title: History of the United States

text: In July 1863, Union forces under General Ulysses S. Grant gained control of the Mississippi River at the Battle of Vicksburg, thereby splitting the Confederacy. In 1864, Union General William Tecumseh Sherman marched south from Chattanooga to capture Atlanta, a decisive victory that ended war jitters among Republicans in the North and helped Lincoln win re-election.


title: History of the United States

text: On the homefront, industrial expansion in the North expanded dramatically, using its extensive railroad service, and moving industrial workers into munitions factories. Foreign trade increased, with the United States providing both food and cotton to Britain, and Britain sending in manufactured products and thousands of volunteers for the Union Army (plus a few to the Confederate army). The British operated blockade runners bringing in food, luxury items and munitions to the Confederacy, bringing out tobacco and cotton. The Union blockade increasingly shut down Confederate ports, and by late 1864 the blockade runners were usually captured before they could make more than a handful of runs.


title: History of the United States

text: The last two years of the war were bloody for both sides, with Sherman marching almost unopposed through southern states, burning cities, destroying plantations, ruining railroads and bridges, but avoiding civilian casualties. Sherman demonstrated that the South was unable to resist a Union invasion. Much of the Confederate heartland was destroyed, and could no longer provide desperately needed supplies to its armies. In spring 1864, Grant launched a war of attrition and pursued Lee to the final, Appomattox campaign which resulted in Lee surrendering in April 1865.


title: History of the United States

text: The American Civil War was the world's earliest industrial war. Railroads, the telegraph, steamships, and mass-produced weapons were employed extensively. The mobilization of civilian factories, mines, shipyards, banks, transportation and food supplies all foreshadowed the impact of industrialization in World War I. It remains the deadliest war in American history, resulting in the deaths of about 750,000 soldiers and an undetermined number of civilian casualties. About ten percent of all Northern males 20–45 years old, and 30 percent of all Southern white males aged 18–40 died. Its legacy includes ending slavery in the United States, restoring the Union, and strengthening the role of the federal government.


title: History of the United States

text: According to historian Allan Nevins, the Civil War had a major long-term impact on the United States in terms of developing its leadership potential and metaphorically moving the country beyond the adolescent stage:


title: History of the United States

text: The Emancipation Proclamation was an executive order issued by President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863. In a single stroke it changed the legal status, as recognized by the U.S. government, of 3 million slaves in designated areas of the Confederacy from "slave" to "free". It had the practical effect that as soon as a slave escaped the control of the Confederate government, by running away or through advances of federal troops, the slave became legally and actually free.


title: History of the United States

text: The owners were never compensated. Plantation owners, realizing that emancipation would destroy their economic system, sometimes moved their slaves as far as possible out of reach of the Union army. By June 1865, the Union Army controlled all of the Confederacy and liberated all of the designated slaves. Large numbers moved into camps run by the Freedmen's Bureau, where they were given food, shelter, medical care, and arrangements for their employment were made.


title: History of the United States

text: The severe dislocations of war and Reconstruction had a large negative impact on the black population, with a large amount of sickness and death.


title: History of the United States

text: Reconstruction lasted from Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863, to the Compromise of 1877.


title: History of the United States

text: The major issues faced by Lincoln were the status of the ex-slaves ("Freedmen"), the loyalty and civil rights of ex-rebels, the status of the 11 ex-Confederate states, the powers of the federal government needed to prevent a future civil war, and the question of whether Congress or the President would make the major decisions.


title: History of the United States

text: The severe threats of starvation and displacement of the unemployed Freedmen were met by the first major federal relief agency, the Freedmen's Bureau, operated by the Army.


title: History of the United States

text: Three "Reconstruction Amendments" were passed to expand civil rights for black Americans: the Thirteenth Amendment outlawed slavery; the Fourteenth Amendment guaranteed equal rights for all and citizenship for blacks; the Fifteenth Amendment prevented race from being used to disenfranchise men.


title: History of the United States

text: Ex-Confederates remained in control of most Southern states for over two years, but changed when the Radical Republicans gained control of Congress in the 1866 elections. President Andrew Johnson, who sought easy terms for reunions with ex-rebels, was virtually powerless in the face of the Radical Republican Congress; he was impeached, but the Senate's attempt to remove him from office failed by one vote. Congress enfranchised black men and temporarily stripped many ex-Confederate leaders of the right to hold office. New Republican governments came to power based on a coalition of Freedmen made up of Carpetbaggers (new arrivals from the North), and Scalawags (native white Southerners). They were backed by the U.S. Army. Opponents said they were corrupt and violated the rights of whites.


title: History of the United States

text: State by state, the New Republicans lost power to a conservative-Democratic coalition, which gained control of the entire South by 1877. In response to Radical Reconstruction, the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) emerged in 1867 as a white-supremacist organization opposed to black civil rights and Republican rule. President Ulysses Grant's vigorous enforcement of the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1870 shut down the Klan, and it disbanded.


title: History of the United States

text: Paramilitary groups, such as the White League and Red Shirts emerged about 1874 that worked openly to use intimidation and violence to suppress black voting to regain white political power in states across the South during the 1870s. One historian described them as the military arm of the Democratic Party.


title: History of the United States

text: Reconstruction ended after the disputed 1876 election. The Compromise of 1877 gave Republican candidate Rutherford B. Hayes the White House in exchange for removing all remaining federal troops in the South. The federal government withdrew its troops from the South, and Southern Democrats took control of every Southern state. In 1882, the United States passed its first major exclusionary immigration acts, the Chinese Exclusion Act (which barred all Chinese immigrants except for students and businessmen), and the Immigration Act of 1882 (which barred all immigrants with mental health issues).


title: History of the United States

text: From 1890 to 1908, southern states effectively disfranchised most black voters and many poor whites by making voter registration more difficult through poll taxes, literacy tests, and other arbitrary devices. They passed segregation laws and imposed second-class status on blacks in a system known as Jim Crow that lasted until the Civil rights movement.


title: History of the United States

text: The latter half of the nineteenth century was marked by the rapid development and settlement of the far West, first by wagon trains and riverboats and then aided by the completion of the transcontinental railroad. Large numbers of European immigrants (especially from Germany and Scandinavia) took up low-cost or free farms in the Prairie States. Mining for silver and copper opened up the Mountain West.


title: History of the United States

text: The United States Army fought frequent small-scale wars with Native Americans as settlers encroached on their traditional lands. Gradually the U.S. purchased the Native American tribal lands and extinguished their claims, forcing most tribes onto subsidized reservations. According to the U.S. Bureau of the Census (1894), from 1789 to 1894:


title: History of the United States

text: The "Gilded Age" was a term that Mark Twain used to describe the period of the late 19th century with a dramatic expansion of American wealth and prosperity, underscored by the mass corruption in the government. Reforms of the Age included the Civil Service Act, which mandated a competitive examination for applicants for government jobs. Other important legislation included the Interstate Commerce Act, which ended railroads' discrimination against small shippers, and the Sherman Antitrust Act, which outlawed monopolies in business. Twain believed that this age was corrupted by such elements as land speculators, scandalous politics, and unethical business practices.


title: History of the United States

text: Since the days of Charles A. Beard and Matthew Josephson, some historians have argued that the United States was effectively plutocratic for at least part of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. As financiers and industrialists such as J.P. Morgan and John D. Rockefeller began to amass vast fortunes, many U.S. observers were concerned that the nation was losing its pioneering egalitarian spirit.


title: History of the United States

text: By 1890 American industrial production and per capita income exceeded those of all other countries. In response to heavy debts and decreasing farm prices, wheat and cotton farmers joined the Populist Party. An unprecedented wave of immigration from Europe served to both provide the labor for American industry and create diverse communities in previously undeveloped areas. From 1880 to 1914, peak years of immigration, more than 22 million people migrated to the United States.


