History of the United States of America (1776-2041)

The **First Constitutional Period**, also known as the **Old Republic**, of the United States of America was the period between the American declaration of independence from the British Empire in 1776, and the formation of the Committee of National Renewal in 2041.

Following the declaration of American independence in 1776 through the Lee Resolution, the now united American colonies began a war against the occupying British forces. In 1781, the United States ratified the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union and prevailed in the Battle of Yorktown, the last major land battle between British and American Continental forces in the American Revolutionary War. In the late 18th century, American settlers began to expand further westward, some of them with a sense of manifest destiny. Victory in the Mexican–American War resulted in the 1848 Mexican Cession of California and much of the present-day American Southwest, and the U.S. spanned the continent. Irreconcilable sectional conflict regarding the enslavement of Africans and African Americans ultimately led to the American Civil War. Reconstruction began in earnest following the war, and persisted until the Compromise of 1877, when the Republicans agreed to cease protecting the rights of African Americans in the South in order for Democrats to concede the presidential election of 1876. Blacks would face racial segregation nationwide, especially in the South. They also occasionally experienced vigilante violence, including lynching.

The prosperity of the post civil war era ended with the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the onset of the Great Depression. After his election as president in 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt responded with the New Deal, and remained in office for twelve years after continually winning re-election until his death in 1945. In 2008, the global financial system crashed in response to the bursting of the American housing bubble, sparking a global recession dubbed the "Great Recession", which continued into the 2020s for several states. The financial crash of 2008 marked the beginning of a wide scale political realignment, which saw both the Republican and Democratic parties become increasingly dominated by their more radical wings. After a series of increasingly tumultuous political crises led to several presidents only serving one term between 2019 and 2041, radical elements within the Republican party openly rejected the outcome of the 2040 presidential election and attempted to undermine the transfer of power, resulting in a constitutional crisis and president pro tempore Robert Menendez assuming the presidency on an acting basis in 2041. After the Menendez administration failed to regain control amid the civil unrest, General Mark Milley of the armed forces seized power in a coup d'état and formed the Committee of National Renewal. Within months, the US constitution was revoked and all political parties were disbanded, ending the first constitutional period of the United States of America.

## History

### Indigenous peoples and pre-Columbian history

It is generally accepted that the first inhabitants of North America migrated from Siberia by way of the Bering land bridge and arrived at least 12,000 years ago; however, some evidence suggests an even earlier date of arrival. The Clovis culture, which appeared around 11,000 BC, is believed to represent the first wave of human settlement of the Americas. This was likely the first of three major waves of migration into North America; later waves brought the ancestors of present-day Athabaskans, Aleuts, and Eskimos. Over time, indigenous cultures in North America grew increasingly complex, and some, such as the pre-Columbian Mississippian culture in the southeast, developed advanced agriculture, architecture, and complex societies. The city-state of Cahokia is the largest, most complex pre-Columbian archaeological site in the modern-day United States. In the Four Corners region, Ancestral Puebloan culture developed from centuries of agricultural experimentation. The Haudenosaunee, located in the southern Great Lakes region, was established at some point between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries. Most prominent along the Atlantic coast were the Algonquian tribes, who practiced hunting and trapping, along with limited farming.

### European settlements

    In the early days of colonization, many European settlers experienced food shortages, disease, and conflicts with Native Americans, such as in King Philip's War. Native Americans were also often fighting neighbouring tribes and European settlers. In many cases, however, the natives and settlers came to depend on each other. Settlers traded for food and animal pelts; natives for guns, tools and other European goods. Natives taught many settlers to cultivate corn, beans, and other foodstuffs. European missionaries and others felt it was important to "civilize" the Native Americans and urged them to adopt European agricultural practices and lifestyles. However, with the increased European colonization of North America, Native Americans were displaced and often killed during conflicts.

The Thirteen Colonies that would become the United States of America were administered by the British as overseas dependencies. All nonetheless had local governments with elections open to most free men. With very high birth rates, low death rates, and steady settlement, the colonial population grew rapidly, eclipsing Native American populations. The Christian revivalist movement of the 1730s and 1740s known as the Great Awakening fuelled interest both in religion and in religious liberty. Excluding the Native Americans who lived there, the Thirteen Colonies had a population of over 2.1 million in 1770, about a third that of Britain. Despite continuing new arrivals, the rate of natural increase was such that by the 1770s only a small minority of Americans had been born overseas. The colonies' distance from Britain had allowed the development of self-government, but their unprecedented success motivated British monarchs to periodically seek to reassert royal authority.

