Main article: Indian removal The Indian Removal Act resulted in the transplantation of several Native American tribes and the Trail of Tears. A later migration identified by linguists, anthropologists, and archeologists occurred around 8,000 BCE. This included Na-Dene-speaking peoples, who reached the Pacific Northwest by 5,000 BCE. [7] From there, they migrated along the Pacific Coast and into the interior and constructed large multi-family dwellings in their villages, which were used only seasonally in the summer to hunt and fish, and in the winter to gather food supplies. [8] Another group, the Oshara tradition people, who lived from 5,500 BCE to 600 CE, were part of the Archaic Southwest. Aerial view of Levittown, Pennsylvania, circa 1959 postwar Americans moved into suburbs by the millions. Women surrounded by posters in English and Yiddish supporting Franklin D. Roosevelt, Herbert H. Lehman, and the American Labor Party teach other women how to vote, 1936 The first settlers in the west were the Spanish in New Mexico; they became U.S. citizens in 1848. The Hispanics in California (" Californios") were overwhelmed by over 100,000 California Gold Rush miners. California grew explosively. San Francisco by 1880 had become the economic hub of the entire Pacific Coast with a diverse population of a quarter million.

For the remainder of the 20th century the United States emerged as the world's sole remaining superpower and continued to intervene in international affairs during the 1990s, including the 1991 Gulf War against Iraq. Following his election in 1992, President Bill Clinton oversaw one of the longest periods of economic expansion and unprecedented gains in securities values. President Clinton worked with the Republican Congress to pass the first balanced federal budget in 30 years. [254]Much of the economic boom was a side effect of the Digital Revolution and new business opportunities created by the internet privatized in 1993. Prior to this time ARPNET a Department of Defense Project had developed the internet for governmental, and research purposes. [255] New Ideas About Human Migration From Asia To Americas". ScienceDaily. October 29, 2007. Archived from the original on February 25, 2011 . Retrieved March 12, 2011. The Watergate scandal, involving Nixon's cover-up of his operatives' break-in into the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office complex destroyed his political base, sent many aides to prison, and forced Nixon's resignation on August 9, 1974. He was succeeded by Vice President Gerald Ford. The Fall of Saigon, on April 30, 1975, ended the Vietnam War and resulted in North and South Vietnam being reunited. Communist victories in neighboring Cambodia and Laos occurred in the same year, with the fall of Cambodia's capital, Phnom Penh on April 17 and the taking of Laos's capital, Vientiane on December 2. [241] Richard Nixon departing from the White House, 1974 The Adena began constructing large earthwork mounds around 600 BCE. They are the earliest known people to have been Mound Builders, however, there are mounds in the United States that predate this culture. Watson Brake is an 11-mound complex in Louisiana that dates to 3,500 BCE, and nearby Poverty Point, built by the Poverty Point culture, is an earthwork complex that dates to 1,700 BCE. These mounds likely served a religious purpose. Langguth, A.J. (2006). "24". Union 1812: The Americans Who Fought the Second War of Independence. Simon and Schuster. ISBN 9780743226189.Berkin, Carol (2002). A Brilliant Solution: Inventing the American Constitution. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. p.192. ISBN 978-0-15-602872-1. The main contributions of the U.S. to the Allied war effort comprised money, industrial output, food, petroleum, technological innovation, and (especially 1944–1945), military personnel. Much of the focus the U.S. government was in maximizing the national economic output, causing a dramatic increase in GDP, the export of vast quantities of supplies to the Allies and to American forces overseas, the end of unemployment, and a rise in civilian consumption even as 40% of the GDP went to the war effort. [194] The Boston Marathon bombing was a bombing incident, followed by subsequent related shootings, that occurred when two pressure cooker bombs exploded during the Boston Marathon on April 15, 2013. The bombs exploded near the marathon's finish line, killing 3 people and injuring an estimated 264 others. President Lyndon B. Johnson secured congressional passage of his Great Society programs in the mid-1960s. [228] They included civil rights, the end of legal segregation, Medicare, extension of welfare, federal aid to education at all levels, subsidies for the arts and humanities, environmental activism, and a series of programs designed to wipe out poverty. [229] [230] As later historians explained: U.S. soldiers searching a village for potential Viet Cong during the Vietnam War, 1966 The English, drawn in by Francis Drake's raids on Spanish treasure ships leaving the New World, settled the strip of land along the east coast in the 1600s. The first British colony in North America was established at Roanoke by Walter Raleigh in 1585, but failed. It would be twenty years before another attempt. [5]

