United States
The United States of America (USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S.) or simply America, is a country primarily located in North America and consisting of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territories, and nine Minor Outlying Islands.[i] It includes 326 Indian reservations. It is the world's third-largest country by both land and total area.[c] It shares land borders with Canada to its north and with Mexico to its south and has maritime borders with the Bahamas, Cuba, Russia, and other nations.[j] With a population of over 333 million,[k] it is the most populous country in the Americas and the third-most populous in the world. The national capital of the United States is Washington, D.C., and its most populous city and principal financial center is New York City.
Indigenous peoples have inhabited the Americas for thousands of years. Beginning in 1607, British colonization led to the establishment of the Thirteen Colonies in what is now the Eastern United States. They clashed with the British Crown over taxation and political representation, which led to the American Revolution and the ensuing Revolutionary War. The United States declared independence on July 4, 1776, becoming the first nation-state founded on Enlightenment principles of unalienable natural rights, consent of the governed, and liberal democracy. The country began expanding across North America, spanning the continent by 1848. Sectional division over slavery led to the secession of the Confederate States of America, which fought the remaining states of the Union during the American Civil War (1861–1865). With the Union's victory and preservation, slavery was abolished nationally. However, racial discrimination and inequality continued into subsequent centuries. By 1900, the United States had established itself as a great power, becoming the world's largest economy. After Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, the U.S. entered World War II on the side of the Allies. The aftermath of the war left the United States and the Soviet Union as the world's two superpowers and led to the Cold War, during which both countries engaged in a struggle for ideological dominance and international influence but avoided direct military conflict. During the Space Race, the United States landed the first humans on the Moon, notably with the Apollo 11 mission in 1969. Following the Soviet Union's collapse and the end of the Cold War, the United States has emerged as the world's sole superpower since the 1990s.
The United States government is a federal presidential constitutional republic and liberal democracy with three separate branches of government: executive, legislative, and judicial. It has a bicameral national legislature composed of the House of Representatives, a lower house based on population; and the Senate, an upper house based on equal representation for each state. Many policy issues are decentralized at a state or local level, with widely differing laws by jurisdiction which may not conflict with the Constitution. The U.S. ranks very highly in international measures of quality of life, income and wealth, economic competitiveness, human rights, innovation, and education; it has low levels of perceived corruption. It has higher levels of incarceration and inequality than most other liberal democracies and is the only liberal democracy without universal healthcare. As a melting pot of cultures and ethnicities, the U.S. has been extensively shaped by the world's largest immigrant population.
Highly developed, the U.S. has by far the largest amount of wealth of any country. The American economy accounts for approximately a quarter of global GDP and is the world's largest by nominal GDP. The U.S. is the world's largest importer and second-largest exporter, as well as the largest consumer market. It is a founding member of the United Nations, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the Organization of American States, NATO and WHO, and is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. It is the world's foremost political, cultural, economic, military, and scientific power.
Etymology
editThe first documentary evidence of the phrase "United States of America" dates back to a letter from January 2, 1776, written by Stephen Moylan, a Continental Army aide to General George Washington, to Joseph Reed, Washington's aide-de-camp. Moylan expressed his desire to go "with full and ample powers from the United States of America to Spain" to seek assistance in the Revolutionary War effort. The first known publication of the phrase "United States of America" was in an anonymous essay in The Virginia Gazette newspaper in Williamsburg, on April 6, 1776.
By June 1776, the name "United States of America" appeared in drafts of the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union, authored by John Dickinson, a Founding Father from the Province of Pennsylvania, and in the Declaration of Independence, written primarily by Thomas Jefferson and adopted by the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia, on July 4, 1776.
History
editBeginnings (before 1630)
editThe first inhabitants of North America migrated from Siberia, crossing the Bering land bridge and arriving in the present-day United States at least 12,000 years ago; some evidence suggests an even earlier date of arrival. The Clovis culture, which appeared around 11,000BC, is believed to represent the first wave of human settlement in the Americas. This was likely the first of three major waves of migration into North America; later waves brought the ancestors of present-day Athabaskans, Aleuts, and Eskimos.