title: History of the United States

text: Most were unskilled workers who quickly found jobs in mines, mills, and factories. Many immigrants were craftsmen (especially from Britain and Germany) bringing human skills, and others were farmers (especially from Germany and Scandinavia) who purchased inexpensive land on the Prairies from railroads who sent agents to Europe. Poverty, growing inequality and dangerous working conditions, along with socialist and anarchist ideas diffusing from European immigrants, led to the rise of the labor movement, which often included violent strikes.


title: History of the United States

text: Skilled workers banded together to control their crafts and raise wages by forming labor unions in industrial areas of the Northeast. Before the 1930s few factory workers joined the unions in the labor movement. Samuel Gompers led the American Federation of Labor (1886–1924), coordinating multiple unions. Industrial growth was rapid, led by John D. Rockefeller in oil and Andrew Carnegie in steel; both became leaders of philanthropy (Gospel of Wealth), giving away their fortunes to create the modern system of hospitals, universities, libraries, and foundations.


title: History of the United States

text: The Panic of 1893 broke out and was a severe nationwide depression impacting farmers, workers, and businessmen who saw prices, wages, and profits fall. Many railroads went bankrupt. The resultant political reaction fell on the Democratic Party, whose leader President Grover Cleveland shouldered much of the blame. Labor unrest involved numerous strikes, most notably the violent Pullman Strike of 1894, which was shut down by federal troops under Cleveland's orders. The Populist Party gained strength among cotton and wheat farmers, as well as coal miners, but was overtaken by the even more popular Free silver movement, which demanded using silver to enlarge the money supply, leading to inflation that the silverites promised would end the depression.


title: History of the United States

text: The financial, railroad, and business communities fought back hard, arguing that only the gold standard would save the economy. In the most intense election in U.S. history, conservative Republican William McKinley defeated silverite William Jennings Bryan, who ran on the Democratic, Populist, and Silver Republican tickets. Bryan swept the South and West, but McKinley ran up landslides among the middle class, industrial workers, cities, and among upscale farmers in the Midwest.


title: History of the United States

text: Prosperity returned under McKinley, the gold standard was enacted, and the tariff was raised. By 1900 the U.S. had the strongest economy on the globe. Apart from two short recessions (in 1907 and 1920) the overall economy remained prosperous and growing until 1929. Republicans, citing McKinley's policies, took the credit.


title: History of the United States

text: The United States emerged as a world economic and military power after 1890. The main episode was the Spanish–American War, which began when Spain refused American demands to reform its oppressive policies in Cuba. The "splendid little war", as one official called it, involved a series of quick American victories on land and at sea. At the Treaty of Paris peace conference the United States acquired the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Guam.


title: History of the United States

text: Cuba became an independent country, under close American tutelage. Although the war itself was widely popular, the peace terms proved controversial. William Jennings Bryan led his Democratic Party in opposition to control of the Philippines, which he denounced as imperialism unbecoming to American democracy. President William McKinley defended the acquisition and was riding high as society had returned to prosperity and felt triumphant in the war. McKinley easily defeated Bryan in a rematch in the 1900 presidential election.


title: History of the United States

text: After defeating an insurrection by Filipino nationalists, the United States achieved little in the Philippines except in education, and it did something in the way of public health. It also built roads, bridges, and wells, but infrastructural development lost much of its early vigor with the failure of the railroads. By 1908, however, Americans lost interest in an empire and turned their international attention to the Caribbean, especially the building of the Panama Canal. The canal opened in 1914 and increased trade with Japan and the rest of the Far East. A key innovation was the Open Door Policy, whereby the imperial powers were given equal access to Chinese business, with not one of them allowed to take control of China.


title: History of the United States

text: Dissatisfaction on the part of the growing middle class with the corruption and inefficiency of politics as usual, and the failure to deal with increasingly important urban and industrial problems, led to the dynamic Progressive Movement starting in the 1890s. In every major city and state, and at the federal level as well, and in education, medicine, and industry, the progressives called for the modernization and reform of decrepit institutions, the elimination of corruption in politics, and the introduction of efficiency as a criterion for change.


title: History of the United States

text: Leading politicians from both parties, most notably Theodore Roosevelt, Charles Evans Hughes, and Robert La Follette on the Republican side, and William Jennings Bryan and Woodrow Wilson on the Democratic side, took up the cause of progressive reform. Women became especially involved in demands for female suffrage, prohibition, and better schools. Their most prominent leader was Jane Addams of Chicago, who created settlement houses.


title: History of the United States

text: "Muckraking" journalists such as Upton Sinclair, Lincoln Steffens and Jacob Riis exposed corruption in business and government along with rampant inner-city poverty. Progressives implemented antitrust laws and regulated such industries of meat-packing, drugs, and railroads. Four new constitutional amendments – the Sixteenth through Nineteenth – resulted from progressive activism, bringing the federal income tax, direct election of Senators, prohibition, and female suffrage.


title: History of the United States

text: The period also saw a major transformation of the banking system with the creation of the Federal Reserve System in 1913 and the arrival of cooperative banking in the US with the founding of the first credit union in 1908. The Progressive Movement lasted through the 1920s; the most active period was 1900–1918.


title: History of the United States

text: The women's suffrage movement began with the June 1848 National Convention of the Liberty Party. Presidential candidate Gerrit Smith argued for and established women's suffrage as a party plank. One month later, his cousin Elizabeth Cady Stanton joined with Lucretia Mott and other women to organize the Seneca Falls Convention, featuring the Declaration of Sentiments demanding equal rights for women, and the right to vote.


title: History of the United States

text: Many of these activists became politically aware during the abolitionist movement. The women's rights campaign during "first-wave feminism" was led by Stanton, Lucy Stone and Susan B. Anthony, among many others. Stone and Paulina Wright Davis organized the prominent and influential National Women's Rights Convention in 1850.


title: History of the United States

text: The movement reorganized after the Civil War, gaining experienced campaigners, many of whom had worked for prohibition in the Women's Christian Temperance Union. By the end of the 19th century a few western states had granted women full voting rights, though women had made significant legal victories, gaining rights in areas such as property and child custody.


title: History of the United States

text: Around 1912 the feminist movement began to reawaken, putting an emphasis on its demands for equality and arguing that the corruption of American politics demanded purification by women because men could not do that job. Protests became increasingly common as suffragette Alice Paul led parades through the capital and major cities. Paul split from the large National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), which favored a more moderate approach and supported the Democratic Party and Woodrow Wilson, led by Carrie Chapman Catt, and formed the more militant National Woman's Party. Suffragists were arrested during their "Silent Sentinels" pickets at the White House, the first time such a tactic was used, and were taken as political prisoners.


title: History of the United States

text: The old anti-suffragist argument that only men could fight a war, and therefore only men deserve the right to vote, was refuted by the enthusiastic participation of tens of thousands of American women on the home front in World War I. Across the world, industrialized countries with similar experiences gave women the right to vote. Furthermore, most of the states in the western U.S. had already given the women the right to vote in state and federal elections, and the representatives from those states, including the first woman elected to the House of Representatives, Jeannette Rankin of Montana, demonstrated that woman suffrage was a success. The main resistance came from the south, where white leaders were worried about the threat of black women voting. Congress passed the Nineteenth Amendment in 1919, and women could vote in 1920.


title: History of the United States

text: NAWSA became the League of Women Voters, and the National Woman's Party began lobbying for full equality and the Equal Rights Amendment, which would pass Congress during the second wave of the women's movement in 1972. Politicians responded to the new electorate by emphasizing issues of special interest to women, especially prohibition, child health, and world peace. The main surge of women voting came in 1928, when the big-city machines realized they needed the support of women to elect Al Smith, a Catholic from New York City. Meanwhile, Protestants mobilized women to support Prohibition and vote for Republican Herbert Hoover.


title: History of the United States

text: As World War I raged in Europe from 1914, President Woodrow Wilson took full control of foreign policy, declaring neutrality but warning Germany that resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare against American ships supplying goods to Allied nations would mean war. Germany decided to take the risk and try to win by cutting off supplies to Britain through the sinking of ships such as the RMS Lusitania. The U.S. declared war in April 1917 mainly from the threat of the Zimmermann Telegram.


