NationStates Jolt Archive


United States Factbook (Age of Revolutions)

Elite Battle Hordes
05-03-2006, 22:11
The United States of America:

Capital: Washington D.C.
Head of State: James Buchanan
Population: 31.5 million (4 million are slaves)
Geography: 2,969,640 square miles
Language: English

History:

In 1775, the American Revolutionary War against colonial rule by Britain began. In 1776, the 13 colonies declared their independence from Great Britain and formed the United States. Before the ratification of a national government, the United States existed as an informal alliance of independent individual colonies with their own laws and sovereignty, while the Second Continental Congress was given the nominal authority by the colonies to make decisions regarding the formation and funding of the Continental Army but not to levy taxes or make federal law.

The first united national political structure was a confederation proposed in 1777, and ratified in 1781 as the Articles of Confederation, making the United States the world's first constitutional federal republic. After long debate, this was supplanted in 1789 by the Constitution, which formed a more centralized federal government. For the original 13 states, the date when they accepted the Constitution is often considered as their date of admission to the union.

During the 19th century, many new states were added to the union as the nation expanded across the continent. Manifest Destiny was a philosophy that encouraged westward expansion in the United States: as the population of the Eastern states grew and as a steady increase of immigrants entered the country, settlers moved steadily westward across North America.

In the process, the U.S. displaced most Native American nations. This displacement of Native Americans continues to be a matter of contention in the U.S., with many nations attempting to assert their original claims to various lands, citing the Indian relocation acts of 1830. In some areas, Native American populations had been reduced by foreign diseases contracted through contact with European settlers, and U.S. settlers acquired those emptied lands.