History of the United States

In the Reconstruction era following the war, legal and voting rights were extended to freed slaves.

The Reconstruction era was the period in American history which lasted from 1863 to 1877.

Its attack of Fort Sumter against the Union forces there in 1861 started the Civil War.

The war is one of the most studied and written about episodes in U.S. history.

After a prosperous decade in the 1920s, the Wall Street Crash of 1929 marked the onset of the decade-long worldwide Great Depression.

It was the most devastating stock market crash in the history of the United States, when taking into consideration the full extent and duration of its after-effects.

The beginning of the 21st century saw the September 11 attacks carried out by Al-Qaeda in 2001, which was later followed by wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

9/11 is the single deadliest terrorist attack in human history and the single deadliest incident for firefighters and law enforcement officers in the history of the United States, with 343 and 72 killed, respectively.

The Pilgrims sailed for Virginia on the Mayflower in 1620, but were knocked off course by a storm and landed at Plymouth, where they agreed to a social contract of rules in the Mayflower Compact.

The Pilgrims' story became a central theme in the history and culture of the United States.

Colonial America was defined by a severe labor shortage that utilized forms of unfree labor, such as slavery and indentured servitude.The British colonies were also marked by a policy of avoiding strict enforcement of parliamentary laws, known as salutary neglect.

In American history, salutary neglect is the 17th and 18th century British Crown policy of avoiding strict enforcement of parliamentary laws meant to keep British colonies obedient to England.

Colonial America was defined by a severe labor shortage that utilized forms of unfree labor, such as slavery and indentured servitude.The British colonies were also marked by a policy of avoiding strict enforcement of parliamentary laws, known as salutary neglect.

Most slaves who were ultimately brought to the Thirteen British colonies — the Eastern seaboard of what later became the United States — were imported from the Caribbean, not directly from Africa.

During the first two decades after the Revolutionary War, there were dramatic changes in the status of slavery among the states and an increase in the number of freed blacks.

In United States history, a free Negro or free black was the legal status, in the geographic area of the United States, of blacks who were not enslaved peoples.

Its goal was primarily to remove Native Americans, including the Five Civilized Tribes, from the American Southeast; they occupied land that settlers wanted.

The term "Five Civilized Tribes" derives from the colonial and early federal period in the history of the United States.

The Republicans also imposed tariffs designed to protect the infant industries that had been created when Britain was blockading the U.S. With the collapse of the Federalists as a party, the adoption of many Federalist principles by the Republicans, and the systematic policy of President James Monroe in his two terms (1817–25) to downplay partisanship, the nation entered an Era of Good Feelings, with far less partisanship than before (or after), and closed out the First Party System.

The Era of Good Feelings marked a period in the political history of the United States that reflected a sense of national purpose and a desire for unity among Americans in the aftermath of the War of 1812.

(The Catholic, Episcopal and Lutheran denominations largely ignored the slavery issue.)

The Catholic Church's part of the history of the United States has its background in the European colonization of the Americas.

The issue of slavery in the new territories was seemingly settled by the Compromise of 1850, brokered by Whig Henry Clay and Democrat Stephen Douglas; the Compromise included the admission of California as a free state in exchange for no federal restrictions on slavery placed on Utah or New Mexico.

In the history of the United States, a slave state was a U.S. state in which the practice of slavery was legal, and a free state was one in which slavery was prohibited or being legally phased out.

New Republican governments came to power based on a coalition of Freedmen made up of Carpetbaggers (new arrivals from the North), and Scalawags (native white Southerners).

In the history of the United States, carpetbagger was a derogatory term applied by former Confederates to any person from the Northern United States who came to the Southern states after the American Civil War; they were perceived as exploiting the local populace.

New Republican governments came to power based on a coalition of Freedmen made up of Carpetbaggers (new arrivals from the North), and Scalawags (native white Southerners).

In United States history, scalawags (sometimes spelled scallawags or scallywags) were white Southerners who supported Reconstruction after the American Civil War.

Since the days of Charles A. Beard and Matthew Josephson, some historians have argued that the United States was effectively plutocratic for at least part of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era.

In United States history, the Gilded Age was an era that occurred during the late 19th century, from the 1870s to about 1900.

In the western theater, the Union was relatively successful, with major battles, such as Perryville and Shiloh along with Union gunboat dominance of navigable rivers producing strategic Union victories and destroying major Confederate operations.

The Battle of Shiloh was the battle with the highest number of casualties in American history until the Battle of Stones River, which was surpassed by the Battle of Chancellorsville the next year and soon after, by the three-day Battle of Gettysburg, the highest-casualty battle of the war.

Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt ended the Republican dominance of the White House and implemented his New Deal programs, which included relief for the unemployed, support for farmers, Social Security and a minimum wage.

Roosevelt is widely considered to be one of the most important figures in the history of the United States, as well as one of the most influential figures of the 20th century.

Starting in the late 1950s, institutionalized racism across the United States, but especially in the South, was increasingly challenged by the growing Civil Rights Movement.

European Americans—particularly affluent white Anglo-Saxon Protestants—enjoyed exclusive privileges in matters of education, immigration, voting rights, citizenship, land acquisition, and criminal procedure throughout American history.

Poverty, growing inequality and dangerous working conditions, along with socialist and anarchist ideas diffusing from European immigrants, led to the rise of the labor movement, which often included violent strikes.

World War I saw women taking traditionally men's jobs in large numbers for the first time in American history.

The highly influential "Frontier Thesis" of Wisconsin historian Frederick Jackson Turner argues that the frontier shaped the national character, with its boldness, violence, innovation, individualism, and democracy.

The Frederick Jackson Turner Award is given annually by the Organization of American Historians for an author's first scholarly book on American history.

The Mexican–American War (1846–48) broke out with the Whigs opposed to the war, and the Democrats supporting the war.

However, the fervor also inspired anti-Japanese sentiment, leading to internment of Japanese Americans.

Almost 120,000 Japanese Americans and resident Japanese aliens were eventually removed from their homes on the West Coast and Southern Arizona as part of the single largest forced relocation in U.S. history.

The Indian wars under the government of the United States have been more than 40 in number.

In 1960, the charismatic John F. Kennedy was elected as the first and – thus far – only Roman Catholic President.

The assassination proved to be a pivotal moment in U.S. history because of its impact on the nation, and the ensuing political repercussions.

The history of the United States, a country in North America, started with the arrival of Indigenous people from Siberia before 15,000 BC.