title: History of the United States

text: American money, food, and munitions arrived in Europe quickly, but troops had to be drafted and trained. By the summer of 1918 American Expeditionary Forces soldiers under General John J. Pershing's American Expeditionary Forces arrived at the rate of 10,000 a day, while Germany was unable to replace its losses. Dissent against the war was suppressed by the Sedition Act of 1918 & Espionage Act of 1917. German language, leftist & pacifist publications were suppressed, and over 2,000 were imprisoned for speaking out against the war. The political prisoners were later released by U.S. President Warren G. Harding.


title: History of the United States

text: The result was Allied victory in November 1918. President Wilson demanded Germany depose the Kaiser and accept his terms in the famed Fourteen Points speech. Wilson dominated the 1919 Paris Peace Conference but Germany was treated harshly by the Allies in the Treaty of Versailles (1919) as Wilson put all his hopes in the new League of Nations. Wilson refused to compromise with Senate Republicans over the issue of Congressional power to declare war, and the Senate rejected the Treaty and the League.


title: History of the United States

text: In the 1920s the U.S. grew steadily in stature as an economic and military world power. The United States Senate did not ratify the Treaty of Versailles imposed by its Allies on the defeated Central Powers; instead, the United States chose to pursue unilateralism. The aftershock of Russia's October Revolution resulted in real fears of Communism in the United States, leading to a Red Scare and the deportation of aliens considered subversive.


title: History of the United States

text: While public health facilities grew rapidly in the Progressive Era, and hospitals and medical schools were modernized, the country in 1918 and 1919 lost approximately 675,000 lives to the Spanish flu pandemic.


title: History of the United States

text: In 1920, the manufacture, sale, import and export of alcohol were prohibited by the Eighteenth Amendment, Prohibition. The result was that in cities illegal alcohol became a big business, largely controlled by racketeers.


title: History of the United States

text: The second Ku Klux Klan grew rapidly in 1922–1925, then collapsed. Immigration laws were passed to strictly limit the number of new entries. The 1920s were called the Roaring Twenties due to the great economic prosperity during this period. Jazz became popular among the younger generation, and thus the decade was also called the Jazz Age.


title: History of the United States

text: The Great Depression (1929–1939) and the New Deal (1933–1936) were decisive moments in American political, economic, and social history that reshaped the nation.


title: History of the United States

text: During the 1920s, the nation enjoyed widespread prosperity, albeit with a weakness in agriculture. A financial bubble was fueled by an inflated stock market, which later led to the Stock Market Crash on October 29, 1929. This, along with many other economic factors, triggered a worldwide depression known as the Great Depression. During this time, the United States experienced deflation as prices fell, unemployment soared from 3% in 1929 to 25% in 1933, farm prices fell by half, and manufacturing output plunged by one-third.


title: History of the United States

text: In 1932, Democratic presidential nominee Franklin D. Roosevelt promised "a New Deal for the American people", coining the enduring label for his domestic policies. The result was a series of permanent reform programs including Relief for the unemployed, assistance for the elderly, jobs for young men, social security, unemployment insurance, public housing, bankruptcy insurance, farm subsidies, and regulation of financial securities.


title: History of the United States

text: State governments added new programs as well and introduced the sales tax to pay for them. Ideologically the revolution established modern liberalism in the United States and kept the Democrats in power in Washington almost continuously for three decades thanks to the New Deal coalition of ethnic whites, blacks, blue-collar workers, labor unions, and white Southerners. It provided relief to the long-term unemployed through numerous programs, such as the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and for young men, the Civilian Conservation Corps. Large scale spending projects designed to provide private sector construction jobs and rebuild the infrastructure were under the purview of the Public Works Administration.


title: History of the United States

text: The Second New Deal was a turn to the left in 1935–1936, building up labor unions through the Wagner Act. Unions became a powerful element of the merging New Deal coalition, which won reelection for Roosevelt in 1936, 1940, and 1944 by mobilizing union members, blue-collar workers, relief recipients, big city machines, ethnic, and religious groups (especially Catholics and Jews) and the white South, along with blacks in the North (where they could vote). Roosevelt seriously weakened his second term by a failed effort to pack the Supreme Court, which had been a center of conservative resistance to his programs.


title: History of the United States

text: Most of the relief programs were dropped after 1938 in the 1940s when the conservatives regained power in Congress through the Conservative coalition. Of special importance is the Social Security program, begun in 1935. The economy basically recovered by 1936, but had a sharp, short recession in 1937–1938; long-term unemployment, however, remained a problem until it was solved by wartime spending.


title: History of the United States

text: In an effort to denounce past U.S. interventionism and subdue any subsequent fears of Latin Americans, Roosevelt announced on March 4, 1933, during his inaugural address, "In the field of World policy, I would dedicate this nation to the policy of the good neighbor, the neighbor who resolutely respects himself and, because he does so, respects the rights of others, the neighbor who respects his obligations and respects the sanctity of his agreements in and with a World of neighbors."


title: History of the United States

text: To create a friendly relationship between the United States and Central as well as South American countries, Roosevelt sought to stray from asserting military force in the region. This position was affirmed by Cordell Hull, Roosevelt's Secretary of State at a conference of American states in Montevideo in December 1933.


title: History of the United States

text: As a result of the Great Depression, 355,000 to 500,000 Mexicans and Mexican Americans were voluntarily repatriated or formally deported to Mexico during the 1930s, in what is known as the Mexican Repatriation.


title: History of the United States

text: In the Depression years, the United States remained focused on domestic concerns while democracy declined across the world and many countries fell under the control of dictators. Imperial Japan asserted dominance in East Asia and in the Pacific. Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy militarized and threatened conquests, while Britain and France attempted appeasement to avert another war in Europe. U.S. legislation in the Neutrality Acts sought to avoid foreign conflicts; however, policy clashed with increasing anti-Nazi feelings following the German invasion of Poland in September 1939 that started World War II.


title: History of the United States

text: At first, Roosevelt positioned the U.S. as the "Arsenal of Democracy," pledging full-scale financial and munitions support for the Allies and Lend-Lease agreements – but no military personnel. Japan tried to neutralize America's power in the Pacific by attacking Pearl Harbor in 1941, but instead it catalyzed American support to enter the war.


title: History of the United States

text: The main contributions of the U.S. to the Allied war effort comprised money, industrial output, food, petroleum, technological innovation, and (especially 1944–1945), military personnel. Much of the focus the U.S. government was in maximizing the national economic output, causing a dramatic increase in GDP, the export of vast quantities of supplies to the Allies and to American forces overseas, the end of unemployment, and a rise in civilian consumption even as 40% of the GDP went to the war effort.


title: History of the United States

text: Tens of millions of workers moved from low-productivity occupations to high-efficiency jobs, improving productivity through better technology and management. Students, retired people, housewives, and the unemployed moved into the active labor force. Economic mobilization was managed by the War Production Board and a wartime production boom led to full employment, wiping out this vestige of the Great Depression. Labor shortages encouraged industry to look for new sources of workers, finding new roles for women and Blacks.


title: History of the United States

text: Most durable goods became unavailable, and meat, clothing, and gasoline were tightly rationed. In industrial areas housing was in short supply as people doubled up and lived in cramped quarters. Prices and wages were controlled, and Americans saved a high portion of their incomes, which led to renewed growth after the war instead of a return to depression. Americans on the home front tolerated the extra work because of patriotism, increased pay, and the confidence that it was only "for the duration," and life would return to normal as soon as the war was won.


title: History of the United States

text: The Allies – the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union and other countries – saw Germany as the main threat and gave the highest priority to Europe. The U.S. dominated the war against Japan and stopped Japanese expansion in the Pacific in 1942. After the attack at Pearl Harbor and the loss of the Philippines to Japanese conquests, as well as a draw in the Battle of the Coral Sea (May 1942), the American Navy then inflicted a decisive blow at Midway (June 1942). American ground forces assisted in the North African campaign that eventually concluded with the collapse of Mussolini's fascist government in 1943, as Italy switched to the Allied side. A more significant European front was opened on D-Day, June 6, 1944, in which American and Allied forces invaded Nazi-occupied France from Britain.


