I.

Introduction

United States of America or United States, popularly referred to as the United States or as America, a federal republic on the continent of North America, consisting of 48 contiguous states and the non-contiguous states of Alaska and Hawaii. Outlying areas include Puerto Rico, American Samoa, Guam, and the US Virgin Islands. The conterminous 48 states are bounded on the north by Canada, on the east by the Atlantic Ocean, on the south by the Gulf of Mexico and Mexico, and on the west by the Pacific Ocean. The northern boundary is partly formed by the Great Lakes and the St Lawrence River; the southern boundary is partly formed by the Rio Grande. New York is the largest city in the United States. Washington, D.C., is the capital.

The total area of the United States (including the District of Columbia) is 9,826,630 sq km (3,794,083 sq mi), of which 1,717,854 sq km (663,267 sq mi) are in Alaska and 28,311 sq km (10,931 sq mi) are in Hawaii. Inland, coastal, and Great Lakes bodies of water cover 470,129 sq km (181,518 sq mi) of the total area. Measured along the parallel of latitude that passes through West Quoddy Head, Maine, the easternmost point in the United States, the maximum width of the conterminous 48 states is about 4,421 km (2,747 mi). The maximum length measured from the vicinity of Brownsville, Texas, due north to the Canadian frontier is about 2,572 km (1,598 mi). Mount McKinley, or Denali (6,194 m/20,320 ft), in Alaska, is the highest point in North America; Death Valley, a depression 86 m (282 ft) below sea level, in California, is the lowest point.

II.

Land and Resources

The United States has an enormous variety of physical features and a wide diversity of animal and plant life, which are discussed more fully in the individual state entries.

A.

Geological History

The present-day pattern of the landforms of the United States is the result of a long sequence of collisions and separations of large blocks of the Earth’s surface crust, a process known as plate tectonics. The oldest part of the continent is the Canadian Shield, or Laurentian Plateau, a mass of granite and related rock that underlies eastern Canada and the north-eastern United States. The shield was formed during several long periods of crustal convergence in Precambrian time (a period that stretches from the formation of the Earth to about 570 million years ago). The characteristic rock of the shield is granite. The margins of the ancient continent are more complex in structure, and include zones of granite, darker ocean-bottom rocks, fine-grained volcanic rocks, and hardened ocean sediments.

A long period of inactivity in the crust followed the formation of the shield. Erosion reduced the mountainous continent to a low plain, and the adjoining seas were filled with thick beds of sediment. Near the end of this period, great forests covered the land, and the addition of organic material to the sediment formed the vast coal and petroleum layers that stretch in a broad curve from northern Pennsylvania through West Virginia to Alabama, then west to Texas and north-west through the Great Plains states and Canadian prairies to Arctic Alaska.

The period of crustal calm ended when the North American and European land masses collided early in the fossil-forming period; southern Massachusetts and Rhode Island are actually parts of the European land mass that became attached to the American plate at this time. Later, after the coal-forming age, the African and American land masses converged. The modern Appalachians are the worn-down remnants of the mountains that were built during this collision. Crustal uplift and subsequent erosion exposed ancient granite rocks all the way from New England to Alabama, as evidenced in the low Piedmont hills of Georgia and the Carolinas and the somewhat higher Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, Virginia, and West Virginia. To the west, the layers of younger sedimentary rocks still remain at the surface, crumpled and eroded, notably in the long, even ridges and valleys of central Pennsylvania, eastern Tennessee, and the Ouachita region of Arkansas and Oklahoma. Still further west and north, less intense folding created broad domes and basins. Present-day Michigan and Iowa occupy geological basins. Structural domes are centred near the Wisconsin Dells, the Bluegrass area of Kentucky, and the Nashville area of Tennessee.

After the Appalachian collision, the continent reversed direction and drifted west. The Atlantic Ocean began to widen, and the eastern United States again became a region of geological calm. The Appalachians began to erode, and the resulting sediment accumulated on the mid-continental Great Plains and on the Atlantic and Gulf coastal plains. Meanwhile, new ranges of mountains were rising as the western United States collided with the Pacific plate. Lava erupted on to the surface in many places at different times: in northern New Mexico, central Arizona, eastern California, and southern Idaho, and especially in the region of the Cascade Range of Oregon and Washington. The sandy sediments of the Great Plains were thrust sharply upward along the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado and Montana and around smaller mountain ranges such as the Black Hills of South Dakota. Rock movement along massive faults formed California’s Sierra Nevada, the Wasatch Range in Utah, the aligned mountain ranges of Nevada, and the Teton Range in Wyoming. The land of Arizona and southern Utah was lifted, and rivers cut canyons into the level sedimentary rocks.

The major past climatic event is the Pleistocene epoch, more commonly known as the Ice Age. At least four times in the past 1 million years, great ice sheets formed in eastern Canada and the mountains of the west and spread outward. The moving ice scraped up soil and rock from Canada and the northern United States and deposited the material further south. The aligned lakes and exposed rocks of New England and northern Minnesota are the result of glacial scouring. Long Island and Cape Cod are huge glacial deposits, characterized by hills composed of rock and soil, with associated swamps and sand outwash plains; similar features are abundant throughout the former glaciated areas, from New England to the Dakotas and in the western mountain valleys. Rivers such as the Hudson, Illinois, Minnesota, Missouri, and Columbia carried huge floods of glacial meltwater and carved valleys much larger than the present-day streams require. Glacial meltwater also formed many large lakes. Today, level plains and low beach ridges mark the beds and shores respectively of Ice Age lakes on both the eastern and western edges of Vermont, around the Maumee River of north-western Ohio, in the sand counties of central Wisconsin, around the Red River of Minnesota and the Dakotas, around the Great Salt Lake of Utah, and in the Missoula Basin of Montana, and the Central Valley of California. Ice Age dust storms left thick deposits of loess (fine-grained silt or clay) on the undulating plains around the Mississippi and Missouri rivers, on the steeper bluffs of western Wisconsin and western Tennessee, and in the Palouse Hills region of eastern Washington. Times of higher sea level built beaches far up on the Gulf Coastal Plain and on slopes overlooking the Pacific Ocean, while Chesapeake Bay and many similar drowned river valleys along the Atlantic coast from Georgia to Connecticut are the result of periods of lower sea level.

B.

Rivers and Lakes

The rivers of the eastern United States, principal among which are the Hudson, Delaware, Susquehanna, Potomac, and Savannah, receive rainfall in every month and are therefore reliable routes for water-borne commerce. Rivers of the interior, such as the Ohio, Tennessee, Illinois, and Mississippi, often flood in spring and decrease in size during the hot weeks of late summer and the snowy winter months. Some degree of flow regulation and flood control has been achieved on these rivers through a costly and controversial system of dams and levees. Argument over water projects is even more heated in the western United States, where mountain snowmelt is the principal source of water for the eastward-flowing Missouri, Platte, Arkansas, and Rio Grande rivers and the westward-flowing Colorado, Sacramento, Snake, and Columbia rivers. Most of these rivers shrink in volume as they flow away from their mountain sources; some, like the Colorado, are dammed and diverted for so many urban or agricultural uses that they no longer carry water to the sea. In Alaska the drainage system is dominated by the Yukon, a river as long as the Rio Grande but considerably greater in volume.

The five Great Lakes—Ontario, Erie, Huron, Michigan, and Superior—occupy an interconnected set of glacially scoured basins and together serve as a major artery of transport. Glaciers also left tens of thousands of smaller lakes throughout the north-eastern United States, the upper Midwest, and much of Alaska. Among the larger of these are Champlain, Winnipesaukee, and Cayuga in the north-east and Winnebago, Red, and Mille Lacsin the Midwest. The Great Salt Lake of Utah and many smaller salt basins of the Mountain states are remnants of much larger Ice Age lakes. Many groundwater aquifers, especially those of the Great Plains, are also relics of wetter climates of the past.

C.

Climate

In general, sun intensity and, consequently, temperatures decrease from south to north; in summer, however, the decrease in intensity is partly offset by longer days in the north. Montana, North Dakota, and Minnesota actually have higher record temperatures than New Mexico and Alabama. In winter, on the other hand, the short days in the north exaggerate the effect of low sun angles, creating wide temperature differences from south to north. Forests use up much solar energy to evaporate water, and therefore the humid states of the eastern United States do not get as warm as the dry western deserts. Oceans and lakes moderate temperatures, and mountains are somewhat cooler by day and much colder at night than surrounding lowlands.

The pattern of precipitation is largely a consequence of the interaction of wind and topography. The wind system of the Earth balances temperatures by taking heat from the equator and carrying it towards the poles. Two features of this global atmospheric circulation are particularly significant for the United States. One is a current of sinking air, a gentle but persistent downward movement of air from the upper atmosphere. This subsidence is part of the global convection cycle and starts with updrafts of warm and humid air near the equator; the air loses moisture as it rises to the upper atmosphere and begins to move polewards. At about latitude 30° north the air begins to sink, bringing hot and dry conditions to the south-western United States, especially in summer.

The other significant part of atmospheric circulation is the jet stream, a shifting zone of fast winds blowing high above the ground, generally from west to east. The path of the jet stream on any given day is a key to surface weather. In summer, the jet stream is usually near the Canadian border, though it may loop as far north as Alaska or as far south as Louisiana. It brings wet Pacific air onshore in Washington and Alaska, but in other western states dry air masses from Mexico and Canada dominate. In the east, by contrast, the jet can pull moist air masses northward from the Gulf of Mexico all the way to Canada. In winter, the entire wind system follows the sun southward. Pacific air masses now bring clouds and rain to the coastal mountains from California to southern Alaska. The jet usually crosses the country at the latitude of Oklahoma, and cold, dry Canadian air covers the northern half of the country; however, day-to-day shifts of the jet may pull warm, moist Gulf air as far north as Illinois or bring Canadian air to Florida.

Regional weather hazards are intimately associated with the seasonal position of the jet stream and associated fronts. Torrential rains are most common near the Gulf of Mexico, which is the major source of moisture for the country. Tornadoes occur in the centre of the United States, where Canadian and Gulf air masses often collide violently; hurricanes arise out of the late-summer warmth of the Atlantic Ocean and drift towards the south-eastern states in the autumn. Southern California experiences smog and forest fires in late summer.

Heavy winter snows in the eastern United States are caused by the rapid cooling of Gulf air, amplified in the Great Lakes region by local lake breezes. December and March are the major months for snow in Minnesota and the Dakotas; in January there is a time of intense cold and little snowfall, because Gulf air cannot penetrate that far north. Finally, the occasional kona (west coast) storms of Hawaii are wintertime incursions of North Pacific air that occur when the jet stream curves far to the south. Normal weather consists of trade winds that cause rain only on the north-eastern slopes of each island.

D.

Natural Resources

The United States is exceedingly rich in natural resources, and the climate is favourable for a diversity of crops and forest products. There are significant deposits of many important minerals, including more than a fifth of the world’s coal, and the Corn Belt, a region stretching from western Ohio to central Nebraska, is the largest expanse of prime farmland in the world. Despite this, the United States imports more than 80 per cent of its bauxite, magnesium, platinum, tin, and tungsten; and although it produced about 57 per cent of its petroleum needs in the mid-1990s, new domestic discoveries tend to be small and costly to recover.

Agricultural exports have helped compensate for mineral imports, but the price is high: more than a third of the nation’s topsoil has been lost to erosion. There is also concern about the rapid conversion of prime cropland to urban and other non-farm uses.

Nevertheless, the environmental picture is not all bleak. Because of government regulations, water pollution diminished considerably during the 1970s; forests are growing more rapidly than they are being cut in most regions; and substantial areas have been set aside as wilderness preserves and national parks. In the future the questions of acid rain, toxic-waste disposal, water supply, and climate change will continue to be major national environmental issues.

E.

Soils

The United States can be divided into five major soil regions: (1) the deep, black mollisols of the mid-continent (the country’s most fertile), in an area stretching from Illinois west to Nebraska and the Dakotas; (2) the leached red ultisols of the south-eastern and western coast mountains, which are considerably less fertile; (3) the coarse and acid spodosols in the north-eastern United States and in the high western mountains; (4) the moderately fertile grey or brown alfisols found around the Great Lakes, on the southern Great Plains, and in the Central Valley of California; and (5) the dry, salty aridsols of the desert Southwest. Superimposed on these broad patterns are local geological exceptions, such as the black clay vertisols of Texas and the organic histosols, which are peat and muck soils found in swampy places such as the Florida Everglades or the Minnesota bogs.

F.

Vegetation

At the time European settlement began, about 50 per cent of the United States was covered by forests; today, the figure is about 30 per cent. Similarly, grasslands and other natural vegetative cover decreased in extent as the continent was settled.

Northern Alaska, the northernmost part of the United States, is characterized by a windswept tundra, a region of lichens, mosses, hardy low shrubs, and flowering plants. Inland and to the south, the growing season lengthens and certain trees can survive. A few species of conifers, notably spruces and firs, dominate a vast evergreen forest, interspersed with lichen-covered rocky areas, grassy swamps, and aspen-choked fire scars. This forest, known as the taiga, stretches south-east from interior Alaska and reaches into northern New England and the Great Lakes region. South of the taiga the growing season is longer and more tree species can survive; the forest contains both conifer and deciduous trees, including pines, maples, elms, birches, oaks, hickory, beech, and sycamore. This type of mixed forest covered the region around the Great Lakes and most of the New England and Middle Atlantic states when European settlers arrived.

Still further south, the forest reaches its maximum diversity. The Great Smoky Mountains National Park in western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee contains more tree species than Europe. The Gulf of Mexico coast is even warmer than this mountainous area, but its plains and low hills do not support as complex a forest. Moreover, the sandy soils and hot summers encourage fires, which suppress oaks and other hardwoods and favour the fast-growing pines that now represent the major forest resource of the nation. Other species found here include southern magnolia, pecan, red gum, and black gum (tupelo). A number of subtropical and tropical trees flourish in southern Florida. Along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, salt marshes and groves of cypress and mangrove help to buttress the shore against the eroding forces of wind and water.

The diversity of the forest also decreases west of the Appalachian Mountains. First, the mountaintop spruces, firs, and mountain ashes disappear. Then rainfall decreases in quantity and reliability, and fires become more frequent. The lush hardwood forests of the Mississippi Valley slowly dwindle in size and complexity; oak-hickory forests give way to isolated stands of oak and then to tall grass prairies, which, before cultivation, occupied the present Corn Belt from Indiana to the eastern Great Plains.

Further west, the climate becomes still drier, and the tall bluestem grasses yield to shorter grama and wheatgrass ranges. The grasses of the northern Great Plains grow only during the short summer and flower in late summer or early autumn. By contrast, the grasses of the southern Great Plains grow rapidly in spring, flower early, and then lie dormant during the hot, dry summers. Both kinds of grass become less productive as rainfall continues to diminish towards the west. Shrubby sagebrush (in the north) and mesquite and juniper (in Texas) are typical invaders on poorer grasslands that have been overgrazed or protected from fires.

A gradual transition to true desert vegetation is interrupted by the Rocky Mountains and other ranges, the elevation of which both increases rainfall and decreases temperature and evaporation. Trees become prominent on the lower and middle slopes. Hardy pines and junipers dominate at lower elevations, giving way to aspens, firs, and spruces at higher elevations. Still higher, the spruces and firs become stunted and widely spaced. Above this zone is treeless tundra. Shrubby low-lying deserts alternate with forested (and occasionally tundra- or ice-capped) mountains across all of the Mountain states and into the Pacific states. This region is agriculturally productive only when massive investments are made in irrigation. Death Valley, which lies below sea level, is but one of the many nearly barren lowlands. Vegetation in these regions includes species such as sagebrush, juniper, piñon, rabbitbrush, mesquite, creosote bush, and yucca; the cactus “forests” that form a popular image of deserts are actually found on the slopes of mountain ranges in the Mojave Desert of southern Arizona and California. On the higher but still relatively dry Colorado Plateau are ponderosa and piñon pines.

The hot, dry summers and mild, moist winters of coastal southern California produce a distinctive shrub vegetation known as chaparral. Further north on the western slopes of the coastal hills and Sierra Nevada, where there is enough rain to permit rapid growth but a long enough dry season to discourage competition from numerous species, forests of giant sequoia and redwood grow. Still further north, in western Oregon and Washington, where the dry periods extend only to a few weeks in midsummer, a true rainforest appears, consisting primarily of a great variety of conifers. Douglas firs, true firs, hemlocks, cedars, spruces, and pines each occupy their own preferred elevation zone, and together constitute the second-richest forest resource for the nation. The coastal forests of Alaska have fewer species than the rich rainforest to the south but a faster growth than the taiga to the north.

The natural vegetation of Hawaii is conditioned by its isolation and by the interplay of its mountains and the moist trade winds. Forests dominated by guava trees on the windward (north-east) coasts of the islands graduate to a rich but swampy rainforest at moderate elevations, where the annual rainfall may exceed 10,000 mm (400 in). The high mountains support shrub forest, and patches of tundra are found on the summits of the highest peaks, Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea. The dry leeward (south-west) coasts are virtual deserts, with spiny koa and kiawe shrubs growing on the slightly wetter slopes.

G.

Animals

In the Arctic areas and regions of mountain tundra are found burrowing marmots, ground squirrels, cold-water fish such as grayling and trout, and an occasional bear. Alaskan coastal waters are the habitat of a number of large mammals, including walrus and fur seals. Caribou and wapiti spend summers on the tundra but migrate into the conifer forest for winter. The hardwood forests of the eastern United States contain elk, black bears, deer, foxes, raccoons, skunks, squirrels, and a diversity of small birds. Along the Gulf of Mexico coast live larger and more colourful birds such as pelicans, flamingos, and green kingfishers; as well as alligators and warm-water fish such as catfish. Several varieties of venomous snakes are also found there.

Bison (buffalo) are popularly associated with the grasslands, although in fact they once ranged over most of eastern North America before becoming nearly extinct through hunting; they now exist only in captivity or in protected areas. Gophers, rabbits, prairie dogs, ferrets, and other burrowing species are the creatures best suited to the grasslands, which were once swept by fires. The mountainous western states, especially Alaska, are the last refuges in the United States of most big-game animals: elk, pronghorn, moose, deer, bighorn sheep, mountain goats, timber wolves, and, in a few remote areas, brown bears. The Kodiak bear, the largest carnivore in North America, is found in Alaska. The deserts have fewer small animals, and almost no large ones; kangaroo rats, lizards, and wide-ranging birds are typical animals in such harsh regions. The animals of Hawaii include many endemic species, but many of these have been driven nearly to extinction by human alteration of the habitat. Hawaii’s only indigenous mammal is the bat.

III.

Population

According to the 1990 census, the resident population of the United States was 248,709,873. The population grew by 22,164,068 people—or 9.8 per cent—during the decade from 1980 to 1990. This increase was not evenly distributed: about 12 million, or 54.3 per cent of the growth, occurred in the states of California, Texas, and Florida. According to the 2000 census, the United States was a nation of 282,338,631 people. The population of the United States was later estimated 307,212,120 (2009 estimate). It was estimated to have reached 300 million on October 17, 2006.

Another trend evident during the latter part of the 20th century was that although urban areas grew at a somewhat higher rate than rural areas, growth rates were low in some of the largest metropolitan areas and in a number of major cities, such as Chicago, Philadelphia, and Detroit, the population decreased substantially.

A.

Ethnic Composition

According to the 2000 census, 70.9 per cent of Americans were non-Hispanic whites, and the populations of blacks, Hispanics, Native Americans, and Asian and Pacific Islanders were increasing. The Native American and African-American populations grew, reversing 19th-century declines in their share of the total population. Migration from the Caribbean and smaller flows from various parts of Africa created the first substantial influx of free people of African descent in the nation’s history. The Census Bureau released updated estimates for the diversity of Americans in 2006, based on information compiled by regularly sampling thousands of households in 2005. Non-Hispanic whites comprised about 67 per cent of the total population. Minorities made up 33 per cent of Americans, with Hispanics the largest (and fastest-growing) group at 14.4 per cent and blacks second at 12.8 per cent. The number of immigrants increased over the five-year period since the last census to about 12.4 per cent of the population. Over half the immigrants came from Latin America, followed in number by groups from Asia.

B.

Population Characteristics

The US population had more women than men in 2008—154.5 million women compared to 149.3 million men. The country’s population is growing because more people are being born than are dying and because immigrants, most in their late teens or early 20s, continue to enter the United States. This combination means that the American population is younger than in many other developed nations. In 2001, 21 per cent of the population in the United States was under the age of 15. This compares with 18 per cent in Europe. In 2001, 13 per cent of the US population was over age 65, compared with 15 per cent in Europe.

Age differences also vary by ethnicity and race. The median age in 2000 for the non-Hispanic white population was 37.7, for non-Hispanic blacks 30.2, for Native Americans 28.0, for Asian and Pacific Islanders 27.5, and for Hispanics 24.6. These differences stem in large measure from differences in birthrates. Within the United States, the age structure of the population also varies from one region to another. The states that attract newcomers, such as Alaska, Colorado, Georgia, and Texas, tend to have the highest proportion of young people. Conversely, many north-eastern cities have large elderly populations, while suburbs in the Southeast and Southwest have large populations of younger people. Florida is an exception to these trends, because it attracts many retirees as well as younger Cubans, Haitians, and other immigrants.

The average population density for the United States as a whole was about 34 persons per sq km (87 per sq mi) in 2009. This represents a substantial increase over the average densities of 1.7 people per sq km (4.5 per sq mi) in 1790; 3 per sq km (7.9 per sq mi) in 1850; 9.9 per sq km (25.6 per sq mi) in 1900; and 19.5 per sq km (50.6 per sq mi) in 1950.

In 2000 almost two-thirds of the US population lived in states along the three major coasts—38 per cent along the Atlantic Ocean, 16 per cent along the Pacific Ocean, and 12 per cent along the Gulf of Mexico. The smallest numbers lived in the area between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains, particularly in the central and northern Great Plains. While the Rocky Mountain and plains states account for about half of the landmass of the United States, only 34 per cent of the population resides in these areas. At the beginning of the 21st century the fastest-growing areas were in the Southeast, especially Georgia, the Carolinas, and Florida; in the Rocky Mountains, including Nevada, Arizona, Colorado, Utah, and Idaho; and along the West Coast.

In 2005 urban dwellers made up about 81 per cent of the population, or some 242 million people. Rural residents made up 19 per cent of the population, or about 58 million people.

C.

Religion

The religious affiliations of the inhabitants of the British colonies that formed the nucleus of the United States varied from region to region. Throughout the New England area the dominant faith was Congregationalism, established by Separatist and Puritan groups who were dissidents from the Church of England; settlers of the South Atlantic region adhered officially to the Church of England; and the Middle Atlantic region was a haven for a variety of sects and creeds.

The New England Separatists and Puritans came to North America in order to worship in their own way, without interference from the Church of England. The first group to reach New England were the Separatists called the Pilgrims, who in 1620 founded the Plymouth Colony. The colony, with its Church, was absorbed eventually by the more powerful Massachusetts Bay Colony, which was founded in 1629 by Puritans.

Religion was the focal point of social and political life in New England. Until 1691 the Massachusetts Bay Colony was a theocracy, in which church attendance was compulsory, and Church membership a qualification for voting and holding office. Non-Congregationalist denominations, notably the Baptists and Quakers (see Friends, Society of), were regarded with hostility and often persecuted by the colonial government. Noteworthy among those who rebelled against this alliance between Church and State was Roger Williams, who in 1636 left the Massachusetts Bay Colony and founded the community of Providence, located in what is now the state of Rhode Island. Williams, whose colony became a haven for people of many creeds, established the first Baptist Church in America in 1639.

In the South Atlantic coastal region, which comprised Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia, the Church of England was the established Church. Clergy of non-Anglican denominations—for example, Baptist and Presbyterian—were frequently prohibited from preaching and from performing marriage ceremonies.

The Middle Atlantic colonies provided a more congenial climate for freedom of religion. The first European settlers of the Middle Atlantic region were the Dutch, who founded the colony of New Netherland in 1625, bringing to it the beliefs and practices of the Reformed Church. The first organized group of Jewish settlers in North America arrived in New Amsterdam, the capital of New Netherland, in 1654. After New Netherland was seized by the British in 1664, the Church of England became influential there, and by the beginning of the 18th century it was the established Church of the four most populous counties of New York. Delaware and New Jersey, which had been parts of New Netherland, maintained a complete separation of Church and State. The territory now comprising Maryland was granted in 1632 to the Calvert family, who were English Roman Catholics. Members of the family colonized the region in 1634 with the aim of providing a haven for their persecuted co-religionists; eventually, Anglicanism was made the established religion of Maryland. Pennsylvania, under the terms of a charter granted in 1681, was founded by the English Quaker William Penn as a haven for adherents of all religions. Lutheranism was established during the colonial period in Pennsylvania, New York, and Delaware. Presbyterianism was introduced on a large scale into the Middle Atlantic colonies by Scottish and Scots-Irish settlers during the late 17th and early 18th centuries. Methodists settled in the Middle Atlantic region, notably in New York, during the latter half of the 18th century.

A liberalizing influence on the religion of colonial America was the revivalist movement known as the Great Awakening, which developed in the middle of the 18th century. Inspired by the evangelical preaching of several ministers, most prominently the Congregationalist clergyman Jonathan Edwards in New England, the Presbyterian minister Gilbert Tennent in the Middle Atlantic region, and the visiting British evangelist George Whitefield, the movement eventually spread to all the colonies. The general effect of the Great Awakening was to increase the strength of the Methodist and Baptist denominations, and to pave the way for the separation of Church and State when the United States became an independent nation.

The ratification in 1788 of the Constitution of the United States marked the beginning of a new era in American religion. The First Amendment states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” After the adoption of the Constitution those states with established religions gradually eliminated their Church-State ties; the last state to do so was Massachusetts, which disestablished its Church in 1833.

During the first half of the 19th century the population of the United States was overwhelmingly Protestant; it included relatively few Catholics and Jews, and almost no adherents of such non-Christian religions as Islam and Buddhism. The number of Roman Catholics greatly increased from about 1820 by the arrival of large numbers of Irish immigrants; as a result of potato famines more than 1 million people emigrated from Ireland to the United States between 1845 and 1855. Following the unsuccessful popular uprisings of 1848 in Germany, large numbers of German Lutherans migrated to the United States. In the latter half of the century most of the immigration was from countries in southern and eastern Europe—notably, Italy, Austria, Hungary, and Russia—from which came large numbers of Catholics and Jews.