See also: First Party System and Second Party System Map of the British, French and Spanish settlements in North America in 1750, before the French and Indian War The Articles of Confederation were ratified as the governing law of the United States, written to limit the powers of the central government in favor of state governments. This caused economic decline, as the government was unable to pass economic legislation and pay its debts. [61] Nationalists worried that the confederate nature of the union was too fragile to withstand an armed conflict with any adversarial states, or even internal revolts such as the Shays' Rebellion of 1786 in Massachusetts. [62] In 2016, following a contentious election, Republican Donald Trump was elected president. [309] The results of the election were called into question, and U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that associates of the Russian government interfered in the election "to undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process". This, along with questions about potential collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian officials, led to investigations by the FBI and Congress. [310] [311]Kidd, Thomas S. (2009). The Great Awakening: The Roots of Evangelical Christianity in Colonial America. Bedford/St. Martin's. ISBN 9780312452254. Barker, Deanna. "Indentured Servitude in Colonial America". National Association for Interpretation, Cultural Interpretation and Living History Section. Archived from the original on October 22, 2009. Lumpkin, Henry (1981). From Savannah to Yorktown: The American Revolution in the South. University of South Carolina Press. pp.27–30. ISBN 978-0-87249-408-4. Religiosity expanded greatly after the First Great Awakening, a religious revival in the 1740s which was led by preachers such as Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield. American Evangelicals affected by the Awakening added a new emphasis on divine outpourings of the Holy Spirit and conversions that implanted new believers with an intense love for God. Revivals encapsulated those hallmarks and carried the newly created evangelicalism into the early republic, setting the stage for the Second Great Awakening in the late 1790s. [36] In the early stages, evangelicals in the South, such as Methodists and Baptists, preached for religious freedom and abolition of slavery; they converted many slaves and recognized some as preachers. Ancestral Pueblo culture". Encyclopædia Britannica. Archived from the original on April 29, 2015 . Retrieved June 4, 2012.

The Mexican–American War (1846–1848) broke out with the Whigs opposed to the war, and the Democrats supporting the war. The U.S. army, using regulars and large numbers of volunteers, defeated the Mexican armies, invaded at several points, captured Mexico City and won decisively. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the war in 1848. Many Democrats wanted to annex all of Mexico, but that idea was rejected by White Southerners who argued that by incorporating millions of Mexican people, mainly of mixed race, would undermine the United States as an exclusively white republic. [110] ANDERSON, ATHOLL; LEACH, HELEN; SMITH, IAN; WALTER, RICHARD (1994). "Reconsideration of the Marquesan sequence in East Polynesian prehistory, with particular reference to Hane (MUH1)". Archaeology in Oceania. 29 (1): 29–52. doi: 10.1002/arco.1994.29.1.29. ISSN 0728-4896. Learn about Maryland's many historical figures such as George Calvert, Benjamin Banneker, and Thurgood Marshall See all videos for this article

The primary American goal of 1945–1948 was to rescue Europe from the devastation of World War II and to contain the expansion of Communism, represented by the Soviet Union. U.S. foreign policy during the Cold War was built around the support of Western Europe and Japan along with the policy of containment, stopping the spread of communism. The U.S. joined the wars in Korea and Vietnam and toppled left-wing governments in the third world to try to stop its spread. [221] The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant rose to prominence in September 2014. In addition to taking control of much of Western Iraq and Eastern Syria, ISIS also beheaded three journalists, two American and one British. These events lead to a major military offensive by the United States and its allies in the region. Wright, R (2005). Stolen Continents: 500 Years of Conquest and Resistance in the Americas. Mariner Books. ISBN 978-0-618-49240-4. See also: Presidency of Donald Trump, China–United States trade war, COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, and Presidency of Joe Biden A man stands on a burned out car following protests over the murder of George Floyd on May 28, 2020.