American Revolution and the early republic (1765–1800)

Main articles: History of the United States (1776–1789), History of the United States (1789–
1815), American Revolution, and Founding Fathers of the United States

The Declaration of Independence portrait depicts

the Committee of Five presenting the Declaration to the Continental Congress on June 28, 1776,
in Philadelphia.

Following their victory in the French and Indian War, Britain began to assert greater
control over local colonial affairs, resulting in colonial political resistance; one of the
primary colonial grievances was a denial of their rights as Englishmen, particularly
the right to representation in the British government that taxed them. To demonstrate
their dissatisfaction and resolve, the First Continental Congress met in 1774 and
passed the Continental Association, a colonial boycott of British goods enforced by
local "committees of safety" that proved effective. The British attempt to then disarm
the colonists resulted in the 1775 Battles of Lexington and Concord, igniting
the American Revolutionary War. At the Second Continental Congress, the colonies
appointed George Washington commander-in-chief of the Continental Army, and
created a committee that named Thomas Jefferson to draft the Declaration of
Independence. Two days after passing the Lee Resolution to create an independent
nation the Declaration was adopted on July 4, 1776.[68] The political values of the
American Revolution included liberty, inalienable individual rights; and
the sovereignty of the people;[69] supporting republicanism and
rejecting monarchy, aristocracy, and all hereditary political power; civic virtue; and
vilification of political corruption.[70] The Founding Fathers of the United States, who
included Washington, Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander
Hamilton, John Jay, James Madison, Thomas Paine, and many others, were inspired
by Classical, Renaissance, and Enlightenment philosophies and ideas.[71][72]

Though in practical effect since its drafting in 1777, the Articles of Confederation was
ratified in 1781 and formally established a decentralized government that operated
until 1789.[68] After the British surrender at the siege of Yorktown in 1781, American
sovereignty was internationally recognized by the Treaty of Paris (1783), through
which the U.S. gained territory stretching west to the Mississippi River, north to
present-day Canada, and south to Spanish Florida.[73] The Northwest
Ordinance (1787) established the precedent by which the country's territory would
expand with the admission of new states, rather than the expansion of existing
states.[74]

The U.S. Constitution was drafted at the 1787 Constitutional Convention to

overcome the limitations of the Articles. It went into effect in 1789, creating a federal
republic governed by three separate branches that together formed a system
of checks and balances.[75] George Washington was elected the country's first
president under the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights was adopted in 1791 to allay
skeptics' concerns about the power of the more centralized government.[76] His
resignation as commander-in-chief after the Revolutionary War and his later refusal
to run for a third term as the country's first president established a precedent for the
supremacy of civil authority in the United States and the peaceful transfer of power.[77]

Westward expansion and Civil War (1800–1865)

Main articles: History of the United States (1815–1849) and History of the United States
(1849–1865)

Territorial expansion of the United States

In the late 18th century, American settlers began to expand westward in larger
numbers, many with a sense of manifest destiny.[78][79] The Louisiana Purchase of
1803 from France nearly doubled the territory of the United States.[80][81] Lingering
issues with Britain remained, leading to the War of 1812, which was fought to a
draw.[82] Spain ceded Florida and its Gulf Coast territory in 1819.[83]

The Missouri Compromise of 1820, which admitted Missouri as a slave

state and Maine as a free state, attempted to balance the desire of northern states to
prevent the expansion of slavery into new territories with that of southern states to
extend it there. Primarily, the compromise prohibited slavery in all other lands of the
Louisiana Purchase north of the 36°30′ parallel.[84]

As Americans expanded further into territory inhabited by Native Americans,

the federal government implemented policies of Indian removal or assimilation.[85]
[86]
The most significant such legislation was the Indian Removal Act of 1830, a key
policy of President Andrew Jackson. It resulted in the Trail of Tears (1830–1850), in
which an estimated 60,000 Native Americans living east of the Mississippi
River were forcibly removed and displaced to lands far to the west, causing 13,200
to 16,700 deaths along the forced march.[87] Settler expansion as well as this influx of
Indigenous peoples from the East resulted in the American Indian Wars west of the
Mississippi.[88][89]

During the colonial period, slavery became legal in all the Thirteen colonies, but by
1770 it provided the main labor force in the large-scale, agriculture-dependent
economies of the Southern Colonies from Maryland to Georgia. The practice began
to be significantly questioned during the American Revolution, [90] and spurred by an
active abolitionist movement that had reemerged in the 1830s, states in the
North enacted laws to prohibit slavery within their boundaries.[91] At the same
time, support for slavery had strengthened in Southern states, with widespread use
of inventions such as the cotton gin (1793) having made slavery immensely
profitable for Southern elites.[92][93][94]