Among the religious developments of the 19th century was the founding of several indigenous American denominations, among which were The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, known popularly as the Mormons; the Church of Christ, Scientist; the Seventh-Day Adventist Church; and Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Today, the largest single American religious group consists of Roman Catholics. Among the major Protestant groups are Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, Pentecostalists (see Pentecostal Churches), and Episcopalians (see Episcopal Church). The Orthodox Church has a large following. The largest non-Christian religion in the United States is Judaism, and Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism also have significant numbers of adherents.

See also Fundamentalism; Missionary Movements.

D.

Language

English is the main language of the United States and is spoken by the great majority of US residents. However, nearly 32 million residents aged five or older speak a language other than English at home. Of this total, approximately 54 per cent speaks Spanish, making it the second most widely spoken language in the United States. Other languages spoken include Chinese, Tagalog, Polish, Korean, Vietnamese, Portuguese, Japanese, Greek, Arabic, Hindi and Urdu, Russian, Yiddish, Thai and Lao, Persian, French Creole, Armenian, and Navaho.

E.

Education

In most of the United States illiteracy has been virtually eliminated, though census estimates suggest that 2.4 per cent of the population over the age of 25 is functionally illiterate—that is, they are unable to read and write well enough to meet the demands of everyday life. Nevertheless, among Americans aged 25 and older in 1995, about 82 per cent had completed high school, compared with about 25 per cent in 1940. In 1995 nearly 23 per cent of the population had completed four or more years of college education.

Education is offered at all levels from pre-kindergarten to graduate school by both public and private institutions. Elementary and secondary education involves 12 years of schooling, the successful completion of which leads to a high school diploma. Although public education can be defined in various ways, one key concept is the accountability of school officials to the voters. In theory, responsibility for operating the public education system in the United States is local. In fact, much of the local control has been superseded, and state legislation controls financing methods, academic standards, and policy and curriculum guidelines. Because public education is separately developed within each state, variations exist from one state to another.

Public elementary and secondary education is supported financially by three levels of government—local, state, and federal. Local school districts often levy property taxes, which are the major source of financing for the public school systems. One of the problems that arises because of the heavy reliance on local property tax is a disparity in the quality of education received by students. Rich communities can afford to pay more per student than poorer communities; consequently, the disparity in wealth affects the quality of education received. Some states have taken measures to level this imbalance by distributing property tax collections to school districts based on the number of students enrolled.

A unique feature of higher education in the United States is the device known as accreditation, which includes voluntary self-evaluation by a school and appraisal by a group of its peers. This process operates through nationally recognized accrediting agencies and associations and certain state bodies. These agencies or associations have established educational criteria to evaluate institutions in terms of their own objectives and to ascertain whether programmes of educational quality are being maintained.

Before the American Civil War, public school segregation was common both in the South and in the North. In every southern state except Kentucky and Maryland, laws existed that forbade the teaching of reading and writing to slaves. In 1867, after the end of the Civil War, schools for blacks began to be established in various parts of the South. For nearly a century, until 1954, most education facilities in the southern states remained racially segregated by state laws. Not only were schools segregated but, in schools for blacks, the physical conditions and facilities were poor, transport to such schools was meagre or non-existent, and expenditures per black pupil fell below those per white pupil.

In the northern states during this same period, most black children also attended separate schools. Sometimes this was the result of state laws; more often it was the result of policy decisions, either officially acknowledged or clandestine.

In 1954 the Supreme Court of the United States declared racial segregation in schools illegal, in its landmark Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka decision. Since then progress has been made towards desegregation; however, widespread de facto segregation still exists today in both suburban and urban areas.

In 1995 some 60,808 public elementary and 20,282 public secondary schools were in operation in the United States, in addition to 5,131 special-purpose or combined schools. Enrolment in public schools in 1995 totalled about 32.1 million elementary pupils and about 12.6 million secondary students. In addition, private elementary and secondary schools together enrolled about 5.8 million students in 1995. The largest system of private education in the United States is that of the Roman Catholic Church, with some 2.5 million students in 1996.

The first American colleges were small and attended by an aristocratic student body. The earliest institutions were established in the United States between the mid-17th and mid-18th centuries: Harvard University (1636), the College of William and Mary (1693), Yale University (1701), the University of Pennsylvania (1740), Princeton University (1746), Columbia University (1754), Brown University (1764), Rutgers University (1771), and Dartmouth College (1769). These private institutions initially prepared students for careers in theology, law, medicine, and teaching only.

An important development occurred in 1862 when President Abraham Lincoln signed the Morrill Act, which donated public lands to the several states and territories to provide colleges with the resources necessary to teach such branches of learning as agriculture and the mechanical arts. The Morrill Act was designed to promote the liberal and practical education of the new industrial population. In addition to creating colleges, the Morrill Act extended education to groups that would benefit from higher education regardless of financial background and greatly accelerated the admission of women to institutions of higher learning.

Higher education, like elementary and secondary education, has historically been racially segregated in the United States. Before 1954 most blacks gained access to higher education only by attending colleges and universities established for blacks, nearly all of which were located in the southern states. With the gradual dissolution of most traditional racial barriers, more and more blacks enrolled in institutions where whites made up the majority of the student body. By 1994 only about 19 per cent of all black students were enrolled in the 103 historically black colleges and universities.

Although tuition and fees generally are substantially lower at public institutions than at private ones, the other student costs are about the same. The average cost for tuition, fees, and room and board for the 1995 academic year at private four-year colleges was about $20,010. At public four-year colleges the average combined cost was about $7,082.

F.

Performing Arts

The first American symphony orchestra, the Philharmonic Society of New York, was established in 1842; the first classes in a music conservatory were held at Oberlin College in 1865. In the 20th century major American composers such as Charles Ives, Virgil Thomson, Aaron Copland, George Gershwin, Leonard Bernstein, and John Cage won international fame. Gospel music, the blues, and jazz were African-American creations. Jazz gained worldwide attention through performers such as Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Duke Ellington, and Miles Davis. See also American Music; Popular Music; Rock Music.

Major symphony orchestras in the 1990s included the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, and St Louis Symphony Orchestra. In addition to these large orchestral ensembles, a growing number of chamber groups such as the Juilliard String Quartet, Guarneri String Quartet, and Kronos Quartet were flourishing in universities and communities throughout the country. Leading opera companies included the Metropolitan Opera of New York, the New York City Opera, the Lyric Opera of Chicago, the San Francisco Opera, the Washington Opera, the Santa Fe Opera Company, and the Houston Grand Opera.

The New York City Ballet and the American Ballet Theatre, both founded in the 1930s, exert an important creative influence on contemporary American dance. Other major groups include the travelling companies of Merce Cunningham and Paul Taylor, the San Francisco Ballet, the Joffrey Ballet in New York, Dance Theatre of Harlem, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, the Tulsa Ballet, the Boston Ballet, and the Pennsylvania Ballet in Philadelphia. Well-known choreographers include George Balanchine, Jerome Robbins, Merce Cunningham, Twyla Tharp, Katherine Dunham, Alvin Ailey, and Mark Morris. See also Dance; Popular and Social Dance.

Drama in the United States in the 1980s continued to experience an audience boom that began in the mid-1970s. Broadway shows in New York relied heavily on revivals, long-running shows, and stage spectaculars in addition to new plays. Prominent experimental groups included The New York Shakespeare Festival; La Mama, Etc., Experimental Theatre Club; and the Guthrie Theatre Company in Minneapolis. Arthur Miller, Edward Albee, Neil Simon, John Guare, August Wilson, Lorraine Hansberry, Sam Shepard, and David Mamet are among the best-known contemporary playwrights. Musical comedies have flourished under the influence of a number of creative teams, including Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, and Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe.

G.

Literature, Film, Architecture, and Art

The first major American novelist was James Fenimore Cooper, who wrote The Last of the Mohicans (1826), The Prairie (1827), and other works about the frontier. The Romantic period of American literature, from about 1830 to 1865, introduced important novelists such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, author of The Scarlet Letter (1850) and The House of the Seven Gables (1851), in which he explored New England’s Puritan heritage; and Herman Melville, author of Moby-Dick (1851), a complex and poetic novel of the sea. Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1850-1852) by Harriet Beecher Stowe became a best-seller and a vehicle for anti-slavery sentiments.

Realism, prominent in American literature from the close of the Civil War until about the beginning of the 20th century, was the product of a new mass audience and the experience of industrialization. Major figures of this time included writers as diverse as the humorist Mark Twain, with his classic tales of boyhood, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884); and Henry James, a stylistic innovator whose works, such as The Portrait of a Lady (1881) and The Ambassadors (1903), were landmarks in the development of the American novel.

In Sister Carrie (1900) and An American Tragedy (1925), Theodore Dreiser described how spiritually empty industrial America had become. This marked the new age of Naturalism, which ran until about 1930. Important novelists of this period included Edith Wharton (Ethan Frome, 1911; The Age of Innocence, 1920); Willa Cather (O Pioneers!, 1913; My Ántonia, 1918); F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Great Gatsby, 1925); Sinclair Lewis (Main Street, 1920; Babbitt, 1922), the first American to win a Nobel Prize for Literature, in 1930; Ernest Hemingway, also a Nobel Prize winner (1954), noted for his terse, carefully crafted prose in works such as The Sun Also Rises (1926) and A Farewell to Arms (1929); Zora Neale Hurston, a novelist and folklorist (Their Eyes Were Watching God, 1937); Richard Wright (Native Son, 1940; Black Boy, 1945); and William Faulkner, whose innovative techniques and thoughtful characterizations in such novels as The Sound and the Fury (1929), Light in August (1932), and Absalom, Absalom! (1936) won him the Nobel Prize in 1949. Modernist Gertrude Stein (The Making of Americans, 1925; Everybody’s Autobiography, 1936) experimented radically with language, following the example of Impressionist painters.

Hemingway and Faulkner remained leading writers into the 1950s; they were joined by John Steinbeck (The Grapes of Wrath, 1939; Nobel Prize winner, 1962); Robert Penn Warren (All the King’s Men, 1946); James Jones (From Here to Eternity, 1951); James Baldwin (Go Tell It on the Mountain, 1953); Norman Mailer (The Naked and the Dead, 1948; The Executioner’s Song, 1979); and Vladimir Nabokov (Lolita, 1955; Pale Fire, 1962). Novelists of contemporary note include Flannery O’Connor (Wise Blood, 1952); Carson McCullers (The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, 1940); Eudora Welty (The Ponder Heart, 1954; The Optimist’s Daughter, 1969), well known also for her short stories; Saul Bellow (The Adventures of Augie March, 1953; Humboldt’s Gift, 1975; Nobel Prize, 1976); Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (Slaughterhouse-Five, 1969); John Updike (Rabbit, Run, 1960); Louise Erdrich (Love Medicine, 1984); Toni Morrison (Beloved, 1987; Nobel Prize, 1993); and Alice Walker (The Color Purple, 1982).

Distinctive American poetry first appeared in the 19th century, with the musical and highly rhythmic works of Edgar Allan Poe, the experimental democratic chant of Walt Whitman (Leaves of Grass, 1855), and the tightly wrought lyrical verse of Emily Dickinson. Modern American poetry began in the early 20th century with the lyrics and dramatic poems of the New England poet Robert Frost; the Cantos of Ezra Pound, the founder of Imagism; and the prairie realism of Carl Sandburg. It has continued to be enriched by such gifted poets as Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Brooks, Ntozake Shange, Anne Sexton, Denise Levertov, Robert Lowell, Allen Ginsberg, Howard Nemerov, Richard Wilbur, and Adrienne Rich. For more information on American prose and poetry, see American Literature.

Hollywood, an unincorporated district within Los Angeles, has been one of the most influential and productive international film capitals. Contemporary trends in film in the United States include escapist films bent on capturing mass audiences and emphasizing imaginative production techniques rather than content; and an opposing move towards the use of film as a medium of social criticism or artistic expression for more sophisticated audiences. Recent film stars, such as Jack Nicholson, Dustin Hoffman, Robert De Niro, Meryl Streep, Denzel Washington, and Jodie Foster, have tended to be less glamorous (or less glamorously presented) and to portray characters more humanly flawed than their classic Hollywood predecessors, such as Cary Grant, Gary Cooper, and Marilyn Monroe. Other recent trends are the upsurge in the production of American documentary films; films written, produced, and directed by women and by black and coloured film-makers; and independent films. See also American Cinema.

During the colonial period and the early years of the United States, American architecture in the main followed the trends of British architecture. The first true American contribution to international architecture was the skyscraper, pioneered in Chicago in the late 19th century by architects such as Louis Henri Sullivan (see Chicago School). Subsequent developments incorporated European Modernism to produce the box-shaped, glass-curtain-wall skyscraper common in American cities, and first exemplified by the Secretariat Building of the United Nations in New York. In the 1980s new forms emerged that borrowed stylistic elements from various periods in the history of architecture, incorporating them into buildings that also made use of the newest technology. Examples of this so-called Postmodern architecture included the AT&T Building in New York, a skyscraper designed by Philip C. Johnson and topped with a pediment; and the Public Office Building by Michael Graves in Portland, Oregon, which incorporated Romantic and Classical elements. See also American Art and Architecture; Modern Art and Architecture.

Portraits were the first paintings to be produced in significant numbers in America, including those of famous historical figures painted by John Singleton Copley in the 18th century. Landscape paintings, such as those of Asher B. Durand of the Hudson River School and the dramatic seascapes of Winslow Homer, were prominent during the 19th century. Thomas Eakins achieved a striking realism in his portraits towards the end of that century.

European Modernism was introduced into the United States at the Armory Show in 1913. This exposition of international art, which opened in New York and travelled to Chicago and Boston, was seen by more than 250,000 Americans. Armory Show ideas influenced many American artists, including John Marin and Georgia O’Keeffe, and became embodied in the collections and philosophy of the Museum of Modern Art, which was founded in New York in 1929. Following World War II, New York supplanted Paris as the leading centre of the art world; innovative art exhibited and often produced there has included works by the Abstract Expressionist painters Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and Robert Motherwell and the sculptor David Smith; and by the Pop Art painters Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein and sculptor George Segal. See also Painting; Sculpture.

H.

Museums and Libraries

Major American art museums include the Museum of Modern Art in New York, which has come to represent the “establishment” in modern art; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., which also houses modern art; and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Museums that house extensive collections of art objects, paintings, and sculpture from all parts of the world from prehistory to the present include the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the M. H. de Young Fine Arts Museum in San Francisco, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston.

The United States has more than 7,000 museums, including many historical, science, and art museums. Among the more prominent museums of science are the American Museum of Natural History in New York; the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.; the Field Museum and the Museum of Science and Industry, both in Chicago; the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia; the Maryland Academy of Sciences in Baltimore; and the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.

In 1993 the United States had more than 32,414 libraries. Approximately 47 per cent of these were public libraries and their branches, and 4,619 were college and university libraries. The foremost is the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. Other libraries with vast collections include the public libraries of New York, Los Angeles, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Portland, Oregon; and the libraries at academic institutions such as Harvard University, Stanford University, Yale University, the University of Michigan, Columbia University, the University of California at Berkeley, and the University of Texas at Austin. Many of these libraries contain special and rare book collections, such as those of the New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Other noted collections include those of the Huntington Library in San Marino, California; the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York; and the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C.

IV.

Economy

The United States has been the world’s leading industrial nation since early in the 20th century. Until the second half of the 19th century, agriculture remained the dominant economic activity. After the American Civil War, great advances were made in the production of basic industrial goods. By World War I, exports of manufactured goods had become more important than the export of raw materials; as manufacturing grew, agriculture became increasingly mechanized and efficient, employing fewer and fewer workers. The most important development in the economy since World War II has been the tremendous growth of service industries, government, professional services, trade, and financial activities. Today, service industries make up the most important sector of the economy, employing almost 75 per cent of the workforce. Industry employs approximately 23 per cent of the labour force; and agriculture, forestry, and fishing, about 3 per cent.

From the 1930s onward the government has played an increasingly active role in the economy. Even though the economy in the 1990s was based on free enterprise, the government regulated business in various ways, including legislating to reduce environmental pollution, and to protect consumers from unsafe products and workers from unsafe working conditions. More than 15 per cent of the US labour force works for the government. The federal budget for 2007 included estimated expenditures of US$2,977 billion. Revenue was estimated at US$2,692 billion. The United States has consistently recorded annual budget deficits of US$100 billion or more since the early 1980s, although the amount of the deficit has been declining since the early 1990s.

In the mid-1990s the United States led all nations of the world in the yearly value of its economic production. The nation’s annual GDP was about US$13,751 billion in 2007. With a per-capita GDP of about US$45,591.70 (2007), the people of the United States have one of the world’s highest standards of living.

The US economy consists of three main sectors: the primary, secondary, and tertiary. Primary economic activities are those directly involving the natural environment, including agriculture, forestry, fishing, and mining. The primary sector usually contributes about 3 per cent of annual GDP. Secondary economic activities involve processing or combining materials into new products, and include manufacturing and construction. This sector accounts for approximately 21 per cent of GDP. Tertiary economic activities involve the output of services rather than goods, for example wholesale and retail trade, banking, government, and transport. The tertiary is the most important sector by far and accounts for almost 76 per cent of annual GDP.

A.

Agriculture

Farming accounts for less than 2 per cent of annual GDP and employs less than 3 per cent of US workers, yet the nation leads the world in many aspects of agricultural production. Farmers not only produce enough to meet domestic needs, they also enable the United States to export more farm products per year than any other nation in the world. The total annual value of farm output increased from about US$55 billion in 1970 to about US$202 billion in 1994. Excluding inflation, the increase in the farm output was 2 per cent annually.

The small subsistence farm run by a farmer primarily to meet personal needs has virtually disappeared from the American scene; most agricultural products are grown on large commercial farms for shipment to urban and industrial markets. The number of farms in the United States decreased from more than 5.6 million in 1950 to about 2.1 million in 1995. At the same time, average farm size increased from 86 hectares (213 acres) to 190 hectares (469 acres). In the mid-1990s livestock and livestock products accounted for 49 per cent of the value of all farm marketings, and crops for the remainder. California led all states in the yearly value of farm receipts; it was followed by Texas, Iowa, Nebraska, Illinois, Kansas, and Minnesota.

Beef cattle rank as the most valuable product of the nation’s farms, accounting for almost one fifth of total annual farm receipts. Many are raised on large ranches in south-western states. Dairy products represent about 11 per cent of the yearly value of farm marketings and are the second most valuable item coming from American farms. Other major livestock and livestock products include pigs, chickens, eggs, turkeys, and sheep and lambs.

Leading agricultural crops are maize, vegetables, soya beans, fruits and nuts, wheat, cotton, and tobacco. Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Minnesota, and Indiana together produce about two thirds of the annual maize crop, while Kansas usually leads all states in yearly wheat production. For more than a century and a half, cotton was the predominant cash crop in the South. Today, however, it is no longer important in some of the traditional cotton-growing areas east of the Mississippi River and is now concentrated in relatively flat areas amenable to large-scale mechanization, such as the lower Mississippi Valley, the plains of Texas, and the valleys of California and Arizona. Tobacco remains an important cash crop. The leading tobacco-producing states are North Carolina and Kentucky.

Other leading crops include peanuts, peaches, tomatoes, and apples. More than 75 per cent of the oranges and about 50 per cent of the tomatoes are produced in Florida; some 84 per cent of the grapes are raised in California; and about 50 per cent of the commercial apples come from orchards in Washington state. Additional major vegetable crops are sugar cane, rice, sorghum grain, dry beans, broccoli, cabbage, carrots, celery, cucumbers, lettuce, onions, green peppers, and mushrooms; valuable fruit crops include cantaloupe melons and watermelons, cherries, pears, plums and prunes, and strawberries. Major nut crops include almonds, pecans, and walnuts.

B.

Forestry

Forests cover around 31 per cent of the United States, or about 303 million hectares (749 million acres). About 73 per cent of the commercial forestland is privately owned by farmers, timber companies, paper mills, and other wood-using industries. The remaining 27 per cent is owned by federal, state, and local governments. Softwoods make up about three quarters of the production, and hardwoods about one quarter. Nearly half the timber output is used for timber, and about one third is converted to pulpwood, which is subsequently used to manufacture paper. Most of the remaining output goes into plywood and veneer. Douglas fir and southern yellow pine are the primary softwoods used for timber, and oak is the most important hardwood. About half of the nation’s timber and all the fir plywood come from the forests of the Pacific states, an area dominated by softwoods.

C.

Fishing

In 2007 the United States had an annual fish catch of about 5.33 million tonnes, with a value of approximately US$3 billion. The United States is usually sixth among the nations of the world in weight of total catch, ranking behind China, Japan, Peru, Chile, and Russia. In addition to commercial fishing, sport fishing is popular in many states.

Marine species dominate commercial landings, with freshwater fish representing only a small portion of the total catch. Shellfish account for only about 15 per cent of the weight of the total catch but 45 per cent of the value. The most valuable species caught are salmon (16 per cent of the total catch value), shrimp (13 per cent), and crabs (13 per cent). Other important species include scallops, lobster, flounder, Pacific cod, clams, and oysters.

Alaska leads all states in both the volume and value of the catch; important species caught at Alaska ports include pollack and salmon. Other leading fishing states, ranked by value, are Louisiana, Massachusetts, Texas, Maine, California, Florida, Washington, and Virginia. Measured by value of the catch, Dutch Harbor, Alaska, is the nation’s leading fishing port, followed by New Bedford, Massachusetts. Important species caught in the New England region include lobsters, scallops, clams, oysters, and cod; in the Chesapeake Bay, crabs; and in the Gulf of Mexico, menhaden and shrimp.

Much of the annual tonnage of commercial freshwater fish comes from farms. The most important species raised on farms are catfish, trout, salmon, oysters, and crayfish. The total annual output of private catfish and trout farms in the mid-1990s was 232,800 tonnes, valued at more than US$380 million.

D.

Mining

The United States ranks among world leaders in value of annual mineral production. Mining contributes about 1.4 per cent of annual GDP and employs about 0.5 per cent of the workers. Minerals are produced in all states, but Texas, Louisiana, Alaska, California, Wyoming, and Oklahoma typically account for half of the value of the nation’s annual mineral production. Texas alone accounts for more than one fifth of the value of total US output.

The three chief mineral products are fuels. In order of value, they are natural gas, petroleum, and coal. In the early 1990s the United States produced 25 per cent of the world’s natural gas, 19 per cent of its coal, and 11 per cent of its crude oil. Sixty per cent of the nation’s most valuable mineral, natural gas, is produced in Texas and Louisiana. Petroleum accounted for nearly one third of US fuel production and about one quarter of the annual value of all minerals produced in the United States. Texas, Alaska, and California together yield more than half of the nation’s petroleum.

Coal, the third leading mineral, accounts for about one sixth of the yearly value of all US mining output, much of it produced in mines in the Appalachians. Wyoming, Kentucky, and West Virginia, which together produce more than half of the annual US output, are the leading coal mining states. Nuclear energy, which is used to supplement petroleum, natural gas, and coal, is produced from uranium that is mined chiefly in Texas, New Mexico, and Wyoming.

Important metals mined in the United States include gold, copper, iron ore, zinc, magnesium, lead, and silver. Leading industrial minerals are materials used in construction—clays, lime, salt, phosphate rock, boron, and potassium salts. In the mid-1990s the United States produced about 51 per cent of the world’s mica, 48 per cent of its magnesium, 45 per cent of its molybdenum, 33 per cent of its phosphate rock, 23 per cent of its elemental sulphur, and 13 per cent of its lead. Most of the iron ore comes from the Superior Upland region, especially the Mesabi Range of north-eastern Minnesota. About 60 per cent of the nation’s copper output is mined in Arizona; phosphate rock is mined in large quantities in Florida, North Carolina, Idaho, and Tennessee; Arizona, Colorado, and Utah are the chief sources of molybdenum; Missouri, Idaho, and Alaska are among the leading producers of lead; Alaska and Tennessee, of zinc. More than four fifths of the nation’s potash is produced in New Mexico. Nevada, Alaska, and Idaho are important sources of silver; and Nevada, California, and Utah, are leading producers of gold.

E.

Manufacturing

About 14 per cent of annual GDP is accounted for by manufacturing, which employs about one sixth of the nation’s workers. The total value of manufacturers’ shipments in the 1990s was approximately US$2,820 billion annually. Although manufacturing remains a key component of the US economy, it has declined in relative importance since the late 1960s. From 1970 to 1995 the overall number of employees in manufacturing declined from 20.7 million to 20.5 million, while the total labour force grew by more than 46.2 million people.

Perhaps the most important change in recent decades has been the growth of manufacturing outside the north-eastern and north-central regions. The nation’s industrial core developed in the north-east and this is still the location of the greatest concentration of industry, but it has become relatively less significant than in the past. In the early 1990s about half of the nation’s manufacturing employees were found in the 21 north-eastern and north-central states that extend from New England to Kansas; in 1947 about 75 per cent of the manufacturing employees lived in the same region. Since 1947 the South’s share of the nation’s manufacturing workers has increased from 19 to 32 per cent, and that in the West has grown from 7 to 18 per cent. Within the North, manufacturing is centred in the Middle Atlantic and eastern north-central states, which account for about 37 per cent of the annual value added by all manufacturing in the United States. Located in this area are five of the top seven manufacturing states—New York, Ohio, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Michigan—which together are responsible for approximately 27 per cent of the value added by manufacturing in all states each year.

The greatest gains in manufacturing in the South have been in Texas, and the most phenomenal growth in the West has been in California, which in the early 1990s was the leading manufacturing state, accounting for more than 10 per cent of the annual value added by manufacturing.

Ranked by value of manufacturers’ shipments, the leading categories of US manufactured goods are processed foods, transport equipment, chemicals, industrial machinery, and electronic equipment.

All varieties of industrial machinery accounted for about 10 per cent of the yearly value added by manufacture in the mid-1990s. Industrial machinery includes engines, farm equipment, various kinds of construction machinery, office machines, and refrigeration equipment. Transport equipment includes cars, trucks, aeroplanes, space vehicles, ships and boats, and railway equipment. Michigan, with its huge motor industry, is a leading producer of transport equipment. California is a leader in the aerospace industry.

Food processing accounted for about 11 per cent of the overall annual value added by manufacture in the mid-1990s, and the chemical industry contributed about the same. Texas and Louisiana are leaders in chemical manufacturing. The petroleum and natural gas produced and refined in both states are basic raw materials used in manufacturing many chemical products. Food processing is an important industry in several states noted for the production of food crops and livestock, or both. California has a large fruit- and vegetable-processing industry. Meat-packing in Illinois and dairy-processing in Wisconsin make both states leaders in food manufacturing.