title: History of the United States

text: War fervor also inspired anti-Japanese sentiment, leading to internment of Japanese Americans. Roosevelt's Executive Order 9066 resulted in over 120,000 Americans of Japanese descent being removed from their homes and placed in internment camps. Two-thirds of those interned were American citizens and half of them were children.


title: History of the United States

text: Military research and development also increase, leading to the Manhattan Project, a secret effort to harness nuclear fission to produce atomic bombs. The first nuclear device ever detonated was conducted July 16, 1945.


title: History of the United States

text: The Allies pushed the Germans out of France but the western front stopped short, leaving Berlin to the Soviets as the Nazi regime formally capitulated in May 1945, ending the war in Europe. In the Pacific, the U.S. implemented an island hopping strategy toward Tokyo. The Philippines was eventually reconquered, after Japan and the United States fought in history's largest naval battle, "The Battle of Leyte Gulf". However, the war wiped out all the development the United States invested in the Philippines as cities and towns were completely destroyed.


title: History of the United States

text: The United States then established airfields for bombing runs against mainland Japan from the Mariana Islands, achieving hard-fought victories at Iwo Jima and Okinawa in 1945. Bloodied at Okinawa, the U.S. prepared to invade Japan's home islands when B-29s dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, compelling Japan to surrender and ending World War II. The U.S. occupied Japan (and part of Germany), and restructured Japan along American lines.


title: History of the United States

text: During the war, Roosevelt coined the term "Four Powers" to refer four major Allies of World War II, the United States, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, and China, which later became the foundation of the United Nations Security Council. Though more than 400,000 military personnel and civilians were lost, the U.S. mostly prospered untouched by the physical devastation of war that inflicted a heavy toll on Europe and East Asia.


title: History of the United States

text: Participation in postwar foreign affairs marked the end of predominant American isolationism. The threat of nuclear weapons inspired both optimism and fear. Nuclear weapons have not been used since the war ended, and a "long peace" began between the global powers in era of competition that came to be known as the Cold War. The Truman Doctrine characterized this reality on May 22, 1947. Despite the absence of a global war during this period, there were, however, regional wars in Korea and Vietnam.


title: History of the United States

text: Following World War II, the United States emerged as one of the two dominant superpowers, the Soviet Union being the other. The U.S. Senate on a bipartisan vote approved U.S. participation in the United Nations (UN), which marked a turn away from the traditional isolationism of the U.S. and toward increased international involvement.


title: History of the United States

text: The primary American goal of 1945–1948 was to rescue Europe from the devastation of World War II and to contain the expansion of Communism, represented by the Soviet Union. U.S. foreign policy during the Cold War was built around the support of Western Europe and Japan along with the policy of containment, stopping the spread of communism. The U.S. joined the wars in Korea and Vietnam and to try to stop its spread.


title: History of the United States

text: The Truman Doctrine of 1947 provided military and economic aid to Greece and Turkey to counteract the threat of Communist expansion in the Balkans. In 1948, the United States replaced piecemeal financial aid programs with a comprehensive Marshall Plan, which pumped money into the economy of Western Europe, and removed trade barriers, while modernizing the managerial practices of businesses and governments.


title: History of the United States

text: The Plan's $13 billion budget was in the context of a U.S. GDP of $258 billion in 1948 and was in addition to the $12 billion in American aid given to Europe between the end of the war and the start of the Marshall Plan. Soviet head of state Joseph Stalin prevented his satellite states from participating, and from that point on, Eastern Europe, with inefficient centralized economies, fell further and further behind Western Europe in terms of economic development and prosperity. In 1949, the United States, rejecting the long-standing policy of no military alliances in peacetime, formed the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) alliance, which continues into the 21st century. In response the Soviets formed the Warsaw Pact of communist states, leading to the "Iron Curtain".


title: History of the United States

text: In August 1949 the Soviets tested their first nuclear weapon, thereby escalating the risk of warfare. The threat of mutually assured destruction however, prevented both powers from nuclear war, and resulted in proxy wars, especially in Korea and Vietnam, in which the two sides did not directly confront each other.


title: History of the United States

text: President Dwight D. Eisenhower, elected in a landslide as the first Republican president since 1932, had a lasting impact on American life and politics. He ended the Korean War, and avoided any other major conflict. He cut military spending by reliance on very high technology, such as nuclear weapons carried by long-range bombers and intercontinental missiles. He gave strong support to the NATO alliance and built other alliances along similar lines, but they never were especially effective.


title: History of the United States

text: After Stalin died in 1953, Eisenhower worked to obtain friendlier relationships with the Soviet Union. At home, he ended McCarthyism, expanded the Social Security program and presided over a decade of bipartisan comity. He promoted civil rights cautiously, and sent in the Army when trouble threatened over racial integration in Little Rock, Arkansas.


title: History of the United States

text: The unexpected leapfrogging of American technology by the Soviets in 1957 with Sputnik, the first Earth satellite, began the Space Race, won in 1969 by the Americans as Apollo 11 landed astronauts on the Moon. The angst about the weaknesses of American education led to large-scale federal support for science education and research. In the decades after World War II, the United States became a global influence in economic, political, military, cultural, and technological affairs.


title: History of the United States

text: In 1960, John F. Kennedy was elected President and his administration saw the acceleration of the country's role in the Space Race, escalation of the American role in the Vietnam War, the Bay of Pigs Invasion, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the jailing of Martin Luther King Jr. during the Birmingham campaign. President Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963, leaving the nation in profound shock.


title: History of the United States

text: President Lyndon B. Johnson secured congressional passage of his Great Society programs in the mid-1960s. They included civil rights, the end of legal segregation, Medicare, extension of welfare, federal aid to education at all levels, subsidies for the arts and humanities, environmental activism, and a series of programs designed to wipe out poverty. As later historians explained:


title: History of the United States

text: Johnson was rewarded with an electoral landslide in 1964 against conservative Barry Goldwater, which broke the decades-long control of Congress by the Conservative coalition. However, the Republicans bounced back in 1966 and elected Richard Nixon in 1968. Nixon largely continued the New Deal and Great Society programs he inherited; conservative reaction would come with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980. Meanwhile, the American people completed a great migration from farms into the cities and experienced a period of sustained economic expansion.


title: History of the United States

text: Starting in the late 1950s, institutionalized racism across the United States, but especially in the South, was increasingly challenged by the growing Civil Rights Movement. The activism of African-American leaders Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. led to the Montgomery bus boycott, which launched the movement. For years African Americans would struggle with violence against them but would achieve great steps toward equality with Supreme Court decisions, including "Brown v. Board of Education" and "Loving v. Virginia", the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968, which ended the Jim Crow laws that legalized racial segregation between whites and blacks.


title: History of the United States

text: Martin Luther King Jr., who had won the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to achieve equality of the races, was assassinated in 1968. Following his death others led the movement, most notably King's widow, Coretta Scott King, who was also active, like her husband, in the Opposition to the Vietnam War, and in the Women's Liberation Movement. There were 164 riots in 128 American cities in the first nine months of 1967. Frustrations with the seemingly slow progress of the integration movement led to the emergence of more radical discourses during the early 1960s, which, in turn, gave rise to the Black Power movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s.


title: History of the United States

text: The decade would ultimately bring about positive strides toward integration, especially in government service, sports, and entertainment. Native Americans turned to the federal courts to fight for their land rights. They held protests highlighting the federal government's failure to honor treaties. One of the most outspoken Native American groups was the American Indian Movement (AIM). In the 1960s, Cesar Chavez began organizing poorly paid Mexican-American farm workers in California. He led a five-year-long strike by grape pickers. Then Chávez formed the country's first successful union of farm workers. His United Farm Workers of America (UFW) faltered after a few years but after Chavez died in 1993 he became an iconic "folk saint" in the pantheon of Mexican Americans.


