History of USA
 

[SIZE="5"][B][U]Before 1600[/U][/B][/SIZE]

[B][U]c. 12,000 B.C.[/U][/B]

North American Indian cultures flourish. Natives, North American, peoples who occupied North America before the arrival of the Europeans in the 15th cent. They have long been known as Indians because of the belief prevalent at the time of Columbus that the Americas were the outer reaches of the Indies (i.e., the East Indies). Most scholars agree that Native Americans came into the Western Hemisphere from Asia via the Bering Strait or along the N Pacific coast in a series of migrations. From Alaska they spread east and south. The several waves of migration are said to account for the many native linguistic families. while the common origin is used to explain the physical characteristics that Native Americans have in common (though with considerable variation)—Mongoloid features, coarse, straight black hair, dark eyes, sparse body hair, and a skin color ranging from yellow-brown to reddish brown. Some scholars accept evidence of Native American existence in the Americas back more than 25,000 years, while many others believe that people arrived later than that, perhaps as recently as 12,000 years ago. In pre-Columbian times (prior to 1492) the Native American population of the area N of Mexico is conservatively estimated to have been about 1.8 million, with some authorities believing the population to have been as large as 10 million or more. This population dropped dramatically within a few decades of the first contacts with Europeans, however, as many Native Americans died from smallpox, influenza, measles, and other diseases to which they had not previously been exposed. Native Americans were far more likely to die. From prehistoric times until recent historic times there were roughly six major cultural areas, excluding that of the Arctic, i.e., Northwest Coast, Plains, Plateau, Eastern Woodlands, Northern, and Southwest. Information about particular groups can be found in separate articles and in separate biographies and subject articles (e.g., Pontiac's Rebellion; Dawes Act).



[B][U]A.D. 1000[/U][/B]

Norse seaman Leif Ericsson lands in Newfoundland, which he calls Vinland. Leif Ericsson was an Old Norse Leifr Eiriksson, fl. A.D. 999–1000, Norse discoverer of America, b. probably in Iceland; son of Eric the Red. He spent his youth in Greenland and in 999 visited Norway, where he was converted to Christianity and commissioned by King Olaf I to carry the faith to Greenland. According to the “Saga of Eric the Red” in the collection of sagas known as Hauksbok, it was on the return voyage from Norway to Greenland in 1000 that Leif Ericsson, blown off his course, discovered hitherto unknown lands in which he found grapes, self-sown wheat, and a species of trees called “mausur.” He landed, secured specimens, and continued to Greenland, where he was successful in introducing Christianity. In another version of the story, interpolated in the “Saga of Olaf Tryggvason” in the Flateyjarbok, Leif completed his mission to Greenland, set out from there c.1002 on a voyage to western lands, discovered several places, and settled for a winter in Vinland. This account is much more detailed, but the account in the “Saga of Eric the Red” is more widely accepted. Many scholars believe that Leif Ericsson landed on some part of the North American coast, but there has been no agreement on the modern identity of Vinland. Various sites have been nominated, from Newfoundland to Virginia, with Nova Scotia and New England as favorites.


[B][U]1492[/U][/B]

Christopher Columbus, financed by Spain, makes the first of four voyages to the New World. He lands in the Bahamas (Oct. 12).


[B][U]1513 [/U][/B]

Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León lands on the coast of Florida. Ponce de León, Juan c.1460–1521, Spanish explorer, first Westerner to reach Florida. He served against the Moors of Granada, and in 1493 he accompanied Columbus on his second voyage to America. From 1502 to 1504 he assisted in the conquest of Higuey (the eastern part of Hispaniola, now the Dominican Republic) and was made governor of that province. After finding gold on Boriquén (Puerto Rico) in 1508, he conquered the island and, as governor (1509–12), made a fortune in gold, slaves, and land. Hearing tales from the Carib of a wonderfully rich island called Bimini, said to be N of Cuba, Ponce de León secured a commission (1512) to conquer and colonize that land. There is a legend that he was seeking a spring with waters having the power of restoring youth. From Puerto Rico on Mar. 3, 1513, with three vessels, he sailed NE through the Bahamas, sighting the Florida peninsula (which he took to be an island) late in March and landing near the site of St. Augustine early in April. Probably because his arrival in Florida occurred at the time of the Easter feast (Pascua Florida), Ponce de León named the land (which he claimed for Spain) La Florida. He turned south, exploring the coast to Key West, and proceeded up the west coast as far as Cape Romano. Then, retracing his route, he sailed to Miami Bay via Cuba and from there returned to Puerto Rico, arriving Sept. 21, 1513. After partly pacifying Puerto Rico, which had been in revolt, he sailed to Spain, where the king commissioned him (Sept., 1514) to subdue the Carib of Guadeloupe and to conquer and colonize the “isle of Florida.” In 1515 he led an unsuccessful expedition against the Carib and returned to Puerto Rico, where he resided until 1521. With two vessels, 200 men, 50 horses and other domestic animals, and farm implements, he sailed for Florida in 1521. Upon landing on the west coast, probably in the vicinity of Charlotte Harbor or Tampa Bay, his party was fiercely attacked by Native Americans, and he was severely wounded by an arrow. The expedition sailed immediately for Cuba, where Ponce de León soon died.



[B][U]1565[/U][/B]

Saint Augustine, Florida, settled by the Spanish, becomes the first permanent European colony in North America.





[QUOTE][B]Note: [/B] History of USA is being reviewed with defference of Timeline. This thread will cover almost history of USA notes.

Thank you very much[/QUOTE]

[SIZE="5"][B][U]1600–1799[/U][/B][/SIZE]


[B][U]1607[/U][/B]

Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in America, is established by the London Company in southeast Virginia (May 14 o.s.).


[B][U]1619[/U][/B]

The House of Burgesses, the first representative assembly in America, meets for the first time in Virginia (July 30 o.s.). The first African slaves are brought to Jamestown (summer).


[B][U]1620[/U][/B]

The Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts is established by Pilgrims from England (Dec. 11 o.s.). Before disembarking from their ship, the Mayflower, 41 male passengers sign the Mayflower Compact, an agreement that forms the basis of the colony's government.


[B][U]1650[/U][/B]

Colonial population is estimated at 50,400.


[B][U]1664[/U][/B]

English seize New Amsterdam (city and colony) from the Dutch and rename it New York (Sept.).


[B][U]1752[/U][/B]

Britain and the British colonies switch from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar (Sept. 2).


[B][U]1754–1763[/U][/B]

French and Indian War: Final conflict in the ongoing struggle between the British and French for control of eastern North America. The British win a decisive victory over the French on the Plains of Abraham outside Quebec (Sept. 13, 1759) and, by the Treaty of Paris (signed Feb. 10, 1763), formally gain control of Canada and all the French possessions east of the Mississippi.


[B][U]1770[/U][/B]

Boston Massacre: British troops fire into a mob, killing five men and leading to intense public protests (March 5).


[B][U]1773[/U][/B]

Boston Tea Party: Group of colonial patriots disguised as Mohawk Indians board three ships in Boston harbor and dump more than 300 crates of tea overboard as a protest against the British tea tax (Dec. 16).


[B][U]1774[/U][/B]

First Continental Congress meets in Philadelphia, with 56 delegates representing every colony except Georgia. Delegates include Patrick Henry, George Washington, and Samuel Adams (Sept. 5–Oct. 26).


[B][U]1775–1783[/U][/B]

American Revolution: War of independence fought between Great Britain and the 13 British colonies on the eastern seaboard of North America. Battles of Lexington and Concord, Mass., between the British Army and colonial minutemen, mark the beginning of the war (April 19, 1775). Battle-weary and destitute Continental army spends brutally cold winter and following spring at Valley Forge, Pa. (Dec. 19, 1777–June 19, 1778). British general Charles Cornwallis surrenders to Gen. George Washington at Yorktown, Va. (Oct. 19, 1781). Great Britain formally acknowledges American independence in the Treaty of Paris, which officially brings the war to a close (Sept. 3, 1783).


[B][U]1776[/U][/B]

Continental Congress adopts the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia (July 4).


[B][U]1777[/U][/B]

Continental Congress approves the first official flag of the United States (June 14). Continental Congress adopts the Articles of Confederation, the first U.S. constitution (Nov. 15).


[B][U]1786[/U][/B]

Shays's Rebellion erupts (Aug.); farmers from New Hampshire to South Carolina take up arms to protest high state taxes and stiff penalties for failure to pay.


[B][U]1787[/U][/B]

Constitutional Convention, made up of delegates from 12 of the original 13 colonies, meets in Philadelphia to draft the U.S. Constitution (May–Sept.).

[B][U]1789[/U][/B]

George Washington is unanimously elected president of the United States in a vote by state electors (Feb. 4). U.S. Constitution goes into effect, having been ratified by nine states (March 4). U.S. Congress (Web: clerkweb.house.gov/histrecs/househis/lists/sessions.htm ) meets for the first time at Federal Hall in New York City (March 4). Washington is inaugurated as president at Federal Hall in New York City (April 30).


[B][U]1790[/U][/B]

U.S. Supreme Court meets for the first time at the Merchants Exchange Building in New York City (Feb. 2). The court, made up of one chief justice and five associate justices, hears its first case in 1792. The nation's first census shows that the population has climbed to nearly 4 million.


[B][U]1791[/U][/B]

First ten amendments to the Constitution, known as the Bill of Rights, are ratified (Dec. 15).


[B][U]1793[/U][/B]

Washington's second inauguration is held in Philadelphia (March 4). Eli Whitney's invention of the cotton gin greatly increases the demand for slave labor.


[B][U]1797[/U][/B]

John Adams is inaugurated as the second president in Philadelphia (March 4). Adams, John, 1735–1826, 2d President of the United States (1797–1801), b. Quincy (then in Braintree), Mass., grad. Harvard, 1755. John Adams and his wife, Abigail Adams, founded one of the most distinguished families of the United States; their son, John Quincy Adams, was also President.

[B][U][SIZE="5"]1800–1849[/SIZE][/U][/B]

[B][U]1800[/U][/B]


The U.S. capital is moved from Philadelphia to Washington, DC (June 15). U.S. Congress meets in Washington, DC, for the first time (Nov. 17). Gabriel Prosser, an enslaved African American blacksmith, organizes a slave revolt intending to march on Richmond, Virginia. The conspiracy is uncovered, and Prosser and a number of the rebels are hanged. Virginia's slave laws are consequently tightened.



[B][U]1801[/U][/B]

Thomas Jefferson is inaugurated as the third president in Washington, DC (March 4).


[B][U]1803[/U][/B]

Marbury v. Madison: Landmark Supreme Court decision greatly expands the power of the Court by establishing its right to declare acts of Congress unconstitutional (Feb. 24). Louisiana Purchase: United States agrees to pay France $15 million for the Louisiana Territory, which extends west from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains and comprises about 830,000 sq mi (treaty signed May 2). As a result, the U.S. nearly doubles in size.


[B][U]1804[/U][/B]

Lewis and Clark set out from St. Louis, Mo., on expedition to explore the West and find a route to the Pacific Ocean. (May 14).


[B][U]1805[/U][/B]

Jefferson's second inauguration (March 4). Lewis and Clark reach the Pacific Ocean (Nov. 15).


[B][U]1809[/U][/B]

James Madison is inaugurated as the fourth president (March 4).


[B][U]1812–1814[/U][/B]

War of 1812: U.S. declares war on Britain over British interference with American maritime shipping and westward expansion (June 18, 1812). Madison's second inauguration (March 4, 1813). British capture Washington, DC, and set fire to White House and Capitol (Aug. 1814). Francis Scott Key writes Star-Spangled Banner as he watches British attack on Fort McHenry at Baltimore (Sept. 13–14, 1814). Treaty of Ghent is signed, officially ending the war (Dec. 24, 1814).


[B][U]1817[/U][/B]

James Monroe is inaugurated as the fifth president (March 4).

[B][U]1819[/U][/B]

Spain agrees to cede Florida to the United States (Feb. 22). McCulloch v. Maryland: Landmark Supreme Court decision upholds the right of Congress to establish a national bank, a power implied but not specifically enumerated by the Constitution.

[B][U]1820[/U][/B]

Missouri Compromise: In an effort to maintain the balance between free and slave states, Maine (formerly part of Massachusetts) is admitted as a free state so that Missouri can be admitted as a slave state; except for Missouri, slavery is prohibited in the Louisiana Purchase lands north of latitude 36°30' (March 3).


[B][U]1821[/U][/B]

Monroe's second inauguration (March 5).


[B][U]1822[/U][/B]

Denmark Vesey, an enslaved African American carpenter who had purchased his freedom, plans a slave revolt with the intent to lay siege on Charleston, South Carolina. The plot is discovered, and Vesey and 34 coconspirators are hanged.


[B][U]1823[/U][/B]

Monroe Doctrine: In his annual address to Congress, President Monroe declares that the American continents are henceforth off-limits for further colonization by European powers (Dec. 2).


[B][U]1824[/U][/B]

Gibbons v. Ogden: Landmark Supreme Court decision broadly defines Congress's right to regulate interstate commerce (March 2).


[B][U]1825[/U][/B]

John Quincy Adams is inaugurated as the sixth president (March 4). Erie Canal, linking the Hudson River to Lake Erie, is opened for traffic (Oct. 26).


[B][U]1828[/U][/B]

Construction is begun on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, the first public railroad in the U.S. (July 4).


[B][U]1829[/U][/B]

Andrew Jackson is inaugurated as seventh president (March 4).

[B][U]1830[/U][/B]

President Jackson signs the Indian Removal Act, which authorizes the forced removal of Native Americans living in the eastern part of the country to lands west of the Mississippi River (May 28). By the late 1830s the Jackson administration has relocated nearly 50,000 Native Americans.


[B][U]1831[/U][/B]

Nat Turner, an enslaved African American preacher, leads the most significant slave uprising in American history. He and his band of about 80 followers launch a bloody, day-long rebellion in Southampton County, Virginia. The militia quells the rebellion, and Turner is eventually hanged. As a consequence, Virginia institutes much stricter slave laws.


[B][U]1832[/U][/B]

William Lloyd Garrison begins publishing the Liberator, a weekly paper that advocates the complete abolition of slavery. He becomes one of the most famous figures in the abolitionist movement.


[B][U]1833[/U][/B]

Jackson's second inauguration (March 4).

[B][U]1836[/U][/B]

Texas declares its independence from Mexico (March 1). Texan defenders of the Alamo are all killed during siege by the Mexican Army (Feb. 24–March 6). Texans defeat Mexicans at San Jacinto (April 21).


[B][U]1837[/U][/B]

Martin Van Buren is inaugurated as the eighth president (March 4).


[B][U]1838[/U][/B]

More than 15,000 Cherokee Indians are forced to march from Georgia to Indian Territory in present-day Oklahoma. Approximately 4,000 die from starvation and disease along the “Trail of Tears.”


[B][U]1841[/U][/B]

William Henry Harrison is inaugurated as the ninth president (March 4). He dies one month later (April 4) and is succeeded in office by his vice president, John Tyler.


[B][U]1845[/U][/B]

U.S. annexes Texas by joint resolution of Congress (March 1). James Polk is inaugurated as the 11th president (March 4). The term “manifest destiny” appears for the first time in a magazine article by John L. O'Sullivan (July–August). It expresses the belief held by many white Americans that the United States is destined to expand across the continent.


[B][U]1846[/U][/B]

Oregon Treaty fixes U.S.-Canadian border at 49th parallel; U.S. acquires Oregon territory (June 15).

The Wilmot Proviso, introduced by Democratic representative David Wilmot of Pennsylvania, attempts to ban slavery in territory gained in the Mexican War The proviso is blocked by Southerners, but continues to enflame the debate over slavery.


[B][U]1846–1848[/U][/B]

Mexican War: U.S. declares war on Mexico in effort to gain California and other territory in Southwest (May 13, 1846). War concludes with signing of Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (Feb. 2, 1848). Mexico recognizes Rio Grande as new boundary with Texas and, for $15 million, agrees to cede territory comprising present-day California, Nevada, Utah, most of New Mexico and Arizona, and parts of Colorado and Wyoming.


[B][U]1848[/U][/B]

Gold is discovered at Sutter's Mill in California (Jan. 24); gold rush reaches its height the following year. Women's rights convention is held at Seneca Falls, N.Y. (July 19–20).


[B][U]1849[/U][/B]

Zachary Taylor is inaugurated as the 12th president (March 5).


Harriet Tubman escapes from slavery and becomes one of the most effective and celebrated members of the Underground Railroad.

[SIZE="5"][B][U]1850–1899[/U][/B][/SIZE]

[B][U]1850 [/U][/B]

President Taylor dies (July 9) and is succeeded by his vice president, Millard Fillmore.

The continuing debate whether territory gained in the Mexican War should be open to slavery is decided in the Compromise of 1850: California is admitted as a free state, Utah and New Mexico territories are left to be decided by popular sovereignty, and the slave trade in Washington, DC, is prohibited. It also establishes a much stricter fugitive slave law, than the original, passed in 1793


[B][U]1852 [/U][/B]

Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin is published. It becomes one of the most influential works to stir anti-slavery sentiments.


[B][U]1853 [/U][/B]

Franklin Pierce is inaugurated as the 14th president (March 4). Gadsden Purchase treaty is signed; U.S. acquires border territory from Mexico for $10 million (Dec. 30).


[B][U]1854 [/U][/B]

Congress passes the Kansas-Nebraska Act, establishing the territories of Kansas and Nebraska (May 30). The legislation repeals the Missouri Compromise of 1820 and renews tensions between anti- and proslavery factions.


[B][U]1857 [/U][/B]

James Buchanan is inaugurated as the 15th president (March 4). Dred Scott v. Sanford: Landmark Supreme Court decision holds that Congress does not have the right to ban slavery in states and, furthermore, that slaves are not citizens.


[B][U]1858 [/U][/B]

Abraham Lincoln comes to national attention in a series of seven debates with Sen. Stephen A. Douglas during Illinois state election campaign (Aug.–Oct.).


[B][U]1859[/U][/B]

Abolitionist John Brown and 21 followers capture federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Va. (now W. Va.), in an attempt to spark a slave revolt (Oct. 16).


[B][U]1860 [/U][/B]

Abraham Lincoln is elected president (Nov. 6). South Carolina secedes from the Union (Dec. 20).


[B][U]1861 [/U][/B]

Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana secede (Jan.). Confederate States of America is established (Feb. 8). Jefferson Davis is elected president of the Confederacy (Feb. 9). Texas secedes (March 2). Abraham Lincoln is inaugurated as the 16th president (March 4).


[B][U]1861–1865 [/U][/B]

Civil War: Conflict between the North (the Union) and the South (the Confederacy) over the expansion of slavery into western states. Confederates attack Ft. Sumter in Charleston, S.C., marking the start of the war (April 12, 1861). Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennessee secede (April–June). Emancipation Proclamation is issued, freeing slaves in the Confederate states (Jan. 1, 1863). Battle of Gettysburg is fought (July 1–3). President Lincoln delivers the Gettysburg Address (Nov. 19). Gen. William T. Sherman captures Atlanta (Sept. 2, 1864). Lincoln's second inauguration (March 4, 1865). Gen. Ulysses S. Grant captures Richmond, Va., the capital of the Confederacy (April 3). Confederate general Robert E. Lee surrenders to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse, Va., (April 9).


[B][U]1863[/U][/B]

Homestead Act becomes law, allowing settlers to claim land (160 acres) after they have lived on it for five years (Jan. 1).


[B][U]1865 [/U][/B]

Lincoln is assassinated (April 14) by John Wilkes Booth in Washington, DC, and is succeeded by his vice president, Andrew Johnson. Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution is ratified, prohibiting slavery (Dec. 6).


[B][U]1867 [/U][/B]

U.S. acquires Alaska from Russia for the sum of $7.2 million (treaty concluded March 30).


[B][U]1868 [/U][/B]

President Johnson is impeached by the House of Representatives (Feb. 24), but he is acquitted at his trial in the Senate (May 26). Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution is ratified, defining citizenship (July 9).


[B][U]1869 [/U][/B]

Ulysses S. Grant is inaugurated as the 18th president (March 4). Central Pacific and Union Pacific railroads are joined at Promontory, Utah, creating first transcontinental railroad (May 10).


[B][U]1870[/U][/B]

Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution is ratified, giving blacks the right to vote (Feb. 3).


[B][U]1871 [/U][/B]

Chicago fire kills 300 and leaves 90,000 people homeless (Oct. 8–9).


[B][U]1872 [/U][/B]

Crédit Mobilier scandal breaks, involving several members of Congress (Sept.).

[B][U]1873[/U][/B]

Grant's second inauguration (March 4).


[B][U]1876 [/U][/B]

Lt. Col. George A. Custer's regiment is wiped out by Sioux Indians under Sitting Bull at the Little Big Horn River, Mont. (June 25).


[B]1877 [/B]

Rutherford B. Hayes is inaugurated as the 19th president (March 5). The first telephone line is built from Boston to Somerville, Mass.; the following year, President Hayes has the first telephone installed in the White House.

[B]1881 [/B]

James A. Garfield is inaugurated as the 20th president (March 4). He is shot (July 2) by Charles Guiteau in Washington, DC, and later dies from complications of his wounds in Elberon, N.J. (Sept. 19). Garfield's vice president, Chester Alan Arthur, succeeds him in office.


[B]1882 [/B]

U.S. adopts standard time (Nov. 18).


[B]1885 [/B]

Grover Cleveland is inaugurated as the 22nd president (March 4).


[B]1886 [/B]

Statue of Liberty is dedicated (Oct. 28). American Federation of Labor is organized (Dec.).


[B]1889[/B]

Benjamin Harrison is inaugurated as the 23rd president (March 4). Oklahoma is opened to settlers (April 22).


[B]1890 [/B]

National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) is founded, with Elizabeth Cady Stanton as president. Sherman Antitrust Act is signed into law, prohibiting commercial monopolies (July 2). Last major battle of the Indian Wars occurs at Wounded Knee in South Dakota (Dec. 29). In reporting the results of the 1890 census, the Census Bureau announces that the West has been settled and the frontier is closed.


[B]1892 [/B]

Ellis Island becomes chief immigration station of the U.S. (Jan. 1).


[B]1893 [/B]

Grover Cleveland is inaugurated a second time, as the 24th president (March 4). He is the only president to serve two nonconsecutive terms.


[B]1896[/B]

Plessy v. Ferguson: Landmark Supreme Court decision holds that racial segregation is constitutional, paving the way for the repressive Jim Crow laws in the South (May 18).


[B][U]1897[/U][/B]

William McKinley is inaugurated as the 25th president (March 4).


[B]1898[/B]

Spanish-American War: USS Maine is blown up in Havana harbor (Feb. 15), prompting U.S. to declare war on Spain (April 25). Treaty of Paris is signed, ending the Spanish-American War (Dec. 10); Spain gives up control of Cuba, which becomes an independent republic, and cedes Puerto Rico, Guam, and (for $20 million) the Philippines to the U.S.


[B]1898[/B]

U.S. annexes Hawaii by an act of Congress (July 7).


[B]1899 [/B]

U.S. acquires American Samoa by treaty with Great Britain and Germany (Dec. 2).




[SIZE="5"][B][U]1900–1949[/U][/B][/SIZE]


[B]1900 [/B]

Galveston hurricane leaves an estimated 6,000 to 8,000 dead (Sept. 8). According to the census, the nation's population numbers nearly 76 million.


[B]1901[/B]

McKinley's second inauguration (March 4). He is shot (Sept. 6) by anarchist Leon Czolgosz in Buffalo, N.Y., and later dies from his wounds (Sept. 14). He is succeeded by his vice president, Theodore Roosevelt.


[B]1903[/B]

U.S. acquires Panama Canal Zone (treaty signed Nov. 17). Wright brothers make the first controlled, sustained flight in heavier-than-air aircraft at Kitty Hawk, N.C. (Dec. 17).


[B]1905 [/B]

Theodore Roosevelt's second inauguration (March 4).

[B]1906 [/B]

San Francisco earthquake leaves 500 dead or missing and destroys about 4 sq mi of the city (April 18).


[B]1908 [/B]

Bureau of Investigation, forerunner of the FBI, is established (July 26).


[B]1909[/B]

William Howard Taft is inaugurated as the 27th president (March 4). Mrs. Taft has 80 Japanese cherry trees planted along the banks of the Potomac River.


[B]1913[/B]

Woodrow Wilson is inaugurated as the 28th president (March 4). Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution is ratified, providing for the direct election of U.S. senators by popular vote rather than by the state legislatures (April 8).


[B]1914–1918[/B]

World War I: U.S. enters World War I, declaring war on Germany (April 6, 1917) and Austria-Hungary (Dec. 7, 1917) three years after conflict began in
1914. Armistice ending World War I is signed (Nov. 11, 1918).


[B]1914[/B]

Panama Canal opens to traffic (Aug. 15).


[B]1915 [/B]

First long distance telephone service, between New York and San Francisco, is demonstrated (Jan. 25).


[B]1916[/B]

U.S. agrees to purchase Danish West Indies (Virgin Islands) for $25 million (treaty signed Aug. 14). Jeannette Rankin of Montana is the first woman elected to the U.S. House of Representatives (Nov. 7).


[B]1917 [/B]

Wilson's second inauguration (March 5). First regular airmail service begins, with one round trip a day between Washington, DC, and New York (May 15).

[B]1918 [/B]

Worldwide influenza epidemic strikes; by 1920, nearly 20 million are dead. In U.S., 500,000 perish.


[B]1919[/B]

League of Nations meets for the first time; U.S. is not represented (Jan. 13). Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution is ratified, prohibiting the manufacture, sale, and transportation of liquor (Jan. 16). It is later repealed by the Twenty-First Amendment in 1933. Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution is ratified, granting women the right to vote (Aug. 18). President Wilson suffers a stroke (Sept. 26). Treaty of Versailles, outlining terms for peace at the end of World War I, is rejected by the Senate (Nov. 19).


[B]1921 [/B]

Warren G. Harding is inaugurated as the 29th president (March 4). He signs resolution declaring peace with Austria and Germany (July 2).


[B]1923 [/B]

President Harding dies suddenly (Aug. 2). He is succeeded by his vice president, Calvin Coolidge. Teapot Dome scandal breaks, as Senate launches an investigation into improper leasing of naval oil reserves during Harding administration (Oct.)


[B]1925 [/B]

Coolidge's second inauguration (March 4). Tennessee passes a law against the teaching of evolution in public schools (March 23), setting the stage for the Scopes Monkey Trial (July 10–25).


[B]1927 [/B]

Charles Lindbergh makes the first solo nonstop transatlantic flight in his plane The Spirit of St. Louis (May 20–21).


[B]1929[/B]

Herbert Hoover is inaugurated as the 31st president (March 4). Stock market crash precipitates the Great Depression (Oct. 29).


