The USA: its history, geography and political system
Contents:
|A brief history of the USA | |
|The colonial era |1 |
|A new nation |2 |
|Slavery and The Civil War |2 |
|The late 19th century |3 |
|The progressive moment |4 |
|War and peace |4 |
|The great depression |5 |
|World War II |5 |
|The Cold War |6 |
|Decades of change |7 |
|Geography and regional characteristics | |
|Short facts |8 |
|Regional Variety |10 |
|New England |10 |
|Middle Atlantic |11 |
|The South |11 |
|The Midwest |12 |
|The Southwest |12 |
|The West |13 |
|The Frontier Spirit |13 |
|A responsive government | |
|The constitution |14 |
|Bill of Rights |15 |
|Legislative Branch |16 |
|Executive Branch |16 |
|Juridical Branch |16 |
|The court of last resort |17 |
|Political parties and elections |17 |
Source:
http://usinfo.state.gov/usa/infousa/facts/factover
A brief history of the United States.
The first Europeans to reach North America were Icelandic Vikings, led by
Leif Ericson, about the year 1000. Traces of their visit have been found in
the Canadian province of Newfoundland, but the Vikings failed to establish
a permanent settlement and soon lost contact with the new continent.
Five centuries later, the demand for Asian spices, textiles, and dyes
spurred European navigators to dream of shorter routes between East and
West. Acting on behalf of the Spanish crown, in 1492 the Italian navigator
Christopher Columbus sailed west from Europe and landed on one of the
Bahama Islands in the Caribbean Sea. Within 40 years, Spanish adventurers
had carved out a huge empire in Central and South America.
THE COLONIAL ERA
The first successful English colony was founded at Jamestown, Virginia, in
1607. A few years later, English Puritans came to America to escape
religious persecution for their opposition to the Church of England. In
1620, the Puritans founded Plymouth Colony in what later became
Massachusetts. Plymouth was the second permanent British settlement in
North America and the first in New England.
In New England the Puritans hoped to build a "city upon a hill" -- an
ideal community. Ever since, Americans have viewed their country as a great
experiment, a worthy model for other nations to follow. The Puritans
believed that government should enforce God's morality, and they strictly
punished heretics, adulterers, drunks, and violators of the Sabbath. In
spite of their own quest for religious freedom, the Puritans practiced a
form of intolerant moralism. In 1636 an English clergyman named Roger
Williams left Massachusetts and founded the colony of Rhode Island, based
on the principles of religious freedom and separation of church and state,
two ideals that were later adopted by framers of the U.S. Constitution.
Colonists arrived from other European countries, but the English were far
better established in America. By 1733 English settlers had founded 13
colonies along the Atlantic Coast, from New Hampshire in the North to
Georgia in the South. Elsewhere in North America, the French controlled
Canada and Louisiana, which included the vast Mississippi River watershed.
France and England fought several wars during the 18th century, with North
America being drawn into every one. The end of the Seven Years' War in 1763
left England in control of Canada and all of North America east of the
Mississippi.
Soon afterwards England and its colonies were in conflict. The mother
country imposed new taxes, in part to defray the cost of fighting the Seven
Years' War, and expected Americans to lodge British soldiers in their
homes. The colonists resented the taxes and resisted the quartering of
soldiers. Insisting that they could be taxed only by their own colonial
assemblies, the colonists rallied behind the slogan "no taxation without
representation."
All the taxes, except one on tea, were removed, but in 1773 a group of
patriots responded by staging the Boston Tea Party. Disguised as Indians,
they boarded British merchant ships and dumped 342 crates of tea into
Boston harbor. This provoked a crackdown by the British Parliament,
including the closing of Boston harbor to shipping. Colonial leaders
convened the First Continental Congress in 1774 to discuss the colonies'
opposition to British rule. War broke out on April 19, 1775, when British
soldiers confronted colonial rebels in Lexington, Massachusetts. On July 4,
1776, the Continental Congress adopted a Declaration of Independence.
