us history essay outline

us history essay outline

Exploring the Evolution of American Society through Key Historical Events

1. Introduction: Setting the Stage for American History

Whose facts must be learned? What events are grasped and analyzed? Through which lens is American history examined? Published books on American history offer different touchstones in each state on the nation’s timeline. The same kaleidoscopic crystal also refracts on petitions from special groups determined to pull their presences closer to the central narrative. Certainly there is no lack of primary documents, such as governmental decrees and reports, inventories of possessions, wills, legislation, church records, newspaper speeches, diaries, sociological and historical studies, photographs, art, artifacts. Why then, is interest in diversity in the century and a half taught in public schools and colleges, in part woven by regional historians into textbooks and possibly a regional ethnic studies seminar, a matter of choice?

American history provides a window into our nation’s diverse past. It shapes the dynamic individual characteristics of the American people – how each group advances or struggles within the context of American society. This essay highlights pivotal events that not only advanced the American timeline but also markedly distinguished the ethnic composition of Americans and foretold the nation’s accelerating cultural diversity. While outlining these events, the essay draws attention to the unique contributions of various ethnic groups, broadening the scope and complexity of “typical” American history. This approach broadens awareness and appreciation of the significant contributions of people of different racial or ethnic groups, fosters a deeper respect and admiration for the monumental challenges many faced, and contributes to building a climate of understanding and appreciation for today’s cultural diversity.

2. Colonial America: The Foundation of a New Nation

Religion as a strong cultural force dominated the early years of the colonies, with the early colonists showing a strong disdain for excesses in pleasure and personal wealth. Over time, the colonists became more acculturated to America and less influenced by the ways of the Old World. Increased third and fourth generation natives replaced dying founders, and the land became populated by families who considered themselves “Americans” rather than “Englishmen afar off.” The colonists worked hard to build their commonwealth and fought to protect it when attacks from the French and Indian foes attempted to destroy it.

By 1776, the original 13 colonies had been established: Virginia, Massachusetts, Maryland, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, North Carolina, South Carolina, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Georgia. America’s earliest settlers brought with them a trust in God’s Providence and a will to strive in a new world. In the early years of the colonies, disputes between the founders and disagreements over the settlers’ rights were common. However, the colonies grew as settlers moved away from family structures in the extended families that were so prevalent in their homeland, by starting nuclear type families of their own.

3. The Revolutionary Era: Birth of a Nation

England’s 1676 Navigation Acts, designed to secure the colonies as a viable market for English merchants, became the first impetus for developing the awareness of the common American people. A cramped colonial economy was the offspring of these laws, intended to stimulate mercantile industries, which not only affected all the colonies but also stifled the economic profitability of overseas trading. The superimposition of external power, by establishing raw colonies and preempting their economic freedom, spurred the colonials to initiate exports illegally and rebelliously in order to direct their interests toward more profitable, individual commerce.

Historians frequently assert that America was born in 1776, but in reality, the spirit of American nationalism predates the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Indeed, as seventeenth-century America endured the colonial experience and hungered for self-government, the anticipation of nationhood sowed the seeds of republicanism. Because each of the thirteen original colonies was a unique entity with its own history and culture, loyalties to anything greater than the local colony or region did not develop easily. However, the colonies did share England as a mother country and common English cultural traits, thereby marking them as a group of colonies worthy of joining together to form the United States. America was an apparition sugarcoated with the aspiration of national union.

4. Expansion and Industrialization: The Changing Face of America

In the process of redefining American culture, the nature of American politics changed. The lessons of the Gilded Age and the challenges to assumptions about the nature of society and the economy led to the developing of coalitions of interest groups within the various states that sought to challenge the strong centralized role played by the federal government. The stresses resulting from the movement of American society from an agrarian culture to an urbanized, industrialized one led to the restructuring of the nation’s fundamental values and called for a new and dynamic system of political leadership that produced two major contrasting philosophies: progressivism, which sought to promote greater equality and economic and social justice, and modernism, which sought a return to older customs and traditional forms that had been identifiers of the American character for so many years. The country that had begun as an idyllic land of rural folk rooted in the soil was now a complex, stratified nation rooted in a myriad of vast organizations located in small pockets of rigidly specialized activity. And the nation that had existed as a nation of homogeneity would, by the turn of the century, be a series of ethnic, racial, and social communities held together only by their belief in the common values that had brought them to the nation in the first place.

Throughout American history, periods of growth and expansion have accompanied stages of industrialization and progress. This evolution has led to changes in the way the country is governed, the structure and values of American society, and the identity of its citizens. Yet as large segments of American society found new places in the economy and questioned traditional beliefs about the nature of the family, the condition of children, sexual morality, and the very nature of work, relations between industrialists and workers in this second stage of economic progress became strained, culminating in occasional violent labor conflicts and the creation of labor unions. The economic triumphs made possible by the nation’s natural resources were beginning to be tempered by the necessity of solving the long-term problems that result from industrialization. Fervent beliefs in liberal individualism, moral progress, and social uplift finally attempted to address the larger issues of the society’s changing character. The result was a more complex national domain – one that demanded a central federal authority that accommodated various, and sometimes, conflicting interests while providing a greater degree of control to preserve and regulate the system.

5. Civil Rights and Social Movements: Struggles and Progress

In 1870, the 15th Amendment to the United States Constitution granted African American men the right to vote. This assured that all persons subject to the powers of the United States, both citizens and non-citizens, those states could not abridge their right to vote. Rapidly freedmen, as the former slaves were called, overwhelmingly voted for the Republican Party. During the time often referred to as the Reconstruction, the southern states passed a series of anti-African American laws, the Black Codes, which restricted the rights of African Americans. The guiding political forces behind the Black Codes were the once-ruling southern planters, now virtually bankrupt, and the minimally influential major world manufacturers looking for a large untapped labor source. The task for civil rights in America may still be ahead. While the 14th Amendment sought to streamline the spurious Congressional Reconstruction Acts, the 14th Amendment’s roots are only skin-deep and have been subject to periods of legal fadism.

The Civil War in America was a horrific conflict which tested the idealistic promise of the American society. The war established the federal government as the ongoing arbiter of formerly states’ rights areas. The lives of millions of Americans, over two-thirds of the Civil War fighting force of 3 million fought on the side of the Union to end the evil of slavery. Shortly after the Civil War, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which sought to protect the newly gained rights of African Americans. This act also established civil rights, the right to contract, and protected all citizens’ property rights. It did not guarantee African American citizens the right to vote, nor did the 13th Amendment which had abolished slavery in 1864.