The electronic equipment industry includes the manufacture of electric industrial apparatus, household appliances, radio and television equipment, electronic components, and communications devices. California, Illinois, Indiana, and Massachusetts are all leaders in the production of electronic equipment, which is one of the fastest-growing sectors of US industry.

The manufacture of fabricated metal and primary metal is concentrated in the nation’s industrial core region. Iron ore from the Lake Superior district, as well as that imported from Canada and other countries, and Appalachian coal are the basis for a huge iron and steel industry. Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Michigan are leading states in the value of primary metal output. The fabricated metal industry, which includes the manufacture of cans and other containers, hardware, and metal forgings and stampings, is important in the same states.

The rubber and plastics industry is located mainly in the nation’s industrial core region. Ohio, which has a large concentration of tyre-manufacturing plants, has long been a leader in this industry.

Printing and publishing is a widespread industry, with newspapers published throughout the country. New York, with its book-publishing industry, is the leading state.

Paper-products manufacture is important, particularly in those states with sizeable timber resources, especially softwood trees used to make most paper. The manufacture of paper and paperboard contributes significantly to the economies of Wisconsin, Alabama, Georgia, Washington, New York, Maine, and Pennsylvania.

Other major US manufactures include textiles, clothing, precision instruments, timber, furniture, tobacco products, leather goods, and stone, clay, and glass items.

F.

Tourism

Each year travellers in the United States spend over US$350 billion on transport, food and drinks, various kinds of amusement, and motel and hotel accommodation. Travel and tourism have contributed substantially to the growth of such businesses as motels, restaurants, car-rental agencies, amusement parks, and various retail outlets, including those that sell cameras and film, clothing, sporting goods, gifts, and souvenirs.

In recent decades visitors from overseas have become an increasingly important part of the US tourist business. By 1995 the number of overseas visitors—chiefly from Western Europe, Japan, Latin America, and the Caribbean—was an estimated 43 million, and their expenditure had risen to about US$58.4 billion. Millions of visitors from Canada and Mexico cross the border every year; estimated annual expenditure in the United States by Canadian and Mexican travellers totalled US$6 billion and US$5 billion respectively.

New York is a popular destination among both domestic and foreign travellers, and tourism is a mainstay of the economies of California and Florida. Conveniently located within a day’s journey of the eastern United States, Great Smoky Mountains National Park is the most popular national park in the United States, receiving nearly 9 million recreational visits annually.

G.

Energy

Measured in terms of heat-producing capacity (British thermal units, or Btu), petroleum provides about 39 per cent of the total energy consumed in the United States. It supplies about 97 per cent of the energy used to power the nation’s transport system, and it is used to heat millions of houses and factories.

Natural gas is the source of about 24 per cent of the energy consumed for industrial and domestic purposes; coal provides about 22 per cent. Its major uses are in the generation of electricity, which uses more than three quarters of all the coal consumed, and in the manufacture of steel.

Water power generates about 4 per cent and nuclear power about 7 per cent of the nation’s energy. Both are employed mainly to produce electricity for residential and industrial use.

Some 33 per cent of the energy consumed in the United States is used in the generation of electricity. The nation’s generating plants have a total installed capacity of about 741.6 million kilowatts and produce about 4.1 trillion kilowatt-hours of electricity each year. Coal is the most commonly used fuel by electric power plants, and 55 per cent of the nation’s yearly electricity is generated in coal-fired plants. Natural gas accounts for about 10 per cent of the electricity produced, and refined petroleum for about 2 per cent; hydroelectric facilities generate about 7 per cent, and nuclear power plants about 19 per cent.

For many years, petroleum appeared abundant and cheap, and it became the basis for an American lifestyle based on extensive use of the private car. Since 1947, when the United States became a net importer of oil, annual domestic production has not been enough to meet the demands of the highly mobile American society.

In 1970 domestic crude-oil production reached a record high of 3.5 billion barrels, but this had to be supplemented by imports amounting to 12 per cent of the nation’s overall crude oil supply. In 1995 about 50 per cent of the crude oil needs of the United States were met by net imports. However, abundant domestic supplies of coal allow the United States to export part of its annual production. See Energy Supply, World.

H.

Currency and Banking

The monetary unit is the United States dollar. The US decimal currency consists of coins and paper money, issued by the US Department of the Treasury and the Federal Reserve System. The Federal Reserve issues paper money called Federal Reserve notes, which constitute almost all the paper money in the United States. The Treasury issues United States notes, which come in $100 denominations, as well as all coins.

Coins are made in six denominations—the penny, or 1¢; the nickel, or 5¢; the dime, or 10¢; the quarter, or 25¢; the half-dollar, or 50¢; and the dollar, or 100¢. Federal Reserve notes are issued in six denominations—$1, $5, $10, $20, $50, and $100. Denominations of $500, $1,000, $5,000, and $10,000 were discontinued in 1969, and $2 bills were stopped in 1976; however, some of these notes remain in circulation. In 1995 the basic US money supply, including currency and funds in checking accounts, was nearly US$1,300 billion.

In 1995 the United States had 11,970 insured banks with a total of nearly 81,893 banking offices. Because of mergers and closures, the number of banks steadily declined in the 1980s and 1990s while the number of bank offices increased. Combined assets were approximately US$4,310 billion. Banks in the United States are chartered under the laws of either a state or the federal government. State-chartered banks are regulated by officials of the state in which they are located; national banks are under the supervision of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.

The Federal Reserve System, created by the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, is the central banking organization of the United States. All national banks are required by law to belong to the Federal Reserve System. State banks may voluntarily become members if they meet certain requirements. Each member bank operates within the district of 1 of the 12 Federal Reserve banks. About 60 per cent of all commercial banking offices belong to banks affiliated with the Federal Reserve System.

See also Banking; Finance; Money.

I.

Commerce and Trade

The United States is the world’s leading trading nation, with a trade volume of US$1,330 billion in 1995. Total merchandise exports in 2007 amounted to US$1,163 billion, and imports to US$2,017 billion. Beginning in the mid-1970s, the nation’s imports of expensive foreign petroleum and of manufactured goods from Canada and Asia (especially Japan) created a trade imbalance. From 1984 to 1990 the annual merchandise trade deficit regularly exceeded US$100 billion.

Non-agricultural products usually account for approximately 90 per cent of the yearly value of exports and agricultural products for about 10 per cent. Machinery and transport equipment make up the leading categories of exports, amounting together to about 33 per cent of the value of all exports. Other leading exports include electrical equipment, chemicals, precision instruments, and food products.

Canada, Japan, and Mexico are the country’s most important trade partners; they provide the markets for about 41 per cent of total annual exports and are the source of about 44 per cent of imports. Chief trading partners for exports are Canada, Japan, Mexico, Germany, the United Kingdom, Taiwan, and South Korea; chief trading partners for imports are Canada, Japan, Mexico, China, Germany, Taiwan, and the United Kingdom. Leading sources of US petroleum imports are Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Canada, Mexico, and Nigeria.

J.

Labour

In 2008 the United States had a total employed civilian labour force of about 145 million. Primary occupations in agriculture, forestry, fishing, and mining engage only about 3 per cent of the employed population, and secondary occupations in manufacturing and construction employ about 23 per cent. The service activities in the large tertiary sector employ about three quarters of the workers.

By the end of the 1930s the labour union movement in the United States had become widely accepted, and in the mid-1990s organized labour was still one of the most powerful economic forces in the country. The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) was the leading grouping of unions; about 80 per cent of the union members in the United States belonged to a group affiliated with the AFL-CIO. While the labour movement did help to achieve a higher standard of living for US workers, in the 1980s and early 1990s the number of work hours had begun to increase, while wages failed to keep pace with the rising cost of living. In recent decades the percentage of workers belonging to labour unions has declined.

K.

Transport

The development of transport facilities was of crucial importance in the growth of the United States. The first routes were natural waterways; the earliest overland routes were rough trails suitable for travel on foot or horseback. No surfaced roads existed until the 1790s, when the first turnpikes were built, some under private auspices and some by state government. Besides the overland roads, many canals were constructed between the late 18th century and 1850 to link navigable rivers and lakes in the eastern United States and in the Great Lakes region. Steam railways began to appear in the East in the 1820s. The first transcontinental railway was constructed between 1862 and 1869 by the Union Pacific and Central Pacific companies, both of which received large subsidies from the federal government. Transcontinental railways were the chief means of transport used by European settlers who populated the West in the latter part of the 19th century and were also of utmost importance for moving goods from one part of the country to another. The railways continued to expand until 1917, when the length of operated track reached a peak of about 407,165 km (253,000 mi). Thereafter, motor transport became a serious competitor both for passengers and freight.

Air transport began to compete with other modes of transport in the United States after World War I. The first commercial flights in the United States were made in 1918 and carried mail. Passenger service began to gain importance in the late 1920s, but not until the advent of commercial jet craft after World War II did air transport become a leading mode of travel.

During the early 1990s railways annually handled 37.4 per cent of the total freight traffic, trucks carried 27.6 per cent of the freight, and oil pipelines conveyed 19.3 per cent. Some 15.3 per cent was shipped on inland waterways. Although the freight handled by airlines amounted to only 0.4 per cent of the total, much of the cargo consisted of high-priority or high-value items.

Private cars accounted for about 80 per cent of the total annual passenger traffic. Airlines came second, carrying nearly 18 per cent; buses were responsible for 1.1 per cent, and railways carried 0.7 per cent.

In 2004 the United States had about 6.4 million km (4 million mi) of streets, roads, and highways. About 21 per cent of the roadways were in urban areas. The National Interstate Highway System, 75,111 km (46,672 mi) in length, connected the nation’s principal cities and carried nearly one quarter of all the road and street traffic. Around 465 passenger vehicles per 1,000 people were registered.

As of 1992, Class I railways—the 13 largest railway companies in the United States—operated 74 per cent of the total amount of track, employed 89 per cent of the railway workers, and generated 91 per cent of the railway revenue. Overall, the United States had 191,771 km (119,161 mi) of operated railway track in 2007. Railways employ about 223,000 people and transport nearly 25 million cars of freight each year. Amtrak (the National Railroad Passenger Corporation), a federally subsidized concern, operates almost all the intercity passenger trains in the United States; it carried more than 51 million passengers annually in the early 1990s, including some 29 million metropolitan commuters.

The United States has a relatively small merchant marine. In 1995 only 543 vessels of 1,000 gross tonnes and over were registered in the United States, of which only 354 were privately owned. Many American shipowners register their ships in foreign countries such as Liberia and Panama, however, so they can operate the ship at a lower cost.

The leading seaport in the United States in the early 1990s was the Port of New Orleans, Louisiana. Other leading ports included New York; Houston; Valdez Harbor, Alaska; Baton Rouge, Louisiana; Corpus Christi, Texas; Long Beach, California; Norfolk Harbor, Virginia; Tampa Harbor, Florida; and Los Angeles. Although it no longer ranks first among US seaports, the Port of New York remains a significant destination for both passenger and freight traffic.

The inland waterway network of the United States has three main components—the Mississippi river system, the Great Lakes, and coastal waterways. About 60 per cent of the annual freight traffic is on the Mississippi and its tributaries, about 19 per cent is on the Great Lakes, and the remaining 21 per cent is on the coastal waterways.

The Mississippi river system has a combined network of waterways that exceed about 24,000 km (15,000 mi) in length; St Louis, Missouri, is the leading port. The Great Lakes carry more commerce than any other lakes in the world. The leading Great Lakes seaport is Duluth, Minnesota-Superior, Wisconsin. Ocean-going vessels can sail between the Great Lakes and the Atlantic Ocean via the St Lawrence Seaway (opened in 1959). The Intracoastal Waterway is a navigable, toll-free shipping route extending for about 1,740 km (1,080 mi) along the Atlantic Coast and for about 1,770 km (1,100 mi) along the Gulf of Mexico coast. About 45 per cent of the total annual traffic on all coastal waterways is on the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway, about 30 per cent is on the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway, and about 25 per cent is on Pacific Coast waterways.

Airlines in the United States annually carry 528 million passengers, the vast majority of whom are domestic travellers. In the mid-1990s, the nation had about 5,474 public and 12,896 private airports. Among the busiest are Chicago-O’Hare International Airport; Dallas/Fort Worth Airport, in Texas; William B. Hartsfield International Airport, near Atlanta, Georgia; Los Angeles International Airport; and San Francisco International Airport.

L.

Communications

All radio and television broadcasting stations in the United States must be licensed by the Federal Communications Commission. In 1997 about 1,285 television broadcasters were in operation. All states had television stations, and more than 40 per cent were concentrated in nine states: Texas, California, New York, Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, and North Carolina. A rapidly growing number of households (estimated at 60.5 million in the mid-1990s) subscribed to cable television. More than 98 per cent of households had at least one television set.

Commercial radio stations in 1997 numbered about 3,702 AM stations and about 4,665 FM stations.

There were 1,486 daily newspapers published in the United States in 2004, with a circulation of approximately 57 million copies. The top daily newspapers are the Wall Street Journal (published in New York), USA Today (published in Arlington, Virginia), the New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times, each with a circulation in excess of 1 million. Other leading newspapers, each with a daily circulation of more than 500,000, included the Washington Post, the New York Daily News, the Chicago Tribune, the Detroit Free Press, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Chicago Sun-Times, the Boston Globe, and the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Nearly 21,300 periodicals were published in 1997. These ranged from specialized journals reaching only a small number of professionals to major news magazines such as Newsweek, with a circulation of about 3.2 million a week; and Time, with a circulation of about 4.2 million a week. In 1992 about 49,300 new books were published; the leading categories were sociology and economics, juvenile, and fiction. Book sales in 1994 totalled some 2.1 billion.

V.

Government

The supreme law of the land is the Constitution of the United States, which was drafted by a convention in 1787, ratified by the required two thirds of the states by June 1788, and put into effect in 1789. The Constitution may be amended by a two-thirds vote of each house of Congress or by a special national convention called for the purpose, subject to ratification by vote of three quarters of the legislatures of the states or state conventions. The first ten amendments, known as the Bill of Rights, were adopted in 1791. These provide for freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of the press, the right to assemble, the right to petition the government, and various due process and criminal procedure rights for individuals. Seventeen additional amendments were adopted between 1795 and 1992, abolishing slavery, providing for an income tax, and providing for universal suffrage for all people 18 or older, among other purposes.

The Constitution provides for a union of states, now numbering 50, each with its own constitution, republican form of government, and reserved powers, within a federal system. The national government is responsible for external affairs and has concurrent powers with states, commonwealths, and self-governing territories over domestic matters. The chief of state is the president of the United States and the seat of government is the District of Columbia, which has limited home rule and no voting representation in the national legislature.

The Constitution establishes three separate branches of government: the legislature, the executive, and the judiciary. Each branch has its own area of authority. These areas overlap, making it necessary for the three branches to share in, and compete for, the power to govern effectively. Each branch has some constitutional authority that it can use to impede the functioning of the other branches, creating a system of checks and balances. The purpose of this somewhat cumbersome machinery of government is to prevent the concentration of power in a small group of politicians.

Since the adoption of the Constitution, the national government has increased its functions in economic and social matters and has shared more responsibilities with the states.

A.

Executive

Article II of the Constitution provides for a president and vice-president chosen by a majority of voters in the Electoral College for a fixed term of four years. The 22nd Amendment (1951) limits presidents to two terms in office. By state law, electors are chosen by a plurality of the popular vote in each state and in the District of Columbia. In almost all cases the winner of the popular vote is elected president. In 2000, 51 per cent of the electorate, translated as 105 million people, voted. The 2004 election saw a significant increase, with more than 115 million citizens voting, around 60 per cent of the electorate—the largest turnout percentage since the 1960s. However, dwarfing this was the voter turnout for the 2008 presidential election, which reached a figure of more than 64 per cent nationally and around 90 per cent in a couple of states.

The US president typically has a greater range of functions than prime ministers in parliamentary governments because the president serves as ceremonial chief of state as well as head of government. Unlike most presidents in other nations, the US president is also the head of his or her party, an important legislative leader, and the chief executive.

The Constitution makes the president commander-in-chief of the US armed forces. The president’s authority to deploy forces on his or her own initiative is regulated by Congress under Article I, Section 8, which reserves to Congress the power to declare war, and under provisions of the War Powers Resolution of 1973.

The president’s diplomatic powers include negotiation and ratification of treaties, with the consent of two thirds of the Senate; the appointment of ambassadors to foreign nations, also with the consent of the Senate; and the reception of foreign ambassadors. The president negotiates, on his or her own authority, executive agreements with leaders of other nations.

By law the president prepares an executive budget and an economic report, which are submitted to Congress each year. The president submits requests for legislation, the most important of which usually regard taxation and other economic and military matters. The president also exercises executive authority over the various government departments and agencies.

An extensive advisory system serves the president. Aides in the White House, where the president resides and has offices, provide advice, manage press relations, schedule appointments and travel, and communicate with Congress, government departments, lobbying groups, and the president’s political party. Staff agencies in the executive office include the Office of Management and Budget, which prepares presidential budget requests and controls spending; the National Security Council, which is concerned with the nation’s defence; and the Council of Economic Advisers. The president’s Cabinet also serves as a source of information and advice. It consists of the heads of the governmental departments and a few other officials, such as the director of the Central Intelligence Agency and the US ambassador to the UN. The Cabinet has no power of its own.

The executive branch of the government comprises a number of departments. Some government agencies are not directly supervised by the president. These include independent establishments such as the Interstate Commerce Commission, the Federal Communications Commission, and the Federal Reserve System.

B.

Legislature

All legislative powers granted by the Constitution in Article I are exercised by the Congress of the United States. Congress consists of two houses, the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Senate contains 100 senators, 2 representing each state—a provision of the Constitution not subject to amendment. The 435 members of the House are elected by the different states on the basis of their population at the most recent US census. California has the largest number of representatives, 53; several states, such as Delaware and Vermont, have only 1. Representatives serve two-year terms, and senators six-year terms. Every two years all 435 members of the House are elected, and one third of the senators. Trends show that in presidential election years about 45 per cent of eligible adults vote for members of Congress; in other election years only about 35 per cent vote.

The Senate and House are organized by the majority party in each chamber, which chooses the presiding officer, the majority leader, and the chairs of each committee. Through much of American history the party controlling the White House did not control both houses of Congress. This situation, known as divided government, can lead to reduced output of legislation and an increase in presidential vetoes of bills passed by Congress. Unlike the chief executives of parliamentary systems in other countries, the US president neither resigns nor calls for new elections, even when majorities in Congress reject the president’s programmes.

Congress has extensive powers in domestic affairs, including the power to tax, borrow money and pay debts, coin money and regulate its value, and regulate commerce among the states. Congress helps to establish and oversee the departments and agencies of the executive branch; it also establishes the lower federal courts and determines their jurisdiction. Congress has the power to declare war, raise and maintain the armed forces, establish tariffs, and regulate commerce with foreign nations.

A bill is passed by Congress by majority vote of those present in each chamber; it is then sent to the president. The president may sign the bill to indicate approval, or allow the bill to become law without signing it; or may veto the bill and return it to Congress, giving reasons for this action. The president’s veto can be overridden by a two-thirds vote of the members of Congress voting in each chamber.

Each house of Congress has some distinct powers. Revenue measures must originate in the House of Representatives. The House, with a majority vote, can initiate proceedings to impeach (charge with misconduct) the president. If the Electoral College cannot produce a majority to elect a president, the House chooses one of the top three contenders. If both the president and the vice-president die, are incapacitated, or are removed from office, the Speaker of the House becomes president.

The Senate advises on and consents to presidential treaties and to nominations for major executive officials, ambassadors, justices of the Supreme Court, and federal judges. The Senate tries all impeachments, with a two-thirds vote necessary to convict. In the event of a deadlock in the Electoral College, the Senate chooses the vice-president from the top two contenders. The president pro tempore of the Senate comes after the Speaker of the House in the line of succession to the presidency.

The legislative branch also includes agencies such as the Congressional Budget Office, the General Accounting Office, the Library of Congress, and the Government Printing Office.

C.

Political Parties

Two major political parties exist in the United States in the 1990s. The Democratic Party was founded in the 1790s as the Anti-Federalists, became the Democratic-Republican Party in 1801, and was renamed the Democratic Party in 1828. The Republican Party was founded in 1854 as a third party and became one of the two major parties in 1860. Parties other than the Democratic and Republican parties are of only minor importance in most national and state elections, and no third-party candidate has ever won the presidency. Third parties have played only a minor role in Congress.

In the late 20th century the Democrats were split into two major factions. The northern Democrats as a rule favoured national action to solve social problems, emphasized government regulation of the economy, and advocated strong action to aid minorities. The southern Democrats were more conservative in fiscal, economic regulation, and social matters.

Republicans were less divided in their economic approach, favouring reduced social services to help balance the budget to lower inflation, and tax cuts to promote industrial development. Division among Republicans occurred on social issues involving such matters as abortion and civil rights, however. Political Parties in the United States.

D.

Judiciary

The federal court system derives its powers from Article III of the Constitution. The system includes the Supreme Court of the United States, established by the Constitution; and 13 courts of appeal (sometimes called circuit courts), 94 district courts, and special courts such as the Tax Court, the Claims Court, and the Court of Veterans’ Appeals, all established by Congress. See Courts in the United States.

The federal courts perform two constitutional functions. First, they interpret the meaning of laws and administrative regulations; this is known as statutory construction. Second, the courts determine whether any law passed by Congress or state legislatures, or any administrative action taken by the national or state executive branches, violates the US Constitution; this is known as judicial review. Federal courts can declare null and void laws or actions, at the national and state levels, that violate the Constitution.

The nine justices of the Supreme Court and the other federal judges are nominated by the president with the advice and consent of the Senate. The president, in making district court nominations, usually follows the recommendations of senators from the president’s party. All federal judges and justices of the Supreme Court serve on good behaviour for life. They may be removed from office only through the process of impeachment, which has been used fewer than 20 times, and never successfully against a Supreme Court justice.

Decisions of the Supreme Court that involve the statutory construction of laws may be overturned by Congress. Decisions involving judicial review may be checked and balanced in either of two ways. The president and Senate may deliberately fill vacancies on the Supreme Court with new justices who can be expected to overturn the decision; or the Constitution can be amended, as was the case after the Supreme Court ruled income tax unconstitutional.

E.

State and Local Government

The US Constitution provides for a federal system, with those powers not exercised by the national government retained by the states. States are denied the power to conduct foreign relations, enter into treaties or alliances, or lay tariffs. They may not coin currency, levy taxes on interstate commerce, or prevent the movement of persons across their borders. States may cooperate with one another through creation of interstate compacts, which require the approval of Congress. These often involve water resources, navigation, pollution control, or port development.

The national government and states are closely linked in an administrative system of cooperative federalism. This includes categorical grant programmes, in which the national government establishes operating standards and pays up to 90 per cent of the cost of programmes administered by the states; block grants for general purposes such as education or community development; and revenue sharing, whereby the national government distributes money to states and localities each year.

The major functions of the states include qualified control of voter eligibility requirements; administration of state and national elections; supervision of municipal and county government; promotion and regulation of commerce, industry, and agriculture; and maintenance of highways, prisons, hospitals, and mental-health facilities. The states also support extensive systems of higher education. They share with local units of government the responsibility for welfare, medical care for indigents, employment services, and other social services.

Almost all states are divided into territorial units called counties. Louisiana is divided into parishes, which are similar to counties. Alaska has no counties as such; much of the state is organized into boroughs. In a number of states, such as Connecticut, counties have virtually no governmental function. In several states, notably Virginia, one or more cities are independent of any county organization and thus constitute primary divisions of the state. In relatively heavily populated areas, communities are organized into municipalities, which include cities, towns, villages, and boroughs. Municipalities generally provide basic services, including police, sanitation, and fire protection. Education at the elementary and secondary levels is usually supervised by school boards, which share authority over finance, curriculum, and teacher certification with state government. Also important are so-called special districts, which are independent, limited-purpose local government units dealing with water supply, flood control, fire protection, community development, housing, and other matters.

F.

Health and Welfare

Through cooperative federalism, the national and state governments provide social services to individuals. The Social Security Act of 1935 provides financial protection to wage earners and their families when the wage earner retires, becomes disabled, or dies. Contributions are financed through payroll taxes and employer contributions, and benefits are indexed against the effects of inflation.

The national government and states also help fund unemployment insurance programmes. Health programmes include Medicare, a health insurance programme for the elderly, and Medicaid, a programme of assistance to the poor (see Medicare and Medicaid). The United States has extensive medical facilities of the highest quality, but gaining access to them remains a problem for a substantial segment of the population. It has been estimated that more than 30 million Americans have no private health insurance coverage and do not qualify for Medicare or Medicaid; perhaps twice that number either have inadequate basic coverage or do not have adequate coverage for catastrophic illness.

Federal, state, and local grants provide income assistance for the blind, disabled, and elderly poor, and assistance to poor families with dependent children. School lunch programmes for needy children and a food stamp programme for poor families are also provided.

G.

Defence

The president is commander-in-chief of the US armed forces. The president’s orders commanding these forces are passed through the office of the Secretary of Defense to the various military commands. The military heads of the army, navy, air force, and marines serve as the Joint Chiefs of Staff, whose chair is designated by the president. The Joint Chiefs of Staff advise the president and Congress on military strategy and recommend expenditure levels and weapons systems.

Although the Selective Service System registers all male citizens over the age of 18, since 1973 the armed forces have been composed entirely of men and women volunteers. At the beginning of 2006 the armed forces consisted of 1,506,757 active-duty military personnel, including some 595,946 in the army, 173,595 in the marines, 376,750 in the navy, and 347,400 in the air force. United States Coast Guard personnel numbered 37,300 in the mid-1990s.

Major collective security agreements to which the United States is a party include the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and ANZUS, which links Australia and New Zealand with the United States.

H.

International Organizations

The United States is a member of the UN and has a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. It also belongs to many UN agencies such as the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the International Labour Organization, and the International Monetary Fund. In addition, the United States plays a major role in numerous other international organizations, such as the Organization of American States and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

VI.

History

In addition to cross-references contained in the following account of US history, the reader is referred to the history sections of articles on the individual states and to separate articles on US presidents.

A.

