Short USA History

The history of the United States of America is one that cannot be summarized easily. This is because there are many things about it that needs to be taken into details. But for the sake of space and the demands of this job, we are going to have a look at a brief history of the United States of America.

The history of America actually started when one of the voyagers named Christopher Columbus sailed to the region and discovered America as history will have it.

But there is a controversy about this as many people have argued that Columbus could not have discovered America in 1749 when in actual fact people have been living there for a very long time before he came.

If we even say that he discovered the river, we also know that the natives have been using the river before he came. The only fact is that he discovered that there was such an area with people living in it.

This discovery made a separate part of the English world that did not like the way they were being treated by their king to set sail to the land discovered by Columbus around the same time.

Around the year 1750, America which now has a population made up of people who were predominantly slaves in the English world also engaged in its own slavery and conquest of colonies. Because of this, it had a population which 25% of it were slaves around 1750. When they arrived to America, they were still under the rule of the English. But due to the desire to exist as a separate people, they were forced to declare independence in 1776. This led to the revolutionary war between the British and America. However, after a war that lasted for a total of 9 years, America was freed from English rule.

While America was still jubilating about its victory and freedom from the English, 11 states out of the 50 had problems with the union. here, the issues of slavery in particular and other sectional and administrative, economic, political and philosophical differences that were irreconcilable between the north and south of America led to the first internal civil war in the nation. However, the result of the war that lasted for 5 years is the further strengthening of the relationship between the states.

Within this period, political differences in the structure and ideologies of political parties, mainly between the Whig Party and the Republican Party ensued, with the result being that many Catholics in the Whig anti-Catholic party later defected to the Republican Party. This was fuelled by the candidacy of Lincoln for president, as he was seen by people from many angles as a very sectional candidate. The result was that some states wanted to form another union, but this was completely crushed by the war and Lincoln also won the election to the presidential seat.

While the war was raging and some rebellions were still going on, Lincoln declared slavery dead in the USA and proclaimed that all slaves are thereby emancipated.  The Republican Party in Washington went on with some economic reforms that involved high protective tariffs, huge aid to capitalists to explore natural resources and build railways, freedom of association and homeownership for all settlers. It was here that the banking and currency laws that created a single paper currency for the whole union was created. It was also at this time that land grants were given for universities to be established in each state for the training of engineers, agriculturalists and other professionals as the US wanted to run an industrialized economy.

Lincoln was assassinated a week after the creation of these laws and reforms. He was succeeded by Andrew Johnson who embarked on a reconstruction and reconciliation to bring back southerners to the main fold. But the republicans refused to admit them into the house. Some even went ahead to confront Andrew on this. He went ahead to terminate the bureau that took care of refugees and veto the protection of their civil rights.

However, in 1868, the 1866 law was ratified and all who were born or naturalized in the USA were made citizens with equal rights. All states were forbidden from interfering in their civil rights.

In 1867, the southern governments were replaced with military outfits for total reconstruction, and this led to an impeachment effort on the president in 1868. The result of all these is that the south started doing things the same way with the north.

They went into reforms, industrialization, and made education free for all, taxes more equitable and election into public offices free for all. With the suppression of governmental official oppression of blacks, it became domesticated around 1870.

The country continued to build on this till 1914 when it joined the world in the World War 1. Here, it lost more than 118,000 soldiers. America was also to get involved in the Second World War between 1939 and 1945, but this time around, it helped to defeat Japan by detonating an atomic bomb in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.