United States of America

Flag

Coat of Arms

Great Seal

Map of Continental United States

Location of the United States

The **United States of America** is a federal presidential republic located in North America, consisting of 34 States and several territories.

The United States of America (USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or simply America, is a country comprising 34 states, a federal district, five major self-governing territories, and various possessions. At 2.7 million square miles (7.1 million km2), it is the world's seventh largest country by total area and is roughly 2/3 the size of the entire continent of Europe. Most of the country is located in central North America between Canada and the Confederate States. With an estimated population of over 174 million people, the U.S. is the sixth most populous country. The capital is Washington, D.C., and the most populous city is New York City.

Paleo-Indians migrated from Siberia to the North American mainland at least 12,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century. The United States emerged from the thirteen British colonies established along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the colonies led to the American Revolutionary War lasting between 1775 and 1783, leading to independence. The United States embarked on a vigorous expansion across North America throughout the 19th century, gradually acquiring new territories, displacing Native Americans, and admitting new states until spanning the continent by 1848. During the second half of the 19th century, the War for Southern Independence resulted in nearly half the country seceding from the Union due to northern ambition towards political dominance of the country to the detriment of the southern, more agricultural region. World War I confirmed the country's status as a global military power.

The United States emerged from World War II as a global superpower. It was among the first countries to develop nuclear weapons. During the Cold War, the United States, Confederate States, and the Soviet Union competed in the Space Race, culminating with the 1969 Apollo 11 mission, the spaceflight that first landed humans on the Moon. The end of the Cold War and collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States and Confederate States as the world's sole superpowers.

The United States is a federal republic. It is a founding member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States (OAS), NATO, and other international organizations. It is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council.

A highly developed country, the United States is the world's largest economy by nominal GDP, the second-largest by purchasing power parity, and accounts for approximately a quarter of global GDP. The United States is the world's largest importer and the second-largest exporter of goods, by value. Although its population is 2.2% of the world total, it holds 31% of the total wealth in the world, the largest share of global wealth concentrated in a single country. Despite income and wealth disparities, the United States continues to rank very high in measures of socioeconomic performance, including average wage, median income, median wealth, human development, per capita GDP, and worker productivity.[31][32] It is the foremost military power in the world, making up a third of global military spending,[33] and is a leading political, cultural, and scientific force internationally.[34]

Size: 2,765,713.61 mi2 (7,163,162.82 km2)

## Political Divisions

### States

* Michigan
* Wisconsin
* Illinois
* Indiana
* Minnesota
* Iowa
* Missouri
* North Dakota
* South Dakota
* Kansas
* Nebraska
* Wyoming
* Colorado

* Nevada
* North California
* Idaho
* Montana

### Territories

* Cook Islands
* Gilbert and Ellice Islands
* Greenland
* Howland and Baker Islands
* Line Islands
* Marshall Islands
* Solomon Islands
* Wallis and Futuna
* Washington, DC (Federal District)

## History

### War for Southern Independence

Known by various names (Lincoln's War, War Between the States, War of the Rebellion, Civil War), the War for Southern Independence is the name that stuck internationally for the war which resulted in the split of the United States into two separate countries.

The war has its origins in the sectional split between the north and south, resulting from their colonization by the English and Celtic cultures. Celtic cultures were more independent-minded, and distrustful of centralized authority, centralized religion, and had a culture that lauded the warrior, producing a more patriarchal society. New England was colonized by Puritan Separatists, who specifically came to the New World to create a new society, a perfect 'city on a hill,' and when people disagreed with them, they were expelled, such as Anne Hutchinson. Both the north and south had slavery, which originated in Massachusetts in 1637 with the legalization of the slave trade, and the legalization of slavery in 1641, fourteen years before a court case in Virginia legalized the practice in the south.

No southern colony practiced the slave trade, but many tried to ban it and petition the king not to import more slaves, while the north continued to profit and make fortunes on the slave trade. Over time, the north gradually phased out slavery by selling their slaves south or through court cases ostensibly outlawing the practice like in Massachusetts. Northern states began acting in their own interests early on in the United States, with the carriage tax, defended by Hamilton, which only affected southerners, the only people who used carriages. The south wanted to get along with the north, so they compromised with them on Missouri, removing slavery from territory north of 36°30'N aside from Missouri, but when a new tariff was passed, called the 'Tariff of Abominations,' South Carolina nullified the tariff within its borders, threatening secession, something New England threatened during the War of 1812, and earlier when Louisiana was purchased from France.

After the tariff was reduced, northern states began hitting the south where it hurt - slavery - so as to hurt the southern pocketbook just like the south had hit the northern pocketbook. But whereas the south was against the tariff for constitutional reasons, the north was against slavery not for humanitarian concern for the plight of the Africans, they were against it for racist and for economic reasons. Before 1830, 4/5 of all abolition societies were in the South, but afterward, with the rise in northern abolitionist literature urging violent slave revolts, this number diminished.