[B]1931[/B]

The Star-Spangled Banner is adopted as the national anthem (March 3).


[B]1932 [/B]

Hattie Wyatt Caraway of Arkansas is the first woman elected to the U.S. Senate, to fill a vacancy caused by the death of her husband (Jan. 12). She is reelected in 1932 and 1938. Amelia Earhart completes first solo nonstop transatlantic flight by a woman (May 21).



[B]1933 [/B]

Twentieth Amendment to the Constitution, sometimes called the “Lame Duck Amendment,” is ratified, moving the president's inauguration date from March 4 to Jan. 20 (Jan. 23). Franklin Roosevelt is inaugurated as the 32nd president (March 4). New Deal recovery measures are enacted by Congress (March 9–June 16). Twenty-First Amendment to the Constitution is ratified, repealing Prohibition (Dec. 5).


[B]1935[/B]

Works Progress Administration is established (April 8). Social Security Act is passed (Aug. 14). Bureau of Investigation (established 1908) becomes the Federal Bureau of Investigation under J. Edgar Hoover


[B]1937 [/B]

F. Roosevelt's second inauguration (Jan. 20).


[B]1938[/B]

Fair Labor Standards Act is passed, setting the first minimum wage in the U.S. at 25 cents per hour (June 25).


[B]1939–1945[/B]

World War II: U.S. declares its neutrality in European conflict (Sept. 5, 1939). F. Roosevelt's third inauguration (Jan. 20, 1941). He is the first and only president elected to a third term. Japan attacks Hawaii, Guam, and the Philippines (Dec. 7, 1941). U.S. declares war on Japan (Dec. 8). Germany and Italy declare war on the United States; U.S. reciprocates by declaring war on both countries (Dec. 11). Allies invade North Africa (Oct.–Dec. 1942) and Italy (Sept.–Dec. 1943). Allies invade France on D-Day (June 6, 1944). F. Roosevelt's fourth inauguration (Jan. 20, 1945). President Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin meet at Yalta in the USSR to discuss postwar occupation of Germany (Feb. 4–11). President Roosevelt dies of a stroke (April 12) and is succeeded by his vice president, Harry Truman. Germany surrenders unconditionally (May 7). First atomic bomb is detonated at Alamogordo, N.M. (July 16). President Truman, Churchill, and Stalin meet at Potsdam, near Berlin, Germany, to demand Japan's unconditional surrender and to discuss plans for postwar Europe (July 17–Aug. 2). U.S. drops atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan (Aug. 6). U.S. drops atomic bomb on Nagasaki, Japan (Aug. 9). Japan agrees to unconditional surrender (Aug. 14). Japanese envoys sign surrender terms aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo harbor (Sept. 2).


[B]1945[/B]

United Nations is established (Oct. 24).


[B]1946[/B]

The Philippines, which had been ceded to the U.S. by Spain at the end of the Spanish-American War, becomes an independent republic (July 4).

[B]1947[/B]

Presidential Succession Act is signed into law by President Truman (July 18). Central Intelligence Agency is established.


[B]1948[/B]

Congress passes foreign aid bill including the Marshall Plan, which provides for European postwar recovery (April 2). Soviets begin blockade of Berlin in the first major crisis of the cold war (June 24). In response, U.S. and Great Britain begin airlift of food and fuel to West Berlin (June 26).


[B]1949[/B]

Truman's second inauguration (Jan. 20). North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is established (April 4). Soviets end blockade of Berlin (May 12), but airlift continues until Sept. 30

[SIZE="5"][B][I][U]1950–1999[/U][/I][/B][/SIZE]

[B]1950–1953[/B]

Korean War: Cold war conflict between Communist and non-Communist forces on Korean Peninsula. North Korean communists invade South Korea (June 25, 1950). President Truman, without the approval of Congress, commits American troops to battle (June 27). President Truman removes Gen. Douglas MacArthur as head of U.S. Far East Command (April 11, 1951). Armistice agreement is signed (July 27, 1953).


[B]1950–1975 [/B]

Vietnam War: Prolonged conflict between Communist forces of North Vietnam, backed by China and the USSR, and non-Communist forces of South Vietnam, backed by the United States. President Truman authorizes $15 million in economic and military aid to the French, who are fighting to retain control of French Indochina, including Vietnam. As part of the aid package, Truman also sends 35 military advisers (May 1950). North Vietnamese torpedo boats allegedly attack U.S. destroyer in Gulf of Tonkin off the coast of North Vietnam (Aug. 2, 1964). Congress approves Gulf of Tonkin resolution, authorizing President Johnson to take any measures necessary to defend U.S. forces and prevent further aggression (Aug. 7). U.S. planes begin bombing raids of North Vietnam (Feb. 1965). First U.S. combat troops arrive in South Vietnam (March 8–9). North Vietnamese army and Viet Cong launch Tet Offensive, attacking Saigon and other key cities in South Vietnam (Jan.–Feb. 1968). American soldiers kill 300 Vietnamese villagers in My Lai massacre (March 16). U.S. troops invade Cambodia (May 1, 1970). Representatives of North and South Vietnam, the Viet Cong, and the U.S. sign a cease-fire agreement in Paris (Jan. 27, 1973). Last U.S. troops leave Vietnam (March 29). South Vietnamese government surrenders to North Vietnam; U.S. embassy Marine guards and last U.S. civilians are evacuated (April 30, 1975).


[B]1951[/B]

Twenty-Second Amendment to the Constitution is ratified, limiting the president to two terms (Feb. 27). President Truman speaks in first coast-to-coast live television broadcast (Sept. 4).


[B]1952[/B]

Puerto Rico becomes a U.S. commonwealth (July 25). First hydrogen bomb is detonated by the U.S. on Eniwetok, an atoll in the Marshall Islands (Nov. 1).


[B]1953 [/B]

Dwight Eisenhower is inaugurated as the 34th president (Jan. 20). Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are executed for passing secret information about U.S. atomic weaponry to the Soviets (June 19).


[B]1954 [/B]

Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy accuses army officials, members of the media, and other public figures of being Communists during highly publicized hearings (April 22–June 17). Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kans.: Landmark Supreme Court decision declares that racial segregation in schools is unconstitutional (May 17).


[B]1957[/B]

Eisenhower's second inauguration (Jan. 21). President sends federal troops to Central High School in Little Rock, Ark., to enforce integration of black students (Sept. 24).


[B]1958 [/B]

Explorer I, first American satellite, is launched (Jan. 31).


[B]1959 [/B]

Alaska becomes the 49th state (Jan. 3) and Hawaii becomes the 50th (Aug. 21).


[B]1961[/B]

U.S. severs diplomatic relations with Cuba (Jan. 3). John F. Kennedy is inaugurated as the 35th president (Jan. 20). Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba fails (April 17–20). A mixed-race group of volunteers sponsored by the Committee on Racial Equality—the so-called Freedom Riders—travel on buses through the South in order to protest racially segregated interstate bus facilities (May).


[B]1962[/B]

Lt. Col. John Glenn becomes first U.S. astronaut to orbit Earth (Feb. 20). Cuban Missile Crisis: President Kennedy denounces Soviet Union for secretly installing missile bases on Cuba and initiates a naval blockade of the island (Oct. 22–Nov. 20).


[B]1963 [/B]

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., delivers his “I Have a Dream” speech before a crowd of 200,000 during the civil rights march on Washington, DC (Aug. 28). President Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas, Tex. (Nov. 22). He is succeeded in office by his vice president, Lyndon B. Johnson.


[B]1964[/B]

President Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act (July 2).
1965 In his annual state of the Union address, President Johnson proposes his Great Society program (Jan. 4). L. Johnson's second inauguration (Jan. 20). State troopers attack peaceful demonstrators led by Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., as they try to cross bridge in Selma, Ala. (March 7). President Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits discriminatory voting practices (Aug. 6). In six days of rioting in Watts, a black section of Los Angeles, 35 people are killed and 883 injured (Aug. 11–16).


[B]1966[/B]

Miranda v. Arizona: Landmark Supreme Court decision further defines due process clause of Fourteenth Amendment and establishes Miranda rights (June 13).


[B]1967 [/B]

Twenty-Fifth Amendment to the Constitution is ratified, outlining the procedures for filling vacancies in the presidency and vice presidency (Feb. 10).


[B]1968 [/B]

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., is assassinated in Memphis, Tenn. (April 4). Sen. Robert F. Kennedy is assassinated in Los Angeles, Calif. (June 5–6).


[B]1969[/B]

Richard Nixon is inaugurated as the 37th president (Jan. 20). Astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin, Jr., become the first men to land on the Moon (July 20).


[B]1970[/B]

Four students are shot to death by National Guardsmen during an antiwar protest at Kent State University (May 1).


[B]1971[/B]

The Twenty-Sixth Amendment to the Constitution is ratified, lowering the voting age from 21 to 18 (July 1).


[B]1972 [/B]

Nixon makes historic visit to Communist China (Feb. 21–27). U.S. and Soviet Union sign strategic arms control agreement known as SALT I (May 26). Five men, all employees of Nixon's reelection campaign, are caught breaking into rival Democratic headquarters at the Watergate complex in Washington, DC (June 17).


[B]1973 [/B]

Nixon's second inauguration (Jan. 20). Roe v. Wade: Landmark Supreme Court decision legalizes abortion in first trimester of pregnancy (Jan. 22). Senate Select Committee begins televised hearings to investigate Watergate cover-up (May 17–Aug. 7). Vice President Spiro T. Agnew resigns over charges of corruption and income tax evasion (Oct. 10). President Nixon nominates Gerald R. Ford as vice president (Oct. 12). Ford is confirmed by Congress and sworn in (Dec. 6). He is the first vice president to succeed to the office under the terms laid out by the Twenty-Fifth Amendment.


[B]1974[/B]

House Judiciary Committee recommends to full House that Nixon be impeached on grounds of obstruction of justice, abuse of power, and contempt of Congress (July 27–30). Nixon resigns; he is succeeded in office by his vice president, Gerald Ford (Aug. 9). Nixon is granted an unconditional pardon by President Ford (Sept. 8). Five former Nixon aides go on trial for their involvement in the Watergate cover-up (Oct. 15); H. R. Haldeman, John D. Ehrlichman, and John Mitchell eventually serve time in prison. Nelson Rockefeller is confirmed and sworn in as vice president (Dec. 19).


[B]1977[/B]

Jimmy Carter is inaugurated as the 39th president (Jan. 20). President Carter signs treaty (Sept. 7) agreeing to turn control of Panama Canal over to Panama on Dec. 31, 1999


[B]1978[/B]

President Carter meets with Egyptian president Anwar Sadat and Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin at Camp David (Sept. 6); Sadat and Begin sign Camp David Accord, ending 30-year conflict between Egypt and Israel (Sept. 17).


[B]1979 [/B]

U.S. establishes diplomatic ties with mainland China for the first time since Communist takeover in 1949 (Jan. 1). Malfunction at Three Mile Island nuclear reactor in Pennsylvania causes near meltdown (March 28). Panama takes control of the Canal Zone, formerly administered by U.S. (Oct. 1). Iranian students storm U.S. embassy in Teheran and hold 66 people hostage (Nov. 4); 13 of the hostages are released (Nov. 19–20).


[B]1980 [/B]

President Carter announces that U.S. athletes will not attend Summer Olympics in Moscow unless Soviet Union withdraws from Afghanistan (Jan. 20). FBI's undercover bribery investigation, code named Abscam, implicates a U.S. senator, seven members of the House, and 31 other public officials (Feb. 2). U.S. mission to rescue hostages in Iran is aborted after a helicopter and cargo plane collide at the staging site in a remote part of Iran and 8 servicemen are killed (April 25).


[B]1981[/B]

Ronald Reagan is inaugurated as the 40th president (Jan. 20). U.S. hostages held in Iran are released after 444 days in captivity (Jan. 20). President Reagan is shot in the chest by John Hinckley, Jr. (March 30). Sandra Day O'Connor is sworn in as the first woman Supreme Court justice (Sept. 25).


[B]1982[/B]

Deadline for ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution passes without the necessary votes (June 30).


[B]1983[/B]

U.S. invades Caribbean island of Grenada after a coup by Marxist faction in the government (Oct. 25).


[B]1985[/B]

Reagan's second inauguration (Jan. 21).


[B]1986[/B]

Space shuttle Challenger explodes 73 seconds after liftoff, killing all seven crew members (Jan. 28). It is the worst accident in the history of the U.S. space program. U.S. bombs military bases in Libya in effort to deter terrorist strikes on American targets (April 14). Iran-Contra scandal breaks when White House is forced to reveal secret arms-for-hostages deals (Nov.).


[B]1987[/B]

Congress holds public hearings in Iran-Contra investigation (May 5–Aug. 3). In a speech in Berlin, President Reagan challenges Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down this wall” and open Eastern Europe to political and economic reform (June 12). Reagan and Gorbachev sign INF treaty, the first arms-control agreement to reduce the superpowers' nuclear weapons (Dec. 8).


[B]
1989[/B]

George H. W. Bush is inaugurated as the 41st president (Jan. 20). Oil tanker Exxon Valdez runs aground in Prince William Sound, spilling more than 10 million gallons of oil (March 24). It is the largest oil spill in U.S. history. President Bush signs legislation to provide for federal bailout of nearly 800 insolvent savings and loan institutions (Aug. 9). U.S. forces invade Panama in an attempt to capture Gen. Manuel Noriega, who previously had been indicted in the U.S. on drug trafficking charges (Dec. 20).


[B]1990[/B]

Iraqi troops invade Kuwait, leading to the Persian Gulf War (Aug. 2).


[B]1991[/B]

Persian Gulf War: U.S. leads international coalition in military operation (code named “Desert Storm”) to drive Iraqis out of Kuwait (Jan. 16–Feb. 28). Iraq accepts terms of UN ceasefire, marking an end of the war (April 6).


[B]1991 [/B]

U.S. and Soviet Union sign START I treaty, agreeing to further reduce strategic nuclear arms (July 31). Senate Judiciary Committee conducts televised hearings to investigate allegations of past sexual harassment brought against Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas by Anita Hill, a law professor at the University of Oklahoma (Oct. 11–13).


[B]1992[/B]

Following the breakup of the Soviet Union in Dec. 1991, President Bush and Russian president Boris Yeltsin meet at Camp David and formally declare an end to the cold war (Feb. 1). The acquittal of four white police officers charged in the 1991 beating of black motorist Rodney King in Los Angeles sets off several days of rioting, leading to more than 50 deaths, thousands of injuries and arrests, and $1 billion in property damage (April 29). President Bush authorizes sending U.S. troops to Somalia as part of UN relief effort (Dec. 4). President Bush grants pardons to six officials convicted or indicted in the Iran-Contra scandal, leading some to suspect a cover-up (Dec. 24).


[B]1993[/B]

Bill Clinton is inaugurated as the 42nd president (Jan. 20). Bomb explodes in basement garage of World Trade Center, killing 6, injuring 1,000, and causing more than $500 million in damage (Feb. 26). After 51-day standoff with federal agents, Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Tex., burns to the ground, killing 80 cult members (April 19). President Clinton orders missile attack against Iraq in retaliation for alleged plot to assassinate former President Bush (June 26). Eighteen U.S. soldiers are killed in ambush by Somali militiamen in Mogadishu (Oct. 3–4). President Clinton signs North American Free Trade Agreement into law (Dec. 8).


[B]1994[/B]

Paula Jones, a former Arkansas state employee, files a federal lawsuit against President Clinton for sexual harassment (May 6).


[B]1995 [/B]

Bombing of federal office building in Oklahoma City kills 168 people (April 19). U.S. establishes full diplomatic relations with Vietnam (July 11). President Clinton sends first 8,000 of 20,000 U.S. troops to Bosnia for 12-month peacekeeping mission (Dec.). Budget standoff between President Clinton and Congress results in partial shutdown of U.S. government (Dec. 16–Jan. 6).


[B]1997 [/B]

Clinton's second inauguration (Jan. 20).


[B]1998 [/B]

President Clinton denies having had a sexual relationship with a White House intern named Monica Lewinsky (Jan. 17). President Clinton releases 1999 federal budget plan; it is the first balanced budget since 1969 (Feb. 2). In televised address, President Clinton admits having had a sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky (Aug. 17). U.S. launches missile attacks on targets in Sudan and Afghanistan following terrorist attacks on U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania (Aug. 20). U.S. and Britain launch air strikes against weapons sites in Iraq (Dec. 16). House of Representatives votes to impeach President Clinton on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice (Dec. 19).


[B]1999[/B]

Senate acquits Clinton of impeachment charges (Feb. 12). NATO wages air campaign against Yugoslavia over killing and deportation of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo (March 24–June 10). School shooting at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., leaves 14 students (including the 2 shooters) and 1 teacher dead and 23 others wounded (April 20). U.S. and China sign historic trade agreement (Nov. 15).




[B][U][CENTER][SIZE="5"]2000–[/SIZE][/CENTER][/U][/B]


[B]2000[/B]

According to the census, the nation's population numbers more than 280 million (April 1). No clear winner is declared in the close presidential election contest between Vice President Al Gore and Texas governor George W. Bush (Nov. 7). More than a month after the presidential election, the U.S. Supreme Court rules against a manual recount of ballots in certain Florida counties, which it contends would violate the Constitution's equal protection and due process guarantees. The decision provokes enormous controversy, with critics maintaining that the court has in effect determined the outcome of the election (Dec. 12). Bush formally accepts the presidency, having won a slim majority in the electoral college but not a majority of the popular vote (Dec. 13).


[B]2001 [/B]

George W. Bush is inaugurated as the 43rd president (Jan. 20). Two hijacked jetliners ram twin towers of World Trade Center in worst terrorist attack against U.S.; a third hijacked plane flies into the Pentagon, and a fourth crashes in rural Pennsylvania. More than 3,000 people die in the attacks (Sept. 11). U.S. and Britain launch air attacks against targets in Afghanistan after Taliban government fails to hand over Saudi terrorist Osama bin Laden, the suspected mastermind behind the Sept. 11 attacks (Oct. 7). Following air campaign and ground assault by Afghani opposition troops, the Taliban regime topples (Dec. 9); however, the hunt for bin Laden and other members of al-Qaeda terrorist organization continues.


[B]2002[/B]

In his first State of the Union address, President Bush labels Iran, Iraq, and North Korea an “axis of evil” and declares that U.S. will wage war against states that develop weapons of mass destruction (Jan. 29). President Bush signs legislation creating a new cabinet department of Homeland Security. (Nov. 25).


[B]2003 [/B]

Space shuttle Columbia explodes upon reentry into Earth's atmosphere, killing all seven astronauts on board (Feb. 1). War waged by the U.S. and Britain against Iraq begins (March 19). President Bush signs $350 billion tax-cut bill (May 28).


[B]2004[/B]

The U.S. returns sovereignty to an interim government in Iraq, but maintains roughly 135,000 troops in the country to fight a growing insurgency (June 28). Four hurricanes devastate Florida and other parts of the southern United States (Aug. and Sept.).

[B]
2005 [/B]

The U.S. engagement in Iraq continues amid that country's escalating violence and fragile political stability. Hurricane Katrina wreaks catastrophic damage on Mississippi and Louisiana; 80% of New Orleans is flooded (Aug. 29–30). All levels of government are criticized for the delayed and inadequate response to the disaster.

[B]
2006[/B]

The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that the population of the United States has reached 300 million (Oct. 17).




[COLOR="Red"]Regards,

Suresh lasi[/COLOR]

[SIZE="6"][B][U][CENTER]U.S. Presidents[/CENTER][/U][/B][/SIZE]


[B][U]George Washington[/U][/B]

[IMG]http://www.teachersparadise.com/ency/en/media/2/2e/george_washington.jpg[/IMG]

Born: 2/22/1732
Birthplace: Westmoreland County, Va.

George Washington was born on Feb. 22, 1732 (Feb. 11, 1731/2, old style) in Westmoreland County, Va. While in his teens, he trained as a surveyor, and at the age of 20 he was appointed adjutant in the Va. militia. For the next three years, he fought in the wars against the French and Indians, serving as Gen. Edward Braddock's aide in the disastrous campaign against Ft. Duquesne. In 1759, he resigned from the militia, married Martha Dandridge Custis, a widow with children, and settled down as a gentleman farmer at Mount Vernon, Va.

As a militiaman, Washington had been exposed to the arrogance of the British officers, and his experience as a planter with British commercial restrictions increased his anti-British sentiment. He opposed the Stamp Act of 1765 and after 1770 became increasingly prominent in organizing resistance. A delegate to the Continental Congress, Washington was selected as commander in chief of the Continental Army and took command at Cambridge, Mass., on July 3, 1775.

Inadequately supported and sometimes covertly sabotaged by the Congress, in charge of troops who were inexperienced, badly equipped, and impatient of discipline, Washington conducted the war on the policy of avoiding major engagements with the British and wearing them down by harassing tactics. His able generalship, along with the French alliance and the growing weariness within Britain, brought the war to a conclusion with the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown, Va., on Oct. 19, 1781.

The chaotic years under the Articles of Confederation led Washington to return to public life in the hope of promoting the formation of a strong central government. He presided over the Constitutional Convention and yielded to the universal demand that he serve as first president. He was inaugurated on April 30, 1789, in New York, the first national capital. In office, he sought to unite the nation and establish the authority of the new government at home and abroad. Greatly distressed by the emergence of the Hamilton-Jefferson rivalry, Washington worked to maintain neutrality but actually sympathized more with Hamilton. Following his unanimous reelection in 1792, his second term was dominated by the Federalists. His Farewell Address on Sept. 17, 1796 (published but never delivered) rebuked party spirit and warned against “permanent alliances” with foreign powers.

He died at Mount Vernon on Dec. 14, 1799.





[B][U]John Adams[/U][/B]

[IMG]http://www.earlyamerica.com/portraits/images/johnadams.jpg[/IMG]

Born: 10/30/1735
Birthplace: Braintree, Mass.

John Adams born on Oct. 30 (Oct. 19, old style), 1735, at Braintree (now Quincy), Mass. A Harvard graduate, he considered teaching and the ministry but finally turned to law and was admitted to the bar in 1758. Six years later, he married Abigail Smith. He opposed the Stamp Act, served as lawyer for patriots indicted by the British, and by the time of the Continental Congresses, was in the vanguard of the movement for independence. In 1778, he went to France as commissioner. Subsequently he helped negotiate the peace treaty with Britain, and in 1785 became envoy to London. Resigning in 1788, he was elected vice president under Washington and was reelected in 1792.

Though a Federalist, Adams did not get along with Hamilton, who sought to prevent his election to the presidency in 1796 and thereafter intrigued against his administration. In 1798, Adams's independent policy averted a war with France but completed the break with Hamilton and the right-wing Federalists; at the same time, the enactment of the Alien and Sedition Acts, directed against foreigners and against critics of the government, exasperated the Jeffersonian opposition. The split between Adams and Hamilton resulted in Jefferson's becoming the next president. Adams retired to his home in Quincy. He and Jefferson died on the same day, July 4, 1826, the 50th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence.

His Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States (1787) contains original and striking, if conservative, political ideas.





[B][U]Thomas Jefferson[/U][/B]

[IMG]http://content.answers.com/main/content/wp/en/6/6b/Thomas-Jefferson.jpg[/IMG]

Born: 4/13/1743
Birthplace: Albemarle County, Va.

Thomas Jefferson was born on April 13 (April 2, old style), 1743, at Shadwell in Goochland (now Albemarle) County, Va. A William and Mary graduate, he studied law, but from the start showed an interest in science and philosophy. His literary skills and political clarity brought him to the forefront of the revolutionary movement in Virginia. As delegate to the Continental Congress, he drafted the Declaration of Independence. In 1776, he entered the Virginia House of Delegates and initiated a comprehensive reform program for the abolition of feudal survivals in land tenure and the separation of church and state.

In 1779, he became governor, but constitutional limitations on his power, combined with his own lack of executive energy, caused an unsatisfactory administration, culminating in Jefferson's virtual abdication when the British invaded Virginia in 1781. He retired to his beautiful home at Monticello, Va., to his family. His wife, Martha Wayles Skelton, whom he married in 1772, died in 1782.

Jefferson's Notes on Virginia (1784–85) illustrate his many-faceted interests, his limitless intellectual curiosity, his deep faith in agrarian democracy. Sent to Congress in 1783, he helped lay down the decimal system and drafted basic reports on the organization of the western lands. In 1785 he was appointed minister to France, where the Anglo-Saxon liberalism he had drawn from John Locke, the British philosopher, was stimulated by contact with the thought that would soon ferment in the French Revolution. In 1789, Washington appointed him secretary of state. While favoring the Constitution and a strengthened central government, Jefferson came to believe that Hamilton contemplated the establishment of a monarchy. Growing differences resulted in Jefferson's resignation on Dec. 31, 1793.

Elected vice president in 1796, Jefferson continued to serve as spiritual leader of the opposition to Federalism, particularly to the repressive Alien and Sedition Acts. He was elected president in 1801 by the House of Representatives as a result of Hamilton's decision to throw the Federalist votes to him rather than to Aaron Burr, who had tied him in electoral votes. He was the first president to be inaugurated in Washington, which he had helped to design.

The purchase of Louisiana from France in 1803, though in violation of Jefferson's earlier constitutional scruples, was the most notable act of his administration. Reelected in 1804, with the Federalist Charles C. Pinckney opposing him, Jefferson tried desperately to keep the United States out of the Napoleonic Wars in Europe, employing to this end the unpopular embargo policy.

After his retirement to Monticello in 1809, he developed his interest in education, founding the University of Virginia and watching its development with never-flagging interest. He died at Monticello on July 4, 1826. Jefferson had an enormous variety of interests and skills, ranging from education and science to architecture and music.






[B][U]James Madison[/U][/B]

[IMG]http://www.bartleby.com/124/madison.gif[/IMG]

Born: 3/16/1751
Birthplace: Port Conway, Va.

James Madison was born in Port Conway, Va., on March 16, 1751 (March 5, 1750/1, old style). A Princeton graduate, he joined the struggle for independence on his return to Virginia in 1771. In the 1770s and 1780s he was active in state politics, where he championed the Jefferson reform program, and in the Continental Congress. Madison was influential in the Constitutional Convention as leader of the group favoring a strong central government and as recorder of the debates; and he subsequently wrote, in collaboration with Alexander Hamilton and John Jay, the Federalist papers to aid the campaign for the adoption of the Constitution.

Serving in the new Congress, Madison soon emerged as the leader in the House of the men who opposed Hamilton's financial program and his pro-British leanings in foreign policy. Retiring from Congress in 1797, he continued to be active in Virginia and drafted the Virginia Resolution protesting the Alien and Sedition Acts. His intimacy with Jefferson made him the natural choice for secretary of state in 1801.

