From 1754 to 1763, England and France fought a war over their land in America called the
Seven Years' War or the French and Indian War, which the British won.
[18] After the war, the
Royal Proclamation of 1763 said that the colonists could not live west of the
Appalachian Mountains. Many colonists who wanted to move to the frontier did not like the Proclamation.
[19]
After the French and Indian War, the colonists began to think that they were not getting their "rights as
freeborn Englishman".
[20] This meant they wanted to be treated fairly by the English government. This was mainly caused by new
taxes the British made the colonies pay to pay for the war.
[21] Americans called this "No taxation without representation", meaning that the colonists should not have to pay taxes unless they had
votes in the
British Parliament.
[21] Each tax was disliked, and replaced by another which led to more
unitybetween the colonies. In 1770, colonists in Boston known as the
Sons of Liberty got in a fight with British soldiers. This became known as the
Boston Massacre.
[22] After the Tea Act, the Sons of Liberty dumped hundreds of boxes of tea in a river. This was known as the
Boston Tea Party (1773).
[23][24] This led to the British Army taking over Boston.
[25] After that, leaders of the 13 colonies formed a group called the
Continental Congress.
[26] Many people were members of the Continental Congress, but some of the more important ones were
Benjamin Franklin,
John Adams,
Thomas Jefferson,
John Hancock,
Roger Sherman and
John Jay.
[27]- See also: United States Constitution and War of 1812
In 1781, the colonies formed a
confederation of states under the
Articles of Confederation, but it lasted only six years. It gave almost all the power to the states and very little to the central government.
[34] The confederation had no president. It could not remove Native Americans or the British from the
frontier, nor could it stop
mob uprisings such as
Shays' Rebellion.
[35] After Shays' Rebellion, many people thought the Articles of Confederation were not working.
[36]
The United States Constitution
Some states agreed to the Constitution very quickly. In other states, many people did not like the Constitution because it gave more power to the central government and had no bill of rights.
[38][39] To try and get the Constitution passed, Madison, Hamilton and Jay wrote a series of newspaper articles called the
Federalist Papers.
[38][39] Very soon after, the
Bill of Rights was added. This was a set of 10 amendments (changes), that limited the government's power and guaranteed
rights to the
citizens.
[40] Like the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution is a
social contract between the people and the government.
[41] The main idea of the Constitution is that the government is a
republic (a representative democracy) elected by the people, who all have the same rights. However, this was not true at first, when only white males who owned property could vote.
[42] Because of state laws as well as the 14th, 15th, 19th, 24th and 26th Amendments, almost all American citizens who are at least 18 years old can vote today.
[37]
In 1789, Washington was elected the first President. He defined how a person should act as President and retired after two terms.
[43] During Washington's term, there was a
Whiskey Rebellion, where country farmers tried to stop the government from collecting taxes on
whiskey.
[44] In 1795, Congress passed the Jay Treaty, which allowed for increased trade with Britain in exchange for the British giving up their forts on the
Great Lakes.
[45] However, Great Britain was still doing things that hurt the U.S., such as impressment (making American sailors join the
British Royal Navy).
[46]
John Adams defeated Thomas Jefferson in the election of 1796 to become the second President of the United States. This was the first American election that was between two
political parties.
[47] As president, Adams made the
army and
navylarger.
[48] He also got the
Alien and Sedition Acts passed, which were much disliked.
[49]
In the election of 1800, Jefferson defeated Adams. One of the most important things he did as President was to make the
Louisiana Purchase from
France, which made the United States twice as big.
[50] Jefferson sent
Lewis and
Clark to map the Louisiana Purchase.
[13] Jefferson also tried to stop trade with England and France so that the United States would not become involved in
a war the two countries were fighting.
[51] Fighting broke out between the United States and England in 1812 when James Madison was President. This was called the
War of 1812.
[52]
Expansion, industrialization and slavery (1815–1861)[change | change source]
One of the problems of this period was
slavery. By 1861, over three million African-Americans were slaves in the South.
[53]This means that they worked for other people, but had no
freedom and received no money for their work. Most worked picking cotton on large
plantations.
[13] Only a few white people in the South owned plantations. Most white people in the South owned no slaves at all.
[54] Cotton became the main crop in the South after
Eli Whitney invented the
cotton gin in 1793.
[55] There were a few slave
rebellions against slavery, including one led by
Nat Turner. All of these rebellions failed.