Over time, indigenous cultures in North America grew increasingly sophisticated, and some, such as the pre-Columbian Mississippian culture in the southeast, developed advanced agriculture, architecture, and complex societies. The city-state of Cahokia was the largest, most complex pre-Columbian archaeological site in present-day United States. In the Four Corners region in present-day Southwestern United States, the culture of Ancestral Puebloans developed over centuries of agricultural experimentation. The Algonquian, consisting of peoples who speak Algonquian languages, were one of the most populous and widespread North American indigenous peoples. These people were historically prominent along the Atlantic Coast and in the Saint Lawrence River and Great Lakes regions. Before European immigrants made contact, most of the Algonquian relied on hunting and fishing, and many supplemented their diet by cultivating corn, beans, and squash, known as the "Three Sisters". By European contact in the 17th century, they practiced slash and burn agriculture, using controlled fire to extend farmlands' productivity and manage land. The Ojibwe cultivated wild rice. The Iroquois confederation Haudenosaunee, located in the southern Great Lakes region, was established between the 12th and 15th centuries.
Estimating the native population of North America before the arrival of European immigrants is difficult. Estimates range from over 500,000 to nearly 10 million living near the Gulf of Mexico, Atlantic coast, and Mississippi Valley.
The Italian explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano, sent by France to the New World in 1525, encountered Native American inhabitants in the present-day New York Bay region. The Spanish Empire set up their first settlements in Florida and New Mexico, including in Saint Augustine (1565), which is often considered the nation's oldest city, and Santa Fe (1598). The French established their own settlements along the Mississippi River and Gulf of Mexico, including in New Orleans (1718) and Mobile (1702).
The continent's first elected legislative assembly, the House of Burgesses in Virginia, was founded in 1619. In 1636, Harvard College in Cambridge, Massachusetts Bay Colony was founded as the first institution of higher education. The Mayflower Compact and the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut established precedents for representative self-government and constitutionalism that would develop throughout the American colonies. The native population of America declined after European arrival, primarily as a result of infectious diseases such as smallpox and measles. By the mid-1670s, the British defeated and seized the territory of Dutch settlers in New Netherland, in the mid-Atlantic region. [citation needed]
During the 17th century European colonization many European settlers experienced food shortages, disease, and conflicts with Native Americans, particularly in King Philip's War. In addition to conflicts with European settlers, Native American polities also warred with each other. But in many cases, the natives and settlers came to develop a mutual dependency. Settlers traded for food and animal pelts, and Native Americans traded for guns, tools, and other European goods. Native Americans taught many settlers to cultivate corn, beans, and other foodstuffs. European missionaries and others felt it was important to "civilize" the Native Americans and urged them to adopt European agricultural practices and lifestyles. With the increased European colonization of North America, however, Native Americans were often displaced or killed during conflicts.
European settlers also began trafficking African slaves into the colonial United States via the transatlantic slave trade. By the turn of the 18th century, slavery supplanted indentured servitude as the main source of agricultural labor for the cash crops in the Southern Colonies. Colonial society was divided over the religious and moral implications of slavery, and several colonies passed acts for or against it as well as laws designed to keep Blacks subservient.
In what was then considered British America, the Thirteen Colonies were administered as overseas dependencies by the British. All colonies had local governments with elections open to white male property owners except Jews and, in some areas, Catholics. With very high birth rates, low death rates, and steadily growing settlements, the colonial population grew rapidly, eclipsing Native American populations. The Christian revivalist movement of the 1730s and 1740s, known as the Great Awakening, fueled colonial interest in both religion and religious liberty. Excluding the Native Americans, the Thirteen Colonies had a population of over 2.1 million in 1770, roughly a third the size of Great Britain. By the 1770s, despite continuing new immigrant arrivals from Britain and other European regions, the natural increase of the population was such that only a small minority of Americans had been born overseas. The colonies' distance from Britain had allowed for the development of self-governance in the colonies, but it encountered periodic efforts by British monarchs to reassert royal authority.
