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Incorporation of territories
In 1800, they built a federal capital called Washington. In 1803, to buy Napoleon the immense territory of Louisiana and Spain, Florida. After violent discussions with the British, they had recognized their ownership of Oregon, which controlled access to the Pacific Ocean. -
Population growth
The United States benefited throughout the century from massive emigration: for twenty years, twenty million Europeans crossed the Atlantic to settle there. The massive displacements of the population were already possible. Many of those who came came from the old English homeland. Immigration changed the nature of the population, until then mainly constituted by English Protestants and black slaves. -
Civil War
The southern states carried out the secession and formed a confederation of twelve southern states under the presidency of Jefferson Davis. Contrary to what is said, the rejection of slavery was not the main reason for the war. The central question posed by the Confederates was that of the right of secession, since the American Constitution had not foreseen that case. Abraham Lincoln was assassinated by a Southerist, but the Union had triumphed. The Civil War was the first modern war. -
Opposition of two production modes
After the election of Lincoln, the slave states of the south left the Union and formed their own federation. The economy of the southern states depended on the plantations of the pseudo-aristocratic landlords, and their exploitation was much more profitable if there were slaves. The north, on the other hand, was industrial, and industry presupposed mobility and freedom. -
Ethnic minorities
Here are the roots of the two current parties, although their reciprocal electorates have changed. Only thanks to the Civil War, Napoleon III could risk his Mexican adventure. In the United States, the black problem is in the process of being solved. That minority is a poorer population than that of European or Asian origin; at least it is numerous and is on the way to social ascension. Another minority was almost annihilated: the redskins. -
Decline of abolitionist ideas after the war
The society had come through the civil war, For many the abolitionists were the villains who had been responsible for the war because they had led the nation to self-destruction. For this, the price of the reform was the elimination of the question of race and of the situation of the blacks of the table of dissensions. With the Supreme Court, state laws were established that excluded the African-American population from political life and discriminated against it socially. -
Economic expansion
After the Civil War, the United States resumed expansion. In 1870, he bought Alaska from the Tsar Empire. In 1898, the United States declared war on a European power for the second time. The Americans did not have to struggle to win that monarchy, then decadent. At the same time there was a formidable industrial expansion, facilitated by the arrival of immigrants and capital.
The first continental railway, the Grand Pacific Railway, linked New york with San Francisco -
Isolationist trend
The United States had already become a very powerful country. However, he intervened little in the old world. When it is said that the American is isolationist, it is not well known how accurate this is. If the outside world were to disappear, America would not flinch. This State-continent is sufficient for itself. it has a population whose ancestors, all of them, for one reason or another, fled the old continent.