[56] The South wanted to keep slavery, but by the time of the Civil War, many people in the North wanted to end it.
[57] Another argument between the North and South was about the role of government. The South wanted stronger state governments, but the North wanted a stronger central government.
[57]
James Monroe made Americans feel that it was the "era of good feelings"
After the War of 1812 the
Federalist Party faded away, leaving an "Era of Good Feelings" in which only one party was important, under Presidents James Madison and
James Monroe.
[58] Under Monroe, the United States' policy in North America was the
Monroe Doctrine, which suggested that Europe should stop trying to control the United States and other independent countries in the Americas.
[59] Around this time, Congress called for something called the "American System".
[60] The American System meant spending money on banking,
transportation and
communication. Due to the American System, bigger cities and more
factories were built.
[61] One of the big transportation projects of this time was the
Erie Canal, a
canal in the state of New York.
[62]By the 1840s,
railroads were built as well as canals. By 1860, thousands of miles of railroads and
telegraph lines had been built in the United States, mostly in the Northeast and
Midwest.
[63]
In the early and mid-1800s, there was a religious movement called the
Second Great Awakening. Thousands of people gathered at large religious meetings called revivals.
[67]They thought they could bring about a Golden Age in America through religion.
[68] New religious movements such as the Holiness Movement and the
Mormons started, and groups like the
Methodist Church grew.
[69] The Second Great Awakening led to two movements in
reform, that is, changing laws and behaviors to make society better.
[70] One of these was the Temperance Movement, which believed that drinking
alcohol was evil. The other was
abolitionism, which tried to end slavery. People such as
Harriet Beecher Stowe and
William Lloyd Garrison wrote books and newspapers saying that slavery should stop.
[13] They also formed political movements, which included the Liberty Party, the Free Soil Party and the Republican Party.
[71] Some abolitionists, such as
Frederick Douglass, were former slaves. By 1820, slavery was very rare in the North, but continued in the South.
[13]
In the 19th century, there was something called the “
cult of domesticity” for many American women. This meant that most married women were expected to stay in the home and raise children.
[72] As in other countries, American wives were very much under the control of their husband, and had almost no rights. Women who were not married had only a few jobs open to them, such as working in clothing factories and serving as
maids.
[73] By the 19th century, women such as
Lucretia Mott and
Elizabeth Cady Stanton thought that women should have more rights. In 1848, many of these women met and agreed to fight for more rights for women, including
voting.
[74] Many of the women involved in the movement for women’s rights were also involved in the movement to end slavery.
[13]
Jackson was the first Democratic President
In 1828,
Andrew Jackson was elected President. He was the first president elected from the
Democratic Party. He changed the government in many ways. Since many of his supporters were poor people who had not voted before, he rewarded them with government jobs, which is called "spoils" or "patronage".
[13] Because of Jackson, a new party was formed to run against him called the
Whigs. This was called the “Second Party System”.
[75] Jackson was very much against the National Bank. He saw it as a symbol of Whigs and of powerful American businessmen.
[13][76] Jackson also called for a high
import tax that the South did not like. They called it the "Tariff of Abominations".
[57]Jackson’s Vice-President,
John C. Calhoun, was from the South. He wrote that the South should stop the tariff and perhaps leave the Union (
secession). These words would be used again during the Civil War.
[57]
People started to move west of the
Mississippi River and the
Rocky Mountains at this time. The first people who moved west were people who caught and sold animal skins such as John Colter and Jim Bridger.
[77][78] By the 1840s, many people were moving to
Oregon by wagon, and even more people went west after the
California Gold Rush of 1849.
[79][80] Many new states were added to the first thirteen, mostly in the Midwest and South before the Civil War and in the West after the Civil War. During this period, Native Americans lost much of their land. They had lost military battles to the Americans at
Tippecanoe and in the Seminole War.
[81] In the 1830s, Indians were being pushed out of the Midwest and South by events such as the
Trail of Tears and the
Black Hawk War.
[82] By the 1840s, most Native Americans had been moved west of the Mississippi River.
The Alamo was the site of a battle between Texans and Mexicans in 1836.
In 1845,
Texas, which was a nation after it left
Mexico, joined the United States.
[83] Mexico did not like this, and the Americans wanted land Mexico had on the West Coast (“
Manifest Destiny”).