In 1809, Madison succeeded Jefferson as president, defeating Charles C. Pinckney. His wife, Dolley Payne Todd, whom he married in 1794, brought a new social sparkle to the executive mansion. In the meantime, increasing tension with Britain culminated in the War of 1812—a war for which the United States was unprepared and for which Madison lacked the executive talent to clear out incompetence and mobilize the nation's energies. Madison was reelected in 1812, running against the Federalist De Witt Clinton. In 1814, the British actually captured Washington and forced Madison to flee to Virginia.

Madison's domestic program capitulated to the Hamiltonian policies that he had resisted 20 years before and he now signed bills to establish a United States Bank and a higher tariff.

After his presidency, he remained in retirement in Virginia until his death on June 28, 1836.





[B][U]James Monroe[/U][/B]

[IMG]http://www.earlyamerica.com/portraits/images/monroe.jpg[/IMG]

Born: 4/28/1758
Birthplace: Westmoreland County, Va.

James Monroe was born on April 28, 1758, in Westmoreland County, Va. A William and Mary graduate, he served in the army during the first years of the Revolution and was wounded at Trenton. He then entered Virginia politics and later national politics under the sponsorship of Jefferson. In 1786, he married Elizabeth (Eliza) Kortright.

Fearing centralization, Monroe opposed the adoption of the Constitution and, as senator from Virginia, was highly critical of the Hamiltonian program. In 1794, he was appointed minister to France, where his ardent sympathies with the Revolution exceeded the wishes of the State Department. His troubled diplomatic career ended with his recall in 1796. From 1799 to 1802, he was governor of Virginia. In 1803, Jefferson sent him to France to help negotiate the Louisiana Purchase and for the next few years he was active in various negotiations on the Continent.

In 1808, Monroe flirted with the radical wing of the Republican Party, which opposed Madison's candidacy; but the presidential boom came to naught and, after a brief term as governor of Virginia in 1811, Monroe accepted Madison's offer to become secretary of state. During the War of 1812, he vainly sought a field command and instead served as secretary of war from September 1814 to March 1815.

Elected president in 1816 over the Federalist Rufus King, and reelected without opposition in 1820, Monroe, the last of the Virginia dynasty, pursued the course of systematic tranquilization that won for his administrations the name “the era of good feeling.” He continued Madison's surrender to the Hamiltonian domestic program, signed the Missouri Compromise, acquired Florida, and with the able assistance of his secretary of state, John Quincy Adams, promulgated the Monroe Doctrine in 1823, declaring against foreign colonization or intervention in the Americas. He died in New York City on July 4, 1831, the third president to die on the anniversary of Independence.







[B][U]John Quincy Adams[/U][/B]

[IMG]http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/presidents/images/bio6a.jpg[/IMG]

Born: 7/11/1767
Birthplace: Braintree, Mass.

John Quincy Adams was born on July 11, 1767, at Braintree (now Quincy), Mass., the son of John Adams, the second president. He spent his early years in Europe with his father, graduated from Harvard, and entered law practice. His anti-Paine newspaper articles won him political attention. In 1794, he became minister to the Netherlands, the first of several diplomatic posts that occupied him until his return to Boston in 1801. In 1797, he married Louisa Catherine Johnson.

In 1803, Adams was elected to the Senate, nominally as a Federalist, but his repeated displays of independence on such issues as the Louisiana Purchase and the embargo caused his party to demand his resignation and ostracize him socially. In 1809, Madison rewarded him for his support of Jefferson by appointing him minister to St. Petersburg. He helped negotiate the Treaty of Ghent in 1814, and in 1815 became minister to London. In 1817 Monroe appointed him secretary of state where he served with great distinction, gaining Florida from Spain without hostilities and playing an equal part with Monroe in formulating the Monroe Doctrine.

When no presidential candidate received a majority of electoral votes in 1824, Adams, with the support of Henry Clay, was elected by the House in 1825 over Andrew Jackson, who had the original plurality. Adams had ambitious plans of government activity to foster internal improvements and promote the arts and sciences, but congressional obstructionism, combined with his own unwillingness or inability to play the role of a politician, resulted in little being accomplished. After being defeated for reelection by Jackson in 1828, he successfully ran for the House of Representatives in 1830. There, though nominally a Whig, he pursued as ever an independent course. He led the fight to force Congress to receive antislavery petitions and fathered the Smithsonian Institution.

Adams had a stroke while on the floor of the House, and died two days later on Feb. 23, 1848. His long and detailed Diary gives a unique picture of the personalities and politics of the times.






[B][U]Andrew Jackson[/U][/B]

[IMG]http://www.bartleby.com/124/jackson.gif[/IMG]

Born: 3/15/1767
Birthplace: Waxhaw, S.C.

Andrew Jackson was born on March 15, 1767, in what is now generally agreed to be Waxhaw, S.C. After a turbulent boyhood as an orphan and a British prisoner, he moved west to Tennessee, where he soon qualified for law practice but found time for such frontier pleasures as horse racing, cockfighting, and dueling. His marriage to Rachel Donelson Robards in 1791 was complicated by subsequent legal uncertainties about the status of her divorce. During the 1790s, Jackson served in the Tennessee Constitutional Convention, the United States House of Representatives and Senate, and on the Tennessee Supreme Court.

After some years as a country gentleman, living at the Hermitage near Nashville, Jackson in 1812 was given command of Tennessee troops sent against the Creeks. He defeated the Indians at Horseshoe Bend in 1814; subsequently he became a major general and won the Battle of New Orleans over veteran British troops, though after the treaty of peace had been signed at Ghent. In 1818, Jackson invaded Florida, captured Pensacola, and hanged two Englishmen named Arbuthnot and Ambrister, creating an international incident. A presidential boom began for him in 1821, and to foster it, he returned to the Senate (1823–25). Though he won a plurality of electoral votes in 1824, he lost in the House when Clay threw his strength to Adams. Four years later, he easily defeated Adams. Jackson, the first president to come from humble origins, built his reputation as a populist and a defender of the common man over the political elite.

As president, Jackson greatly expanded the power and prestige of the presidential office and carried through an unprecedented program of domestic reform, vetoing the bill to extend the United States Bank, moving toward a hard-money currency policy, and checking the program of federal internal improvements. He also vindicated federal authority against South Carolina with its doctrine of nullification and against France on the question of debts. The support given his policies by the workingmen of the East as well as by the farmers of the East, West, and South resulted in his triumphant reelection in 1832 over Clay.

After watching the inauguration of his handpicked successor, Martin Van Buren, Jackson retired to the Hermitage, where he maintained a lively interest in national affairs until his death on June 8, 1845.






[B][U]Martin Van Buren[/U][/B]

[IMG]http://www.bartleby.com/124/vanburen.gif[/IMG]

Born: 12/5/1782
Birthplace: Kinderhook, N.Y.

Martin Van Buren was born on Dec. 5, 1782, at Kinderhook, N.Y. After graduating from the village school, he became a law clerk, entered practice in 1803, and soon became active in state politics as state senator and attorney general. In 1820, he was elected to the United States Senate. He threw the support of his efficient political organization, known as the Albany Regency, to William H. Crawford in 1824 and to Jackson in 1828. After leading the opposition to Adams's administration in the Senate, he served briefly as governor of New York (1828–1829) and resigned to become Jackson's secretary of state. He was soon on close personal terms with Jackson and played an important part in the Jacksonian program.

In 1832, Van Buren became vice president; in 1836, president. The Panic of 1837 overshadowed his term. He attributed it to the overexpansion of the credit and favored the establishment of an independent treasury as repository for the federal funds. In 1840, he established a 10-hour day on public works. Defeated by Harrison in 1840, he was the leading contender for the Democratic nomination in 1844 until he publicly opposed immediate annexation of Texas, and was subsequently beaten by the Southern delegations at the Baltimore convention. This incident increased his growing misgivings about the slave power.

After working behind the scenes among the anti-slavery Democrats, Van Buren joined in the movement that led to the Free-Soil Party and became its candidate for president in 1848. He subsequently returned to the Democratic Party while continuing to object to its pro-Southern policy. He died in Kinderhook on July 24, 1862. His Autobiography throws valuable sidelights on the political history of the times.

His wife, Hannah Hoes, whom he married in 1807, died in 1819.







[B][U]William Henry Harrison[/U][/B]

[IMG]http://www.usconstitution.com/williamhenryharrison1.gif[/IMG]

Born: 2/9/1773
Birthplace: Charles City County, Va.

William Henry Harrison was born in Charles City County, Va., on Feb. 9, 1773. Joining the army in 1791, he was active in Indian fighting in the Northwest, became secretary of the Northwest Territory in 1798 and governor of Indiana in 1800. He married Anna Symmes in 1795. Growing discontent over white encroachments on Indian lands led to the formation of an Indian alliance under Tecumseh to resist further aggressions. In 1811, Harrison won a nominal victory over the Indians at Tippecanoe and in 1813 a more decisive one at the Battle of the Thames, where Tecumseh was killed.

After resigning from the army in 1814, Harrison had an obscure career in politics and diplomacy, ending up 20 years later as a county recorder in Ohio. Nominated for president in 1835 as a military hero whom the conservative politicians hoped to be able to control, he ran surprisingly well against Van Buren in 1836. Four years later, he defeated Van Buren but caught pneumonia and died in Washington on April 4, 1841, a month after his inauguration. Harrison was the first president to die in office.






[B][U]John Tyler[/U][/B]

[IMG]http://www.usconstitution.com/johntyler2.gif[/IMG]

Born: 3/29/1790
Birthplace: Charles City County, Va.

John Tyler was born in Charles City County, Va., on March 29, 1790. A William and Mary graduate, he entered law practice and politics, serving in the House of Representatives (1817–21), as governor of Virginia (1825–27), and as senator (1827–36). A strict constructionist, he supported Crawford in 1824 and Jackson in 1828, but broke with Jackson over his United States Bank policy and became a member of the Southern state-rights group that cooperated with the Whigs. In 1836, he resigned from the Senate rather than follow instructions from the Virginia legislature to vote for a resolution expunging censure of Jackson from the Senate record.

Elected vice president on the Whig ticket in 1840, Tyler succeeded to the presidency on Harrison's death. His strict-constructionist views soon caused a split with the Henry Clay wing of the Whig party and a stalemate on domestic questions. Tyler's more considerable achievements were his support of the Webster-Ashburton Treaty with Britain and his success in bringing about the annexation of Texas.

After his presidency he lived in retirement in Virginia until the outbreak of the Civil War, when he emerged briefly as chairman of a peace convention and then as delegate to the provisional Congress of the Confederacy. He died on Jan. 18, 1862. He married Letitia Christian in 1813 and, two years after her death in 1842, Julia Gardiner.








[B][U]James Knox Polk[/U][/B]

[IMG]http://www.tmbg.org/learning/jameskpolk/polk.jpg[/IMG]

Born: 11/2/1795
Birthplace: Mecklenburg County, N.C.

James Knox Polk was born in Mecklenburg County, N.C., on Nov. 2, 1795. A graduate of the University of North Carolina, he moved west to Tennessee, was admitted to the bar, and soon became prominent in state politics. In 1825, he was elected to the House of Representatives, where he opposed Adams and, after 1829, became Jackson's floor leader in the fight against the Bank. In 1835, he became Speaker of the House. Four years later, he was elected governor of Tennessee, but was beaten in tries for reelection in 1841 and 1843.

The supporters of Van Buren for the Democratic nomination in 1844 counted on Polk as his running mate, but when Van Buren's stand on Texas alienated Southern support, the convention swung to Polk on the ninth ballot. He was elected over Henry Clay, the Whig candidate. Rapidly disillusioning those who thought that he would not run his own administration, Polk proceeded steadily and precisely to achieve four major objectives—the acquisition of California, the settlement of the Oregon question, the reduction of the tariff, and the establishment of the independent treasury. He also enlarged the Monroe Doctrine to exclude all non-American intervention in American affairs, whether forcible or not, and he forced Mexico into a war that he waged to a successful conclusion.

His wife, Sarah Childress, whom he married in 1824, was a woman of charm and ability. Polk died in Nashville, Tenn., on June 15, 1849.









[B][U]Zachary Taylor[/U][/B]

[IMG]http://www.gallatindesign.com/websites/presidents/images/biopics/taylor.jpg[/IMG]

Born: 11/24/1784
Birthplace: Orange County, Va.

Zachary Taylor was born at Montebello, Orange County, Va., on Nov. 24, 1784. Embarking on a military career in 1808, Taylor fought in the War of 1812, the Black Hawk War, and the Seminole War, meanwhile holding garrison jobs on the frontier or desk jobs in Washington. A brigadier general as a result of his victory over the Seminoles at Lake Okeechobee (1837), Taylor held a succession of Southwestern commands and in 1846 established a base on the Rio Grande, where his forces engaged in hostilities that precipitated the war with Mexico. He captured Monterrey in Sept. 1846 and, disregarding Polk's orders to stay on the defensive, defeated Santa Anna at Buena Vista in Feb. 1847, ending the war in the northern provinces.

Though Taylor had never cast a vote for president, his party affiliations were Whiggish and his availability was increased by his difficulties with Polk. He was elected president over the Democrat Lewis Cass. During the revival of the slavery controversy, which was to result in the Compromise of 1850, Taylor began to take an increasingly firm stand against appeasing the South; but he died in Washington on July 9, 1850, during the fight over the Compromise. He married Margaret Mackall Smith in 1810. His bluff and simple soldierly qualities won him the name Old Rough and Ready.









[COLOR="Red"]to be continued[/COLOR]

[B][U]Millard Fillmore[/U][/B]

[IMG]http://www.renderplus.com/hartgen/images/presidents/fillmore.jpg[/IMG]

Born: 1/7/1800
Birthplace: Cayuga County, N.Y.

Millard Fillmore was born at Locke, Cayuga County, N.Y., on Jan. 7, 1800. A lawyer, he entered politics with the Anti-Masonic Party under the sponsorship of Thurlow Weed, editor and party boss, and subsequently followed Weed into the Whig Party. He served in the House of Representatives (1833–35 and 1837–43) and played a leading role in writing the tariff of 1842. Defeated for governor of New York in 1844, he became state comptroller in 1848, was put on the Whig ticket with Taylor as a concession to the Clay wing of the party, and became president upon Taylor's death in 1850.

As president, Fillmore broke with Weed and William H. Seward and associated himself with the pro-Southern Whigs, supporting the Compromise of 1850. Defeated for the Whig nomination in 1852, he ran for president in 1856 as candidate of the American, or Know-Nothing, Party, which sought to unite the country against foreigners in the alleged hope of diverting it from the explosive slavery issue. Fillmore opposed Lincoln during the Civil War. He died in Buffalo on March 8, 1874.

He was married in 1826 to Abigail Powers, who died in 1853, and in 1858 to Caroline Carmichael McIntosh.






[B][U]Franklin Pierce[/U][/B]

[IMG]http://www.bartleby.com/124/pierce.gif[/IMG]

Born: 11/23/1804
Birthplace: Hillsboro, N.H.

Franklin Pierce was born at Hillsboro, N.H., on Nov. 23, 1804. A Bowdoin graduate, lawyer, and Jacksonian Democrat, he won rapid political advancement in the party, in part because of the prestige of his father, Gov. Benjamin Pierce. By 1831 he was Speaker of the New Hampshire House of Representatives; from 1833 to 1837, he served in the federal House and from 1837 to 1842 in the Senate. His wife, Jane Means Appleton, whom he married in 1834, disliked Washington and the somewhat dissipated life led by Pierce; in 1842 Pierce resigned from the Senate and began a successful law practice in Concord, N.H. During the Mexican War, he was a brigadier general.

Thereafter Pierce continued to oppose antislavery tendencies within the Democratic Party. As a result, he was the Southern choice to break the deadlock at the Democratic convention of 1852 and was nominated on the 49th ballot. In the election, Pierce overwhelmed Gen. Winfield Scott, the Whig candidate.

As president, Pierce followed a course of appeasing the South at home and of playing with schemes of territorial expansion abroad. The failure of his foreign and domestic policies prevented his renomination. He died in Concord on Oct. 8, 1869, in relative obscurity.



[B][U]James Buchanan[/U][/B]

[IMG]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/archive/f/fd/20061021100949!James_Buchanan.jpg[/IMG]

Born: 4/23/1791
Birthplace: Mercersburg, Pa.

James Buchanan was born near Mercersburg, Pa., on April 23, 1791. A Dickinson graduate and a lawyer, he entered Pennsylvania politics as a Federalist. With the disappearance of the Federalist Party, he became a Jacksonian Democrat. He served with ability in the House (1821–31), as minister to St. Petersburg (1832–33), and in the Senate (1834–45), and in 1845 became Polk's secretary of state. In 1853, Pierce appointed Buchanan minister to Britain, where he participated with other American diplomats in Europe in drafting the expansionist Ostend Manifesto.

He was elected president in 1856, defeating John C. Frémont, the Republican candidate, and former President Millard Fillmore of the American Party. The growing crisis over slavery presented Buchanan with problems he lacked the will to tackle. His appeasement of the South alienated the Stephen Douglas wing of the Democratic Party without reducing Southern militancy on slavery issues. While denying the right of secession, Buchanan also denied that the federal government could do anything about it. He supported the administration during the Civil War and died in Lancaster, Pa., on June 1, 1868.

The only president to remain a bachelor throughout his term, Buchanan used his charming niece, Harriet Lane, as White House hostess.






[B][U]Abraham Lincoln[/U][/B]

[IMG]http://www.bartleby.com/124/lincoln.gif[/IMG]

Born: 2/12/1809
Birthplace: Larue County, Ky.

Abraham Lincoln was born in Hardin (now Larue) County, Ky., on Feb. 12, 1809. His family moved to Indiana and then to Illinois, and Lincoln gained what education he could along the way. While reading law, he worked in a store, managed a mill, surveyed, and split rails. In 1834, he went to the Illinois legislature as a Whig and became the party's floor leader. For the next 20 years he practiced law in Springfield, except for a single term (1847–49) in Congress, where he denounced the Mexican War. In 1855, he was a candidate for senator and the next year he joined the new Republican Party.

A leading but unsuccessful candidate for the vice-presidential nomination with Frémont, Lincoln gained national attention in 1858 when, as Republican candidate for senator from Illinois, he engaged in a series of debates with Stephen A. Douglas, the Democratic candidate. He lost the election, but continued to prepare the way for the 1860 Republican convention and was rewarded with the presidential nomination on the third ballot. He won the election over three opponents.

From the start, Lincoln made clear that, unlike Buchanan, he believed the national government had the power to crush the rebellion. Not an abolitionist, he held the slavery issue subordinate to that of preserving the Union, but soon perceived that the war could not be brought to a successful conclusion without freeing the slaves. His administration was hampered by the incompetence of many Union generals, the inexperience of the troops, and the harassing political tactics both of the Republican Radicals, who favored a hard policy toward the South, and the Democratic Copperheads, who desired a negotiated peace. The Gettysburg Address of Nov. 19, 1863, marks the high point in the record of American eloquence. Lincoln's long search for a winning combination finally brought generals Ulysses S. Grant and William T. Sherman to the top; and their series of victories in 1864 dispelled the mutterings from both Radicals and Peace Democrats that at one time seemed to threaten Lincoln's reelection. He was reelected in 1864, defeating Gen. George B. McClellan, the Democratic candidate. His inaugural address urged leniency toward the South: “With malice toward none, with charity for all . . . let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds . . .” This policy aroused growing opposition on the part of the Republican Radicals, but before the matter could be put to the test, Lincoln was shot by the actor John Wilkes Booth at Ford's Theater, Washington, on April 14, 1865. He died the next morning.

Lincoln's marriage to Mary Todd in 1842 was often unhappy and turbulent, in part because of his wife's pronounced instability.






[B][U]Andrew Johnson[/U][/B]

[IMG]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7c/Andrew_Johnson.jpg/280px-Andrew_Johnson.jpg[/IMG]

Born: 12/29/1808
Birthplace: Raleigh, N.C.

Andrew Johnson was born at Raleigh, N.C., on Dec. 29, 1808. Self-educated, he became a tailor in Greeneville, Tenn., but soon went into politics, where he rose steadily. He served in the House of Representatives (1843–54), as governor of Tennessee (1853–57), and as a senator (1857–62). Politically he was a Jacksonian Democrat and his specialty was the fight for a more equitable land policy. Alone among the Southern Senators, he stood by the Union during the Civil War. In 1862, he became war governor of Tennessee and carried out a thankless and difficult job with great courage. Johnson became Lincoln's running mate in 1864 as a result of an attempt to give the ticket a nonpartisan and nonsectional character. Succeeding to the presidency on Lincoln's death, Johnson sought to carry out Lincoln's policy, but without his political skill. The result was a hopeless conflict with the Radical Republicans who dominated Congress, passed measures over Johnson's vetoes, and attempted to limit the power of the executive concerning appointments and removals. The conflict culminated with Johnson's impeachment for attempting to remove his disloyal secretary of war in defiance of the Tenure of Office Act, which required senatorial concurrence for such dismissals. The opposition failed by one vote to get the two thirds necessary for conviction.

After his presidency, Johnson maintained an interest in politics and in 1875 was again elected to the Senate. He died near Carter Station, Tenn., on July 31, 1875. He married Eliza McCardle in 1827.






[B][U]Ulysses Simpson Grant[/U][/B]

[IMG]http://www.ohiohistorycentral.org/images/403.jpg[/IMG]

Born: 4/27/1822
Birthplace: Point Pleasant, Ohio

Ulysses Simpson Grant was born (as Hiram Ulysses Grant) at Point Pleasant, Ohio, on April 27, 1822. He graduated from West Point in 1843 and served without particular distinction in the Mexican War. In 1848 he married Julia Dent. He resigned from the army in 1854, after warnings from his commanding officer about his drinking habits, and for the next six years held a wide variety of jobs in the Middle West. With the outbreak of the Civil War, he sought a command and soon, to his surprise, was made a brigadier general. His continuing successes in the western theaters, culminating in the capture of Vicksburg, Miss., in 1863, brought him national fame and soon the command of all the Union armies. Grant's dogged, implacable policy of concentrating on dividing and destroying the Confederate armies brought the war to an end in 1865. The next year, he was made full general.

In 1868, as Republican candidate for president, Grant was elected over the Democrat, Horatio Seymour. From the start, Grant showed his unfitness for the office. His cabinet was weak, his domestic policy was confused, and many of his intimate associates were corrupt. The notable achievement in foreign affairs was the settlement of controversies with Great Britain in the Treaty of London (1871), negotiated by his able secretary of state, Hamilton Fish.

Running for reelection in 1872, he defeated Horace Greeley, the Democratic and Liberal Republican candidate. The Panic of 1873 graft scandals close to the presidency created difficulties for his second term.

After retiring from office, Grant toured Europe for two years and returned in time to accede to a third-term boom, but was beaten in the convention of 1880. Illness and bad business judgment darkened his last years, but he worked steadily at the Personal Memoirs, which were to be successful when published after his death at Mount McGregor, near Saratoga, N.Y., on July 23, 1885.







[B][U]Rutherford Birchard Hayes[/U][/B]

[IMG]http://www.nndb.com/people/005/000029915/rutherford-b-hayes.jpg[/IMG]

Born: 10/4/1822
Birthplace: Delaware, Ohio

Rutherford Birchard Hayes was born in Delaware, Ohio, on Oct. 4, 1822. A graduate of Kenyon College and the Harvard Law School, he practiced law in Lower Sandusky (now Fremont) and then in Cincinnati. In 1852 he married Lucy Webb. A Whig, he joined the Republican party in 1855. During the Civil War he rose to major general. He served in the House of Representatives from 1865 to 1867 and then confirmed a reputation for honesty and efficiency in two terms as governor of Ohio (1868–72). His election to a third term in 1875 made him the logical candidate for those Republicans who wished to stop James G. Blaine in 1876, and he was nominated.

The result of the election was in doubt for some time and hinged upon disputed returns from South Carolina, Louisiana, Florida, and Oregon. Samuel J. Tilden, the Democrat, had the larger popular vote but was adjudged by the strictly partisan decisions of the Electoral Commission to have one fewer electoral vote, 185 to 184. The national acceptance of this result was due in part to the general understanding that Hayes would pursue a conciliatory policy toward the South. He withdrew the troops from the South, took a conservative position on financial and labor issues, and urged civil service reform.

Hayes served only one term by his own wish and spent the rest of his life in various humanitarian endeavors. He died in Fremont on Jan. 17, 1893.






[B][U]James Abram Garfield[/U][/B]

[IMG]http://www.probertencyclopaedia.com/j/James%20Abram%20Garfield.jpg[/IMG]

Born: 11/19/1831
Birthplace: Cuyahoga County, Ohio

James Abram Garfield, the last president to be born in a log cabin, was born in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, on Nov. 19, 1831. A Williams graduate, he taught school for a time and entered Republican politics in Ohio. In 1858, he married Lucretia Rudolph. During the Civil War, he had a promising career, rising to major general of volunteers; but he resigned in 1863, having been elected to the House of Representatives, where he served until 1880. His oratorical and parliamentary abilities soon made him the leading Republican in the House, though his record was marred by his unorthodox acceptance of a fee in the DeGolyer paving contract case and by suspicions of his complicity in the Crédit Mobilier scandal.

In 1880, Garfield was elected to the Senate, but instead became the presidential candidate on the 36th ballot as a result of a deadlock in the Republican convention. In the election, he defeated Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock, the Democratic candidate. Garfield's administration was barely under way when he was shot by Charles J. Guiteau, a disappointed office seeker, in Washington on July 2, 1881. He died in Elberon, N.J., on Sept. 19.






[B][U]Chester Alan Arthur[/U][/B]

Born: 10/5/1829
Birthplace: Fairfield, Vt.

Chester Alan Arthur was born at Fairfield, Vt., on Oct. 5, 1829. A graduate of Union College, he became a successful New York lawyer. In 1859, he married Ellen Herndon. During the Civil War, he held administrative jobs in the Republican state administration and in 1871 was appointed collector of the Port of New York by Grant. This post gave him control over considerable patronage. Though not personally corrupt, Arthur managed his power in the interests of the New York machine so openly that President Hayes in 1877 called for an investigation and the next year Arthur was suspended.

In 1880 Arthur was nominated for vice president in the hope of conciliating the followers of Grant and the powerful New York machine. As president upon Garfield's death, Arthur, stepping out of his familiar role as spoilsman, backed civil service reform, reorganized the cabinet, and prosecuted political associates accused of post office graft. Losing machine support and failing to gain the reformers, he was not nominated for a full term in 1884. He died in New York City on Nov. 18, 1886.






[B][U]Stephen Grover Cleveland[/U][/B]

Born: 3/18/1837
Birthplace: Caldwell, N.J.