Colonial Developments

The United States did not emerge as a nation-state until near the end of the 18th century, but national history is properly introduced with a brief survey of the chief events leading to the formation of the Union. The voyages in the last years of the 15th century of Christopher Columbus and John Cabot were the decisive initial developments. On the strength of Columbus’s explorations and those of later Spanish navigators, Spain staked out a vast domain in North, Central, and South America. Cabot, sailing in the service of King Henry VII of England, reached the North American mainland in 1497. On the basis of this voyage, England later claimed the entire continent. Among other early voyagers to North America were Giovanni da Verrazzano of Italy and Jacques Cartier of France. Sailing under the flag of France, they initiated a protracted period of French colonial activity.

The lands these navigators “discovered” had been inhabited for at least 20,000 years before Columbus’s arrival. In 1492 the indigenous population of the continent numbered more than 90 million, of whom about 10 million lived north of present-day Mexico. Contact with Europeans precipitated a demographic disaster for these varied Native Americans. Because they lacked natural immunity to European diseases, influenza, typhus, measles, and smallpox reduced native populations in the more densely settled regions of Central and South America by up to 95 per cent within the first 150 years after contact. In North America, where the indigenous cultures tended to be semi-nomadic and populations less dense, the population collapse was more protracted, but no less devastating. Once European colonists established permanent settlements in North America, they introduced not only diseases but also cattle and horses that displaced game animals and invaded Native American agricultural lands, altering the environment so drastically that indigenous populations declined to a fraction of pre-contact levels. Even in the absence of warfare, European colonization signalled the wholesale destruction of indigenous cultures. (For a detailed discussion of the original inhabitants of the United States, see Native Americans and articles on individual peoples.)

A.1.

The First Settlements

The founding of St Augustine (in what is now Florida) by the Spanish in 1565 marked the beginning of European colonization within the present boundaries of the United States. At the time of this settlement, England and Spain were engaged in naval warfare, which in 1588 culminated in the virtual annihilation of the Spanish Armada. After this defeat, Spain no longer figured as a serious rival to England for possession of the Atlantic seaboard of North America. Before that time, however, these same military pressures helped inhibit English efforts at colonization.

In 1585 an expedition sponsored by Sir Walter Raleigh settled on Roanoke Island off the coast of present-day North Carolina. The colony soon failed, in part because the settlers were more concerned with hunting for gold than with learning how to sustain their colony by agriculture. In 1587 Raleigh dispatched a larger group—led by John White—to the region, which he had named Virginia to honour Elizabeth I, known as the Virgin Queen. White soon sailed back to England for additional supplies. The war with Spain prevented his returning to Roanoke until 1590, by which time the settlers had disappeared. The mystery of what happened to Raleigh’s Lost Colony has never been solved.

The first permanent English settlement in North America was Jamestown. Established in 1607, Jamestown was a project of the Virginia Company of London, a joint-stock corporation chartered in 1606 by James I of England for the purpose of trading in and colonizing North America. After a series of catastrophic misadventures, in which thousands of immigrants died as a result of disease, starvation, and a war in 1622 with Native Americans, the Crown revoked the company’s charter in 1624 and took control of the colony as a royal province.

After the colonial government removed controls on the production of tobacco, there was a major expansion in the economy and in the English population of the Chesapeake Bay region. The incessant demand for labour to grow tobacco created a harsh system of indentured servitude. In the last quarter of the 17th century, when it became prohibitively expensive to import English labourers, English colonists began importing Africans kidnapped from their native countries. These African slaves emerged as the predominant agricultural labour force in the southern mainland.

A.2.

French and Dutch Activities

During the decade following the settlement of Jamestown, France and the Netherlands entered the contest for territory in North America. The French quickly recognized the importance of controlling the St Lawrence River, the best available route to the interior. In 1608, as the first step in their strategic design, they founded Quebec. The achievements of such explorers as Jacques Marquette, Louis Jolliet, and René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle brought vast areas of the interior, including the entire Mississippi valley, under nominal French ownership during the next 75 years. Their inability to consolidate this enormous American dominion stemmed especially from the French desire to trade with Native Americans for furs and skins, rather than to try to force them off their lands, as the English did. In addition, French colonial policies discouraged large-scale immigration and the settlement of enduring communities. As a consequence, French colonial populations remained small throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, enabling them to cultivate military alliances with Native Americans, who rightly saw them as less threatening than the English settlers.

The Dutch based their claims to North American territory on the explorations of Henry Hudson, an English mariner in the employ of the Dutch East India Company. In 1609 Hudson had entered present-day New York Bay and explored the river that now bears his name. During the next few years the Dutch dispatched several trading vessels to the region, which they named New Netherland. Trading posts were founded on Manhattan Island and near the site of modern Albany in 1613 and 1614. Because of the profitable fur trade, the Dutch made no immediate attempt to colonize New Netherland. Permanent colonists began to arrive in 1624, and New Amsterdam (now New York) was founded the following year. However, constant friction or warfare with the Native Americans, administrative incompetence, and internal unrest were characteristic, and the colony never attained the stability and vigour of Virginia or of the later English colonies.

A.3.

The New England Colonies

English colonizing activity resumed in 1620 when a party of English Separatists, a dissident sect that had previously withdrawn from the Church of England, acquired the right to settle in Virginia. Whether by accident or design, their ship, the Mayflower, entered Massachusetts Bay and dropped anchor in what is now the harbour of Provincetown, Massachusetts. Recognizing that they were outside the bounds of any organized government, 41 of the men in the group, better known as the Pilgrims, gathered aboard ship on November 21, 1620, and signed an agreement called the Mayflower Compact, the first written American constitution. Later they founded Plymouth Colony, on a site near the head of Cape Cod.

The organization of Plymouth Colony inaugurated the colonization of New England, a region peopled mainly by religious dissenters. In this phase, the most significant development was the founding in 1629 to 1630 of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, just north of Plymouth, by a joint-stock company that used its corporate charter to develop a complete system of self-government. The Massachusetts Bay colonists were followers of Puritanism. Soon after the establishment of Massachusetts, dissidents expelled from the colony formed the nucleus of a settlement from which Rhode Island grew; in 1636 settlers from the Bay Colony looking for better land on which to raise cattle migrated westward to found Connecticut. Both of these colonies created governments modelled on that of Massachusetts, with an elected legislative body, or general court, and an elected governor. Growing political turmoil in England prevented the king from reining in these nearly independent colonies; not until 1676 would the English government attempt to establish control over Massachusetts and its neighbours. Meanwhile they grew, prospered, and developed their own distinctive traditions of government.

A.4.

Proprietary Colonies

After the founding of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the English Crown issued no more corporate charters for colonization projects in America. Beginning with Maryland, which was chartered in 1632 as a refuge for Roman Catholics and others, all the new colonies were organized according to the provisions of proprietary charters. In general the people of the proprietary provinces received qualified legislative privileges, but administrative authority was vested in the charter grantees, who received from the king virtually complete freedom to establish any form of government, as well as the right to dispose of all lands within the boundaries of their colonies.

With the exception of Georgia, which was chartered in 1732, all these English proprietary colonies in North America were organized before the end of the 17th century. In 1663 a company of eight English nobles was granted what are now the states of North Carolina and South Carolina. New Netherland, lying across the lines of communication between the northern and southern possessions of England, was forcibly annexed in 1664 and renamed New York. New Jersey, mainly comprising territory that the Dutch had previously seized from Sweden, was formed in the same year. New Hampshire, consisting of settlements formerly under the jurisdiction of Massachusetts, was organized 15 years later. In 1681 William Penn received a charter for the region that he named Pennsylvania.

A.5.

Political Developments

The first manifestation of parliamentary authority over the colonies was the Navigation Act of 1651, which required that colonial imports and exports be shipped in English-flag vessels. Further Navigation Acts prohibited commercial relations between the colonies and non-English nations. Although colonial merchants freely ignored the provisions when it suited their purposes, the laws created a trading environment that generally benefited colonies and mother country alike. Because of lax enforcement, smuggling and illicit trade were common and, over the next century, became an accepted part of American colonial mores.

King Charles II, who was restored to the English throne in 1660, took little active interest in the colonies, but his brother (and later his successor as James II) was determined to impose stricter control over England’s American possessions. The navigation laws were broadened and New Hampshire and Massachusetts were transformed into royal provinces. The revocation of the Massachusetts charter in 1684 reflected royal hostility to the trade violations, autonomous status, and generally independent attitude of the colony. In 1686 James II decreed the unification of New York, New Jersey, and the New England colonies into a single royal province, the Dominion of New England. Colonial resistance to the change assumed various forms. Connecticut and Rhode Island refused to yield their charters; in Massachusetts armed rebellion broke out in 1689; and the Boston populace seized control of the colonial government. New York also became the scene of rebellion.

A.6.

The British-French Wars

The accession of William and Mary in 1689 occasioned a complete reversal of English diplomatic policy, which under Charles II and James II had been pro-French, and the English government now challenged the military power of France, its chief rival for colonial empire. The ensuing struggle, extending in successive phases for nearly a century, was fought in many parts of the world. In North America the successive phases of the conflict were known collectively as the French and Indian wars and included King William’s War (1689-1697), Queen Anne’s War (1702-1713), King George’s War (1744-1748), and the French and Indian War (1754-1763). The French regime in North America possessed various advantages in these wars. It was highly centralized, had a well-disciplined military, and numbered most eastern Native Americans among its allies. The British colonies by contrast rarely cooperated with one another (see Albany Congress), enjoyed few reliable alliances with the Native Americans, and demonstrated little military prowess. On the other hand, the British had vast numerical superiority from the outset; by the 1750s they had a population advantage of nearly 30 to 1 over the French.

The first three of the wars were indecisive, largely because of the diplomacy of the Iroquois, a confederation of five (later six) Native American nations located in New York, which occupied the critical middle ground between New France and the northern British colonies. Only the Peace of Utrecht, which ended the War of the Spanish Succession (known as Queen Anne’s War in the colonies) in 1713, obliged the French to relinquish considerable territory, including Acadia, Newfoundland, and the region surrounding Hudson Bay.

A lapse in the Iroquois policy of neutrality brought on the last and most decisive colonial war. The Iroquois had claimed sovereignty over the Ohio river valley and had long succeeded in keeping both the French and English from establishing a permanent presence there. After 1748, however, Pennsylvania traders and Virginia land speculators gained footholds in the valley; this caused the French to build forts there to protect their access, via the river, to French settlements in the Mississippi Valley. The confrontation between England and France over control of the Ohio basin led to the final phase of the struggle, the French and Indian War.

From its modest beginnings in 1754, this war quickly escalated into a contest for domination of the continent. Although the first half of the war brought a series of disasters for the British and their colonies, after 1757 Great Britain and its allies in the European theatre of the conflict dealt stunning blows to France (see Seven Years’ War). In North America, the fighting in this second phase of the war was carried on mainly by the British army, aided by colonial auxiliaries. In 1759 British and colonial forces seized Quebec; the following year they conquered Montreal, destroying French power in America. The remainder of the war, fought in Europe, the West Indies, India, Africa, and elsewhere, brought an almost unbroken sequence of British colonial victories that led to France’s capitulation in 1763. Under the terms of the Treaty of Paris, France lost all its possessions on the North American mainland. The entire region east of the Mississippi and all the French holdings in what is now Canada were ceded to Great Britain. Spain, an ally of France during the war, surrendered Florida but was granted control of French territories west of the Mississippi.

A.7.

The Rise of Colonial Resistance

The victory over France created enormous problems for the British government. The war had virtually doubled the national public debt, and the accession of half the territory in North America had vastly compounded the problems of controlling the empire. These circumstances required new revenues. Accordingly, measures to secure enforcement of the Navigation Acts were adopted by the British parliament in 1764. In order to obtain additional revenue, Parliament also adopted, in 1765, a Stamp Act, requiring Americans to validate various documents, transactions, and purchases by buying and applying stamps issued by the royal government.

Passage of the Stamp Act aroused widespread indignation and opposition among the American colonists, especially in Virginia, New York, and Massachusetts. Nearly all officials responsible for execution of the Stamp Act were forced to resign, and many of the stamps were seized and destroyed. The intercolonial hostility towards taxation without representation culminated in October 1765 in the Stamp Act Congress, the first important demonstration of American political unity. Although Parliament refused to recognize the adoption by the congress of a petition of rights, privileges, and grievances, the Stamp Act was repealed in 1766.

After a change in leadership in the British government, the policy of imposing direct taxes on the American colonies was revived in 1767. Parliament approved a series of measures, known as the Townshend Acts, that among other things levied modest customs duties on tea, paper, lead, paint, and glass. Colonial resistance to the Townshend Acts included boycotts of British goods, intercolonial expressions of condemnation, and, in Massachusetts, open defiance of the British government by the town of Boston and the General Court. In 1768 Great Britain transferred two regiments of troops to Boston, but this action merely served to intensify anti-British feelings there. Finally, on March 5, 1770, a contingent of British soldiers fired into a hostile crowd, producing the first bloodshed of the struggle. See Boston Massacre.

In 1770 Parliament repealed all the Townshend duties except the tax on tea, which was retained to uphold Britain’s right to levy taxes on its subjects. The Americans then dropped all non-importation measures except for a tea boycott, kept up to maintain their objections to taxation without representation. Relations returned to normal until 1773, when Parliament tried to save the English East India Company from bankruptcy by granting it a monopoly on tea sold to America. Known as the Tea Act, this measure precipitated a new crisis. The colonists, regarding the Tea Act as a measure to induce them to submit to parliamentary taxation, not only intensified the boycott but, in Boston, destroyed cargoes of tea. See Boston Tea Party.

A.8.

The American War of Independence

Parliamentary reaction to the events in Boston was swift and harsh. By enactments adopted in March 1774, Parliament closed the port of Boston, prohibited town meetings everywhere in Massachusetts, and imposed other penalties. Intercolonial indignation over this legislation, popularly known as the Intolerable Acts, paved the way for the convocation, in September 1774, of the First Continental Congress. The Congress drafted a petition to the British sovereign, George III, for a redress of grievances, called for intensification of the boycott on trade with Great Britain, and completed plans for a new Congress to assemble in May 1775, in the event of British refusal to grant its demands.

The king rejected the Congress’s petition and characterized the colonial protest movement as rebellion. Less than four months after that news was received in America, armed conflict broke out in Massachusetts when the royal governor, General Thomas Gage, dispatched troops against Concord, where the leaders of the resistance had concentrated arms and ammunition. On April 19 British regulars fired on a formation of patriot militia at Lexington, precipitating the first battle of the American War of Independence (see also Concord, Battle of).

The Second Continental Congress convened at Philadelphia on May 10, 1775. The Congress proclaimed American determination to resist British aggression with armed force, provided for establishment of a Continental army, appointed George Washington Commander-in-Chief, authorized the issue of paper money, and assumed other prerogatives of executive authority over the colonies. Congress also appealed to the British government for a peaceful solution of the crisis, but in August, George III responded with a proclamation exhorting his “loyal subjects” to “suppress rebellion and sedition” in North America. Meanwhile, British-held Fort Ticonderoga had fallen to Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys, and American troops had inflicted severe casualties on a large force of British regulars at Charlestown, Massachusetts. (See Bunker Hill, Battle of.) More than a year later, on July 2, 1776, the Second Continental Congress declared independence, and two days afterwards adopted a formal statement of principle written by Thomas Jefferson justifying that action.

B.

The Growth of the Nation

With the signing of the Treaty of Paris (1783), ending the war with Great Britain, the United States was confronted with new problems, chief of which was devising a form of government that would bind the 13 states into a strong and efficient union.

B.1.

The Articles of Confederation

From 1776 to 1781 the states had been governed by the Continental Congress, which assumed certain executive powers—such as raising an army, borrowing money from foreign countries, and concluding treaties—in order to carry on the struggle against Great Britain. These powers were codified shortly after independence in an agreement known as the Articles of Confederation. The articles were approved by the Congress in 1777 and were ratified successively by the various states, concluding with Maryland in 1781.

B.2.

The Lack of Central Power

Under the Articles of Confederation, the states explicitly retained their sovereign power, which meant that their individual legislatures remained supreme in matters of taxation and administration of justice, as provided by their own constitutions. Congress was a body in which only the states, not the people, were represented; it functioned as a large plural executive, not as a legislature. Thus, Congress could only ask the states for money to run the government, and the states might contribute or withhold funds at their pleasure. In the unstable financial climate of post-independence America, these limitations on its power prevented the Congress from keeping domestic peace or inspiring respect abroad.

During the period in which the articles were in force, nationalists such as Washington, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton worried that rivalries between the states and social conflicts within them threatened the ability of the United States to survive as a political entity.

An uprising in Massachusetts known as Shays’ Rebellion convinced them that there could be no security for people or property without a central government to exert authority over, and within, the states.

B.3.

The Constitution

The more ardent nationalists, including Madison and Hamilton, believed that the Articles of Confederation would have to be discarded, but it was with the intention of revising them that Congress agreed in 1787 to permit a convention of delegates from all the states to propose amendments to the system. Meeting at Philadelphia from May to September, with George Washington as its president, the convention drew up the Constitution of the United States. In general, this laid the foundations for an efficient national union by making the people, not the states, the parties to the agreement. Largely the work of Madison, James Wilson, Roger Sherman, and other nationalist delegates, the Constitution substituted a fully articulated government of three branches—executive, legislative, and judiciary—for the weak, quasi-governmental Confederation Congress.

The Constitution became law in 1788, after 9 states (the required two thirds) had ratified it; 12 states ratified the document by the end of 1788. (Rhode Island, which had sent no delegates to the Philadelphia convention, did not join the Union until it ratified the Constitution in May 1790.) On March 4, 1789, the first Congress of the United States elected under the Constitution assembled in New York, the then national capital. On April 30 George Washington, who had been unanimously elected the first President of the United States, was inaugurated in New York.

B.4.

The First Party Conflict

The financial policies of Washington’s secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton, aroused opposition from those who felt his measures neglected the agricultural class and favoured the bankers and manufacturers. The debates in Congress and elsewhere in 1790 and 1791 over Hamilton’s measures revealed a distinct cleavage in the political and economic ideas of the nation, and this division was soon manifested in the formation of the first two important political parties in US history: the Federalists and the Republicans.

The Federalists advocated a strong federal government existing to serve the national interest, guided by the educated and wealthy classes. The Republicans, whose outstanding leaders were James Madison and Thomas Jefferson, believed in the ability of the common people to function as their own governmental officers and advocated strict limitation of federal powers and protection of states’ rights. The Federalist Party was supported by the moneyed and commercial interests, especially merchants in the north-eastern cities; the Republicans were supported mainly by farmers, particularly in the South and West, and by artisans and other urban workers.

The two parties also disagreed strongly on US foreign policy. Republicans sympathized with the ideology of the French Revolution and generally favoured France over Great Britain. Federalists saw the French Revolution as an example of chaotic subversion of established law and order, and favoured strict neutrality. President Washington inclined toward the Federalist viewpoint and in 1793 proclaimed a policy of US neutrality in the ongoing wars between Great Britain and France.

In domestic matters, antagonism between Federalists and Republicans built up steadily after Federalist suppression of the so-called Whiskey Rebellion in 1794. Tensions finally climaxed in 1798, when the Federalist-controlled Congress passed the Alien and Sedition Acts. These laws, designed to silence all Republican criticism of Federalist policy, struck Republicans as unconstitutional infringements on the rights of free speech and press, and provided one of the main issues in the presidential election of 1800. The victory of Thomas Jefferson over John Adams signified a repudiation of the Federalist theory that government should be conducted by the “rich, the well born, and the able” and a triumph for the idea that ordinary people were fit to govern themselves. The Federalist Party, although it nominated presidential candidates until 1816, never again won a national election.

B.5.

Jefferson’s Presidency

The most important event in Jefferson’s first administration was the acquisition by the United States of the Louisiana territory, a vast area encompassing the lands between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains, from the Gulf of Mexico to Canada. Ceded to Spain in 1762 during the French and Indian War, the land had been reacquired by France in 1800 through a secret treaty. The offer of Napoleon Bonaparte to sell the region for a mere $15 million was of such obvious benefit to the United States that in 1803 Jefferson concluded a treaty purchasing Louisiana from France and by this act, doubled the area of the United States. See Louisiana Purchase.

Jefferson was re-elected in 1804. His second administration was marked chiefly by growing tension in foreign affairs. In their intensifying wars against each other, both Britain and France adopted restrictive economic measures that injured neutral commerce, especially that of the United States. To force withdrawal of these measures, Jefferson had Congress pass a number of acts designed to deprive Britain and France of US goods and to exclude their products from the United States; the most important of these measures were the Non-Importation Act (1806), the Embargo Acts (1807, 1808), and the Non-Intercourse Act (1809).

B.6.

The War of 1812

These acts, and similar measures taken in the administration of Jefferson’s successor—James Madison, also a Republican—failed to change the policies of Britain and France and resulted in severe financial loss to US merchants and shipowners. Britain aroused special animosity, not only because its policies damaged US commerce, but also because the Royal Navy routinely stopped American merchant ships on the pretext of searching for naval deserters, and pressed many US citizens into service aboard British warships. President Madison hoped to resolve the crisis by diplomacy, but by June 1812 he could no longer resist congressional pressure. He sent Congress a message describing the outrages committed by Britain, and Congress responded with a declaration of war.

The War of 1812 settled none of the issues that had brought it about, but it nevertheless had three important results in the United States. It created a strong feeling of national union and pride; it destroyed the national political influence of the Federalists; and it ended the dominance of American political affairs by European events.

B.7.

Era of Good Feeling

In the decade following the War of 1812, the powers of the federal government were augmented by several important decisions of the Supreme Court, under Chief Justice John Marshall, that limited various legislative and executive powers of the states. The national territory also expanded during the decade, when Spain ceded Florida (then East Florida) to the United States in 1819; West Florida, a strip of land along the Gulf of Mexico extending westward from East Florida to the mouth of the Mississippi River, had been forcibly annexed by the United States in 1810. In foreign affairs, the strong national spirit was demonstrated chiefly in the promulgation of the Monroe Doctrine, a statement of policy by President James Monroe that announced the determination of the United States to prevent any further colonization by European nations in either South or North America. The statement thus implied the United States would aid the South American republics, formed in the first quarter of the 19th century by revolt from Spain, in defence of their independence.

This period of strong national unity, often referred to as the Era of Good Feeling, was, however, a prelude to an era of strife between various sections of the nation over economic, social, and political issues that was destined to continue for four decades and culminate in the American Civil War (1861-1865).

B.8.

Westward Migration

By this time, the West, the region lying west of the Allegheny Mountains, had been settled by people from the seaboard colonies or states in two successive waves of migration. The first began after the region was secured to Britain from the French by its victory in 1763 in the French and Indian War, and then won from Britain during the American War of Independence; it continued to the end of the 18th century. By the last decade of the century many sections of the frontier territories had become sufficiently populated to enter the Union. Vermont, a frontier region settled chiefly by New Englanders, became a state in 1791; Kentucky, in 1792; Tennessee, in 1796; and Ohio, in 1803. The westward movement slackened during Jefferson’s first administration, which was characterized by business prosperity in the East. When restrictions on business caused economic troubles in the East, beginning about 1806, the westward movement resumed and a second wave of migration took place. It resulted in the addition to the Union of the states of Louisiana (1812), Indiana (1816), Mississippi (1817), Illinois (1818), and Alabama (1819).

B.9.

Cotton and the South

The South was principally devoted to the growing of cotton on large plantations with black slave labour. In contrast to the hardy, vigorous, and crude life of the people on the western frontier, the southern planters led lives characterized by aristocratic social grace and culture. Nevertheless, the West and the South, both devoted largely to agriculture, had similar interests and leaders in the early period of sectional conflict. However, as time passed, the conflict between North and South over the issue of slavery and the preservation of the Union overshadowed every other sectional conflict; in this fundamental difference, the various western states took the side of the section, North or South, in which they were geographically situated.

B.10.

Manufacturing and the North-East

Stimulated by the new inventions and processes of the Industrial Revolution, the North-East became a great manufacturing centre in the first two decades of the 19th century. The rapid growth of the large cities of Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore was partly engendered by the canals and railways that were built at the time between West and East, giving the great trading centres easier access to the products of the West. These new means of transport replaced the crude roads that had been almost the only means of east-west travel in the first quarter of the 19th century. The North-East was conservative in politics and social life; financial and political power in the section was held by the manufacturing and mercantile classes.

B.11.

The Election of 1824

The conflict between the mercantile aristocracy of the North-East, the agricultural aristocracy of the South, and the frontier democracy of the West was first manifested in the presidential election of 1824. The three principal candidates, all members of the Republican Party, were John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts, representing the conservative elements of the party; Andrew Jackson, born in South Carolina but at the time a US senator from Tennessee, leader of the democratic western frontier element and the border and southern faction; and Henry Clay, born in Virginia and at the time a US representative from Kentucky and the Speaker of the House, who was Jackson’s rival for leadership of the West and South.

After a bitter campaign no candidate had received the required majority of electoral votes, and the House of Representatives chose Adams as President. Because Jackson had received the plurality of electoral votes, his followers claimed that the election of Adams was contrary to the will of the people, and the Republican Party split into two sections. One, the National Republican Party, followed Adams and Clay; the other, the Democratic-Republican Party, was led by Jackson, John C. Calhoun of South Carolina, and William H. Crawford of Georgia.

B.12.

The Tariff and Nullification

The principal controversy in the Adams administration involved the question of tariff. The North favoured a protective tariff; the South, which had advocated it in 1816, now opposed it as it had no manufactures of its own that might benefit from a high tariff. Southern leaders held that the levying of such a tariff taxed the economy of one section of the nation for the benefit of another section and asserted that this procedure was unconstitutional. The North, however, with its larger population, controlled Congress. In 1824 Congress passed a tariff raising the average duty from 20 per cent to 36 per cent; in 1828 it passed a tariff levying even higher duties. The 1828 tariff, the so-called Tariff of Abominations, excited extreme anger in the South.

The South did nothing, however, during the Adams administration to implement its declared right to nullify acts of Congress, hoping that Jackson would be elected as President in 1828 and would favour a low tariff. Jackson defeated Adams in 1828, but he disappointed the South by declaring that Congress was within its rights in levying a protective tariff. Then in 1832 Congress passed a new tariff bill that was again highly protective in character. Indignation over the tariff immediately precipitated drastic action by South Carolina. A convention summoned by its legislature ordered its citizens not to pay the duties imposed by the tariff law and informed the federal government that it would secede from the Union if the federal government attempted to enforce the law. Military conflict between South Carolina and the Union seemed imminent, but the issue was settled by compromise: Congress passed a new tariff law providing for a gradual reduction of duties over a period of ten years, until the rates were no higher than the 1816 levels, and South Carolina cancelled its Ordinance of Nullification.

B.13.

