Foreign relations and military

The United States exercises global economic, political, and military influence. It is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council and New York City hosts the United Nations Headquarters. Almost all countries have embassies in Washington, D.C., and many have consulates around the country. Likewise, nearly all nations host American diplomatic missions. However, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Bhutan, Sudan, and the Republic of China (Taiwan) do not have formal diplomatic relations with the United States.
The United States enjoys strong ties with the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, and Israel. It works closely with fellow NATO members on military and security issues and with its neighbors through the Organization of American States and free trade agreements such as the trilateral North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico. In 2008, the United States spent a net $25.4 billion on official development assistance, the most in the world. As a share of gross national income (GNI), however, the U.S. contribution of 0.18% ranked last among twenty-two donor states. In contrast, private overseas giving by Americans is relatively generous.[45]

Parties, ideology, and politics

The United States has operated under a two-party system for most of its history. For elective offices at all levels, state-administered primary elections choose the major party nominees for subsequent general elections. Since the general election of 1856, the major parties have been the Democratic Party, founded in 1824, and the Republican Party, founded in 1854. Since the Civil War, only one third-party presidential candidate—former president Theodore Roosevelt, running as a Progressive in 1912—has won as much as 20% of the popular vote.
Within American political culture, the Republican Party is considered center-right or "conservative" and the Democratic Party is considered center-left or "liberal". The states of the Northeast and West Coast and some of the Great Lakes states, known as "blue states", are relatively liberal. The "red states" of the South and parts of the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains are relatively conservative.
The winner of the 2008 presidential election, Democrat Barack Obama, is the 44th U.S. president. All previous presidents were men of solely European descent. The 2008 elections also saw the Democratic Party strengthen its control of both the House and the Senate. In the 111th United States Congress, the Senate comprises 57 Democrats, two independents who caucus with the Democrats, and 41 Republicans; the House comprises 253 Democrats and 177 Republicans (five seats are vacant

Contemporary era

Under President George H. W. Bush, the United States took a lead role in the UN–sanctioned Gulf War. The longest economic expansion in modern U.S. history—from March 1991 to March 2001—encompassed the Bill Clinton administration and the dot-com bubble.[41] A civil lawsuit and sex scandal led to Clinton's impeachment in 1998, but he remained in office. The 2000 presidential election, one of the closest in American history, was resolved by a U.S. Supreme Court decision—George W. Bush, son of George H. W. Bush, became president.
On September 11, 2001, al-Qaeda terrorists struck the World Trade Center in New York City and The Pentagon near Washington, D.C., killing nearly three thousand people. In response, the Bush administration launched a "War on Terrorism". In late 2001, U.S. forces led an invasion of Afghanistan, removing the Taliban government and al-Qaeda training camps. Taliban insurgents continue to fight a guerrilla war. In 2002, the Bush administration began to press for regime change in Iraq on controversial grounds.[42] Lacking the support of NATO or an explicit UN mandate for military intervention, Bush organized a Coalition of the Willing; coalition forces preemptively invaded Iraq in 2003, removing dictator Saddam Hussein. In 2005, Hurricane Katrina caused severe destruction along much of the Gulf Coast, devastating New Orleans. On November 4, 2008, amid a global economic recession, Barack Obama was elected president. He is the first African American to hold the office. In early 2010, he oversaw the enactment of major health care reform.

