黄庆芬HowtheUSCameintoBeing

1、How the United States Came into Being 南宁一中 黄庆芬The United States is a young nation, having a history of only a little over 200 years since its independence, but its history is full of contents. Its not a history of replacement of one dynasty by another or a sudden change of the political system. Its

2、a history of Americans own, a history of how America has become what she is now.Its a little difficult for me to write about the history of this country. What I try to do now is to present a brief time line together with some major events that ever happened in this nation, through which we can get a

3、 scaffold of American history. And I will focus on the period from the year 1492 to 1865. 1n 1492, Christopher Columbus discovered America, which he believed was India so he called the natives on the islands Indians. Following in his steps Amerigo Vespucci discovered the continent of South America.

4、The newly-found continent was later named after him and became known as America. Since it was the first time for the Europeans to set foot on this large continent, they called it the New World. Before 1607, people who lived on the American continent were native Indians, living mostly in what is now

5、Mexico and the southern America, Eskimos and the Vikings, who lived in the Arctic Circle. In 1607, the first settlers, a group of about 100 people from Europe came to Jamestown, Virginia and settled down there, which is considered the first real successful settlement. Then in 1620, another group of

6、Puritans sailed for Virginia aboard the ship Mayflower and settled in Plymouth Massachusetts. From then on, more and more settlers from England, France, Germany, Ireland, Netherland and Spain came to the continent and they built 13 colonies on the east coast and in the northwest there were some Fren

7、ch settlements. During the 130 years from 1620 to 1754, things were getting built out more and getting more developed. In the year 1754, the French and the British started getting into squabbles over territory, which started the war between the French and Indians against the British and the colonist

8、s. The war started in 1756 based on the disputes over Pittsburgh and ended in 1763 with the Treaty of Paris. So it is also called the Seven Years War. According to the treaty, most of what France had in the new world now became essentially British colonies and British territories. However, the Briti

9、sh thought Americans were the most beneficiaries of this war because Americans could get all this new territory and they could now trade there. So the British decided to start taxing the Americans. In 1765, they passed the Stamp Act and in 1767 the Townshend Acts. It was a way to extract money from

10、the colonized in order to help pay back some of the cost that the British had incurred in the war.In 1773, the famous Boston Tea Party happened. This event showed that the colonized became angrier about the colonists rule. They decided in protest and in revolt they dumped the tea on three ships into

11、 Boston harbor, which the British colonists were not happy about and they did a blockade of Boston. Things were getting really tense in the early 1770s. In 1775, the first conflict of the American Revolutionary War (Battle of Lexington and Concord) broke out. So we can say Boston Tea Party is actual

12、ly the blasting fuse of the American Revolutionary War. In 1776, the Declaration of Independence, drafted by Thomas Jefferson, was passed at the Continental Congress, which declared to the world the birth of the United States. The American Revolutionary War ended with the Treaty of Paris in 1783. Fr

13、om then on, the United States became a free, independent state, being governed by Congress and the Articles of Confederation. The constitution then was drafted in 1787 and was ratified in 1788. It went into effect in 1789. The birth of the country is the day when the Declaration of Independence was

14、declared but the country in its current form with its current institutions started in 1789. After its independence, the United States worked on expanding its territory. In 1803, Napoleon was forced to sell Louisiana to the US for a very cheap price at about 1,500 million dollars. The US almost doubl

15、ed in size after the purchase.In 1812, the US declared war to Britain and the war ended in 1815 with the battle of New Orleans. The war brought no real transfer of territory but it really asserted Americas stay. It means that the US was able to defeat one of the greatest empires in the world again.B

16、efore 1836, Texas was part of Mexico. The English-speaking settlers there were slave owners. At that time, the American government tried to abolish slavery. The settlers in Texas didnt like the idea so in 1836, the war for Texas independence broke out. The first president for Texas was Sam Houston.

17、Thats why Houston was named Houston. The United States annexed Texas in 1845 but Mexico was not happy about this because it still viewed Texas as a part of their territory so in 1846 a war broke out between Mexico and the US. The US trounced Mexico and got California, Nevada, Arizona as its territor

18、y. By 1848, the manifest destiny 0f territory expansion essentially had happened. The United States had finished its expansion in territory and had gotten everything from California all the way from the Pacific coast to the Atlantic coast.Meanwhile, a lot of people in the North didnt like slavery on

19、 moral grounds but a lot of people in the south wanted to keep it. They wanted slavery regardless of their morality because the Souths economy to a large degree was based on slavery. In 1860, Abraham Lincoln was vocal in public that he didnt like slavery and he wanted to curb the spread of slave states. There were compromises that every time a state came into the Union, the slave