The United States annexed the Republic of Texas in 1845,[95] and the 1846 Oregon
Treaty led to U.S. control of the present-day American Northwest.[96] Dispute with
Mexico over Texas led to the Mexican–American War (1846–1848). After the victory
of the U.S., Mexico recognized U.S. sovereignty over Texas, New Mexico,
and California in the 1848 Mexican Cession; the cession's lands also included the
future states of Nevada, Colorado and Utah.[78][97] The California gold rush of 1848–
1849 spurred a huge migration of white settlers to the Pacific coast, leading to even
more confrontations with Native populations. One of the most violent, the California
genocide of thousands of Native inhabitants, lasted into the mid-1870s.[98] Additional
western territories and states were created.[99]

Slave states and free states in 1858

Throughout the 1850s, the sectional conflict regarding slavery was further inflamed
by national legislation in the U.S. Congress and decisions of the Supreme Court. In
Congress, the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 mandated the forcible return to their
owners in the South of slaves taking refuge in non-slave states, while the Kansas–
Nebraska Act of 1854 effectively gutted the anti-slavery requirements of the Missouri
Compromise.[100] In its Dred Scott decision of 1857, the Supreme Court ruled against
a slave brought into non-slave territory, simultaneously declaring the entire Missouri
Compromise to be unconstitutional. These and other events exacerbated tensions
between North and South that would culminate in the American Civil War (1861–
1865).[101][102]

Beginning with South Carolina, 11 slave-state governments voted to secede from the
United States in 1861, joining to create the Confederate States of America. All other
state governments remained loyal to the Union.[q][103][104] War broke out in April 1861
after the Confederacy bombarded Fort Sumter.[105][106] Following the Emancipation
Proclamation on January 1, 1863, many freed slaves joined the Union army.[107] The
war began to turn in the Union's favor following the 1863 Siege of
Vicksburg and Battle of Gettysburg, and the Confederates surrendered in 1865 after
the Union's victory in the Battle of Appomattox Court House.[108]

Reconstruction, Gilded Age, and Progressive Era (1863–

1917)
Main article: History of the United States (1865–1917)
Duration: 2 minutes and 27 seconds.2:27An Edison Studios film showing immigrants arriving at Ellis
Island in New York Harbor, a major point of entry for European immigrants in the late 19th and early
20th centuries[109][110]

Efforts toward reconstruction in the secessionist South had begun as early as 1862,
[111]
but it was only after President Lincoln's assassination that the
three Reconstruction Amendments to the Constitution were ratified to protect civil
rights. The amendments codified nationally the abolition of slavery and involuntary
servitude except as punishment for crimes, promised equal protection under the law
for all persons, and prohibited discrimination on the basis of race or previous
enslavement.[112][113][114] As a result, African Americans took an active political role in ex-
Confederate states in the decade following the Civil War.[115][116] The former
Confederate states were readmitted to the Union, beginning with Tennessee in 1866
and ending with Georgia in 1870.[117][118]

National infrastructure, including transcontinental telegraph and railroads, spurred

growth in the American frontier. This was accelerated by the Homestead Acts,
through which nearly 10 percent of the total land area of the United States was given
away free to some 1.6 million homesteaders.[119][120] From 1865 through 1917, an
unprecedented stream of immigrants arrived in the United States, including 24.4
million from Europe.[121] Most came through the Port of New York, and New York City
and other large cities on the East Coast became home to large Jewish, Irish,
and Italian populations. Many Northern Europeans as well as significant numbers
of Germans and other Central Europeans moved to the Midwest. At the same time,
about one million French Canadians migrated from Quebec to New England.
[122]
During the Great Migration, millions of African Americans left the rural South for
urban areas in the North.[123] Alaska was purchased from Russia in 1867.[124]

The Compromise of 1877 is generally considered the end of the Reconstruction era,
as it resolved the electoral crisis following the 1876 presidential election and led
President Rutherford B. Hayes to reduce the role of federal troops in the South.
[125]
Immediately, the Redeemers began evicting the Carpetbaggers and quickly
regained local control of Southern politics in the name of white supremacy.[126]
[127]
African Americans endured a period of heightened, overt racism following
Reconstruction, a time often called the nadir of American race relations.[128][129] A
series of Supreme Court decisions, including Plessy v. Ferguson, emptied
the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments of their force, allowing Jim Crow laws in
the South to remain unchecked, sundown towns in the Midwest, and segregation in
communities across the country, which would be reinforced by the policy
of redlining later adopted by the federal Home Owners' Loan Corporation.[130]