At first the Revolutionary War went badly for the Americans. With few
provisions and little training, American troops generally fought well, but
were outnumbered and overpowered by the British. The turning point in the
war came in 1777 when American soldiers defeated the British Army at
Saratoga, New York. France had secretly been aiding the Americans, but was
reluctant to ally itself openly until they had proved themselves in battle.
Following the Americans' victory at Saratoga, France and America signed
treaties of alliance, and France provided the Americans with troops and
warships.
The last major battle of the American Revolution took place at Yorktown,
Virginia, in 1781. A combined force of American and French troops
surrounded the British and forced their surrender. Fighting continued in
some areas for two more years, and the war officially ended with the Treaty
of Paris in 1783, by which England recognized American independence.
A NEW NATION
The framing of the U.S. Constitution and the creation of the United States
are covered in more detail in chapter 4. In essence, the Constitution
alleviated Americans' fear of excessive central power by dividing
government into three branches -- legislative (Congress), executive (the
president and the federal agencies), and judicial (the federal courts) --
and by including 10 amendments known as the Bill of Rights to safeguard
individual liberties. Continued uneasiness about the accumulation of power
manifested itself in the differing political philosophies of two towering
figures from the Revolutionary period. George Washington, the war's
military hero and the first U.S. president, headed a party favoring a
strong president and central government; Thomas Jefferson, the principal
author of the Declaration of Independence, headed a party preferring to
allot more power to the states, on the theory that they would be more
accountable to the people.
Jefferson became the third president in 1801. Although he had intended to
limit the president's power, political realities dictated otherwise. Among
other forceful actions, in 1803 he purchased the vast Louisiana Territory
from France, almost doubling the size of the United States. The Louisiana
Purchase added more than 2 million square kilometers of territory and
extended the country's borders as far west as the Rocky Mountains in
Colorado.
SLAVERY AND THE CIVIL WAR
In the first quarter of the 19th century, the frontier of settlement moved
west to the Mississippi River and beyond. In 1828 Andrew Jackson became the
first "outsider" elected president: a man from the frontier state of
Tennessee, born into a poor family and outside the cultural traditions of
the Atlantic seaboard.
Although on the surface the Jacksonian Era was one of optimism and energy,
the young nation was entangled in a contradiction. The ringing words of the
Declaration of Independence, "all men are created equal," were meaningless
for 1.5 million slaves. (For more on slavery and its aftermath, see
chapters 1 and 4.)
In 1820 southern and northern politicians debated the question of whether
slavery would be legal in the western territories. Congress reached a
compromise: Slavery was permitted in the new state of Missouri and the
Arkansas Territory but barred everywhere west and north of Missouri. The
outcome of the Mexican War of 1846-48 brought more territory into American
hands -- and with it the issue of whether to extend slavery. Another
compromise, in 1850, admitted California as a free state, with the citizens
of Utah and New Mexico being allowed to decide whether they wanted slavery
within their borders or not (they did not).
But the issue continued to rankle. After Abraham Lincoln, a foe of
slavery, was elected president in 1860, 11 states left the Union and
proclaimed themselves an independent nation, the Confederate States of
America: South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana,
Texas, Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina. The American
Civil War had begun.
The Confederate Army did well in the early part of the war, and some of
its commanders, especially General Robert E. Lee, were brilliant
tacticians. But the Union had superior manpower and resources to draw upon.
In the summer of 1863 Lee took a gamble by marching his troops north into
Pennsylvania. He met a Union army at Gettysburg, and the largest battle
ever fought on American soil ensued. After three days of desperate
fighting, the Confederates were defeated. At the same time, on the
Mississippi River, Union General Ulysses S. Grant captured the city of
Vicksburg, giving the North control of the entire Mississippi Valley and
splitting the Confederacy in two.
Two years later, after a long campaign involving forces commanded by Lee
and Grant, the Confederates surrendered. The Civil War was the most
traumatic episode in American history. But it resolved two matters that had
vexed Americans since 1776. It put an end to slavery, and it decided that
the country was not a collection of semi-independent states but an
indivisible whole.
