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  • What I thought I would attempt to do

  • in this and the next few videos is just give

  • a scaffold of American history.

  • I'm clearly going to glaze over a lot of the details,

  • but hopefully it'll give you a sense

  • of how everything at least fits together,

  • at least the major events in American history.

  • So you can kind of, and when I say American history,

  • I'm talking about United States history.

  • And so the first real successful settlement

  • in what's now the United States was at Jamestown.

  • That's Jamestown, Virginia right over here.

  • And it was 1607.

  • It was set up as kind of a commercial settlement

  • and then shortly after that, and we always

  • learned this in school, you know the pilgrims on the Mayflower,

  • sailing the oceans blue and all the rest.

  • They were kind of the next major settlement in the New World.

  • Or I guess we should say the next major successful English

  • settlement.

  • There were obviously the Spanish and the Portuguese were already

  • settling the New World with a good bit of success

  • at this point, but we're talking about the English settlements.

  • And so the pilgrims settled what's

  • now Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1620.

  • And obviously from 1620 until the mid-1700s,

  • you just had a huge influx of people migrating and cities

  • developing.

  • But I'm going to fast forward all the way to the mid-1700s.

  • So this is actually a huge amount of time

  • that I'm just not providing any details over.

  • Because I'm really just quite focused on the major events

  • in American history.

  • And so this is a 130-year period where things were just

  • getting built out more, they were getting more developed.

  • And I'm going to fast forward to 1754, because

  • at this period you had essentially

  • the entire east coast of what's now the US.

  • These were the 13 colonies of the-- well,

  • they're not the United States yet,

  • they're the 13 British colonies.

  • But these are English settlements,

  • and then if you go a little bit to the northwest from there,

  • you have all the French settlements.

  • And obviously still in these parts of Quebec and Canada,

  • people speak French.

  • But you had the French settlements

  • up in this area over here.

  • I'm not going to go into the details.

  • Each of these can be a whole series of videos,

  • and hopefully in the future I will

  • make them whole series of videos.

  • But you fast forward to 1754, and you

  • start having the French and the British start

  • getting into squabbles over territory

  • where Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania is right now.

  • In 1754.

  • And that starts the French and Indian War.

  • And I want to be very clear here because this is maybe

  • one of the biggest points of confusion

  • when people first learn American history.

  • Since it's called the French and Indian War,

  • they think it's between the French and the Indians.

  • But it's not.

  • It was the French and the Indians

  • against the British and the colonists.

  • So in this war, the British and the colonists

  • were on the same side against the French and the Indians.

  • And obviously there were some Indians

  • that were also on the side of the British,

  • but it's called the French and Indian War because these

  • were the people that the British were fighting against.

  • Now if anyone outside of the United States

  • talks about the French and Indian War,

  • they will not call it the French and Indian War.

  • They'll really just call that the American theater

  • of the Seven Years' War because it eventually

  • evolves into a much bigger conflict between Great Britain

  • and France that's going on in Europe,

  • and the French and Indian War was really

  • just the American theater of it.

  • So between-- the French and Indian

  • War starts in 1754 based on these disputes over Pittsburgh.

  • But that wasn't the only thing.

  • You had all of these other things, all

  • of these other tensions that were developing.

  • The thing that starts the war is never the only factor.

  • It's always just the tipping point.

  • But that leads to a bigger war in Europe.

  • And that's the Seven Years' War that starts in 1756.

  • And they both end because they're really the same war.

  • They both end in 1763 with the Treaty of Paris.

  • Treaty of Paris, 1763.

  • And the big takeaway of that is that really most of what France

  • had in the New World now becomes essentially

  • a part of the British Empire, now

  • becomes British colonies or British territories.

  • And even Louisiana goes over to Spain at this point.

  • And we'll see it goes back to France

  • for a little bit in 1800, and then

  • it goes back to the United States in 1803,

  • but we'll see that in a second.

  • So 1763, the British-- it was this huge costly war--

  • but they were able to win.

  • And at least from the point of view of the British,

  • they felt that the main beneficiaries of this war

  • were the Americans.

