EARLY AMERICA (to 1500s)

1. Pre-Columbian era

A. The first Americans - at the height of the Ice Age, be­tween 34,000 and 30,000 B.C., much of the world’s water was locked up in vast continental ice sheets. As a result, the Bering Sea was hundreds of meters below its current level, and a land bridge, known as Beringia, emerged between Asia and North America. At its peak, Beringia is thought to have been some 1,500 ki­lometers wide. A moist and treeless tundra, it was covered with grasses and plant life, attracting the large animals that early humans hunted for their survival.

THE COLONIAL PERIOD (1500-1750)

After a period of exploration sponsored by major European nations, the first successful English settlement was established in 1607. Europeans brought horses, cattle, and hogs to the Americas and, in turn, took back to Europe maize, turkeys, potatoes, tobacco, beans, and squash. Many explorers and early settlers died after being exposed to new diseases in the Americas. The effects of new Eurasian diseases carried by the colonists, especially smallpox and measles, were much worse for the Native Americans, as they had no immunity to them. They suffered epidemics and died in very large numbers, usually before large-scale European settlement began. Their societies were disrupted and hollowed out by the scale of deaths.

THE ROAD TO INDEPENDENCE (1776-1789)

Between 1776 and 1789, the United States emerged as an independent country, creating and ratifying its new constitution, and establishing its national government. In order to assert their traditional rights, American Patriots seized control of the colonies and launched a war for independence. The Americans declared independence on July 1776, proclaiming "all men are created equal." Congress raised the Continental Army under the command of General George Washington, forged a military alliance with France, and captured the two main British invasion armies. Nationalists replaced the governing Articles of Confederation to strengthen the federal government's powers of defense and taxation with the Constitution of the United States in 1789, still in effect today.

THE FORMATION OF NATIONAL GOVERNMENT (1776-1812)

1. State Constitutions 

The success of the Revolution gave Americans the opportunity to give legal form to their ideals as expressed in the Declaration of Independence, and to remedy some of their grievances through state constitutions. As early as May 10, 1776, Congress had passed a resolution advising the colonies to form new governments "such as shall best conduce to the happiness and safety of their constituents." Some of them had already done so, and within a year after the Declaration of Independence, all but three had drawn up constitutions.

BUILDING UNITY, POLITICAL PROCESS AND WESTWARD EXPANSION (1812-1850)

The War of 1812 was, in a sense, a second war of independence, for before that time the United States had not been accorded equality in the family of nations. With its conclusion, many of the serious difficulties that the young republic had faced since the Revolution now disappeared. National union under the Constitution brought a balance between liberty and order. With a low national debt and a continent awaiting exploration, the prospect of peace, prosperity and social progress opened before the nation.

THE MARKET REVOLUTION AND THE SECTIONAL CONFLICT (1812-1860)

1. A General information about the market revolution

Traditional commerce was made obsolete by improvements in transportation and communication. This change prompted the reinstatement of the mercantilist ideas that were thought to have died out. Increased industrialization was a major component of the Market Revolution as a result of the Industrial Revolution.

THE CIVIL WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION (1860-1877)

1. Secession and civil war

Lincoln’s victory in the presi­dential election of November 1860 made South Carolina’s secession from the Union December 20 a foregone conclusion. The state had long been waiting for an event that would unite the South against the antislavery forces. By February 1, 1861, five more Southern states had seceded. On February 8, the six states signed a provisional constitu­tion for the Confederate States of America. The remaining Southern states as yet remained in the Union, although Texas had begun to move on its secession.

THE GILDED AGE. GROWTH AND TRANSFORMATION (1877-1896)

1. General information about The Gilded Age 

The Glided Age in United States history is the late 19th century, from the 1870s to about 1900. 
The early half of the Gilded Age roughly coincided with the middle portion of the Victorian era in Britain and Belle Époque in France.

Name of the era - the term "gilded age" was applied to the era by historians in the 1920s, who took the term from one of Mark Twain's lesser known novels, The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (1873). The book (co-written with Charles Dudley Warner) satirized the promised 'golden age' after the American Civil War, portrayed as an era of serious social problems masked by a thin gold gilding of economic expansion. In the 1920s and 30s "Gilded Age" became a designated period in American history, with the term applied to the post Civil War period up to 1900.

THE PROGRESSIVE ERA. DISCONTENT AND REFORM (1896-1920)

1. Progressive Era 

A. General characteristics - it was a period of widespread social activism and political reform across the United States, from the 1890s to 1920s. The main objective of the Progressive movement was eliminating corruption in government. The movement primarily targeted political machines and their bosses. By taking down these corrupt representatives in office a further means of direct democracy would be established. They also sought regulation of monopolies (Trust Busting) and corporations through antitrust laws. These antitrust laws were seen as a way to promote equal competition for the advantage of legitimate competitors. 