My city Butwal

Incredible Butwal wakes up with dawn from the hill park accustomed centre of recreation. The sunshine's on the face of Phulbari enchanting creping of birds and flapping of leaves. Butwal is situated at the bank of Tinau river. The howling of prays in mosque, gumba and temples really relief people in the city from atheism. People of different cast, culture and creed meticulous harmonious relationship.
Siddhababa temple at the north, Manakamana temple at the west and Krishna Temple at the bank of Tinau makes incredible Butwal, a religious centre.
Butwal is a metropolitan city with grooming trade and business. Mahendra and Siddartha highway connects Butwal with western and northern zones. High heel buildings, lavish departmental stores and multi supermarkets symbolize growth of trade. Butwal industrial estate, one of the renowned industrial sector situated at the southern part of the city, is contributing a lot in economic upliftment of nation. Industries of plastics, confectionaries, soap, steel, milk, cotton products, pipes, dhaka etc. are local products. Butwal Industrial Estate resumes all the facilities for the establishment of industries. Bulk business transactions lure financial institutions blooming in the area. More than fifty financial institutions provide their services. Paschimanchal finance company building regarded as tallest automated building in the western development region. Countries first auto village emerged in Butwal providing all kind of facilities for the maintenance of vehicles. It is one of the major cities of the country from the economic point of view.
Besides reciting economic view, Butwal is an educational milestone contributing in development of professional manpower related to science, commerce, humanities, sociology and arts. Its magnificent result of last two year in S.L.C created challenges for rest of the cities of the country. It is an educational zone muddled up visionary students and lecturers. Technical and medical insights from different educational parameters like Butwal Technical Institute, Mayadevi and Sanjivani Nursing School etc are eminent manpower producers. Education institutions succumbed intermediate, bachelor and master level in different faculties and provide students from neighboring districts "An Educational hub".
Information clink sharp in Butwal aspiring National Daily online newspaper. Moreover, Butwal is media hub after Kathmandu. Personnel and reporters manipulate national agenda and elite views published in Local newspapers. Political party's leaders of Butwal are vivid with national agenda. History of Butwal itself tells how bravely King Ujurshing fought with British army. Butwal support for liberalization of Nepal was commendable.
Moreover, Hillpark, Phulbari and Ramaphithecus Park situated within periphery of Butwal are vigilance places for local and foreign tourists. On the other hand Siddhababa, Bolbom, Manakamana, Kalika temple and Muktinath dham indulges Hindus from neighboring cities and countries. Variety of culture, rites and rituals in the region sparkle Nepalese unity and integrity. Padma Chaitya Bihar, Mosque and Church within the province of the city clustered a harmonious wall of religious devotees. Diversity in culture, natural beauty, luxurious hotels and restaurants and assertive people mindboggling Butwal as, "Tourism garden of the country".
On the other hand, Lumbini Zonal Hospital located at the centre of the city is providing medical facilities to local people as well as travelers. An automated hospital for the people includes all the primary and secondary parameters. Skillful doctors and nurses have esteemed the services provided in the zone. Besides Lumbini, Amda hospital for women and child is contributing a lot reduce infant child death rate. Better and sophisticated medical facilities are provided by both private and government medical house.
At last, but not the least, Butwal is an asset for the economic, educational, political, social & medical and tourism development in the country. Butwal vitalizes the powers restored in human potential to face challenges crest and trough in upcoming future paramount.
Bibhuti

Progressivism, imperialism, and World War I (1890–1918)

After the Gilded Age came the Progressive Era, whose followers called for reform over perceived industrial corruption. Viewpoints taken by progressives included greater federal regulation of anti-trust laws and the industries of meat-packing, drugs, and railroads. Four new constitutional amendments—the Sixteenth through Nineteenth—resulted from progressive activism.[73] The era lasted from 1900 to 1918, the year marking the end of World War I.[74]
U.S. Federal government policy, since the James Monroe Administration, had been to move the indigenous population beyond the reach of the federal frontier into a series of Indian reservations. Tribes were generally forced onto small reservations as farmers and ranchers took over their lands.

Reconstruction and the rise of industrialization (1865–1890)

Reconstruction took place for most of the decade following the Civil War. During this era, the "Reconstruction Amendments" were passed to expand civil rights for black Americans. Those amendments included the Thirteenth Amendment, which outlawed slavery, the Fourteenth Amendment that guaranteed citizenship for all people born or naturalized within U.S. territory, and the Fifteenth Amendment that granted the vote for all men regardless of race. While the Civil Rights Act of 1875 forbade discrimination in the service of public facilities, the Black Codes denied blacks certain privileges readily available to whites.[65]
In response to Reconstruction, the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) emerged around the late 1860s as a white-supremacist organization opposed to black civil rights. Increasing hate-motivated violence from groups like the Klan influenced both the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1870 that classified the KKK as a terrorist group[66] and an 1883 Supreme Court decision nullifying the Civil Rights Act of 1875; however, in the Supreme Court case United States v. Cruikshank the Court interpreted the Fourteenth Amendment as regulating only states' decisions regarding civil rights.[67] The case defeated any protection of blacks from terrorist attacks, as did the later case United States v. Harris.[68]

