A+Brief+Summary+of+American+History



In 1492, explorer Christopher Columbus landed in San Salvadore, an island in what is now called the Bahamas. This was the first European interaction with the Americas. However, Columbus died thinking he had reached the Indies, not a new continent. It was only in the early 1500s that Europeans began to discover that this was not the Indies but indeed a completely new place they had no idea about. The continent was named after another American explorer, Amerigo Vespucci, who discovered Columbus had discovered a new continent for the Westerners. ('America' is Vespucci's name feminized in Latin.) The first permanent European settlement on the American mainland was the Spanish St. Augustine, Florida, in 1565, which is still there today. The first successful English settlement in America was Jamestown, Virginia, which was the precursor to the 13 Colonies of Britain. Soon a boom of European colonization of the 13 Colonies, caused by the promises of religious freedom and wealth, began to spread. However, in the early 1770's, the British colonies became fed up with the British's high taxes after the costly French and Indian War. They rebelled in the American Revolutionary War in 1775 and declared their own independence in 1776. In 1783, the Treaty of Paris was signed, formally ending the war. The new country, called the United States of America, became a democratic republic, with George Washington was elected as the first president, and the Constitution still used today was written in 1787. In 1812, America fought another war with Britain, appropriately titled "The War of 1812". Often called an American victory, the outcome was really more of an awkward stalemate. In the early 1800's, America's goal became to expand further westward, eventually reaching the Pacific Ocean. In 1846, America annexed the Republic of Texas, an independent nation that Mexico considered to still be their territory. This caused the Mexican American war, a conflict that ended in a United States victory in 1848. From this, America acquired basically all of the formerly Mexican land north of the Rio Grande. Conflicts about the slavery of these new territories as well as States' rights led to the American Civil War between the Union, of the United States of America's northern free states, the Loyalist slave states, and America's terrirories, and the Confederate States of America, consisting of 11 seceded slave states. This brutal war from 1861 to 1865 eventually ended in the preservation of the Union and the abolishment of slavery in the rebel states (eventually all slavery was declared illegal). The next major war for America was in 1917, with America's entry into World War I. Though the War lasted 1914-1918, President Woodrow Wilson felt it was a European war, not an American war, and thus tried to keep America out as long as possible. (Ironically, for the term when he declared war, his campaign slogan was 'He Kept Us Out Of The War'.) However, after the revelation of the Zimmerman telegram and the Germans adopting the policy of Unrestricted submarine warfare on neutral vessels, the Americans thought it was unsafe to continue to stay out of the war any longer. After the war's end in 1918, the next major military conflict was World War II (and it was obviously the coolest one, I mean, //General George S. freaking Patton was in it//!!), when we entered into the war after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. (The war itself started in 1939) The war ended in 1945 with the Axis' collape and the atomic bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. After WWII, America and the USSR engaged in the Cold War, a bloodless idelogical war that lasted until the fall of the Soviet Union. American wars on Communism include in 1950-1953 America fought in the Korean War, and 1959-1975, America fought in the Vietnam Conflict.

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