An explosion of technological advancement accompanied by the exploitation of

cheap immigrant labor[131] led to rapid economic expansion during the late 19th and
early 20th centuries, allowing the United States to outpace the economies of
England, France, and Germany combined.[132][133] This fostered the amassing of power
by a few prominent industrialists, largely by their formation
of trusts and monopolies to prevent competition.[134] Tycoons led the nation's
expansion in the railroad, petroleum, and steel industries. The United States
emerged as a pioneer of the automotive industry.[135] These changes resulted in
significant increases in economic inequality, slum conditions, and social unrest,
creating the environment for labor unions and socialist movements to begin to
flourish.[136][137][138] This period eventually ended with the advent of the Progressive Era,
which was characterized by significant reforms.[139][140]

Pro-American elements in Hawaii overthrew the Hawaiian monarchy; the

islands were annexed in 1898. That same year, Puerto Rico, the Philippines,
and Guam were ceded to the U.S. by Spain after the latter's defeat in the Spanish–
American War. (The Philippines was granted full independence from the U.S. on July
4, 1946, following World War II. Puerto Rico and Guam have remained U.S.
territories.)[141] American Samoa was acquired by the United States in 1900 after
the Second Samoan Civil War.[142] The U.S. Virgin Islands were purchased
from Denmark in 1917.[143]

World War I, Great Depression, and World War II (1917–

1945)
Main article: History of the United States (1917–1945)

The 1945 American Trinity test, the first-ever detonation

of a nuclear weapon

The United States entered World War I alongside the Allies in 1917 helping to turn
the tide against the Central Powers.[144] In 1920, a constitutional amendment granted
nationwide women's suffrage.[145] During the 1920s and 1930s, radio for mass
communication and early television transformed communications nationwide.
[146]
The Wall Street Crash of 1929 triggered the Great Depression, to which
President Franklin D. Roosevelt responded with the New Deal plan of "reform,
recovery and relief", a series of unprecedented and sweeping recovery
programs and employment relief projects combined with financial reforms and
regulations.[147][148]

Initially neutral during World War II, the U.S. began supplying war materiel to
the Allies of World War II in March 1941 and entered the war in December
after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor.[149] The U.S. developed the first nuclear
weapons and used them against the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in
August 1945, ending the war.[150][151] The United States was one of the "Four
Policemen" who met to plan the post-war world, alongside the United Kingdom,
the Soviet Union, and China.[152][153] The U.S. emerged relatively unscathed from the
war, with even greater economic power and international political influence.[154]

Cold War and social revolution (1945–1991)

Main articles: History of the United States (1945–1964), History of the United States (1964–
1980), and History of the United States (1980–1991)
Civil rights activists during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in Washington, D.C. in
August 1963

The end of World War II in 1945 left the U.S. and the Soviet Union as superpowers,
each with its own political, military, and economic sphere of influence. Geopolitical
tensions between the two superpowers soon led to the Cold War.[155][156][157] The U.S.
utilized the policy of containment to limit the Soviet Union's sphere of influence,
engaged in regime change against governments perceived to be aligned with the
Soviets, and prevailed in the Space Race, which culminated with the first crewed
Moon landing in 1969.[158][159]

Domestically, the U.S. experienced economic growth, urbanization, and population

growth following World War II.[160] The civil rights movement emerged, with Martin
Luther King Jr. becoming a prominent leader in the early 1960s.[161] The Great
Society plan of President Lyndon B. Johnson's administration resulted in
groundbreaking and broad-reaching laws, policies and a constitutional
amendment to counteract some of the worst effects of lingering institutional racism.
[162]

The counterculture movement in the U.S. brought significant social changes,

including the liberalization of attitudes toward recreational drug use and sexuality.[163]
[164]
It also encouraged open defiance of the military draft (leading to the end of
conscription in 1973)[165] and wide opposition to U.S. intervention in Vietnam, with the
U.S. totally withdrawing in 1975.[166] A societal shift in the roles of women was
significantly responsible for the large increase in female paid labor participation
during the 1970s, and by 1985 the majority of American women aged 16 and older
were employed.[167]

The Fall of Communism and the dissolution of the Soviet Union from 1989 to 1991
marked the end of the Cold War and left the United States as the world's sole
superpower.[168][169][170][171] This cemented the United States' global influence, reinforcing
the concept of the "American Century" as the U.S. dominated international political,
cultural, economic, and military affairs.[172][173]

Contemporary (1991–present)
Main articles: History of the United States (1991–2016) and History of the United States
(2016–present)