title: History of the United States

text: A new consciousness of the inequality of American women began sweeping the nation, starting with the 1963 publication of Betty Friedan's best-seller, "The Feminine Mystique", which explained how many housewives felt trapped and unfulfilled, assaulted American culture for its creation of the notion that women could only find fulfillment through their roles as wives, mothers, and keepers of the home, and argued that women were just as able as men to do every type of job. In 1966 Friedan and others established the National Organization for Women (NOW) to act for women as the NAACP did for African Americans.


title: History of the United States

text: Protests began, and the new women's liberation movement grew in size and power, gained much media attention, and, by 1968, had replaced the Civil Rights Movement as the U.S's main social revolution. Marches, parades, rallies, boycotts, and pickets brought out thousands, sometimes millions. There were striking gains for women in medicine, law, and business, while only a few were elected to office.


title: History of the United States

text: The women's movement was split into factions by political ideology early on, with NOW on the left, the Women's Equity Action League (WEAL) on the right, the National Women's Political Caucus (NWPC) in the center, and more radical groups formed by younger women on the far-left. The proposed Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution, passed by Congress in 1972 was defeated by a conservative coalition mobilized by Phyllis Schlafly. They argued that it degraded the position of the housewife and made young women susceptible to the military draft.


title: History of the United States

text: However, many federal laws (i.e. those equalizing pay, employment, education, employment opportunities, and credit; ending pregnancy discrimination; and requiring NASA, the Military Academies, and other organizations to admit women), state laws (i.e., those ending spousal abuse and marital rape), Supreme Court rulings (i.e. ruling that the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment applied to women), and state ERAs established women's equal status under the law, and social custom and consciousness began to change, accepting women's equality. The controversial issue of abortion, deemed by the Supreme Court as a fundamental right in "Roe v. Wade" (1973), is still a point of debate today.


title: History of the United States

text: Amid the Cold War, the United States entered the Vietnam War, whose growing unpopularity fed already existing social movements, including those among women, minorities, and young people. President Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society social programs and numerous rulings by the Warren Court added to the wide range of social reform during the 1960s and 1970s. Feminism and the environmental movement became political forces, and progress continued toward civil rights for all Americans. The Counterculture Revolution swept through the nation and much of the western world in the late sixties and early seventies, further dividing Americans in a "culture war" but also bringing forth more liberated social views.


title: History of the United States

text: Johnson was succeeded in 1969 by Republican Richard Nixon, who attempted to gradually turn the war over to the South Vietnamese forces. He negotiated the peace treaty in 1973 which secured the release of POWs and led to the withdrawal of U.S. troops. The war had cost the lives of 58,000 American troops. Nixon manipulated the fierce distrust between the Soviet Union and China to the advantage of the United States, achieving "détente" with both parties.


title: History of the United States

text: The Watergate scandal, involving Nixon's cover-up of his operatives' break-in into the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office complex destroyed his political base, sent many aides to prison, and forced Nixon's resignation on August 9, 1974. He was succeeded by Vice President Gerald Ford. The Fall of Saigon, on April 30, 1975, ended the Vietnam War and resulted in North and South Vietnam being reunited. Communist victories in neighboring Cambodia and Laos occurred in the same year, with the fall of Cambodia's capital, Phnom Penh on April 17 and the taking of Laos's capital, Vientiane on December 2.


title: History of the United States

text: The OPEC oil embargo marked a long-term economic transition since, for the first time, energy prices skyrocketed, and American factories faced serious competition from foreign automobiles, clothing, electronics, and consumer goods. By the late 1970s, the economy suffered an energy crisis, slow economic growth, high unemployment, and very high inflation coupled with high-interest rates (the term stagflation was coined). Since economists agreed on the wisdom of deregulation, many of the New Deal era regulations were ended, such as in transportation, banking, and telecommunications.


title: History of the United States

text: Jimmy Carter, running as someone who was not a part of the Washington political establishment, was elected president in 1976. On the world stage, Carter brokered the Camp David Accords between Israel and Egypt. In 1979, Iranian students stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran and took 66 Americans hostage, resulting in the Iran hostage crisis. With the hostage crisis and continuing stagflation, Carter lost the 1980 election to the Republican Ronald Reagan. On January 20, 1981, minutes after Carter's term in office ended, the remaining U.S. captives held at the U.S. embassy in Iran were released, ending the 444-day hostage crisis.


title: History of the United States

text: Ronald Reagan produced a major political realignment with his 1980 and 1984 landslide elections. Reagan's economic policies (dubbed "Reaganomics") and the implementation of the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981 lowered the top marginal tax rate from 70% to 28% over the course of seven years. Reagan continued to downsize government taxation and regulation. The U.S. experienced a recession in 1982, but the negative indicators reversed, with the inflation rate decreasing from 11% to 2%, the unemployment rate decreasing from 10.8% in December 1982 to 7.5% in November 1984, and the economic growth rate increasing from 4.5% to 7.2%.


title: History of the United States

text: Reagan ordered a buildup of the U.S. military, incurring additional budget deficits. Reagan introduced a complicated missile defense system known as the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) (dubbed "Star Wars" by opponents) in which, theoretically, the U.S. could shoot down missiles with laser systems in space. The Soviets reacted harshly because they thought it violated the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and would upset the balance of power by giving the U.S. a major military advantage. For years Soviet general secretary Mikhail Gorbachev argued vehemently against SDI. However, by the late 1980s he decided the system would never work and should not be used to block disarmament deals with the U.S.


title: History of the United States

text: Historians argue how great an impact the SDI threat had on the Soviets – whether it was enough to force Gorbachev to initiate radical reforms, or whether the deterioration of the Soviet economy alone forced the reforms. There is agreement that the Soviets realized they were well behind the Americans in military technology, that to try to catch up would be very expensive, and that the military expenses were already a very heavy burden slowing down their economy.


title: History of the United States

text: The 1983 Invasion of Grenada and 1986 bombing of Libya were popular in the U.S., though his backing of the Contras rebels was mired in the controversy over the Iran–Contra affair.


title: History of the United States

text: Reagan met four times with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who ascended to power as General Secretary of the Communist Party in 1985, and their summit conferences led to the signing of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. Gorbachev tried to save Communism in the Soviet Union first by ending the expensive nuclear arms race with America, then by shedding the East European empire in 1989. The Soviet Union collapsed on Christmas Day 1991, ending the U.S–Soviet Cold War.


title: History of the United States

text: The United States emerged as the world's sole remaining superpower and continued to intervene in international affairs during the 1990s, including the 1991 Gulf War against Iraq. Following his election in 1992, President Bill Clinton oversaw one of the longest periods of economic expansion and unprecedented gains in securities values. President Clinton worked with the Republican Congress to pass the first balanced federal budget in 30 years.Much of the econmic boom was a side effect of the Digital Revolution and new business opportunities created by the internet privatized in 1993. Prior to this time ARPNET a Department of Defense Project had developed the internet for governmental, and research purposes.


title: History of the United States

text: In 1998, Clinton was impeached by the House of Representatives on charges of lying under oath about (perjury regarding) a sexual relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. He was acquitted by the Senate. The failure of impeachment and the Democratic gains in the 1998 election forced House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a Republican, to resign from Congress.


title: History of the United States

text: The Republican Party expanded its base throughout the South after 1968 (excepting 1976), largely due to its strength among socially conservative white Evangelical Protestants and traditionalist Roman Catholics, added to its traditional strength in the business community and suburbs. As white Democrats in the South lost dominance of the Democratic Party in the 1990s, the region took on the two-party apparatus which characterized most states. The Republican Party's central leader by 1980 was Ronald Reagan, whose conservative policies called for reduced government spending and regulation, lower taxes, and a strong anti-Soviet foreign policy.


title: History of the United States

text: His iconic status in the party persists into the 21st century, as practically all Republican Party leaders acknowledge his stature. Social scientists Theodore Caplow et al. argue, "The Republican party, nationally, moved from right-center toward the center in 1940s and 1950s, then moved right again in the 1970s and 1980s." They add: "The Democratic party, nationally, moved from left-center toward the center in the 1940s and 1950s, then moved further toward the right-center in the 1970s and 1980s."


