USA Revolution and the new nation

 

Revolution and the new nation (1763–1789)

Declaration of Independence, a portrait by John Trumbull depicting the Committee of Five presenting the draft of the Declaration to the Continental Congress on June 28, 1776, in Philadelphia

After the British victory in the French and Indian War that was won largely through the support in men and materiel from the colonies, the British began to assert greater control in local colonial affairs, fomenting colonial political resistance. In 1774, to demonstrate colonial dissatisfaction with the lack of representation in the British government that extracted taxes from them, the First Continental Congress met in Philadelphia and passed the Continental Association, which mandated a colonies-wide boycott of British goods. The American Revolutionary War began the following year, on April 19, 1775, at the Battles of Lexington and Concord. The then United Colonies responded by again convening in Philadelphia in the Second Continental Congress, where, in June 1775, they appointed George Washington as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army, which was initially comprised of various American patriot militias resisting the British Army. In June 1776, the Second Continental Congress charged a committee with writing a Declaration of Independence, largely drafted by Thomas Jefferson.

On July 4, 1776, the Second Continental Congress with alterations unanimously adopted and issued the Declaration of Independence, which famously stated: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." The adoption of the Declaration of Independence is celebrated annually on July 4 in the United States as Independence Day. In 1777, the American victory at the Battle of Saratoga resulted in the capture of a British army, and led to France and their ally Spain joining in the war against them. After the surrender of a second British Army at the siege of Yorktown in 1781, Britain signed a peace treaty. American sovereignty gained international recognition, and the new nation took possession of substantial territory east of the Mississippi River, from what is present-day Canada in the north and Florida in the south. Tensions with Britain remained, leading to the War of 1812, which was fought to a draw.

In 1781, the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union established a decentralized government that operated until 1789. Considered one of the most important legislative acts of the Confederation Congress, Northwest Ordinance (1787) established the precedent by which the national government would be sovereign and expand westward with the admission of new states, rather than with the expansion of existing states and their established sovereignty under the Articles. The prohibition of slavery in the territory had the practical effect of establishing the Ohio River as the geographic divide between slave states and free states from the Appalachian Mountains to the Mississippi River, an extension of the Mason–Dixon line. It also helped set the stage for later federal political conflicts over slavery during the 19th century until the American Civil War.

As it became increasingly apparent that the Confederation was insufficient to govern the new country, nationalists advocated for and led the Philadelphia Convention of 1787, where the United States Constitution was authored and then ratified in state conventions in 1788. The U.S. Constitution is the oldest and longest-standing written and codified national constitution in force today. Going into effect in 1789, it reorganized the government into a federation administered by three branches (executive, judicial, and legislative), on the principle of creating salutary checks and balances. George Washington, who led the Continental Army to victory in the Revolutionary War and then willingly relinquished power, was elected the new nation's first President under the new constitution. The Bill of Rights was adopted in 1791, originally forbidding only federal restriction of personal freedoms and guaranteeing a range of legal protections, portions of the Bill of Rights are now applied to state and local governments by virtue of both state and federal court decisions.

United States History

 

Beginnings (before 1630)

The first inhabitants of North America migrated from Siberia, crossing the Bering land bridge and arriving in the present-day United States at least 12,000 years ago; some evidence suggests an even earlier date of arrival. The Clovis culture, which appeared around 11,000BC, is believed to represent the first wave of human settlement in the Americas. This was likely the first of three major waves of migration into North America; later waves brought the ancestors of present-day Athabaskans, Aleuts, and Eskimos.

Over time, indigenous cultures in North America grew increasingly sophisticated, and some, such as the pre-Columbian Mississippian culture in the southeast, developed advanced agriculture, architecture, and complex societies. The city-state of Cahokia was the largest, most complex pre-Columbian archaeological site in present-day United States. In the Four Corners region in present-day Southwestern United States, the culture of Ancestral Puebloans developed over centuries of agricultural experimentation. The Algonquian, consisting of peoples who speak Algonquian languages, were one of the most populous and widespread North American indigenous peoples. These people were historically prominent along the Atlantic Coast and in the Saint Lawrence River and Great Lakes regions. Before European immigrants made contact, most of the Algonquian relied on hunting and fishing, and many supplemented their diet by cultivating corn, beans, and squash, known as the "Three Sisters". By European contact in the 17th century, they practiced slash and burn agriculture, using controlled fire to extend farmlands' productivity and manage land. The Ojibwe cultivated wild rice. The Iroquois confederation Haudenosaunee, located in the southern Great Lakes region, was established between the 12th and 15th centuries.

