History of the United States is what happened in the past in the United States, a country in North America.
Native Americans lived in the Americas for thousands of years. English people in 1607 went to the place now called Jamestown, Virginia. Other European settlers went to the colonies, mostly from England and later Great Britain. France, Spain, and the Netherlands also colonized North America. In 1775, a war between the thirteen colonies and Britain began when the colonists were upset over paying taxation to their government in the UK, but were not being given any chance to vote in the UK/British elections, to contribute to how that money was spent.
Just after dawn on April 19, 1775, the British attempted to disarm the Massachusetts militia at Concord, Massachusetts, thus beginning the war with the "Shot Heard Round the World." On July 4, 1776, Founding Fathers wrote the United States Declaration of Independence. They won the Revolutionary War and started a new country. They signed the constitution in 1787 and the Bill of Rights in 1791. General George Washington, who had led the war, became its first president. During the 19th century, the United States gained much more land in the West and began to become industrialized. In 1861, several states in the South attempted to leave the United States to start a new country called the Confederate States of America. This caused the American Civil War. After the war, Immigration resumed. Some Americans became very rich in this Gilded Age, and the country developed one of the largest economies in the world.
In the early 20th century, the United States became a world power, fighting in World War I and World War II. Between the wars, there was an economic boom called the Roaring Twenties, when many people became richer, and a bust, called the Great Depression, when most were poorer. The Great Depression ended with World War II.
The United States and the Soviet Union entered the Cold War. This included wars in Korea and Vietnam. During this time, African-Americans, Chicanos, and women sought more rights. In the 1970s and 1980s, the United States started to make fewer things in factories. The country then went through the worst recession it had since the Great Depression. In the late 1980s, the Cold War ended, helping the United States out of recession. The Middle East became more important in American foreign policy, especially after the September 11 attacks in 2001. In the 2010s, Barack Obama's presidency helped many domestic problems in the country such as the auto business and healthcare coverage. After Obama, the country saw a rise in populist politics with the presidency of Donald Trump. In 2020, the country oversaw the COVID-19 pandemic, social unrest over racial justice and disputes over the 2020 election results which led to violent reactions.
Pre-Columbian America
The Pre-Columbian Era is the time before Christopher Columbus went to the Americas in 1492. At that time, Native Americans lived on the land that is now controlled by the United States. They had various cultures: Native Americans in the Eastern Woodlands hunted game and deer; Native Americans in the Northwest fished; Native Americans in the Southwest grew corn and built houses called pueblos; and Native Americans in the Great Plains hunted Bison. Around the year 1000, the Vikings visited Newfoundland. However, they did not settle there.
Colonial America
The English tried to settle at Roanoke Island in 1585. The settlement did not last, and no one knows what happened to the people. In 1607, the first lasting English settlement was made at Jamestown, Virginia, by John Smith, John Rolfe and other Englishmen interested in gold and adventure. In its early years, many people in Virginia died of disease and starvation. The colony in Virginia lasted because it made money by planting tobacco, rice and cotton.
In 1621, a group of Englishmen called the Pilgrims settled at Plymouth, Massachusetts. A bigger colony was built at Massachusetts Bay by the Puritans in 1630. The Pilgrims and the Puritans were interested in making a better society, not looking for gold. They called this ideal society a "city on a hill". A man named Roger Williams left Massachusetts after disagreeing with the Puritans, and started the colony of Rhode Island in 1636.