History Of The United States

Today America is one of the wealthiest, strongest, and hardworking countries in the world. It has population of over three hundred million and growth rate of 0.97% annually. America as a nation is known to have done many great contributions to the world such as: the idea of presidency, inventing telephone, discovering electricity, inventing planes, the first nation to put a man on moon, and many more. America has grown and multiplied over time and it is still increasing. Even though today America stands out apart from other countries, it was built from nothing but scrap.

In early 19th century America, there was a shared feeling of exceptionalism, often leading to egocentrism and prejudice towards foreigners. This egocentrism and prejudice belief system has been passed down, and ignorance towards reforming these beliefs is evident throughout history. Many Americans believe that the colonies of Jamestown and Plymouth were the first settlements in America, thus that the Europeans who traveled across the Atlantic were the first to inhabit the New World. In fact, St. Augustine was a Spanish settlement in Florida established in 1565, 42 years prior to the Jamestown settlement and 55 years prior to the Plymouth settlement. Historical accounts of the American nation tend to neglect this information, resulting in American citizens believing that people of Spanish and Mexican descent do not belong, when in reality, they settled America first. Furthermore, American history tends to neglect mentioning the resistance which Anglo-Americans met as they expanded westward into lands which Native Americans and Mexicans lived in. Accordingly, people of Mexican descent occupied present-day Texas when Anglo-Americans first arrived. Through brutal, immoral, and unjust conquering, Texas became a state separate from Mexico, disregarding the Tejanos of Mexican descent and forcing them to migrate elsewhere.

Chapter one of Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States discusses the differences between the culture and attitudes of the Europeans and the Native Americans. It further describes how the Europeans came to the New World and committed genocide against the Native Americans in order to get land and gold from them, which displayed the cruelty and greed of the European explorers coming to the Americas. However, many historians consider these actions by the European Conquistadors to be necessary in order for human progress to occur, but Zinn argues whether human progress needed all of these barbaric actions. He talks about how history has had many important details left out of many events and believes that it is important for history to be seen for all that happened. For example, Zinn writes, “To emphasize the heroism of Columbus and his successors as navigators and discoverers, and to de-emphasize their genocide, is not a technical necessity but an ideological choice. It serves- unwittingly-to justify what was done.” (Zinn) This quotation shows how Zinn emphasizes how this brutality was not a necessity but it is a choice on how it should be interpreted. Zinn also talks about Hernando Cortes’ time with the Aztec Empire. In the text, Zinn writes, “Cortes then began his march of death from town to town, using deception, turning Aztec against

Everybody knows that the United States is a nation of immigrants. Immigration to the United States first began when the first English settlers arrived at Jamestown,Virginia.

The United States is one of the strongest nations in the world. We, as a nation, have learned a lot from other nations. For example, in the 1760’s we learned a lot of what not to do from Britain. America came to be because of citizens, who were known as patriots, that were unhappy with the British government. America gained their independence because of unfair laws passed by the British, such as, the Intolerable Acts, Stamp Act, Townshend Act; and violent acts such as the Boston Massacre.

In the beginning of immigration it all started with slave trade, which was a global force in the Atlantic and later Asia. At first Africans were taken from their homelands and shipped to America to do labor work. People already in America, were eager to purchase a slave to do their dirty work at no cost. Just as things went negatively for the African American slaves, later the Native Americans, who were already here in the United States, were forced to move or killed. A large amount of Natives died from disease, war, or migrating to the West leaving a small amount of them in the United State’s territory.

"The Southern States, standing on the basis of the Constitution, have a right to demand this act of justice from the States of the North. Should it be refused, then the Constitution, to which all the States are parties, will have been willfully violated by one portion of them in a provision essential to the domestic security and happiness of the remainder. In that event the injured States, after having first used all peaceful and constitutional means to obtain redress, would be justified in revolutionary resistance to the Government of the Union. . . .

Without knowledge, we cannot improve ourselves and the world. I have learned that investigating the past, through the histories that many historians have written and left us as a legacy, is where we can find the causes of many events that occur in our present. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the different perspectives on Christopher Columbus of historian Howard Zinn, as well as the impacts created by the arrival of Columbus to “The New World” in the history of the United States.

We have all heard the phrase, In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue. This phrase refers to when Christopher Columbus discovered the “Americas”. Historically the Native Americans were the first to settle in the “Americas” thousands of years ago. The United States of America was founded on Immigration. At this very time there are roughly 42.1 million immigrants, which is around 13% of the 322 million people that live in the United States (Census Bureau). Immigration in the United States has been a controversial and sensitive subject for quite some time.

In the United States, November is a month leading up to a feast where we all give thanks to the people we love and care for; as well as giving thanks to the people who helped the first settlers survive during the harsh winter in a new world-- the Native Americans. While citizens of this country feast on Thanksgiving Day, they may not take into consideration the systematic murders of America’s native peoples in order to get to where we are today. This is because the history of how the United States became a sovereign nation has been twisted into a biased account, which is taught in the American school system. This problem has lead to a society with racism deeply ingrained in our culture, and ignorance about the actual events which took place in efforts to demolish the Native American culture and their history. It is time to end this mentality in our school system, and to end the racism that has been in our society through decades and decades of misinformation found in our textbooks and public institutions. If this nation is ever to heal from the millions of lives taken in order for us to live on this land, we must implement plans for our school system to better include what exactly happened to our native peoples, rather than twist truths and distort the reality of America’s history to cover-up the white man’s crimes and guilt.

“The arc of American history almost inevitably moves toward freedom. Whether it 's Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation, the expansion of women 's rights or, now, gay rights, I think there is an almost-inevitable march toward greater civil liberties.” -James McGreevey

n the founding years of America, there has been a struggle for justice amongst treatment of the nation. Equality has been the belief that people of all race, gender, or sexual orientation are created equal, without preference to some groups, until the day that preference to race and gender began to occur within the education frontier. In the hopes of improving chances of like-minded individuals who experienced direct discrimination, Universities were obliged to improve educational opportunities of groups who have experienced prejudice in the past, though a practice called Affirmative Action. The Civil Rights Act was created in 1964 to prohibit discrimination against race, color, religion, or origin in order to create a fair nation. The

As the first day of man began, there has been immigration of man throughout this great country of America. Many immigrants came for a better way of life for themselves as well as their family. Some stayed where others went back to their nation of origin, yet they all made an impact on us today as Americans.

The beginning of the story of the United States starts like this: a group of Spanish foreigners were traveling across the oceans in order to find the so called new world. In their journey to this world, they stumbled upon new land and decided to visit the land. During their visit, they encountered the native Americans and came to amicable terms with them. They later went back to their country to tell about their founding to their king and upon hearing the news, more people started migrating to this new land. After the first wave of immigrants from Spain, a new wave came England. This wave of settlers was fleeing religious persecution. After finding a new home on these lands, the settlers started pushing and killing the native Americans out of their own territory. After years of constant war between the native Americans and these new settlers continued and the settlers were able to push the natives away enough to not have to worry about them. The settlers turned around declared war on their British overseers and out of that war came the declaration of independence. The country of United States of America was formed but at loss of the native Americans who were basically considered the settlers while the US were in contrast their English overseers. This type of action is not only highly hypocritical; it is highly prevalent throughout the history of the United States of America.

ISince the creation of the United States we have had many hopes to what it will be come. Very few were there to see as the thirteen colonies became the United States of America. They witness a weak confederation turn into a government so strong that its constitution is still being used hundreds of years later. Now a day’s many people believe that our old constitution is what is making our government so inefficient. But in reality it is not on our government or on the constitution.