Revolution and the new nation (1763–1789)
editAfter the British victory in the French and Indian War that was won largely through the support in men and materiel from the colonies, the British began to assert greater control in local colonial affairs, fomenting colonial political resistance. In 1774, to demonstrate colonial dissatisfaction with the lack of representation in the British government that extracted taxes from them, the First Continental Congress met in Philadelphia and passed the Continental Association, which mandated a colonies-wide boycott of British goods. The British attempted to disarm the Americans, resulting in the Battles of Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775, igniting the American Revolutionary War. The then United Colonies responded by again convening in Philadelphia as the Second Continental Congress where, in June 1775, they appointed George Washington as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army, which was initially composed of various American patriot militias resisting the British Army. In June 1776, the Second Continental Congress charged a committee with writing a Declaration of Independence, largely drafted by Thomas Jefferson.[26]
On July 4, 1776, the Second Continental Congress with alterations unanimously adopted and issued the Declaration of Independence, which famously stated: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." The adoption of the Declaration of Independence is celebrated annually on July 4 in the United States as Independence Day.[27] In 1777, the American victory at the Battle of Saratoga resulted in the capture of a British army, and led to France and their ally Spain joining in the war against them. After the surrender of a second British Army at the siege of Yorktown in 1781, Britain signed a peace treaty. American sovereignty gained international recognition, and the new nation took possession of substantial territory east of the Mississippi River, from what is present-day Canada in the north to Florida in the south.[28] Tensions with Britain remained, leading to the War of 1812, which was fought to a draw.[29]
In 1781, the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union established a decentralized government that operated until 1789.[27] Considered one of the most important legislative acts of the Confederation Congress,[30] Northwest Ordinance (1787) established the precedent by which the national government would be sovereign and expand westward with the admission of new states, rather than with the expansion of existing states and their established sovereignty under the Articles. The prohibition of slavery in the territory had the practical effect of establishing the Ohio River as the geographic divide between slave states and free states from the Appalachian Mountains to the Mississippi River, an extension of the Mason–Dixon line. It also helped set the stage for later federal political conflicts over slavery during the 19th century until the American Civil War.[citation needed]
As it became increasingly apparent that the Confederation was insufficient to govern the new country, nationalists advocated for and led the Philadelphia Convention of 1787, where the United States Constitution was authored and then ratified in state conventions in 1788. The U.S. Constitution is the oldest and longest-standing written and codified national constitution in force today.[31] Going into effect in 1789, it reorganized the government into a federation administered by three branches (executive, judicial, and legislative), on the principle of creating salutary checks and balances. George Washington, who led the Continental Army to victory in the Revolutionary War and then willingly relinquished power, was elected the new nation's first President under the new constitution. The Bill of Rights was adopted in 1791, originally forbidding only federal restriction of personal freedoms and guaranteeing a range of legal protections,[32] portions of the Bill of Rights are now applied to state and local governments by virtue of both state and federal court decisions.[33]
Expansion (1789–1860)
edit]
During the colonial period, slavery was legal in the American colonies, and "challenges to its moral legitimacy were rare". However, during the American Revolution, many began to question the practice.Template:Sfnm Regional divisions over slavery grew in the ensuing decades, with prominent Founding Fathers in the northern United States advocating for the abolition of slavery. By the 1810s, slavery had been abolished in all Northern states.Template:Sfnm Despite the federal government outlawing American participation in the Atlantic slave trade in 1807, the exponential increase in profits for southern elites resulting from the drastic reduction of cotton production costs after the invention of the cotton gin, spurred entrenchment and support of slavery in the southern United States.[34][35][36]
In the late 18th century, American settlers began to expand further westward, some of them with a sense of manifest destiny.[37]The Louisiana Purchase (1803) nearly doubled the acreage of the United States, effectively ending French colonial interest in North America and their opposition to American westward expansion.[38] Spain ceded Florida and other Gulf Coast territory in 1819,[39] The Second Great Awakening, especially in the period 1800–1840, converted millions to evangelical Protestantism. In the North, it energized multiple social reform movements, including abolitionism;[40] in the South, Methodists and Baptists proselytized among slave populations.[41] In 1820, the Missouri Compromise admitted Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state, and instituted a policy of prohibiting slavery in the remaining Louisiana Purchase lands north of the 36°30′ parallel. The outcome de facto sectionalized the country into two factions: free states, which forbade slavery; and slave states, which protected the institution; it was controversial and widely seen as dividing the country along sectarian lines.[42] [43]
