History of the United States

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The flag of the United States during the American Revolution

The history of the United States is what happened in the past in the United States, a country
in North America.
Native Americans lived in the Americas for thousands of years. English people in 1607 went to the
place now called Jamestown, Virginia. Other European settlers went to the colonies, mostly
from England and later Great Britain. France, Spain, and the Netherlands also colonized North
America. In 1775, a war between the thirteen colonies and Britain began when the colonists were
upset over tyrannical British policies. Just after dawn on April 19, 1775 the British attempted to
disarm the Massachusetts militia at Concord, Massachusetts[source?], thus beginning the war with the
"Shot Heard Round the World." On July 4, 1776, Founding Fathers wrote the United States
Declaration of Independence. They won the Revolutionary War and started a new country. They
signed the constitution in 1787 and the Bill of Rights in 1791. General George Washington, who had
led the war, became its first president. During the 19th century, the United States gained much more
land in the West and began to become industrialized. In 1861, several states in the South attempted
to leave the United States to start a new country called the Confederate States of America. This
caused the American Civil War. After the war, Immigration resumed. Some Americans became very
rich in this Gilded Age and the country developed one of the largest economies in the world.
In the early 20th century, the United States became a world power, fighting in World War I and World
War II. Between the wars, there was an economic boom called the Roaring Twenties when people
became richer and a bust called the Great Depression when most were poorer. The Great
Depression ended with World War II.
The United States and the Soviet Union entered the Cold War. This included wars
in Korea and Vietnam. During this time, African-Americans, Chicanos, and women sought
more rights. In the 1970s and 1980s, the United States started to make fewer things in factories. The
country then went through the worst recession it had since the Great Depression. In the late 1980s
the Cold War ended, helping the United States out of recession. The Middle East became more
important in American foreign policy, especially after the September 11 attacks in 2001.