Estimating the native population of North America following the arrival of European immigrants is difficult. Douglas H. Ubelaker of the Smithsonian Institution estimated a population of 93,000 in the South Atlantic states and a population of 473,000 in the Gulf states, but most academics regard this figure as too low. Anthropologist Henry F. Dobyns believed the populations were much higher, suggesting that approximately 1.1 million resided on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, 2.2 million people living between Florida and Massachusetts, 5.2 million in the Mississippi Valley and tributaries, and around 700,000 in the Florida peninsula.

The Italian explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano, sent by France to the New World in 1525, encountered Native American inhabitants in the present-day New York Bay region. The Spanish Empire set up their first settlements in Florida and New Mexico, including in Saint Augustine, which is often considered the nation's oldest city, and Santa Fe. The French established their own settlements along the Mississippi River and Gulf of Mexico, including in New Orleans and Mobile.

Colonization, settlement, and communities (1630–1763)

The continent's first elected legislative assembly, the House of Burgesses in Virginia, was founded in 1619. In 1636, Harvard College in Cambridge, Massachusetts Bay Colony was founded as the first institution of higher education. The Mayflower Compact and the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut established precedents for representative self-government and constitutionalism that would develop throughout the American colonies. Many English settlers were dissenting Christians who fled England seeking religious freedom. The native population of America declined after European arrival, primarily as a result of infectious diseases such as smallpox and measles. By the mid-1670s, the British defeated and seized the territory of Dutch settlers in New Netherland, in the mid-Atlantic region.

In the 17th century, during European colonization, many European settlers experienced food shortages, disease, and conflicts with Native Americans, including in King Philip's War. In addition to fighting European settlers, Native Americans also often fought neighboring tribes. But in many cases, the natives and settlers came to develop a mutual dependency. Settlers traded for food and animal pelts, and Native Americans traded for guns, tools, and other European goods. Native Americans taught many settlers to cultivate corn, beans, and other foodstuffs. European missionaries and others felt it was important to "civilize" the Native Americans and urged them to adopt European agricultural practices and lifestyles. With the increased European colonization of North America, however, Native Americans were often displaced or killed during conflicts.

European settlers also began trafficking African slaves into the colonial United States via the transatlantic slave trade. By the turn of the 18th century, slavery supplanted indentured servitude as the main source of agricultural labor for the cash crops in the American South. Colonial society was divided over the religious and moral implications of slavery, and several colonies passed acts for or against it.

In what was then considered British America, the Thirteen Colonies were administered as overseas dependencies by the British. All colonies had local governments with elections open to white male property owners except Jews and, in some areas, Catholics. With very high birth rates, low death rates, and steadily growing settlements, the colonial population grew rapidly, eclipsing Native American populations. The Christian revivalist movement of the 1730s and 1740s, known as the Great Awakening, fueled colonial interest in both religion and religious liberty. Excluding the Native American population, the Thirteen Colonies had a population of over 2.1 million in 1770, representing a population that was then roughly a third the size of Great Britain. By the 1770s, despite continuing new immigrant arrivals from Britain and other European regions, the natural increase of the population was such that only a small minority of Americans had been born overseas. The colonies' distance from Britain had allowed for the development of self-governance in the colonies, but it encountered periodic efforts by British monarchs to reassert royal authority.

United States Etymology

 

The first documentary evidence of the phrase "United States of America" dates back to a letter from January 2, 1776, written by Stephen Moylan, a Continental Army aide to General George Washington, to Joseph Reed, Washington's aide-de-camp. Moylan expressed his desire to go "with full and ample powers from the United States of America to Spain" to seek assistance in the Revolutionary War effort. The first known publication of the phrase "United States of America" was in an anonymous essay in The Virginia Gazette newspaper in Williamsburg, on April 6, 1776.

By June 1776, the name "United States of America" appeared in drafts of the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union, authored by John Dickinson, a Founding Father from the Province of Pennsylvania, and in the Declaration of Independence, written primarily by Thomas Jefferson and adopted by the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia, on July 4, 1776.