As Americans expanded further into land inhabited by Native Americans, the federal government often applied policies of Indian removal or assimilation.[44][45] The displacement prompted a long series of American Indian Wars west of the Mississippi River[46] and eventually conflict with Mexico. Most of these conflicts ended with the cession of Native American territory and their confinement to Indian reservations.[47] The Republic of Texas was annexed in 1845 during a period of expansionism,[43] and the 1846 Oregon Treaty with Britain led to U.S. control of the present-day American Northwest.[48] Victory in the Mexican–American War resulted in the 1848 Mexican Cession of California and much of the present-day American Southwest, resulting in the U.S. spanning the continent from the Atlantic to the Pacific oceans.[37][49]
Civil War and Reconstruction (1860–1876)
editSectional conflict regarding African slavery[50] was the primary cause of the American Civil War.[51] With the 1860 election of Abraham Lincoln, conventions in eleven slave states in the Southern U.S. declared secession and formed the Confederate States of America, while the remaining states, known as the Union, maintained that secession was unconstitutional and illegitimate.[52] On April 12, 1861, the Confederacy initiated military conflict by bombarding Fort Sumter, a federal garrison in Charleston harbor in South Carolina. The ensuing American Civil War fought between 1861 and 1865 became the deadliest military conflict in American history. The war resulted in the deaths of approximately 620,000 soldiers from both sides and upwards of 50,000 civilians, most of them in the South.[53] In early July 1863, the Civil War began to turn in the Union's favor following the Union Army under General Ulysses S. Grant successfully splitting the Confederacy in two by capturing Vicksburg in the west, denying it any further movement along or across the Mississippi River and preventing supplies from Texas and Arkansas that might sustain the war effort from passing east, almost simultaneous with victory in the Battle of Gettysburg, where Union Army general George Meade halted Confederate Army general Robert E. Lee's invasion of the North. In April 1865, following the Union Army's victory at the Battle of Appomattox Court House, the Confederacy surrendered and soon collapsed.[54]
Reconstruction began in earnest following the defeat of the Confederates. While President Lincoln attempted to foster reconciliation between the Union and former Confederacy, his assassination on April 14, 1865 drove a wedge between North and South again. "Radical Republicans" in the federal government made it their goal to oversee the rebuilding of the South and to ensure the rights of African Americans, and the so-called Reconstruction Amendments to the Constitution guaranteed the abolishment of slavery, full citizenship to Americans of African descent, and suffrage for adult Black men. They persisted until the Compromise of 1877.[55]
To encourage additional westward settlement the Homestead Acts were several laws in the United States by which an applicant could acquire ownership of government land or the public domain, typically called a "homestead". In all, more than 160 million acres (650 thousand km2; 250 thousand sq mi) of public land, or nearly 10 percent of the total area of the United States, was given away free to 1.6 million homesteaders; most of the homesteads were west of the Mississippi River. The Southern Homestead Act of 1866 was enacted specifically to break a cycle of debt during Reconstruction. Prior to this act, blacks and impoverished whites alike were having trouble buying land or did not have the means to travel west. Sharecropping and tenant farming had become ways of life. This act attempted to solve this by selling land at low prices so marginalized Southerners could buy it. Many, however, could still not participate because the low prices remained out of reach.[56]
Development of the modern United States (1876–1914)
editInfluential Southern Whites, calling themselves "Redeemers",[57] took local control of the South after the end of Reconstruction, leading to the nadir of American race relations. From 1890 to 1910, the Redeemers established so-called Jim Crow laws, disenfranchising almost all Blacks and some impoverished Whites throughout the region. Blacks faced racial segregation nationwide and codified discrimination, especially in the South,[58] and lived under the threat of lynching and other vigilante violence.[59][60]
National infrastructure, including telegraph and transcontinental railroads, spurred economic growth and greater settlement and development of the American Old West. After the end of the American Civil War in 1865, new transcontinental railways made relocation easier for settlers, expanded internal trade, and increased conflicts with Native Americans.[61] Mainland expansion also included the purchase of Alaska from Russia in 1867.[62] In 1893, pro-American elements in Hawaii overthrew the Hawaiian monarchy and formed the Republic of Hawaii, which the U.S. annexed in 1898. Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines were ceded by Spain in the same year, by the Treaty of Paris (1898) following the Spanish–American War.[63] Puerto Ricans did not gain citizenship either through the Foraker Act (1900) or the Insular Cases (1901), but through the Jones–Shafroth Act in 1917,[64]: 60–63 allowing for the conscription of 20,000 Puerto Ricans, which began two months later.[65] American Samoa was acquired by the United States in 1900 after the end of the Second Samoan Civil War.[66] The U.S. Virgin Islands were purchased from Denmark in 1917.[67]