[84] This led to the U.S. and Mexico fighting a war called the
Mexican-American War. During the war, the U.S captured the cities of
San Francisco,
Los Angeles,
Monterrey,
Veracruz and
Mexico City.
[85] As a result of the war, the U.S. gained land in
California and much of the American Southwest. Many people in the North did not like this war, because they thought it was just good for Southern slave states.
[86]
Lincoln, Grant, Sherman, and Porter discussing about the Civil War
In the 1840s and 1850s, people in the Northern states and people in the Southern states did not agree whether slavery was right or wrong in the territories--parts of the United States that were not yet states.
[87] People in the government tried to make deals to stop a war. Some deals were the Compromise of 1850 and the Kansas-Nebraska Act, but they did not really work to keep the Union together.
[88] People in the South were angry at books like
Uncle Tom’s Cabin that said that slavery was wrong. People in the North did not like a Supreme Court decision called
Dred Scott that kept Scott a slave.
[89] People from the South and people from the North started killing each other in
Kansas over slavery. This was called "Bleeding Kansas".
[13] One of the people from Bleeding Kansas,
John Brown, took over a town in
Virginia in 1859 to make a point about slavery being wrong and to try to get slaves to fight their owners.
[90]
In the election of 1860, the Democratic Party split and the Republican candidate for President,
Abraham Lincoln, was elected. After this, many Southern states left the Union. Eventually, eleven states left. They tried to start a new country called the
Confederate States of America, or the "Confederacy".
[91] A war started between the Union (North) and the Confederacy (South). Not having factories made it harder for Southern soldiers to get guns or
uniforms.
[92] The South could not get supplies because Northern ships
blockaded the Southern coast.
[93]
Early in the war, Confederate generals such as
Robert E. Lee and
Stonewall Jacksonwon battles over Union generals such as
George B. McClellan and
Ambrose Burnside.
[94] In 1862 and 1863, the Union Army tried to take the Confederate capital of
Richmond, Virginia several times, but failed each time.
[95] Lee's army invaded the North twice, but was turned back at
Antietam and
Gettysburg.
[93] In the middle of war, Lincoln made the
Emancipation Proclamation, which freed all slaves in the Confederacy, and started letting black men fight in the Union Army.
[96] The war started going the Union’s way after the battles of
Gettysburg and
Vicksburg in 1863. Gettysburg stopped Lee from invading the North, and Vicksburg gave the Union control over the
Mississippi River.
[93] In 1864, a Union Army under
William T. Sherman marched through Georgia and destroyed much of it.
[97] By 1865, Union General
Ulysses S. Grant had taken Richmond and forced Lee to give up the fight at
Appomattox.
[98]- See also: Reconstruction of the United States
In April 1865, Lincoln was shot and
killed while watching a play. The new president,
Andrew Johnson, had to go through the process of
reconstruction, which was putting the United States back together after the Civil War. During this time, the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution were passed, freeing slaves, making them citizens and allowing them to vote.
[99] Congress was run by "Radical Republicans", who wanted to punish the South after the Civil War.
[100] They did not like Johnson, and almost removed him from office.
[100] They also sent many soldiers to the South, installed
unpopular "scalawag" governments, and made the South pass the 14th and 15th Amendments.
[101] The South did not like this, so they made
"Jim Crow" laws that placed blacks in lower roles.
[102] White Southerners started a group called the
Ku Klux Klan that attacked blacks and stopped them from voting.
[103]
During this time, many people moved to the United States from other countries, such as
Ireland,
Italy,
Germany,
Eastern Europe, and
China.
[104] Many of them worked in large
factories and lived in big cities, such as
New York City,
Chicago, and
Boston, often in small, poor, close-together
apartments called "tenements" or "slums".
[105] They often were used by "political machines", who gave them jobs and money in exchange for votes.
[105]
Scottish businessman, Andrew Carnegie, made America a "steel empire"
Major politicians were chosen by political machines and were
corrupt.
[106] The government could do little and leaders of big businesses often had more power than the government.
[106] At this time, there were several very big businesses called trusts. People who ran trusts made millions of dollars while paying their workers low wages. Some of these people were
John D. Rockefeller,
Andrew Carnegie, and
J.P. Morgan.
[107]
After the Civil War, people continued to move west where new states were formed. People now could get free land in the West due to an 1862 law called the
Homestead Act.
