Historia De Los Estados Unidos (Ingés)

History of the United States
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"American history" redirects here. For the history of the continents, see History of the Americas.
History of the United States |

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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. Officially the United States of America began as an independent nation with the Declaration of Independence in July 1776. European colonists reached the Gulf and Pacific coasts, but the largest settlements were by the English on the East Coast, starting in 1607. By the 1770s the Thirteen Colonies contained two and half millionpeople. They were prosperous, and had developed their own political and legal systems. The British government's threat to American self-government led to war in 1775 and the Declaration of Independence in 1776. With major military and financial support from France, the patriots won the American Revolution. In 1789 the Constitution became the basis for the United States federal government, with warhero George Washington as the first president. The young nation continued to struggle with the scope of central government and with European influence, creating the first political parties in the 1790s, and fighting a second war for independence in 1812.
U.S. territory expanded westward across the continent, brushing aside Native Americans and Mexico, and overcoming modernizers who wanted to deepenthe economy rather than expand the geography. Slavery of Africans was abolished in the North, but heavy world demand for cotton let it flourish in the Southern states. Through shipping, manufacturing and supplies, major northern cities were closely tied to the Southern cotton economy and slavery as well. For 50 of the 72 years between the election of George Washington and that of Abraham Lincoln,a slaveholder served as president of the United States and, during that period, only slaveholding presidents were re-elected to second terms.[1]
The 1860 election of Abraham Lincoln, who called for no more expansion of slavery, triggered a crisis as eleven slave states seceded to found the Confederate States of America in 1861. The bloody American Civil War (1861–65) redefined the nation andremains the central iconic event. The South was defeated and, in the Reconstruction era, the U.S. ended slavery, extended rights to African Americans, and readmitted secessionist states with loyal governments. The national government was much stronger, and it now had the explicit duty to protect individuals. Reconstruction was never completed by the US government and left the blacks in a world of JimCrow political, social and economic inferiority. The entire South remained poor while the North and West grew rapidly.
Thanks to an outburst of entrepreneurship in the North and the arrival of millions of immigrant workers from Europe, the U.S. became the leading industrialized power by 1900. Disgust with corruption, waste, and traditional politics stimulated the Progressive movement,1890s-1920s, which pushed for reform in industry and politics and put into the Constitution women's suffrage and Prohibition of alcohol (the latter repealed in 1933). Initially neutral in World War I, the U.S. declared war on Germany in 1917, and funded the Allied victory. The nation refused to follow President Woodrow Wilson's leadership and never joined the League of Nations. After a prosperous decade inthe 1920s the Wall Street Crash of 1929 marked the onset of the decade-long world-wide Great Depression. A political realignment expelled the Republicans from power and installed Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt and his elaborate and expensive New Deal programs for relief, recovery, and reform. Roosevelt's Democratic coalition, comprising ethnics in the north, labor unions, big-city machines,...