Cold War and protest politics

The United States and Soviet Union jockeyed for power after World War II during the Cold War, dominating the military affairs of Europe through NATO and the Warsaw Pact. The United States promoted liberal democracy and capitalism, while the Soviet Union promoted communism and a centrally planned economy. Both supported dictatorships and engaged in proxy wars. American troops fought Communist Chinese forces in the Korean War of 1950–53. The House Un-American Activities Committee pursued a series of investigations into suspected leftist subversion, while Senator Joseph McCarthy became the figurehead of anticommunist sentiment.
The 1961 Soviet launch of the first manned spaceflight prompted President John F. Kennedy's call for the United States to be first to land "a man on the moon," achieved in 1969. Kennedy also faced a tense nuclear showdown with Soviet forces in Cuba. Meanwhile, the United States experienced sustained economic expansion. A growing civil rights movement, symbolized and led by African Americans such as Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Jr., and James Bevel, used nonviolence to confront segregation and discrimination. Following Kennedy's assassination in 1963, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965 were passed under President Lyndon B. Johnson. Johnson and his successor, Richard Nixon, expanded a proxy war in Southeast Asia into the unsuccessful Vietnam War. A widespread countercultural movement grew, fueled by opposition to the war, black nationalism, and the sexual revolution. Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, and others led a new wave of feminism that sought political, social, and economic equality for women

World War I, Great Depression, and World War II

At the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the United States remained neutral. Most Americans sympathized with the British and French, although many opposed intervention.[36] In 1917, the United States joined the Allies, helping to turn the tide against the Central Powers. After the war, the Senate did not ratify the Treaty of Versailles, which established the League of Nations. The country pursued a policy of unilateralism, verging on isolationism.[37] In 1920, the women's rights movement won passage of a constitutional amendment granting women's suffrage. The prosperity of the Roaring Twenties ended with the Wall Street Crash of 1929 that triggered the Great Depression. After his election as president in 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt responded with the New Deal, a range of policies increasing government intervention in the economy. The Dust Bowl of the mid-1930s impoverished many farming communities and spurred a new wave of western migration.

Civil War and industrialization

Tensions between slave and free states mounted with arguments over the relationship between the state and federal governments, as well as violent conflicts over the spread of slavery into new states. Abraham Lincoln, candidate of the largely antislavery Republican Party, was elected president in 1860. Before he took office, seven slave states declared their secession—which the federal government maintained was illegal—and formed the Confederate States of America. With the Confederate attack upon Fort Sumter, the American Civil War began and four more slave states joined the Confederacy. Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation declared slaves in the Confederacy to be free. Following the Union victory in 1865, three amendments to the U.S. Constitution ensured freedom for the nearly four million African Americans who had been slaves,[33] made them citizens, and gave them voting rights. The war and its resolution led to a substantial increase in federal power.

Independence and expansion

Tensions between American colonials and the British during the revolutionary period of the 1760s and early 1770s led to the American Revolutionary War, fought from 1775 through 1781. On June 14, 1775, the Continental Congress, convening in Philadelphia, established a Continental Army under the command of George Washington. Proclaiming that "all men are created equal" and endowed with "certain unalienable Rights," the Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence, drafted largely by Thomas Jefferson, on July 4, 1776. That date is now celebrated annually as America's Independence Day. In 1777, the Articles of Confederation established a weak confederal government that operated until 1789.
After the British defeat by American forces assisted by the French, Great Britain recognized the independence of the United States and the states' sovereignty over American territory west to the Mississippi River. A constitutional convention was organized in 1787 by those wishing to establish a strong national government, with powers of taxation. The United States Constitution was ratified in 1788, and the new republic's first Senate, House of Representatives, and president—George Washington—took office in 1789. The Bill of Rights, forbidding federal restriction of personal freedoms and guaranteeing a range of legal protections, was adopted in 1791.