WORLD WAR I, PROSPERITY AND THE GREAT DEPRESSION (1914-1932)

1. World War I and neutral rights

To the American public of 1914, the outbreak of war in Europe — with Germany and Austria-Hun­gary fighting Britain, France, and Russia — came as a shock. At first the encounter seemed remote, but its economic and political effects were swift and deep. By 1915 U.S. industry, which had been mildly de­pressed, was prospering again with munitions orders from the West­ern Allies. Both sides used propa­ganda to arouse the public passions of Americans — a third of whom were either foreign-born or had one or two foreign-born parents. More­over, Britain and Germany both act­ed against U.S. shipping on the high seas, bringing sharp protests from President Woodrow Wilson.

THE NEW DEAL AND WORLD WAR II (1932- 1945)

1. Roosevelt and the new deal 

In 1933 the new president, Franklin D.Roosevelt, brought an air of con­fidence and optimism that quickly rallied the people to the banner of his program, known as the New Deal. “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” the president de­clared in his inaugural address to the nation. 

THE AGE OF CONSENSUS. COLD WAR AND AFFLUENT SOCIETY (1946-1960)

The United States dominated glob­al affairs in the years immediately after World War II. Victorious in that great struggle, its homeland undamaged from the ravages of war, the nation was confident of its mission at home and abroad. U.S. leaders wanted to maintain the dem­ocratic structure they had defended at tremendous cost and to share the benefits of prosperity as widely as possible. For them, as for publisher Henry Luce of Time magazine, this was the “American Century.”

DECADES OF CHANGE, THE GREAT SOCIETY AND ECONOMIC MALAISE (1960-1980)

By 1960, the United States was on the verge of a major social change. American society had always been more open and fluid than that of the nations in most of the rest of the world. Still, it had been dominated primarily by old-stock, white males. During the 1960s, groups that previ­ously had been submerged or sub­ordinate began more forcefully and successfully to assert themselves: Af­rican Americans, Native Americans, women, the white ethnic offspring of the “new immigration,” and Latinos. Much of the support they received came from a young population larg­er than ever, making its way through a college and university system that was expanding at an unprecedented pace. Frequently embracing “coun­tercultural” lifestyles and radical politics, many of the offspring of the World War II generation emerged as advocates of a new America char­acterized by a cultural and ethnic pluralism that their parents often viewed with unease.

THE NEW CONSERVATISM AND A NEW WORLD ORDER (1981-1992)

1. Reagan presidency (1981-1988)

A. General information about the period - Ronald Reagan produced a major realignment with his 1980 and 1984 landslide elections. Reagan's economic policies (dubbed "Reaganomics") and the implementation of the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981 lowered the top marginal tax rate from 70% to 28% over the course of seven years. Reagan continued to downsize government taxation and regulation. The US experienced a recession in 1982, but the negative indicators reversed, with the inflation rate decreasing from 11% to 2%, the unemployment rate decreasing from 10.8% in December 1982 to 7.5% in November 1984, and the economic growth rate increasing from 4.5% to 7.2%.

BRIDGE TO THE 21TH CENTURY. THE AGE OF CLINTON AND THE WAR ON TERROR (1993-2008)

For most Americans the 1990s would be a time of peace, prosper­ity, and rapid technological change. Some attributed this to the “Rea­gan Revolution” and the end of the Cold War, others to the return of a Democrat to the presidency. During this period, the majority of Ameri­cans—political affiliation aside— asserted their support for tradi­tional family values, often ground­ed in their faiths. New York Times columnist David Brooks suggested that the country was experienc­ing “moral self-repair,” as “many of the indicators of social breakdown, which shot upward in the late 1960s and 1970s, and which plateaued at high levels in the 1980s,” were now in decline. Improved crime and other social statistics aside, American politics re­mained ideological, emotional, and characterized by intense divisions. Shortly after the nation entered the new millennium, moreover, its post- Cold War sense of security was jolted by an unprecedented terrorist attack that launched it on a new and difficult international track.

POLITICS OF HOPE AND OBAMANATION (2008-2016)

1. General information about The Great Recession 2008

In September 2008, the United States, and most of Europe, entered the longest post–World War II recession, often called the "Great Recession." Multiple overlapping crises were involved, especially the housing market crisis, a subprime mortgage crisis, soaring oil prices, an automotive industry crisis, rising unemployment, and the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. The financial crisis threatened the stability of the entire economy in September 2008 when Lehman Brothers failed and other giant banks were in grave danger. Starting in October the federal government lent $245 billion to financial institutions through the Troubled Asset Relief Program which was passed by bipartisan majorities and signed by Bush.