title: History of the United States

text: The close presidential election in 2000 between Governor George W. Bush and Al Gore helped lay the seeds for political polarization to come. The vote in the decisive states of New Mexico and Florida was extremely close and produced a dramatic dispute over the counting of votes. Including 2000, the Democrats outpolled the Republicans in the national vote in every election from 1992 to 2020, except for 2004.


title: History of the United States

text: On September 11, 2001 ("9/11"), the United States was struck by a terrorist attack when 19 al-Qaeda hijackers commandeered four airliners to be used in suicide attacks and intentionally crashed two into both twin towers of the World Trade Center and the third into the Pentagon, killing 2,937 victims—206 aboard the three airliners, 2,606 who were in the World Trade Center and on the ground, and 125 who were in the Pentagon. The fourth plane was re-taken by the passengers and crew of the aircraft. While they were not able to land the plane safely, they were able to re-take control of the aircraft and crash it into an empty field in Pennsylvania, killing all 44 people including the four terrorists on board, thereby saving whatever target the terrorists were aiming for. Within two hours, both Twin Towers of the World Trade Center completely collapsed causing massive damage to the surrounding area and blanketing Lower Manhattan in toxic dust clouds. All in all, a total of 2,977 victims perished in the attacks. In response, President George W. Bush on September 20 announced a "war on terror". On October 7, 2001, the United States and NATO then invaded Afghanistan to oust the Taliban regime, which had provided safe haven to al-Qaeda and its leader Osama bin Laden.


title: History of the United States

text: The federal government established new domestic efforts to prevent future attacks. The USA PATRIOT Act increased the government's power to monitor communications and removed legal restrictions on information sharing between federal law enforcement and intelligence services. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security was created to lead and coordinate federal counter-terrorism activities. Since 2002, the U.S. government's indefinite detention of terrorism suspects captured abroad at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, a prison at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, led to allegations of human rights abuses and violations of international law.


title: History of the United States

text: In 2003, from March 19 to May 1, the United States launched an invasion of Iraq, which led to the collapse of the Iraq government and the eventual capture of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, with whom the U.S. had long-standing tense relations. The reasons for the invasion cited by the Bush administration included the spreading of democracy, the elimination of weapons of mass destruction (a key demand of the UN as well, though later investigations found parts of the intelligence reports to be inaccurate), and the liberation of the Iraqi people. Despite some initial successes early in the invasion, the continued Iraq War fueled international protests and gradually saw domestic support decline as many people began to question whether or not the invasion was worth the cost. In 2007, after years of violence by the Iraqi insurgency, President Bush deployed more troops in a strategy dubbed "the surge". While the death toll decreased, the political stability of Iraq remained in doubt.


title: History of the United States

text: In 2008, the unpopularity of President Bush and the Iraq war, along with the 2008 financial crisis, led to the election of Barack Obama, the first multiracial president, with African-American ancestry. After his election, Obama reluctantly continued the war effort in Iraq until August 31, 2010, when he declared that combat operations had ended. However, 50,000 American soldiers and military personnel were kept in Iraq to assist Iraqi forces, help protect withdrawing forces, and work on counter-terrorism until December 15, 2011, when the war was declared formally over and the last troops left the country. At the same time, Obama increased American involvement in Afghanistan, starting a surge strategy using an additional 30,000 troops, while proposing to begin withdrawing troops sometime in December 2014. In 2009, on his second day in office, Obama issued an executive order banning the use of torture, a prohibition codified into law in 2016. Obama also ordered the closure of secret CIA-run prisons overseas ("black sites"). Obama sought to close the Guantanamo Bay detention camp "as soon as practicable" and over his tenure the population of the detention camp declined from 242 inmates to 45 inmates; the Guantanamo Review Task Force cleared many prisoners for release and resettlement abroad. Obama's efforts to close the prison entirely were stymied by Congress, which in 2011 enacted a measure blocking Obama from transferring any Guantanamo detainees to U.S. facilities.


title: History of the United States

text: In May 2011, after nearly a decade in hiding, the founder and leader of Al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, was killed in Pakistan in a raid conducted by U.S. naval special forces acting under President Obama's direct orders. While Al Qaeda was near collapse in Afghanistan, affiliated organizations continued to operate in Yemen and other remote areas as the CIA used drones to hunt down and remove its leadership.


title: History of the United States

text: The Boston Marathon bombing was a bombing incident, followed by subsequent related shootings, that occurred when two pressure cooker bombs exploded during the Boston Marathon on April 15, 2013. The bombs exploded near the marathon's finish line, killing 3 people and injuring an estimated 264 others.


title: History of the United States

text: The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant rose to prominence in September 2014. In addition to taking control of much of Western Iraq and Eastern Syria, ISIS also beheaded three journalists, two American and one British. These events lead to a major military offensive by the United States and its allies in the region.


title: History of the United States

text: On December 28, 2014, Obama officially ended the combat mission in Afghanistan and promised a withdrawal of all remaining U.S. troops at the end of 2016 with the exception of the embassy guards. The US military mission formally ended on August 30, 2021.


title: History of the United States

text: In September 2008, the United States and most of Europe entered the longest post–World War II recession, often called the "Great Recession". Multiple overlapping crises were involved, especially the housing market crisis, a subprime mortgage crisis, soaring oil prices, an automotive industry crisis, rising unemployment, and the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. The financial crisis threatened the stability of the entire economy in September 2008 when Lehman Brothers failed and other giant banks were in grave danger. Starting in October the federal government lent $245 billion to financial institutions through the Troubled Asset Relief Program which was passed by bipartisan majorities and signed by Bush.


title: History of the United States

text: Following his election victory by a wide electoral margin in November 2008, Bush's successor – Barack Obama – signed into law the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, which was a $787 billion economic stimulus aimed at helping the economy recover from the deepening recession. Obama, like Bush, took steps to rescue the auto industry and prevent future economic meltdowns. These included a bailout of General Motors and Chrysler, putting ownership temporarily in the hands of the government, and the "cash for clunkers" program which temporarily boosted new car sales.


title: History of the United States

text: The recession officially ended in June 2009, and the economy slowly began to expand once again. Beginning in December 2007, the unemployment rate steeply rose from around 5% to a peak of 10% before falling as the economy and labor markets experienced a recovery. The economic expansion that followed the Great Recession was the longest in U.S. history; strong growth led to the unemployment rate reaching a 50-year low in 2019. Despite the strong economy, increases in the costs of housing, child care, higher education, and out-of-pocket healthcare expenses surpassed increases in wages, a phenomenon some referred to as an "affordability crisis". The economic expansion came to an end in early 2020 with a sharp economic contraction largely caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, which seriously affected the United States.


title: History of the United States

text: From 2009 to 2010, the 111th Congress passed major legislation such as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, informally known as Obamacare, the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act and the Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal Act, which were signed into law by President Obama. Following the 2010 midterm elections, which resulted in a Republican-controlled House of Representatives and a Democratic-controlled Senate, Congress presided over a period of elevated gridlock and heated debates over whether or not to raise the debt ceiling, extend tax cuts for citizens making over $250,000 annually, and many other key issues. These ongoing debates led to President Obama signing the Budget Control Act of 2011. Following Obama's 2012 re-election, Congressional gridlock continued as Congressional Republicans' call for the repeal of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act along with other various demands, resulted in the first government shutdown since the Clinton administration and almost led to the first default on U.S. debt since the 19th century. As a result of growing public frustration with both parties in Congress since the beginning of the decade, Congressional approval ratings fell to record lows.


title: History of the United States

text: Recent events also include the rise of new political movements, such as the conservative Tea Party movement and the liberal Occupy movement. The debate over the issue of rights for the LGBT community, including same-sex marriage, began to shift in favor of same-sex couples. In 2012, President Obama became the first president to openly support same-sex marriage, and the Supreme Court provided for federal recognition of same-sex unions and then nationwide legalized gay marriage in 2015.