History

Native Americans and European settlers
See also: Native Americans in the United States, European colonization of the Americas, and Thirteen Colonies
The indigenous peoples of the U.S. mainland, including Alaska Natives, are most commonly believed to have migrated from Asia. They began arriving at least 12,000 and as many as 40,000 years ago.[27] Some, such as the pre-Columbian Mississippian culture, developed advanced agriculture, grand architecture, and state-level societies. After Europeans began settling the Americas, many millions of indigenous Americans died from epidemics of imported diseases such as smallpox.[28]

Geography, climate, and environment

The land area of the contiguous United States is approximately 1.9 billion acres (770 million hectares). Alaska, separated from the contiguous United States by Canada, is the largest state at 365 million acres (150 million hectares). Hawaii, occupying an archipelago in the central Pacific, southwest of North America, has just over 4 million acres (1.6 million hectares).[16] After Russia and Canada, the United States is the world's third or fourth largest nation by total area, ranking just above or below China. The ranking varies depending on how two territories disputed by China and India are counted and how the total size of the United States is calculated: the CIA World Factbook gives 3,794,101 square miles (9,826,675 km2),[1] the United Nations Statistics Division gives 3,717,813 sq mi (9,629,091 km2),[17] and the Encyclopædia Britannica gives 3,676,486 sq mi (9,522,055 km2).[18] Including only land area, the United States is third in size behind Russia and China, just ahead of Canada.[19]

Etymology

In 1507, German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a world map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere "America" after Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci.[12] The former British colonies first used the country's modern name in the Declaration of Independence, the "unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America" adopted by the "Representatives of the united States of America" on July 4, 1776.[13] The current name was finalized on November 15, 1777, when the Second Continental Congress adopted the Articles of Confederation, which states, "The Stile of this Confederacy shall be 'The United States of America.'" The short form the United States is also standard. Other common forms include the U.S., the USA, and America. Colloquial names include the U.S. of A. and the States. Columbia, a once popular name for the United States, was derived from Christopher Columbus. It appears in the name "District of Columbia".
The standard way to refer to a citizen of the United States is as an American. Though United States is the formal adjective, American and U.S. are the most common adjectives used to refer to the country ("American values," "U.S. forces"). American is rarely used in English to refer to people not connected to the United States.[14]
The phrase "the United States" was originally treated as plural—e.g., "the United States are"—including in the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified in 1865. It became common to treat it as singular—e.g., "the United States is"—after the end of the Civil War. The singular form is now standard; the plural form is retained in the idiom "these United States".[15]

British colonization

The strip of land along the eastern seacoast was settled primarily by English colonists in the 17th century, along with much smaller numbers of Dutch and Swedes. Colonial America was defined by a severe labor shortage that gave birth to forms of unfree labor such as slavery and indentured servitude,[16] and by a British policy of benign neglect (salutary neglect) that permitted the development of an American spirit distinct from that of its European founders.[17] Over half of all European migrants to Colonial America arrived as indentured servants.[18]
The first successful English colony was established in 1607, on the James River at Jamestown. It languished for decades until a new wave of settlers arrived in the late 17th century and established commercial agriculture based on tobacco. Between the late 1610s and the Revolution, the British shipped an estimated 50,000 convicts to its American colonies.[19] During the Georgian era English officials exiled 1,000 prisoners across the Atlantic every year.[20] One example of conflict between Native Americans and English settlers was the 1622 Powhatan uprising in Virginia, in which Native Americans had killed hundreds of English settlers. The largest conflict between Native Americans and English settlers in the 17th century was King Philip's War in New England,[21] although the Yamasee War may have been bloodier.[22]
The Plymouth Colony was established in 1620. The area of New England was initially settled primarily by Puritans who established the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630.[15] The Middle Colonies, consisting of the present-day states of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware, were characterized by a large degree of diversity. The first attempted English settlement south of Virginia was the Province of Carolina, with Georgia Colony the last of the Thirteen Colonies established in 1733.[23] Several colonies were used as penal settlements from the 1620s until the American Revolution.[24] Methodism became the prevalent religion among colonial citizens after the First Great Awakening, a religious revival led by preacher Jonathan

