History and Government History and Government of the United Statesof the United States

What’s that? The United States wasn’t always here? That’s crazy talk!

• Ah, but true. It actually wasn’t around 12,000 years ago when those nomads crossed over to modern-day Alaska from Siberia.

• Those folks multiplied and gradually spread throughout the Americas.

• As they spread out and occupied different areas and environments, they became different distinct cultures.

Original location of Native American tribes.

Current distribution of Native Americans

Then the Europeans come barging onto the scene (rude)

• The Spanish did most of the early exploring, looking for things like El Dorado and such.

• Hernando De Soto was one such conquistador

• The French and English follow up the Spanish, forming their own settlements and colonies.

• Columbian Exchange is begun

• The trading and transplantation of goods, plants, animals, and diseases to and from Europe and North America.

• This was rather significant. Keep in mind that these species had been completely separated from millions of years and all of a sudden you have things like cows and horses where there were none before.

• The new nutrition also spurred a population boom in Europe.

• Conversely, European diseases wreaked havoc on the native American populations.

• By 1595, 18 million had died in Mexico alone

The British colonies rebelled (as I’m sure you know)

• The American one went onto form the United States

• The Canadian colonies never really rebelled and remained relatively loyal to the crown

• They’re still part of the British Commonwealth (the queen is their head of state), though they are an independent country.

• Australia, India, and a number of countries in the West Indies and Africa are also part of the Commonwealth.

In a fit of Manifest Destiny, the young Americans start migrating west.

• Aided by the Louisiana Purchase

• The purchase from France in 1803 of nearly 830,000 square miles of land.

• Keep in mind that Houston is just 601 square miles.

• It actually doubled the size of the U.S.

• Cost only $15 million (about $390 billion in today’s money… a steal, really).

Time goes on and sectionalism becomes a problem.

• This was especially true as concerns the issue of slavery.

• The southern states were slave-owning (including Texas) and the northern ones were not.

• The Civil War breaks out in 1861.

• 618,000 Americans died and 412,000 were injured. That makes for a total of 1,030,000 causalities out of a population of just 31 million.

• The North won and slavery was abolished.

After the Civil War, the nation starts to urbanize

• People start migrating towards cities and the industrial centers that were increasingly taking the place of the traditional agrarian base.