American History

The history of the United States as covered in schools and universities typically begins with either 1492 and Columbus, or—especially in recent years—with the prehistory of the Native peoples.[1]The United States began as an independent nation with the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. European colonists reached the Gulf and Pacific coasts, but the largest settlements were by theEnglish on the Atlantic coast, starting in 1607. By the 1770s, the Thirteen Colonies contained two and a half million people. They were prospering, and had developed their own political and legalsystems. As a result of the French and Indian Wars, Britain began to try to recoup the costs of those wars by instituting a series of additional taxes on the Colonists, and had left parts of their army inthe colonies to help provide for their defense. The additional efforts at taxation, and the continuous presence of British troops posed a threat to American self-government. Political action in theearly 1770s culminated in the Boston Tea Party in December 1773, and led to all-out war in 1775. After fierce debate among the colonies, it was finally agreed to declare their independence from Britain,and in 1776, the Declaration of Independence was signed, formally and officially breaking all ties with the former mother country. With major military and financial support from France, the Patriotswon the American Revolutionary War. During and after the war, the United States were united under a weak federal government established by the Articles of Confederation. When these became unworkable, anew Constitution was written in 1789, and it became the basis for the United States federal government, with war hero George Washington as the country's first president. The young nation continued tostruggle with the scope of central government and with European influence, creating the first political parties in the 1790s, and fighting a second war with Britain in 1812.
U.S. territory expanded...