[108] Most of the land in the West was owned by the government, railroads, or large farmers.
[13] The
Transcontinental Railroad, finished in 1869, helped get people and goods from the west to the rest of the country.
Chicago became the center of trade between West and East because many rail lines met there.
[109] There were problems between the white settlers and the native Indians as more people began to move west. Because of this, many more Indians were killed at battles such as Wounded Knee.
[110] Almost all the Indians' land was taken away by laws like the Dawes Act.
[111] A lot of people did not like this decision. They had to deal with it anyway
Many Americans thought the railroads charged farmers so much money that it made them poor.
[112] Workers led several
strikes against the railroad that were put down by the army. Also, farmers started groups to fight the railroad, such as the
Grange.
[113] These groups became the
Populist Movement, which almost won the presidency under
William Jennings Bryan. The Populists wanted
reforms such as an
income tax and direct election of Senators.
[114] The Populist Party died out after 1896. Many of the things the Populists wanted would happen during the
Progressive Era.
[115]
In the United States, progressivism is the belief that the government should have a larger role in the economy to provide good living standards for people, especially workers.
[116]Imperialism was the belief that the U.S. should build a stronger navy and conquer land.
Theodore Roosevelt was President during most of the 1900s
In 1901,
Theodore Roosevelt became President. He had been a soldier in the
Spanish-American War. He called for a foreign policy known as the “Big Stick”.
[120] This meant having a large navy and
exercising control over
Latin America.
[121][122] Between 1901 and 1930, the United States sent soldiers into Latin America several times.
[122] When Roosevelt was president, work was begun on the
Panama Canal, a link between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans that made travel around the world much faster.
[123]
During this time, people started to notice the poor condition of American cities. A group of people called the “
muckrakers” wrote books and newspaper articles about subjects like the power of big business, unclean practices in factories, and the condition of poor people.
[13] Roosevelt and Congress answered their
concerns with laws such as the
Pure Food and Drug Act. The Act controlled the way food was made to make sure it was safe.
[124] Another response to the muckrakers was something called “trust-busting”, where big businesses were broken up into smaller ones.
[125] The biggest business broken up this way was the
Standard Oil Company in 1911.
[126]
In 1912,
Woodrow Wilson became President. He was a Progressive, but not quite the same as Roosevelt.
[127][128] He fought the “triple wall of privilege”, which was big business, taxes, and fees on goods coming into the United States.
[13] During this time, the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution were passed. They allowed for a federal income tax and direct election of U.S. Senators.
[129]
The United States did not want to enter World War I
[130] but wanted to sell weapons to both sides. In 1915 a German submarine sank a ship carrying Americans called the
Lusitania.
[130] This angered Americans, and Germany stopped attacking passenger ships. In January 1917 Germany started attacking them again, and sent the
Zimmerman Telegram to Mexico about invading the U.S.
[131] The United States joined the war against Germany, and it ended a year later. Wilson worked to create an international organization called the
League of Nations. The main goal of the League was preventing war.
[132] However, the United States did not join because
isolationists rejected the
peace treaty.
[133] At the end of World War I, a
flu pandemic killed millions of people in the U.S. and Europe.
[134] After the war, the United States was one of the richest and most powerful nations in the world.
[135]
Coolidge: “The business of America is business.”
[136]
Model-T's were invented by
Henry Ford and changed American transportation
After World War I, the United States had an
isolationistforeign policy. That meant it did not want to enter into another global war. It passed laws and treaties that supposedly would end war forever, and refused to sell
weapons to its former allies.
[142]
In 1921,
Warren G. Harding became President. He believed that the best way to make the economy good was for the government to be friendly to big business by cutting taxes and
regulating less.
[143] While the economy was doing very well under these policies, America had the largest difference between how much money the rich had and how much money the poor had.
[144] Harding's presidency had several problems. The biggest one was
Teapot Dome over
oil drilling in the Navy Oil Reserve.
[145] Harding died in 1923, and
Calvin Coolidge became President. Coolidge believed that the government should keep out of business, just like Harding, and continued many of Harding's policies.
[136]Coolidge chose not to seek the presidency in 1928 and
Herbert Hoover became president.
[146]- See also: Great Depression and New Deal
In 1929, a Great Depression hit the United States. The
stock market crashed (lost much of its value). Many
banks ran out of money and closed.