THE LATE 19TH CENTURY
Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in 1865, depriving America of a leader
uniquely qualified by background and temperament to heal the wounds left by
the Civil War. His successor, Andrew Johnson, was a southerner who had
remained loyal to the Union during the war. Northern members of Johnson's
own party (Republican) set in motion a process to remove him from office
for allegedly acting too leniently toward former Confederates. Johnson's
acquittal was an important victory for the principle of separation of
powers: A president should not be removed from office because Congress
disagrees with his policies, but only if he has committed, in the words of
the Constitution, "treason, bribery, or other high crimes and
misdemeanors."
Within a few years after the end of the Civil War, the United States
became a leading industrial power, and shrewd businessmen made great
fortunes. The first transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869; by
1900 the United States had more rail mileage than all of Europe. The
petroleum industry prospered, and John D. Rockefeller of the Standard Oil
Company became one of the richest men in America. Andrew Carnegie, who
started out as a poor Scottish immigrant, built a vast empire of steel
mills. Textile mills multiplied in the South, and meat-packing plants
sprang up in Chicago, Illinois. An electrical industry flourished as
Americans made use of a series of inventions: the telephone, the light
bulb, the phonograph, the alternating-current motor and transformer, motion
pictures. In Chicago, architect Louis Sullivan used steel-frame
construction to fashion America's distinctive contribution to the modern
city: the skyscraper.
But unrestrained economic growth brought dangers. To limit competition,
railroads merged and set standardized shipping rates. Trusts -- huge
combinations of corporations -- tried to establish monopoly control over
some industries, notably oil. These giant enterprises could produce goods
efficiently and sell them cheaply, but they could also fix prices and
destroy competitors. To counteract them, the federal government took
action. The Interstate Commerce Commission was created in 1887 to control
railroad rates. The Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 banned trusts, mergers,
and business agreements "in restraint of trade."
Industrialization brought with it the rise of organized labor. The
American Federation of Labor, founded in 1886, was a coalition of trade
unions for skilled laborers. The late 19th century was a period of heavy
immigration, and many of the workers in the new industries were foreign-
born. For American farmers, however, times were hard. Food prices were
falling, and farmers had to bear the costs of high shipping rates,
expensive mortgages, high taxes, and tariffs on consumer goods.
With the exception of the purchase of Alaska from Russia in 1867, American
territory had remained fixed since 1848. In the 1890s a new spirit of
expansion took hold. The United States followed the lead of northern
European nations in asserting a duty to "civilize" the peoples of Asia,
Africa, and Latin America. After American newspapers published lurid
accounts of atrocities in the Spanish colony of Cuba, the United States and
Spain went to war in 1898. When the war was over, the United States had
gained a number of possessions from Spain: Cuba, the Philippines, Puerto
Rico, and Guam. In an unrelated action, the United States also acquired the
Hawaiian Islands.
Yet Americans, who had themselves thrown off the shackles of empire, were
not comfortable with administering one. In 1902 American troops left Cuba,
although the new republic was required to grant naval bases to the United
States. The Philippines obtained limited self-government in 1907 and
complete independence in 1946. Puerto Rico became a self-governing
commonwealth within the United States, and Hawaii became a state in 1959
(as did Alaska).
THE PROGRESSIVE MOVEMENT
While Americans were venturing abroad, they were also taking a fresh look
at social problems at home. Despite the signs of prosperity, up to half of
all industrial workers still lived in poverty. New York, Boston, Chicago,
and San Francisco could be proud of their museums, universities, and public
libraries -- and ashamed of their slums. The prevailing economic dogma had
been laissez faire: let the government interfere with commerce as little as
possible. About 1900 the Progressive Movement arose to reform society and
individuals through government action. The movement's supporters were
primarily economists, sociologists, technicians, and civil servants who
sought scientific, cost-effective solutions to political problems.