  • They were able to get all this new territory, all

  • this new area that they can now trade with,

  • or they could now potentially settle.

  • And so the British decide to start

  • taxing the Americans to recoup some portion

  • of the cost of the war.

  • So in 1765 they pass the Stamp Act.

  • And this wasn't a tax on stamps.

  • What this was is that they essentially

  • declared that a whole set of paper

  • that had to be used in the New World.

  • So the stuff for legal documents,

  • stuff that maybe even newspaper.

  • That that paper would have to be produced in Great Britain,

  • and it had to have a special stamp on it in order

  • for the contracts or whatever was on top of it,

  • in order for them to be legitimate.

  • So essentially it was a huge tax on paper and on documents.

  • And essentially, this is what societies ran on.

  • So it was just a way to extract money from the colonists

  • in order to, I guess, help pay back some of the costs

  • that the empire felt that they had incurred

  • on behalf of the colonists.

  • You could debate whether who was the main beneficiary, but

  • regardless you could imagine this didn't make--

  • this whole period over here-- the colonists weren't happy.

  • Especially because they didn't have

  • any representation in Parliament.

  • This was done without anybody from the colony

  • saying, hey, wait I don't think that's fair.

  • Or this is fair or whatever.

  • And so you fast forward.

  • 1773, you have the Boston Tea Party

  • where you have a bunch of people who, for whatever reason,

  • and there's multiple interests here.

  • But there was three ships in Boston Harbor full of tea

  • and the tea was owned by the East India Tea company.

  • And they decide, in protest, and there

  • was a whole series of acts and other taxes

  • that went back and forth, but once again, we're

  • not going to go into the details here.

  • But in revolt they dumped the tea.

  • They dressed up as Indians, as American Indians,

  • and they dumped the tea into Boston Harbor,

  • and then you could imagine well that was

  • kind of a very exciting act for the colonists,

  • but it didn't make the British very happy.

  • And then after that, they passed the Coercive Act.

  • They essentially did a blockade of Boston.

  • So things started to get really, really,

  • really tense in the early 1770s.

  • And then you fast forward to 1775,

  • you have essentially the first conflicts of the American

  • Revolutionary War, and we're going

  • to do a whole series of videos on really

  • the whole Revolutionary War.

  • 1776, you have the Declaration of Independence.

  • This is them right here drafting the Declaration

  • of Independence.

  • And that's really just saying, hey, we've

  • had enough of you Great Britain!

  • We are now declaring ourselves as an independent country.

  • No more of this colonies business.

  • And so all the way until 1783 you

  • have the American Revolutionary War.

  • And once again, you can do a lot of videos on this,

  • but I'm just going to go over it just

  • so you have a sense of when everything happened

  • and when everything ended.

  • And we can later dig deeper into the scaffold.

  • And it ends with the Treaty of Paris.

  • The US becomes a free independent state.

  • And then you fast forward.

  • Until this point, the US has been

  • governed by Congress, and the Articles of Confederation.

  • But the Constitution that we have now,

  • it was drafted in 1787.

  • It was ratified-- it had to get at least nine of the states

  • to ratify it-- that happened in 1788.

  • And then it went into effect in 1789.

  • So it depends what you consider the birth of the country.

  • Well, it would definitely be the Declaration of Independence,

  • but the country in its current form,

  • with its current institutions, with this current constitution,

  • started in 1789.

  • And that was also the beginning of Washington's first

  • of two terms as president, and those ended in 1797.

  • And then John Adams comes into the picture.

  • And the reason why I put this-- obviously

  • this is actually the only president that I showed--

  • is that it was actually very important

  • that he decided to step down after two terms.

  • He was hugely popular.

  • If he wanted to, he probably could

  • have become one of these characters that

  • stick around maybe a little bit longer

  • than some people would want.

  • So it was really good that he set this example of stepping

  • down after two terms, and that he

  • wasn't this kind of power hungry dude.

  • You fast forward a little bit more.

  • 1803, I mentioned that after the French and Indian War what's

  • Louisiana-- I want to be clear when I say Louisiana.

  • Louisiana isn't just what's the current state of Louisiana.