From 1865 through 1918 an unprecedented and diverse stream of immigrants arrived in the United States, 27.5 million in total. Of those, 24.4 million (89%) came from Europe, including from Great Britain, Ireland, Scandinavia, Germany, Italy, Russia and other parts of Central and Eastern Europe. Another 1.7 million came from Canada.[70] Most came through the port of New York City, and from 1892 specifically through the now iconic immigration station on Ellis Island there, but some ethnic groups tended to congregate in specific locations. New York and other large cities of the East Coast became home to large Jewish, Irish, and Italian populations, while many Germans and Central Europeans moved to the Midwest, obtaining jobs in industry and mining. At the same time, about one million French Canadians migrated from Quebec to New England.[71] The Great Migration, which began around 1910, resulted in millions of African Americans leaving the rural South for urban areas in the North.[72]
Rapid economic development during the late 19th and early 20th centuries fostered the rise of many prominent industrialists, largely by their formation of trusts and monoplies to prevent competition.[73] Tycoons like Cornelius Vanderbilt, John D. Rockefeller, and Andrew Carnegie led the nation's expansion in the railroad, petroleum, and steel industries. Banking became a major part of the economy, with J. P. Morgan playing a notable role. The United States also emerged as a pioneer of the automotive industry in the early 20th century.[74] These changes were accompanied by significant increases in economic inequality, slum conditions, and social unrest, which prompted the rise of populist, socialist, and anarchist movements.[75][76][77] This period eventually ended with the advent of the Progressive Era, which was characterized by significant reforms, including health and safety regulation of consumer goods, the rise of labor unions, greater antitrust measures to ensure competition among businesses, and improvements in worker conditions.[78]
World Wars period (1914–1945)
editThe United States remained neutral after the outbreak of World War I in 1914 until 1917 when it joined the war as an "associated power" alongside the Allies of World War I, helping to turn the tide against the Central Powers, and played a leading role in the Paris Peace Conference.[79] In 1920, a constitutional amendment granted nationwide women's suffrage.[80] During the 1920s and 1930s, radio for mass communication and ultimately the invention of early television transformed communications in the United States.[81] The prosperity of the Roaring Twenties ended with the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the onset of the Great Depression. After his election as president in 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt, between 1933 and 1939, introduced his New Deal social and economic policies, which included public works projects, financial reforms, and regulations which represented a shift to a new current of modern liberalism in the United States".[82] The Dust Bowl of the mid-1930s impoverished many farming communities and spurred a new wave of western migration.[83]
At first neutral during World War II, the U.S. began supplying war materiel to the Allies of World War II in March 1941. On December 7, 1941, the Empire of Japan launched a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, causing the U.S. to militarily join the Allies against the Axis powers.[84][85] The U.S. pursued a "Europe first" defense policy, and the Philippines was invaded and occupied by Japan until its liberation by U.S. led forces in 1944–1945.[citation needed] The U.S. developed the first nuclear weapons and used them againast the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945; the subsequent surrender of Japan on September 2 ended World War II.[86][87] The United States was one of the "Four Policemen" who met to plan the postwar world, alongside the United Kingdom, Soviet Union, and China.[88][89] It played a leading role in the Bretton Woods and Yalta conferences, and participated in a 1945 international conference that produced the United Nations Charter, which became active after the war's end.[90] The U.S. emerged relatively unscathed from the war, with even greater economic and military influence.[91]
Contemporary United States (1945–present)
editAfter World War II, the United States launched the Marshall Plan to aid in the reconstruction of Europe.[92] This period also marked the beginning of the Cold War, where geopolitical tensions between the U.S. and the Soviet Union driven by ideological differences and competition for international influence led the two countries to dominate the affairs of Europe,[93] with the U.S.-led capitalist Western Bloc opposing the Soviet-led communist Eastern Bloc. The U.S. engaged in regime change against governments perceived to be aligned with the Soviet Union, participated in conflicts like the Korean and Vietnam Wars, and competed in the Space Race, culminating in the first crewed Moon landing in 1969.[94][95][96][97][98] Domestically, the U.S. experienced large economic growth, urbanization, and population growth following World War II,[99] and admitted Alaska and Hawaii as states.[100]
The civil rights movement emerged, with Martin Luther King Jr. becoming a prominent leader in the early 1960s.[101] President Lyndon B. Johnson initiated the "Great Society", introducing sweeping legislation and policies to address poverty and racial inequalities, the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act most prominent among them.[102] The counterculture movement in the U.S. brought significant social changes, including the liberalization of attitudes towards what substances are acceptable for recreational drug use, sexuality[103][104] and the beginning of the modern gay rights movement as well as open defiance of the military draft and opposition to intervention in Vietnam.[105]