The Whigs and the Democrats

Jackson was an autocratic and arbitrary executive; he exercised such power over his Cabinet and Congress that the period of his administrations is sometimes referred to as the “reign” of Andrew Jackson. Between 1834 and 1836 his enemies joined to create a new political party, the Whig Party. Several years earlier, the Democratic-Republicans, led by Jackson, had dropped the second half of the party name to become the Democratic Party, still in existence today. The Democratic Party was strong enough to elect Martin Van Buren in 1836 but was hurt by the financial panic of 1837. The ensuing business depression lasted throughout Van Buren’s administration and so discredited the Democrats that in 1840 the Whigs elected their candidate, William Henry Harrison. Harrison died, however, a few weeks after he was inaugurated in 1841, and the vice-president, John Tyler, became President.

The most fundamental political issue of this time was slavery, which now superseded controversy over the tariff. Slavery had been the cause of dispute since the founding of the nation, and from the fourth decade of the century to the middle of the sixth it dominated all phases of American life.

C.

The Debate Over Slavery

During the 17th century about 25,000 Africans were brought into the country, and slavery was legal in all the colonies. The demand for cheap labour to raise cotton, the principal southern crop, caused a great increase in the number of slaves in the South. The North gradually united in finding the institution of slavery obnoxious, and by the end of the 18th century all the states north of Maryland, except New Jersey, had provided for the abolition of slavery.

The US Constitution, however, recognized the institution. Congress in its early days sometimes acted for and sometimes against slavery. By the Ordinance of 1787 it prohibited slavery in the North-West Territory; in 1793 it passed the Fugitive Slave Law, which permitted a slave owner to reclaim, from any locality in the United States and on mere proof of ownership, any slave who had escaped custody; and in 1808 it forbade the further importation of slaves into the United States. Between 1791 and 1812 the Union admitted three states in which slavery was legal (Kentucky, Tennessee, and Louisiana) and two in which slavery was prohibited (Vermont and Ohio).

C.1.

Slavery and Western Expansion

The first serious sectional controversy over slavery took place when the Missouri Territory, in which slavery was legal, applied for statehood in 1818. Because Missouri was to be the first state lying entirely west of the Mississippi created from territory added to the Union since its formation, the northern opponents of slavery feared its admission as a slave state would serve as a precedent for admission of all future states. After a lengthy and violent controversy in Congress and throughout the country, Congress enacted the Missouri Compromise. Under this law, Missouri was to be admitted as a slave state, but slavery was to be prohibited in all other states to be created out of territory of the Louisiana Purchase above latitude 36°30′ north. Accordingly, Missouri was admitted to the Union in 1821. In the previous year, Maine had been admitted as a free state to placate the opponents of slavery. Maine had been part of Massachusetts since the 17th century but a movement for separate statehood had begun in 1785.

The controversy preceding the enactment of the Missouri Compromise focused the attention of the entire country on the problem of slavery. After 1820 pressure for its abolition strengthened in the North; proposals ranged from gradual emancipation with compensation for the slave owners, to immediate, unconditional emancipation. The South, feeling that the very basis of its economic and social order was threatened, passed stringent laws to keep its slaves under control. In 1840 it secured passage by Congress of the so-called gag resolution, providing that Congress would no longer consider any petition presented to it on the subject of slavery.

The division of national opinion on the slavery issue grew more violent through the third decade of the century and rose to a crisis in the fourth. At that time the United States acquired large new areas of territory in the West, and a struggle at once began between North and South over whether slavery should be permitted in those regions. The new territory comprised Texas, the Oregon region, California, and New Mexico (which then consisted of the area between California on the west and Texas on the east) and extended from the Mexican border to the southern border of Oregon.

C.2.

Texas and Oregon

Texas was a province of Mexico until 1836, when its inhabitants, for the most part settlers from the United States who had migrated there in large numbers since the beginning of the 19th century, concluded a successful revolt and established the Republic of Texas. The new nation desired annexation to the United States. The South, favouring enlargement of the national territory in which slavery was permitted, strongly advocated the annexation of Texas, where slavery was legal; the North opposed it.

The question of the annexation of Texas then became involved with that of the annexation of Oregon. By virtue of exploration and settlement, both the United States and Britain claimed this region. Agreement had been made between the two nations in 1818 (renewed in 1827) to share authority over the region, but in the 1840s strong sentiment arose in the United States for annexing Oregon. This was particularly favoured by those who desired the annexation of Texas; they felt that by the addition of Oregon, in which slavery had taken no hold, the North might be won over to the annexation of Texas.

The presidential campaign of 1844 was fought largely on the issue of the annexation of Texas and Oregon. In December 1845 Texas was admitted to the Union; in June 1846 Britain and the United States concluded a treaty extending the parallel of latitude 49° North (already the boundary between the United States and Canada east of the Rocky Mountains) west from the Rockies to the Pacific, thus bringing under sole US ownership all of Oregon south of the 49th parallel.

C.3.

The Mexican-American War

The annexation of Texas brought about a dispute between the United States and Mexico, which had never recognized the independence of Texas. Feeling grew strong in both countries; each massed troops along the Rio Grande, and a raid by American troops into Mexican territory led directly to the Mexican-American War, which was won by the United States. By terms of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (February 2, 1848), Mexico, in return for $15 million, ceded California and New Mexico to the United States and agreed to recognize the Rio Grande as the boundary between Texas and Mexico. By a treaty negotiated in 1853 and ratified by the US Senate in 1854, the United States purchased from Mexico an additional strip of territory in southern Arizona; this acquisition, known as the Gadsden Purchase, completed the western territorial expansion of the conterminous United States.

The struggle between South and North to introduce or prohibit slavery in the newly acquired regions had begun even before the peace treaty with Mexico was signed. In 1846 David Wilmot, a US representative from Pennsylvania, called for the prohibition of slavery in any territory to be acquired from Mexico. The Wilmot Proviso was several times passed by the House but each time defeated by the Senate; although it did not become law, it served to attract nationwide attention to the demands of the anti-slavery forces. In retaliation, the slavery interests proposed an amendment permitting slavery for the bill organizing Oregon into a national territory; the amendment was defeated, and in 1848 Oregon became a territory in which slavery was prohibited.

C.4.

California and New Mexico

The next important controversy over slavery took place in 1848, when President James K. Polk urged the civil organization of California and New Mexico, which had been under US military rule since 1846. Three plans concerning slavery in these areas were advanced: to permit slavery throughout California and New Mexico; to prohibit slavery throughout the two regions; or to divide each of the two into a free and a slave section by the parallel latitude 36°30′ north, as all of the Louisiana Purchase except Missouri had been divided. The discussion became so acrimonious that in the presidential election of 1848 the two principal political parties avoided committing themselves definitely on the issue. The balance of power in the election was held by a new party, the Free-Soil Party, to which most members of the Liberty Party, formed in 1839, had transferred their allegiance. The Free-Soil Party, like the Liberty Party, opposed slavery, but unlike the latter, which urged the abolition of slavery everywhere in the United States, it opposed only the extension of slavery into the territory west of the Mississippi.

D.

The Preservation of the Union

In the election of 1848 the Free-Soilers drew away a sufficient number of votes from the Democratic Party in New York State to enable General Zachary Taylor, a Whig, to win the state and the election. In the year following the election the slavery and anti-slavery groups in Congress were so evenly divided that no solution to the problem of slavery in the newly acquired regions could be reached. At this juncture Henry Clay, in January 1850, introduced legislation that proposed a series of compromises between the demands of the two groups. After a notable series of debates in the Senate, from January to July 1850, the propositions made by Clay were passed; in their enacted form they are known as the Compromise Measures of 1850. They provided principally for California to be admitted to the Union as a free state; for the entire region ceded by Mexico east of California to be opened to settlement by both slave-holders and anti-slavery advocates; and for a new fugitive slave law, making much more effective the measures that could be taken by a slave owner to reclaim an escaped slave.

Passage of the Compromise Measures of 1850 was followed by a four-year truce in the slavery controversy. The one notable exception to its popular acceptance was the refusal of many people in the North to obey the fugitive slave laws and their persistence in helping fugitive slaves who reached the North to escape to Canada through secret routes known as the Underground Railroad.

D.1.

The Kansas-Nebraska Act

In 1854 the organization of the central part of the Louisiana Purchase arose as a pivotal issue of the slavery debate. In January, Stephen A. Douglas, a US senator from Illinois and a leader of the Democratic Party in the North, introduced the Kansas-Nebraska Act. This act provided that the central part of the Louisiana Purchase be divided into two territories, Nebraska to the north and Kansas to the south, and that the territories’ inhabitants would decide for themselves whether they desired the institution of slavery. Because this division contradicted the Missouri Compromise, provisions of that law would be repealed.

The Kansas-Nebraska Act aroused the bitterest criticism and opposition to slavery that had yet appeared in the North. It destroyed the Whig Party by creating bitter antagonism between southern members who had supported the measure and northern members who had opposed it, and also brought about violent conflict in Kansas between abolitionist settlers who had emigrated from New England for the purpose of making Kansas a free state and pro-slavery forces who invaded Kansas from the neighbouring slave state of Missouri to vote in favour of slavery. The pro-slavery forces sacked and burned the anti-slavery town of Lawrence in May 1856, and in retaliation John Brown, a fanatical abolitionist, led a group who killed five pro-slavery adherents at Pottawatomie Creek.

Most importantly, the Kansas-Nebraska Act led directly to the formation of the Republican Party. The founders of the party denounced slavery as an unmitigated evil and opposed its extension; they specifically demanded the repeal of the Kansas-Nebraska Act and the fugitive slave laws. The new party, however, was dominated not by abolitionists, who sought an immediate end to the institution of slavery, but by Free-Soilers, who sought merely to confine slavery to its existing boundaries.

D.2.

The Election of 1856

The Republican Party held its first national convention in 1856 and nominated John C. Frémont of California for president. The Democratic Party chose James Buchanan of Pennsylvania; a third candidate, former President Millard Fillmore, was nominated by the American Party, whose campaign stressed Fillmore’s ability to restore sectional harmony. Buchanan carried the election, but in its first national campaign the Republican Party made a remarkably good showing.

D.3.

Slavery Sanctioned

Buchanan hoped to end the agitation over the slavery question, but events in his administration brought the issue to its final crisis. The South won two important victories in the controversy. The Dred Scott decision issued in 1857 by the US Supreme Court and the obiter dictum opinion of Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney of Maryland sanctioned the institution of slavery by declaring that slaves were property and not citizens and that Congress had no right to prohibit slavery in the territories. In December of the same year the pro-slavery element in Kansas managed by fraud to have the state adopt the pro-slavery Lecompton Constitution, and although a majority of the citizens of the territory opposed the constitution, Buchanan recommended to the Senate that Kansas be admitted as a state under its provisions. The bill to bring this about was passed by the Senate but defeated by the House. (Kansas was finally admitted to the Union as a free state in 1861.) A series of debates in 1858 between the two aspirants for the office of senator from Illinois, Stephen A. Douglas and Abraham Lincoln, centred the attention of the entire country as never before on the political and moral aspects of the problem of slavery. In these debates, Douglas advocated popular sovereignty, while Lincoln stood for congressional control of slavery in the territories. Douglas won the election, but the debates established Lincoln as the leader of the Republican Party in the West.

D.4.

Secession and War

The Republicans, with a platform hostile to slavery in the territories, won the election of 1860. Although the party declared it had no intention of interfering with slavery in the southern states, the South felt that nothing would prevent it from becoming controlled by abolitionists intent on eliminating slavery from the Union. On December 20, 1860, South Carolina seceded from the Union. A few days later military forces of the state laid siege to the federal garrison at Fort Sumter in the Charleston harbour. South Carolina was followed within a month by Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, and Georgia; and later by Louisiana, Texas, Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennessee.

On February 4, 1861, delegates from six of the seceding states met at Montgomery, Alabama, and formed a provisional government under the title of the Confederate States of America. Subsequently, several unsuccessful attempts were made to resolve by compromise the issues that were steadily driving North and South to war. Lincoln, in his inaugural address on March 4, 1861, made his position clear: he did not intend to interfere with slavery in the states where it existed, but, at the same time, he declared that no state had the right to leave the Union as and when it pleased. On April 12 the besiegers of Fort Sumter began a bombardment of the fort, which surrendered two days later. On April 15 Lincoln called upon the loyal states for 75,000 volunteers to defend the Union. For a detailed account of the campaign that followed, see American Civil War.

E.

The Post-War Period

The Civil War settled the two great problems that had been agitating the nation almost since its foundation. The North’s victory assured permanent union based on the supremacy of the nation over the states. In addition, although the war was fought primarily to preserve the Union, the North also included in its war aims the abolition of slavery. Acts passed by Congress in 1862 abolished slavery in the territories, and on January 1, 1863, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which declared free all slaves in the rebellious states. Finally, on December 6, 1865, the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery in all the states and territories of the United States, was ratified.

E.1.

Supremacy of the Republican Party

The Republican Party remained in control of both houses of Congress until 1875 and of the presidency from 1869 until 1885. The war hero Ulysses S. Grant was President from 1869 to 1877, to be followed by Rutherford B. Hayes (1877 to 1881), James A. Garfield (1881), and Chester A. Arthur (1881 to 1885). Their policies generally favoured the interests of big business and, especially in the Grant administration, were tolerant of corruption.

The first issue that the nation faced after the Civil War was determining how to bring the seceded states back into the Union. Lincoln’s wartime plan for Reconstruction of the southern states was to readmit them on liberal and easy terms and Andrew Johnson, who became President on April 15, 1865, after the assassination of Lincoln, initially espoused similar views. However, his attempt to put them into effect without consulting Congress brought about a series of bitter disputes between the executive and legislative branches of the national government. The quarrel was won by Congress, which passed the Reconstruction Acts of 1867. By this plan, most of the South was divided into five military districts; suffrage was granted to the black male population; and by the third section of the 14th Amendment (adopted 1868) to the Constitution, the former political leaders of the South were denied participation in the various state governments.

The resulting Reconstruction governments provoked great resentment in the South. Southerners were unwilling to accept any form of government in which blacks and northerners played a significant role and attempted to disrupt the Reconstruction governments with outbreaks of violence and through intimidation, orchestrated principally by the secret society known as the Ku Klux Klan. The North eventually grew tired of imposing Reconstruction by force, and by 1877 white southerners had regained control of all their state governments.

Because of the alliance between financial interests and the Republican Party machine, Republican rule during the first two decades after the Civil War resulted in a period of unparalleled favouritism towards big business. Also during this period, a series of frauds was perpetrated, notably during the administration of President Grant. Unscrupulous politicians in alliance with corrupt business executives stole from both the public treasury and the public domain. By the Homestead Act of 1862, which was intended to encourage western migration, the government gave 65 hectares (160 acres) of land free to any head of a family who contracted to cultivate the tract for five years; millions of acres, however, were placed fraudulently into the hands of so-called land sharks.

To counter this state of affairs, a dissident group within the Republican Party, called the Liberal Republicans, initiated (1870-1872) a movement to bring about civil service reform, to reduce the protective tariff that was causing high prices, and to withdraw the federal troops upholding the black Republican state governments in the South; the group also condemned the corruption in the national government. In the election of 1872 the Liberal Republicans nominated the newspaper editor Horace Greeley for president. Although he was also the nominee of the Democratic Party, he was defeated by Grant, the Republican candidate.

Outside the party, the Granger Movement arose among American farmers protesting against the economic burdens imposed on the agricultural classes of the West and elsewhere by the railways, particularly in the form of high freight rates charged to carry crops and supplies. A movement to bring about labour reforms and currency reforms that would make more money available to the debtor classes, especially the farmers, resulted in the formation of the Greenback Party, later called the Greenback-Labor Party.

The election of 1876 was won by the Republican Rutherford B. Hayes. His administration was marked by efforts to inaugurate various reforms, all of which were opposed by most other party leaders. It was also notable for two financial measures. One was the Bland-Allison Act of 1878, which answered the demands of western silver-mine owners, who wanted a market for their product, and of western farmers and others, who desired an increased amount of currency in circulation. The other was the resumption by the US Treasury in 1879 of specie payment—that is, payment in gold for outstanding paper money, which had been suspended during the Civil War.

Largely because of his opposition to the Republican machine, Hayes refused renomination by the Republicans in 1880. Instead, James A. Garfield was elected over the Democratic candidate, Winfield S. Hancock, and once in office, he opposed the Republican machine leaders, principally by refusing to make federal appointments according to their orders. On July 2, 1881, Garfield was shot by a disappointed office-seeker, Charles J. Guiteau, and died on September 19; he was succeeded by the vice-president, Chester A. Arthur, who was faithful to the party machine.

E.2.

Re-Emergence of the Democratic Party

During Arthur’s administration, several off-year elections in which the Democratic Party won important state offices alerted the Republican Party to the growing dissatisfaction with its partisan policies; notable among these Democratic victories was the election of Grover Cleveland as Governor of New York. The Republicans sought to placate this dissatisfaction by passing in 1883 a civil service reform bill, but national feeling had so turned against the Republican Party by 1884 that for the first time since 1856 the Democrats won the presidency. Cleveland defeated the Republican nominee, James G. Blaine, after a campaign remarkable for the rancour with which the two parties attacked each other.

F.

Domestic Affairs (1885-1920)

F.1.

Beginnings of the Labour Movement

Cleveland’s administration was noted for the emergence of labour as an organized economic and political force in the United States. Trade unions were formed on a national scale between 1861 and 1866, and the first attempt to unite all trade unions into one federation took place in 1866, with the organization of the National Labor Union, which was disbanded in 1872 because of internal strife. It was succeeded by the Knights of Labor, organized in 1869. By 1886 this body was a national organization with more than 700,000 members. In Cleveland’s administration, labour for the first time in the United States made vigorous claims, with demands for higher wages and shorter hours, to a larger share of the national income than it had previously enjoyed. Such demands resulted in unprecedented conflict between capital and labour; in 1886 and 1887 an estimated 3,000 strikes took place in the United States.

F.2.

Railway Regulation and the Tariff

In Cleveland’s administration also, much criticism was directed at the railways, which had practically a monopoly of freight transport on western routes and practised extortion and discrimination in setting freight rates. In 1887 the US Congress passed the Interstate Commerce Act to regulate railways, establishing a precedent for similar regulation of other interstate commercial enterprises.

The most important issue in Cleveland’s administration, however, was the tariff. On taking office, the president found a surplus of nearly $500 million in the Treasury—as a result of the high protective tariffs that had prevailed since the Civil War. Cleveland felt that bringing about a reduction in the tariff was in the interest of consumers and taxpayers. Through his influence, the House of Representatives passed a bill calling for a reduction of the tariff by approximately 8 per cent, but the bill failed to pass the Senate. The tariff therefore became the principal issue of the presidential campaign of 1888. Although Cleveland was actually a proponent of a low tariff, the Republican Party made it appear that he favoured a free-trade policy that would enable British manufacturers to undersell US manufacturers in the US market. Using this tactic, the Republican Party successfully brought about the election of Benjamin Harrison.

F.3.

The Harrison Administration

Harrison’s administration brought a reversal of the financial policies of Cleveland. Congress disposed of the Treasury surplus by making large appropriations for pensions, naval vessels, lighthouses, coastal defences, and other projects. It also passed the McKinley Tariff Act, which raised the already high protective duties and resulted in higher prices for many household commodities, and the Sherman Antitrust Act (1890), which declared illegal “every contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade”. Although the nation favoured this measure, it reacted against the higher prices brought about by the McKinley Act by electing a Democratic Congress in 1890. In 1892 former Democratic President Cleveland won his second term. A feature of the campaign was the emergence of a new political party—the People’s Party, usually referred to as the Populist party—formed principally by western farmers and workers who were members of the Farmers’ Alliances or of the American Federation of Labor.

F.4.

The Second Cleveland Administration

Cleveland’s second administration was marked by increasing conflict between the interests of the agricultural reformers, whose followers lived in the West, and those of the large bankers and manufacturers of the country, the seat of whose enterprises was generally in the East. Although pledged to a tariff for revenue only, Congress yielded to the desires of senators devoted to protecting the interests of large corporations or trusts by passing another high protective tariff. In addition, the US Supreme Court declared unconstitutional the income tax law. Besides legislation and judicial decisions that displeased the West, the administration saw a period of industrial depression, high prices, widespread unemployment, lockouts, and strikes.

The most important strike was that in 1894 of the employees of the Pullman Company, who were led by the American Railway Union. It resulted in violence, the deaths of workers, and the destruction of property. President Cleveland sent federal troops to Chicago to restore order, and the federal courts issued an injunction to break the strike. Among working classes, particularly the Populists and the more radical Democrats, the episode resulted in increasing discontent with the administration. This dissatisfaction was expressed at the Democratic convention of 1896. The Democrats nominated William Jennings Bryan for president; the Republicans, William McKinley. After a strenuous contest, McKinley defeated Bryan.

F.5.

The McKinley Administrations

The principal event of McKinley’s first administration was the Spanish-American War (1898), fought over the issue of the liberation of Cuba. In defeat, Spain relinquished Cuba and ceded to the United States the Philippine Islands, Guam, and Puerto Rico. Expansion of the nation to include regions outside of the North American continent was denounced as imperialism by the Democratic Party, and became the principal issue of the 1900 presidential campaign. The nation, however, supported the policy of expansion and in the election McKinley again defeated Bryan. In September 1901 McKinley was assassinated by an anarchist, and Vice-President Theodore Roosevelt became President.

F.6.

Theodore Roosevelt and Progressivism

Roosevelt’s policies, designed to secure a greater measure of social justice, were outlined in his first message to Congress. His address included demands for federal supervision and regulation of all interstate corporations; for amendment of the Interstate Commerce Act to prohibit railways from giving special rates to shippers; for the conservation of natural resources; for federal appropriations for irrigation of arid regions in the West; and for extension of the merit system in civil service.

Roosevelt was particularly noted for his policy regarding the trusts—business combinations formed for the purpose of reducing competition and controlling prices. The number of trusts in the United States had increased greatly at the end of the 19th century, and many had practical monopolies of vital commodities such as oil, beef, coal, and sugar, or of important utilities such as the railways. During Roosevelt’s administrations, Congress passed several measures designed to help enforce the antitrust laws already on the statute books and the Department of Justice instituted 43 suits against the trusts, winning several important judicial decisions, including one ordering the dissolution of the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey as a holding company with a monopoly on oil refining (see Rockefeller, John D(avison)).

Other domestic reforms in Roosevelt’s programme, which he called the Square Deal, were his expansion of forest reserves and national parks; the appointment of the National Conservation Commission in 1908 to promote further conservation; and the passage of the Meat Inspection Act and the first of the Pure Food and Drug Acts. Roosevelt gained worldwide importance through his dramatic speeches and actions as president, his inauguration of the building of the Panama Canal, and his activities in ending the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905). He declined to run for re-election in 1908 and the Republicans nominated his Secretary of War, William Howard Taft, who easily defeated his Democratic opponent, William Jennings Bryan.

F.7.

The Taft Administration

A pronounced split over the tariff questions and other issues developed in the Republican Party during Taft’s administration. On one side was the conservative element, the so-called standpatters, who wanted a high tariff and opposed the kind of reforms initiated by Roosevelt; on the other side were the so-called insurgents, later known as progressives, who denounced a high tariff as a betrayal of the promises made in the Republican platform and criticized the administration for refusing to continue the reforms begun by Roosevelt.

In January 1911 the Republican senator from Wisconsin, Robert M. La Follette, organized the National Republican Progressive League to take political action for the principles of the progressive element in the Republican Party. Standpatters and progressive Republicans engaged in a bitter battle for control of the Republican national convention of June 1912. Defeated in their efforts to seat their delegates, the progressives, led by Roosevelt, bolted the convention and in August organized the Progressive Party. Popularly known as the Bull Moose party, the progressives nominated Roosevelt for president. The regular Republican convention had nominated Taft, and the Democratic Party nominated Governor Woodrow Wilson of New Jersey. Because of the split in the Republican ranks, Wilson won decisively.

F.8.

Wilson and the New Freedom

In his inaugural address, Wilson announced his dedication to the task of improving the national life in all possible aspects. His social, economic, and political policies as a unit are sometimes known as the New Freedom, from the title of a volume he published in 1913. Displaying unusual executive ability and skilful control of his Cabinet and Congress during most of his two terms in office, Wilson succeeded in carrying out notable revisions and reforms in the laws governing the tariff, the banking system, trusts, labour, and agriculture.

Under Wilson’s guidance, Congress in 1913 passed the Underwood Tariff Act, which provided for a general decrease in the tariff schedules and for an income tax to bring in sufficient revenue to compensate for any loss in national revenue occasioned by the lower tariff duties. To provide the means for furnishing an elastic currency and to establish more effective supervision of banking, Wilson advocated the passage by Congress of the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, which resulted in the organization of the Federal Reserve System.

Wilson considered private monopoly “indefensible and intolerable” and prevailed on Congress in 1914 to pass two important pieces of legislation in regard to trusts. One established the Federal Trade Commission to investigate and prevent unfair methods of business competition; the other was the Clayton Antitrust Act, designed primarily to punish those guilty of employing such unfair methods.

Wilson also achieved a victory in domestic affairs when the 19th Amendment to the US Constitution, which legalized women’s voting rights, was passed in 1919 and ratified in 1920 (see Women’s Suffrage).

The most important issues of Wilson’s first and second terms, however, were those arising from the outbreak of World War I in Europe in 1914 and the making of peace in 1919. For discussion of these issues, see World War I below.

G.

Foreign Affairs (1865-1920)

From 1865 to 1898, US foreign policy was strongly nationalistic; it did not concern itself with world issues. As a result of the Spanish-American War, however, the United States acquired territorial possessions outside its continental area, giving the nation problems of colonial government and control that, together with other factors, compelled it to assume an increasing role in world affairs. In 1917 the United States was finally drawn into the war against Germany and its allies and was influential in the writing of the Treaty of Versailles, which formally ended the war in 1919.

G.1.

The Influence of Foreign Governments (1865-1898)

During the American Civil War, both France and Britain sought to profit by the federal government’s preoccupation with its conflict with the South. Napoleon III ignored the US Department of State’s protests when, in 1863, he made Maximilian, Archduke of Austria, the Emperor of Mexico. In 1864 French troops supported Maximilian’s invasion of Mexico, but after the close of the Civil War more vigorous US objections resulted in their withdrawal in 1867. As for Britain, during the Civil War it had permitted construction in British shipyards of Confederate cruisers, which inflicted severe losses on northern shipping. The United States sought compensation from Britain for these losses, particularly those caused by the steamship Alabama (see Alabama Claims).

