United States

***United States of America***
 **Population:** 3,929,326**Ethnic Groups:*** White - 80.7%
* Articles of Confederation - March 1, 1781
* Constitution - June 21, 1788

**The United States of America**, commonly known as the United States or America, was the first independent nation of European decent to independently govern itself on the Continent of North America. The United States is made up of territories spanning from Spanish Florida to British North America, otherwise known as Canada, the United States also spans as far west as the Mississippi River.

Indigenous peoples have inhabited the Americas for thousands of years. Beginning in 1607, British colonization led to the establishment of the Thirteen Colonies in what is now the Eastern United States. They clashed with the British Crown over taxation and political representation which led to the American Revolution and the ensuing Revolutionary War. The United States declared independence on July 4, 1776, becoming the first nation-state founded on Enlightenment principles of unalienable natural rights, consent of the governed, and liberal democracy.

The United States government is a federal republic and a representative democracy with three separate branches of government: executive, legislative, and judicial. It has a bicameral national legislature composed of the House of Representatives, a lower house based on population; and the Senate, an upper house based on equal representation for each state. Many policy issues are decentralized at a state or local level, with widely differing laws by jurisdiction.

## Revolution and Early Years

The United States had been rebellious up into the 1770s, but in the 1770s tensions finally broke out into the American Revolution. The British attempted to disarm the Americans, resulting in the Battles of Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775, igniting the American Revolutionary War. The then United Colonies responded by again convening in Philadelphia as the Second Continental Congress where, in June 1775, they appointed George Washington as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army, which was initially composed of various American patriot militias resisting the British Army. In June 1776, the Second Continental Congress charged a committee with writing a Declaration of Independence, largely drafted by Thomas Jefferson.

On July 4, 1776, the Second Continental Congress with alterations unanimously adopted and issued the Declaration of Independence, which famously stated: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." The adoption of the Declaration of Independence is celebrated annually on July 4 in the United States as Independence Day.

In 1781, the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union established a decentralized government that operated until 1789. Considered one of the most important legislative acts of the Confederation Congress, Northwest Ordinance (1787) established the precedent by which the national government would be sovereign and expand westward with the admission of new states, rather than with the expansion of existing states and their established sovereignty under the Articles. The prohibition of slavery in the territory had the practical effect of establishing the Ohio River as the geographic divide between slave states and free states from the Appalachian Mountains to the Mississippi River, an extension of the Mason–Dixon line.

As it became increasingly apparent that the Confederation was insufficient to govern the new country, nationalists advocated for and led the Philadelphia Convention of 1787, where the United States Constitution was authored and then ratified in state conventions in 1788. The U.S. Constitution is the oldest and longest-standing written and codified national constitution in force today. Going into effect in 1789, it reorganized the government into a federation administered by three branches (executive, judicial, and legislative), on the principle of creating salutary checks and balances. George Washington, who led the Continental Army to victory in the Revolutionary War and then willingly relinquished power, was elected the new nation's first President under the new constitution.