(Stephen) Grover Cleveland was born at Caldwell, N.J., on March 18, 1837. He was admitted to the bar in Buffalo, N.Y., in 1859 and lived there as a lawyer, with occasional incursions into Democratic politics, for more than 20 years. He did not participate in the Civil War. As mayor of Buffalo in 1881, he carried through a reform program so ably that the Democrats ran him successfully for governor in 1882. In 1884 he won the Democratic nomination for president. The campaign contrasted Cleveland's spotless public career with the uncertain record of James G. Blaine, the Republican candidate, and Cleveland received enough Mugwump (independent Republican) support to win.

As president, Cleveland pushed civil service reform, opposed the pension grab and attacked the high tariff rates. While in the White House, he married Frances Folsom in 1886. Renominated in 1888, Cleveland was defeated by Benjamin Harrison, polling more popular but fewer electoral votes. In 1892, he was elected over Harrison. When the Panic of 1893 burst upon the country, Cleveland's attempts to solve it by sound-money measures alienated the free-silver wing of the party, while his tariff policy alienated the protectionists. In 1894, he sent troops to break the Pullman strike. In foreign affairs, his firmness caused Great Britain to back down in the Venezuela border dispute.

In his last years Cleveland was an active and much-respected public figure. He died in Princeton, N.J., on June 24, 1908.






[B][U]Benjamin Harrison[/U][/B]

[IMG]http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/seattlepolitics/library/benjamin-harrison-picture.jpg[/IMG]

Born: 8/20/1833
Birthplace: North Bend, Ohio

Benjamin Harrison was born in North Bend, Ohio, on Aug. 20, 1833, the grandson of William Henry Harrison, the ninth president. A graduate of Miami University in Ohio, he took up the law in Indiana and became active in Republican politics. In 1853, he married Caroline Lavinia Scott. During the Civil War, he rose to brigadier general. A sound-money Republican, he was elected senator from Indiana in 1880. In 1888, he received the Republican nomination for president on the eighth ballot. Though behind on the popular vote, he won over Grover Cleveland in the electoral college by 233 to 168.

As president, Harrison failed to please either the bosses or the reform element in the party. In foreign affairs he backed Secretary of State Blaine, whose policy foreshadowed later American imperialism. Harrison was renominated in 1892 but lost to Cleveland. His wife died in the White House in 1892 and Harrison married her niece, Mary Scott (Lord) Dimmick, in 1896. After his presidency, he resumed law practice. He died in Indianapolis on March 13, 1901.






[B][U]William McKinley[/U][/B]

[IMG]http://www.ohiohistorycentral.org/images/407.jpg[/IMG]

Born: 1/29/1843
Birthplace: Niles, Ohio

William McKinley was born in Niles, Ohio, on Jan. 29, 1843. He taught school, then served in the Civil War, rising from the ranks to become a major. Subsequently he opened a law office in Canton, Ohio, and in 1871 married Ida Saxton. Elected to Congress in 1876, he served there until 1891, except for 1883–85. His faithful advocacy of business interests culminated in the passage of the highly protective McKinley Tariff of 1890. With the support of Mark Hanna, a shrewd Cleveland businessman interested in safeguarding tariff protection, McKinley became governor of Ohio in 1892 and Republican presidential candidate in 1896. The business community, alarmed by the progressivism of William Jennings Bryan, the Democratic candidate, spent considerable money to assure McKinley's victory.

The chief event of McKinley's administration was the war with Spain, which resulted in the United States' acquisition of the Philippines and other islands. With imperialism an issue, McKinley defeated Bryan again in 1900. On Sept. 6, 1901, he was shot at Buffalo, N.Y., by Leon F. Czolgosz, an anarchist, and he died there eight days later.






[B][U]Theodore Roosevelt[/U][/B]

Born: 10/27/1858
Birthplace: New York City, N.Y.

Theodore Roosevelt was born in New York City on Oct. 27, 1858. A Harvard graduate, he was early interested in ranching, in politics, and in writing picaresque historical narratives. He was a Republican member of the New York Assembly in 1882–84, an unsuccessful candidate for mayor of New York in 1886, a U.S. civil service commissioner under Benjamin Harrison, police commissioner of New York City in 1895, and assistant secretary of the Navy under McKinley in 1897. He resigned in 1898 to help organize a volunteer regiment, the Rough Riders, and take a more direct part in the war with Spain. He was elected governor of New York in 1898 and vice president in 1900, in spite of lack of enthusiasm on the part of the bosses.

Assuming the presidency of the assassinated McKinley in 1901, Roosevelt embarked on a wide-ranging program of government reform and conservation of natural resources. He ordered antitrust suits against several large corporations, threatened to intervene in the anthracite coal strike of 1902, which prompted the operators to accept arbitration, and, in general, championed the rights of the “little man” and fought the “malefactors of great wealth.” He was also responsible for such progressive legislation as the Elkins Act of 1903, which outlawed freight rebates by railroads; the bill establishing the Department of Commerce and Labor; the Hepburn Act, which gave the I.C.C. greater control over the railroads; the Meat Inspection Act; and the Pure Food and Drug Act.

In foreign affairs, Roosevelt pursued a strong policy, permitting the instigation of a revolt in Panama to dispose of Colombian objections to the Panama Canal and helping to maintain the balance of power in the East by bringing the Russo-Japanese War to an end, for which he won the Nobel Peace Prize, the first American to achieve a Nobel prize in any category. In 1904, he decisively defeated Alton B. Parker, his conservative Democratic opponent.

Roosevelt's increasing coldness toward his successor, William Howard Taft, led him to overlook his earlier disclaimer of third-term ambitions and to reenter politics. Defeated by the machine in the Republican convention of 1912, he organized the Progressive Party (Bull Moose) and polled more votes than Taft, though the split brought about the election of Woodrow Wilson. From 1915 on, Roosevelt strongly favored intervention in the European war. He became deeply embittered at Wilson's refusal to allow him to raise a volunteer division. He died in Oyster Bay, N.Y., on Jan. 6, 1919. He was married twice: in 1880 to Alice Hathaway Lee, who died in 1884, and in 1886 to Edith Kermit Carow.







[B][U]William Howard Taft[/U][/B]

[IMG]http://www.nndb.com/people/288/000026210/william-howard-taft-1-sized.jpg[/IMG]

Born: 9/15/1857
Birthplace: Cincinnati, Ohio

William Howard Taft was born in Cincinnati on Sept. 15, 1857. A Yale graduate, he entered Ohio Republican politics in the 1880s. In 1886 he married Helen Herron. From 1887 to 1890, he served on the Ohio Superior Court; 1890–92, as solicitor general of the United States; 1892–1900, on the federal circuit court. In 1900 McKinley appointed him president of the Philippine Commission and in 1901 governor general. Taft had great success in pacifying the Filipinos, solving the problem of the church lands, improving economic conditions, and establishing limited self-government. His period as secretary of war (1904–08) further demonstrated his capacity as administrator and conciliator, and he was Roosevelt's hand-picked successor in 1908. In the election, he polled 321 electoral votes to 162 for William Jennings Bryan, who was running for the presidency for the third time.

Though he carried on many of Roosevelt's policies, Taft got into increasing trouble with the progressive wing of the party and displayed mounting irritability and indecision. After his defeat in 1912, he became professor of constitutional law at Yale. In 1921 he was appointed chief justice of the United States Supreme Court. He died in Washington, DC, on March 8, 1930.







[B][U]Thomas Woodrow Wilson[/U][/B]

Born: 12/28/1856
Birthplace: Staunton, Va.

(Thomas) Woodrow Wilson was born in Staunton, Va., on Dec. 28, 1856. A Princeton graduate, he turned from law practice to post-graduate work in political science at Johns Hopkins University, receiving his Ph.D. in 1886. He taught at Bryn Mawr, Wesleyan, and Princeton, and in 1902 was made president of Princeton. After an unsuccessful attempt to democratize the social life of the university, he welcomed an invitation in 1910 to be the Democratic gubernatorial candidate in New Jersey, and was elected. His success in fighting the machine and putting through a reform program attracted national attention.

In 1912, at the Democratic convention in Baltimore, Wilson won the nomination on the 46th ballot and went on to defeat Roosevelt and Taft in the election. Wilson proceeded under the standard of the New Freedom to enact a program of domestic reform, including the Federal Reserve Act, the Clayton Antitrust Act, the establishment of the Federal Trade Commission, and other measures designed to restore competition in the face of the great monopolies. In foreign affairs, while privately sympathetic with the Allies, he strove to maintain neutrality in the European war and warned both sides against encroachments on American interests.

Reelected in 1916 as a peace candidate, he tried to mediate between the warring nations; but when the Germans resumed unrestricted submarine warfare in 1917, Wilson brought the United States into what he now believed was a war to make the world safe for democracy. He supplied the classic formulations of Allied war aims and the armistice of Nov. 11, 1918, was negotiated on the basis of Wilson's Fourteen Points. In 1919 he strove at Versailles to lay the foundations for enduring peace. He accepted the imperfections of the Versailles Treaty in the expectation that they could be remedied by action within the League of Nations. He probably could have secured ratification of the treaty by the Senate if he had adopted a more conciliatory attitude toward the mild reservationists; but his insistence on all or nothing eventually caused the diehard isolationists and diehard Wilsonites to unite in rejecting a compromise.

In Sept. 1919 Wilson suffered a paralytic stroke that limited his activity. After leaving the presidency he lived on in retirement in Washington, dying on Feb. 3, 1924. He was married twice—in 1885 to Ellen Louise Axson, who died in 1914, and in 1915 to Edith Bolling Galt.






[B][U]Warren Gamaliel Harding[/U][/B]

[IMG]http://www.geocities.com/peterroberts.geo/Relig-Politics/WGHarding.jpg[/IMG]

Born: 11/2/1865
Birthplace: Morrow County, Ohio

Warren Gamaliel Harding was born in Morrow County, Ohio, on Nov. 2, 1865. After attending Ohio Central College, Harding became interested in journalism and in 1884 bought the Marion (Ohio) Star. In 1891 he married a wealthy widow, Florence Kling De Wolfe. As his paper prospered, he entered Republican politics, serving as state senator (1899–1903) and as lieutenant governor (1904–06). In 1910, he was defeated for governor, but in 1914 was elected to the Senate. His reputation as an orator made him the keynoter at the 1916 Republican convention.

When the 1920 convention was deadlocked between Leonard Wood and Frank O. Lowden, Harding became the dark-horse nominee on his solemn affirmation that there was no reason in his past that he should not be. Straddling the League question, Harding was easily elected over James M. Cox, his Democratic opponent. His cabinet contained some able men, but also some manifestly unfit for public office. Harding's own intimates were mediocre when they were not corrupt. The impending disclosure of the Teapot Dome scandal in the Interior Department and illegal practices in the Justice Department and Veterans' Bureau, as well as political setbacks, profoundly worried him. On his return from Alaska in 1923, he died unexpectedly in San Francisco on Aug. 2.








[COLOR="Red"]to be continued[/COLOR]

[B][U]John Calvin Coolidge[/U][/B]

[IMG]http://www.nndb.com/people/331/000024259/coolidge-fix.jpg[/IMG]

Born: 7/4/1872
Birthplace: Plymouth, Vt.

(John) Calvin Coolidge was born in Plymouth, Vt., on July 4, 1872. An Amherst graduate, he went into law practice at Northampton, Mass., in 1897. He married Grace Anna Goodhue in 1905. He entered Republican state politics, becoming successively mayor of Northampton, state senator, lieutenant governor and, in 1919, governor. His use of the state militia to end the Boston police strike in 1919 won him a somewhat undeserved reputation for decisive action and brought him the Republican vice-presidential nomination in 1920. After Harding's death Coolidge handled the Washington scandals with care and finally managed to save the Republican Party from public blame for the widespread corruption.

In 1924, Coolidge was elected without difficulty, defeating the Democrat, John W. Davis, and Robert M. La Follette running on the Progressive ticket. His second term, like his first, was characterized by a general satisfaction with the existing economic order. He stated that he did not choose to run in 1928.

After his presidency, Coolidge lived quietly in Northampton, writing an unilluminating autobiography and a syndicated column. He died there on Jan. 5, 1933.






[B][U]Herbert Clark Hoover[/U][/B]

[IMG]http://www.geocities.com/peterroberts.geo/Relig-Politics/HCHoover.jpg[/IMG]

Born: 8/10/1874
Birthplace: West Branch, Iowa

Herbert Clark Hoover was born at West Branch, Iowa, on Aug. 10, 1874, the first president to be born west of the Mississippi. A Stanford graduate, he worked from 1895 to 1913 as a mining engineer and consultant throughout the world. In 1899, he married Lou Henry. During World War I, he served with distinction as chairman of the American Relief Committee in London, as chairman of the Commission for Relief in Belgium, and as U.S. Food Administrator. His political affiliations were still too indeterminate for him to be mentioned as a possibility for either the Republican or Democratic nomination in 1920, but after the election he served Harding and Coolidge as secretary of commerce.

In the election of 1928, Hoover overwhelmed Gov. Alfred E. Smith of New York, the Democratic candidate and the first Roman Catholic to run for the presidency. He soon faced the worst depression in the nation's history, but his attacks upon it were hampered by his devotion to the theory that the forces that brought the crisis would soon bring the revival and then by his belief that there were too many areas in which the federal government had no power to act. In a succession of vetoes, he struck down measures proposing a national employment system or national relief, he reduced income tax rates, and only at the end of his term did he yield to popular pressure and set up agencies such as the Reconstruction Finance Corporation to make emergency loans to assist business.

After his 1932 defeat, Hoover returned to private business. In 1946, President Truman charged him with various world food missions; and from 1947 to 1949 and 1953 to 1955, he was head of the Commission on Organization of the Executive Branch of the Government. He died in New York City on Oct. 20, 1964.






[B][U]Franklin Delano Roosevelt[/U][/B]

[IMG]http://us.history.wisc.edu/hist102/photos/assets/photos/1101.jpg[/IMG]

Born: 1/30/1882
Birthplace: Hyde Park, N.Y.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was born in Hyde Park, N.Y., on Jan. 30, 1882. A Harvard graduate, he attended Columbia Law School and was admitted to the New York bar. In 1910, he was elected to the New York State Senate as a Democrat. Reelected in 1912, he was appointed assistant secretary of the navy by Woodrow Wilson the next year. In 1920, his radiant personality and his war service resulted in his nomination for vice president as James M. Cox's running mate. After his defeat, he returned to law practice in New York. In Aug. 1921, Roosevelt was stricken with infantile paralysis while on vacation at Campobello, New Brunswick. After a long and gallant fight, he recovered partial use of his legs. In 1924 and 1928, he led the fight at the Democratic national conventions for the nomination of Gov. Alfred E. Smith of New York, and in 1928 Roosevelt was himself induced to run for governor of New York. He was elected, and was reelected in 1930.

In 1932, Roosevelt received the Democratic nomination for president and immediately launched a campaign that brought new spirit to a weary and discouraged nation. He defeated Hoover by a wide margin. His first term was characterized by an unfolding of the New Deal program, with greater benefits for labor, the farmers, and the unemployed, and the progressive estrangement of most of the business community.

At an early stage, Roosevelt became aware of the menace to world peace posed by totalitarian fascism, and from 1937 on he tried to focus public attention on the trend of events in Europe and Asia. As a result, he was widely denounced as a warmonger. He was reelected in 1936 over Gov. Alfred M. Landon of Kansas by the overwhelming electoral margin of 523 to 8, and the gathering international crisis prompted him to run for an unprecedented third term in 1940. He defeated Wendell L. Willkie.

Roosevelt's program to bring maximum aid to Britain and, after June 1941, to Russia was opposed, until the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor restored national unity. During the war, Roosevelt shelved the New Deal in the interests of conciliating the business community, both in order to get full production during the war and to prepare the way for a united acceptance of the peace settlements after the war. A series of conferences with Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin laid down the bases for the postwar world. In 1944 he was elected to a fourth term, running against Gov. Thomas E. Dewey of New York.

On April 12, 1945, Roosevelt died of a cerebral hemorrhage at Warm Springs, Ga., shortly after his return from the Yalta Conference. His wife, (Anna) Eleanor Roosevelt, whom he married in 1905, was a woman of great ability who made significant contributions to her husband's policies.








[B][U]Harry S Truman[/U][/B]

[IMG]http://library.thinkquest.org/13831/media/truman.gif[/IMG]

Born: 5/8/1884
Birthplace: Lamar, Mo.

Harry S. Truman was born on a farm near Lamar, Mo., on May 8, 1884. During World War I, he served in France as a captain with the 129th Field Artillery. He married Bess Wallace in 1919. After engaging briefly and unsuccessfully in the haberdashery business in Kansas City, Mo., Truman entered local politics. Under the sponsorship of Thomas Pendergast, Democratic boss of Missouri, he held a number of local offices, preserving his personal honesty in the midst of a notoriously corrupt political machine. In 1934, he was elected to the Senate and was reelected in 1940. During his first term he was a loyal but quiet supporter of the New Deal, but in his second term, an appointment as head of a Senate committee to investigate war production brought out his special qualities of honesty, common sense, and hard work, and he won widespread respect.

Elected vice president in 1944, Truman became president upon Roosevelt's sudden death in April 1945 and was immediately faced with the problems of winding down the war against the Axis and preparing the nation for postwar adjustment. Germany surrendered on May 8, and in July Truman attended the Potsdam Conference to discuss the settlement plans for postwar Europe. To end the war with Japan, he authorized the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on Aug. 6 and Aug. 9, 1945. Japan surrendered on Aug. 14. Although the action undoubtedly saved many American lives by bringing the war to an end, the morality of the decision is still debated.

The years 1947–48 were distinguished by civil-rights proposals, the Truman Doctrine to contain the spread of Communism, and the Marshall Plan to aid in the economic reconstruction of war-ravaged nations. Truman's general record, highlighted by a vigorous Fair Deal campaign, brought about his unexpected election in 1948 over the heavily favored Thomas E. Dewey.

Truman's second term was primarily concerned with the cold war with the Soviet Union, the implementing of the North Atlantic Pact, the United Nations police action in Korea, and the vast rearmament program with its accompanying problems of economic stabilization.

On March 29, 1952, Truman announced that he would not run again for the presidency. After leaving the White House, he returned to his home in Independence, Mo., to write his memoirs. He further busied himself with the Harry S. Truman Library there. He died in Kansas City, Mo., on Dec. 26, 1972.







[B][U]Dwight David Eisenhower[/U][/B]

Born: 10/14/1890
Birthplace: Denison, Tex.

Dwight David Eisenhower was born in Denison, Tex., on Oct. 14, 1890. His ancestors lived in Germany and emigrated to America, settling in Pennsylvania, early in the 18th century. His father, David, had a general store in Hope, Kans., which failed. After a brief time in Texas, the family moved to Abilene, Kan.

After graduating from Abilene High School in 1909, Eisenhower did odd jobs for almost two years. He won an appointment to the Naval Academy at Annapolis, but was too old for admittance. Then he received an appointment in 1910 to West Point, from which he graduated as a second lieutenant in 1915.

He did not see service in World War I, having been stationed at Fort Sam Houston, Tex. There he met Mamie Geneva Doud, whom he married in Denver on July 1, 1916, and by whom he had two sons: Doud Dwight (died in infancy) and John Sheldon Doud.

Eisenhower served in the Philippines from 1935 to 1939 with Gen. Douglas MacArthur. Afterward, Gen. George C. Marshall, the army chief of staff, brought him into the War Department's General Staff and in 1942 placed him in command of the invasion of North Africa. In 1944, he was made Supreme Allied Commander for the invasion of Europe.

After the war, Eisenhower served as army chief of staff from Nov. 1945 until Feb. 1948, when he was appointed president of Columbia University.

In Dec. 1950, President Truman recalled Eisenhower to active duty to command the North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces in Europe. He held his post until the end of May 1952.

At the Republican convention of 1952 in Chicago, Eisenhower won the presidential nomination on the first ballot in a close race with Sen. Robert A. Taft of Ohio. In the election, he defeated Gov. Adlai E. Stevenson of Illinois.

Through two terms, Eisenhower hewed to moderate domestic policies. He sought peace through Free World strength in an era of new nationalisms, nuclear missiles, and space exploration. He fostered alliances pledging the United States to resist “Red” aggression in Europe, Asia, and Latin America. The Eisenhower Doctrine of 1957 extended commitments to the Middle East.

At home, the popular president lacked Republican congressional majorities after 1954, but he was reelected in 1956 by 457 electoral votes to 73 for Stevenson.

While retaining most Fair Deal programs, he stressed “fiscal responsibility” in domestic affairs. A moderate in civil rights, he sent troops to Little Rock, Ark., to enforce court-ordered school integration.

With his wartime rank restored by Congress, Eisenhower returned to private life and the role of elder statesman, with his vigor hardly impaired by a heart attack, an ileitis operation, and a mild stroke suffered while in office. He died in Washington, DC, on March 28, 1969.









[B][U]John Fitzgerald Kennedy[/U][/B]

[IMG]http://www.romfart.no/Sitater/Bilder/KennedyJohn.jpg[/IMG]

Born: 5/29/1917
Birthplace: Brookline, Mass.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy was born in Brookline, Mass., on May 29, 1917. His father, Joseph P. Kennedy, was ambassador to Great Britain from 1937 to 1940.

Kennedy was graduated from Harvard University in 1940 and joined the navy the next year. He became skipper of a PT boat that was sunk in the Pacific by a Japanese destroyer. Although given up for lost, he swam to a safe island, towing an injured enlisted man.

After recovering from a war-aggravated spinal injury, Kennedy entered politics in 1946 and was elected to Congress. In 1952, he ran against Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., of Massachusetts, and won.

Kennedy was married on Sept. 12, 1953, to Jacqueline Lee Bouvier, by whom he had three children: Caroline, John Fitzgerald, Jr. (died in a 1999 plane crash), and Patrick Bouvier (died in infancy).

In 1957 Kennedy won the Pulitzer Prize for a book he had written earlier, Profiles in Courage.

After strenuous primary battles, Kennedy won the Democratic presidential nomination on the first ballot at the 1960 Los Angeles convention. With a plurality of only 118,574 votes, he carried the election over Vice President Richard M. Nixon and became the first Roman Catholic president.

Kennedy brought to the White House the dynamic idea of a “New Frontier” approach in dealing with problems at home, abroad, and in the dimensions of space. Out of his leadership in his first few months in office came the 10-year Alliance for Progress to aid Latin America, the Peace Corps, and accelerated programs that brought the first Americans into orbit in the race in space.

Failure of the U.S.-supported Cuban invasion in April 1961 led to the entrenchment of the Communist-backed Castro regime, only 90 mi from United States soil. When it became known that Soviet offensive missiles were being installed in Cuba in 1962, Kennedy ordered a naval “quarantine” of the island and moved troops into position to eliminate this threat to U.S. security. The world seemed on the brink of a nuclear war until Soviet premier Khrushchev ordered the removal of the missiles.

A sudden “thaw,” or the appearance of one, in the cold war came with the agreement with the Soviet Union on a limited test-ban treaty signed in Moscow on Aug. 6, 1963.

In his domestic policies, Kennedy's proposals for medical care for the aged and aid to education were defeated, but on minimum wage, trade legislation, and other measures he won important victories.

Widespread racial disorders and demonstrations led to Kennedy's proposing sweeping civil rights legislation. As his third year in office drew to a close, he also recommended an $11-billion tax cut to bolster the economy. Both measures were pending in Congress when Kennedy, looking forward to a second term, journeyed to Texas for a series of speeches.

While riding in an automobile procession in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, he was shot to death by an assassin firing from an upper floor of a building. The alleged assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, was killed two days later in the Dallas city jail by Jack Ruby, owner of a strip-tease club.

At 46 years of age, Kennedy became the fourth president to be assassinated and the eighth to die in office.








[B][U]Lyndon Baines Johnson[/U][/B]

[IMG]http://www.lucidcafe.com/library/95aug/95auggifs/lbj1.gif[/IMG]

Born: 8/27/1908
Birthplace: Stonewall, Tex.

Lyndon Baines Johnson was born in Stonewall, Tex., on Aug. 27, 1908. On both sides of his family he had a political heritage mingled with a Baptist background of preachers and teachers. Both his father and his paternal grandfather served in the Texas House of Representatives.

After his graduation from Southwest Texas State Teachers College, Johnson taught school for two years. He went to Washington in 1932 as secretary to Rep. Richard M. Kleberg. During this time, he married Claudia Alta Taylor, known as “Lady Bird.” They had two children: Lynda Bird and Luci Baines.

In 1935, Johnson became Texas administrator for the National Youth Administration. Two years later, he was elected to Congress as an all-out supporter of Franklin D. Roosevelt, and served until 1949. He was the first member of Congress to enlist in the armed forces after the attack on Pearl Harbor. He served in the navy in the Pacific and won a Silver Star.

Johnson was elected to the Senate in 1948 after he had captured the Democratic nomination by only 87 votes. He was 40 years old. He became the Senate Democratic leader in 1953. A heart attack in 1955 threatened to end his political career, but he recovered fully and resumed his duties.

At the height of his power as Senate leader, Johnson sought the Democratic nomination for president in 1960. When he lost to John F. Kennedy, he surprised even some of his closest associates by accepting second place on the ticket.

Johnson was riding in another car in the motorcade when Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963. He took the oath of office in the presidential jet on the Dallas airfield.

With Johnson's insistent backing, Congress finally adopted a far-reaching civil-rights bill, a voting-rights bill, a Medicare program for the aged, and measures to improve education and conservation. Congress also began what Johnson described as “an all-out war” on poverty.

Amassing a record-breaking majority of nearly 16 million votes, Johnson was elected president in his own right in 1964, defeating Sen. Barry Goldwater of Arizona.

The double tragedy of a war in Southeast Asia and urban riots at home marked Johnson's last two years in office. Faced with disunity in the nation and challenges within his own party, Johnson surprised the country on March 31, 1968, with the announcement that he would not be a candidate for reelection. He died of a heart attack suffered at his LBJ Ranch on Jan. 22, 1973.







[B][U]Richard Milhous Nixon[/U][/B]

[IMG]http://www.historyplace.com/specials/calendar/docs-pix/nixon.jpg[/IMG]

Born: 1/9/1913
Birthplace: Yorba Linda, Calif.

Richard Milhous Nixon was born in Yorba Linda, Calif., on Jan. 9, 1913, to Midwestern-bred parents, Francis A. and Hannah Milhous Nixon, who raised their five sons as Quakers.

Nixon was a high school debater and was undergraduate president at Whittier College in California, where he was graduated in 1934. As a scholarship student at Duke University Law School in North Carolina, he graduated third in his class in 1937.

After five years as a lawyer, Nixon joined the navy in August 1942. He was an air transport officer in the South Pacific and a legal officer stateside before his discharge in 1946 as a lieutenant commander.