[147] By 1932, over a quarter of the nation had no jobs, and much of the nation was poor or unemployed.
[148] Many people were driven off farms, not only because of the Depression, but also because of a storm known as the "
Dust Bowl" and because farmers had not been doing well during the 1920s.
[149]
Roosevelt launched the
New Deal helping the American economy
President Hoover tried to do something about the Depression, but it did not work.
[150] In 1932, he was defeated and
Franklin D. Roosevelt became President. He created the
New Deal. It was a series of government programs which would give relief (to the people who were hurt by the bad economy), recovery (to make the economy better), and reform (to make sure a depression never happens again).
[151]
The New Deal is often called the period that "saved capitalism", and stopped America from becoming a
Communist or
Fasciststate.
[149] Although the New Deal improved the economy, it did not end the Great Depression. The Great Depression was ended by
World War II.
[155]
The atomic bomb over
Nagasaki, August 9, 1945
As World War II was beginning, the United States said they would not get involved in it. Most Americans thought the United States should remain neutral, and some people thought the United States should enter the war on the side of the Germans.
[13][142] Eventually, the U.S. did try to help the
Allied Powers (
Soviet Union,
Britain, and
France) with the
Lend Lease Act. It gave the Allies a lot of money and guns in trade for use of air bases throughout the world.
[156]
On December 7, 1941, Japan
attacked Pearl Harbor, a U.S.Naval base in
Hawaii.
[157] The U.S. was no longer neutral, and it declared war on the
Axis Powers (
Germany,
Japan,
Italy). The U.S. entering World War II ended the Great Depression because the war created many jobs.
[155] While some of the battles the U.S. fought in were
air and
naval battles with Japan, the U.S. mainly fought in Europe and Africa.
[158] The U.S. opened up several fronts, including in
North Africa and
Italy.
[158] The U.S. also bombed Germany from airplanes, blowing up German cities and factories.
[158] On June 6, 1944 (
D-Day), American and British forces invaded
Normandy. A year later, the Allies had freed France and taken
Berlin.
[154] In 1945, Roosevelt died, and
Harry Truman became president. The U.S. decided to
drop two atomic bombs on Japan. Japan gave up soon afterwards, and the war ended.
The war meant different things for women and minorities. During the war, many women worked in weapons factories. They were symbolized by a character called "Rosie the Riveter".
[159][160] Many African-Americans served in the army, but often in
segregated units with white officers.
[161] Japanese-Americans on the
West Coast were forced to live in
internment camps, though a few also served in the Army.
[162]- See also: Korean War, Vietnam War, Cuban Missile Crisis, Space Race, and Reagan Era
After World War II, the
Soviet Union and the
United States were the two most powerful countries left in the world. The
Cold War was a period of
tension between the two countries over ways of life. The two countries tried to get other countries on their side. The Soviet Union tried to get countries to become
Communist and the United States tried to stop them from being Communist.
[163] American and Soviet soldiers never fought in battles, but they fought indirectly in the
Korean War (1950s) and the
Vietnam War (1950s–1970s).
[164]
The Korean War lasted only a few years, but led to American soldiers being in
Korea since then.
[165] The Vietnam War lasted much longer. It started with a few American troops in Vietnam, but by the 1960s thousands of Americans were being sent to Vietnam.
[166] Both wars were between a Northern Communist government helped by the Soviet Union and
Communist China and a Southern government helped by the U.S. The Korean War resulted in a split Korea, but the Vietnam War resulted in a Communist Vietnam after the United States left due to American people wanting to end the war.
[167] Over a quarter million Americans died or were wounded in Vietnam, which was very much a military failure.
[168]The U.S. and Soviet Union argued about where they could place nuclear weapons. One of these arguments was the
Cuban Missile Crisis. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, the U.S. and Soviet Union came very close to attacking each other with nuclear weapons.
[169]
During the Cold War, the United States had a "Red Scare" where the government tried to find people it thought were Communist. The House of Representatives had a group called the House Un-American Activities Committee to deal with this, and
Joseph McCarthy led hearings in the Senate.
[170] The Red Scare led to people losing their jobs, going to jail, and even being
executed.
[171] Many
actors and
authors were put on blacklists, which meant they could not get jobs in movies or get credit for their writings.
[13][172]
The Cold War began with an arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union to see who could have more and better
weapons. This started after the Soviets were the second country to develop an
atomic bomb.