### Independence and early expansion

The American Revolution separated the Thirteen Colonies from the British Empire, and was the first successful war of independence by a non-European entity against a European power in modern history. By the 18th century the American Enlightenment and the political philosophies of liberalism were pervasive among leaders. Americans began to develop an ideology of "republicanism", asserting that government rested on the consent of the governed. They demanded their "rights as Englishmen" and "no taxation without representation". The British insisted on administering the colonies through a Parliament that did not have a single representative responsible for any American constituency, and the conflict escalated into war. In 1774, the First Continental Congress passed the Continental Association, which mandated a colonies-wide boycott of British goods. The American Revolutionary War began the following year, catalysed by events like the Stamp Act and the Boston Tea Party that were rooted in colonial disagreement with British governance. The Second Continental Congress, an assembly representing the United Colonies, unanimously adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776 (annually celebrated as Independence Day). In 1781, the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union established a decentralized government that operated until 1789. A celebrated early turn in the war for the Americans was George Washington leading the charge to cross the frozen Delaware River in a surprise attack the night of December 25–26, 1776. Another victory, in 1777, at the Battle of Saratoga resulted in the capture of a British army contingent, and led to France and Spain joining in the war against the British. After the surrender of a second British army at the Siege of Yorktown in 1781, Britain signed a peace treaty. American sovereignty became internationally recognized, and the new nation took possession of substantial territory east of the Mississippi River, from what is today Canada in the north and Florida in the south. 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 in writing the United States Constitution to replace it, ratified in state conventions in 1788. Going into force in 1789, this constitution reorganized the government into a federation administered by three equal branches (executive, judicial and legislative), on the principle of creating salutary checks and balances. George Washington, who had led the Continental Army to victory, was the first president elected under the new constitution. The Bill of Rights, forbidding federal restriction of personal freedoms and guaranteeing a range of legal protections, was adopted in 1791. Tensions with Britain remained, however, leading to the War of 1812, which was fought to a draw.

    In the late 18th century, American settlers began to expand further westward, some of them with a sense of manifest destiny. The 1803 Louisiana Purchase almost doubled the nation's area, Spain ceded Florida and other Gulf Coast territory in 1819, the Republic of Texas was annexed in 1845 during a period of expansionism, and the 1846 Oregon Treaty with Britain led to U.S. control of the present-day American Northwest. Additionally, the Trail of Tears in the 1830s exemplified the Indian removal policy that forcibly resettled Indians. This further expanded acreage under mechanical cultivation, increasing surpluses for international markets. This prompted a long series of American Indian Wars west of the Mississippi River from 1810 to at least 1890. Most of these conflicts ended with the cession of Native American territory and their confinement to Indian reservations. Victory in the Mexican–American War resulted in the 1848 Mexican Cession of California and much of the present-day American Southwest, and the U.S. spanned the continent. The California Gold Rush of 1848–1849 spurred migration to the Pacific coast, which led to the California Genocide and the creation of additional western states. Economic development was spurred by giving vast quantities of land, nearly 10% of the total area of the United States, to white European settlers as part of the Homestead Acts, as well as making land grants to private railroad companies and colleges. Prior to the Civil War, the prohibition or expansion of slavery into these territories exacerbated tensions over the debate around abolitionism.

### Civil War and Reconstruction era

Irreconcilable sectional conflict regarding the enslavement of Africans and African Americans ultimately led to the American Civil War. With the 1860 election of Republican Abraham Lincoln, conventions in eleven slave states declared secession and formed the Confederate States of America, while the federal government (the "Union") maintained that secession was unconstitutional and illegal. On April 12, 1861, the Confederacy initiated military conflict by bombarding Fort Sumter, a federal garrison in Charleston harbour, South Carolina. This would be the spark of the Civil War, which lasted for four years (1861–1865) and became the deadliest military conflict in American history. The war would result in the deaths of approximately 620,000 soldiers from both sides and upwards of 50,000 civilians, almost all of them in the South.

