Chester A. Arthur
1881-85
Grover Cleveland
1885-89
Thomas A. Hendricks
1885*
Benjamin Harrison
1889-93
Levi Parsons Morton
1889-93
Grover Cleveland
1893-97
Adlai E. Stevenson
1893-97
William McKinley
1897-1901*
Garret A. Hobart
1897-99*
Theodore Roosevelt
1901
Theodore Roosevelt
1901-9
Charles Warren Fairbanks
1905-9
William Howard Taft
1909-13
James Schoolcraft Sherman
1909-12*
Woodrow Wilson
1913-21
Thomas R. Marshall
1913-21
Warren G. Harding
1921-23*
Calvin Coolidge
1921-23
Calvin Coolidge
1923-29
Charles G. Dawes
1925-29
Herbert Hoover
1929-33
Charles Curtis
1929-33
Franklin D. Roosevelt
1933-45*
John Nance Garner
1933-41
Henry A. Wallace
1941-45
Harry S. Truman
1945
Harry S. Truman
1945-53
Alben W. Barkley
1949-53
Dwight D. Eisenhower
1953-61
Richard M. Nixon
1953-61
John F. Kennedy
1961-63*
Lyndon B. Johnson
1961-63
Lyndon B. Johnson
1963-69
Hubert H. Humphrey
1965-69
Richard M. Nixon
1969-74**
Spiro T. Agnew
1969-73**
Gerald R. Ford
1973-74
Gerald R. Ford
1974-77
Nelson A. Rockefeller
1974-77
Jimmy Carter
1977-81
Walter F. Mondale
1977-81
Ronald Reagan
1981-89
George Bush
1981-89
George Bush
1989-93
Dan Quayle
1989-93
William J. Clinton
1993-2001
Albert Gore
1993-2001
George W. Bush
2001-
Richard B. Cheney
2001-
*Died in office. ‘‘Resigned from office.
highest point is Alaska’s Mount McKinley; within the conterminous states it is Mount Whitney, Calif. Chief rivers are the Mississippi system, the Colorado, the Columbia, and the Rio Grande. The Great Lakes, the Great Salt Lake, Iliamna Lake, and Lake Okeechobee are the largest lakes. The U.S. is among the world’s leading producers of several minerals, includ¬ ing copper, silver, zinc, gold, coal, petroleum, and natural gas; it is the chief exporter of food. Its manufactures include iron and steel, chemicals, electronic equipment, and textiles. Other important industries are tourism, dairying, livestock raising, fishing, and lumbering. The U.S. is a federal republic with two legislative houses; its head of state and government is the president.
The territory was originally inhabited for several thousand years by numerous American Indian peoples who had probably emigrated from Asia. European exploration and settlement from the 16th century began displacement of the Indians. The first permanent European settlement, by the Spanish, was at Saint Augustine, Fla., in 1565. The English settled
© 2006 Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.
United States ► United States Marine Corps I 1969
Jamestown, Va. (1607); Plymouth, Mass. (1620); Maryland (1634); and Pennsylvania (1681). The English took New York, New Jersey, and Dela¬ ware from the Dutch in 1664, a year after English noblemen had begun to colonize the Carolinas. The British defeat of the French in 1763 (see French and Indian War) assured Britain political control over its 13 colo¬ nies. Political unrest caused by British colonial policy culminated in the American Revolution (1775-83) and the Declaration of Independence (1776). The U.S. was first organized under the Articles of Confederation (1781), then finally under the Constitution (1787) as a federal republic. Boundaries extended west to the Mississippi River, excluding Spanish Florida. Land acquired from France by the Louisiana Purchase (1803) nearly doubled the country’s territory. The U.S. fought the War of 1812 against the British and acquired Florida from Spain in 1819. In 1830 it legalized the removal of American Indians to lands west of the Missis¬ sippi River. Settlement expanded into the Far West in the mid-19th cen¬ tury, especially after the discovery of gold in California in 1848 (see gold rush). Victory in the Mexican War (1846^48) brought the territory of seven more future states (including California and Texas) into U.S. hands. The northwestern boundary was established by treaty with Britain in 1846. The U.S. acquired southern Arizona by the Gadsden Purchase (1853). It suffered disunity during the conflict between the slavery-based plantation economy in the South and the industrial and agricultural economy in the North, culminating in the American Civil War and the abolition of slavery under the 13th Amendment. After Reconstruction (1865-77) the U.S. experienced rapid growth, urbanization, industrial development, and European immigration. In 1887 it authorized allotment of American Indian reservation land to individual tribesmen, resulting in widespread loss of land to whites. Victory in the Spanish-American War brought the U.S. the overseas territories of the Philippines, Guam, and Puerto Rico. By the end of the 19th century, it had further developed foreign trade and acquired other outlying territories, including Alaska, Midway Island, the Hawaiian Islands, Wake Island, American Samoa, and the Panama Canal Zone.
The U.S. participated in World War I in 1917-18. It granted suffrage to women in 1920 and citizenship to American Indians in 1924. The stock market crash of 1929 led to the Great Depression, which New Deal leg¬ islation combated by increasing the federal government’s role in the economy. The U.S. entered World War II after the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor (Dec. 7, 1941). The explosion by the U.S. of an atomic bomb on Hiroshima (Aug. 6, 1945) and another on Nagasaki (Aug. 9, 1945), Japan, brought about Japan’s surrender. Thereafter the U.S. was the mili¬ tary and economic leader of the Western world. In the first decade after the war, it aided the reconstruction of Europe and Japan and became embroiled in a rivalry with the Soviet Union known as the Cold War. It participated in the Korean War from 1950 to 1953. In 1952 it granted autonomous commonwealth status to Puerto Rico. Racial segregation in schools was declared unconstitutional in 1954. Alaska and Hawaii were made states in 1959. In 1964 Congress passed the Civil Rights Act and authorized U.S. entry into the Vietnam War. The mid- to late 1960s were marked by widespread civil disorder, including race riots and antiwar demonstrations. The U.S. accomplished the first manned lunar landing in 1969. All U.S. troops were withdrawn from Vietnam in 1973. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the U.S. assumed the status of sole world superpower. The U.S. led a coalition of forces against Iraq in the First Persian Gulf War (1991). Administration of the Panama Canal was turned over to Panama in 1999. After the September 11 attacks on the U.S. in 2001 destroyed the World Trade Center and part of the Pentagon, the U.S. attacked Afghanistan’s Taliban government for harbouring and refusing to extradite the mastermind of the terrorism, Osama bin Laden. In 2003 the U.S. attacked Iraq, with British support, and overthrew the gov¬ ernment of Saddam Hussein (see Second Persian Gulf War). See map on following pages.
United States, Bank of the See Bank of the U.S.
United States Air Force (USAF) Major component of the U.S. mili¬ tary organization, with primary responsibility for air warfare, air defense, and military space research. It also provides air services in coordination with the other military branches. U.S. military activities in the air began with army use of balloons for reconnaissance during the Civil War and the Spanish-American War; in 1907 the Aeronautical Division of the Sig¬ nal Corps was created. In 1920 the Army Reorganization Act created the Air Service (after 1926, Air Corps) as a unit of the Army; in 1941 it became the Army Air Forces. In 1947 the independent U.S. Air Force was created and became part of the newly created Department of Defense in