  • It's this whole region that includes

  • the state of Louisiana, but all the way up

  • to roughly what the United States'

  • current border with Canada.

  • And after the French and Indian War,

  • all of this business over here went to Spain.

  • And then in 1800, it went back to France.

  • But then in 1803, Napoleon had a bunch of stuff

  • that he-- his Naval fleet was destroyed,

  • he had a suffered some defeats in the West Indies,

  • I guess we could call it.

  • In particular in Haiti, and he said,

  • well, you know I probably won't be

  • able to control this territory anyway,

  • so he sold it to the United States

  • for what turned out to be a very, very, very cheap price.

  • But it was kind of like, it's not

  • like he could have protected it anyway.

  • The United States might have been

  • able to take it from him without him being able to do anything.

  • So he might as well get some money for it

  • so that he could fund his battles in Europe.

  • So in 1803, the United States almost doubled in size.

  • It went from these territories that it

  • had after the American Revolution for Independence,

  • and now it got all of this region over here in 1803.

  • Then you fast forward a bit.

  • And the War of 1812, it's an interesting one,

  • because there weren't any really serious outcomes from it.

  • But what was interesting about it, this whole time period,

  • even after independence, the British

  • continued to harass America.

  • They continued to arm Native Americans who would maybe

  • revolt or cause trouble for settlers.

  • They would impress American seamen--

  • and when I say impress, it didn't

  • mean that they were doing something special.

  • It meant that they were-- impressment

  • of seamen meant that they were taking over these boats,

  • taking the sailors, and forcing them

  • to become part of the British military.

  • So they were doing a whole series

  • of things that was really kind of antagonizing the United

  • States.

  • In 1812, the United States declares war on Great Britain.

  • You have the War of 1812.

  • It ends in 1815 with the Battle of New Orleans.

  • But there wasn't any real transfer

  • of a territory or anything like that over here.

  • What was good, some people call it the Second War for American

  • Independence, is it really asserted that America was here

  • to stay, or I should say that the United States was here

  • to stay.

  • That the Revolution wasn't just some fluke that isn't some

  • just fly by night country.

  • It was able to defeat one of the greatest empires in the world

  • again.

  • So it's kind of here to stay.

  • Now you fast forward a little bit more.

  • This part of what we would call Texas,

  • this area right over here.

  • It was, before 1836, it was part of Mexico.

  • But the Mexicans actually encouraged

  • English-speaking settlers-- these

  • would be American English-speaking settlers

  • into the area-- just because it was very sparsely settled.

  • But these English-speaking settlers, a lot of them

  • were slave owners, and then as we kind of go up to 1836,

  • the state of Mexico that this was all governed by,

  • they were thinking about abolishing slavery.

  • So you can imagine that the settlers there, they

  • didn't like this idea.

  • So in 1836, you had the War for Texas Independence,

  • and that's where you remember the Alamo, and all of that.

  • And then the first president of Texas is Sam Houston.

  • That's why Houston is named Houston.

  • And then you fast forward all the way to 1845.

  • And in this time period, you have this whole talk

  • in the United States of Manifest Destiny,

  • that it's part of our God-given destiny as Americans,

  • to one day extend our territory all the way to the Pacific

  • Ocean.

  • So people were already eyeing a lot of the territory.

  • Remember all of this territory, this was Texas.

  • And Mexico still viewed it as their territory,

  • even though it was being governed independently

  • by the people who called themselves

  • the Republic of Texas.

  • And you had all of this territory

  • that was Mexican territory.

  • So people were starting to eye this and say,

  • wouldn't it be nice to get a little bit of that?

  • So in 1845, and this was in agreement

  • with the settlers in Texas, with the Republic of Texas,

  • the United States annexed Texas.

  • The settlers there wanted this to happen,

  • so wasn't a forced annexation of Texas.

  • But Mexico was not so happy about this

  • because Mexico still viewed Texas

  • as part of their territory.

  • And America, to some degree, depends on how you view it,

  • it seems like they kind of wanted to goad Mexico into war,

  • so they sent military really close to the border of Mexico,

  • even into some territory where Mexico might have had better

  • claims to it or-- I'm not going to take sides on this,

  • but it seemed like there was some instigation going on.