Running for Congress in California as a Republican in 1946, Nixon defeated Rep. Jerry Voorhis. As a member of the House Un-American Activities Committee, he made a name as an investigator of Alger Hiss, a former high State Department official, who was later jailed for perjury. In 1950, Nixon defeated Rep. Helen Gahagan Douglas, a Democrat, for the Senate. He was criticized for portraying her as a Communist dupe.

Nixon's anti-Communism ideals, his Western roots, and his youth figured into his selection in 1952 to run for vice president on the ticket headed by Dwight D. Eisenhower. Demands for Nixon's withdrawal followed disclosure that California businessmen had paid some of his Senate office expenses. His televised rebuttal, known as “the Checkers speech” (named for a cocker spaniel given to the Nixons), brought him support from the public and from Eisenhower. The ticket won easily in 1952 and again in 1956.

Eisenhower gave Nixon substantive assignments, including missions to 56 countries. In Moscow in 1959, Nixon won acclaim for his defense of U.S. interests in an impromptu “kitchen debate” with Soviet premier Nikita S. Khrushchev.

Nixon lost the 1960 race for the presidency to John F. Kennedy.

In 1962, Nixon failed in a bid for California's governorship and seemed to be finished as a national candidate. He became a Wall Street lawyer, but kept his old party ties and developed new ones through constant travels to speak for Republicans.

Nixon won the 1968 Republican presidential nomination after a shrewd primary campaign, then made Gov. Spiro T. Agnew of Maryland his surprise choice for vice president. In the election, they edged out the Democratic ticket headed by Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey by 510,314 votes out of 73,212,065 cast.

Committed to winding down the U.S. role in the Vietnamese War, Nixon pursued “Vietnamization”—training and equipping South Vietnamese to do their own fighting. American ground combat forces in Vietnam fell steadily from 540,000 when Nixon took office to none in 1973 when the military draft was ended. But there was heavy continuing use of U.S. air power.

Nixon improved relations with Moscow and reopened the long-closed door to mainland China with a good-will trip there in Feb. 1972. In May of that same year, he visited Moscow and signed agreements on arms limitation and trade expansion and approved plans for a joint U.S.–Soviet space mission in 1975.

Inflation was a campaign issue for Nixon, but he failed to master it as president. On Aug. 15, 1971, with unemployment edging up, Nixon abruptly announced a new economic policy: a 90-day wage-price freeze, stimulative tax cuts, a temporary 10% tariff, and spending cuts. A second phase, imposing guidelines on wage, price, and rent boosts, was announced Oct. 7.

The economy responded in time for the 1972 campaign, in which Nixon played up his foreign-policy achievements. Played down was the burglary on June 17, 1972, of Democratic national headquarters in the Watergate apartment complex in Washington. The Nixon–Agnew reelection campaign cost a record $60 million and swamped the Democratic ticket headed by Sen. George McGovern of South Dakota with a plurality of 17,999,528 out of 77,718,554 votes. Only Massachusetts, with 14 electoral votes, and the District of Columbia, with 3, went for McGovern.

In Jan. 1973, hints of a cover-up emerged at the trial of six men found guilty of the Watergate burglary. With a Senate investigation under way, Nixon announced on April 30 the resignations of his top aides, H. R. Haldeman and John D. Ehrlichman, and the dismissal of White House counsel John Dean III. Dean was the star witness at televised Senate hearings that exposed both a White House cover-up of Watergate and massive illegalities in Republican fund-raising in 1972.

The hearings also disclosed that Nixon had routinely tape-recorded his office meetings and telephone conversations.

On Oct. 10, 1973, Agnew resigned as vice president, then pleaded no-contest to a negotiated federal charge of evading income taxes on alleged bribes. Two days later, Nixon nominated the House minority leader, Rep. Gerald R. Ford of Michigan, as the new vice president. Congress confirmed Ford on Dec. 6, 1973.

In June 1974, Nixon visited Israel and four Arab nations. Then he met in Moscow with Soviet leader Leonid I. Brezhnev and reached preliminary nuclear arms limitation agreements.

But, in the month after his return, Watergate ended the Nixon regime. On July 24 the Supreme Court ordered Nixon to surrender subpoenaed tapes. On July 30, the Judiciary Committee referred three impeachment articles to the full membership. On Aug. 5, Nixon bowed to the Supreme Court and released tapes showing he halted an FBI probe of the Watergate burglary six days after it occurred. It was in effect an admission of obstruction of justice, and impeachment appeared inevitable.

Nixon resigned on Aug. 9, 1974, the first president ever to do so. A month later, President Ford issued an unconditional pardon for any offenses Nixon might have committed as president, thus forestalling possible prosecution.

In 1940, Nixon married Thelma Catherine (Pat) Ryan. They had two daughters, Patricia (Tricia) and Julie, who married Dwight David Eisenhower II, grandson of the former president.

He died on April 22, 1994, in New York City of a massive stroke.








[B][U]Gerald Rudolph Ford[/U][/B]

Born: 7/14/1913
Birthplace: Omaha, Neb.

Gerald Rudolph Ford was born Leslie King Jr. in Omaha, Neb., on July 14, 1913, the only child of Leslie and Dorothy Gardner King. His parents were divorced in 1915. His mother moved to Grand Rapids, Mich., and married Gerald R. Ford. The boy was renamed for his stepfather.

Ford captained his high school football team in Grand Rapids, and a football scholarship took him to the University of Michigan, where he starred as varsity center before his graduation in 1935. A job as assistant football coach at Yale gave him an opportunity to attend Yale Law School, from which he graduated in the top third of his class in 1941.

He returned to Grand Rapids to practice law, but entered the Navy in April 1942. He saw wartime service in the Pacific on the light aircraft carrier Monterey and was a lieutenant commander when he returned to Grand Rapids early in 1946 to resume law practice and dabble in politics.

Ford was elected to Congress in 1948 for the first of his 13 terms in the House. He was soon assigned to the influential Appropriations Committee and rose to become the ranking Republican on the subcommittee on Defense Department appropriations.

As a legislator, Ford described himself as “a moderate on domestic issues, a conservative in fiscal affairs, and a dyed-in-the-wool internationalist.” He carried the ball for Pentagon appropriations, was a hawk on the war in Vietnam, and kept a low profile on civil-rights issues.

Ford was also dependable and hard-working and popular with his colleagues. In 1963, he was elected chairman of the House Republican Conference. He served in 1963–1964 as a member of the Warren Commission, which investigated the assassination of John F. Kennedy. A revolt by dissatisfied younger Republicans in 1965 made him minority leader.

On Oct. 12, 1973, Nixon nominated Ford to fill the vice presidency left vacant by Agnew's resignation under fire. It was the first use of the procedures for filling vacancies in the vice presidency laid down in the 25th Amendment to the Constitution, which Ford had helped enact. Once in office, he said he did not believe Nixon had been involved in the Watergate scandals, but he criticized Nixon's stubborn court battle against releasing tape recordings of Watergate-related conversations for use as evidence. The scandals led to Nixon's unprecedented resignation on Aug. 9, 1974, and Ford was sworn in immediately as the 38th president, the first to enter the White House without winning a national election.

Ford assured the nation when he took office that “our long national nightmare is over” and pledged “openness and candor” in all his actions. He won a warm response from the Democratic 93rd Congress when he said he wanted “a good marriage” rather than a honeymoon with his former colleagues. In Dec. 1974 congressional majorities backed his choice of former New York governor Nelson A. Rockefeller as his vice president.

The cordiality was chilled by Ford's announcement on Sept. 8, 1974, that he had granted an unconditional pardon to Nixon for any crimes he might have committed as president. Although no formal charges were pending, Ford said he feared “ugly passions” would be aroused if Nixon were brought to trial. The pardon was widely criticized.

To fight inflation, the new president first proposed fiscal restraints and spending curbs and a 5% tax surcharge that got nowhere in the Senate and House. Congress again rebuffed Ford in the spring of 1975 when he appealed for emergency military aid to help the governments of South Vietnam and Cambodia resist massive Communist offensives.

Politically, Ford's fortunes improved steadily in the first half of 1975. Badly divided Democrats in Congress were unable to muster votes to override his vetoes of spending bills that exceeded his budget. He faced some right-wing opposition in his own party, but moved to preempt it with an early announcement—on July 8, 1975—of his intention to be a candidate in 1976. During the election campaign, Ford was regarded as a caretaker president lacking in strength and vision. He was defeated in November by Jimmy Carter.

In 1948, Ford married Elizabeth Anne (Betty) Bloomer. They had four children, Michael Gerald, John Gardner, Steven Meigs, and Susan Elizabeth. He died on Dec. 26, 2006, at age 93.







[B][U]James Earl Carter, Jr.[/U][/B]

[IMG]http://www.nndb.com/people/386/000022320/bigcar.jpg[/IMG]

Born: 10/1/1924
Birthplace: Plains, Ga.

James Earl Carter, Jr., was born in the tiny village of Plains, Ga., Oct. 1, 1924, and grew up on the family farm at nearby Archery. Both parents were fifth-generation Georgians. His father, James Earl Carter, was known as a segregationist, but treated his black and white workers equally. Carter's mother, Lillian Gordy, was a matriarchal presence in home and community and opposed the then-prevailing code of racial inequality. The future president was baptized in 1935 in the conservative Southern Baptist Church and spoke often of being a “born again” Christian, although committed to the separation of church and state.

Carter married Rosalynn Smith, a neighbor, in 1946. Their first child, John William, was born a year later in Portsmouth, Va. Their other children are James Earl III, born in Honolulu in 1950; Donnel Jeffrey, born in New London, Conn., in 1952; and Amy Lynn, born in Plains in 1967.

In 1946 Carter was graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis and served in the nuclear-submarine program under Adm. Hyman G. Rickover. In 1954, after his father's death, he resigned from the Navy to take over the family's flourishing warehouse and cotton gin, with several thousand acres for growing seed peanuts.

Carter was elected to the Georgia Senate in 1962. In 1966 he lost the race for governor, but was elected in 1970. His term brought a state government reorganization, sharply reduced agencies, increased economy and efficiency, and new social programs, all with no general tax increase. In 1972 the peanut farmer–politician set his sights on the presidency and in 1974 built a base for himself as he criss-crossed the country as chairman of the Democratic Campaign Committee, appealing for revival and reform. In 1975 he won the support of most of the old Southern civil-rights coalition after endorsement by Rep. Andrew Young, black Democrat from Atlanta, who had been the closest aide to the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. Having won 19 out of 31 primaries with a broad appeal to conservatives and liberals, black and white, poor and well-to-do, he defeated Gerald R. Ford in Nov. 1976.

In his one term, Carter fought hard for his programs against resistance from an independent-minded Democratic Congress that frustrated many pet projects although it overrode only two vetoes. Public dissatisfaction with the “stagflation” economy, staff problems, friction with Congress, long gasoline lines, and the months-long Iranian crisis, including the abortive sally in April 1980 to free the hostages also proved problematic for the administration. Yet, assessments of his record have noted many positive elements. There was, for one thing, peace throughout his term, with no American combat deaths and with a brake on the advocates of force. Regarded as perhaps his greatest personal achievements were the Camp David accords between Israel and Egypt and the resulting treaty—the first between Israel and an Arab neighbor. The treaty with China and the Panama Canal treaties were also major achievements. Carter worked for nuclear-arms control. His concern for international human rights was credited with saving lives and reducing torture, and he supported the British policy that ended internecine warfare in Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe. Domestically, his environmental record was a major accomplishment. His judicial appointments won acclaim, with 265 choices for the federal bench that included minority members and women.

In 1980 Carter was renominated on the first ballot after vanquishing Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts in the primaries. In the election campaign, he attacked his rivals, Ronald Reagan and John B. Anderson, independent, with the warning that a Reagan Republican victory would heighten the risk of war and impede civil rights and economic opportunity. In November Carter lost to Reagan, who won 489 electoral college votes and 51% of the popular tally, to 49 electoral votes and 41% for Carter. He was awarded the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize.







[B][U]Ronald Wilson Reagan[/U][/B]

[IMG]http://www.fostoria.org/history/Century/years/pictures/Reagon.jpg[/IMG]

Born: 2/6/1911
Birthplace: Tampico, Ill.

Ronald Wilson Reagan rode to the presidency in 1980 on a tide of resurgent right-wing sentiment among an electorate longing for a distant, simpler era. He left office in Jan. 1989 with two-thirds of the American people approving his performance during his two terms. It was the highest rating for any retiring president since World War II.

Reagan, an actor turned politician, a New Dealer turned conservative, came to films and politics from a thoroughly Middle-American background—middle class, Middle West, and small town. He was born in Tampico, Ill., Feb. 6, 1911, the second son of John Edward Reagan and Nelle Wilson Reagan; the family later moved to Dixon, Ill. His father was a shop clerk and merchant with Democratic sympathies. It was an impoverished family; young Ronald sold homemade popcorn at high school games and worked as a lifeguard to earn money for his college tuition. When his father got a New Deal WPA job, the future president became an ardent Roosevelt Democrat.

Reagan earned a BA degree in 1932 from Eureka (Ill.) College, where a photographic memory aided in his studies and in debating and college theatricals. During the Depression, he made $100 a week as a sports announcer for radio station WHO in Des Moines, Iowa. His career as a film and TV actor stretched from 1937 to 1966, and his salary climbed to $3,500 a week. As a World War II captain in army film studios, Reagan recoiled from what he saw as the laziness of civil service workers, and moved to the Right. As president of the Screen Actors Guild, he resisted what he considered a Communist plot to subvert the film industry. With advancing age, Reagan left leading-man roles and became a television spokesman for the General Electric Company.

With oratorical skill as his trademark, Reagan became an active Republican. In 1966, at the behest of a small group of conservative businessmen, he ran for governor of California with a pledge to cut spending; he was elected by almost a million votes over the political veteran, Democratic governor Edmund G. Brown. Reelected to a second term, he served as governor until 1975.

In the 1980 election battle against Jimmy Carter, Reagan broadened his appeal by espousing moderate policies, gaining much of his support from disaffected Democrats and blue-collar workers. The incoming administration immediately set out to “turn the government around” with a new economic program. Over strenuous congressional opposition, Reagan pushed through his “supply side” economic program to stimulate production and control inflation through tax cuts and sharp reductions in government spending. However, in 1982, as the economy declined into the worst recession in 40 years, the president's popularity slipped and support for supply-side economics faded.

Barely three months into his first term, Reagan was the target of an assassin's bullet; his courageous comeback won public admiration. The president also won high acclaim for his nomination of Sandra Day O'Connor as the first woman on the Supreme Court. His later nominations met increasing opposition and did much to tilt the Court's orientation to the Right.

Internationally, Reagan confronted numerous problems in his first term. In an effort to establish order on the Caribbean island of Grenada and eliminate the Cuban military presence there, Reagan ordered an invasion of the tiny nation on Oct. 25, 1983. The troops met strong resistance from Cuban military personnel on the island but soon occupied it. Another military effort, in Lebanon, ended in failure, however. U.S. Marines engaged as part of a multinational peacekeeping force in Beirut were forced to withdraw in 1984 after a disastrous terrorist attack left 241 marines dead.

With the economy improving and inflation under control, the popular president won reelection in a landslide in 1984. Domestically, a tax reform bill that Reagan backed became law. But the constantly growing budget deficit remained an irritant, with the president and Congress persistently at odds over priorities in spending for defense and domestic programs. Congress was also increasingly reluctant to increase spending for the Nicaraguan “Contras.” But even severe critics praised Reagan's restrained but decisive handling of the crisis following the hijacking of an American plane in Beirut by Muslim extremists. The attack on Libya in April 1986 galvanized the nation, although it drew scathing disapproval from the NATO alliance.

Reagan's popularity with the public dipped sharply in 1986 when the Iran-Contra scandal broke, shortly after the Democrats gained control of the Senate. The weeks-long congressional hearings in the summer of 1987 heard an array of administration officials, present and former, reveal a web of deceit and undercover maneuvering in the White House. Yet the president's personal reputation remained untouched; on Aug. 12, 1987, he told the nation that he had not known of questionable activities but agreed that he was ultimately accountable.

Reagan's place in history will rest, perhaps, on the short- and intermediate-range missile treaty consummated on a cordial visit to the Soviet Union that he had once reviled as an “evil empire.” Its provisions, including a ground-breaking agreement on verification inspection, were formulated in four days of summit talks in Moscow in May 1988 with the Soviet leader, Mikhail S. Gorbachev. Reagan could point to numerous domestic achievements as well: sharp cuts in income tax rates, creating economic growth without inflation, and reducing the unemployment rate, among others. He failed, however, to win the “Reagan Revolution” on such issues as abortion and school prayer.

Reagan married his wife, Nancy, four years after his divorce from the screen actress Jane Wyman. The children from his first marriage are Maureen, his daughter by Wyman, and Michael, an adopted son. He had two children by Nancy: Patricia and Ron. Reagan suffered from Alzheimer's disease, which he developed around 1994, and died in Los Angeles on June 5, 2004.








[B][U]George Herbert Walker Bush[/U][/B]

[IMG]http://www.mabus.biz/images/Georgebush.jpg[/IMG]

Born: 6/12/1924
Birthplace: Milton, Mass.

George Herbert Walker Bush was born June 12, 1924, in Milton, Mass., to Prescott and Dorothy Bush. The family later moved to Connecticut. The youth studied at the elite Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass.

The future president joined the Navy after war broke out and at 18 became the Navy's youngest commissioned pilot, serving from 1942 to 1945, and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. He fought the Japanese on 58 missions and was shot down once.

After the war, Bush earned an economics degree and a Phi Beta Kappa key in two and a half years at Yale University.

In 1945 Bush married Barbara Pierce of Rye, N.Y., daughter of a magazine publisher. With his bride, Bush moved to Texas instead of entering his father's investment banking business. There he founded his oil company and by 1980 reported an estimated wealth of $1.4 million.

Throughout his whole career, Bush had the backing of an established family, headed by his father, Prescott Bush, who was elected to the Senate from Connecticut in 1952. The family helped the young patrician become established in his early business ventures, a rich uncle raising most of the capital required for founding the oil company.

In the 1960s, Bush won two contests for a Texas Republican seat in the House of Representatives, but lost two bids for a Senate seat. After Bush's second race for the Senate, President Nixon appointed him U.S. delegate to the United Nations and he later became Republican National Committee chairman. He headed the U.S. liaison office in Beijing before becoming Director of Central Intelligence. In 1980 Bush became Reagan's running mate despite earlier criticism of Reagan “voodoo economics” and by the 1984 election had won acclaim for his devotion to Reagan's conservative agenda.

The vice president entered the 1988 presidential campaign and easily defeated Democrat Michael Dukakis. Bush's choice of Sen. Dan Quayle of Indiana as a running mate provoked criticism and ridicule that continued even after the administration was in office. Nonetheless Bush strongly defended his choice. George Herbert Walker Bush became president on Jan. 20, 1989, with his theme harmony and conciliation after the often-turbulent Reagan years.

Bush's early Cabinet choices reflected a pragmatic desire for an efficient, nonideological government. And with his usual cautious instinct, in 1990 he nominated to the Supreme Court the scholarly David H. Souter, with broadly conservative views.

In his first year, Bush was confronted with the Lebanese hostage crisis, the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska, and the ongoing war against drug trafficking. His public approval soared following the invasion of Panama in late 1989. But a staggering budget deficit and the savings and loan crisis caused the president's popularity to dip sharply in his second year. This plunge followed Bush's recantation of his campaign “no new taxes” pledge as he sat down with congressional leaders to tame the budget deficit and deal with a faltering economy.

In 1991, the president emerged as the leader of an international coalition of Western democracies, Japan, and even some Arab states that came together to free Kuwait following an invasion of the country by Iraq in Aug. 1990. The coalition forces defeated Iraq in only a little more than a month after Operation Desert Storm was launched on Jan. 16–17, 1991, and a nation grateful at feeling the end of the “Vietnam syndrome” gave the president an 89% approval rating. However, the high rating fell as the year went on, as doubts persisted about the war's outcome—Iraqi president Saddam Hussein remained in power and persistently avoided complying with the terms of the peace treaty—and as concerns began to grow about the faltering U.S. economy and other domestic problems.

A major Bush accomplishment in 1991 was the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), signed in July with Soviet president Mikhail S. Gorbachev at their fourth summit conference, marking the end of the long weapons buildup.

In the 1992 presidential election, Bush was defeated by Gov. Bill Clinton of Arkansas.

The Bushes have four sons, George, Jeb, Neil, and Marvin, and a daughter, Dorothy. Another daughter, Robin, died at age three from leukemia. Son George served as governor of Texas from 1995 to 2000, when he was elected the 43rd U.S. president. Jeb Bush was elected governor of Florida in 1998.








[B][U]William Jefferson Clinton[/U][/B]

[IMG]http://www.international.ucla.edu/cms/images/Bill-Clinton.jpg[/IMG]

Born: 8/19/1946
Birthplace: Hope, Ark.

William Jefferson Clinton was born William Jefferson Blythe III in Hope, Ark., on Aug. 19, 1946. He was named for his father, who was killed in an automobile accident before Clinton's birth. Virginia Kelley, his mother, eventually married Roger Clinton, a car dealer, whose surname the future president later adopted.

In high school in Hot Springs, Ark., Clinton considered becoming a doctor, but politics beckoned after a meeting with President John F. Kennedy in Washington, DC, on a Boys' Nation trip. He earned a BS in international affairs in 1968 at Georgetown University, having spent his junior year working for Arkansas senator J. William Fulbright. He was a Rhodes scholar at Oxford between 1968 and 1970. He then attended Yale Law School, where he met his future wife, Hillary Rodham, a Wellesley graduate. The couple has one child, Chelsea.

Clinton taught at the University of Arkansas (1974–1976), was elected state attorney general (1976), and in 1979 became the nation's youngest governor. But he was defeated for reelection in 1980 by voters irate at a rise in the state's automobile license fees. In 1982 he was elected again. This time he reined in liberal tendencies to accommodate the conservative bent of the voters.

Clinton became the 42nd U.S. president following a turbulent political campaign. He overcame vigorous personal attacks on his character and on his actions during the Vietnam War, which he actively opposed. The “character issue” stemmed from allegations of infidelity, which Clinton refuted in a television interview in which he and Hillary avowed their relationship was solid. Throughout his term in office, Clinton was dogged by allegations relating to the Whitewater real estate deal in which he and Hillary were involved prior to the 1992 election. Though the Clintons were never accused of any wrongdoing, partners in the venture were convicted of fraud and conspiracy in a trial in 1996.

The problems faced by the new president were as daunting as they were varied. In Jan. 1993 he became embroiled with the military leadership over his campaign pledge to allow homosexuals to serve openly in the armed services. He ultimately agreed to a compromise, dubbed the “don't ask, don't tell” policy. Clinton's first year also saw him wrangling with Congress over the federal budget and economic policy.

In his second year, Clinton was faced with acrimonious battles over health care, welfare reform, and crime prevention. A health care reform package crafted by his wife failed to gain sufficient support. Clinton had to reduce his objective from massive overhaul to incremental reform.

Clinton won major victories with the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which took effect Jan. 1, 1994, and the Global Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which led to the establishment in 1995 of the World Trade Organization (WTO). Congress also approved a deficit reduction bill, rules allowing abortion counseling in federally funded clinics, a waiting period for handgun purchases (the Brady Bill), and a national service program.

Foreign affairs became a proving ground for Clinton, since he has been elected primarily on a domestic economic agenda. He improved his international image when the Israel–Jordan peace agreement was signed at the White House in the summer of 1994 by Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin and Jordan's King Hussein. In the fall of that year, the administration succeeded in restoring Haiti's ousted president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, to power. Clinton scored again by bolstering Russian president Boris Yeltsin's popularity with promises of economic aid.

The problems in Eastern Europe were Clinton's next big challenge. Though he wanted desperately to end the brutal ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, he did not want to commit American ground troops to do so. A peace accord involving American peacekeeping troops was ultimately signed in Dayton, Ohio, in Nov. 1995.

The 1994 elections resulted in a Republican-controlled Congress, and 1995 was largely a tug-of-war between the White House and Capitol Hill over budget-balancing and other key points of the GOP's “Contract with America,” crafted by Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich.

In 1996, aided by a booming economy, Clinton won reelection to a second term, becoming the first Democratic president since Franklin D. Roosevelt to do so. The country's general prosperity also made it possible in 1997 for Clinton and the Republicans to reach an agreement to balance the federal budget in three decades.

However, the character issues that had followed Clinton for years soon began to emerge once again. A series of investigations was begun to determine whether Clinton and Vice President Gore had participated in questionable fund-raising practices in their 1996 campaign.

As his tenure wore on, Clinton came under increasing pressure from Kenneth Starr, the independent counsel who in 1994 took over the investigation of the Clintons' involvement in the Whitewater land deal. Over time, Starr's brief was expanded to include other matters, such as the suicide of White House lawyer Vincent Foster, the handling of firings in the White House travel office, and allegations of sexual misconduct by Clinton.

In Jan. 1998, Clinton was called to testify in a long-pending sexual harassment suit brought against him by Paula Corbin Jones, a former Arkansas state employee. The hearing also addressed another scandalous relationship, and in his testimony, Clinton denied that he had had a sexual relationship with a young White House intern, Monica Lewinsky, and that he had attempted to cover it up. Although a federal judge in Arkansas threw out the Jones sexual harassment suit in April 1998, by this time the Lewinsky affair had become the focus of Kenneth Starr's investigation as well as a national obsession.

Finally, on Aug. 17, 1998, after relentless media attention, leaks, and news of Lewinsky's upcoming testimony, Clinton made history by becoming the first U.S. president to testify in front of a grand jury in an investigation of his own possibly criminal conduct. In an address to the nation that evening, he admitted to having had an “inappropriate relationship” with Lewinsky, but reaffirmed that he had not asked anyone to lie about or cover up the affair.

In spite of the scandalous outcome of events, Clinton's overall popularity among Americans remained high. The country seemed willing to ignore his weaknesses in character, much as they had in the 1992 elections, as long as the economy was good, his policies were popular, and the United States remained strong abroad.

On Sept. 9, Starr—a conservative Republican whose investigation was seen by Clinton supporters as a politically inspired vendetta—delivered his report to the House of Representatives. While the report outlined 11 possible grounds for impeachment, none stemmed from the initial subjects of the investigation, including the Whitewater real estate deal. The real focus of the accusations seemed to be Clinton's moral conduct, and the “Starr Report” graphically detailed his sexual affair.

Despite the American population's general disapproval of a trial, reflected in poll after poll, Congress moved forward with impeachment proceedings and on Dec. 19, Clinton became the second president in American history to be impeached. Two of the four articles of impeachment—Article I, grand jury perjury, and Article III, obstruction of justice—passed, the votes drawn along party lines. After a Senate trial in Jan.–Feb. 1999, Clinton was acquitted on both counts.