[173] In the United States, this started something called the "Military Industrial Complex", which meant business and government working together to spend a lot of money on large-scale weapons projects. Business and government helped each other to get more money and more power.
[174] Part of the Complex was something called the
Marshall Plan, which rebuilt Europe while making them buy American goods.
[175] The Complex allowed for a growing middle class, but also kept the Cold War going.
[174]
Nixon giving his resignation speech on his last day as President, August 9, 1974
United States foreign policy changed in the 1970s when the United States left Vietnam and
Richard Nixon left office due to a political scandal called
Watergate.
[13] In the 1970s and 1980s, the United States had a policy of "
detente" with the Soviet Union. This meant that the two countries signed
treaties to stop use of weapons.
[179] Under Nixon and
Reagan, the United States sent troops and money to many
Latin American governments to stop them from being Communist.
[122] This led to violence in Latin America.
[122] Around this time, the economy suffered because the United States was not making as many things as it used to, and because some countries in the
Middle East were not giving the U.S. as much oil as it wanted (this was called an "oil embargo").
[163] The Middle East became very important in American foreign policy after several Americans were
kidnapped in
Iran in 1979.
[180] In the 1980s, people in the U.S. government sold weapons to people in Iran and gave the money to "contra" soldiers in
Nicaragua.
[181] This was called the "
Iran-Contra affair". In the 1970s and 1980s, the U.S. normalized relations with
China.
[182] The Cold War came to an end as Communist governments in the Soviet Union and other countries fell apart.
[183]
The United States once again had
prosperity. Millions of white people moved out of the cities and into
suburbs, and into Southern and Western states known as the "
Sunbelt".
[184]They bought new cars and
television sets.
[185] The birth rate in the 1940s and 1950s rose, in what was called the "Baby Boom"
[186] The "Space Age" inspired "
Googie" style
art and
architecture.
[187] Many more people became part of the
middle class, but there were still many people who were poor.
[188]
Poverty was most common among
African-Americans. Most lived in poor
neighborhoods in Northern cities, or in the South where they faced
racism and "Jim Crow"
segregation.
[13]These conditions led to the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s, led by
Martin Luther King Jr. and others. In 1954, the Supreme Court found school segregation illegal in
Brown v. Board of Education, though it would be several years before school segregation was ended.
[189] In 1955, King led a bus
boycott in
Montgomery, Alabama.
[190] In the late 1950s and 1960s, King got help from Presidents
John F. Kennedy, who was shot, and
Lyndon B. Johnson.
[191] In 1963, he led a
march on Washington calling for
civil rights. Soon after, Congress passed laws that made most segregation illegal.
[192] Johnson also a program called the
Great Society that helped poor and minorities.
[193]
Gays and
lesbians, who had often been
persecuted, also started to ask for rights, beginning with the
Stonewall riots in 1969.
[194] Chicanos,
Native Americans, old people, consumers, and people with
disabilities also fought for rights, as did women. Though women had had jobs during World War II, most of them went back to the home after the war.
[195] Women did not like that they often held jobs that paid less than men or that fewer
opportunities were open to them.
[196] People like
Betty Freidan and
Gloria Steinem founded groups such as the
National Organization for Women to try and solve these problems. NOW and other groups wanted an
Equal Rights Amendment that would guarantee them equality in all areas.
[197] In the 1970s and 1980s, many more jobs and opportunities were opened to women. There were some women like
Phyllis Schlafly who opposed Freidan and Steinem and were known as "anti-feminists".
[198] It was partly because of the anti-feminists that the Equal Rights Amendment was defeated, but also because women had already gained equality in many areas and they did not want to be drafted into the army.
[198]
President Reagan said that "Government is not a solution to our problem, government
is the problem".
[205]
Ronald Reagan was elected President in 1980. He defeated incumbent
Jimmy Carter by winning 44 out of the 50 American states.
[13] During the Reagan Era, the country was facing through
inflation, a bad
economy, and the American
foreign policy were not as good. When Ronald Reagan became president, he signed the
Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981which helped the economy. Afterwards more and more jobs began to appear. More people were getting jobs. The inflation decreased. During Reagan's presidency, he also helped expand the American military. This also created more jobs, but also raised the
deficit. During his first term, the economy went from a 4.5% to 7.2%.
Since leaving office in 1989, Reagan became one of the most popular Presidents of the United States.