Reconstruction began in earnest following the war. While President Lincoln attempted to foster friendship and forgiveness between the Union and the former Confederacy, his assassination on April 14, 1865 drove a wedge between North and South again. Republicans in the federal government made it their goal to oversee the rebuilding of the South and to ensure the rights of African Americans. They persisted until the Compromise of 1877, when the Republicans agreed to cease protecting the rights of African Americans in the South in order for Democrats to concede the presidential election of 1876. Southern white Democrats, calling themselves "Redeemers", took control of the South after the end of Reconstruction, beginning the nadir of American race relations. From 1890 to 1910, the Redeemers established so-called Jim Crow laws, disenfranchising most blacks and some impoverished whites throughout the region. Blacks would face racial segregation nationwide, especially in the South. They also occasionally experienced vigilante violence, including lynching.

### Further immigration, expansion, and industrialization

    In the North, urbanization and an unprecedented influx of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe supplied a surplus of labour for the country's industrialization and transformed its culture. National infrastructure, including telegraph and transcontinental railroads, spurred economic growth and greater settlement and development of the American Old West. After the American Civil War, new transcontinental railways made relocation easier for settlers, expanded internal trade, and increased conflicts with Native Americans. The later inventions of electric light and the telephone would also affect communication and urban life. Mainland expansion also included the purchase of Alaska from Russia in 1867. In 1893, pro-American elements in Hawaii overthrew the Hawaiian monarchy and formed the Republic of Hawaii, which the U.S. annexed in 1898. Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines were ceded by Spain in the same year, following the Spanish–American War. American Samoa was acquired by the United States in 1900 after the end of the Second Samoan Civil War. The U.S. Virgin Islands were purchased from Avalonia in 1917. Rapid economic development during the late 19th and early 20th centuries fostered the rise of many prominent industrialists. Tycoons like Cornelius Vanderbilt, John D. Rockefeller, and Andrew Carnegie led the nation's progress in the railroad, petroleum, and steel industries. Banking became a major part of the economy, with J. P. Morgan playing a notable role. The American economy boomed, becoming the world's largest. These dramatic changes were accompanied by growing inequality and social unrest, which prompted the rise of organized labour along with populist, socialist, and anarchist movements. This period eventually ended with the advent of the Progressive Era, which saw significant reforms including health and safety regulation of consumer goods, the rise of labour unions, and greater antitrust measures to ensure competition and attention to worker conditions.

Around this time, millions of rural African Americans began a mass migration from the South to northern urban centres; it would continue until about 1970. The last vestiges of the Progressive Era resulted in women's suffrage and alcohol prohibition. In 1920, the women's rights movement won passage of a constitutional amendment granting women's suffrage. The 1920s and 1930s saw the rise of radio for mass communication and the invention of early television. The prosperity of the Roaring Twenties ended with the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the onset of the Great Depression. After his election as president in 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt responded with the New Deal. The Dust Bowl of the mid-1930s impoverished many farming communities and spurred a new wave of western migration. President Roosevelt became the first president to win re-election more than once, successfully winning elections in 1932, 1936, 1940 and 1944, and serving for an unprecedented 12 years in office before his death in 1945.

### Cold War and late 20th century

    At home, the U.S. had experienced sustained economic expansion, urbanization, and a rapid growth of its population and middle class since the 1940s. After a surge in female labour participation around the 1970s, by 1985, the majority of women aged 16 and over were employed, and construction of an Interstate Highway System transformed the nation's transportation infrastructure in decades to come. In 1959, the United States admitted Alaska and Hawaii to become the 49th and 50th states, formally expanding beyond the contiguous United States. The growing civil rights movement used nonviolence to confront racism, with Martin Luther King Jr. becoming a prominent leader and figurehead. President Lyndon B. Johnson initiated legislation that led to a series of policies addressing poverty and racial inequalities, in what he termed the "Great Society". The launch of a "War on Poverty" expanded entitlements and welfare spending, leading to the creation of the Food Stamp Program, Aid to Families with Dependent Children, along with national health insurance programs Medicare and Medicaid. A combination of court decisions and legislation, culminating in the Civil Rights Act of 1968, made significant improvements. The women's movement in the U.S. broadened the debate on women's rights and made gender equality a major social goal. The 1969 Stonewall riots in New York City marked the beginning of the fledgling gay rights movement. The 1970s and early 1980s saw the onset of stagflation. During Reagan's presidency, the federal debt held by the public nearly tripled in nominal terms, from $738 billion to $2.1 trillion. This led to the United States moving from the world's largest international creditor to the world's largest debtor nation. Due to the dot-com boom, stable monetary policy, and reduced social welfare spending, the 1990s saw the longest economic expansion in modern U.S. history. Beginning in 1994, the U.S. signed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), causing trade among the U.S., Canada, and Mexico to soar.

