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The United States Declaration of Independence, formally The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, is the pronouncement adopted by the Second Continental Congress meeting in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on July 4, 1776. -
E Pluribus Unum – Latin for "Out of many, one" – is a traditional motto of the United States, appearing on the Great Seal along with Annuit cœptis and Novus ordo seclorum which appear on the reverse of the Great Seal; its inclusion on the seal was approved by an Act of Congress in 1782. -
The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the United States of America. It superseded the Articles of Confederation, the nation's first constitution. Originally comprising seven articles, it delineates the national frame of government. -
The Bill of Rights is the first 10 Amendments to the Constitution. It spells out Americans' rights in relation to their government. It guarantees civil rights and liberties to the individual—like freedom of speech, press, and religion. -
As “Democracy in America” revealed, Tocqueville believed that equality was the great political and social idea of his era, and he thought that the United States offered the most advanced example of equality in action. -
Nativism is the political policy of promoting or protecting the interests of native or indigenous inhabitants over those of immigrants, including the support of immigration-restriction measures. -
Tenements were low-rise buildings with multiple apartments, which were narrow and typically made up of three rooms. Because rents were low, tenement housing was the common choice for new immigrants in New York City. It was common for a family of 10 to live in a 325-square-foot apartment. -
The Homestead Act, enacted during the Civil War in 1862, provided that any adult citizen, or intended citizen, who had never borne arms against the U.S. government could claim 160 acres of surveyed government land. Claimants were required to live on and “improve” their plot by cultivating the land. -
In the politics of representative democracies, a political machine is a party organization that recruits its members by the use of tangible incentives—money, political jobs—and that is characterized by a high degree of leadership control over member activity. -
Social Darwinism refers to various theories and societal practices that purported to apply biological concepts of natural selection and survival of the fittest to sociology, economics, and politics, and which were largely defined by scholars in Western Europe and North America in the 1870s. -
Congress established Yellowstone National Park in the Territories of Montana and Wyoming "as a public park or pleasuring-ground for the benefit and enjoyment of the people" and placed it "under the exclusive control of the Secretary of the Interior." The founding of Yellowstone National Park began a worldwide national park movement. Today more than 100 nations contain some 1,200 national parks or equivalent preserves. -
The term "Tin Pan Alley" refers to the physical location of the New York City-centered music publishers and songwriters who dominated the popular music of the United States in the late 19th century and early 20th century. Tin Pan Alley was the popular music publishing center of the world between 1885 to the 1920s. -
The Homestead strike, also known as the Homestead steel strike, Homestead massacre, or Battle of Homestead was an industrial lockout and strike which began on July 1, 1892, culminating in a battle between strikers and private security agents on July 6, 1892. The battle was a pivotal event in U.S. labor history. -
The Sixteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution allows Congress to levy an income tax without apportioning it among the states on the basis of population. It was passed by Congress in 1909 in response to the 1895 Supreme Court case of Pollock v. Farmers' Loan & Trust Co. -
The Klondike Gold Rush was a migration by an estimated 100,000 prospectors to the Klondike region of Yukon, in north-western Canada, between 1896 and 1899. -
The Spanish–American War was a period of armed conflict between Spain and the United States. Hostilities began in the aftermath of the internal explosion of the USS Maine in Havana Harbor in Cuba, leading to United States intervention in the Cuban War of Independence. -
President Theodore Roosevelt's foreign policy: "speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far." -
A muckraker was any of a group of American writers identified with pre-World War I reform and exposé writing. The muckrakers provided detailed, accurate journalistic accounts of the political and economic corruption and social hardships caused by the power of big business in a rapidly industrializing the United States. -