Social workers went into the slums to establish settlement houses, which
provided the poor with health services and recreation. Prohibitionists
demanded an end to the sale of liquor, partly to prevent the suffering that
alcoholic husbands inflicted on their wives and children. In the cities,
reform politicians fought corruption, regulated public transportation, and
built municipally owned utilities. States passed laws restricting child
labor, limiting workdays, and providing compensation for injured workers.
Some Americans favored more radical ideologies. The Socialist Party, led
by Eugene V. Debs, advocated a peaceful, democratic transition to a state-
run economy. But socialism never found a solid footing in the United States
-- the party's best showing in a presidential race was 6 percent of the
vote in 1912.
WAR AND PEACE
When World War I erupted in Europe in 1914, President Woodrow Wilson urged
a policy of strict American neutrality. Germany's declaration of
unrestricted submarine warfare against all ships bound for Allied ports
undermined that position. When Congress declared war on Germany in 1917,
the American army was a force of only 200,000 soldiers. Millions of men had
to be drafted, trained, and shipped across the submarine-infested Atlantic.
A full year passed before the U.S. Army was ready to make a significant
contribution to the war effort.
By the fall of 1918, Germany's position had become hopeless. Its armies
were retreating in the face of a relentless American buildup. In October
Germany asked for peace, and an armistice was declared on November 11. In
1919 Wilson himself went to Versailles to help draft the peace treaty.
Although he was cheered by crowds in the Allied capitals, at home his
international outlook was less popular. His idea of a League of Nations was
included in the Treaty of Versailles, but the U.S. Senate did not ratify
the treaty, and the United States did not participate in the league.
The majority of Americans did not mourn the defeated treaty. They turned
inward, and the United States withdrew from European affairs. At the same
time, Americans were becoming hostile to foreigners in their midst. In 1919
a series of terrorist bombings produced the "Red Scare." Under the
authority of Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, political meetings were
raided and several hundred foreign-born political radicals were deported,
even though most of them were innocent of any crime. In 1921 two Italian-
born anarchists, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, were convicted of
murder on the basis of shaky evidence. Intellectuals protested, but in 1927
the two men were electrocuted. Congress enacted immigration limits in 1921
and tightened them further in 1924 and 1929. These restrictions favored
immigrants from Anglo-Saxon and Nordic countries.
The 1920s were an extraordinary and confusing time, when hedonism
coexisted with puritanical conservatism. It was the age of Prohibition: In
1920 a constitutional amendment outlawed the sale of alcoholic beverages.
Yet drinkers cheerfully evaded the law in thousands of "speakeasies"
(illegal bars), and gangsters made illicit fortunes in liquor. It was also
the Roaring Twenties, the age of jazz and spectacular silent movies and
such fads as flagpole-sitting and goldfish-swallowing. The Ku Klux Klan, a
racist organization born in the South after the Civil War, attracted new
followers and terrorized blacks, Catholics, Jews, and immigrants. At the
same time, a Catholic, New York Governor Alfred E. Smith, was a Democratic
candidate for president.
For big business, the 1920s were golden years. The United States was now a
consumer society, with booming markets for radios, home appliances,
synthetic textiles, and plastics. One of the most admired men of the decade
was Henry Ford, who had introduced the assembly line into automobile
factories. Ford could pay high wages and still earn enormous profits by
mass-producing the Model T, a car that millions of buyers could afford. For
a moment, it seemed that Americans had the Midas touch.
But the superficial prosperity masked deep problems. With profits soaring
and interest rates low, plenty of money was available for investment. Much
of it, however, went into reckless speculation in the stock market. Frantic
bidding pushed prices far above stock shares' real value. Investors bought
stocks "on margin," borrowing up to 90 percent of the purchase price. The
bubble burst in 1929. The stock market crashed, triggering a worldwide
depression.
THE GREAT DEPRESSION
By 1932 thousands of American banks and over 100,000 businesses had
failed. Industrial production was cut in half, wages had decreased 60
percent, and one out of every four workers was unemployed. That year
Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected president on the platform of "a New Deal
for the American people."