French colonization

See also: New France and Fort Caroline
New France was the area colonized by France in North America during a period extending from the exploration of the Saint Lawrence River, by Jacques Cartier in 1534, to the cession of New France to Spain and Britain in 1763. At its peak in 1712 (before the Treaty of Utrecht), the territory of New France extended from Newfoundland to the Rocky Mountains and from Hudson Bay to the Gulf of Mexico. The territory was divided in five colonies, each with its own administration: Canada, Acadia, Hudson Bay, Newfoundland and Louisiana.
Also during this period, French Huguenots, sailing under Jean Ribault, attempted to found a colony in what became the southeastern coast of the United States. Arriving in 1562, they established the ephemeral colony of Charlesfort on Parris Island in what is now South Carolina. When this failed, most of the colonists followed René Goulaine de Laudonnière and moved south, founding the colony of Fort Caroline at the mouth of the St. Johns River in what is now Jacksonville, Florida on June 22, 1564. Fort Caroline was destroyed in 1565 by the Spanish under Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, who moved in from St. Augustine, founded to the south earlier in the year.

Dutch colonization

Main article: New Netherland
Nieuw-Nederland, or New Netherland, was the seventeenth century Dutch colonial province on the eastern coast of North America. The claimed territory were the lands from the Delmarva Peninsula to Buzzards Bay, while the settled areas are now part of New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Delaware, and Pennsylvania. Its capital, New Amsterdam, was located at the southern tip of the island of Manhattan on the Upper New York Bay and was renamed New York.

Dutch colonization

Main article: New Netherland
Nieuw-Nederland, or New Netherland, was the seventeenth century Dutch colonial province on the eastern coast of North America. The claimed territory were the lands from the Delmarva Peninsula to Buzzards Bay, while the settled areas are now part of New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Delaware, and Pennsylvania. Its capital, New Amsterdam, was located at the southern tip of the island of Manhattan on the Upper New York Bay and was renamed New York.

Spanish colonization

Coronado Sets Out to the North (1540) by Frederic Remington, oil on canvas, 1905.
Spanish explorers came to what is now the United States beginning with Christopher Columbus' second expedition, which reached Puerto Rico on November 19, 1493.[10] The first confirmed landing in the continental US was by a Spaniard, Juan Ponce de León, who landed in 1513 on a lush shore he christened La Florida.[11]
Within three decades of Ponce de León's landing, the Spanish became the first Europeans to reach the Appalachian Mountains, the Mississippi River, the Grand Canyon[12] and the Great Plains. In 1540, Hernando de Soto undertook an extensive exploration of the present US and, in the same year, Francisco Vázquez de Coronado led 2,000 Spaniards and Native Mexican Americans across the modern Arizona–Mexico border and traveled as far as central Kansas.[13] Other Spanish explorers include Lucas Vásquez de Ayllón, Pánfilo de Narváez, Sebastián Vizcaíno, Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo, Gaspar de Portolà, Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, Tristán de Luna y Arellano and Juan de Oñate.[14]
The Spanish sent some settlers, creating the first permanent European settlement in the continental United States at St. Augustine, Florida in 1565.[15] Later Spanish settlements included Santa Fe, Albuquerque, San Antonio, Tucson, San Diego, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Most Spanish settlements were along the California coast or the Santa Fe River in New Mexico.