While the impeachment trial overshadowed all other activity in Washington for a good portion of 1998, Clinton was forced to respond to continued problems with Iraq at the end of the year. In December, Saddam Hussein blocked a weapons inspection by the United Nations. The UN responded with airstrikes that would continue on a nearly daily basis for the next three months, and then off and on through the spring and summer, as Iraq taunted the U.S. and its allies further by shooting at jets patrolling the no-fly zones set up after the Persian Gulf war.

In the spring of 1999, reports grew of continued ethnic cleansing in the Serbian province of Kosovo. Clinton and his British counterpart, Tony Blair, led the push for NATO intervention, which resulted in a 78-day bombing campaign against Serbia beginning in March. Although Clinton received some sharp criticism for holding back on the deployment of NATO ground troops, he was vindicated when Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic signed a peace treaty on June 9.

In his final year of office, the president maintained a relatively low profile but took several major trips overseas, to South Asia, Europe, and Africa. He also prepared for the 2000 elections, lending his support not only to presidential hopeful Al Gore, but also to his wife, Hillary Clinton, who successfully ran for U.S. senator from New York.

On Jan. 19, 2001, the day before he left office, Clinton agreed to a five-year suspension of his Arkansas law license and his paying of a $25,000 fine to the Arkansas Bar Association. In exchange, Kenneth Starr's successor, Robert Ray, agreed to close the Whitewater probe, ending the threat of criminal liability for Mr. Clinton after he left office.







[B][U]George Walker Bush [/U][/B]

[IMG]http://george-walker-bush.info/_250px_George_W_Bush.jpeg[/IMG]

Born: 7/6/1946
Birthplace: New Haven, Conn.

George Walker Bush was born on July 6, 1946, in New Haven, Conn., the first child of future president George H. W. Bush. In 1948, the family moved to Odessa, Tex., where the senior Bush went to work in the oil business. George W. grew up mainly in Midland, Tex., and Houston, and later attended two of his father's alma maters, Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass., and Yale.

After graduating from Yale with a history degree in 1968, Bush joined the Texas Air National Guard, where he served as a part-time fighter pilot until 1973. After receiving an MBA from Harvard Business School in 1975, he returned to Texas, where he established his own oil and gas business. In 1977 he met and married his wife, Laura Welch, a librarian. The couple has twin daughters, Jenna and Barbara, born in 1981.

Coming from a prominent political family—his grandfather Prescott Bush had been a senator from Connecticut and his father a U.S. congressman and political appointee—George W. had been immersed in politics since childhood. In 1977 he entered the fray himself, unsuccessfully running for U.S. Congress from the West Texas district that included his hometown of Midland.

Following his defeat, Bush returned to the oil business. In 1985, however, oil prices fell sharply, and Bush's company verged on collapse until it was acquired by a Dallas firm. Bush then headed to Washington to become a paid adviser to his father's successful 1988 presidential campaign. After the election, Bush returned to Texas and assembled a group of investors to buy the Texas Rangers.

Bush again entered politics in 1993, running for the Texas governorship. Although he had a tough opponent in the immensely popular incumbent Ann Richards, he created a clear agenda focused on issues such as education and juvenile justice and won with 53% of the vote. He was reelected in 1998, not long before he announced plans to run for president.

During the 2000 campaign, Bush adhered closely to the traditional conservative line, favoring small government, tax cuts, a strong military, and opposing gun control and abortion. His choice of running mate, Dick Cheney, secretary of defense during his father's administration, provided his campaign with seasoned Washington political experience.

With the country in a state of general prosperity, the 2000 election between George W. Bush and Vice President Al Gore was perceived to be one of the least dynamic on issues. As it turned out, the race was one of the closest in the country's history. By early evening on election night, it was apparent that whoever won Florida would win the election. Bush's razor-thin margin of about 1,200 votes prompted an automatic recount. The case ultimately ended up in the U.S. Supreme Court. Bush officially became the president-elect on Dec. 13, after the Supreme Court reversed a decision by the Florida Supreme Court to allow manual recounts of ballots in some Florida counties, contending that such a partial recount violated the Constitution's equal protection and due process guarantees. With Florida in his column, Bush won the presidency with 271 electoral votes, just one more than he needed, although he lost the popular vote by half a million. The divided 5–4 Supreme Court decision generated enormous controversy, with critics asserting that the Supreme Court, and not the electorate, had effectively determined the outcome of the presidential election.

The top item on Bush's domestic agenda—a $1.35 trillion tax cut over 11 years—was swiftly enacted in June 2001. In his first year in office, President Bush also championed an antimissile defense system, meant to intercept long-range missiles lobbed at U.S. shores. Opponents of the plan argued that it was technologically unfeasible and astronomically expensive. Bush's early foreign policy was defined by the rejection of a number of international treaties that the White House felt were detrimental to American interests, including the Kyoto treaty on global warming, the biological weapons convention banning germ warfare, and a treaty to establish an international war-crimes court. Bush also withdrew from the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty, the basis for three decades of nuclear stability with the Soviet Union, but at the same time succeeded in persuading Russia to agree to a landmark treaty that would cut U.S. and Russian nuclear weapons stockpiles by two-thirds over the next decade.

The terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, irrevocably altered the direction of the Bush presidency; his primary focus became the war on international terrorism. Bush shored up enormous support from the international community to fight terrorism worldwide. On Oct. 7, the U.S. and Britain began air strikes against Afghanistan, after the Taliban government repeatedly refused to surrender Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks. The Taliban collapsed on Dec. 9, but despite this outstanding military success, bin Laden remained at large.

National security efforts included creating the Department of Homeland Security, a domestic security cabinet agency that consolidated 20 federal agencies in a massive government reorganization. More controversial was the passage of the USA PATRIOT Act, antiterrorism legislation that presented law enforcement officials with sweeping new powers to conduct searches without warrants, and to detain and deport individuals in secret.

President Bush's broad characterizations of the terrorist threat led him to expand the focus of his foreign policy from al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations to other regimes hostile to the United States, regardless of their connection to the Sept. 11 attacks. Following the war in Afghanistan, Bush designated Iraq as the primary new threat to American security. He famously labeled Iraq, along with North Korea and Iran, as part of an “axis of evil.” Over the course of 2002, President Bush announced that the U.S. foreign strategy of containment and deterrence was an outdated cold war policy, and introduced the Bush doctrine, which asserted that in an age of terrorism, the U.S. could no longer wait by defensively until a potential threat to its security grew into an actual one—a preemptive strike was called for. In Sept. 2002, Bush addressed the UN, challenging the organization to swiftly enforce its own resolutions against Iraq, or else the U.S. would have no choice but to act on its own. Many world leaders expressed alarm at this shift in U.S. policy, which stressed unilateralism rather than international consensus. The alleged existence of weapons of mass destruction, Iraq's links to terrorism, and Saddam Hussein's despotism and human rights abuses were cited as the casus belli for “regime change.” The UN Security Council unanimously approved a resolution imposing tough new arms inspections on Iraq, but after three months of inspections that resulted in only modest Iraqi cooperation, U.S. patience ran out: on March 19, President Bush declared war on Iraq and U.S. troops, along with their British allies, began bombing Baghdad. By April 9, Baghdad had fallen, and by May 1, combat was officially declared over.

The official phase of the war was swift, but the post-war reconstruction period proved far more difficult. The country was enveloped in violence and chaos and its infrastructure was in ruins. While the Bush administration successfully turned over sovereignty to an interim Iraqi government in June 2004, within months pockets of Iraq were essentially under the control of insurgents. President Bush assured the country that despite these difficulties, the United States would stay the course until Iraq emerged as a free and democratic country. More than a year-and-a-half of searching for Iraq's weapons of mass destruction—one of the prime reasons Bush cited for launching the war—yielded no hard evidence, and the administration and its intelligence agencies came under fire. There were also mounting allegations that the existence of these weapons and their imminent threat to American security was exaggerated or distorted as a pretext to justify the war. The Senate Intelligence Committee's unanimous, bipartisan “Report on Pre-War Intelligence on Iraq,” harshly criticized the CIA: “most of the major key judgments” on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction were “either overstated, or were not supported by, the underlying intelligence report.” The report disputed the CIA's assertions that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear program and that it had chemical and biological weapons, and also concluded that there was no relationship between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. With the justifications for the war evaporating, the Bush administration began emphasizing that the removal of dictator Saddam Hussein had been grounds enough for waging war, and that the United States was more secure as a result of it.

Critics of the administration's policy in Iraq described it as a distraction from the war on terror, preventing the United States from effectively battling the war on its genuine fronts. Since the start of the U.S. war in Iraq, the two remaining countries in the “axis of evil,” North Korea and Iran, had grown into alarming nuclear threats. The Bush administration's diplomatic efforts made little headway against Iran and North Korea's defiance and evasion.

On the domestic front, President Bush promoted an “ownership society” that would give Americans more control over health care, education, and retirement. In Jan. 2002, he passed the No Child Left Behind Act, a federal program dedicated to improving schools across the country. In June 2003 he signed into law the largest expansion of Medicare since its creation. The law provided prescription drug coverage under Medicare for the first time.

In early 2003, President Bush unveiled a sweeping economic stimulus plan that characteristically centered around tax cuts. The plan, in its original form, would have cut taxes by $670 billion over ten years; Congress approved a $350 billion version. Although all workers were to benefit from the tax plan, it strongly favored two groups: two-parent households with several children and the wealthy—nearly half the proposed tax benefits were reserved for the richest 10% of American taxpayers. Critics of the plan, including fiscally conservative Republicans, argued that it was unsound to offer tax cuts while the country was involved in an expensive war and in the midst of a jobless recovery. The federal budget deficit, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, reached a record $412 billion in 2004. The White House countered that the Bush tax cuts had in fact kept the recession remarkably shallow and brief.

The 2004 presidential campaign between the president and Democratic senator John Kerry was one of the most closely followed and heated races in recent history. Terrorism, the war in Iraq, tax cuts, health care, the economy, and the deficit were the major issues. Kerry accused the president of mismanaging the war on Iraq and the fight against terrorism and promised to roll back the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. The president accused his opponent of being a “flip-flopper” on issues and of not having the leadership to fight the war on terror. On Nov. 3, President Bush won reelection with 286 electoral votes and 51% of the popular vote. Moral values and fighting terrorism were cited as the two main issues that won the president his second term.

In the first year of his second term, Bush's priority was the restructuring of Social Security, but despite months of campaigning, the president failed to convince the electorate that the program was in need of a major overhaul. Legislative accomplishments included the passage of the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), an energy bill, which did not, however, address Americans' growing concern over high fuel prices.

Iraq's continued insurgency, lack of political stability, and the acknowledgment that only a small number of Iraqi forces were capable of replacing American troops stationed in the country led to increased domestic discontent. In the face of growing American casualties and the absence of a clear strategy for winning the protracted war beyond “staying the course,” the president's approval ratings plummeted in 2005. In early September, the delayed and inept handling of Hurricane Katrina's emergency relief efforts led to widespread criticism of the Bush administration, even among its Republican base. Trust in the president's ability to lead the country during a crisis had been a central factor in his reelection, but two-thirds of Americans considered his response to Katrina inadequate. In 2005 and 2006, Bush appointed two solid conservatives to the Supreme Court: Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito.

In 2005 it was disclosed that President Bush had secretly authorized the National Security Agency to wiretap domestic calls without obtaining legally required warrants. Controversy concerning the expansion of presidential powers also arose when it was revealed that Bush has used “signing statements” to indicate that he would not comply with more than 800 provisions of 100-plus signed laws. The most publicized of these signing statements was Bush's exception to a provision banning “cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment” of prisoners in American custody. In June 2006, the Supreme Court issued the most significant ruling on the limitations of presidential powers in decades, stating in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, that the Bush administration's failure to obtain Congressional approval for special military tribunals to try terrorist detainees rendered the tribunals unconstitutional, and that they also violated both the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the Geneva Conventions.

As security in Iraq deteriorated in 2006 and reconstruction efforts foundered, the increasingly unpopular war became the president's greatest liability. November 2006 mid-term elections led to a seismic shift in the political landscape, with Democrats gaining control over the House of Representatives and the Senate for the first time in twelve years. A day after the election, President Bush, acknowledging that his party had taken a “thumping,” announced the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, whose intransigent Iraq policies had made him the bete noir of Democrats and many Republicans. In December, the bipartisan report by the Iraq Study Group, led by former secretary of state James Baker and former Democratic congressman Lee Hamilton, concluded that “the situation in Iraq is grave and deteriorating” and “U.S. forces seem to be caught in a mission that has no foreseeable end.” The report's 79 recommendations included reaching out diplomatically to Iran and Syria and having the U.S. military intensify its efforts to train Iraqi troops. The report heightened the debate over the U.S. role in Iraq, but President Bush kept his distance from it, indicating that he would wait until Jan. 2007 before announcing a new Iraq strategy.

Topic # 3
 

[SIZE="5"][B][CENTER]Where Was Columbus?[/CENTER][/B][/SIZE]

[B][CENTER]Pinpointing the explorer's whereabouts on October 12, 1492[/CENTER][/B]

Christopher Columbus, of course, thought he had arrived in the “Indies,” the medieval name for Asia. Using Marco Polo's Travels among other sources, Columbus calculated that his voyage would lead him to Cathay (China), Cipango (Japan), the Spice Islands (the Mollucas), and India.



[B][U]A Slow Boat to China [/U][/B]

After landing on a small island on Oct. 12, 1492, in what he believed were the Indies, Columbus sailed along the coast of Cuba, certain that he had finally reached the continent of Cathay. He searched in vain for the magnificent cities Marco Polo had described, hoping to deliver a letter from the Spanish monarchs to “the great Khan,” the Chinese emperor. “Afterwards,” Columbus wrote on Oct. 21, “I shall set sail for another very large island which I believe to be Cipango, according to the indications I receive from the Indians on board.” Columbus's Japan proved to be the island of Hispaniola.


[B][U]Refusing to Ask for Directions [/U][/B]

Three voyages later, Columbus still resolutely maintained that he had reached Asia despite growing contrary evidence. Amerigo Vespucci's 150l voyage along the coast of South America convinced most explorers and their patrons that a huge unexplored continent existed across the Atlantic—what Vespucci called Mundus Novus, the New World. Columbus, however, died in 1506 still insisting that he had found a new route to Asia.


[B][U]Where in the New World is San Salvador? [/U][/B]

But confusion over where Columbus landed in the New World has not been restricted to the explorer himself. For centuries scholars have hotly debated where Columbus first set foot in the Western Hemisphere—the so-called landfall controversy. All have agreed that Columbus arrived on an island in the Bahamas that he named San Salvador (Holy Savior), and that the island's Arawak inhabitants called Guanahani. But dozens of different islands have been bandied about by numerous historians as the genuine San Salvador. The three most popular contestants have been Watlings Island (called San Salvador today), Cat Island, and Grand Turk (which today is no longer part of the Bahamas).

More than 500 years later, there still is no definitive answer to the landfall question, but the general consensus is that Columbus landed on what was known until 1926 as Watlings Island. The island was named for a local pirate famous for his piety—marauding and pillaging was strictly forbidden on Sundays. The residents of Watlings renamed their island San Salvador in 1926, figuring the right name was key to their claim as Columbus's island.


[B][U]The 400th Centennial [/U][/B]

Among the early historians involved in the landfall controversy was Washington Irving, whose volume, Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (1828), suggested that the explorer first landed on Cat Island, to the northeast of Watlings. As the 400th anniversary of Columbus's arrival in the New World drew near, a special investigation of various Bahamian islands was commissioned, meant to clear up the controversy once and for all. The report, however, just emphasized how muddled the controversy had become:

“…No two investigators agree as to the first landfall without disagreeing as to the second; and if they happen to coincide on the first, it is only to fall out over the fourth.” —Frederick A. Ober, In the Wake of Columbus (1893)


[B][U]Not Just Another Pretty Island[/U][/B]

The difficulty in pinpointing Columbus's first landing is in part the result of the sketchy information provided in his captain's log. The island is described as large, level, and with a lagoon, and like all the other islands he encounters, “these lands are the most fertile, temperate, level, and beautiful countries in the world.” With so little to go on, it is easy to make an argument for nearly any beautiful lagoon in the Bahamas.

Another difficulty is the lack of archeological evidence. Columbus landed only briefly on the island—he was far more interested in moving on to richer and more promising parts of the Indies. No definitive trace of his presence has been uncovered. And although a number of early maps show the island of Guanahani, the island is found in various locations depending on the vagaries of the cartographer.


[B][U]More Centennial Squabbling[/U][/B]

In 1986, the landfall controversy again grew tempestuous. As the 500th Columbus centennial approached, National Geographic presented a sophisticated argument claiming that Samana Cay was the true island of Columbus's landing. This stirred up the waters, but most historians, including such luminaries as Samuel Eliot Morison, maintained that Watlings/San Salvador was the true landfall.

This is a perfectly agreeable conclusion according to San Salvador's roughly 500 inhabitants, who depend on Columbus-inspired tourism for their livelihood. The present-day San Salvadorans are the descendents of freed slaves—the original inhabitants, the Arawaks, have long since vanished.


[B][U]The Voyages[/U][/B]

[B]First voyage, 1492–1493:[/B] San Salvador, The Bahamas, Cuba, Hispaniola

[B]Second voyage, 1493–1494:[/B] Dominica, Hispaniola, Guadeloupe, Antiqua, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Jamaica

[B]Third voyage, 1498–1500:[/B] St. Vincent, Grenada, Trinidad, Margarita, Venezuela

[B]Fourth voyage, 1502–1504:[/B] St. Lucia, Martinique, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama








______________________________________________________________________________

[SIZE="5"][B][CENTER]History of the American Flag[/CENTER][/B][/SIZE]

[CENTER][IMG]http://ec.europa.eu/education/img/flags/usa.gif[/IMG][/CENTER]


According to popular legend, the first American flag was made by Betsy Ross, a Philadelphia seamstress who was acquainted with George Washington, leader of the Continental Army, and other influential Philadelphians. In May 1776, so the story goes, General Washington and two representatives from the Continental Congress visited Ross at her upholstery shop and showed her a rough design of the flag. Although Washington initially favored using a star with six points, Ross advocated for a five-pointed star, which could be cut with just one quick snip of the scissors, and the gentlemen were won over.

Unfortunately, historians have never been able to verify this charming version of events, although it is known that Ross made flags for the navy of Pennsylvania. The story of Washington's visit to the flagmaker became popular about the time of the country's first centennial, after William Canby, a grandson of Ross, told about her role in shaping U.S. history in a speech given at the Philadelphia Historical Society in March 1870.

What is known is that the first unofficial national flag, called the Grand Union Flag or the Continental Colours, was raised at the behest of General Washington near his headquarters outside Boston, Mass., on Jan. 1, 1776. The flag had 13 alternating red and white horizontal stripes and the British Union Flag (a predecessor of the Union Jack) in the canton. Another early flag had a rattlesnake and the motto “Don't Tread on Me.”

The first official national flag, also known as the Stars and Stripes, was approved by the Continental Congress on June 14, 1777. The blue canton contained 13 stars, representing the original 13 colonies, but the layout varied. Although nobody knows for sure who designed the flag, it may have been Continental Congress member Francis Hopkinson.

After Vermont and Kentucky were admitted to the Union in 1791 and 1792, respectively, two more stars and two more stripes were added in 1795. This 15-star, 15-stripe flag was the “star-spangled banner” that inspired lawyer Francis Scott Key to write the poem that later became the U.S. national anthem.

In 1818, after five more states had gained admittance, Congress passed legislation fixing the number of stripes at 13 and requiring that the number of stars equal the number of states. The last new star, bringing the total to 50, was added on July 4, 1960, after Hawaii became a state.

[SIZE="5"][B][CENTER]The Early Congresses[/CENTER][/B][/SIZE]

At the urging of Massachusetts and Virginia, the First Continental Congress met in Philadelphia on Sept. 5, 1774, and was attended by representatives of all the colonies except Georgia. Patrick Henry of Virginia declared: “The distinctions between Pennsylvanians, New Yorkers, and New Englanders are no more. I am not a Virginian but an American.” This Congress, which adjourned Oct. 26, 1774, passed intercolonial resolutions calling for extensive boycott by the colonies against British trade.

The following year, most of the delegates from the colonies were chosen by popular election to attend the Second Continental Congress, which assembled in Philadelphia on May 10. As war had already begun between the colonies and England, the chief problems before the Congress were the procuring of military supplies, the establishment of an army and proper defenses, the issuing of continental bills of credit, etc. On June 15, 1775, George Washington was elected to command the Continental army. Congress adjourned Dec. 12, 1776.

Other Continental Congresses were held in Baltimore (1776–1777), Philadelphia (1777), Lancaster, Pa. (1777), York, Pa. (1777–1778), and Philadelphia (1778–1781).

In 1781, the Articles of Confederation, although establishing a league of the thirteen states rather than a strong central government, provided for the continuance of Congress. Known thereafter as the Congress of the Confederation, it held sessions in Philadelphia (1781–1783), Princeton, N.J. (1783), Annapolis, Md. (1783–1784), and Trenton, N.J. (1784). Five sessions were held in New York City between the years 1785 and 1789.

The Congress of the United States, established by the ratification of the Constitution, held its first meeting on March 4, 1789, in New York City. Several sessions of Congress were held in Philadelphia, and the first meeting in Washington, DC, was on Nov. 17, 1800.

[SIZE="6"][B][CENTER]U.S. Historical Monuments[/CENTER][/B][/SIZE]


[SIZE="4"][U][B]The Statue of Liberty[/B][/U][/SIZE]

[IMG]http://z.about.com/d/architecture/1/7/_/i/Statue_of_Liberty_FREE_l.jpg[/IMG]

The Statue of Liberty (“Liberty Enlightening the World”) is a 225-ton, steel-reinforced copper female figure, 151 ft 1 in. (46.05 m) in height, facing the ocean from Liberty Island1 in New York Harbor. The right hand holds aloft a torch, and the left hand carries a tablet upon which is inscribed: “July IV MDCCLXXVI.”

The statue was designed by Fredéric Auguste Bartholdi of Alsace as a gift to the United States from the people of France to memorialize the alliance of the two countries in the American Revolution and their abiding friendship. The French people contributed the $250,000 cost.

The 150-foot pedestal was designed by Richard M. Hunt and built by Gen. Charles P. Stone, both Americans. It contains steel underpinnings designed by Alexander Eiffel of France to support the statue. The $270,000 cost was borne by popular subscription in this country. President Grover Cleveland accepted the statue for the United States on Oct. 28, 1886.

The Statue of Liberty was designated a National Monument in 1924 and a World Heritage Site in 1984.

On Sept. 26, 1972, President Richard M. Nixon dedicated the American Museum of Immigration, housed in structural additions to the base of the statue. In 1984 scaffolding went up for a major restoration and the torch was extinguished on July 4. It was relit with much ceremony July 4, 1986, to mark its centennial.




[SIZE="4"][B][U]The White House[/U][/B][/SIZE]

[IMG]http://sc94.ameslab.gov/TOUR/whitehouse.gif[/IMG]

The White House, the official residence of the president, is at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, DC 20500. The site, covering about 18 acres, was selected by President Washington and city planner Pierre Charles L'Enfant, and the architect was James Hoban. The design appears to have been influenced by Leinster House, Dublin, and James Gibb's Book of Architecture. The cornerstone was laid Oct. 13, 1792, and the first residents were President John Adams and First Lady Abigail Adams in Nov. 1800.

The White House has a fascinating history. The main building was burned by the British in 1814 during the War of 1812. Afterward, when the building was being restored, the smoke-stained gray stone walls were painted white. The name “White House,” however, was not used officially until President Theodore Roosevelt had it engraved on his stationery in 1901. Prior to that, the building was known variously as the “President's Palace,” the “President's House,” and the “Executive Mansion.”

Over the years, there have been several additions made to the main building, including the west wing (1902), the east wing (1942), and a penthouse and a bomb shelter (1952). The west wing, which contains the president's oval office and the offices of his staff, is the center of activity at the White House. During Harry Truman's presidency, from Dec. 1948 to March 1952, the interior of the White House was rebuilt, and the outer walls were strengthened. Nevertheless, the exterior stone walls are the same ones that were first put in place when the White House was constructed two centuries ago.

The rooms for public functions are on the first floor; the second and third floors are used as the residence of the president and first family. The most celebrated public room is the East Room, where formal receptions take place. Other public rooms are the Red Room, the Green Room, and the Blue Room. The State Dining Room is used for formal dinners. In all, there are 132 rooms, 35 bathrooms, 28 fireplaces, 8 staircases, and 3 elevators.





[SIZE="4"][B][U]U.S. Capital[/U][/B][/SIZE]

When the French architect and engineer Maj. Pierre Charles L'Enfant first began to lay out the plans for a new federal city (now Washington, DC), he noted that Jenkins' Hill, overlooking the area, seemed to be “a pedestal waiting for a monument.” It was here that the U.S. Capitol would be built. The basic structure as we know it today evolved over a period of more than 150 years. In 1792 a competition was held for the design of a capitol building. Dr. William Thornton, a physician and amateur architect, submitted the winning plan, a simple, low-lying structure of classical proportions with a shallow dome. Later, internal modifications were made by Benjamin Henry Latrobe. After the building was burned by the British in 1814, Latrobe and architect Charles Bulfinch were responsible for its reconstruction. Finally, under Thomas Walter, who was Architect of the Capitol from 1851 to 1865, the House and Senate wings and the imposing cast-iron dome topped with the Statue of Freedom were added, and the Capitol assumed the form we see today.

The Capitol building is rich in historic associations. It was in the old Senate chamber that Daniel Webster cried out, “Liberty and union, now and forever, one and inseparable!” In Statuary Hall, which used to be the old House chamber, a small disk on the floor marks the spot where John Quincy Adams was fatally stricken after more than 50 years of service to his country. A whisper from one side of this room can be heard across the vast space of the hall. Visitors can see the original Supreme Court chamber a floor below the Rotunda.

The Capitol Building is also a vast artistic treasure house. The works of such famous artists as Gilbert Stuart, Rembrandt Peale, and John Trumbull are displayed on the walls. The Great Rotunda, with its 180-foot- (54.9-meter-) high dome, is decorated with a fresco by Constantino Brumidi, which extends some 300 ft (90 m) in circumference. Throughout the building are many paintings of events in U.S. history and sculptures of outstanding Americans.The 68-acre (27.5-hectare) park that the Capitol is situated on was designed by the 19th-century landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted.