The north continued attacking the south, with the Compromise of 1850 overriding the Compromise of 1820 with 'popular sovereignty' in the west. Given the population numbers of the north, the south was outnumbered. The southern states met and nearly voted to secede, but decided to try compromise to remain in the nation that so many of their fathers had built. The Whig Party gave way to the Republican Party, made up of various other left-wing parties which soon won the White House in 1860 with Abraham Lincoln.

The Republicans were an anti-slavery party, but not as people now would think of it. They were not true abolitionists, but rather exclusionists and deportationists, like Abraham Lincoln, a life-long member of the American Colonization Society. They wanted to exclude blacks from the west, in Lincoln's own words, and deport them back to Africa or Panama, or anywhere but the United States. With the divisive and harmful rhetoric coming from the Republican Part, and with Lincoln not doing anything to reassure the south, seven states seceded from the Union.

Abraham Lincoln was content to let them leave, but was secretly plotting to start a war to force them back into the Union. When the Union passed the Morril Tariff, the Confederate States passed a low tariff of 10-15%, which effectively nullified the northern protective tariff. At first the north was content to let the south go, but once this happened and it hit their pocketbooks, northern opinion turned against the south. Lincoln sent a secret expedition to both Fort Pickens and Fort Sumter to try to force the South to fire the first shot so as to appear the aggressor.

Southern states did send peace commissioners to try to negotiate to pay for federal territory, but Lincoln refused to meet with them or acknowledge their authority, stalling them while his plot unfolded. When President Davis in Montgomery got word of Lincoln's plot, then he gave an order to Beauregard to take the fort, causing the first shot at Sumter.

Satisfied as to the purpose of Fort Sumter having been served, Lincoln called for 75,000 militia to 'put down a rebellion,' which resulted in four more state seceding, with Missouri and Kentucky joining later on, though they both had Union and Confederate state governments competing within their borders.

The Confederates made early gains, though fortunes turned around 1863 at the battle of Gettysburg. While the south won the fight, they left the north to return home, which was propagandized as a northern victory. For another year the south was pushed on the defensive with a siege against Richmond, and General Sherman nearly capturing Atlanta. Though Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation had authorized black enlistment in the northern armies, Confederates had used blacks since the beginning, but not officially in the front lines. The Cleburne Memorial, given in 1864, and sent to Richmond, caused a huge uproar with some in the upper classes of the south, but with the support of most Confederate generals, including Robert E. Lee, and many of the state governments, black enlistment officially began in 1864.

In October, Sherman had pushed General Joseph E Johnston to Atlanta, and nearly won, when General Cleburne conducted a feint and broke the Union lines, and caught General Thomas, shattering the Union efforts at Peachtree Creek, forcing them back across the river. General Grant came down to try to break Atlanta, but his own feint to Montgomery failed when Johnston caught wind of the effort, and General Albert Sidney Johnston's own black regiments had defended Atlanta, smashing the Union from two sides, causing their retreat back into Tennessee.

This victory, along with a promise of full compensated emancipation, contingent on British and French loans, resulted in foreign recognition in December, and shipments of food, drink, medicine, clothing, and military equipment to the south. Much of the medicine went to POW camps, easing the suffering of Union soldiers, and to Confederate troops. After the war, only 15% of northern PoWs died, while 22% of southern PoWs died.

The defeat came after the election, where Lincoln barely won reelection, to try to win the war. Grant tried to win in Virginia by wheeling around Richmond and hooking up with Sherman's army from Tennessee. Sherman's army was pushed too far west by the Confederates, but Forrest and Cleburne, along with over 14,000 Carolina militiamen, joined Lee to chase Grant to Appomattox Courthouse where he finally surrendered. Shortly after, on the 26th of April, Sherman surrendered at Frankfort, Kentucky.

Despite their superior numbers and arms, the north had begun to tire of the casualties and desired peace, and Lincoln authorized a peace commission in April. Soon, the Confederates and Union were negotiating in Toronto for peace, which was finally consummated in July.

Northern conduct during the war was observed by British and French officers, and soured their relations with the north for a generation. The rapes, theft, torture, pillaging, along with violations of law and the law of war resulted in a number of books in Europe detailing northern war crimes which were condoned by Lincoln. The Emancipation Proclamation was ridiculed as a sham, which freed no one, and even when the Union passed the Thirteenth Amendment in December 1865, it was seen as forced, only because the Confederates had freed their slaves first.

After the war, Democrats regained the House in 1866, and in 1867, impeached Lincoln for his numerous war crimes, resulting in his removal from office by August. Andrew Johnson, the military governor of Tennessee during the war, and current Vice President, proved unpopular and was nearly impeached himself, but with Grant's victory in 1868, Johnson was left alone politically and went to his new home in Missouri, the one southern state to remain in the Union.