Roosevelt's jaunty self-confidence galvanized the nation. "The only thing
we have to fear is fear itself," he said at his inauguration. He followed
up these words with decisive action. Within three months -- the historic
"Hundred Days" -- Roosevelt had rushed through Congress a great number of
laws to help the economy recover. Such new agencies as the Civilian
Conservation Corps and the Works Progress Administration created millions
of jobs by undertaking the construction of roads, bridges, airports, parks,
and public buildings. Later the Social Security Act set up contributory old-
age and survivors' pensions.
Roosevelt's New Deal programs did not end the Depression. Although the
economy improved, full recovery had to await the defense buildup preceding
America's entry into World War II.
WORLD WAR II
Again neutrality was the initial American response to the outbreak of war
in Europe in 1939. But the bombing of Pearl Harbor naval base in Hawaii by
the Japanese in December 1941 brought the United States into the war, first
against Japan and then against its allies, Germany and Italy.
American, British, and Soviet war planners agreed to concentrate on
defeating Germany first. British and American forces landed in North Africa
in November 1942, proceeded to Sicily and the Italian mainland in 1943, and
liberated Rome on June 4, 1944. Two days later -- D-Day -- Allied forces
landed in Normandy. Paris was liberated on August 24, and by September
American units had crossed the German border. The Germans finally
surrendered on May 5, 1945.
The war against Japan came to a swift end in August of 1945, when
President Harry Truman ordered the use of atomic bombs against the cities
of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Nearly 200,000 civilians were killed. Although
the matter can still provoke heated discussion, the argument in favor of
dropping the bombs was that casualties on both sides would have been
greater if the Allies had been forced to invade Japan.
THE COLD WAR
A new international congress, the United Nations, came into being after
the war, and this time the United States joined. Soon tensions developed
between the United States and its wartime ally the Soviet Union. Although
Soviet leader Joseph Stalin had promised to support free elections in all
the liberated nations of Europe, Soviet forces imposed Communist
dictatorships in eastern Europe. Germany became a divided country, with a
western zone under joint British, French, and American occupation and an
eastern zone under Soviet occupation. In the spring of 1948 the Soviets
sealed off West Berlin in an attempt to starve the isolated city into
submission. The western powers responded with a massive airlift of food and
fuel until the Soviets lifted the blockade in May 1949. A month earlier the
United States had allied with Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland,
Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, and the United
Kingdom to form the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
On June 25, 1950, armed with Soviet weapons and acting with Stalin's
approval, North Korea's army invaded South Korea. Truman immediately
secured a commitment from the United Nations to defend South Korea. The war
lasted three years, and the final settlement left Korea divided.
Soviet control of eastern Europe, the Korean War, and the Soviet
development of atomic and hydrogen bombs instilled fear in Americans. Some
believed that the nation's new vulnerability was the work of traitors from
within. Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy asserted in the early 1950s that
the State Department and the U.S. Army were riddled with Communists.
McCarthy was eventually discredited. In the meantime, however, careers had
been destroyed, and the American people had all but lost sight of a
cardinal American virtue: toleration of political dissent.
From 1945 until 1970 the United States enjoyed a long period of economic
growth, interrupted only by mild and brief recessions. For the first time a
majority of Americans enjoyed a comfortable standard of living. In 1960, 55
percent of all households owned washing machines, 77 percent owned cars, 90
percent had television sets, and nearly all had refrigerators. At the same
time, the nation was moving slowly to establish racial justice.
In 1960 John F. Kennedy was elected president. Young, energetic, and
handsome, he promised to "get the country moving again" after the eight-
year presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower, the aging World War II general. In
October 1962 Kennedy was faced with what turned out to be the most drastic
crisis of the Cold War. The Soviet Union had been caught installing nuclear
missiles in Cuba, close enough to reach American cities in a matter of
minutes. Kennedy imposed a naval blockade on the island. Soviet Premier
Nikita Khrushschev ultimately agreed to remove the missiles, in return for
an American promise not to invade Cuba.