In contrast, the amicable Russo-American relations of the period led in 1867 to the US purchase from Russia of Alaska, then known as Russian America; the United States paid $7.2 million in gold for the territory.

The last quarter of the 19th century also witnessed a number of disputes between the United States and Britain. These included the Bering Sea Controversy, a dispute over US fishing rights in waters off Canada and Alaska; and a dispute that arose when the United States felt that Britain was attempting to add Venezuelan territory to British Guiana (now Guyana). The Venezuelan boundary question engendered war fever in both countries; the matter was finally settled in 1897 by arbitration. The last third of the century was also marked by the US acquisition of harbour privileges in the Samoan Islands, and in 1899 by the acquisition of the island of Tutuila (see American Samoa). In 1893 a revolution in the Hawaiian Islands was led by US sugar-planters, who had acquired large interests there since earlier in the century. The revolt resulted in the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy and the subsequent annexation of the island group by the United States in 1898. In the last half of the century the United States also acquired several additional islands in the Pacific, including Wake Island and Midway.

The outstanding conflict with a foreign government in the second half of the 19th century was that with Spain over the island of Cuba. During the Ten Years’ War (1868-1878) between Spain and its Cuban subjects, a Spanish warship captured the US steamer Virginius, which was bringing supplies to the Cuban insurgents. The Spanish executed some of the crew, including eight US citizens. Called the Virginius Affair, this incident aroused considerable ill-feeling in the United States against Spain. Matters came to a climax when the US battleship Maine was blown up in Havana harbour on February 15, 1898, killing 260 people. Although it could not be determined at the time whether the Maine was blown up by the Spanish, by Cuban action, or by internal combustion, US opinion placed the blame on Spain. (In 1969 US Navy research confirmed that the explosion was actually caused by a defective boiler.) On April 19, 1898, Congress adopted a resolution that recognized Cuba’s independence, demanded that Spain withdraw from Cuba, and authorized the president to use force to carry out the resolution; this was practically a declaration of war against Spain.

In the Spanish-American War that ensued, the United States won a decisive victory. The Treaty of Paris, which concluded the conflict on December 10, 1898, provided for the independence of Cuba; the cession by Spain to the United States of Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippine Islands; and the payment to Spain of $20 million by the United States for the Philippines.

G.2.

After the Spanish-American War

The conclusion of the Spanish-American War confronted the United States with the problem of organizing and administering Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and Cuba. The United States held a protectorate over Cuba until 1902, when the US occupation forces turned Cuba over to its first president, Tomás Estrada Palma. In Puerto Rico, Congress set up a civil government in 1900, and the Jones Act of 1917 granted US citizenship to Puerto Ricans. In the Philippines, insurgents led by Emilio Aguinaldo initially resisted the US occupation, but the last guerrillas gave up in 1902. The Jones Act of 1916 instituted an elected senate and promised eventual independence; however, not until July 4, 1946, did the Philippines become a sovereign state.

During the administration of President Theodore Roosevelt the foreign policy of the United States was aggressive, in keeping with Roosevelt’s motto, “Speak softly and carry a big stick.” In the Caribbean area, East Asia, and elsewhere, US policies were vigorously stated and enforced by diplomatic or military action when necessary. When US naval units in the Pacific were needed in the Caribbean Sea during the Spanish-American War, they were forced to steam down the coast of South America, around Cape Horn, and then northward. This circuitous route proved the necessity of an ocean-to-ocean canal either in Nicaragua or the Isthmus of Panama, which for reasons of national defence would be under exclusive US control. In 1903 the United States concluded the Hay-Herrán Treaty with Colombia, of which Panama was then a province, granting the United States a long-term lease over a zone 16 km (10 mi) wide in Panama. The Colombian senate rejected the treaty, whereupon a rebellion broke out in Panama. With the active support of the United States, Panama became an independent republic. By the Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty of 1903 with the new Republic of Panama, the United States obtained in perpetuity the zone it required. In return the United States made Panama an initial payment of $10 million and agreed to an annual payment of $250,000. Construction of the Panama Canal was begun at once and completed in 1914. (By treaties ratified in 1978, the United States relinquished the Panama Canal Zone in 1979 and will hand over the canal itself to Panama in the year 2000.)

By the Tolls Act of 1912, the United States levied tolls on all vessels using the Panama Canal excepting those of US registry employed in coastwise trade. Britain protested that the act violated treaty rights that had guaranteed equality of treatment in the Panama Canal for the ships of all nations. President Wilson desired to avoid friction with Britain while engaged in controversy with Japan over landholding rights in California and was also eager to obtain British support for US policy in Mexico. Congress eventually repealed the act in 1914.

Since 1910 the situation in Mexico had caused the US government great concern. In 1911 the dictator Porfirio Díaz had been overthrown by a revolution led by the reformer Francisco Madero. Madero, whose efforts to bring about reforms in Mexico were viewed sympathetically by the United States, was murdered in 1913, and General Victoriano Huerta seized government. Although 22 of the 27 Mexican states supported Huerta, and 26 foreign nations recognized him as President of Mexico, Wilson maintained that the new regime had brought about the murder of Madero and was, in addition, too weak to keep order in Mexico. In 1914 the United States allowed General Venustiano Carranza, the leader of a revolution against Huerta, to obtain arms in the United States. Huerta retaliated by acts of reprisal against US nationals, and the United States countered by forcibly occupying Veracruz.

In an attempt to prevent war between Mexico and the United States, Argentina, Brazil, and Chile mediated an agreement that resulted in the resignation of Huerta and the assumption of power by Carranza, whose government the United States recognized in 1915. A number of rebellions had been in progress against Carranza; all the leaders of these but one, Francisco (Pancho) Villa, now laid down their arms. In 1916 Villa led a raid into Columbus, New Mexico, killing 16 people and partly destroying the town by fire. With the permission of Carranza, the United States sent a military force into Mexico to find and punish Villa. However, Carranza, fearing that the US force might be used against his government, demanded its withdrawal, and the expedition was recalled without accomplishing its purpose.

G.3.

World War I

At the outbreak of the war in Europe, President Wilson formally proclaimed the neutrality of the United States. His proclamation was not sufficient, however, to prevent strong partisan feeling from arising in the country; nor could it prevent difficulties with both warring groups in respect to US neutral rights.

In 1915 Germany declared the waters surrounding Britain and Ireland a war zone in which German submarines would sink all enemy vessels without the visit or search stipulated by international law. Germany warned neutral ships not to enter the zone and also advised citizens of neutral nations not to travel on ships of the Allied nations. In May 1915 a German submarine torpedoed the British passenger liner Lusitania off the Irish coast without warning, causing the deaths of 1,198 people, of whom 128 were US citizens. The Germans asserted that the Lusitania was carrying munitions to Britain, and later research has proven this to be true. The American public was, nevertheless, outraged by the sinking, and strong protests by the US State Department brought a promise from Germany not to sink any passenger liners without taking precautions to protect the lives of non-combatants.

In March 1916, however, a German submarine sank an unarmed French Channel steamer, the Sussex, with the loss of two Americans. President Wilson threatened to sever diplomatic relations with the German government and, in May, Germany pledged not to sink merchant vessels without warning and without saving the lives of those aboard.

At the end of January 1917, Germany broke the so-called Sussex Pledge by declaring unrestricted submarine warfare in a zone even larger than the one it had proclaimed in 1915. On February 3 Wilson replied by breaking off diplomatic relations with Germany and later in the month Congress passed a bill permitting US merchant vessels to arm. As a result of new depredations by German submarines against neutral shipping, and the discovery of a plan made by the German Foreign Office to unite Germany, Mexico, and Japan against the United States if it entered the war, on April 2, 1917, Wilson requested Congress to declare war. On April 6, Congress passed a resolution declaring a state of war with Germany. See World War I.

Following the defeat of Germany, President Wilson played an important part in the peace conference in 1919 at Paris. Wilson intended to bring about a peace based on his programme known as the Fourteen Points, an idealistic plan for a just and lasting peace. However, he was frustrated by the other Allies, who were intent on inflicting penalties upon Germany. The Treaty of Versailles declared Germany guilty of all the economic losses sustained by the peoples of the Allied nations and established a Reparations Commission that subsequently imposed upon Germany reparations amounting to $33 billion. The only important part of Wilson’s peace programme that was written into the treaty was the Covenant of the League of Nations. Although Wilson toured the United States to raise support for the League and the treaty, the Senate did not ratify it. Subsequently, treaties between the United States and Germany, Austria, and Hungary were separately negotiated and ratified by the Senate.

H.

The Roaring Twenties: Boom and Crash

In 1920 Republican candidate Warren G. Harding was elected President. A time of unusual prosperity followed for US industry. After Harding’s sudden death in 1923, many of the men he appointed to government office were found to be corrupt. Even so, his vice-president and successor, Calvin Coolidge, won the presidential election of 1924. In the campaign of 1928, Republican Herbert C. Hoover ran against Democrat Alfred E. Smith. Hoover won the election, largely because of the nation’s continued prosperity and the fact that Smith was a Roman Catholic and opposed Prohibition in the United States.

H.1.

Immigration and Labour

In the 1920s Congress reversed the traditional US policy of unrestricted immigration by passing two acts, one in 1921 and one in 1924, that considerably reduced European immigration. In labour circles the period 1920 to 1932 was marked by the decline of trade unionism and the growth of industrial unionism. The latter tendency culminated in 1935 in the formation of the Committee for Industrial Organization, which in 1938 was constituted as the Congress of Industrial Organizations.

H.2.

Prohibition

The most enduring controversial issue of the period 1920 to 1932 was Prohibition. The movement to prohibit the manufacture and sale of intoxicating beverages in the United States originated in the early 19th century and culminated with the ratification, in January 1919, of the 18th Amendment to the Constitution. Thus began an era of home-brew, speakeasies, and gangster violence. In 1929 a presidential commission headed by former US Attorney-General George W. Wickersham concluded that federal enforcement of the anti-liquor laws was a failure. Public sentiment, meanwhile, had steadily been turning away from the “drys”, and in February 1933 Congress passed and submitted to the states the 21st Amendment to the Constitution, which gave the control of the liquor traffic back to the individual states; by December of that year, 36 states had ratified the amendment, and it was declared part of the Constitution.

H.3.

The Crash of 1929

In the first year of the Hoover administration the economic foundations of the nation were shaken by the stock market panic of 1929. During the boom after World War I, many people had developed a tendency to invest savings and earnings in speculative ventures. The rise in stock prices reached its height during the first six months of the Hoover administration, when individuals invested billions of dollars in the stock market, obtaining the money for such investments by borrowing from banks, mortgaging homes, and selling sound government securities, such as Liberty Bonds. By October 1929 the feverish wave of buying had exhausted itself and gave way to an equally feverish wave of selling. Prices dropped precipitously, and thousands of people lost all they had invested. On October 29 the New York Stock Exchange, the largest in the world, had its worst day of panic selling. By the end of the year declines in stock values reached $15 billion.

H.4.

The Great Depression

The stock market panic preceded an economic depression that not only spread over the United States but in the early 1930s became worldwide. In the United States many factories closed, unemployment steadily increased, banks failed in growing numbers, and the prices of commodities steadily fell. In spite of measures to extend emergency credit to individuals and corporations, the economic depression steadily worsened during the remainder of the Hoover administration.

By 1932 hundreds of banks had failed, hundreds of mills and factories had closed, mortgages on farms and houses were being foreclosed in large numbers, and more than 10 million workers were unemployed. The presidential campaign of 1932, in which the Democratic candidate was Franklin D. Roosevelt, was waged on the issues of Prohibition and the economic crisis. The Democratic platform called for outright repeal of the 18th Amendment and promised a “new deal” in economic and social matters to bring about recovery from the depression. The Democrats won with overwhelming success in the election, carrying all but six states.

H.5.

Foreign Affairs (1920-1932)

In foreign relations, the administrations of Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover were concerned principally with the problems of war debts due the United States, the related reparations due from Germany, and US attempts to obtain international cooperation on measures that would bring about permanent world peace.

During World War I and shortly afterwards, the US government had lent a total of about $10 billion to the Allies. By 1922 the Allies owed the United States this sum plus accumulated interest of $1 billion. Because the debtor nations claimed inability to pay the full amount owed, in 1922 Congress created the World War Foreign Debt Commission, which during the next four years negotiated agreements that materially reduced the debts and provided for annual payments to be distributed over a period of 62 years. Most of the debtor nations made their annual payments contingent on the reparation payments made to them by Germany. When Germany began to default on its reparation payments in 1923, the United States was instrumental in formulating plans, in 1924 and 1929, to help Germany pay by reducing the German obligations and extending credits to German industry. See Reparations.

During the period 1920 to 1932 the United States attempted to bring about permanent world peace in three ways: by promoting a policy of international limitation of armaments; by cooperating with France in framing a pact to renounce war as an instrument of national policy; and by cooperating with the League of Nations. The Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928, initiated by French Foreign Minister Aristide Briand and sponsored by US Secretary of State Frank B. Kellogg, was an earnest attempt to ensure world peace. Fifteen nations initially signed this agreement to renounce aggressive warfare and to settle disputes by peaceful means. The US Senate ratified the pact in 1929.

I.

The New Deal

The broad economic and social policies of the Roosevelt administration were collectively known as the New Deal. The purpose of the New Deal was twofold: recovery from the economic depression that had followed the financial crash of 1929 and stabilization of the national economy to prevent severe economic crises in the future.

I.1.

Relief Measures

The administration at once set up several agencies to bring relief to the unemployed and needy. Relief funds for the unemployed were distributed through state and local agencies and through several federal agencies that created temporary jobs. New laws and programmes aided farmers, industry, and labour. Through the Rural Electrification Administration, established in 1936, power lines were brought to many sparsely populated areas of the United States, resulting in modernization of rural living conditions and bringing modern appliances and equipment to farms and small towns. By the Social Security Act, passed in 1935 and amended in 1939, the United States took a great step towards providing economic security for its population; this act provided benefits for the elderly, unemployment compensation, and welfare services for mothers, children, the elderly, and people with disabilities.

The earliest sufferers from the crash of 1929 were investors in securities and depositors in banks; the interests of these groups were also considered by the New Deal, as were those of large-scale businesses. Large credit was extended to railways, building-loan companies, banks, agricultural-credit corporations, and insurance companies. To raise the money necessary to finance the New Deal programme, the government passed the Revenue Act of 1935, which slightly increased taxes on incomes, gifts, estates, corporate earnings, and excess profits. The government also borrowed money, and the US gross public debt grew from $22.5 billion in 1933 to $40.44 billion in 1939.

I.2.

Roosevelt Re-elected

The New Deal programme received praise from some who believed that by modifying the US free-enterprise system it had saved the country from adopting, possibly by revolutionary means, either a socialist or fascist system. It was severely condemned by others, who saw in Roosevelt’s policies only a dangerous curtailment of the rights assured by the free-enterprise system. In the 1936 election Roosevelt won one of the greatest political victories in US history, carrying every state except Maine and Vermont. In addition, black voters, following up their major switch to the Democratic Party in the 1934 elections, voted overwhelmingly for Roosevelt.

I.3.

Roosevelt’s Foreign Policy

Initially, the foreign policy of the United States during the Roosevelt administration was concerned with efforts to extend US foreign trade, especially in Latin America; with the problems created by the war between Japan and China, which began in 1937; with the outbreak of World War II in 1939; and with the entrance of the United States into the war in 1941.

Extension of US foreign trade was stimulated by the organization in 1934 of export-import banks through which the government was to make loans to firms intending to increase their sales in foreign countries. Trade also was spurred by reciprocal trade agreements between the United States and foreign countries for lowering of tariff duties. A policy, popularly known as the Good Neighbor Policy, of amicable relations with the countries of Latin America resulted in considerable extension of American trade there.

Meanwhile the United States had adopted measures to keep itself out of the war that had been threatening to break out in Europe since the coming to power in Germany of the National Socialist (Nazi) Party in 1933. Three neutrality acts (1935-1937) prohibited actions by US citizens that might aid a foreign belligerent; in particular, an embargo was placed on the export of “arms, munitions, and implements of war”.

Despite this policy of neutrality, the nation’s moral climate as well as its material interests began to dictate partiality, and the United States took a stand against the aggressive acts of Japan in Asia and of Germany and Italy in Europe. In 1937 President Roosevelt proposed that aggressive nations be “quarantined” by means of an economic boycott.

With the outbreak of World War II in Europe in September 1939, US aid to the nations resisting fascist aggression became definite and vigorous. Late in 1939 Congress partly repealed the arms embargo imposed by the neutrality acts; France and Britain could henceforth purchase war supplies in the United States. In September 1940 the US government transferred 50 old destroyers to the British, receiving in return long leases for US naval and air bases on British possessions in the Western hemisphere.

In 1940 Congress authorized loans to Latin American countries for defence purposes, and the United States and Canada set up the Permanent Joint Board to provide for North American defence; in September 1940 Congress passed the first US peacetime conscription act.

I.4.

Roosevelt’s Third Election

In 1940 the Democratic Party nominated Roosevelt for a third term, breaking the long precedent that had held presidents to a maximum of two terms in office. The rationale behind the nomination was that changing administrations in so critical a period would be inadvisable.

In March 1941 Congress passed the Lend-Lease Act, which empowered the president to transfer, sell, lend, or lease war supplies to any nation of which the defence was vital to US security. Towards the end of July the US State Department forbade the export of war materials to Japan, and it later rejected an agreement of friendship proposed by Japan on condition that the United States acknowledge the Japanese conquest of China.

An alliance between Britain and the United States was foreshadowed by the announcement in August 1941 of the Atlantic Charter, which stated the eight bases that the two countries desired as the foundations for a peace treaty. That year was marked also by a heated nationwide debate between the “isolationists”, who opposed both US participation in World War II and aid to Britain, and the “interventionists,” who felt that victory over the Axis powers was essential for US security.

J.

World War II and Aftermath

On December 7, 1941, the Japanese government launched an air attack on the US naval base at Pearl Harbor in the Hawaiian Islands. On the following day, at the request of the president, Congress declared a state of war between the United States and Japan. On December 11 Germany and Italy declared war on the United States.

J.1.

Allied Conferences

President Roosevelt’s principal diplomatic efforts took the form of a series of conferences, chiefly with the British prime minister, Winston Churchill, and the Soviet leader, Joseph Stalin. In meetings with Churchill from 1941 to 1943 at Washington, Quebec, and Casablanca, Roosevelt discussed the military conduct of the war and proposed the principle of unconditional surrender by the Axis powers. At the Cairo Conference in 1943, Roosevelt, Churchill, and Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek of China planned the prosecution of the war against Japan; at the Tehran Conference, also in 1943, with Churchill and Stalin, plans were formulated for a concerted attack on Germany; and at the Yalta Conference, in what is now Ukraine, in 1945, Churchill, Stalin, and Roosevelt decided to divide Germany into zones of occupation, to establish the United Nations, and to bring the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) into the war against Japan. Several other conferences laid the foundation for the organization of the UN and for other forms of worldwide cooperation after the war, notably the meetings in Moscow in 1943; at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire (see Bretton Woods Conference) in 1944; and at Dumbarton Oaks, in Washington, D.C., in 1944, at which basic plans were adopted for organizing the UN.

J.2.

Roosevelt’s Fourth Election and His Death

In the presidential campaign of 1944 Roosevelt ran for a fourth term, defeating the Republican candidate, Governor Thomas E. Dewey of New York. On April 12, 1945, Roosevelt suffered a cerebral haemorrhage and died. He was succeeded by Vice-President Harry S. Truman, whose first problems as President were the conclusion of the war and the establishment of world peace. On May 8, 1945, Germany formally surrendered to the Allies. Meanwhile, in the Pacific theatre, US forces were advancing towards the Japanese home islands. In the atmosphere of impending victory, a conference of the UN met in San Francisco to draft a charter for a permanent world organization to ensure lasting peace.

J.3.

Conclusion of the War

The increasing difficulties in Soviet-US relations, however, became evident at the Potsdam Conference in Germany in July, where agreements relating to the final division of Germany were reached. Some Americans, led by President Truman, had become convinced that Stalin was not living up to his agreements at Yalta to hold free elections in Romania and Bulgaria. The spirit of wartime cooperation increasingly gave way to mutual suspicion, misunderstanding, and recrimination, leading to the era of conflict known as the Cold War.

In August Truman authorized the use of the atomic bomb on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The bombs were dropped on August 6 and 9, 1945; the Japanese surrendered on August 14.

J.4.

Economic Affairs

Reconversion of the US economy to peacetime conditions and demobilization of the troops became the paramount issues in US domestic policies. The Truman administration formulated a 21-point programme calling for full employment, labour-management cooperation, heavy federal housing subsidies, increased unemployment compensation, extension of price controls, federal aid to education, guarantees of civil rights, increased minimum wage, and continued foreign aid. The president also recommended unification of the armed services and universal military training. Many of these programmes were vigorously opposed by the Republican-dominated Congress, and congressional rejection of price controls led to an 18 per cent increase in the cost of living in 1946. The economic situation became further complicated when almost 5 million workers struck for wage increases to meet the rising costs of living. In 1947 Congress responded to this strike activity by passing, over the president’s veto, the Labor-Management Relations Act, known as the Taft-Hartley Act, which placed limitations on the freedom to strike.

J.5.

Security Affairs

Despite these domestic problems, the United States continued its unprecedented participation in international affairs, through membership in the UN and other groups and through Allied conduct of war crimes trials. The control of atomic energy and atomic weapons became a major diplomatic question. The United States proposed the Baruch Plan, named after the US financier Bernard M. Baruch, its chief proponent, which called for turning over atomic bombs and secrets to the UN. However, Soviet leaders demanded the destruction of existing atomic weapons prior to or simultaneously with the creation of UN control. In 1946 atomic control in the United States was transferred from the army to the civilian Atomic Energy Commission. The National Security Act of 1947 unified the armed services under a Secretary of Defence and the joint Chiefs of Staff. It also established the National Security Council to plan and coordinate defence policies and the Central Intelligence Agency to gather and report strategic information from abroad.

J.6.

Containing Communism

In 1947, in an effort to contain the advance of communism in Europe, and especially in Greece and Turkey, President Truman announced the policy known as the Truman Doctrine, by which the United States furnished military and economic aid to countries threatened by aggression and subversion. An important adjunct of this policy was the Marshall Plan, proposed in June 1947 by Secretary of State George C. Marshall. Officially designated the European Recovery Program, it was a broad programme of economic rehabilitation. The policy of containment was expanded to the Western hemisphere in 1947, when the United States joined with 18 other American nations in signing the Rio Treaty, promising mutual defence and assistance against aggression on any of the signatory nations. In 1948 the United States agreed to the establishment of the Organization of American States to settle disputes among the nations of the Americas. As part of his worldwide campaign against communism, Truman also implemented the Point Four Program to aid developing nations in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

J.7.

The Berlin Airlift

The USSR responded to the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan with the formation of a new Communist International (the Cominform) and a tightening of its control of Czechoslovakia. In February 1948 a plan for the economic merger of the British and US occupation zones in West Germany went into effect following its acceptance by the Germans in those zones. In addition, a conference attended by representatives of the United States, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, France, and Great Britain was held in London to discuss the eventual political and economic merger of the French, British, and US occupation zones. In reaction to this violation of the Yalta and Potsdam agreements, the Soviet delegation withdrew from the Four-Power Allied Control Council and took steps to establish a Soviet-dominated East German state.

On June 24, 1948, following an agreement by the nations that had participated in the London Conference on the creation of a West German state, and the establishment of a West German currency by the Western occupying powers, the Soviets banned all rail traffic between Berlin and West Germany. In response, the British and US occupation authorities organized a system of air transport, known as the Berlin Airlift, to supply the Western-occupied sectors of the city (see Berlin Blockade). In April 1949 the foreign ministers of the United States, the United Kingdom, and France completed plans for combining their occupation zones of West Germany into a federal republic. Also in April the United States, Canada, and ten Western European nations arranged a guarantee of mutual defence and assistance in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, known as NATO.

J.8.

Truman Wins Election

In domestic matters, Truman proposed a programme of civil rights legislation, including laws against lynching and the abolition of the poll tax. He also issued an executive order that led to the eventual desegregation of the US armed forces. These actions cost him the support of many southern Democrats. At the Democratic national convention in 1948, many of these southerners left the Democratic Party, forming a group known as the States’ Rights Democrats, or Dixiecrat Party. Another new faction, the Progressive Party, urged greater efforts towards cooperation with the USSR.

However, Truman was elected and, at the outset of his first full term, sought support for a legislative programme known as the Fair Deal. Although most of his proposals were defeated in Congress, Truman was able to gain congressional approval for an expanded federal housing programme, minimum wage increases, and enlarged social security benefits.

J.9.

Turmoil over China

In 1951 a peace treaty ended the US occupation of Japan, and that country became the firmest US ally in Asia. In China, however, the nationalist government of Chiang Kai-shek, which had been supported by the United States, was unable to withstand the advance of Communist forces under Mao Zedong. By the end of 1949 government troops had been overwhelmingly defeated, and Chiang led his forces into exile on Taiwan. This development caused great turmoil in the United States when critics charged that the Truman administration had failed to support Chiang Kai-shek against the Communists. Further public unease occurred in September 1949, when Truman announced that the USSR had developed an atomic bomb. Secretary of State Dean G. Acheson stated, however, that the loss of the US nuclear monopoly would produce no fundamental change in US foreign policy.

J.10.

The Korean War

The events in China had made the Truman administration sensitive to further Communist expansion in Asia. In June 1950, when South Korea was invaded by the forces of Communist North Korea, Truman announced that the United States would intervene to assist the South Koreans. In an unprecedented move, the UN sponsored military action. On November 26, 1950, the Chinese Communists officially entered the war, and General Douglas MacArthur, in command of the UN forces, subsequently urged that he be allowed to bomb Chinese bases beyond the Yalu River (the Chinese border) and deploy Chiang’s troops against the Communists. Truman rejected these suggestions, however. When MacArthur became increasingly outspoken in his criticisms, the president relieved him of his command.

The conflict in Korea produced profound repercussions on US domestic affairs. The cost of living rose more than 5 per cent during the first six months of the war, wage and price controls were established, and on December 16, 1950, Truman established the Office of Defense Mobilization to supervise the war effort.

J.11.