There are free guided tours of the Capitol, which include admission to the House and Senate galleries. Those who wish to visit the visitors' gallery in either wing without taking the tour may obtain passes from their senators or representatives. Visitors may ride on the monorail subway that joins the House and Senate wings of the Capitol with the congressional office buildings.





[B][U][SIZE="4"]The Supreme Court Building[/SIZE][/U][/B]

[IMG]http://americanhistory.si.edu/brown/history/5-decision/images/supremecourt-lg.jpg[/IMG]

Despite its role as a coequal branch of government, the Supreme Court was not provided with a building of its own until 1935, the 146th year of its existence. Initially, the Court met in the Merchants Exchange Building in New York City. When the national capital moved to Philadelphia in 1790, the Court moved with it, establishing Chambers first in Independence Hall and later in the City Hall.

When the Federal Government moved, in 1800, to the permanent capital in Washington, D.C., Congress lent the Court space in the new Capitol Building. The Court was to change its meeting place a half dozen times within the Capitol. Additionally, the Court convened for a short period in a private house after the British set fire to the Capitol during the War of 1812. Following this episode, the Court returned to the Capitol and met from 1819 to 1860 in a chamber now restored as the “Old Supreme Court Chamber.” Then from 1860 until 1935, the Court sat in what is now known as the “Old Senate Chamber.”

Finally in 1929, Chief Justice William Howard Taft, who had been president of the United States from 1909 to 1913, persuaded Congress to end this arrangement and authorize the construction of a permanent home for the Court. Architect Cass Gilbert was charged by Chief Justice Taft to design “a building of dignity and importance suitable for its use as the permanent home of the Supreme Court of the United States.”

Neither Taft nor Gilbert survived to see the Supreme Court Building completed. The construction, begun in 1932, was completed in 1935, when the Court was finally able to occupy its own building.





[B][U][SIZE="4"]Mount Rushmore[/SIZE][/U][/B]

[IMG]http://webpages.csus.edu/~sac15625/MIS101/Mount%20Rushmore1.jpg[/IMG]

Mount Rushmore (6,000 ft), in South Dakota, became a celebrated American landmark after sculptor Gutzon Borglum took on the project of carving into the side of it the heads of four great presidents. From 1927 until his death in 1941, Borglum worked on chiseling the 60-foot likenesses of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt. His son, Lincoln, finished the sculpture later that year.











_____________________

Compact History of USA
 

[B][CENTER][SIZE="6"][U]History of USA[/U][/SIZE][/CENTER][/B]

[B][U]INTRODUCTION[/U][/B]

The history of the United States has been an experiment in democracy for more than 200 years. Issues that were addressed in the early years continue to be addressed and resolved today: big government versus small government, individual rights versus group rights, unfettered capitalism versus regulated commerce and labor, engagement with the world versus isolationism. The expectations for American democracy have always been high, and the reality has sometimes been disappointing. Yet the nation has grown and prospered, through a continual process of adaptation and compromise.



[B][U]EARLY AMERICA[/U][/B]

At the height of the most recent Ice Age, about 35,000 years ago, much of the world's water was locked up in vast continental ice sheets. A land bridge as much as 1,500 kilometers wide connected Asia and North America. By 12,000 years ago, humans were living throughout much of the Western Hemisphere.

The first Americans crossed the land bridge from Asia and were believed to have stayed in what is now Alaska for thousands of years. They then moved south into the land that was to become the United States. They settled along the Pacific Ocean in the Northwest, in the mountains and deserts of the Southwest, and along the Mississippi River in the Middle West.

These early groups are known as Hohokam, Adenans, Hopewellians, and Anasazi. They built villages and grew crops. Some built mounds of earth in the shapes of pyramids, birds, or serpents. Their life was closely tied to the land, and their society was clan-oriented and communal. Elements of the natural world played an essential part in their spiritual beliefs. Their culture was primarily oral, although some developed a type of hieroglyphics to preserve certain texts. Evidence shows that there was a good deal of trade among the groups but also that some of their relations were hostile.

For reasons not yet completely understood, these early groups disappeared over time and were replaced by other groups of Native Americans, including Hopi and Zuni, who flourished. By the time Europeans reached what is now the United States, about two million native people, maybe more, lived here.

The first Europeans to arrive in North America — at least the first for whom there is solid evidence — were Norse. They traveled west from Greenland, where Erik the Red had founded a settlement around the year 985. In 1001, his son Leif is thought to have explored the northeast coast of what is now Canada. Ruins of Norse houses dating from that time have been discovered at L'Anse-aux-Meadows in northern Newfoundland.

It would be almost 500 more years before other Europeans reached North America and another 100 years after that before permanent settlements were established. The first explorers were searching for a sea passage to Asia. Others — chiefly British, Dutch, French, and Spanish — came later to claim the lands and riches of what they called the "New World."

The first and most famous of these explorers was Christopher Columbus of Genoa. His trips were financed by Queen Isabella of Spain. Columbus landed on islands in the Caribbean Sea in 1492, but he never saw the mainland of the future United States. John Cabot of Venice came five years later on a mission for the king of England. His journey was quickly forgotten, but it provided the basis for British claims to North America.

The 1500s were the age of Spanish exploration in the Americas. Juan Ponce de León landed in what is now Florida in 1513. Hernando De Soto reached Florida in 1539 and continued as far as the Mississippi River. In 1540, Francisco Vázquez de Coronado set out north from Mexico, which Spain had conquered in 1522, in search of the mythical Seven Cities of Cibola. He never found them, but his travels took him as far as the Grand Canyon in Arizona, as well as into the Great Plains.

While the Spanish were pushing up from the south, the northern portion of the present-day United States was slowly being revealed through the journeys of other Europeans. These included Giovanni da Verrazano, Jacques Cartier, and Amerigo Vespucci, for whom the continent — America — would be named.

The first permanent European settlement in what was to become the United States was established by the Spanish in the middle 1500s at St. Augustine in Florida. However, it would not play a part in the formation of the new nation. That story took place in settlements farther north along the Atlantic coast — in Virginia, Massachusetts, New York, and the 10 other areas colonized by a growing tide of immigrants from Europe.







[B][U]COLONIAL PERIOD[/U][/B]

Most settlers who came to the British colonies in the 1600s were English. Others came from The Netherlands, Sweden, Germany, France, and later from Scotland and Northern Ireland. Some left their homelands to escape war, political oppression, religious persecution, or a prison sentence. Some left as servants who expected to work their way to freedom. Black Africans were sold into slavery and arrived in shackles.

By 1690, the population was 250,000. Less than 100 years later, it had climbed to 2.5 million.

The settlers had many different reasons for coming to America, and eventually 13 distinct colonies developed here. Differences among the three regional groupings of colonies were even more marked.

The first settlements were built along the Atlantic coast and on the rivers that flowed to the ocean. In the Northeast, settlers found hills covered with trees and soil filled with stones left behind when the Ice Age glaciers melted. Water power was easy to harness, so "New England" — including Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island — developed an economy based on wood products, fishing, shipbuilding, and trade. The middle colonies — including New York and Pennsylvania — had a milder climate and more varied terrain. Both industry and agriculture developed there, and society was more varied and cosmopolitan. In New York, for example, one could find Bohemians, Danes, Dutch, English, French, Germans, Irish, Italians, Norwegians, Poles, Portuguese, Scots, and Swedes. The Southern colonies — Virginia, Georgia, and the Carolinas — had a long growing season and fertile soil, and the economy was primarily agricultural. There were both small farmers and wealthy aristocratic landowners who owned large plantations worked by African slaves.

Relations between settlers and Native Americans, who were called Indians, were an uneasy mix of cooperation and conflict. Certain areas saw trade and some social interaction, but in general, as the new settlements expanded, the Indians were forced to move, often after being defeated in battle.

Settlement of the American colonies was directly sponsored not by the British government, but by private groups. All except Georgia emerged as companies of shareholders or as proprietorships chartered by the king. Some were governed rigidly by company leaders, but in time, all developed a system of participatory government based on British legal precedent and tradition.

Years of political turmoil in Britain culminated with the Glorious Revolution of 1688-89 that deposed King James II and led to limits on the monarchy and greater freedoms for the people. The American colonies benefited from these changes. Colonial assemblies claimed the right to act as local parliaments. They passed measures that limited the power of royal governors and expanded their own power.

Over the decades that followed, recurring disputes between the governors and assemblies awakened colonists to the increasing divergence between American and British interests. The principles and precedents that emerged from these disputes became the unwritten constitution of the colonies.

At first, the focus was on self-government within a British commonwealth. Only later came the call for independence.







[B][U]ROAD TO INDEPENDENCE[/U][/B]

The principles of liberalism and democracy — the political foundation of the United States — sprang naturally from the process of building a new society on virgin land. Just as naturally, the new nation would see itself as different and exceptional. Europe would view it with apprehension, or hope.

Britain's 13 North American colonies matured during the 1700s. They grew in population, economic strength, and cultural attainment. They were experienced in self-government. Yet it was not until 170 years after the founding of the first permanent settlement at Jamestown, Virginia, that the new United States of America emerged as a nation.

War between Britain and France in the 1750s was fought partly in North America. Britain was victorious and soon initiated policies designed to control and fund its vast empire. These measures imposed greater restraints on the American colonists' way of life.

The Royal Proclamation of 1763 restricted the opening of new lands for settlement. The Sugar Act of 1764 placed taxes on luxury goods, including coffee, silk, and wine, and made it illegal to import rum. The Currency Act of 1764 prohibited the printing of paper money in the colonies. The Quartering Act of 1765 forced colonists to provide food and housing for royal troops. And the Stamp Act of 1765 required the purchase of royal stamps for all legal documents, newspapers, licenses, and leases.

Colonists objected to all these measures, but the Stamp Act sparked the greatest organized resistance. The main issue, in the eyes of a growing number of colonists, was that they were being taxed by a distant legislature in which they could not participate. In October 1765, 27 delegates from nine colonies met in New York to coordinate efforts to get the Stamp Act repealed. They passed resolutions asserting the individual colonies' right to impose their own taxes.

Self-government produced local political leaders, and these were the men who worked together to defeat what they considered to be oppressive acts of Parliament. After they succeeded, their coordinated campaign against Britain ended. During the next several years, however, a small number of radicals tried to keep the controversy alive. Their goal was not accommodation, but independence.

Samuel Adams of Massachusetts was the most effective. He wrote newspaper articles and made speeches appealing to the colonists' democratic instincts. He helped organize committees throughout the colonies that became the basis of a revolutionary movement. By 1773, the movement had attracted colonial traders who were angry with British attempts to regulate the tea trade. In December, a group of men sneaked on to three British ships in Boston harbor and dumped their cargo of tea overboard.

To punish Massachusetts for the vandalism, the British Parliament closed the port of Boston and restricted local authority. The new measures, dubbed the Intolerable Acts, backfired. Rather than isolate one colony, they rallied the others. All the colonies except Georgia sent representatives to Philadelphia in September 1774 to discuss their "present unhappy state." It was the first Continental Congress.

Colonists felt a growing sense of frustration and anger over British encroachment on their rights. Yet by no means was there unanimity of thought on what should be done. Loyalists wanted to remain subjects of the king. Moderates favored compromise to produce a more acceptable relationship with the British government. And revolutionaries wanted complete independence. They began stockpiling weapons and mobilizing forces — waiting for the day when they would have to fight for it.





[B][U]REVOLUTION[/U][/B]

The American Revolution — its war for independence from Britain — began as a small skirmish between British troops and armed colonists on April 19, 1775.

The British had set out from Boston, Massachusetts, to seize weapons and ammunition that revolutionary colonists had collected in nearby villages. At Lexington, they met a group of Minutemen, who got that name because they were said to be ready to fight in a minute. The Minutemen intended only a silent protest, and their leader told them not to shoot unless fired on first. The British ordered the Minutemen to disperse, and they complied. As they were withdrawing, someone fired a shot. The British troops attacked the Minutemen with guns and bayonets.

Fighting broke out at other places along the road as the British soldiers in their bright red uniforms made their way back to Boston. More than 250 "redcoats" were killed or wounded. The Americans lost 93 men.

Deadly clashes continued around Boston as colonial representatives hurried to Philadelphia to discuss the situation. A majority voted to go to war against Britain. They agreed to combine colonial militias into a continental army, and they appointed George Washington of Virginia as commander-in-chief. At the same time, however, this Second Continental Congress adopted a peace resolution urging King George III to prevent further hostilities. The king rejected it and on August 23 declared that the American colonies were in rebellion.


Calls for independence intensified in the coming months. Radical political theorist Thomas Paine helped crystallize the argument for separation. In a pamphlet called Common Sense, which sold 100,000 copies, he attacked the idea of a hereditary monarchy. Paine presented two alternatives for America: continued submission under a tyrannical king and outworn system of government, or liberty and happiness as a self-sufficient, independent republic.

The Second Continental Congress appointed a committee, headed by Thomas Jefferson of Virginia, to prepare a document outlining the colonies' grievances against the king and explaining their decision to break away. This Declaration of Independence was adopted on July 4, 1776. The 4th of July has since been celebrated as America's Independence Day.



The Declaration of Independence not only announced the birth of a new nation. It also set forth a philosophy of human freedom that would become a dynamic force throughout the world. It drew upon French and British political ideas, especially those of John Locke in his Second Treatise on Government, reaffirming the belief that political rights are basic human rights and are thus universal.

Declaring independence did not make Americans free. British forces routed continental troops in New York, from Long Island to New York City. They defeated the Americans at Brandywine, Pennsylvania, and occupied Philadelphia, forcing the Continental Congress to flee. American forces were victorious at Saratoga, New York, and at Trenton and Princeton in New Jersey. Yet George Washington continually struggled to get the men and materials he desperately needed.

Decisive help came in 1778 when France recognized the United States and signed a bilateral defense treaty. Support from the French government, however, was based on geopolitical, not ideological, reasons. France wanted to weaken the power of Britain, its long-time adversary.

The fighting that began at Lexington, Massachusetts, continued for eight years across a large portion of the continent. Battles were fought from Montreal, Canada, in the north to Savannah, Georgia, in the south. A huge British army surrendered at Yorktown, Virginia, in 1781, yet the war dragged on with inconclusive results for another two years. A peace treaty was finally signed in Paris on April 15, 1783.

The Revolution had a significance far beyond North America. It attracted the attention of Europe's political theorists and strengthened the concept of natural rights throughout the Western world. It attracted notables such as Thaddeus Kosciusko, Friedrich von Steuben, and the Marquis de Lafayette, who joined the revolution and hoped to transfer its liberal ideas to their own countries.

The Treaty of Paris acknowledged the independence, freedom, and sovereignty of the 13 former American colonies, now states. The task of knitting them together into a new nation lay ahead.









[B][U]FORMATION OF A NATIONAL GOVERNMENT[/U][/B]

The 13 American colonies became the 13 United States of America in 1783, following their war for independence from Britain. Before the war ended, they ratified a framework for their common efforts. These Articles of Confederation provided for a union, but an extremely loose and fragile one. George Washington called it a "rope of sand."

There was no common currency; individual states still produced their own. There was no national military force; many states still had their own armies and navies. There was little centralized control over foreign policy; states negotiated directly with other countries. And there was no national system for imposing and collecting taxes.

Disputes between Maryland and Virginia over navigation rights on the Potomac River, which formed their common border, led to a conference of five states in Annapolis, Maryland, in 1786. Alexander Hamilton, a delegate from New York, said that such commercial issues were part of larger economic and political questions. What was needed, he said, was a rethinking of the Confederation. He and the other delegates proposed holding a convention to do just that. Support from Washington, unquestionably the most trusted man in America, won over those who thought the idea was too bold.

The gathering in Philadelphia in May 1787 was remarkable. The 55 delegates elected to the convention had experience in colonial and state government. They were knowledgeable in history, law, and political theory. Most were young, but the group included the elderly Benjamin Franklin, who was nearing the end of an extraordinary career of public service and scientific achievement. Two notable Americans were not there: Thomas Jefferson was in Paris as American ambassador to France, and John Adams was in London as ambassador to Great Britain.

The Continental Congress had authorized the convention to amend the Articles of Confederation. Instead, the delegates threw aside the Articles — judging them inadequate for the needs of the new nation — and devised a new form of government based on the separation of legislative, executive, and judicial powers. The gathering had become a constitutional convention.

Reaching consensus on some of the details of a new constitution would prove extremely difficult. Many delegates argued for a strong national government that limited states' rights. Others argued equally persuasively for a weak national government that preserved state authority. Some delegates feared that Americans were not wise enough to govern themselves and so opposed any sort of popular elections. Others thought the national government should have as broad a popular base as possible. Representatives from small states insisted on equal representation in a national legislature. Those from big states thought they deserved to have more influence. Representatives from states where slavery was illegal hoped to outlaw it. Those from slave states rejected any attempts to do so. Some delegates wanted to limit the number of states in the Union. Others supported statehood for the newly settled lands to the West.

Every question raised new divisions, and each was resolved by compromise.

The draft Constitution was not a long document. Yet it provided the framework for the most complex government yet devised. The national government would have full power to issue currency, levy taxes, grant patents, conduct foreign policy, maintain an army, establish post offices, and wage war. And it would have three equal branches — a congress, a president, and a court system — with balanced powers and checks against each other's actions.

Economic interests influenced the course of debate on the document, but so did state, sectional, and ideological interests. Also important was the idealism of the men who wrote it. They believed they had designed a government that would promote individual liberty and public virtue.

On September 17, 1787, after four months of deliberation, a majority of delegates signed the new Constitution. They agreed it would become the law of the land when nine of the 13 states had ratified it.

The ratification process lasted about a year. Opponents voiced fears that a strong central government could become tyrannical and oppressive. Proponents responded that the system of checks and balances would prevent this from happening. The debate brought into existence two factions: the Federalists, who favored a strong central government and who supported the Constitution, and the Anti-Federalists, who favored a loose association of states and who opposed the Constitution.

Even after the Constitution was ratified, many Americans felt it lacked an essential element. They said it did not enumerate the rights of individuals. When the first Congress met in New York City in September 1789, lawmakers agreed to add these provisions. It took another two years before these 10 amendments — collectively known as the Bill of Rights — became part of the Constitution.

The first of the 10 amendments guarantees freedom of speech, press, and religion; the right to protest, assemble peacefully, and demand changes. The fourth protects against unreasonable searches and arrest. The fifth provides for due process of law in all criminal cases. The sixth guarantees the right to a fair and speedy trial. And the eighth protects against cruel and unusual punishment.

Since the Bill of Rights was adopted more than 200 years ago, only 17 more amendments have been added to the Constitution.







[B][U]EARLY YEARS, WESTWARD EXPANSION, AND REGIONAL DIFFERENCES[/U][/B]

George Washington was sworn in as the first president of the United States on April 30, 1789. He had been in charge of organizing an effective military force during the Revolution. Now he was in charge of building a functioning government.

He worked with Congress to create departments of State, Treasury, Justice, and War. The heads of those departments would serve as presidential advisors, his cabinet. A Supreme Court composed of one chief justice and five associate justices was established, together with three circuit courts and 13 district courts. Policies were developed for administering the western territories and bringing them into the Union as new states.

Washington served two four-year terms and then left office, setting a precedent that eventually became law. The next two presidents, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, represented two schools of thought on the role of government. This divergence led to the formation of the first political parties in the Western world. The Federalists, led by Adams and Alexander Hamilton, Washington's secretary of the Treasury, generally represented trade and manufacturing interests. They feared anarchy and believed in a strong central government that could set national economic policies and maintain order. They had the most support in the North. Republicans, led by Jefferson, generally represented agricultural interests. They opposed a strong central government and believed in states' rights and the self-sufficiency of farmers. They had the most support in the South.

For about 20 years, the young nation was able to thrive in relative peace. Its policy was to be friendly and impartial to all other nations. However, it was not immune from political developments in Europe, particularly in Britain and France, which were at war. The British navy seized American ships headed to France, and the French navy seized American ships headed to Britain. Various diplomatic negotiations averted hostilities during the 1790s and early 1800s, but it seemed only a matter of time before the United States would have to defend its interests.

War with Britain came in 1812. Fighting took place mostly in the Northeastern states and along the east coast. One British expeditionary force reached the new capital of Washington, in the District of Columbia. It set fire to the executive mansion — causing President James Madison to flee — and left the city in flames. But the U.S. army and navy won enough decisive battles to claim victory. After two and a half years of fighting, and with a treasury depleted by a separate war with France, Britain signed a peace treaty with the United States. The U.S. victory ended once and for all any British hopes of reestablishing influence south of the Canadian border.

By the time the War of 1812 ended, many of the serious difficulties faced by the new American republic had disappeared. National union under the Constitution brought a balance between liberty and order. A low national debt and a continent awaiting exploration presented the prospect of peace, prosperity, and social progress. The most significant event in foreign policy was a pronouncement by President James Monroe expressing U.S. solidarity with the newly independent nations of Central and South America. The Monroe Doctrine warned against any further attempts by Europe to colonize Latin America. Many of the new nations, in turn, expressed their political affinity with the United States by basing their constitutions on the North American model.

The United States doubled in size with the purchase of the Louisiana Territory from France in 1803 and Florida from Spain in 1819. From 1816 to 1821, six new states were created. Between 1812 and 1852, the population tripled. The young nation's size and diversity defied easy generalization. It also invited contradiction.

The United States was a country of both civilized cities built on commerce and industry, and primitive frontiers where the rule of law was often ignored. It was a society that loved freedom but permitted slavery. The Constitution held all these different parts together. The strains, however, were growing.






[B][U]SECTIONAL CONFLICT[/U][/B]

The United States in 1850 was a huge nation stretched between two oceans. Wide differences in geography, natural resources, and development were obvious from region to region.

New England and the Middle Atlantic states were the main centers of finance, commerce, and manufacturing. Principal products included textiles and clothing, lumber, and machinery. Maritime trade flourished. The Southern states were chiefly agricultural, producing tobacco, sugar, and cotton with slave labor. The Middle Western states were agricultural, too, but their grain and meat products came from the hands of free men and women.

In 1819, Missouri had applied for statehood. Northerners objected because there were 10,000 slaves there. Congressman Henry Clay of Kentucky proposed a compromise: Missouri would enter the Union and continue to permit slavery, while Maine would enter as a free state.

Regional positions on the issue hardened in the decades following the Missouri Compromise. In the North, the movement to abolish slavery was vocal and grew increasingly powerful. In the South, the belief in white supremacy and in maintaining the economic status quo was equally vocal and powerful. Although thousands of slaves escaped north through a network of secret routes known as the Underground Railroad, slaves still comprised a third of the population in the slave states at the time of the 1860 census.

Most Northerners were unwilling to challenge the existence of slavery in the South, yet many opposed its expansion into the western territories. Southerners felt just as strongly that the territories themselves had the right to decide their status. A young politician from Illinois, Abraham Lincoln, felt that the issue was a national, not a local one. "A house divided against itself cannot stand," he said. "I believe this government cannot endure permanently half-slave and half-free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved ... but I do expect it will cease to be divided."

In 1860, the Republican Party nominated Lincoln as its candidate for president on an anti-slavery platform. In a four-man race, he won only 39 percent of the popular vote but a clear majority of votes in the Electoral College. The Electoral College is the group of citizens who directly elect the U.S. president and vice president, following the popular vote.

The storm that had been gathering for decades was about to explode with brutal force. Southern states had threatened to leave the Union if Lincoln were elected; the secessions started even before he was sworn in. It would be up to the new president to try to hold the Union together.






[B][U]CIVIL WAR AND POST-WAR RECONSTRUCTION[/U][/B]

North and South went to war in April 1861. The Southern states had claimed the right to secede and had formed their own Confederacy. Their forces fired the first shots. The Northern states, under the leadership of President Lincoln, were determined to stop the rebellion and preserve the Union.

The North had more than twice as many states and twice as many people. It had abundant facilities for producing war supplies, as well as a superior railway network. The South had more experienced military leaders and had the advantage of fighting mostly on its own territory.

For four years, ground battles involving tens of thousands of soldiers and horses were fought in Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Georgia. Naval battles were fought off the Atlantic coast and on the Mississippi River. In that area, Union forces won an almost uninterrupted series of victories. In Virginia, by contrast, they met defeat after defeat in their attempts to capture Richmond, the Confederate capital.

The single bloodiest day of the war was on September 17, 1862, when the two armies met at Antietam Creek near Sharpsburg, Maryland. Confederate troops led by General Robert E. Lee failed to force back the Union troops led by General George McClellan, and Lee escaped with his army intact. McClellan was fired. Although the battle was inconclusive in military terms, its consequences were enormous. Britain and France had been planning to recognize the Confederacy. They delayed their decisions, and the South never received the aid it desperately needed.

Several months later, President Lincoln issued a preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. It freed all slaves living in Confederate states and authorized the recruitment of African Americans into the Union army. Now the North was no longer fighting just to preserve the Union. It was fighting to end slavery.

Union forces gained momentum in 1863 with victories at Vicksburg in Mississippi and Gettysburg in Pennsylvania, and then with the scorched-earth policy of General William T. Sherman as he marched across Georgia and into South Carolina in 1864. By April 1865, huge Union armies under the command of General Ulysses S. Grant had surrounded Robert E. Lee in Virginia. Lee surrendered, and the American Civil War was over.

The terms of surrender were generous. "The rebels are our countrymen again," Grant reminded his troops. In Washington, President Lincoln was ready to begin the process of reconciliation. He never got the chance. Less than a week after the South surrendered, he was assassinated by a Southerner embittered by the defeat. The task would fall to Lincoln's vice president, Andrew Johnson, a Southerner who favored quick and easy "Reconstruction."

Johnson issued pardons that restored the political rights of many Southerners. By the end of 1865, almost all former Confederate states had held conventions to repeal the acts of secession and to abolish slavery, but all except Tennessee refused to ratify a constitutional amendment giving full citizenship to African Americans. As a result, Republicans in Congress decided to implement their own version of Reconstruction. They enacted punitive measures against former rebels and prevented former Confederate leaders from holding office. They divided the South into five military districts administered by Union generals. They denied voting rights to anyone who refused to take a loyalty oath to the Union. And they strongly supported the rights of African Americans. President Johnson tried to block many of these policies and was impeached. The vote fell short, and he remained in office, but Congress would continue to wield enormous power for the next 30 years.

The divisions and hatreds that had led to the Civil War did not disappear after the fighting stopped. As Southern whites regained political power, Southern blacks suffered. They had gained their freedom but were prevented from enjoying it by local laws denying them access to many public facilities. They had gained the right to vote but were intimidated at the polls. The South had become segregated and would remain so for 100 years. The postwar Reconstruction process had begun with high ideals but collapsed into a sinkhole of corruption and racism. Its failure deferred the struggle for equality for African Americans until the 20th century, when it would become a national, not just a Southern, issue.