In April 1961 the Soviets capped a series of triumphs in space by sending
the first man into orbit around the Earth. President Kennedy responded with
a promise that Americans would walk on the moon before the decade was over.
This promise was fulfilled in July of 1969, when astronaut Neil Armstrong
stepped out of the Apollo 11 spacecraft and onto the moon's surface.
Kennedy did not live to see this culmination. He had been assassinated in
1963. He was not a universally popular president, but his death was a
terrible shock to the American people. His successor, Lyndon B. Johnson,
managed to push through Congress a number of new laws establishing social
programs. Johnson's "War on Poverty" included preschool education for poor
children, vocational training for dropouts from school, and community
service for slum youths.
During his six years in office, Johnson became preoccupied with the
Vietnam War. By 1968, 500,000 American troops were fighting in that small
country, previously little known to most of them. Although politicians
tended to view the war as part of a necessary effort to check communism on
all fronts, a growing number of Americans saw no vital American interest in
what happened to Vietnam. Demonstrations protesting American involvement
broke out on college campuses, and there were violent clashes between
students and police. Antiwar sentiment spilled over into a wide range of
protests against injustice and discrimination.
Stung by his increasing unpopularity, Johnson decided not to run for a
second full term. Richard Nixon was elected president in 1968. He pursued a
policy of Vietnamization, gradually replacing American soldiers with
Vietnamese. In 1973 he signed a peace treaty with North Vietnam and brought
American soldiers home. Nixon achieved two other diplomatic breakthroughs:
re-establishing U.S. relations with the People's Republic of China and
negotiating the first Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty with the Soviet
Union. In 1972 he easily won re-election.
During that presidential campaign, however, five men had been arrested for
breaking into Democratic Party headquarters at the Watergate office
building in Washington, D.C. Journalists investigating the incident
discovered that the burglars had been employed by Nixon's re-election
committee. The White House made matters worse by trying to conceal its
connection with the break-in. Eventually, tape recordings made by the
president himself revealed that he had been involved in the cover-up. By
the summer of 1974, it was clear that Congress was about to impeach and
convict him. On August 9, Richard Nixon became the only U.S. president to
resign from office.
DECADES OF CHANGE
After World War II the presidency had alternated between Democrats and
Republicans, but, for the most part, Democrats had held majorities in the
Congress -- in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. A string
of 26 consecutive years of Democratic control was broken in 1980, when the
Republicans gained a majority in the Senate; at the same time, Republican
Ronald Reagan was elected president. This change marked the onset of a
volatility that has characterized American voting patterns ever since.
Whatever their attitudes toward Reagan's policies, most Americans credited
him with a capacity for instilling pride in their country and a sense of
optimism about the future. If there was a central theme to his domestic
policies, it was that the federal government had become too big and federal
taxes too high.
Despite a growing federal budget deficit, in 1983 the U.S. economy entered
into one of the longest periods of sustained growth since World War II. The
Reagan administration suffered a defeat in the 1986 elections, however,
when Democrats regained control of the Senate. The most serious issue of
the day was the revelation that the United States had secretly sold arms to
Iran in an attempt to win freedom for American hostages held in Lebanon and
to finance antigovernment forces in Nicaragua at a time when Congress had
prohibited such aid. Despite these revelations, Reagan continued to enjoy
strong popularity throughout his second term in office.
His successor in 1988, Republican George Bush, benefited from Reagan's
popularity and continued many of his policies. When Iraq invaded oil-rich
Kuwait in 1990, Bush put together a multinational coalition that liberated
Kuwait early in 1991.
By 1992, however, the American electorate had become restless again.
Voters elected Bill Clinton, a Democrat, president, only to turn around two
years later and give Republicans their first majority in both the House and
Senate in 40 years. Meanwhile, several perennial debates had broken out
anew -- between advocates of a strong federal government and believers in
decentralization of power, between advocates of prayer in public schools
and defenders of separation of church and state, between those who
emphasize swift and sure punishment of criminals and those who seek to
address the underlying causes of crime. Complaints about the influence of
money on political campaigns inspired a movement to limit the number of
terms elected officials could serve. This and other discontents with the
system led to the formation of the strongest Third-Party movement in
generations, led by Texas businessman H. Ross Perot.
