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The history of the present-day United States began in roughly 15,000 BC with the arrival of the first people in the Americas. In the late 15th century, European colonization began and wars and epidemics largely decimated Indigenous societies. By the 1760s, the Thirteen Colonies, then part of British America and the Kingdom of Great Britain, were established. The Southern Colonies built an agricultural system on slave labor and enslaving millions from Africa. After the British victory over the Kingdom of France in the French and Indian Wars, Parliament imposed a series of taxes and issued the Intolerable Acts on the colonies in 1773, which were designed to end self-governance. Tensions between the colonies and British authorities subsequently intensified, leading to the Revolutionary War, which commenced with the Battles of Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775. In June 1775, the Second Continental Congress established the Continental Army and unanimously selected George Washington as its commander-in-chief. The following year, on July 4, 1776, the Second Continental Congress unanimously declared its independence, issuing the Declaration of Independence. On September 3, 1783, in the Treaty of Paris, the British acknowledged the independence and sovereignty of the Thirteen Colonies, leading to the establishment of the United States.

In the 1788-89 presidential election, Washington was elected the nation's first U.S. president. Along with his Treasury Secretary, Alexander Hamilton, Washington sought to create a relatively stronger central government than that favored by other founders, including Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. On March 4, 1789, the new nation debated, adopted, and ratified the U.S. Constitution, which is now the oldest and longest-standing written and codified national constitution in the world.[1] In 1791, a Bill of Rights was added to guarantee inalienable rights. In 1803, Jefferson, then serving as the nation's third president, negotiated the Louisiana Purchase, which doubled the size of the country. Encouraged by available, inexpensive land, and the notion of manifest destiny, the country expanded to the Pacific Coast in a project of settler colonialism marked by a series of conflicts with the continent's indigenous inhabitants. Whether or not slavery should be legal in the expanded territories was an issue of national contention.

Following the election of Abraham Lincoln as the nation's 16th president in the 1860 presidential election, southern states seceded and formed the pro-slavery Confederate States of America. In April 1861, at the Battle of Fort Sumter, Confederates launched the Civil War. However, the Union's victory at the Battle of Gettysburg, the deadliest battle in American military history with over 50,000 fatalities, proved a turning point in the war, leading to the Union's victory in 1865, which preserved the nation. On April 15, 1865, Lincoln was assassinated. The Confederates' defeat led to the abolition of slavery. In the subsequent Reconstruction era from 1865 to 1877, the national government gained explicit duty to protect individual rights. In 1877, white southern Democrats regained political power in the South, often using paramilitary suppression of voting and Jim Crow laws to maintain white supremacy. During the Gilded Age from the late 19th century to the early 20th century, the United States emerged as the world's leading industrial power, largely due to entrepreneurship, industrialization, and the arrival of millions of immigrant workers. Dissatisfaction with corruption, inefficiency, and traditional politics stimulated the Progressive movement, leading to reforms, including to the federal income tax, direct election of U.S. Senators, citizenship for many Indigenous people, alcohol prohibition, and women's suffrage.

Initially neutral during World War I, the United States declared war on Germany in 1917, joining the successful Allies. After the prosperous Roaring Twenties, the Wall Street crash of 1929 marked the onset of a decade-long global Great Depression. President Franklin D. Roosevelt launched New Deal programs, including unemployment relief and social security.[2] Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the United States entered World War II, helping defeat Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy in the European theater and, in the Pacific War, defeating Imperial Japan after using nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. Following the end of World War II, the Cold War commenced with the United States and the Soviet Union emerging as superpower rivals; the two countries largely confronted each other indirectly in the arms race, the Space Race, propaganda campaigns, and proxy wars. In the 1960s, due largely to the civil rights movement, social reforms enforced African Americans' constitutional rights of voting and freedom of movement. In 1991, the Cold War ended with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, leaving the United States as the world's sole superpower.

In the post-Cold War era, the United States has been drawn into conflicts in the Middle East, especially following the September 11 attacks. In the 21st century, the country was negatively impacted by the Great Recession of 2007 to 2009 and the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 to 2023. Recently, the U.S. withdrew from the war in Afghanistan, intervened in the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and became involved in the Middle Eastern crisis.

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