"American history" redirects here. For the history of the continents, see History of the Americas.

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The history of the United States as covered in American schools and universities typically begins with either Christopher Columbus's 1492 voyage to the Americas or with the prehistory of the Native peoples, with the latter approach having become increasingly common in recent decades.^[1]

Indigenous populations lived in what is now the United States before European colonists began to arrive, mostly from England, after 1600. By the 1770s, thirteen British colonies contained two and a half million people. They were prosperous and growing rapidly, and had developed their own autonomous political and legal systems. TheBritish Parliament asserted its authority over these colonies by imposing new taxes, which the Americans insisted were unconstitutional because they were not represented in Parliament. Growing conflicts turned into full-fledged war beginning in April 1775. On July 4, 1776, the colonies declared independence under a document written by Thomas Jefferson from the Kingdom of Great Britain and became the United States of America.

With large-scale military and financial support from France and military leadership by General George Washington, the Patriots won the Revolutionary War and peace came in 1783. During and after the war, the 13 states were united under a weak federal government established by the Articles of Confederation. When these proved unworkable, a new Constitution was adopted in 1789; it remains the basis of the United States federal government, and later included a Bill of Rights. With Washington as the nation's first president and Alexander Hamilton his chief financial advisor, a strong national government was created. In the First Party System, two national political parties grew up to support or oppose Hamiltonian policies. When Thomas Jefferson became president he purchased the Louisiana Territory from France, doubling the size of American territorial holdings. A second and last war with Britain was fought in 1812. The main result of that war was the end of European support for Native American (Indian) attacks on western settlers.

Under the sponsorship of the Jeffersonian Democrats and the Jacksonian Democrats, the nation expanded to the Louisiana purchase and all the way to California and Oregon, and a quest for inexpensive land for Yeoman farmers and slave owners who promoted democracy and expansion, at the cost of violence and a disdain for European culture. The expansion, under the rubric of Manifest Destiny was a rejection of the advice of Whigs who wanted to deepen and modernize the economy and society rather than merely expand the geography. Slavery was abolished in all states north of the Mason–Dixon line by 1804, but it flourished in the Southern stateslargely due to heavy demand for cotton.

After 1820, a series of compromises postponed a showdown on the issue of slavery. In the mid-1850s, the new Republican power took political control of the North and promised to stop the expansion of slavery, which implied its eventual death. The 1860 presidential election of Republican Abraham Lincoln triggered the secession of eleven slave states to found the Confederacy in 1861. The American Civil War (1861-1865) was the centerpiece of American history. After four years of bloody warfare, the Union, under President Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant as the commanding general defeated the South with Robert E. Lee as its foremost general. The Union was saved, slavery was abolished, and the South was impoverished. In the Reconstruction era (1863–77), the United States ended slavery and extended legal and voting rights to theFreedmen. The national government was much stronger, and because of the Fourteenth Amendment it now had the explicit duty to protect individual rights. Reconstruction ended in 1877 and from the 1890s to the 1960s the system of Jim Crow kept blacks in segregation. The entire South remained poor until the 2nd half of the 20th century, while the North and West grew rapidly and prospered. The per capita income in the South remained under half the national average until after 1945.^[2]

The United States became the world's leading industrial power at the turn of the 20th century due to an outburst of entrepreneurship in the North and the arrival of millions of immigrant workers and farmers from Europe. The national railroad network was completed, and large scale mining and factories industrialized the Northeast and Midwest. Middle class dissatisfaction with corruption, inefficiency and traditional politics stimulated the Progressive movement from the 1890s to 1920s, which pushed for reforms and allowed for women's suffrage and the prohibition of alcohol. Initially neutral in World War I, the U.S. declared war on Germany in 1917, and funded the Allied victory the following year. After a prosperous decade in the 1920s, the Wall Street Crash of 1929 marked the onset of the decade-long world-wide Great Depression. Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt became president and implemented his New Deal programs for relief, recovery, and reform, defining modern American liberalism. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the United States entered World War II alongside the Allies and helped defeat Nazi Germany in Europe and, with the detonation of newly invented atomic bombs, Japan in the Far East.

The United States and the Soviet Union emerged as opposing superpowers after World War II and began the Cold War, confronting one another indirectly in the arms race and Space Race. U.S. foreign policy during the Cold War was built around the containment of Communism, and the country participated in the wars in Korea and Vietnam to achieve this goal. Liberalism won numerous victories in the days of the New Deal and again in the mid-1960s, especially in the success of the civil rights movement, but conservatism made its comeback in the 1980s under Ronald Reagan. The Cold War ended when the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, leaving the United States the only superpower. As the 21st century began, international conflict centered around the Middle East and heightened significantly following the September 11 attacks and the War on Terrorism that was subsequently declared. The United States experienced its worst economic recession since World War II in the late 2000s, which has been followed by slower than usual rates of economic growth during the 2010s.