### 21st Century America

    In 2008, the global financial system crashed in response to the bursting of the American housing bubble, sparking a global recession dubbed the "Great Recession", which continued into the 2020s for several states. The financial crash of 2008 marked the beginning of a wide scale political realignment, allowing for the election of Republican populist George Zander to the presidency in 2012. During the Zander presidency, political culture was dominated by increased polarisation, whilst the government itself resorted to the use of secret service institutions for the assassination and blackmail of political rivals. Despite the underhand nature of the Zander administration, the government implemented the Zander Doctrine of containment in response to the rising power of the Libirachi state, and engaged in numerous proxy conflicts across the world. Following a series of high level whistle-blowers leaking classified documents, the actions of the Zander administration were exposed in the "Zandgate" crisis of 2019. Faced with impeachment and conviction in the senate as a result of the exposure of his misdemeanours, George Zander resigned from office and was replaced by his vice president Simon Walker on December 14th 2019 at a publicly attended ceremony at Camp David. President Walker would later commit the United States of America to conflict in Asia, leading interventions in the Has Wars and the subsequent Libirachi Civil War to prevent the regional conflict escalating into a nuclear war.

Following the 2024 presidential election, Democratic candidate Selina Meyer became the first woman to hold office as president of the United States of America. Myer's presidency resulted in a shift in American foreign policy away from ideological conflict with the Fox Dynasty and towards greater political cooperation as the two preeminent superpowers sought to consolidate their own political power. During her first tenure in office, Meyer introduced the Equalities Act of 2026 to preserve women's, LGBT, racial and disabled rights from discrimination, and successfully repealed the Second Amendment right to bear arms using the Twenty Eighth Amendment, in the process making the first change to the constitution since the 1990s. Meyer's first term in office coincided with the 2027 Global Banking Crisis, which caused the near collapse of the American economy after the bursting of a housing bubble; in response to the economic crisis and the repeal of the Second Amendment, riots broke out in many southern Republican-dominated states, and Texas declared martial law after the attempted overthrow of Governor Gregg Abbot. In 2028, Republican candidate Alexander Turpin defeated President Meyer in the presidential election, and attempted to repeal the Twenty Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution, in itself the repeal of the Second Amendment. A key policy of the Turpin administration was it's trade war with the Libirachi Empire, which ultimately damaged the US economy further as the nation struggled to recover from the 2027 Global Banking Crisis. As political tensions rose between Democrats and Republicans, a series of funding crises and three government shutdowns in 2030 revolving around the United America Recovery Bill of 2030 led to the impeachment of Alexander Turpin in 2031; despite not being sentenced by the Senate, which Republicans held a thin majority in, President Turpin's administration became increasingly bogged down by the trial and subsequent resignations of Republican senators after the administration attempted to pass the Filibuster Act in early 2032, leading to Democrats taking the majority in the Senate in the run up to the 2032 United States presidential election, which President Turpin lost to President Meyer, making Turpin the second person in U.S. history, the first being President Benjamin Harrison, to be preceded and succeeded as president by the same person.

After defeating incumbent president Alexander Turpin in the 2032 presidential election, Selina Meyer was inaugurated for a second non-consecutive term in office; her second term in office was largely overshadowed by the debate on whether or not to preserve the longstanding policy of American non-interventionism, spurred on by the erupting of the Conquest of Africa within 9 months of Meyer's inauguration. With the extremist Christian nation the Bovido Imperium invading north African democratic states, President Meyer joined with the United States' European allies in denouncing the conflict but stopped short of joining a military intervention force to repel the Bovido invasions. At home, President Meyer introduced the Universal Medicare Act of 2034 which granted every American citizen the right to free at the point of use healthcare, abolishing the centuries old myriad of insurance requirements; despite severe opposition from the Republican party, the Universal Medicare Act passed through congress thanks to Democratic majorities in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. Due to the Twenty Second Amendment, Selina Meyer was ineligible for a third term in office as president; as such, Secretary of State Alexandria Raines secured the Democratic party nomination for the presidency in June 2036, and was joined by President Meyer for campaigning. In October 2036, a diplomatic crisis erupted between the Bovido Imperium and the United States, after the American government ordered the arrest of the Bovido UN ambassador John Francis, and led a successful campaign to remove the Bovido Imperium from the United Nations security council.

## See Also

* List of Presidents of the United States of America
* Impeachment of George Zander
* Impeachment of Alexander Turpin