The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, elected by the people thereof, for six years; and each Senator shall have one vote. The electors in each State shall have the Qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the State legislatures. -
A French company headed by Ferdinand, viscount de Lesseps, started to build a canal in 1881 but failed by 1889. The United States, led by Pres. Theodore Roosevelt, negotiated the Hay–Bunau-Varilla Treaty, giving the U.S. control of the Canal Zone. -
The United States later declared war on German ally Austria-Hungary on December 7, 1917. Germany's resumption of submarine attacks on passenger and merchant ships in 1917 became the primary motivation behind Wilson's decision to lead the United States into World War I. -
the Eighteenth Amendment prohibited the making, transporting, and selling of alcoholic beverages. -
The settlement movement was a reformist social movement that began in the 1880s and peaked around the 1920s in England and the United States. Its goal was to bring the rich and the poor of society together in both physical proximity and social interconnectedness. -
The Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits the United States and its states from denying the right to vote to citizens of the United States on the basis of sex, in effect recognizing the right of women to a vote. -
The Harlem Renaissance was an intellectual and cultural revival of African American music, dance, art, fashion, literature, theater, politics, and scholarship centered in Harlem, Manhattan, New York City, spanning the 1920s and 1930s. -
The Teapot Dome scandal was a bribery scandal involving the administration of United States President Warren G. Harding from 1921 to 1923. -
The Immigration Act of 1924 limited the number of immigrants allowed entry into the United States through a national origins quota. The quota provided immigration visas to two percent of the total number of people of each nationality in the United States as of the 1890 national census. -
On June 2, 1924, Congress enacted the Indian Citizenship Act, which granted citizenship to all Native Americans born in the U.S. The right to vote, however, was governed by state law; until 1957, some states barred Native Americans from voting. -
The Mexican Repatriation was the repatriation and deportation of Mexicans and Mexican-Americans to Mexico from the United States during the Great Depression between 1929 and 1939. Estimates of how many were repatriated range from 355,000 to 2,000,000. -
Eugenics is the scientifically erroneous and immoral theory of “racial improvement” and “planned breeding,” which gained popularity during the early 20th century. Eugenicists worldwide believed that they could perfect human beings and eliminate so-called social ills through genetics and heredity. -
An executive order called the Mexican Farm Labor Program established the Bracero Program in 1942. This series of diplomatic accords between Mexico and the United States permitted millions of Mexican men to work legally in the United States on short-term labor contracts. -
The First American Volunteer Group of the Republic of China Air Force, nicknamed the Flying Tigers, was formed to help oppose the Japanese invasion of China. Operating from 1941 to 1942, it was composed of pilots from the United States Army Air Corps, Navy, and Marine Corps, and was commanded by Claire Lee Chennault. -
Issued by President Franklin Roosevelt on February 19, 1942, this order authorized the evacuation of all persons deemed a threat to national security from the West Coast to relocation centers further inland. In the next 6 months, over 100,000 men, women, and children of Japanese ancestry were moved to assembly centers. They were then evacuated to and confined in isolated, fenced, and guarded relocation centers, known as internment camps. -
The Bataan Death March was the forcible transfer by the Imperial Japanese Army of 60,000–80,000 American and Filipino prisoners of war from Saysain Point, Bagac, Bataan, and Mariveles to Camp O'Donnell, Capas, Tarlac, via San Fernando, Pampanga, the prisoners being forced to march despite many dying on the journey. -
The Manhattan Project was a research and development undertaking during World War II that produced the first nuclear weapons. It was led by the United States with the support of the United Kingdom and Canada. -
Korematsu v. the United States, 323 U.S. 214, was a landmark decision by the Supreme Court of the United States to uphold the exclusion of Japanese Americans from the West Coast Military Area during World War II. -
The Nuremberg trials were held by the Allies against representatives of defeated Nazi Germany for plotting and carrying out invasions of other countries and other crimes in World War II. -
"In God, We Trust" is the official motto of the United States and of the U.S. state of Florida. It was adopted by the U.S. Congress in 1956, replacing E Pluribus Unum, which had been the de facto motto since the initial 1776 design of the Great Seal of the United States.