  • And there's some debate about the actual course of events.

  • But in 1846 you have war actually breaking out

  • between Mexico and the United States.

  • And by 1848, the United States essentially trounces Mexico,

  • and most of the war actually does go on on Mexican land.

  • And because of that, Mexico cedes over all of this area.

  • So, California and all of the rest of Nevada, Arizona,

  • what the part of New Mexico the didn't come along,

  • that the United States didn't already have.

  • And along that same amount of time,

  • you both had the British and the Americans that

  • were eyeing this territory, the Oregon Territory up here

  • and it even included part of Canada.

  • And eventually they were able to resolve it relatively

  • peacefully, and what they agreed is,

  • is that the Americans would get all of this territory.

  • And the British would get everything north

  • of this line right over here.

  • And that's why Vancouver and British Columbia and all

  • of that, is Canada now.

  • It stayed as part of the British Empire for a little bit longer.

  • So by 1848, the Manifest Destiny essentially had happened.

  • The United States had gotten everything from California

  • all the way from the Pacific coast to the Atlantic coast.

  • And clearly I'm really just covering the high levels,

  • 30,000 level foot view of American history here.

  • This whole time you had this tension developing.

  • From the birth of the country through the election of Abraham

  • Lincoln, you have this tension over slavery.

  • A lot of people in the North didn't like it

  • on moral grounds.

  • A lot of people in the South didn't like it-- well,

  • they wanted slavery regardless of what

  • they thought of it morally-- the South's economy,

  • to a large degree, was based on slavery.

  • And so all of this, the tipping point happened in 1860.

  • Where Abraham Lincoln, who was pretty vocal about the fact

  • that he did not like slavery, that he wanted

  • to curb the spread of slave states.

  • And up to this point, you had all of these compromises

  • every time a state came into the Union.

  • The slave states wanted it to be another slave state.

  • The free states wanted it to be another free state.

  • So you always had this people kind

  • of jocking for whoever could have the most

  • states on their side of the camp.

  • But all of this pro-slavery and anti-slavery

  • hit a tipping point in 1860 when Abraham Lincoln, who

  • was fairly vocal about not extending slavery,

  • he was elected.

  • Then a bunch of what we now consider southern states

  • seceded from the Union.

  • And then in 1861 in South Carolina.

  • South Carolina said, hey, we are not part of the United States

  • anymore, but there was still a United States military garrison

  • there, so they attacked it.

  • That started the Civil War.

  • And so during the Civil War-- it lasts until 1865-- Abraham

  • Lincoln makes the Emancipation Proclamation

  • in 1863, which essentially proclaims

  • all the slaves should be free.

  • This lays the groundwork for the 13th Amendment

  • to the Constitution.

  • And then unfortunately, he dies two months

  • before the end of the Civil War.

  • But in 1865, the South surrenders and so

  • they're not able to secede.

  • And essentially, we no longer have

  • slavery in the United States.

  • So I'm going to leave-- and it's fascinating,

  • and just to give you a sense of things, here's the map.

  • The navy blue are the Union states, the northern states,

  • the light blue are the territory controlled

  • by the northern states.

  • This orange color are the states that

  • seceded from the Union, the Confederacy.

  • And this light orange, these are territories

  • that they controlled, but they were disputed.

  • These yellow states right here were members of the Union.

  • They didn't secede from the Union.

  • They didn't join the Confederacy,

  • but they were slave states.

  • But probably the most fascinating thing

  • about the Civil War, other than the fact

  • that it ended slavery in the United States,

  • that was probably its biggest thing,

  • but it was also the bloodiest war

  • that ever happened in the United States history.

  • During the Civil War-- and these are unbelievable numbers--

  • 18% of white males in the South died.

  • 18%, almost one out of every five white males in the South,

  • died during the Civil War.

  • And for the North, it was slightly better.

  • It was 6%.

  • But still, a huge percentage of the men in the United States

  • died fighting the Civil War.

What I thought I would attempt to do

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