national constitution. The Bill of Rights, adopted in 1791, guaranteed fundamental liberties. In 1803, President Jefferson oversaw the Louisiana Purchase, doubling the nation’s territory. Encouraged by cheap land and the ideology of Manifest Destiny, Americans expanded westward to the Pacific, displacing Indigenous peoples through wars and forced removals. The spread of slavery into new territories soon emerged as a divisive national issue.

The election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860 triggered the secession of southern states and the creation of the Confederacy. Civil war erupted in April 1861 at Fort Sumter. The Union victory at Gettysburg in 1863—America’s bloodiest battle with more than 50,000 dead—marked a turning point. The Union’s eventual victory in 1865 preserved the nation and ended slavery, though Lincoln was assassinated shortly afterward. During Reconstruction (1865–1877), the federal government assumed responsibility for protecting civil rights, but the return of white Democratic rule in the South brought voter suppression, racial violence, and the Jim.