The Twin Towers in New York City during the September

11 attacks of 2001
The 1990s saw the longest recorded economic expansion in American history, a
dramatic decline in U.S. crime rates, and advances in technology. Throughout this
decade, technological innovations such as the World Wide Web, the evolution of
the Pentium microprocessor in accordance with Moore's law, rechargeable lithium-
ion batteries, the first gene therapy trial, and cloning either emerged in the U.S. or
were improved upon there. The Human Genome Project was formally launched in
1990, while Nasdaq became the first stock market in the United States to trade
online in 1998.[174]

In the Gulf War of 1991, an American-led international coalition of states expelled

an Iraqi invasion force that had occupied neighboring Kuwait.[175] The September 11
attacks on the United States in 2001 by the pan-Islamist militant organization al-
Qaeda led to the war on terror and subsequent military interventions in
Afghanistan and in Iraq.[176][177]

The U.S. housing bubble culminated in 2007 with the Great Recession, the largest
economic contraction since the Great Depression.[178] In the 2010s and early 2020s,
the United States has experienced increased political polarization and democratic
backsliding.[179][180][181][182] The country's polarization was violently reflected in the January
2021 Capitol attack,[183] when a mob of insurrectionists[184] entered the U.S. Capitol and
sought to prevent the peaceful transfer of power[185] in an attempted self-coup d'état.
[186]

Geography
Main article: Geography of the United States

A topographic map of the United States

The United States is the world's third-largest country by total area behind Russia and
Canada.[c] The 48 contiguous states and the District of Columbia have a combined
area of 3,119,885 square miles (8,080,470 km2).[12][187] In 2021, the United States had
8% of the Earth's permanent meadows and pastures and 10% of its cropland.[188]

Starting in the east, the coastal plain of the Atlantic seaboard gives way to inland
forests and rolling hills in the Piedmont plateau region.[189] The Appalachian
Mountains and the Adirondack Massif separate the East Coast from the Great
Lakes and the grasslands of the Midwest.[190] The Mississippi River System, the
world's fourth-longest river system, runs predominantly north–south through the
center of the country. The flat and fertile prairie of the Great Plains stretches to the
west, interrupted by a highland region in the southeast.[190]
 The Grand Canyon in Arizona

The Rocky Mountains, west of the Great Plains, extend north to south across the
country, peaking at over 14,000 feet (4,300 m) in Colorado.
[191]
The supervolcano underlying Yellowstone National Park in the Rocky Mountains,
the Yellowstone Caldera, is the continent's largest volcanic feature.[192] Farther west
are the rocky Great Basin and the Chihuahuan, Sonoran, and Mojave deserts.[193] In
the northwest corner of Arizona, carved by the Colorado River, is the Grand Canyon,
a steep-sided canyon and popular tourist destination[194] known for its overwhelming
visual size and intricate, colorful landscape. The Cascade and Sierra
Nevada mountain ranges run close to the Pacific coast. The lowest and highest
points in the contiguous United States are in the State of California,[195] about 84 miles
(135 km) apart.[196]

At an elevation of 20,310 feet (6,190.5 m), Alaska's Denali (also called Mount
McKinley) is the highest peak in the country and on the continent.
[197]
Active volcanoes in the U.S. are common throughout
Alaska's Alexander and Aleutian Islands. Located entirely outside North America, the
archipelago of Hawaii consists of volcanic
islands, physiographically and ethnologically part of the Polynesian subregion
of Oceania.[198]

In addition to its total land area, the United States has one of the world's largest
marine exclusive economic zones spanning approximately 4.5 million square miles
(11.7 million km2) of ocean.[199][200]

Climate
Main article: Climate of the United States
 The Köppen climate types of the United States

With its large size and geographic variety, the United States includes most climate
types. East of the 100th meridian, the climate ranges from humid continental in the
north to humid subtropical in the south.[201] The western Great Plains are semi-arid.
[202]
Many mountainous areas of the American West have an alpine climate. The
climate is arid in the Southwest, Mediterranean in coastal California, and oceanic in
coastal Oregon, Washington, and southern Alaska. Most of Alaska
is subarctic or polar. Hawaii, the southern tip of Florida and U.S. territories in
the Caribbean and Pacific are tropical.[203]

The United States receives more high-impact extreme weather incidents than any
other country.[204][205] States bordering the Gulf of Mexico are prone to hurricanes, and
most of the world's tornadoes occur in the country, mainly in Tornado Alley.[206] Due
to climate change in the country, extreme weather has become more frequent in the
U.S. in the 21st century, with three times the number of reported heat
waves compared to the 1960s.[207][208][209] Since the 1990s, droughts in the American
Southwest have become more persistent and more severe.[210] The regions
considered as the most attractive to the population are the most vulnerable. [211]