The McCarthy Era

The Korean War also led to severe psychological dislocations as concern about Communism within the United States intensified. In 1950 Congress passed the McCarran Internal Security Act, which established a permanent Subversive Activities Control Board to follow Communist activities in the United States and barred from admission into the country any person who had been a member of a Communist organization. The activities of Senator Joseph R. McCarthy of Wisconsin aroused considerable controversy over the degree of Communist influence in the United States. Exploiting highly dubious evidence, McCarthy led a campaign of persecution against various government and military officials, entertainment figures, and others. See Un-American Activities, House Committee on.

K.

The Eisenhower Era

In July 1952 the Republican Party nominated General Dwight D. Eisenhower and Senator Richard M. Nixon of California as candidates for president and vice-president. The Democrats named Governor Adlai E. Stevenson of Illinois and Senator John Sparkman of Alabama. Eisenhower won easily, and the Republicans captured control of Congress. Eisenhower’s personal prestige contributed heavily to the Republican victory, as did frustration over the Korean War and fear of Communism at home.

In contrast to Roosevelt and Truman, Eisenhower granted much independence to his Cabinet. The administration made no effort to repeal New Deal legislation, but Eisenhower endeavoured to limit the role of national government, calling for greater local control of governmental affairs. In addition, he reduced taxes and pressed for drastic reductions in federal spending.

Among important actions taken by the new administration were the removal of all wage and price controls; the creation of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare; and the expansion of social security benefits. In its efforts to deal with a budget deficit, the administration attempted to cut back federal spending and submitted a balanced budget. However, in 1954 Eisenhower was forced to increase federal spending through aid to highway and school construction. Although the economy responded favourably, the crisis in agriculture worsened as huge surpluses developed despite flexible price-support and soil-conservation programmes.

K.1.

The Hunt for Communists

After the elections of 1952, public attention centred increasingly on the activities of Senator McCarthy, who took advantage of the administration’s silence to augment his own power and conducted numerous investigations into alleged Communist infiltration in government agencies, notably the State Department. When he extended his inquiries to the US Army, his irresponsible methods and accusations prompted the Senate to censure him in December 1954. In the meantime the Supreme Court moved to correct some of the worst abuses in civil liberties of the post-war period, and several of its rulings limited public investigations into private beliefs and associations.

K.2.

The Civil Rights Movement

The most urgent domestic issue of the period was the struggle of American blacks to end segregation and secure their full rights as citizens. Congress had opposed Truman’s moderate civil rights programme, and although the Eisenhower administration completed the desegregation of the government and armed forces, it was unwilling to initiate more radical programmes. Blacks, led by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, increasingly turned to the courts for assistance. On May 17, 1954, in the case of Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka, the US Supreme Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren unanimously outlawed racial segregation in public schools. Subsequent decisions in 1955 and 1956 called on local authorities to submit plans for desegregation and also ended racial segregation in intra-state transport.

In many southern states, attempts were made to circumvent these rulings. In September 1957 Governor Orval E. Faubus of Arkansas defied the call to integrate when he ordered the National Guard to prevent nine black students from attending Central High School in Little Rock. On September 23, following attacks by whites on black students and adults, President Eisenhower dispatched federal troops to restore order and help black students attend school safely. Despite advances in the border states, progress in desegregation was slow in the South, and by September 1960 only 765 of the 6,676 southern school districts had been desegregated.

In December 1955 clergyman Martin Luther King, Jr., led a highly effective bus boycott that resulted in desegregation of the bus system in Montgomery, Alabama. Subsequently, a form of protest later known as the sit-in was widely used throughout the South to desegregate lunch counters and other public facilities. Many other organizations and individuals actively worked for racial equality, including the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Congress of Racial Equality, the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee, Malcolm X, Ralph Abernathy, and Rosa Parks. Largely as a result of their activities, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1957, establishing a Civil Rights Commission to investigate the denial of voting rights or equal protection of the laws. A subsequent act in 1960 authorized the courts to appoint officials to protect the voting rights of blacks and made the obstruction of court orders by threat of violence a federal offence.

K.3.

Eisenhower Re-elected

Eisenhower was unable to transfer his personal popularity to the Republican Party in general, and in 1954 it lost control of Congress. In 1956, despite a heart attack, Eisenhower announced that he would run for a second term. The Democrats renominated Stevenson for the presidency and campaigned vigorously for a “new America”, for an end to the draft, and for the cessation of hydrogen bomb testing. Eisenhower carried 41 states; the Democrats, however, retained control of both houses of Congress.

Early in 1958 a nationwide recession began, and by mid-year the downward trend of the economy had assumed major proportions. The number of unemployed people rose in June to more than 5 million, the highest level since World War II. The reluctance of the administration to move swiftly to curb the recession, as well as evidence of financial corruption within the administration, led to a major Democratic victory in the congressional elections of 1958. By the end of 1958 the recession had been brought under control, and the value of US manufactures returned to their pre-recession levels. On January 3, 1959, Alaska was admitted to the Union as the 49th state, and Hawaii was admitted as the 50th state on August 21.

K.4.

Foreign Affairs Under Eisenhower

In the conduct of foreign affairs, Eisenhower relied heavily on his Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, who believed that the “containment policy” was too passive. He preferred the more dynamic policy of “massive retaliation” to be directed at either Moscow or Beijing in case of further Communist aggression anywhere in the world.

The concept of massive retaliation implied a reduction in conventional military forces, but placed greater emphasis on nuclear armaments and delivery systems. The so-called arms race, which accompanied the Cold War, assumed formidable dimensions when the United States exploded the first hydrogen bomb in 1952 and the USSR followed suit six months later. Thereafter, while work continued on nuclear weapons and atomic tests, both sides concentrated on perfecting the means of delivering these bombs. New long-range aircraft were developed, and by 1957 both nations had workable intercontinental ballistic missiles.

One specific accomplishment in foreign policy achieved by Eisenhower was the arrangement, on July 27, 1953, of an armistice in the Korean War. He increased military and economic aid to the French in Indochina, but rejected suggestions by Dulles for the tactical use of nuclear weapons and for the intervention of US troops on behalf of the French against the Communist-dominated Vietnamese nationalists. An accord reached in Geneva in 1954 (which the United States refused to sign) resulted in the partition of Indochina and an eventual intensification of conflict in the region.

In 1954, in an attempt to prevent further Communist expansion in Asia, Dulles formed the South East Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO), which included the United States, Britain, France, Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Thailand, and Pakistan. The refusal of other Asian nations to join SEATO weakened the pact and prompted Dulles to condemn the neutralist policies of many developing nations. A consequence of this setback was the strengthening of US ties with Nationalist China (Taiwan), and in January 1955 Eisenhower obtained congressional approval for the defence of Taiwan and other Chinese islands.

A so-called peace offensive by the USSR followed the death of Stalin in 1953. One significant result of this movement was an East-West agreement on Austria, which became fully sovereign but neutral through an agreement signed on May 15, 1955. Soviet and Western occupation forces were then withdrawn in the summer. A similar Soviet proposal for Germany, however, was rejected by the United States. In July Eisenhower met with the British, French, and Soviet heads of state at a summit conference in Geneva, but no progress was made on the questions of German reunification, disarmament, and other issues. In late 1956, following a denunciation of Stalin by the Soviet leader Nikita S. Khrushchev, anti-Soviet uprisings occurred in Poland and Hungary, and Khrushchev dispatched Russian troops to suppress the Hungarian revolt. The United States condemned this action, but made no effort to intervene directly in the crisis.

On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched an Earth satellite called Sputnik 1, and a second Soviet satellite carrying a living dog soon followed. The Soviet achievement provoked nationwide debate, and many public figures urged a congressional probe of alleged US backwardness in rocket and missile research and advocated sweeping reforms in the educational system in order to increase scientific personnel. The US missile programme was intensified, and in January 1958 the US Army launched the first US Earth satellite, Explorer 1. See Space Exploration.

On May 1, 1960, an American U-2 reconnaissance plane was shot down over Russia while on a spy mission. Two weeks later, at the Paris summit conference, Khrushchev demanded that Eisenhower formally apologize for this violation of Soviet air space. When Eisenhower refused, the conference was terminated. In Latin America, growing resentment against US policies became especially evident in Cuba, where a revolution led by Fidel Castro overthrew the corrupt dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista and resulted in the establishment of a Communist government. When the United States refused to grant Castro a loan in 1959, he turned to the USSR for economic assistance, and the Eisenhower administration severed diplomatic relations with Cuba in January 1961.

L.

The Kennedy Years

In July 1960 the Democrats nominated Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts for president; the Republicans nominated Vice-President Richard Nixon. The presidential campaign was highlighted by a series of television debates between the two candidates. Kennedy won the election, becoming the first Roman Catholic and, at the age of 43, the youngest person ever to be elected to the presidency.

L.1.

Economic Policies

President Kennedy’s first economic proposals were designed to counteract the effects of the recession by providing for increased federal spending and by establishing wage-price guidelines for business and labour. Other measures furnished aid to economically depressed areas and increased the minimum wage for most workers engaged in interstate commerce. Stressing the need for a US trade policy to meet the challenge of the rapidly developing European Community (now called the European Union), Kennedy obtained authorization to cut US tariffs on most imports by 50 per cent over five years and to abolish tariffs on selected goods. Many of his domestic programmes, however, including a plan of medical care for the aged, were defeated in Congress.

L.2.

Civil Rights Activities

Civil rights problems were a major concern. The president’s brother, US Attorney-General Robert F. Kennedy, pressed vigorously for an end to segregation in schools and for protection of minority voting rights. A major racial incident occurred in the autumn of 1962, when the attempt of a black student, James Meredith, to register at the University of Mississippi resulted in a campus riot. To restore order, Kennedy placed the Mississippi National Guard under federal authority and ordered it to patrol the campus. Kennedy also sent federal marshals to enforce desegregation at the University of Alabama, despite the active opposition of Governor George C. Wallace of Alabama. Other racial violence included the murder of the civil rights worker Medgar Evers in Jackson, Mississippi, and the killing of four black girls in the bombing of a church in Birmingham, Alabama.

Blacks and their white supporters continued demonstrating against violence and discrimination, notably in a gathering of more than 250,000 people in Washington, D.C., on August 28, 1963. At this rally the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., gave his celebrated “I Have a Dream” speech. Largely as a result of these events, President Kennedy recommended broad civil rights legislation to outlaw discrimination in voting, education, and most areas of public accommodation and employment. The measure was delayed in Congress throughout 1963.

L.3.

External Affairs

In his foreign policies, Kennedy sought to formulate a new approach towards Communism. With the assistance of his secretary of defence, Robert S. McNamara, the president substituted a policy of “flexible response” for that of “massive retaliation”. In April 1961 Kennedy authorized what was later known as the Bay of Pigs Invasion, an attack on Cuba by anti-Castro Cuban exiles that had been planned under the Eisenhower administration. The invasion attempt was turned back at the Bay of Pigs on the south coast of the island, and most of the invaders were killed or captured. Kennedy was subsequently confronted with new Soviet demands regarding Berlin at a meeting with Khrushchev in Vienna in June. In the months that followed, Khrushchev revived his demand that Berlin be made a free city. In August the construction of a wall separating East Berlin from the West was begun, and the Soviets resumed nuclear testing. Kennedy responded by placing the US military on the alert and ordering resumption of nuclear testing. By 1964 the United States had tripled its missile forces.

In Latin America, Kennedy worked to reverse the Truman-Eisenhower policy of military rather than economic aid. He initiated the Alliance for Progress, a programme that offered Latin American nations $20 billion to modernize their economies. The Peace Corps, created on September 22, 1961, was another attempt to improve the US image in Latin America and other areas of the world. It sent teams of young Americans to work with people, share their way of life, and assist in development activities such as road building and improvement of farming methods.

A major confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union began on October 22, 1962, when Kennedy announced that Soviet-supplied offensive missile bases were being built in Cuba and demanded that the USSR dismantle and remove the weapons. At the same time, he declared that US naval forces would enforce a quarantine of the island, intercepting and inspecting cargo on ships bound for Cuba to determine whether they included offensive weapons. For several days, war seemed imminent, but at the end of a week Khrushchev agreed to dismantle the bases and permit the United States on-site inspection in return for a US guarantee not to invade Cuba. Although Cuba refused to permit the inspection, US aerial reconnaissance revealed that the bases were being disassembled.

Capitalizing on a Soviet desire to ease world tensions in the wake of the Cuban Missile Crisis and on the deteriorating relations between the USSR and Communist China, the United States in 1963 renewed negotiations with the latter. On August 5 of that year the United States, the United Kingdom, and the USSR concluded a treaty to ban atomic testing in the atmosphere, in space, and underwater. Underground tests were not banned. In addition, a “hot line” for communication between Washington, D.C., and Moscow was installed so that US and Soviet government heads could contact each other directly in case of an international emergency.

M.

The Vietnam War Period

At the Vienna conference in 1961 Kennedy and Khrushchev had agreed on the establishment of a neutralist government in Laos. In South Vietnam, however, increased pressure by the Communist-dominated nationalists known as the Vietcong led Kennedy to expand US military aid for the government of Ngo Dinh Diem. On November 1, 1963, Diem’s unpopular regime was deposed and Diem was assassinated with tacit US approval. The succeeding military junta received immediate US recognition.

President Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963, while riding in a motorcade in Dallas, Texas. He was succeeded by Vice-President Lyndon B. Johnson. The suspected assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, was arrested almost immediately, but before he could be questioned about the crime, Oswald himself was shot to death by Jack Ruby, a Dallas nightclub owner. Because the killing of Oswald and the confusion of reported details about the shooting of Kennedy gave rise to rumours of a conspiracy, President Johnson appointed a commission headed by Chief Justice Earl Warren to investigate the assassination. In a report that has remained controversial, the commission discounted conspiracy theories in concluding that Oswald was the sole assassin. See Warren Report.

M.1.

Legislative Activity

On November 27 President Johnson delivered his first address before Congress, pledging his support for the established lines of foreign policy and urging speedy enactment of the civil rights and tax bills initiated by Kennedy.

The first months of Johnson’s administration were marked by virtually unparalleled legislative activity, which included an extensive anti-poverty programme to provide youth-training projects, aid to farm families, community projects, and other means of easing economic distress. The 24th Amendment to the Constitution, ratified on January 23, 1964, prohibited imposition of any poll tax as a requirement for voting in federal elections, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 aided voter registration by blacks.

M.2.

Johnson Elected

In the 1964 presidential campaign, Johnson amplified his vision of a “great society” for the United States. Barry M. Goldwater, the Republican nominee, urged a general reduction in the role of the federal government and advocated a strongly anti-Communist foreign policy. Johnson won the election, and the Democratic majority increased in both the Senate and the House.

In January 1965 Johnson outlined a wide-ranging domestic programme and during the year Congress enacted most of his proposals, including aid to education, grants for medical research, housing and urban renewal programmes, anti-poverty activities, and medical care for the aged.

M.3.

Domestic and Foreign Crises

In the summer of 1965 a severe race riot occurred in Watts, a predominantly black section of Los Angeles, and in 1967 there were disturbances in more than 30 cities. A commission set up to investigate the causes of these civil disturbances issued a report in 1968 that warned of the increasing racial polarization in the United States.

In foreign affairs, the Johnson administration was confronted by a number of crises. A serious dispute arose between the United States and Panama over the control of the Panama Canal, and, after anti-American riots in Panama, a new treaty for the operation of the canal was negotiated. In 1965 the threat of civil war in the Dominican Republic led Johnson to dispatch 22,000 US troops there to prevent the establishment of a Communist-dominated government. The intervention aroused anti-American sentiment throughout the hemisphere and provoked much criticism within the United States. A crisis in the Middle East, followed by a war between Israel and several Arab nations in June 1967 (see Six-Day War), set off an intensive round of diplomatic manoeuvres and an increase in US military aid to Israel in response to Soviet aid for the Arab nations and growing Soviet influence in the Mediterranean.

M.4.

The Vietnam Controversy

During 1964 Johnson continued Kennedy’s policy of sending military “advisers” to assist the military forces of South Vietnam but undertook no further escalation of the Vietnam War until the North Vietnamese were reported to have attacked US vessels in the Gulf of Tonkin, whereupon he sent to Congress a resolution authorizing the president to increase US military involvement in South East Asia. The measure was passed by both houses. By 1967 the United States was bombing virtually the whole of North Vietnam and had committed nearly 500,000 troops to the war. Johnson’s policy of escalation precipitated a great public debate at home, which was intensified in January 1968, during the so-called Tet offensive, when the North Vietnamese interrupted an unofficial truce with a series of offensive strikes. Another Asian crisis also occurred in January, when the US intelligence ship Pueblo was seized by naval forces of North Korea. After lengthy negotiations, the crew was released late in 1968.

Reflecting increasing dissatisfaction with Johnson’s conduct of the war, Senator Eugene J. McCarthy of Minnesota announced his intention to challenge the president for the 1968 Democratic presidential nomination. In the primary election in New Hampshire in March 1968, McCarthy received 44 per cent of the vote against a candidate representing Johnson. This strong showing was taken as an indication of the strength of the anti-war movement. The primary was followed by Senator Robert F. Kennedy’s announcement that he, too, would become a presidential candidate.

In a television address on March 31, Johnson announced that he was suspending the bombing of North Vietnam as a means of furthering negotiations for the conclusion of the war. He also declared that he would not be a candidate for the presidency in 1968. His administration was thereafter marked by a series of domestic disorders. The assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., on April 4 in Memphis, Tennessee, precipitated a new wave of riots in Washington, D.C., and several other cities. Severe disturbances by students at Columbia University and other educational institutions aroused considerable controversy over the use of police to control such disturbances. Then, on June 5, Robert Kennedy was shot after winning the Democratic primary election in California; he died the next day.

M.5.

Nixon Elected President

At the Republican national convention in August, Richard Nixon was nominated for president. The Democratic convention in Chicago was marked by vehement conflicts between supporters and critics of Johnson’s policies; Vice-President Hubert Humphrey received the presidential nomination. Nixon campaigned on a platform calling for a restoration of social stability, and won with some difficulty.

When President Nixon took office in 1969, his approach to domestic affairs was similar to that of President Eisenhower. Calling his programme the “new federalism”, Nixon sought to limit the power of the federal government and to aid state and local authorities in fulfilling their responsibilities. He also recommended a drastic reorganization of welfare programmes and proposed the establishment of a minimum federal standard of welfare assistance.

The US program of space exploration was marked by several major accomplishments during the Nixon administration, notably the first landing on the Moon, by the crew of Apollo 11, on July 20, 1969, after many years of painstaking preparations.

M.6.

The Continuing Vietnam War

Early in his administration, Nixon outlined a foreign policy based on a “low profile” and on reductions in the US role abroad. The Vietnam War, however, continued, and so did inflation, which many blamed on the war. The cost of military equipment for allies abroad, in NATO and in Asia, left money short for domestic programmes.

The interaction of domestic and foreign affairs influenced the 1970 congressional elections. President Nixon and Vice-President Spiro Agnew were unable to upset the Democratic majority in the House and Senate, and the Republicans also lost 11 gubernatorial elections.

In the United States, rising civilian dismay with the Vietnamese conflict led to protests that frequently resulted in direct confrontations between the demonstrators, often college students, and National Guard troops. After the US incursion into Cambodia in search of Communist sanctuaries, students at Kent State University in Ohio demonstrated against the war in May 1970, and four of them were killed by National Guard troops. Ultimately, 500 campuses experienced student strikes and were closed for a considerable time. A number of public buildings were bombed, notably the US Capitol in March 1971.

President Nixon announced that he intended to “wind down” the war through a policy of “Vietnamization”, or replacement of US troops by South Vietnamese forces trained and equipped by the United States. Nixon withdrew more than 350,000 US troops from the war zone; by the end of 1971 fewer than 175,000 remained. Congress, nevertheless, attempted to make the president move faster and tried to limit funds for conduct of the war by various parliamentary means. However, Nixon ordered the resumption of large-scale bombing of North Vietnamese supply trails and anti-aircraft defences late in 1971.

M.7.

Other Foreign Affairs

Relations with the USSR improved, at least in the opinion of some political observers. The Strategic Arms Limitation Talks, begun in 1969, continued into 1972. In May, during President Nixon’s state visit to Moscow, two agreements between the United States and the USSR were signed. One limited anti-ballistic missile systems, and the other put restrictions on offensive missile launchers.

An agreement for unlimited access through East Germany to West Berlin was negotiated by France, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the USSR in the summer of 1971. Meanwhile, in November 1969 the United States signed a treaty calling for the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons. Then on February 11, 1971, the United States signed a treaty banning nuclear weapons, and the testing of them, on the ocean floor.

In July 1971 Henry A. Kissinger, Nixon’s adviser on national security, went secretly to Beijing to arrange a meeting between the president and the leaders of the People’s Republic of China. Nixon went to Beijing in February 1972, and parts of his visit were transmitted by television throughout the world. According to the president, “there were no secret deals” but the two countries did agree to “expand cultural, educational, and journalistic contacts” and “to begin and broaden trade”.

Until Nixon’s historic meeting, Taiwan had constituted the sole Chinese representation in the UN. Once the Nixon visit to Beijing was announced, the members of the UN no longer felt constrained to keep Communist China from occupying the Security Council seat allotted to China. Despite an attempt by the United States to keep the Nationalist Chinese representatives in the UN, Taiwan was expelled from all organizations within it.

M.8.

The Pentagon Papers

In June 1971 the administration clashed with several major newspapers on its right to enforce “prior restraint”, or censorship, on their publication of the so-called Pentagon Papers, excerpts from a classified Defense Department history of US participation in the Vietnam War. Government-obtained injunctions were appealed against to the Supreme Court, and the justices voted 6 to 3 that the government was unable to stop publication of any information, no matter how embarrassing diplomatically, when national security was not involved. Criminal prosecution was started immediately against Daniel Ellsberg, a former civilian employee in the Department of Defense who had supplied the documents to the newspapers and to several congressional representatives. The trial was called off during jury deliberations because of revelations of unfair practices by the prosecution.

M.9.

Nixon Re-elected

On November 7, 1972, President Nixon won re-election in an overwhelming victory over the Democratic Party candidate, Senator George S. McGovern of South Dakota. As Nixon’s second term began, a ceasefire agreement was signed in Paris on January 27, 1973, making possible the withdrawal of US forces from Vietnam. For all practical purposes, the longest and most controversial war in US history was over.

N.

Watergate and the 1970s

Shortly after Nixon’s second inauguration in January 1973, revelations rapidly mounted concerning an illegal wire-tap and attempted burglary that had occurred during the presidential campaign on June 17, 1972, at the national headquarters of the Democratic Party in the Watergate building complex in Washington, D.C. Five people working for the Republican Committee for the Re-election of the President were arrested on the scene. The subsequent indictments, trials, and investigations implicated high members of the Nixon administration in the planning of the break-in. The name “Watergate” became synonymous with a series of illegal, unethical, and irregular acts committed by members of the administration. The United States was faced with a succession of political and economic crises in the next few years. Vice-President Agnew resigned on October 10, 1973, after being indicted for bribery and federal income tax evasion. According to the provisions of the 25th Amendment, Nixon appointed Gerald R. Ford, a US congressman from Michigan, to fill Agnew’s position, and he was sworn in as the 40th Vice-President on December 6, 1973.

N.1.

Détente

In foreign affairs, the policy of détente between the United States and the USSR continued. A renewed outbreak of Arab-Israeli hostilities in October 1973 caused a setback when the Kremlin supported the Arabs and the United States supported Israel (see Yom Kippur War). However, the two superpowers cooperated in bringing about agreements on a ceasefire and disengagement of forces between Israel and Egypt in January 1974, and between Israel and Syria in May. US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger played a key role in achieving these settlements.

N.2.

Nixon’s Resignation

From the autumn of 1973 to the summer of 1974, the evidence steadily mounted that President Nixon himself was implicated in the Watergate burglary and its attempted cover-up. Evidence of other lawless acts committed by the administration followed. By the beginning of August 1974 the president was faced with imminent impeachment and he resigned on August 9. Vice-President Ford, who succeeded him immediately, became the first person to serve without having been elected either to the vice-presidency or the presidency. One of the new president’s first official actions was to pardon his predecessor for any crimes that he might have committed while in office. Against the public outcry that the pardon provoked, Ford contended that it was a means of “putting Watergate behind us”.

N.3.

The Ford Administration

Ford was confronted with a number of domestic and international problems. The worldwide recession was deepening, and the United States was experiencing its highest unemployment and inflation rates in decades. As a result of the Yom Kippur War, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries had imposed an embargo on oil shipments to the United States and other industrial nations in the winter of 1973 and 1974. Oil prices had quadrupled in a few months, intensifying the international monetary crisis. Meanwhile, the sudden resurgence of war in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, the subsequent Communist victory, and the concurrent expulsion of the United States from South East Asia in the spring of 1975 weakened confidence in US strength and in its loyalty to its allies. Contending with an overwhelmingly Democratic Congress as a result of the 1974 mid-term elections, Ford was unable to win approval for his legislative programmes to fight inflation and increase energy resources.

N.4.

The Carter Administration

In July 1976 Jimmy Carter, a former governor of Georgia and a newcomer to national politics, gained the Democratic presidential nomination. In the November elections Carter and his running-mate, Senator Walter F. Mondale of Minnesota, narrowly defeated the Republican candidates, President Ford and Senator Robert J. Dole of Kansas. The Democrats maintained their strong majorities in the US Senate and House of Representatives.

Carter drew up a wide-ranging legislative programme, much of which received severe criticism in Congress. In April the president offered a package of complicated legislation designed to reduce the nation’s consumption of petroleum by encouraging the use of power sources such as coal and solar energy. The Senate altered much of the package, which was finally passed in November 1978.

In foreign affairs, Carter strongly criticized the governments of the USSR and other countries for violating the human rights of their citizens. In September 1977 he signed treaties giving Panama control of the Panama Canal by the year 2000. After heated debate, the treaties were ratified by the Senate in early 1978. The administration also attempted to mediate a peace settlement in the Middle East. In September 1978 Carter hosted a conference at Camp David, near Washington, D.C., with the leaders of Egypt and Israel. The meeting produced a framework for negotiations that resulted in a peace treaty between Israel and Egypt in March 1979. On another front, by January 1979 the United States had established full diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China.

In November 1979, after Carter had allowed the deposed Shah of Iran to enter the United States for medical treatment, a group of Iranian revolutionists stormed the US Embassy in Tehran and held 53 staff members as hostages. When the United States refused the captors’ demand for the shah’s extradition, a stalemate ensued. In April 1980 Carter ordered an airborne rescue attempt that failed. Meanwhile, in January 1980, the United States had restricted trade with the USSR in protest against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and refused to ratify the US-Soviet Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty.