[B][U]GROWTH AND TRANSFORMATION[/U][/B]

The United States came of age in the decades following the Civil War. The frontier gradually vanished; a rural republic became an urban nation. Great factories, steel mills, and transcontinental railroads were built. Cities grew quickly. And millions of people arrived from other countries to begin new lives in a land of opportunity.

Inventors harnessed the power of science. Alexander Graham Bell developed the telephone. Thomas Edison produced the light bulb and, with George Eastman, the moving picture. Before 1860, the government issued 36,000 patents. In the next 30 years, it issued 440,000.

It was an era of corporate consolidation, especially in the steel, rail, oil, and telecommunications industries. Monopolies denied competition in the marketplace, which led to calls for government regulation. A law was passed in 1890 to prevent monopolies from restraining trade, but it was not vigorously enforced at first.

Even with the great gains in industry, farming remained America's basic occupation. Yet it, too, witnessed enormous changes. Farmland doubled and scientists developed improved seeds. Machines — including mechanical planters, reapers, and threshers — took over much of the work that had previously been done by hand. American farmers produced enough grain, cotton, beef, pork, and wool to supply the growing domestic market and still have large surpluses to export.

The western region of the United States continued to attract settlers. Miners staked claims in the ore-rich mountains, cattle ranchers on the vast grasslands, sheep farmers in the river valleys, and farmers on the great plains. Cowboys on horses took care of the animals and guided them to distant railroads for shipment east. This is the image of America that many people still have, even though the era of the "Wild West" cowboy lasted only about 30 years.

From the time that Europeans landed on the east coast of America, their migration westward meant confrontation with native peoples. For many years, government policy had been to move Native Americans beyond the reach of the white frontier to lands reserved for their use. Time and again, however, the government ignored its agreements and opened these areas to white settlement. In the late 1800s, Sioux tribes in the northern plains and Apaches in the southwest fought back hard to preserve their way of life. They were skilled fighters but were eventually overwhelmed by government forces. Official policy after these conflicts was well-intentioned but sometimes proved disastrous. In 1934, Congress passed a measure that attempted to protect tribal customs and communal life on the reservations.

The last decades of the 19th century saw a race by European powers to colonize Africa and compete for trade in Asia. Many Americans believed the United States had a right and duty to expand its influence in other parts of the world. Many others, however, rejected any actions that hinted at imperialism.

A brief war with Spain in 1898 left the United States with control over several Spanish overseas possessions: Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines. Officially, the United States encouraged them to move toward self-government, but, in fact, it maintained administrative control. Idealism in foreign policy existed alongside the practical desire to protect the economic interests of a once-isolated nation that had become a world power.







[B][U]DISCONTENT AND REFORM[/U][/B]

By 1900, America's political foundations had endured growing pains, civil war, prosperity, and economic depression. The ideal of religious freedom had been sustained. Free public education had largely been realized, and a free press had been maintained. At the same time, however, political power seemed concentrated in the hands of corrupt officials and their friends in business. In response, a reform movement called "Progressivism" arose. Its goals included greater democracy and social justice, honest government, and more effective regulation of business.

Writers and social critics protested practices that were unfair, unhealthy, and dangerous. Upton Sinclair, Ida M. Tarbell, Theodore Dreiser, Lincoln Steffens, and others produced a "literature of exposure" that put pressure on lawmakers to correct these abuses through legislation. The reformers believed that expanding the scope of government would ensure the progress of U.S. society and the welfare of its citizens.

President Theodore Roosevelt embodied the spirit of Progressivism and believed that reforms needed to be addressed nationally. He worked with Congress to regulate monopolies and take legal action against companies that violated the law. He also was tireless in his efforts to conserve the United States' natural resources, manage public lands, and protect areas for recreational use.

Reforms continued during the presidencies of William Howard Taft and Woodrow Wilson. The Federal Reserve banking system was established to set interest rates and control the money supply. The Federal Trade Commission was established to deal with unfair methods of competition by businesses. New laws were enacted to help improve working conditions for sailors and railroad laborers. A "county extension" system was developed to help farmers get information and credit. And taxes on imported goods were lowered or eliminated to help reduce the cost of living for all Americans.

The Progressive era was also the era when great numbers of people from all over the world came to the United States. Almost 19 million people arrived between 1890 and 1921. Earlier immigrants had been chiefly northern and western Europeans and some Chinese. The new arrivals came from Italy, Russia, Poland, Greece, the Balkans, Canada, Mexico, and Japan.

The United States has always been a "melting pot" of nationalities, and for 300 years few restrictions were placed on immigration. Starting in the 1920s, however, quotas were established in response to Americans' fears that their jobs and culture were being threatened by the newcomers. While large surges of immigration have historically created social strains, most Americans — whose own ancestors arrived as immigrants — believe that the Statue of Liberty in New York harbor represents the spirit of a welcoming land to those "yearning to breathe free." This belief has preserved the United States as a nation of nations.






[B][U]WORLD WAR I, 1920s PROSPERITY,
THE GREAT DEPRESSION
[/U][/B]

War in Europe in 1914 — with Germany and Austria-Hungary fighting Britain, France, Italy, and Russia — affected U.S. interests almost from the start. The British and the German navies both interfered with American shipping, but German submarine attacks were deadly. Almost 130 Americans died when a submarine sank the British ocean liner Lusitania in 1915. President Woodrow Wilson demanded an end to the attacks, and they stopped for a while, but by 1917 they had resumed. The United States declared war.

The efforts of more than 1,750,000 U.S. troops played a decisive role in the defeat of the German and Austro-Hungarian alliance. An armistice, technically a truce but actually a surrender, was concluded on November 11, 1918.

President Wilson negotiated an end to the conflict based on his 14-point plan for achieving lasting peace. It included an end to secret international agreements, free trade between nations, a reduction in national armaments, self-rule for subjugated European nationalities, and formation of an association — a League of Nations — to help guarantee political independence and territorial integrity for large and small countries alike.

The final peace treaty, however, contained virtually none of these points, as the victors insisted on harsh punishment. Wilson's idea of a League of Nations remained in the Treaty of Versailles, but even he was unable to gain enough support for the concept, and the United States rejected it. America reverted to its instinctive isolationism.

The immediate postwar period was one of labor unrest and racial tensions. Farmers were struggling because of the abrupt end of wartime demand. Bolshevik violence fueled a "Red Scare" that led to decades of militant hostility toward the revolutionary Communist movement. Despite these problems, for a few years in the 1920s the United States enjoyed a period of real and broadly distributed prosperity. Families purchased their first automobile, radio, and refrigerator, and they began going to the movies regularly. And suffragists, after decades of political activism, succeeded in getting approval of a constitutional amendment in 1920 that gave women the right to vote.

The good times did not last. The value of many stocks, which had become artificially inflated, fell dramatically in October 1929. Over the next three years, the business recession in America became part of a worldwide economic depression. Businesses and factories shut down, banks failed, farm income dropped. By November 1932, 20 percent of Americans were unemployed.

The presidential campaign that year was chiefly a debate over the causes of the Great Depression and ways to reverse it. Incumbent Herbert Hoover had started the process of rebuilding the economy, but his efforts had little impact, and he lost the election to Franklin Roosevelt. Roosevelt was infectiously optimistic and was ready to use federal authority to achieve bold remedies. Under his leadership, the United States would enter another era of economic and political change.








[B][U]THE NEW DEAL AND WORLD WAR II[/U][/B]

In the early 1930s, President Franklin Roosevelt proposed a "New Deal" — a plan designed to lift Americans out of the Great Depression as quickly as possible. He noted that democracy had disappeared in other countries at that time — not because the people opposed democracy but because they had grown tired of unemployment and insecurity.

Under his leadership, a federal corporation was established to insure deposits in savings banks. Regulations were imposed on the sale of stocks. Laws were passed to guarantee the right of workers to be represented by unions. Farmers received subsidies for certain crops and assistance in preventing soil erosion. The Civilian Conservation Corps employed young men to plant trees, clean up waterways, and improve facilities in national parks. The Public Works Administration hired skilled laborers for large-scale projects, such as building dams and bridges. The Tennessee Valley Authority provided flood control and electric power for that impoverished area. And the Federal Emergency Relief Administration distributed aid, often in the form of direct payments.

A second round of programs employed workers to build roads, airports, and schools; hired artists, actors, musicians, and writers; and gave part-time employment to young people. It also established the Social Security system to help the poor, disabled, and elderly.

Americans were generally uneasy with the idea of big government, yet they wanted the government to take greater responsibility for the welfare of ordinary people. And while the New Deal provided tangible help for millions of Americans, it never succeeded in restoring prosperity. Better times would come, but not until after another world war had swept the United States into its path.

The United States tried to remain neutral while totalitarian regimes in Germany, Italy, and Japan expanded their control over neighboring countries. Debate intensified after Germany invaded France and began bombing Britain. Despite strong isolationist sentiment, Congress voted to conscript soldiers and strengthen the military.

Most people were focused on what was happening in Europe when Japan threatened to seize sources of raw materials used by Western industries. In response, the United States imposed an embargo on the one commodity Japan needed above all others — oil — and demanded that it withdraw from territories it had conquered. Japan refused, and on December 7, 1941, it carried out a devastating attack on the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The United States declared war on Japan. Germany and Italy, by then allies of Japan, declared war on the United States.

American industry and agriculture were harnessed for the war effort. Production of military equipment was staggering: 300,000 aircraft, 5,000 cargo ships, 60,000 landing craft, and 86,000 tanks in less than four years. Much of the work was done by women, who went to work in factories while men went to fight.

The United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union, allied to counter the Nazi threat, decided that their primary military effort was to be concentrated in Europe. They were determined to break the German-Italian grip on the Mediterranean and prevent the fall of Moscow. Then they would liberate Rome and Paris, and finally Berlin.

From Germany's occupation of Poland in 1939 to its surrender in 1945, the war in Europe claimed the lives of millions of people — soldiers and civilians alike. Millions more were exterminated in the Holocaust, Nazi Germany's systematic policy of genocide against the Jews and other groups.

The war in Asia was largely a series of naval battles and amphibious assaults to break the Japanese grip on islands in the Pacific Ocean. Fighting there continued after the fighting in Europe had stopped. The final battles were among the war's bloodiest. Most Americans, including President Harry Truman, believed that an invasion of Japan would be even worse. Truman was willing to use the newly developed atomic bomb to bring the war to an end. When Japan refused to surrender, he ordered bombs dropped on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The plan worked — Japan surrendered — and World War II was finally over in August 1945. Only later would people realize the full implications of the awesome, destructive power of nuclear weapons.






[B][U]THE COLD WAR, KOREAN CONFLICT, AND VIETNAM[/U][/B]

The United States played a major role in global affairs in the years immediately after World War II, especially through its influence in the newly formed United Nations and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The most important political and diplomatic issue of the early postwar period was the Cold War. It grew out of long-standing disagreements between the United States and the Soviet Union over which type of government and economic system produced the most liberty, equality, and prosperity.

Faced with a postwar world of civil wars and disintegrating empires, the United States hoped to provide the stability to make peaceful reconstruction possible. It advocated democracy and open trade, and committed $17,000 million under the "Marshall Plan" to rebuild western Europe. The Soviet Union wanted to secure its borders at all costs. It used military force to help bring Communist regimes to power in Central and Eastern Europe.

The United States vowed to contain Soviet expansionism. It demanded and obtained a full Soviet withdrawal from Iran. It supported Turkey against Soviet attempts to control shipping lanes. It provided economic and military aid to Greece to fight a strong Communist insurgency. And it led the effort to airlift millions of tons of supplies to Berlin when the Soviet Union blockaded that divided city.

With most American aid moving across the Atlantic, little could be done to prevent the Communist forces of Mao Zedong from taking control of China in 1949. When North Korea — supported by China and the Soviet Union — invaded South Korea the next year, the United States secured U.N. support for military intervention. The North Koreans were eventually pushed back, and a truce was signed, but tensions would remain high and U.S. troops would stay for decades.

In the mid-1960s, the United States sent troops to defend South Vietnam against a Communist insurgency based in North Vietnam. American involvement escalated greatly but was not enough to prevent the South from collapsing in 1975. The war cost hundreds of thousands of lives. It also caused bitter divisions at home, making Americans wary of further foreign entanglements.






[B][U]CULTURAL CHANGE: 1950-1980[/U][/B]

Most Americans felt confident with their role in the world in the 1950s. They accepted the need for a strong stance against global Communism and supported efforts to share the benefits of democracy as widely as possible. At home, they were experiencing phenomenal economic gains and a shift to a service economy. A boom in births fueled the growth of suburban areas around cities. Yet not all Americans participated in this good life, and gradually, challenges to the status quo began to mount.

African Americans launched a movement to guarantee fair treatment everywhere. They won a major victory in 1954 when the Supreme Court ruled that separate educational facilities for black children were not equal to those for white children. The decision started the process of desegregating the nation's public schools. In the 1960s — led by the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. and with the support of President Lyndon Johnson — African Americans won passage of civil rights and voting rights legislation. Some black leaders, such as Malcolm X, argued against interracial cooperation, and some militant calls for reform led to violence. However, many African Americans made quiet, steady progress into the ranks of the middle class, leading to a profound demographic change in American society.

During the 1960s-70s, many American women expressed frustration that they did not have the same opportunities as men. Led by writer Betty Friedan and journalist Gloria Steinem, they organized a movement that helped change laws and traditions to give women the chance to compete equally with men in business and education. However, their efforts to adopt a constitutional amendment guaranteeing equal rights for women fell short when only 35 of the necessary 38 states ratified it.

A new generation of Native-American leaders organized to defend the rights the government had promised in various treaties with tribal groups. They used the court system to regain control of tribal lands and water rights. They used the legislative process to get the assistance they needed to house and educate their people. The first Native American to be elected to the Senate was Ben Nighthorse Campbell in 1992.

Hispanic Americans, especially those whose families came from Mexico, Central America, Puerto Rico, and Cuba, became more politically active, too. They were elected to local, state, and national offices, and they organized to fight discrimination. César Chávez, for example, led a nationwide consumer boycott of California grapes that forced growers to negotiate with his United Farm Workers union for higher wages and improved working conditions.

Many students became politically active to protest the war in Vietnam, which they believed was immoral. They organized large protests that eventually put pressure on President Johnson to begin peace negotiations. Young people also began to reject their parents' cultural values. The most visible signs of the so-called counterculture were long hair, rock-and-roll music, and the use of illegal drugs.

Americans concerned about the environment organized efforts to reduce air and water pollution. The year 1970 saw the first "Earth Day" celebration and the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency. Environmental legislation reflected the need to reduce pollutants without imposing burdensome costs on industries.

The great social changes of the 1950s-1980s grew out of an open, fluid, and diverse society. Demands for change were sometimes peaceful, sometimes deadly. Compromises were necessary. Surely, if sometimes slowly, the United States changed to better reflect its multicultural foundation.







[B][U]END OF THE 20TH CENTURY[/U][/B]

The United States has always experienced periods of political polarization, as Americans debated ways to deal with international events, demographic change, and the effects of technological innovation. The last decades of the 20th century were no exception.

The liberal activism of the 1960s-70s was eclipsed by a new conservatism in the 1980s. Conservatives advocated limited government, a strong national defense, a firm stance against Communism, tax cuts to spur economic growth, tough anti-crime measures, more religious expression in public life, and a stricter code for social behavior. Former actor and Republican Governor of California Ronald Reagan, who represented stability to many Americans, won two terms as president. His supporters credit his policies with hastening the collapse of the Soviet Union.


Americans moved to a more centrist position in 1992 and elected as president Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton, who had organized his campaign around the themes of youth and change. Some of Clinton's proposals were quite liberal, such as his plan for a government-managed health care system, which Congress never voted on. Another proposal — ending government payments to welfare recipients and helping them get jobs — was co-opted from conservatives and eventually proved quite successful.

Normal differences in politics turned especially bitter after the presidential election of 2000. The popular vote and the Electoral College vote were nearly evenly divided between Democrat Al Gore and Republican George W. Bush. Thousands of ballots cast in the state of Florida were contested. After a series of court challenges over laws and procedures governing recounts, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a narrow decision that effectively gave the election to Bush.

Bush expected to focus on domestic issues such as education, the economy, and Social Security. But his presidency changed irrevocably on September 11, 2001. On that day, foreign terrorists hijacked four passenger airplanes and crashed them into the World Trade Center towers in New York City, the Defense Department's Pentagon headquarters near Washington, D.C., and a rural area of Pennsylvania. Bush declared war on global terrorism. Americans were generally united in the early phases, but many grew increasingly uncomfortable as the operation expanded.

The long-term effects of events and trends occurring at the beginning of the 21st century have yet to be fully understood.







[B]For detail reading, Explore the following link :[/B]

[url]http://www.usahistory.info/[/url]





[CENTER]____________________________[/CENTER]

[CENTER][B][SIZE="5"][U]Constitution of the United States of America[/U][/SIZE][/B][/CENTER]


Constitution of the United States, document embodying the fundamental principles upon which the American republic is conducted. Drawn up at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787, the Constitution was signed on Sept. 17, 1787, and ratified by the required number of states (nine) by June 21, 1788. It superseded the original charter of the United States in force since 1781 (see Confederation, Articles of) and established the system of federal government that began to function in 1789. The Constitution is concise, and its very brevity and its general statement of principles have, by accident more than by design, made possible the extension of meaning that has fostered growth. There are seven articles and a preamble; 27 amendments have been adopted (see the table entitled Text of the Constitution of the United States).

The wording of the Constitution is general, necessitating interpretation, and any short summary is only rough and approximate. From its very beginnings, the Constitution has been subject to stormy controversies, not only in interpretation of some of its phrases, but also between the “loose constructionists” and “strict constructionists.” The middle of the 19th cent. saw a tremendous struggle concerning the nature of the Union and the extent of states' rights. The Civil War decided the case in favor of the advocates of strong union, and since that time the general tendency has been toward the centralization and strengthening of federal power.


The oldest federal constitution in existence was framed by a convention of delegates from twelve of the thirteen original states in Philadelphia in May 1787, Rhode Island failing to send a delegate. George Washington presided over the session, which lasted until September 17, 1787. The draft (originally a preamble and seven Articles) was submitted to all thirteen states and was to become effective when ratified by nine states. It went into effect on the first Wednesday in March 1789, having been ratified by New Hampshire, the ninth state to approve, on June 21, 1788. The states ratified the Constitution in the following order:


Delaware _____________________________________ December 7, 1787
Pennsylvania __________________________________ December 12, 1787
New Jersey ___________________________________ December 18, 1787
Georgia _______________________________________ January 2, 1788
Connecticut ___________________________________ January 9, 1788
Massachusetts _________________________________ February 6, 1788
Maryland _______________________________________ April 28, 1788
South Carolina __________________________________ May 23, 1788
New Hampshire _________________________________ June 21, 1788
Virginia ________________________________________ June 25, 1788
New York ______________________________________ July 26, 1788
North Carolina _________________________________ November 21, 1789
Rhode Island ___________________________________ May 29, 1790




[B][U]The Preamble[/U][/B]

The Preamble does not confer power, but its first words, “We the People of the United States,” describe the source of the powers conferred by the rest of the Constitution and have been used by the advocates of a strong union arguing against the proponents of states' rights. The Preamble also states the purpose of the document. One of the statements of purpose, “to … promote the general welfare,” has been of great importance in the 20th cent. in upholding social legislation, for which no warrant could be found in the enumerated powers of Congress.






[B][U]The Articles[/U][/B]

The first three articles set up the threefold separation of powers, said to have been modeled on Montesquieu's study, which on this point was incorrect, of the British government. In actuality this separation has been weakened by the granting of greater powers to the President and his administrative agencies, which now have legislative and judicial as well as executive functions.





[B]1: Congress[/B]

Article 1 provides for the establishment of the bicameral Congress composed of the Senate and the House of Representatives. The various powers of the Congress and the respective houses, together with their methods of election, are enumerated in the article. The Seventeenth Amendment, passed in 1916, instituted the direct popular election of Senators and removed the power of their election from the state legislatures as had originally been provided in Article 1.

Section 4 of Article 1 gives the states power over the conduct of federal elections but permits the Congress to alter such regulations at any time. In 1842 the Congress imposed the district system on the United States. In 1962 the Supreme Court dealt with proper apportionment of election districts and in its decision in Baker v. Carr allowed voters to go into a federal court to force equitable representation in a state legislature. This decision was, however, based on the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Later, the court ruled (1964) that state legislative apportionment must reflect the one-person one-vote principle.

As a legislative body Congress has certain inherent powers. Among these are the power to investigate pursuant to legislative needs. Congressional investigations have led to a great many court decisions concerning the right of a witness before a Congressional committee to refuse to testify even when granted immunity from prosecution.

Section 8 of Article 1 lists the enumerated powers of the Congress. The clause of this section, the “commerce clause,” which grants the Congress the right to “regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several States,” has, in the 20th cent., been used as a strong argument for the expansion of government power. Since the historic case of Gibbons v. Ogden (1824), the commerce clause has been the battleground over which much of the struggle for and against increased federal regulation of private enterprise has been fought. Until the late 1930s Congress exercised its powers under the clause solely with reference to transportation. But after a series of dramatic reversals by the Supreme Court, Congress began to enter areas that had previously been controlled only by the states. The commerce clause is now the source of important peacetime powers of the national government and an important basis for the judicial review of state actions.

Besides its enumerated and inherent powers, the Congress has implied powers under Article 1 “to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution” the enumerated or expressed powers. Sections 9 and 10 of Article 1 contain guarantees of the writ of habeas corpus, prohibit bills of attainder and ex post facto laws, and also improve certain limitations on state power.







[B]2: The Executive Branch[/B]

Article 2 creates the executive branch of government headed by the President, elected, along with the Vice President, for a term of four years. The Twenty-second Amendment (1951) provides that no person may be elected President more than twice. The Twenty-third Amendment (1961) permits District of Columbia residents to vote in presidential elections. Since the adoption of the Constitution there have been two conflicting views of Article 2. The first is that the powers of the President are limited to those enumerated in the article. The opposite view is that the President is given executive power not limited by the provisions of the rest of the article. Every President has had to make the choice of interpretations for himself.







[B]3: The Judiciary[/B]

Article 3 provides for a judiciary and defines treason. Besides its enumerated powers, the judiciary has the inherent authority to interpret laws and the Constitution with an authority that must be deferred to. Article 3 also guarantees trial by jury in criminal cases and lays the basis for federal jurisdiction. The Eleventh Amendment (1798), which prohibits suits against any state by citizens of another state or foreigners (see sovereignty), was passed in reaction to the Supreme Court's accepting jurisdiction of a suit against a state by a citizen of another state.



[B]4: The States[/B]

Article 4 deals with the relations of the states (see conflict of laws), providing that “Full faith and credit shall be given in each State to the public acts, records, and judicial proceedings of every other State.” Section 2 prohibits any state from discriminating against citizens of other states, or in favor of its own. It also provides for the extradition of criminals. The article guarantees a republican form of government to every state and provides for the admission of new states as well as the government of territories.


[B]5: Amending the Constitution[/B]

Article 5 provides for amending the Constitution. The supremacy of the federal Constitution and of federal law over those of the states is the heart of the federal system and is established by Article 6. Article 6 also provides for an oath of office for members of the three branches of the federal government and the states and specifically forbids any religious qualification for office. Article 7 declares that the Constitution should go into force when ratified by nine states.






[B][U]The Amendments[/U][/B]

The Constitution has undergone gradual alteration with the growth of the country. Some of the 26 amendments were brought on by Supreme Court decisions. However, the first 10 amendments, which constitute the Bill of Rights, were added within two years of the signing of the federal Constitution in order to ensure sufficient guarantees of individual liberties. The Bill of Rights applied only to the federal government. But since the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment (1868), many of the guarantees contained in the Bill of Rights have been extended to the states through the “due process” clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.




[B]The Bill of Rights[/B]

The First Amendment guarantees the freedom of worship, of speech, of the press, of assembly, and of petition to the government for redress of grievances. This amendment has been the center of controversy in recent years in the areas of free speech and religion. The Supreme Court has held that freedom of speech does not include the right to refuse to testify before a Congressional investigating committee and that most organized prayer in the public schools violates the First Amendment.

The right to bear arms openly—adopted with reference to state militias—is guaranteed by the Second Amendment, while freedom from quartering soldiers in a house without the owner's consent is guaranteed by the Third Amendment. The Fourth Amendment protects people against unreasonable search and seizure, a safeguard only recently extended to the states.

The Fifth Amendment provides that no person shall be held for “a capital or otherwise infamous crime” without indictment, be twice put in “jeopardy of life or limb” for the same offense, be compelled to testify against himself, or “be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.” The privilege against self-incrimination has been the center of a great deal of controversy as a result of the growth of Congressional investigations. The phrase “due process of law,” which appears in the Fifth Amendment, is also included in the Fourteenth Amendment. As a result there has been much debate as to whether both amendments guarantee the same rights. Those in favor of what is termed fixed due process claim that all the safeguards applied against the federal government should be also applied against the states through the Fourteenth Amendment. The supporters of the concept of flexible due process are only willing to impose those guarantees on the states that “are implicit in the concept of ordered liberty.”

The Sixth Amendment guarantees the right of speedy and public trial by an impartial jury in all criminal proceedings, while the Seventh Amendment guarantees the right of trial by jury in almost all common-law suits. Excessive bail, fines and “cruel and unusual” punishment are prohibited by the Eighth Amendment. The Ninth Amendment states that “The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”

By the Tenth Amendment “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” Powers reserved to the states are often termed “residual powers.” This amendment, like the commerce clause, has been a battleground in the struggle over states' rights and federal supremacy.





[B]The Other Amendments[/B]

Of the succeeding sixteen amendments, the Eleventh, Seventeenth, Twenty-second and Twenty-third Amendments have already been discussed under Articles 1, 2, and 3. The Twelfth (1804) revised the method of electing President and Vice President. The Thirteenth (1865), Fourteenth (1868), and Fifteenth (1870) are the Civil War and Reconstruction amendments; they abolish slavery, while guaranteeing civil rights and suffrage to U.S. citizens, including former slaves. The Sixteenth Amendment (1913) authorizes the income tax. Prohibition was established by the Eighteenth Amendment (1919) and repealed by the Twenty-first (1933). The Nineteenth (1920) grants woman suffrage. The Twentieth (1933) abolishes the so-called lame-duck Congress and alters the date of the presidential inauguration. The poll tax and any other tax made a requirement for voting in primaries and elections for federal office was outlawed by the Twenty-fourth Amendment (1964). The Twenty-fifth (1967) establishes the procedure for filling the office of Vice President between elections and for governing in the event of presidential disability. The Twenty-sixth Amendment (1971) lowers the voting age in all elections to 18. The Twenty-seventh Amendment (1992), first proposed in 1789, establishes procedures for Congressional pay increases.