Colonial period

Main article: Colonial history of the United States

The Mayflower, which transported Pilgrims to the New World
After a period of exploration by people from various European countries, Spanish, Dutch, English, French, Swedish, and Portuguese settlements were established. Although Leif Ericson was the first European to arrive in North America, Christopher Columbus is credited as the first European to set foot on what would one day become US territory when he came to Puerto Rico on November 19, 1493, during his second voyage.
In the 16th century, Europeans brought horses, cattle, and hogs to the Americas and, in turn, took back to Europe maize, potatoes, tobacco, beans, squash, and slave natives, many of whom died enroute.

Woodland period

The Archaic period was followed by the Woodland period (c. 1000 BC). Some well-understood examples would be the Adena culture of Ohio and nearby states and the subsequent Hopewell culture known from Illinois to Ohio and renowned for their geometric earthworks. The Adena and Hopewell were not, however, the only mound building peoples during this time period. There were contemporaneous mound building cultures throughout the Eastern United States.

Archaic era

Poverty Point in what is now Louisiana is perhaps the most prominent example of early archaic mound builder construction (c. 2500–1000 BC). An even earlier example, Watson Brake, dates to approximately 3400 BC and coincides with the emergence of social complexity worldwide.

Pre-Columbian period

The earliest known inhabitants of what is now the United States are thought to have arrived in Alaska by going across the Bering land bridge, at least 14,000 – 30,000 years ago.[4] Some of these groups migrated south and east, and over time spread throughout the Americas. These were the ancestors to modern Native Americans in the United States and Alaskan Native peoples, as well as all indigenous peoples of the Americas.
Many indigenous peoples were semi-nomadic tribes of hunter-gatherers; others were sedentary and agricultural civilizations. Many formed new tribes or confederations in response to European colonization. Well-known groups included the Huron, Apache Tribe, Cherokee, Sioux, Delaware, Algonquin, Choctaw, Mohegan, Iroquois (which included the Mohawk nation, Oneida tribe, Seneca nation, Cayuga nation, and Onondaga . The Inuit in Alaska are considered a separate group. Though not as technologically advanced as the Mesoamerican civilizations further south, there were extensive pre-Columbian sedentary societies in what is now the US.

History of the United States

The first residents of what is now the United States immigrated from Asia prior to 15,000 years ago by crossing Beringia into Alaska. Archaeological evidence of these peoples, the ancestors of the Native Americans is dated to 14,000 years ago.[1]

Christopher Columbus was the first European to land in the territory of what is now the United States when he arrived in Puerto Rico in 1493. The subsequent arrival of settlers from Europe began the colonial history of the United States. The Thirteen English colonies that would become the original US states, were founded along the east coast beginning in 1607. Spain, France and Russia also founded small settlements in what would become US territory. The Thirteen Colonies grew very rapidly, reaching 50,000 by 1650, 250,000 by 1700, and 2.5 million by 1775. High birth rates and low death rates were augmented by steady flows of immigrants from Europe as well as slaves from the West Indies. Occasional small-scale wars involved the French and Indians to the north, and the Spanish and Indians to the south. Religion was a powerful influence on many immigrants, especially the Puritans in New England and the German sects in Pennsylvania, with boosts from the revivals of the First Great Awakening. The colonies by the 1750s had achieved a standard of living about as high as Britain, with far more self government than anywhere else. Most free men owned their own farms and could vote in elections for the colonial legislatures, while local courts dispensed justice. Royal soldiers were rarely seen.[2]

The colonists did not have representation in the ruling British government and believed they were being denied their constitutional rights as Englishmen. For many years, the home government had permitted wide latitude to local colonial governments. Beginning in the 1760s London demanded the colonists pay taxes. The new foreign taxes on stamps and tea ignited a firestorm of opposition. The British responded with military force in Massachusetts, and shut down the system of local self government in what the colonists called the Intolerable Acts.