title: History of the United States

text: Political debate has continued over tax reform, immigration reform, income inequality, and U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, particularly with regards to global terrorism, the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant and an accompanying climate of Islamophobia.


title: History of the United States

text: The late 2010s were marked by widespread social upheaval and change in the United States. The #MeToo movement gained popularity, exposing alleged sexual harassment and abuse in the workplace. Multiple prominent celebrities were accused of misconduct or rape. During this period, the Black Lives Matter movement also gained support online, exacerbated by the police killings of multiple black Americans. Multiple mass shootings, including the Pulse Nightclub shooting (2016) and the Las Vegas shooting, which claimed the lives of 61 people, led to increased calls for gun control and reform. Following the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in 2018, gun control advocates organized the March for Our Lives, where millions of students across the country walked out of school to protest gun violence. The Women's March protest against Trump's presidency in 2017 was one of the largest protests in American history.


title: History of the United States

text: In 2016, following a contentious election, Republican Donald Trump was elected president. The results of the election were called into question, and U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that associates of the Russian government interfered in the election "to undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process". This, along with questions about potential collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian officials, led to investigations by the FBI and Congress.


title: History of the United States

text: During Trump's presidency, he espoused an "America First" ideology, placing restrictions on asylum seekers and imposing a widely controversial ban on immigration from seven Muslim-majority countries. Many of his executive orders and other actions were challenged in court. During his presidency he also engaged the United States in a trade war with China, imposing a wide range of tariffs on Chinese products. In 2018, controversy erupted over the Trump administration's "zero tolerance" policy towards illegal immigrants, which involved the separation of thousands of undocumented children from their parents. After public outcry, Trump rescinded this policy. Trump's term also saw the confirmation of three new justices to the Supreme Court, cementing a conservative majority.


title: History of the United States

text: In 2019, a whistleblower complaint alleged that Trump had withheld foreign aid from Ukraine under the demand that they investigate the business dealings of the son of Trump's political opponent. As a result, Trump was impeached for abuse of power and obstruction of congress, becoming the third president to have been impeached, but he was acquitted.


title: History of the United States

text: The worldwide COVID-19 pandemic having arrived in the United States was first confirmed in January 2020. , the U.S. has suffered more official COVID-19 deaths than any other country with the death toll standing at 1 million, with the U.S. death toll surpassing the number of U.S. deaths during the Spanish flu pandemic, although the Spanish flu killed 1 in 150 Americans compared to COVID-19 killing 1 in 500 Americans. As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, U.S. life expectancy fell by over a year in 2020 and unemployment rates rose to the worst rates since the Great Depression. In 2021, U.S. life expectancy decreased by around half a year. The May 2020 murder of George Floyd caused mass protests and riots in many major cities over police brutality, with many states calling in the National Guard.


title: History of the United States

text: 2020 was marked by a rise in domestic terrorist threats and widespread conspiracy theories around mail-in voting and COVID-19. The QAnon conspiracy theory, a fringe far-right political movement among some ardent conservatives, gained publicity and multiple major cities were hit by rioting and brawls between far-left antifascist affiliated groups and far right groups such as the Proud Boys.


title: History of the United States

text: Democrat Joe Biden defeated Trump in the 2020 presidential election, the first defeat of an incumbent president since 1992. The election, with an exceptional amount of voting by mail and early voting due to the danger of contracting COVID-19 at traditional voting booths, had historically high voter turnout. Trump then repeatedly made false claims of massive voter fraud and election rigging, leading to the January 6 United States Capitol attack by supporters of Trump and right-wing militias. That storming led to Trump's impeachment, as the only U.S. president to be impeached twice. The Senate later acquitted Trump despite some members of his own Republican party voting against him. After the 2021 inauguration, Biden's running-mate, then-Senator Kamala Harris, became both the first African-American and first woman vice president of the United States.


title: History of the United States

text: The biggest mass vaccination campaign in U.S. history kicked off on December 14, 2020, when ICU nurse Sandra Lindsay became the first person in the U.S. to receive the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine. As of August 2021, 60% of the U.S. population has received a dose of the Pfizer BioNTech, Moderna, or Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine.


title: History of the United States

text: Following Biden's election, the date for US troops to withdraw from Afghanistan was moved back from April to August 31, 2021. In Afghanistan, the withdrawal coincided with the 2021 Taliban offensive, culminating in the fall of Kabul. Following a massive airlift of over 120,000 people, the US military mission formally ended on August 30, 2021.


title: History of the United States

text: On June 24, 2022, the Supreme Court, in a landmark ruling, determined that abortion is not a protected right under the Constitution. The ruling, "Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization" overturned "Roe v. Wade" and "Planned Parenthood v. Casey" and sparked protests outside of the Supreme Court building and across the country.


title: History of the United States

text: Ketanji Brown Jackson succeeded Justice Breyer upon his retirement from the court on June 30, 2022. She became the first black woman and the first former federal public defender to serve on the Supreme Court upon her swearing in.


title: Percy Bysshe Shelley

text: Percy Bysshe Shelley ( ; 4 August 17928 July 1822) was one of the major English Romantic poets. A radical in his poetry as well as in his political and social views, Shelley did not achieve fame during his lifetime, but recognition of his achievements in poetry grew steadily following his death and he became an important influence on subsequent generations of poets including Robert Browning, Algernon Charles Swinburne, Thomas Hardy, and W. B. Yeats. American literary critic Harold Bloom describes him as "a superb craftsman, a lyric poet without rival, and surely one of the most advanced sceptical intellects ever to write a poem."


title: Percy Bysshe Shelley

text: Shelly's reputation fluctuated during the 20th century, but in recent decades he has achieved increasing critical acclaim for the sweeping momentum of his poetic imagery, his mastery of genres and verse forms, and the complex interplay of sceptical, idealist, and materialist ideas in his work. Among his best-known works are "Ozymandias" (1818), "Ode to the West Wind" (1819), "To a Skylark" (1820), the philosophical essay "The Necessity of Atheism" written alongside his friend T. J. Hogg (1811), and the political ballad "The Mask of Anarchy" (1819). His other major works include the verse drama "The Cenci" (1819) and long poems such as "Alastor, or The Spirit of Solitude" (1815), "Julian and Maddalo" (1819), "Adonais" (1821), "Prometheus Unbound" (1820)—widely considered his masterpiece—"Hellas" (1822), and his final, unfinished work, "The Triumph of Life" (1822).


title: Percy Bysshe Shelley

text: Shelley also wrote prose fiction and a quantity of essays on political, social, and philosophical issues. Much of this poetry and prose was not published in his lifetime, or only published in expurgated form, due to the risk of prosecution for political and religious libel. From the 1820s, his poems and political and ethical writings became popular in Owenist, Chartist, and radical political circles, and later drew admirers as diverse as Karl Marx, Mahatma Gandhi, and George Bernard Shaw.


title: Percy Bysshe Shelley

text: Shelley's life was marked by family crises, ill health, and a backlash against his atheism, political views and defiance of social conventions. He went into permanent self-exile in Italy in 1818, and over the next four years produced what Leader and O'Neill call "some of the finest poetry of the Romantic period". His second wife, Mary Shelley, was the author of "Frankenstein". He died in a boating accident in 1822 at the age of 29.


title: Percy Bysshe Shelley

text: Shelley was born on 4 August 1792 at Field Place, Warnham, West Sussex, England. He was the eldest son of Sir Timothy Shelley (1753–1844), a Whig Member of Parliament for Horsham from 1790 to 1792 and for Shoreham between 1806 and 1812, and his wife, Elizabeth Pilfold (1763–1846), the daughter of a successful butcher. He had four younger sisters and one much younger brother. Shelley's early childhood was sheltered and mostly happy. He was particularly close to his sisters and his mother, who encouraged him to hunt, fish and ride. At age six, he was sent to a day school run by the vicar of Warnham church, where he displayed an impressive memory and gift for languages.


