American History: A Survey

The Clovis people, named for a town in New Mexico where their civilization was first identified, were the first known settlers in what is now the US. Little is known about their history or ways of life. They likely arrived in North America from Siberia and other parts of Asia between 15,000 and 11,000 years ago after crossing the Bering Strait during a period of low sea level in pursuit of large game animals. Although populations from other parts of the world may have settled in the Americas, DNA traced to Clovis populations can be found in almost every New World Indigenous group, suggesting that the Clovis groups spread throughout the continents and founded successful settlements in many ecosystems. They were at least partly responsible for the decline in large mammals, which were easy to hunt, having evolved without the threat of humans and other hominids for many centuries.

The first long-lasting European settlement in North America was founded at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay in what is now Virginia. Funded by the London Company and established in 1607, Jamestown’s population set out with the goal of finding gold to transport to Europe for sale. Their singular focus doomed the first colonists in many ways. They brought no women, so natural population and community growth was impossible. Indigenous people taught them about growing local foods, but they spent little time actively cultivating their agriculture. Women and children eventually arrived in the colony, but its first several years were marked by high mortality rates and little success in finding gold or anything else of value. Eventually, the tobacco industry became the colony’s saving grace. After tobacco’s popularity spiked in Europe, the Jamestown colony finally saw financial success, and more colonies began to spring up throughout the Virginia tidewater region.

A Congregationalist preacher from Massachusetts, Jonathan Edwards was one of the primary figures in the first Great Awakening, when newfound religious fervor spread throughout the colonies. Edwards believed that the colonies had fallen into dangerously secular practices and considered the newly trendy belief that salvation was possible despite all blasphemy. He reinvigorated puritanical belief in the absolute authority of a vengeful God. He gave public sermons, mostly in New England, with terrifying descriptions of the hell that awaited wayward colonists. Edwards and his fellow preachers were particularly concerned with the arrival of European Enlightenment views in the colonies, which had propelled a growth in secular education. As concepts like science and literacy became more widespread, the Great Awakening preachers strove to return their followers to traditional ways of life dominated by adherence to strict Christian values.

In the 15th century, the Mohawk, Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, and Oneida tribes formed an alliance, calling themselves the Iroquois Nation. At first, the alliance was a defensive strategy against other local tribes. It evolved into the most powerful force in what became the Northeastern US, and through the first 200 years of colonial settlement, the Iroquois Nation formed successful strategic partnerships with British, French, and other colonial forces. As other, less unified Indigenous groups succumbed to colonial advancement, the Iroquois maintained power even as white settlers began to encroach on their land.

Many colonial leaders played important roles in the lead up to the American Revolution, but Thomas Paine stands out, as his popular leaflet Common Sense was perhaps the most important factor in convincing the general population that independence from England was a necessary goal. He arrived in the colonies from England only a little over a year before the work’s publication. Before becoming a writer he tried his hand at many trades, most of which ended in failure. Because of these experiences, he explained the problems with British rule in a way that appealed to more than just the wealthy and powerful. Common Sense sold over 100,000 copies in early 1776, an enormous success for the time. Its popularity quickly accelerated support for the war, which began just a few months later.

After the American Revolution, a group of representatives from each new state met in Philadelphia to discuss plans for a new, centralized government. The group was made up of prominent men, most from wealthy families, who had gained power in their own colonies during the prewar years. Many of these men, including George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin, were influential in the colonies’ decision to break away from the British Empire. Others, such as Alexander Hamilton, played a lesser role before the war but gained prominence through their groundbreaking ideas for how the new government should be formed.

John Marshall became chief justice of the Supreme Court in 1801 and presided over many important cases that shaped the way the court operated in years to come. In the US Constitution, the place of the judicial branch on equal footing with the legislative and executive branches was not explicitly clear. Marshall’s rulings in cases like Marbury v Madison explained the court’s power. With that decision, the court ruled that it had the ability to nullify acts of congress. Thomas Jefferson, who was president at the time of the ruling, was wary of Marshall’s attempts to assert the court’s power, but ultimately many of Marshall’s rulings became long-standing precedents by which the Supreme Court still rules today. In addition, he was integral in defining the Supreme Court as impartial, issuing rulings that were not influenced by political affiliation or his own opinions.