The presidency of Richard Nixon saw the American withdrawal from Vietnam but also the Watergate scandal, which led to his resignation and a decline in public trust of government that expanded for decades.[106] After a surge in female labor participation around the 1970s, by 1985, the majority of women aged 16 and over were employed.[107] The 1970s and early 1980s saw economic stagflation and President Ronald Reagan responded with neoliberal reforms and a rollback strategy towards the Soviet Union.[108][109][110][111] The late 1980s and early 1990s saw the collapse of the Warsaw Pact and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, which marked the end of the Cold War and solidified the U.S. as the world's sole superpower.[112][113][114][115]
In the first decades of the 21st century, the U.S. faced challenges from terrorism, with the September 11 attacks in 2001 leading to the war on terror and military interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq.[116][117] The U.S. housing bubble in 2006 culminated in the 2007–2008 financial crisis and the Great Recession, the largest economic contraction since the Great Depression.[118] Amid the financial crisis, Barack Obama, the first multiracial president, was elected in 2008.[119][120]
Political polarization increased as sociopolitical debates on cultural issues dominated political discussion.[121] The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in over 100 million confirmed cases and 1 million deaths,[122] making it the most deadly pandemic in U.S. history.[123] Attempts to overturn the 2020 U.S. presidential election culminated in the January 6, 2021 attack on the United States Capitol that attempted to prevent the peaceful transition of power to president-elect Joe Biden.[124]
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You inquire why so young a man as Mr. Jefferson was placed at the head of the committee for preparing a Declaration of Independence? I answer: It was the Frankfort advice, to place Virginia at the head of everything. Mr. Richard Henry Lee might be gone to Virginia, to his sick family, for aught I know, but that was not the reason of Mr. Jefferson's appointment. There were three committees appointed at the same time, one for the Declaration of Independence, another for preparing articles of confederation, and another for preparing a treaty to be proposed to France. Mr. Lee was chosen for the Committee of Confederation, and it was not thought convenient that the same person should be upon both. Mr. Jefferson came into Congress in June, 1775, and brought with him a reputation for literature, science, and a happy talent of composition. Writings of his were handed about, remarkable for the peculiar felicity of expression. Though a silent member in Congress, he was so prompt, frank, explicit, and decisive upon committees and in conversation - not even Samuel Adams was more so - that he soon seized upon my heart; and upon this occasion I gave him my vote, and did all in my power to procure the votes of others. I think he had one more vote than any other, and that placed him at the head of the committee. I had the next highest number, and that placed me the second. The committee met, discussed the subject, and then appointed Mr. Jefferson and me to make the draft, I suppose because we were the two first on the list. The subcommittee met. Jefferson proposed to me to make the draft. I said, 'I will not,' 'You should do it.' 'Oh! no.' 'Why will you not? You ought to do it.' 'I will not.' 'Why?' 'Reasons enough.' 'What can be your reasons?' 'Reason first, you are a Virginian, and a Virginian ought to appear at the head of this business. Reason second, I am obnoxious, suspected, and unpopular. You are very much otherwise. Reason third, you can write ten times better than I can.' 'Well,' said Jefferson, 'if you are decided, I will do as well as I can.' 'Very well. When you have drawn it up, we will have a meeting.'"
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...the so-called sexual revolution in the United States in the 1960s, marked by greatly more permissive attitudes toward sexual interest and activity than had been prevalent in earlier generations.
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- ^ Kissinger, Henry (2011). Diplomacy. Simon & Schuster. pp. 781–784. ISBN 978-1-4391-2631-8. Retrieved October 25, 2015. Mann, James (2009). The Rebellion of Ronald Reagan: A History of the End of the Cold War. Penguin. p. 432. ISBN 978-1-4406-8639-9.
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- ^ "Barack Obama: Face Of New Multiracial Movement?". NPR. November 12, 2008.
- ^ Washington, Jesse; Rugaber, Chris (July 10, 2011). "African-American Economic Gains Reversed By Great Recession". Associated Press. Archived from the original on June 16, 2013.
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- ^ Ritchie, Hannah; Mathieu, Edouard; Rodés-Guirao, Lucas; Appel, Cameron; Giattino, Charlie; Ortiz-Ospina, Esteban; Hasell, Joe; Macdonald, Bobbie; Beltekian, Diana; Dattani, Saloni; Roser, Max (2020–2022). "Coronavirus Pandemic (COVID-19)". Our World in Data. Retrieved Template:COVID-19 data/Date.
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(help) - ^ "COVID-19 surpasses 1918 flu as deadliest pandemic in U.S. history". National Geographic. September 21, 2021.
- ^ Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol (December 22, 2022). FINAL REPORT (PDF) (Report). 117th Congress Second Session. 117-663.
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