[13]
Post-Cold War and beyond (1991–present)[change | change source]
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Cold War came to an end. This was due to the Russian leader
Mikhail Gorbachev starting a policy called
perestroika, the fall of the
Berlin Wall, and the Soviet Union breaking into different countries.
[207] Around this time, the United States cut down on its production of cheap goods, and had many people working in service jobs.
[208] Part of these service jobs were in
computers and the
internet, which came into wide use in the 1990s.
[209] By this time, the United States had a very large trade deficit, meaning it received more goods from other countries, such as
China, than it sent to other countries.
[210]
In 2005, the southern United States was hit by
Hurricane Katrina. Much of the city of
New Orleans was destroyed. In 2006, the Democrats won back Congress because Americans did not like the way Bush dealt with War in Iraq or Katrina. At the end of Bush's term, the United States entered the worst
recession since the Great Depression.
Barack Obama is inaugurated as President of the United States, January 2009
Barack Obama was elected President in 2008. He became the first
African-AmericanPresident of the United States. During his first years in office, Obama and Congress passed reforms on
health care and banking. They also passed a large
stimulus bill to help the economy during the recession. During the recession, the government used large amounts of money to keep the banking and auto industries from falling apart. There was also a large oil spill in the
Gulf of Mexico. In 2010, Congress passed the Patient Protecton and Affordable Care Act, a sweeping overhaul of the health care system. Dubbed "Obamacare", it was faced with fierce criticism from conservative media.
A "
Tea Party movement" started during Obama's presidency. This group opposes Obama's health care plan and other policies they see as "big government." Due to the recession, the Tea Party and a dislike of what Obama did, Republicans won a large number of House and Senate seats in the 2010 election. In 2011, Tea Party members of Congress almost shut down the government and sent the U.S. into default (not being able to pay people the government owes money). A few months later, many young people protested against organized and concentrated wealth during the Occupy movement. In 2012, Obama was reelected to a second term. Following reelection, Obama faced major obstruction from Congressional Republicans. This polarization in the political atmosphere and the media, lead to events such as the 2013 Federal Government Shutdown and the stalling of Obama's Supreme Court pick, Judge Merrick Garland to replace Justice Antonio Scalia. In 2014, Republicans took control of both houses of Congress, further adding to the gridlock. In foreign policy, President Obama helped crafted the Paris Climate Agreement, a major global commitment to fighting climate change. He also forged the Iran Nuclear Agreement and opened relations with Cuba for the first time in fifty years.
On January 27, President Trump signed an executive order that suspended entering of refugees for 120 days and denied entry to citizens of
Iraq,
Iran,
Libya,
Somalia,
Sudan,
Syria, and
Yemen for 90 days, citing security concerns about terrorism. The following day, thousands of protesters gathered at airports and other locations throughout the United States to protest the signing of the order and detainment of the foreign nationals.
[214] Later, the administration seemed to reverse a portion of part of the order, effectively exempting visitors with a
green card.
[215]
On May 3, 2017, Puerto Rico filed for
bankruptcy after a massive debt and weak economy.
[217] It is the largest bankruptcy case in American history.
[217]
The United States faces many political issues. One of these is what kind of government the United States should become. Liberals want a large government, while the Tea Party and other groups want a smaller government.
[218] One of these debates is over health care. Health care costs have risen.
[219] Conservatives and liberals also disagree on social issues such as
abortion and
gay marriage.
[220][221] Many more people have come to accept gays and gay marriage as an acceptable part of American society. There are also many trends and developments that the U.S. must deal with. One of these is immigration. Many people are coming to the U.S. from
Latin America and
Asia, especially
Mexico. This is called the "browning of America".
[222][223] Baby Boom Americans are getting older and a larger fraction of the people are retired.
[224][225] Other issues facing the United States are a growing concern about the
environment. This has led to the creation of many "green jobs," or jobs that create clean or
renewable energy.
[226][227]
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2)now click here go to CLIPCONVERTER.Then you wiil re direct to new page show as below and now paste the copied URL in the CLIPCONVERTERs at 'Media URL' and press Continue..png)
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4)After a while the video is converted and there is the download file to convert.click on download to convert..png)
4)Now ana udio file will be downloaded to your computer as shown below..png)
5)click on that to download the video file then it will be visible as below..png)
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7)now the vedio will be saved in your desktop watch the video and enjoy the trick
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