O.

The 1980s

President Carter defeated a challenge from Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts and won his party’s nomination to run for re-election in 1980. The Republicans nominated a conservative, former screen actor and governor of California, Ronald W. Reagan. The Democrats, blamed by many for the declining economy and the Iranian hostage crisis—which was not resolved until January 1981—lost in every section of the country. The Republicans won control of the Senate for the first time in nearly 30 years, and Jimmy Carter became the first elected president to lose his bid for re-election since Herbert Hoover in 1932.

O.1.

The Reagan Administration

President Reagan’s announced intentions were to lower taxes, to reduce government spending and regulations, and to strengthen the defence establishment. Reagan recovered fully from an assassination attempt in March 1981, and his programme maintained momentum. In the following months, Congress enacted the largest tax cut in US history, reduced spending by sharply curtailing aid to the poor and to state and local governments, and increased the defence budget.

In October 1983 Reagan ordered a surprise invasion of the island of Grenada. The immediate purpose was the rescue of US medical students from political turmoil, but the administration also cited requests for help from Grenada’s Caribbean neighbours. In Central America, Reagan backed government forces in El Salvador but supported guerrillas against the Nicaraguan government. Relations with the USSR worsened in 1983 after Reagan announced an anti-ballistic missile defence system against nuclear attack. This Strategic Defense Initiative, which became known as “Star Wars”, was based on the concept of deterrence through the threat of retaliation.

Economic issues dominated the 1984 presidential campaign. On the Democratic side, former vice-president Mondale won a bruising primary battle. He defeated Senator Gary Hart of Colorado, who had stressed the need for “new ideas”, and the Reverend Jesse Jackson, the first black person to win a party presidential primary. Mondale selected as his vice-presidential running-mate Representative Geraldine A. Ferraro, the first woman to run for such high office on a major party ticket. Reagan and Vice-President George Bush captured 59 per cent of the vote, carrying 49 states and 525 electoral votes.

Just before the elections, the Soviets had signalled their desire for a new opening on arms control. Two summits were held, in November 1985 and October 1986, between Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. The US space programme suffered a severe setback when the space shuttle Challenger exploded after lift-off on January 28, 1986, killing the seven crew members on board (see Challenger Disaster). In April the United States launched a major air strike against Libya in retaliation for terrorist attacks against Americans elsewhere.

Interim elections in November returned control of the Senate to the Democrats. The Reagan administration was further weakened during 1987 by continued budget and trade deficits and by a congressional investigation into the US sale of arms to Iran and the diversion of profits from the sale to support the Nicaraguan rebels (see Iran-Contra Affair). This affair represented the worst political scandal in the United States since Watergate in the early 1970s. On October 19, 1987, the stock market suffered its worst one-day loss in history, as the Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeted 508 points, or 22.6 per cent (see Black Monday). In December Reagan and Gorbachev signed a treaty to eliminate the two nations’ medium-range and certain shorter-range missiles. During 1988 Congress ratified the treaty, toughened civil rights laws, and authorized reparations for Japanese-Americans interned during World War II.

Vice-President Bush defeated several challengers, notably Senator Robert Dole, to win the Republican presidential nomination. In the Democratic primary campaign, Governor Michael S. Dukakis of Massachusetts outlasted civil rights leader Jesse Jackson. Bush and his vice-presidential choice, Senator Dan Quayle of Indiana, were able to capitalize on the peace-and-prosperity issue, and with a popular-vote majority of 54 to 46 per cent, Bush became the first incumbent vice-president since Martin Van Buren in 1836 to be elected President. In the Senate and House, however, the Democrats increased their majorities.

O.2.

The Bush Administration

Among the challenges facing President Bush when he took office on January 20, 1989, were the federal trade and budget deficits, the insolvent savings and loan system, and the Soviet diplomatic offensive in Europe. Responding to the rapid political changes in Eastern Europe, Bush offered aid to Poland and Hungary during his visits there in July. In December more than 24,000 troops invaded Panama to oust the regime of General Manuel Antonio Noriega, wanted in the United States on drug-trafficking charges. During summit meetings in December 1989 and late May and early June 1990, Bush and Gorbachev agreed to end production of chemical weapons and reduce existing stockpiles. More than 500,000 US troops served with allied forces during the Gulf War of 1991, which forced Iraq to withdraw. US diplomatic activity then centred on a joint effort with the USSR towards peace in the Middle East. After the USSR and the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia disintegrated in 1991-1992, the United States recognized nearly all their former constituent republics.

One of the worst riots in US history erupted in Los Angeles in April 1992 after the acquittal of four white police officers charged with the videotaped beating 13 months earlier of a black man, Rodney King. Fifty-eight people died in the rioting, and property damage exceeded $750 million. In a second Rodney King trial (April 17), two of the four police officers were found guilty.

In 1992 President Bush won renomination on the Republican ticket, while Governor Bill Clinton of Arkansas emerged as the Democratic nominee. Clinton became the first Democrat to win a presidential election since 1976, and the Democrats kept their majorities in both houses. In December, Bush, still in office, dispatched over 20,000 US military personnel to Somalia under UN auspices to maintain peace and aid in the distribution of famine relief. President-elect Clinton supported this move and also Bush’s signing of the START II nuclear disarmament treaty with Russian President Boris Yeltsin in January 1993.

P.

The Clinton Administration

During President Clinton’s first months in office, he launched many initiatives for domestic change. He sought to end the ban on the rights of homosexuals to serve in the military, though this plan was modified when it met strong opposition in Congress and the Department of Defense. In addition, he appointed First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton to head a task force on health care reform. However, the health care package met strong resistance in Congress and did not pass.

The Clinton administration also faced criticism for mishandling the so-called Whitewater affair, a controversy that questioned the Clintons’ role in a failed real-estate venture in Arkansas. Amid a decline in popularity for Clinton and Democrats in general, the Republicans recorded a victory in the mid-term elections of November 1994. The Republican Party gained control of both the House and the Senate for the first time since 1954. The Republican congressional majorities and Clinton had difficulty reaching consensus during 1995 and 1996. For example, Clinton and the Republicans in Congress were unable to agree on a 1996 budget for the federal government, and, as a result, government operations were partially shut down on two occasions. They finally agreed on a federal budget in April 1996. One major piece of legislation that was passed with the support of both Congress and the president was a telecommunications bill, which restructured the television and telephone industries by allowing for more competition. The bill also outlawed pornography on the Internet.

The deadliest terrorist bombing in the history of the United States occurred in April 1995, when a bomb exploded in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. The blast largely destroyed the building and caused at least 168 deaths. In response to this bombing and other acts of terrorism, a bill was passed in April 1996 that was designed to help law enforcement officials fight terrorism by appropriating additional money and making it easier to deport aliens suspected of terrorism. In June 1997 Timothy McVeigh was found guilty of the bombing and was sentenced to death by lethal injection.

P.1.

Foreign Affairs

The United States sent troops to Somalia in 1993 to help protect food and supplies that were intended for starving civilians. However, when US soldiers came under attack from the various factions in the civil war, the US involvement became unpopular among Americans. The troops were withdrawn by March 1994, and the UN took control of the peacekeeping operation.

Both in the Middle East and the former Yugoslavia, the United States was instrumental in helping negotiate peace agreements. At the White House in September 1993, Clinton hosted the signing of a historic peace agreement between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO Chairman Yasir Arafat in attendance. He also oversaw the signing of an agreement between Israel and Jordan at the White House in July 1994. In addition, in November 1995 the United States led peace talks between the Bosnian Muslims, Serbs, and Croats in Dayton, Ohio, in hopes of resolving the Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian War. The talks led to a peace agreement signed by all parties. As part of the agreement, Clinton pledged to send American soldiers to Bosnia and Herzegovina to help lead NATO in providing humanitarian aid and policing a zone between the factions.

In Asia, the United States renewed favoured trading status for the People’s Republic of China in 1994, despite controversy over that country’s human rights record. The same year, Clinton announced the end of a 19-year trade embargo against Vietnam; and in July 1995, more than 20 years after the end of the Vietnam War, the United States extended full diplomatic recognition to Vietnam.

In the Americas, the United States worked to aid both Haiti and Mexico. In September 1994 the United States was prepared to launch a military invasion of Haiti to restore to power Haiti’s elected president, , who had been ousted in a military coup in 1991. Military confrontation was averted at the last minute, largely due to the diplomatic efforts of former president Jimmy Carter, who negotiated Aristide’s peaceful return. The United States also came to the support of Mexico when its currency (the peso) began to drop in value in early 1995, providing a $20 billion loan package to help restore the Mexican economy.

In February 1996 Cuba shot down two civilian planes from the United States, claiming that they were violating Cuban air space. The United States increased the embargo on Cuba by placing sanctions on any company, regardless of nationality, that traded with Cuba.

International trade agreements became important issues with Clinton successfully pressing Congress to ratify the (NAFTA). The agreement was a plan for tariff cuts and the elimination of other trade barriers between the United States, Mexico, and Canada over 15 years. NAFTA officially took effect on January 1, 1994. Then, in December 1994, Congress passed the Uruguay Round provisions of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), a global tariff-cutting pact that founded the World Trade Organization. Clinton signed GATT later that month.

P.2.

The 1996 Election

Clinton again sought office and chose the incumbent vice-president, Al Gore, as his running-mate; Republican opposition was provided by Robert Dole with Jack Kemp as his running-mate. In the election on November 5, 1996, Clinton won 49.2 per cent of the electoral votes and claimed 31 states. During the months of campaigning he had never appeared to be in danger of losing. The Republicans kept control of both houses, however.

In December Speaker of the House of Representatives Newt Gingrich admitted that a college course he had taught had been funded by tax-exempt charitable funds. Nevertheless he was re-elected Speaker on January 7 as Congress reconvened. Later that month he was officially reprimanded and fined $300,000 for his action. The Democratic Party, meanwhile, was being accused of irregularities in the funding of the presidential campaign.

Clinton was sworn in for a second presidential term on January 20, 1997. Throughout that year and into 1998, his administration was beset by scandals. The issue of Democratic Party fund-raising for the 1996 presidential and congressional elections came to the fore, centring around Vice-President Al Gore. The Paula Jones sexual harassment suit against the president continued, and was compounded by allegations in January 1998 of a sexual affair between Clinton and a former White House intern, Monica Lewinsky.

In May the Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski was sentenced to life for a 17-year bombing campaign that claimed three lives and left many injured. In August US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed by terrorists and over 250 people were killed. The United States retaliated with simultaneous missile attacks on a terrorist base in Afghanistan and a chemical-weapons factory in Sudan, both of which were suspected of being involved in the bombings. Following notification in December that the Iraqis had ceased to cooperate with the UN Special Commission arms inspection team, forces from the United States and the United Kingdom began a three-day campaign of air strikes on Iraq.

In December President Clinton was impeached by the House of Representatives on two counts: perjury before a grand jury and obstruction of justice, both of which arose from his concealment of his affair with Monica Lewinsky. He was acquitted in a senate trial in February. The public continued to support Clinton throughout the Starr hearings, judiciary committee proceedings, and trial, as was shown in the November election results, when the Democrats gained seats midway through a term for the first time since the 1930s.

On July 6, 1999, Clinton imposed sanctions against the Taliban in Afghanistan. Clinton said the sanctions were intended to encourage the Taliban to end its relationship with Osama bin Laden, a wealthy Saudi Arabian who allegedly commands a terrorist organization blamed for the 1998 bombings against the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

In a major setback for President Clinton the Republican-controlled Senate rejected the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) in October 1999. Approved by the United Nations in 1996, the CTBT is designed to ban all nuclear testing worldwide. The treaty must be ratified by the 44 nations thought to be capable of producing arms before it can take effect.

In a ceremony held on December 14, 1999, former United States president Jimmy Carter and Panamanian president Mireya Moscoso signed documents that gave Panama full control of the Panama Canal. The actual transfer took place on December 31 and marked the end of the 96-year-old period of American control of the strategic waterway and surrounding zone.

Noting the election of reformers in parliamentary elections in Iran, the US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright announced the end of economic sanctions against Iran in March 2000. It was not intended as a complete lifting of sanctions in that the ban on investment in Iran's petroleum sector and the ban on importation or Iranian oil remained in place.

Hundreds of thousands of mothers joined the “Million Mom March” in Washington, D.C. to demonstrate against weak gun laws in the United States, also in May. The protest followed a number of school shooting incidents, including the massacre of 12 students and a teacher at Columbine High School in Denver, Colorado, in April 1999. Ali Mohamed, an alleged associate of Osama bin Laden, pleaded guilty in a US district court to charges relating to the bombing of African US embassies in 1998.

Q.

The Presidency of George W. Bush

The presidential election of 2000 was between Republican candidate George W. Bush, the governor of Texas and son of the 41st president, and incumbent Vice-President Al Gore. The issues of the campaign centred on the use of the budget surplus—Gore supporting its use in expanded government programmes while Bush advocated large tax cuts—and gun control. Although Gore won a majority of around 200,000 in the popular vote on November 7, 2000, he failed to secure victory in enough states, and the election was awarded to Bush through the vote of the electoral college. This was despite a series of legal challenges by the Gore team of the recount in the key state of Florida, which controlled the balance of 25 electoral college votes. These challenges culminated in a Supreme Court decision five weeks after the election that barred any further recounts. George W. Bush was inaugurated on January 20, 2001, the first son of a former president to enter the White House since John Quincy Adams.

Bush launched his presidency with a series of policy initiatives that received broad bipartisan support from Congress. In January he announced a US$60 billion blueprint for education, which centred upon testing for schools. Plans were also outlined whereby religious and community organizations would be eligible for several billion dollars allocated by the newly established White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives to tackle such problems as drug addiction, gang violence, and homelessness. In February, Bush proposed his much trailed US$1.6 trillion tax cut, spread over 10 years, thought to be the biggest in history, which was partly designed to revive the US economy that appeared increasingly to be slowing down or even heading towards recession. A 'new architecture' for defence, created by investing in new technologies and weapons systems including the national missile defense that continued to cause controversy among the United States' NATO allies, was also announced.

On June 11 the Oklahoma bomber, Timothy McVeigh, was executed by lethal injection; the following day Mohammed Rashed Daoud Owhali was sentenced to life imprisonment for his involvement in the 1998 terrorist attack on the US embassy in Kenya.

Q.1.

Foreign Relations

The United States and Britain made an air strike on targets in Iraq in February in what was seen as a hardening of the US stance against Saddam Hussein. Bush expelled some 50 Russian diplomats from the United States in March following the arrest of Robert Hanssen, an FBI agent who was accused of spying for Moscow. It was the greatest number of diplomats expelled since the end of the Cold War and was met by a tit-for-tat expulsion by Russia. On April 1, a US spy aeroplane, an EP-3 surveillance craft, was in collision with a Chinese fighter jet over the South China Sea and was forced to land on Hainan island. The Chinese aircraft and pilot were believed lost. A standoff then ensued between the Chinese and US authorities, with China refusing to return the craft and crew of 24 until apologies from the US had been received. Viewed as an early foreign policy test for Bush, the standoff ended after 11 days, with an apology from the president and the return of the crew.

Bush also faced worldwide criticism for the US failure to sign the 1997 Kyoto Treaty on cutting greenhouse gas emissions. He stated that the protocol would impose an unacceptable economic burden on the US.

Q.2.

The “War on Terrorism”

On September 11, 2001, four US passenger airliners were hijacked from Boston, Newark, and Washington airports by suicide terrorists. Two of the aeroplanes were deliberately flown into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York, causing them to collapse and burying over 3,000 victims, including emergency service personnel who had attended the scene of the disaster. A further aeroplane crashed into the Pentagon outside Washington, D.C., killing nearly 200 more and the fourth aeroplane crashed near Pittsburgh; the terrorists on board were thought to have been overpowered by passengers. World opinion was almost unanimous in condemning the atrocities and President Bush sought wide support for what he declared to be a war against terrorism. The chief suspect behind the attacks was Osama bin Laden (see above), who was in hiding in Afghanistan. As the US prepared for military action against Afghanistan, securing the support of neighbouring Pakistan, the Taliban regime showed reluctance in compelling Bin Laden to leave. While support for military retaliation remained strong at home, and among US allies, there were also calls for restraint, as concerns arose regarding the risks of a campaign in Afghanistan, a notoriously difficult battleground.

Military action against Afghanistan was launched on the evening of October 7-8, 2001 with air and missile strikes on the major Afghan cities of Kabul, Kandahār, Mazār-e Sharīf, and Jalālābād. Later, ground troops joined the action and in partnership with the Northern Alliance forces in Afghanistan took the cities of Qondūz and Kabul as the Taliban collapsed and fell back to its strongholds. However, the fighting continued for many months in the ongoing hunt for Bin Laden and to secure the entire country. Peacekeepers also patrolled the country, especially Kabul, as the new government attempted to establish itself in Afghanistan. Captured prisoners from the fighting were taken to a US naval base—dubbed Camp X-Ray—at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The US received widespread international criticism after pictures were released showing prisoners being held blindfolded and shackled.

Q.3.

Domestic Issues

In the wake of the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington there were numerous cases of anthrax spores being sent via the postal system to government buildings, including the Capitol building, and news agencies. Five people at various sites from Connecticut to Florida died from inhalation anthrax, with more than 50 more being exposed to either skin anthrax or inhalation anthrax. No individual or organization claimed responsibility for the incidents, but the suggestion that the attacks were orchestrated by Osama bin Laden was dismissed.

On November 12, 2001, in New York an American Airlines flight on route to the Dominican Republic crashed on the residential district of Queens. Coming so soon after the attacks on the city, many feared a repetition of the terrorist violence. However, the authorities quickly refuted any suggestion other than that the crash was an accident. Over 260 passengers and people on the ground were killed in the incident.

The major energy company Enron filed for bankruptcy in December after collapsing with substantial debts. The corporate failure led to a criminal investigation into the business practices at Enron. Auditors Arthur Andersen were implicated in the irregularities once it was established that the company had been shredding documents. On January 23, the chairman and chief executive of Enron, Kenneth Lay, resigned; two days later a former vice-chairman of the company was found dead, apparently having committed suicide. The Enron affair was quickly followed by the collapse of telecommunications giant WorldCom, which also faced bankruptcy after an accounting scandal led to a distortion in the reporting of its accounts by US$9 billion. WorldCom’s bankruptcy eclipsed that of Enron as the country’s biggest; its chief executive Bernie Ebbers was found guilty of conspiracy and fraud and was given a 25-year prison sentence.

On February 1, 2003, the US space shuttle Columbia, with seven crew members onboard, broke up upon entering the Earth’s atmosphere. Debris from the accident was scattered across Texas. Investigators could find no immediate cause for the disaster but focused their attention on damage to the craft’s wing and heat-resistant tile structure.

Q.4.

Protecting the Nation

Galvanized by the attacks on New York and Washington, in November 2002 President Bush appointed former Pennsylvania governor Tom Ridge to a new Cabinet-level Office of Homeland Security (DHS), with the responsibility of protecting the US against acts of terrorism. The DHS combined dozens of federal agencies into one department, constituting the largest reorganization in the federal government since the Department of Defense was created in 1947.

The following month Bush gave the go-ahead to the new and controversial National Missile Defence (NMD) programme. In the previous June, Bush had abandoned the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, arguing that the new defence programme was needed to counter the nuclear threat from the so-called rogue states such as North Korea and Iraq. An interim missile defence capability of ten interceptors was planned to be in place by 2004, with a further ten missiles by 2005.

Q.5.

War on Iraq

In President Bush’s first State of the Union address in January 2002 he controversially advocated taking action against “an axis of evil”, three nations—Iran, Iraq, and North Korea—accused of developing weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Bush identified Iraq as a threat to global security and sought proof that the regime of Saddam Hussein had destroyed weapons banned as after its defeat in the Gulf War of 1991. The administration feared that these weapons could land in the hands of terrorist groups. In October Congress passed a resolution authorizing Bush to use force to enforce all relevant UN resolutions regarding Iraq. The following month the UN Security Council passed a resolution ordering weapons inspectors to return to Iraq, from where they had been expelled in 1998, and threatening “serious consequences” if Iraq did not disarm. Iraq agreed to comply with the resolution, and weapons inspections started that same month.

However, the pace of progress was considered too slow and the Bush administration argued that Iraq was not fully cooperating with inspectors and was continuing to hide banned weapons. Bush, with the support of Britain and several other countries, sought UN authorization of force against Iraq. However, some countries, such as France, Germany, Russia, and China, wanted to give the weapons inspections more time to proceed and opposed military action. Hans Blix, chief weapons inspector, requested more time to complete the inspections work. After the UN Security Council was unable to reach agreement about whether to authorize force against Iraq, Bush decided to forego UN approval and pursue military action in a coalition with other willing countries. In March 2003 US-led forces invaded Iraq from the south of the country and coalition air strikes targeted key sites in the country, most visibly Baghdad, at the start of the War on Iraq.

The war lasted just over a month before Baghdad was taken, and on May 1 Bush declared the war over. However, coalition troops continued to find their peacekeeping and reconstruction roles far more arduous, as for the rest of the year they attempted to re-establish order in the country. Baghdad, the capital, and the US forces in particular were subject to repeated attacks and bombings from rebel fighters as the problems of creating a new government and repairing the infrastructure were tackled. By April 2004 more than 700 members of the US military had died during the war and reconstruction period.

At home, Congress launched an inquiry into the intelligence that had preceded the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 in order to account for the attacks and to prevent any future incidents. Its remit allowed it to question both Bush and Cheney as well as the previous president and vice-president, Bill Clinton and Al Gore, and in total more than 1,000 interviews were conducted. The report concluded that US leaders had underestimated the terror threat from Al-Qaeda. It recommended an overhaul of US intelligence and security agencies with the creation of a national counter-terrorism centre headed and coordinated by a national intelligence director. In December, many of the proposed reforms were enacted in a new intelligence bill. The search for WMD in Iraq was abandoned in January 2005.

Q.6.

The 2004 Election and Second Term Issues

In March 2004 the Democratic senator for Massachusetts, John Kerry, won the Democratic nomination to run for the presidency against Bush. Meanwhile, Bush’s standing in the polls continued to fall as the numbers of US fatalities in Iraq increased. As the election neared, political analysts declared that the election would be one of the closest on record and early exit polls seemed to predict a narrow victory for Kerry. However, the appeal of Bush’s conservative values on issues such as abortion, stem cell research, and gay marriages cemented his victory and saw him returned to the White House with a greater share of the popular vote than he had achieved four years earlier. The continued involvement in Iraq strongly polarized voters, and observers declared the campaign one of the most divisive ever. The strength of feeling on both sides of the political divide was evidenced by the largest voter turnout since the 1960s.

Possessing a stronger mandate than four years previously, Bush’s plans for his second term included further tax reform, social security improvements, and education reform. Colin Powell stood down as secretary of state to be replaced by Condoleezza Rice. Sandra Day O’Connor retired from the Supreme Court and with the death of the chief justice, William Rehnquist, Bush took the opportunity to secure a conservative majority in the Supreme Court. In September 2005 he successfully nominated John G. Roberts, Jr., as the new chief justice.

The Bush Administration faced severe criticism over its handling of the relief effort following the devastating Hurricane Katrina that hit the Gulf coast in August 2005. The hurricane hit the Gulf Coast of the United States with winds of more than 235 km/hr (145 mph). Louisiana was particularly seriously affected. The low-lying city of New Orleans was spared the brunt of the hurricane; however, the storm surge that built up on Lake Pontchartrain breached the city’s extensive system of flood defences. Floodwaters inundated the city, rendering it uninhabitable. A complete evacuation of the city was ordered amid fears that thousands may have died in the flooding. The evacuation of survivors quickly turned into a humanitarian crisis, with food and water in short supply and reports of looting and violence.

In March 2006 President Bush renewed the Patriot Act, though with a number of revisions and compromises after accusations of infringements of civil liberties. The Act, originally introduced in 2001 in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, gave the government unprecedented powers to investigate and detain terror suspects.

The administration fared badly in the mid-term congressional elections, held in November 2006. The Republicans lost control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate. Admitting that he and his allies had taken a “thumping”, Bush accepted the resignation of Donald Rumsfeld as secretary of defense. The move was interpreted as an acknowledgement that the US strategy in Iraq had run into severe difficulties. In Rumsfeld’s place Bush nominated Robert Gates, who had served under Bush’s father as head of the CIA (1991-1993).

The report presented in December 2006 by the Iraq Study Group recommended that US combat forces should be withdrawn, probably by early 2008, and that the US government should engage with the governments of Iran and Syria, both neighbours of Iraq as well as members of Bush’s “axis of evil”. Bush rejected the recommendations, instead proposing an increase of 28,000 US troops in Baghdad and the western province of Anbar to restore government control. At the beginning of May 2007, Bush used his veto for the second time in his presidency, rejecting a bill from Congress that linked funding for the war in Iraq with a timetable for the withdrawal of US forces.

Meanwhile the search for a presidential successor to Bush continued. Senator John McCain of Arizona quickly came to the fore as the favoured presidential candidate for the Republicans, cementing his nomination early in the campaign in March 2008. The Democratic race was much closer, with former First Lady Hillary Clinton, a senator from New York, vying with Illinois senator Barack Obama for the nomination. The campaign—a landmark tussle that would have resulted in either the first woman or the first black candidate being chosen to run for the White House—ran until the final primaries in June 2008, with Obama gaining an unassailable lead; Clinton then lent Obama her endorsement.

In the autumn of 2008 Bush was confronted with a growing financial crisis. In September, Lehman Brothers, one of the largest investment banks in the US, filed for bankruptcy, with drastic effects on the stock market and on confidence in the banking system. Bush’s treasury secretary, Henry (“Hank”) Paulson, proposed a US$700 billion package to buy bad debt from the banks and restore confidence. The plan ran into opposition in Congress, and was initially voted down by the House of Representatives. Seeking to defend the plan, Bush pointed to the trillion dollar losses on the stock market that followed the rejection of the bill as an indication of the consequences of failing to implement it. The bill was finally passed at the beginning of October. Later in the month, Bush and Paulson announced plans to buy stakes in leading US banks—effectively a partial nationalization, although Bush insisted it was a short-term measure to deal with the immediate crisis.

The financial crisis appeared to have a dramatic effect in the presidential election voting intentions of the American people according to polls in October 2008, with Senator Obama faring the better of the two candidates. At the November 4 election, Obama won both the popular vote, by a margin of six percentage points, and secured more than twice as many votes in the electoral college, becoming the nation’s first-ever African-American president-elect.