After fighting broke out in April 1775, each of the colonies ousted all royal officials and set up their own governments, which were coordinated out of Philadelphia by the Continental Congress. The American Revolution escalated into all-out war. Despite local King George loyalists, the new nation declared independence in July 1776 as the United States of America. After Americans captured the British invasion army in 1777, France became a military ally, and the war became a major international war with evenly balanced forces. With the capture of a second British invasion army at Yorktown in 1781, the British opened peace negotiations. The Treaty of Paris in 1783 proved highly favorable to the new nation.[3]

The new national government proved too weak, so and a Constitutional Convention was called in 1787 to create an alternative. The resulting Constitution of the United States ratified in 1788 created a federal government, based on the ideology of republicanism, equal rights, and civic duty. The first ten amendments known as the Bill of Rights quickly followed, guaranteeing many individual rights from federal interference. The new national government under President George Washington built a strong economic system, designed by Alexander Hamilton, that settled the wartime debts, created a national bank and sought economic growth based on cities and trade, more than farming. Hamilton formed the Federalist Party to gain wide local support for the new policies, which were opposed by Thomas Jefferson. The Jay Treaty of 1795 opened a decade of trade with Britain, which was at war with revolutionary France. Jefferson, a friend of France who feared British influence would undermine republicanism, set up an opposition party, and the First Party System based on voters in every state, began operation in the mid 1790s. Jefferson tried to coerce the British into recognizing America's neutral rights, stopping seizing sailors on American ships, and stop aiding hostile Indians in the West. When that failed the U.S. declared the War of 1812 against Britain. The war was militarily indecisive but guaranteed American independence, as well as friendly relations with the British Empire, which controlled Canada.

With the Louisiana Purchase in 1803 westward expansion of the United States crossed the Mississippi River. This was encouraged by the belief in Manifest Destiny, by which the United States would expand east to west, reaching the Pacific after the conquest of Mexico in 1848. The slaveholding South in 1861 tried to break away and form its own country in response to threats to its peculiar institution-- slavery. The Civil War lasting four years became deadliest war in American history. Under the leadership of Republican Abraham Lincoln the rebellion was crushed, the nation reunified. the slaves freed, and the South put under Reconstruction for a decade.

Very rapid economic growth, fueled by entrepreneurs who created great new industries in railroads, steel, coal, textiles, and machinery, manned by millions of immigrants from Europe (and some from Asia), built new cities overnight, making the U.S. the world's foremost industrial power. With Germany threatening to win World War I in part by sinking American ships, the U.S. entered the war in 1917, supplied the material, money and to a degree the soldiers needed to win. The U.S. partly dictated the peace terms, but refused to join the League of Nations, as it enjoyed unprecedented prosperity in the 1920s. The crash of 1929 started the worldwide Great Depression, which was long and severe for the entire country. A New Deal Coalition led by Franklin D. Roosevelt dominated national elections for years, and the New Deal in 1933-36 began a new era of federal regulation of the business, support for labor unions, and provision of relief for the unemployed and Social Security for the elderly.

The U.S. joined the Allied Forces of World War II in December 1941 after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Postwar hopes that the new United Nations would resolve the world's problems failed, as Europe was divided and the U.S. took the lead in the Cold War with a policy of containing Soviet expansion. Containment led to wars in Korea (a stalemate) and Vietnam (lost). Economic prosperity after the war empowered families to move to the suburbs and engage in a Baby Boom that pushed the population from 140 million in 1940 to 203 million in 1970. The industrial economy based on heavy industry gave way to a service economy featuring health care and education, as America led the way to a computerized world. The end of the Cold War came in 1991 as Soviet Communism collapsed. The U.S. was the only military superpower left, but it was challenged for economic supremacy by China, which remained on good terms with the U.S. as it embraced capitalism and by 2010 was growing much more rapidly than the U.S.

The Civil Rights Movement ended Jim Crow and empowered black voters in the 1960s, leading to the movement of blacks into high government offices. However, the New Deal coalition collapsed in the mid 1960s in disputes over race and the Vietnam War. The Reagan Era of conservative national policies, deregulation and tax cuts took control with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980. By 2010, commentators were debating whether the election of Barack Obama in 2008 represented an end of the Reagan Era, or was only a reaction against the bubble economy of the 2000s, which burst in 2008 and became the Late-2000s recession with prolonged unemployment