In 1803, President Thomas Jefferson mounted an expedition to the newly claimed western territories beyond the Mississippi River. Merriwether Lewis and William Clark were the expedition’s leaders, but their journey would have been impossible without the assistance of Shoshone guide Sacajawea. Having been married to a French fur trader, Sacajawea was well-traveled and fluent in several languages. She helped the explorers find the easiest passes across the treacherous Rocky Mountains and acted as an interpreter between the white men and the local tribes.

Andrew Jackson was one of the first major American politicians who was not from a wealthy background. He gained prominence as a general during the War of 1812 and won the presidency on a platform that appealed to a wide population. Jackson was a populist—but only for the white population. His presidency was marked by a vast increase in anti-Indigenous brutality. Tribes were forcefully removed from large swaths of their Eastern homelands and relocated to a small block of land in what is now Oklahoma. Even for white people, Jackson’s promises of increased economic equality never came to fruition. One of the first presidents to call for reduction of the federal government’s power, Jackson became an inspiration for the state’s rights movement.

After the invention of the telegraph, media in the US moved beyond local newspapers reporting mostly local news. National and international stories became more quickly and widely distributed. The Associated Press (AP) was founded in 1846 by newspaper publishers around the country to collaboratively share stories by telegraph. This revolutionized the distribution of news because stories no longer had to be shared in person. The AP promoted the growth of regional newspapers and gave Americans a better sense of national unity.

Slavery was one of the most prominent political issues of the 1850s, but until the publication of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the general population largely ignored the issue, viewing it as mainly an economic concern. Like Common Sense in the pre-Revolutionary era, Uncle Tom’s Cabin had an immediate and resounding effect on the general population. It was adored throughout the North and drew many people to become committed abolitionists, while in the South it enraged slavery supporters, who saw it as a political tactic to upend their economic stability.

The late 1800s saw a rapid rise in American industry led by a few prominent men like John D. Rockefeller, the founder of Standard Oil. Rockefeller and his cohorts gained massive amounts of wealth by monopolizing entire industries, and began to wield immense influence over national politics. The efforts of men like Rockefeller not only transformed the US into an important industrial power but also set into motion many long-standing trends in American politics. Rockefeller and other figures cultivated a close relationship between the US government and big business, and the influence of these Gilded Age tycoons persists today.

Women had rallied for the right to vote several times before the 20th century, but the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) was the single most important organization behind finally making women’s suffrage a reality. By 1917, the group had over two million members and had gained the support of many conservatives through its carefully considered messaging. NAWSA presented women’s voting rights not as true gender equality concern but as a way to introduce sensitivity and family values (issues seen as unique to women) into the mainstream political sphere. After several states allowed women to vote throughout the 1910s, in 1920 the federal government passed the 19th Amendment, which made women’s voting rights mandatory across the country.

The only American president elected for a third term, Roosevelt was incredibly influential across a long and volatile span of US History. His New Deal policies helped ease the effects of the Great Depression and expanded the power of the federal government in ways still in effect today. He was the first president to reach a mass audience through his expert use of radio technology, which helped unify Americans and put them at ease during both the depression and World War II. During the war, he was one of the major leaders for the Allied forces, working closely with Britain’s Winston Churchill and the Soviet Union’s Joseph Stalin to ensure victory over Adolph Hitler and the other Axis leaders.

After the civil rights movement fueled laws forcing the desegregation of schools in the 1950s, Rosa Parks sparked other desegregation efforts when she refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama bus to a white man. Her act of civil disobedience led to a major boycott of the Montgomery bus system, which helped civil rights activists across the South gain momentum for their cause. The Montgomery boycott led to the rise of the important civil rights leader Martin Luther King.