FITE Notes: U.S. History

By the 1770s, thirteen British colonies were tired of being taxed by a government three thousand miles away that gave them no vote. The slogan was "no taxation without representation." Tensions over taxes, troops, and trade boiled into the American Revolution.

The Declaration of Independence (1776)

Thomas Jefferson wrote it. It announced that the colonies were breaking from Britain and laid out the big idea: that all men are created equal and have rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Government, it said, gets its power from the consent of the people.

• ●1775 to 1783: the Revolutionary War is fought
• ●July 4, 1776: the Declaration of Independence is adopted
• ●George Washington leads the Continental Army to victory
• ●France helps the Americans win

The Constitution and Bill of Rights

After winning, the new nation's first plan of government (the Articles of Confederation) was too weak. In 1787 leaders wrote the U.S. Constitution, the document that still runs the country. It split the federal government into three branches so no one person could grab all the power.

• ●Legislative branch (Congress): makes the laws
• ●Executive branch (President): carries out the laws
• ●Judicial branch (Supreme Court): interprets the laws
• ●Checks and balances: each branch can limit the other two
• ●Bill of Rights (1791): the first 10 amendments, protecting freedoms like speech, religion, and a fair trial

From the start, the country was split over slavery. The Southern economy ran on enslaved labor on cotton plantations; the North was moving toward factories and free labor. Every time the nation added new territory, the fight flared up over whether it would allow slavery.

The road to war

• ●Compromises (like the Missouri Compromise of 1820) tried to keep slave and free states balanced
• ●The Dred Scott decision (1857) denied citizenship to Black Americans and inflamed the North
• ●Abraham Lincoln, against the spread of slavery, was elected President in 1860
• ●Southern states seceded and formed the Confederacy

The Civil War (1861 to 1865)

The Union (North) fought the Confederacy (South). It became the deadliest war in American history. In 1863, Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation declared enslaved people in the rebelling states free and made ending slavery a goal of the war.

• ●Gettysburg (1863): the turning point; the Confederacy never fully recovered
• ●1865: General Lee surrenders; the Union wins
• ●Lincoln is assassinated days after the war ends

Reconstruction (1865 to 1877)

The period of rebuilding the South and trying to bring formerly enslaved people into full citizenship. Three amendments came out of it, but progress was rolled back when federal troops left and unfair laws returned.

• ●13th Amendment: ended slavery
• ●14th Amendment: granted citizenship and equal protection
• ●15th Amendment: gave Black men the right to vote

After the Civil War, the United States exploded into an industrial powerhouse. Factories, steel, oil, and railroads connected the country coast to coast. The late 1800s are called the Gilded Age because the country looked golden on the surface but had serious problems underneath.

Big business and railroads

• ●The transcontinental railroad (finished 1869) tied the nation together
• ●Andrew Carnegie dominated steel; John D. Rockefeller dominated oil
• ●Huge companies (monopolies and trusts) controlled whole industries
• ●A small group got incredibly rich while many workers stayed poor

Immigration and cities

Millions of immigrants from Europe and Asia came looking for work and a better life. Many passed through Ellis Island in New York. Cities grew fast and crowded, with tenement housing and tough conditions.

Labor fights back

• ●Workers faced long hours, low pay, and dangerous jobs (kids worked too)
• ●Labor unions formed to demand better wages and shorter hours
• ●Strikes sometimes turned violent as workers and owners clashed

Around 1900, reformers set out to fix the problems the Gilded Age created, and the country stepped onto the world stage. This was the Progressive Era, followed by America's entry into World War I.

Progressive Era reforms

• ●"Muckraker" journalists exposed corruption and unsafe conditions
• ●New laws regulated food and medicine for safety
• ●Trust-busting broke up some giant monopolies
• ●The 19th Amendment (1920) gave women the right to vote

World War I (U.S. enters 1917)

The war started in Europe in 1914. The U.S. stayed out at first, but attacks on American ships by German submarines pulled it in. American troops helped tip the balance toward the Allies, who won in 1918.

• ●1914: war begins in Europe
• ●1917: the U.S. joins the Allies
• ●1918: the war ends with Allied victory
• ●President Woodrow Wilson pushed for a League of Nations to prevent future wars

The 1920s roared, then the floor fell out. The decade of boom turned into the worst economic collapse in American history, and the government's response changed what people expected from it forever.

The Roaring Twenties

• ●A booming economy, cars, radio, and jazz music
• ●The Harlem Renaissance: a flowering of Black art, music, and writing
• ●Prohibition banned alcohol, which fueled organized crime
• ●Many people bought stocks on credit, betting prices would keep rising

The Great Depression

In October 1929, the stock market crashed. Banks failed, businesses closed, and roughly one in four workers lost their jobs. The Dust Bowl, a series of dust storms, wrecked farms in the Great Plains on top of it all.

The New Deal

President Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) won in 1932 promising action. His New Deal was a set of programs to provide relief, recovery, and reform.

• ●Relief: jobs programs put people back to work
• ●Recovery: spending to restart the economy
• ●Reform: Social Security and bank regulations to prevent another crash

World War II was the largest and deadliest war in history. It pitted the Allies (including the U.S., Britain, and the Soviet Union) against the Axis (Germany, Italy, and Japan).

Causes and U.S. entry

• ●Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany invaded its neighbors starting in 1939
• ●The Holocaust: the Nazis murdered six million Jews and millions of others
• ●Dec 7, 1941: Japan attacks Pearl Harbor, and the U.S. enters the war

The home front

• ●Factories switched to building tanks, planes, and ships
• ●Women took factory jobs (symbolized by "Rosie the Riveter")
• ●Japanese Americans were unjustly forced into internment camps
• ●Rationing limited everyday goods so supplies could go to the troops

Turning points and the end

• ●D-Day (June 6, 1944): the Allied invasion of France in Europe
• ●May 1945: Germany surrenders (V-E Day)
• ●Aug 1945: the U.S. drops atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki
• ●Sept 1945: Japan surrenders (V-J Day), ending the war

Decades after slavery ended, Black Americans still faced segregation and "Jim Crow" laws, especially in the South. The Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s used courts, protests, and organizing to win equal rights under the law.

Key events and people

• ●Brown v. Board of Education (1954): the Supreme Court ruled segregated schools unconstitutional
• ●Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955 to 1956): sparked after Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat
• ●Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: leader of nonviolent protest; gave the "I Have a Dream" speech in 1963
• ●Sit-ins, Freedom Rides, and marches challenged segregation directly

Laws that changed the country

• ●Civil Rights Act of 1964: banned discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin
• ●Voting Rights Act of 1965: outlawed practices used to block Black citizens from voting

After World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union became rivals in the Cold War, a decades-long standoff between two ways of running a country: democracy and capitalism versus communism. It was "cold" because the two giants never fought each other directly, but it shaped the whole world.

Cold War overview

• ●An arms race built huge stockpiles of nuclear weapons
• ●The Space Race: the U.S. landed astronauts on the Moon in 1969
• ●Proxy wars, like the Korean War and Vietnam War, were fought instead of direct combat
• ●The Cuban Missile Crisis (1962) brought the world close to nuclear war

Major shifts

• ●The fall of the Berlin Wall (1989) symbolized the end of the divide
• ●The Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, ending the Cold War
• ●The U.S. became the world's leading superpower

Connecting to today

• ●The Sept 11, 2001 attacks reshaped American security and foreign policy
• ●The digital age and the internet changed how people work, learn, and connect
• ●Debates over rights, the economy, and America's role in the world continue