page_title: History of the United States
section_title: Reconstruction and the Gilded Age
hierarchical_section_title: History of the United States / Reconstruction and the Gilded Age
caption_attribution_description: English: Exterior of the Home Insurance Building by architect William Le Baron Jenney in Chicago, Illinois.
context_page_description: 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 paying taxation to their government in the UK, but were not being given any chance to vote in the UK/British elections, to contribute to how that money was spent.
  Just after dawn on April 19, 1775, the British attempted to disarm the Massachusetts militia at Concord, Massachusetts, this 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.
context_section_description: In April 1865, Lincoln was shot and killed while watching a play. The new president, Andrew Johnson, had to go through the process of reconstruction, which was putting the United States back together after the Civil War. During this time, the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution were passed, freeing slaves, making them citizens and allowing them to vote. Congress was run by "Radical Republicans", who wanted to punish the South after the Civil War. They did not like Johnson, and almost removed him from office. They also sent many soldiers to the South, installed unpopular "scalawag" governments, and made the South pass the 14th and 15th Amendments. The South did not like this, so they made "Jim Crow" laws that placed blacks in lower roles. White Southerners started a group called the Ku Klux Klan that attacked blacks and stopped them from voting.
  During this time, many people moved to the United States from other countries, such as Ireland, Italy, Germany, Eastern Europe, and China. Many of them worked in large factories and lived in big cities, such as New York City, Chicago, and Boston, often in small, poor, close-together apartments called "tenements" or "slums". They often were used by "political machines", who gave them jobs and money in exchange for votes.
  Major politicians were chosen by political machines and were corrupt. The government could do little and leaders of big businesses often had more power than the government. At this time, there were several very big businesses called trusts. People who ran trusts made millions of dollars while paying their workers low wages. Some of these people were John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, and J.P. Morgan.
  After the Civil War, people continued to move west where new states were formed. People now could get free land in the West due to an 1862 law called the Homestead Act. Most of the land in the West was owned by the government, railroads, or large farmers. The Transcontinental Railroad, finished in 1869, helped get people and goods from the west to the rest of the country. Chicago became the center of trade between West and East because many rail lines met there. There were problems between the white settlers and the native Indians as more people began to move west. Because of this, many more Indians were killed at battles such as Wounded Knee. Almost all the Indians' land was taken away by laws like the Dawes Act.
  Many Americans thought the railroads charged farmers so much money that it made them poor. Workers led several strikes against the railroad that were put down by the army. Also, farmers started groups to fight the railroad, such as the Grange. These groups became the Populist Movement, which almost won the presidency under William Jennings Bryan. The Populists wanted reforms such as an income tax and direct election of Senators. The Populist Party died out after 1896. Many of the things the Populists wanted would happen during the Progressive Era.
caption: The Home Insurance Building in Chicago was the first skyscraper in the world
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