US History Highlights in 3 Minutes

Transcript

Here's a challenge for you: can you tell the story of the United States in three minutes? Let's try it together, because once you see the big turning points, everything else in your textbook has a place to hang.

Start with thirteen British colonies strung along the Atlantic coast. By the seventeen seventies, colonists were furious about being taxed by a Parliament where they had no vote. That anger boiled over into revolution, and in seventeen seventy-six the colonies adopted the Declaration of Independence. After winning the war, the new nation wrote the Constitution in seventeen eighty-seven — the plan of government the country still runs on today.

Next comes growth. In eighteen oh three, the Louisiana Purchase roughly doubled the size of the United States, and settlers pushed west for the rest of the century. But growth came with a deepening conflict over slavery. That conflict tore the country apart in eighteen sixty-one, when the Civil War began. President Abraham Lincoln led the Union through four brutal years, issued the Emancipation Proclamation, and by eighteen sixty-five the war was over and slavery was abolished by the Thirteenth Amendment.

The twentieth century transformed America again. Women won the constitutional right to vote in nineteen twenty with the Nineteenth Amendment. The Great Depression crushed the economy in the nineteen thirties, and Franklin D. Roosevelt — the only president elected four times — led the country through both the Depression and most of World War Two. After the war came the Civil Rights Movement, when leaders like Martin Luther King Junior pushed the nation to live up to its founding promise of equality, leading to the Civil Rights Act of nineteen sixty-four.

Now, one common mix-up to clear away: the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are not the same document. The Declaration, from seventeen seventy-six, announced the break from Britain. The Constitution, written eleven years later, set up the government. Students blend them together all the time — you won't.

So here's your recap: thirteen colonies declared independence in seventeen seventy-six, built a constitutional government, expanded west, and fought a civil war that ended slavery. Then the twentieth century brought voting rights for women, a depression, a world war, and a civil rights movement that reshaped the nation. Now take the quiz below and see how much stuck.