THE HISTORY OF THE USA

The American Declaration of Independence of 1776 was signed by thirteen British colonies on the east coast. They mark the end of British domination of their American colonies and the birth of the United States as a nation. Protests against British rule had begun some years earlier, in 1773, at the so called Boston Tea Party. American rebels had thrown boxes of tea from a British ship into the water, as a protest against paying taxes to a government in which they were not represented. War against Britain followed in 1775 and lasted eight years. But it wasn't the end of conflict with Britain. The new Unites States was at war again with the 'mother country' between 1812 and 1814. During this conflict, the British army entered Washington, and set fire to the White House. The United States still basically consisted of thirteen ex-colonies on the east coast. This all changed in 1848. The discovery of gold in California started the famous 'Gold Rush', when thousands of people migrated to the west coast in search of an easy fortune. Many Native American tribes were forced to move to reservations to make way for the new white settlers. Meanwhile, back in the east, civil war started, American against American. The agricultural states in the South, with their black slaves, were afraid of the industrial North, with its economic power and anti-slavery policy. The immediate cause of the war was the election of anti-slavery president Abraham Lincoln. The war lasted from 1861 till 1865. It was a bloody affair; over 600,000 people died. President Lincoln was assassinated in a theatre just five days after the war ended. After the civil war, people continued to move west. The first trans-continental railway was completed in 1869, but this movement of white settlers led to more conflict with Native Americans. The so-called Indian Wars intensified, until the US government received a big shock in 1876. Sioux and Cheyenne tribes defeated the US Army at the Battle of Little Bighorn; there were no survivors. This war by the whites against the Native Americans continued until 1890, when the US Army killed hundreds of Native Americans, men, women and children, at a place called Wounded Knee. It was the end of an era. American soldiers were in action again in 1917, this time in Europe. After the horrors and hardship of the First World War, American life changed drastically in the 1920s. It was the time of Prohibition.Between 1920 and 1933, the manufacture and sale of alcohol was banned. This led to illegal bars and the rise of gangsters like Al Capone. They were exciting times, but the Wall Street Crash of 1929 led to a deep economic depression in the 1930s. Unemployment and povery were widespread. Nobody knew at the time, but the USA was about to take its place on the world stage. In 1941, the USA entered the Second World War and in 1945 they ended it by dropping two nuclear bombs on Japan. Since then, American troops have been active in most parts of the world, most famously fighting communist forces in Vietnam. The USA spent over 150 billion dollary on the Vietnam war, but had to leave in 1973when they realised they couldn't win. Meanwhile, back home, times were changing. John Kennedy, at forty-four, was the youngest president in history. His presidency was cut short in 1963 when he was assassinated; mystery still surrounds his death. The black civil rights movement was growing, too, but tragedy struck again when its leader Martin Luther King was also assassinated in 1968. However, the decade ended on a more optimistic note in 1969 when Neil Armstrong became the first person to walk on the moon.