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The United States Declaration of Independence, formally The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, is the pronouncement adopted by the Second Continental Congress meeting in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on July 4, 1776 -
E pluribus unum – Latin for "Out of many, one" – is a traditional motto of the United States, appearing on the Great Seal -
The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the United States of America. It superseded the Articles of Confederation, the nation's first constitution. Originally comprising seven articles, it delineates the national frame of government. -
The United States Bill of Rights comprises the first ten amendments to the United States Constitution. -
In the politics of representative democracies, a political machine is a party organization that recruits its members by the use of tangible incentives—money, political jobs—and that is characterized by a high degree of leadership control over member activity. (fixed elections in New York as an example, Boss Tweed was a political machine -
Tocqueville observed how democracy created a strong sense of individualism and that Americans differed from Europeans in that there were no hierarchical societal classes. Women and children were more independent, and the freedom of religion allowed for more religious denominations. As a result of his observations, Tocqueville determined five values crucial to America’s success as a constitutional republic: liberty, egalitarianism, individualism, populism, and laissez-faire. -
Sanford Ballard Dole was a lawyer and jurist from the Hawaiian Islands. He lived through the periods when Hawaii was a kingdom, protectorate, republic, and territory. A descendant of the American missionary community to Hawaii, Dole advocated the westernization of Hawaiian government and culture. -
General of the Armies John Joseph Pershing GCB, nicknamed "Black Jack", was a senior United States Army officer. He served most famously as the commander of the American Expeditionary Forces on the Western Front during World War I, from 1917 to 1918. -
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. -
Alfred Thayer Mahan was a United States naval officer and historian, whom John Keegan called "the most important American strategist of the nineteenth century." -
the right of a government or its agent to expropriate private property for public use, with payment of compensation. -
George Smith Patton Jr. was a general in the United States Army who commanded the Seventh United States Army in the Mediterranean theater of World War II, and the Third United States Army in France and Germany after the Allied invasion of Normandy in June 1944. -
The Klondike Gold Rush was a migration by an estimated 100,000 prospectors to the Klondike region of Yukon, in north-western Canada, between 1896 and 1899. -
Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower was an American military officer and statesman who served as the 34th president of the United States from 1953 to 1961. During World War II, he served as Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force in Europe, and achieved the five-star rank of General of the Army. -
The Homestead strike, also known as the Homestead steel strike, Homestead massacre, or Battle of Homestead was an industrial lockout and strike which began on July 1, 1892, culminating in a battle between strikers and private security agents on July 6, 1892. The battle was a pivotal event in U.S. labor history. -
Omar Nelson Bradley was a senior officer of the United States Army during and after World War II, rising to the rank of General of the Army. Bradley was the first chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and oversaw the U.S. military's policy-making in the Korean War. -
The Spanish–American War was a period of armed conflict between Spain and the United States. Hostilities began in the aftermath of the internal explosion of USS Maine in Havana Harbor in Cuba, leading to United States intervention in the Cuban War of Independence. -
The muckrakers were reform-minded journalists, writers, and photographers in the Progressive Era in the United States who exposed corruption and wrongdoing in established institutions, often through sensationalist publications. -
The Sixteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution allows Congress to levy an income tax without apportioning it among the states on the basis of population. It was passed by Congress in 1909 in response to the 1895 Supreme Court case of Pollock v. Farmers' Loan & Trust Co. -
The National Park Service is an agency of the United States government that manages all national parks, most national monuments, and other natural, historical, and recreational properties with various title designations. -
The United States later declared war on German ally Austria-Hungary on December 7, 1917. Germany's resumption of submarine attacks on passenger and merchant ships in 1917 became the primary motivation behind Wilson's decision to lead the United States into World War I.
M.A.I.N. (Militarize, Alliances, Imperialism, Nationalism) -
The Eighteenth Amendment (Amendment XVIII) of the United States Constitution established the prohibition of alcohol in the United States. The amendment was proposed by Congress on December 18, 1917, and was ratified by the requisite number of states on January 16, 1919. -
The settlement movement was a reformist social movement that began in the 1880s and peaked around the 1920s in England and the United States. Its goal was to bring the rich and the poor of society together in both physical proximity and social interconnectedness. -
Convicted of accepting bribes from the oil companies, Fall became the first presidential cabinet member to go to prison; no one was convicted of paying the bribes. Before the Watergate scandal, Teapot Dome was regarded as the "greatest and most sensational scandal in the history of American politics" -
The Harlem Renaissance was an intellectual and cultural revival of African American music, dance, art, fashion, literature, theater, politics and scholarship centered in Harlem, Manhattan, New York City, spanning the 1920s and 1930s -
The Immigration Act of 1924 limited the number of immigrants allowed entry into the United States through a national origins quota. The quota provided immigration visas to two percent of the total number of people of each nationality in the United States as of the 1890 national census. -
On June 2, 1924, Congress enacted the Indian Citizenship Act, which granted citizenship to all Native Americans born in the U.S. The right to vote, however, was governed by state law; until 1957, some states barred Native Americans from voting -
The Dust Bowl was the name given to the drought-stricken Southern Plains region of the United States, which suffered severe dust storms during a dry period in the 1930s. As high winds and choking dust swept the region from Texas to Nebraska, people and livestock were killed and crops failed across the entire region. -
The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was a voluntary government work relief program that ran from 1933 to 1942 in the United States for unemployed, unmarried men ages 18–25 and eventually expanded to ages 17–28. Robert Fechner was the first director of this agency, succeeded by James McEntee following Fechner's death. -
This act of May 18, 1933, created the Tennessee Valley Authority to oversee the construction of dams to control flooding, improve navigation, and create cheap electric power in the Tennessee Valley basin. -
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation is one of two agencies that supply deposit insurance to depositors in American depository institutions, the other being the National Credit Union Administration, which regulates and insures credit unions. -
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is an independent agency of the United States federal government, created in the aftermath of the Wall Street Crash of 1929. The primary purpose of the SEC is to enforce the law against market manipulation. -
The Works Progress Administration (WPA) was an ambitious employment and infrastructure program created by President Roosevelt in 1935, during the bleakest years of the Great Depression. Over its eight years of existence, the WPA put roughly 8.5 million Americans to work. -
The aim of invading Ethiopia was to boost Italian national prestige, which was wounded by Ethiopia's defeat of Italian forces at the Battle of Adowa in the nineteenth century (1896), which saved Ethiopia from Italian colonisation. -
The United States Social Security Administration is an independent agency of the U.S. federal government that administers Social Security, a social insurance program consisting of retirement, disability and survivor benefits. -
Marine Corps leadership selected 29 Navajo men, the Navajo Code Talkers, who created a code based on the complex, unwritten Navajo language. The code primarily used word association by assigning a Navajo word to key phrases and military tactics. -
An executive order called the Mexican Farm Labor Program established the Bracero Program in 1942. This series of diplomatic accords between Mexico and the United States permitted millions of Mexican men to work legally in the United States on short-term labor contracts. -
Korematsu v. United States, 323 U.S. 214, was a landmark decision by the Supreme Court of the United States to uphold the exclusion of Japanese Americans from the West Coast Military Area during World War II. -
The Nuremberg trials were held by the Allies against representatives of the defeated Nazi Germany for plotting and carrying out invasions of other countries and other crimes in World War II. -
"In God We Trust" is the official motto of the United States and of the U.S. state of Florida. It was adopted by the U.S. Congress in 1956, replacing E pluribus unum, which had been the de facto motto since the initial 1776 design of the Great Seal of the United States.