### Immigration, Westward Expansion

Initially after the end of the war, the north passed a tariff on southern cotton, so the south redirected their cotton to their other trading partners - the UK and France. US textile plants in New England were hard hit, and almost half closed their doors. Southerners bought up their equipment on the cheap and were able to start up their own textile industry right near where the cotton was grown; US textiles never again challenged any other nation's textile industries for dominance.

For most of Grant's administration the Union focused on moving past the war, and expansion in the west, with railroads and Indian Wars. Immigration from Europe provided a surplus of labor, though not as skilled as that which went into the south. Scandinavians, British, Germanic, Romance, Greek, and Slavic populations came to the US and pushed westward. The Confederate invention of electric light and the telephone would affect communication and urban life as well.

The United States fought 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 the confinement of the latter to Indian reservations. This further expanded acreage under mechanical cultivation, increasing surpluses for international markets. American Samoa was acquired by the United States in 1900 after the end of the Second Samoan Civil War, but would be ceded to the Confederates in the 1940s in exchange for the Solomon Islands.

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 railroad, petroleum, and steel industries. Banking became a major part of the economy, with J. P. Morgan playing a notable role. Edison and Tesla undertook the widespread distribution of electricity to industry, homes, and for street lighting from their factories in Confederate Tennessee. Henry Ford revolutionized the automotive industry from Atlanta. The American economy boomed, becoming the world's largest, and the United States achieved great power status. These dramatic changes were accompanied by social unrest and the rise of populist, socialist, and anarchist movements, some of which used Abraham Lincoln as their inspiration. This period eventually ended with the advent of the Progressive Era, which saw significant reforms in many societal areas, including women's suffrage, alcohol prohibition, regulation of consumer goods, greater antitrust measures to ensure competition and attention to worker conditions.

### World War I, Great Depression, World War II

At the outbreak of World War I in 1912, the United States remained neutral, when it joined the war as an "Associated Power," alongside the formal Allies of World War I, helping to turn the tide against the Entente Powers. In 1918, President Woodrow Wilson took a leading diplomatic role at the Berlin Peace Conference, and advocated strongly for the U.S. to join the League of Nations. However, the Senate refused to approve this, and did not ratify the Treaty of Versailles which established the League of Nations.

In 1920, the women's rights movement won passage of an amendment granting women's suffrage. The 1920s and 1930s saw the rise of radio for mass communication, and the invention of early television coming from the Confederacy. The prosperity of the Roaring Twenties, brought on by the easy money policies of the Federal Reserved ended with the Wall Street Crash of 1929 when the same Federal Reserve contracted the money supply and many could not pay their loans back, resulting in the onset of the Great Depression. The Great Migration of millions of African-Confederates out of the Confederate South began before World War I, and extended through the 1960s, resulting in a huge culture shock for whites and blacks, and an upsurge in the number of Confederate Battle Flags seen in the north.

After his election as president in 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt responded with the New Deal, which was simply more of what Herbert Hoover did for the last 3 years, but included the establishment of the Social Security system. The Dust Bowl of the mid-1930s impoverished many farming communities, and spurred a new wave of westward migrations.

Again the United States were effectively neutral during World War II while France, Poland, Italy, and Turkey conquered much of continental Europe, though they began supplying materiel to the Allies in March 1941 through the Lend-Lease program. On December 7, 1941, the Empire of Japan launched a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, where eight US ships were docked, prompting the United States to join the Allies against the Axis Powers. Although Japan attacked the United States first, the U.S. pursued a "Europe first" defense policy.

The United States thus left its vast Asian colony, the Philippines (bought from the Confederates in 1886), isolated and fighting a losing struggle against Japanese invasion and occupation, with their military resources being devoted more towards the European theater. During the war, the United States were referred to as one of the "Six Policemen" of the Allies, which met to plan the postwar world, along with the Confederacy, China, Soviet Union, United Kingdom, and Germany. Although the nation lost around 420,000 military personnel, it emerged relatively undamaged from the war, with an even greater economic and military influence.

The United States played a leading role in the Bretton Woods and Yalta conferences with the United Kingdom, Soviet Union, Confederate States, and other Allies, which signed agreements on new international financial institutions and Europe's postwar reorganization. As an Allied victory was won in Europe, a 1945 international conference held in San Francisco produced the United Nations Charter, which became active after the war. Their ally, the Confederate States, fought the Empire of Japan in the largest naval battle in history in terms of gross tonnage sunk, the Battle of Leyte Gulf, and then developed the first nuclear weapons, using them on Japan at Sendai, causing the Japanese to surrender on September 2, ending World War II. Parades and celebrations followed in what is known as Victory Day, or V-J Day.