American history

The history of the United States traditionally starts with the Declaration of Independence in the year 1776, although its territory was inhabited by Native Americans since prehistoric times and thenby European colonists who followed the voyages of Christopher Columbus starting in 1492. The largest settlements were by the English on the East Coast, starting in 1607. By the 1770s the ThirteenColonies contained two and half million people, 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 andthe 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 UnitedStates federal government, with war hero George Washington as the first president. The young nation continued to struggle with the scope of central government and with European influence, creating thefirst 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, andovercoming modernizers who wanted to deepen the 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 Southernstates. 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 GeorgeWashington 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 electionof 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...