Although the economy was strong in the mid-1990s, two phenomena were
troubling many Americans. Corporations were resorting more and more to a
process known as downsizing: trimming the work force to cut costs despite
the hardships this inflicted on workers. And in many industries the gap
between the annual compensations of corporate executives and common
laborers had become enormous. Even the majority of Americans who enjoy
material comfort worry about a perceived decline in the quality of life, in
the strength of the family, in neighborliness and civility. Americans
probably remain the most optimistic people in the world, but with the
century drawing to a close, opinion polls showed that trait in shorter
supply than usual.
Geography and regional characteristics.
The USA stretches from the heavily industrialized, metropolitan Atlantic
coast, across the rich farms of the Great Plains, over the Appalachian and
the Rocky Mountains to the densely populated West coast. Alaska and the
island state of Hawaii are detached from the main mid-continental group of
48 states. America is the land of physical contrasts, including the
weather. Most of the USA is the temperate zone with four distinct seasons,
while the northern states and Alaska have extremely cold winters, and the
southern parts of Florida, Texas, California have warm weather year round.
The area of the United States is 9 629 091 square km.
The United States is the land of bountiful rivers and lakes. Minnesota is
the land of 10.000 lakes. The Mississippi River runs nearly 6 thousand km
from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. The St. Lawrence Seaway connects the
Great lakes with the Atlantic Ocean.
Underground, a wealth of minerals provides a solid base for American
industry. History has glamorized the gold rushes of California and Alaska
and the silver finds in Nevada.
Location:
North America, bordering both the North Atlantic Ocean and the North
Pacific Ocean, between Canada and Mexico
Map references: North America
Area:
total area: 9,372,610 sq km
land area: 9,166,600 sq km
comparative area: about half the size of Russia; about three-tenths the
size of Africa; about one-half the size of South America (or slightly
larger than Brazil); slightly smaller than China; about two and one-half
times the size of Western Europe
note: includes only the 50 states and District of Columbia
Land boundaries: total 12,248 km, Canada 8,893 km (including 2,477 km with
Alaska), Cuba 29 km (US Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay), Mexico 3,326 km
Coastline: 19,924 km
Climate: mostly temperate, but tropical in Hawaii and Florida and arctic in
Alaska, semiarid in the great plains west of the Mississippi River and arid
in the Great Basin of the southwest; low winter temperatures in the
northwest are ameliorated occasionally in January and February by warm
chinook winds from the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains
Terrain: vast central plain, mountains in west, hills and low mountains in
east; rugged mountains and broad river valleys in Alaska; rugged, volcanic
topography in Hawaii
Natural resources: coal, copper, lead, molybdenum, phosphates, uranium,
bauxite, gold, iron, mercury, nickel, potash, silver, tungsten, zinc,
petroleum, natural gas, timber
Land use: arable land: 20%, permanent crops: 0%, meadows and pastures: 26%,
forest and woodland: 29%, other: 25%, irrigated land: 181,020 sq km (1989
est.)
Environment:
current issues: air pollution resulting in acid rain in both the US and
Canada; the US is the largest single emitter of carbon dioxide from the
burning of fossil fuels; water pollution from runoff of pesticides and
fertilizers; very limited natural fresh water resources in much of the
western part of the country require careful management; desertification.
natural hazards: tsunamis, volcanoes, and earthquake activity around
Pacific Basin; hurricanes along the Atlantic coast; tornadoes in the
midwest; mudslides in California; forest fires in the west; flooding;
permafrost in northern Alaska is a major impediment to development
international agreements: party to - Air Pollution, Air Pollution-Nitrogen
Oxides, Antarctic Treaty, Climate Change, Endangered Species, Environmental
Modification, Marine Dumping, Marine Life Conservation, Nuclear Test Ban,
Ozone Layer Protection, Ship Pollution, Tropical Timber 83, Wetlands,