title: Percy Bysshe Shelley

text: In 1802 he entered the Syon House Academy of Brentford, Middlesex, where his cousin Thomas Medwin was a pupil. Shelley was bullied and unhappy at the school and sometimes responded with violent rage. He also began suffering from the nightmares, hallucinations and sleep walking that were to periodically afflict him throughout his life. Shelley developed an interest in science which supplemented his voracious reading of tales of mystery, romance and the supernatural. During his holidays at Field Place, his sisters were often terrified at being subjected to his experiments with gunpowder, acids and electricity. Back at school he blew up a paling fence with gunpowder.


title: Percy Bysshe Shelley

text: In 1804, Shelley entered Eton College, a period which he later recalled with loathing. He was subjected to particularly severe mob bullying which the perpetrators called "Shelley-baits". A number of biographers and contemporaries have attributed the bullying to Shelley's aloofness, nonconformity and refusal to take part in fagging. His peculiarities and violent rages earned him the nickname "Mad Shelley". His interest in the occult and science continued, and contemporaries describe him giving an electric shock to a master, blowing up a tree stump with gunpowder and attempting to raise spirits with occult rituals. In his senior years, Shelley came under the influence of a part-time teacher, Dr James Lind, who encouraged his interest in the occult and introduced him to liberal and radical authors. Shelley also developed an interest in Plato and idealist philosophy which he pursued in later years through self-study. According to Richard Holmes, Shelley, by his leaving year, had gained a reputation as a classical scholar and a tolerated eccentric.


title: Percy Bysshe Shelley

text: In his last term at Eton, his first novel "Zastrozzi" appeared and he had established a following among his fellow students. Prior to enrolling for University College, Oxford in October 1810, Shelley completed "Original Poetry by Victor and Cazire" (written with his sister Elizabeth), the verse melodrama "The Wandering Jew" and the gothic novel "St. Irvine; or, The Rosicrucian: A Romance" (published 1811).


title: Percy Bysshe Shelley

text: At Oxford Shelley attended few lectures, instead spending long hours reading and conducting scientific experiments in the laboratory he set up in his room. He met a fellow student, Thomas Jefferson Hogg, who became his closest friend. Shelley became increasingly politicised under Hogg's influence, developing strong radical and anti-Christian views. Such views were dangerous in the reactionary political climate prevailing during Britain's war with Napoleonic France, and Shelley's father warned him against Hogg's influence.


title: Percy Bysshe Shelley

text: In the winter of 1810–1811, Shelley published a series of anonymous political poems and tracts: "Posthumous Fragments of Margaret Nicholson", "The Necessity of Atheism" (written in collaboration with Hogg) and "A Poetical Essay on the Existing State of Things". Shelley mailed "The Necessity of Atheism" to all the bishops and heads of colleges at Oxford, and he was called to appear before the college's fellows, including the Dean, George Rowley. His refusal to answer questions put by college authorities regarding whether or not he authored the pamphlet resulted in his expulsion from Oxford on 25March 1811, along with Hogg. Hearing of his son's expulsion, Shelley's father threatened to cut all contact with Shelley unless he agreed to return home and study under tutors appointed by him. Shelley's refusal to do so led to a falling-out with his father.


title: Percy Bysshe Shelley

text: In late December 1810, Shelley had met Harriet Westbrook, a pupil at the same boarding school as Shelley's sisters. They corresponded frequently that winter and also after Shelley had been expelled from Oxford. Shelley expounded his radical ideas on politics, religion and marriage to Harriet, and they gradually convinced each other that she was oppressed by her father and at school. Shelley's infatuation with Harriet developed in the months following his expulsion, when he was under severe emotional strain due to the conflict with his family, his bitterness over the breakdown of his romance with his cousin Harriet Grove, and his unfounded belief that he might be suffering from a fatal illness. At the same time, Harriet Westbrook's elder sister Eliza, to whom Harriet was very close, encouraged the young girl's romance with Shelley. Shelley's correspondence with Harriet intensified in July, while he was holidaying in Wales, and in response to her urgent pleas for his protection, he returned to London in early August. Putting aside his philosophical objections to matrimony, he left with the sixteen-year-old Harriet for Edinburgh on 25 August 1811, and they were married there on the 28th.


title: Percy Bysshe Shelley

text: Hearing of the elopement, Harriet's father, John Westbrook, and Shelley's father, Timothy, cut off the allowances of the bride and groom. (Shelley's father believed his son had married beneath him, as Harriet's father had earned his fortune in trade and was the owner of a tavern and coffee house.)


title: Percy Bysshe Shelley

text: Surviving on borrowed money, Shelley and Harriet stayed in Edinburgh for a month, with Hogg living under the same roof. The trio left for York in October, and Shelley went on to Sussex to settle matters with his father, leaving Harriet behind with Hogg. Shelley returned from his unsuccessful excursion to find that Eliza had moved in with Harriet and Hogg. Harriet confessed that Hogg had tried to seduce her while Shelley had been away. Shelley, Harriet and Eliza soon left for Keswick in the Lake District, leaving Hogg in York.


title: Percy Bysshe Shelley

text: At this time Shelley was also involved in an intense platonic relationship with Elizabeth Hitchener, a 28-year-old unmarried schoolteacher of advanced views, with whom he had been corresponding. Hitchener, whom Shelley called the "sister of my soul" and "my second self", became his confidante and intellectual companion as he developed his views on politics, religion, ethics and personal relationships. Shelley proposed that she join him, Harriet and Eliza in a communal household where all property would be shared.


title: Percy Bysshe Shelley

text: The Shelleys and Eliza spent December and January in Keswick where Shelley visited Robert Southey whose poetry he admired. Southey was taken with Shelley, even though there was a wide gulf between them politically, and predicted great things for him as a poet. Southey also informed Shelley that William Godwin, author of "Political Justice", which had greatly influenced him in his youth, and which Shelley also admired, was still alive. Shelley wrote to Godwin, offering himself as his devoted disciple. Godwin, who had modified many of his earlier radical views, advised Shelley to reconcile with his father, become a scholar before he published anything else, and give up his avowed plans for political agitation in Ireland.


title: Percy Bysshe Shelley

text: Meanwhile, Shelley had met his father's patron, Charles Howard, 11th Duke of Norfolk, who helped secure the reinstatement of Shelley's allowance. With Harriet's allowance also restored, Shelley now had the funds for his Irish venture. Their departure for Ireland was precipitated by increasing hostility towards the Shelley household from their landlord and neighbours who were alarmed by Shelley's scientific experiments, pistol shooting and radical political views. As tension mounted, Shelley claimed he had been attacked in his home by ruffians, an event which might have been real or a delusional episode triggered by stress. This was the first of a series of episodes in subsequent years where Shelley claimed to have been attacked by strangers during periods of personal crisis.


title: Percy Bysshe Shelley

text: Early in 1812, Shelley wrote, published and personally distributed in Dublin three political tracts: "An Address, to the Irish People; Proposals for an Association of Philanthropists;" and "Declaration of Rights". He also delivered a speech at a meeting of O'Connell's Catholic Committee in which he called for Catholic emancipation, repeal of the Acts of Union and an end to the oppression of the Irish poor. Reports of Shelley's subversive activities were sent to the Home Secretary.


title: Percy Bysshe Shelley

text: Returning from Ireland, the Shelley household travelled to Wales, then Devon, where they again came under government surveillance for distributing subversive literature. Elizabeth Hitchener joined the household in Devon, but several months later had a falling out with the Shelleys and left.


title: Percy Bysshe Shelley

text: The Shelley household had settled in Tremadog, Wales in September 1812, where Shelley worked on "Queen Mab", a utopian allegory with extensive notes preaching atheism, free love, republicanism and vegetarianism. The poem was published the following year in a private edition of 250 copies, although few were initially distributed because of the risk of prosecution for seditious and religious libel.


title: Percy Bysshe Shelley

text: In February 1813, Shelley claimed he was attacked in his home at night. The incident might have been real, a hallucination brought on by stress, or a hoax staged by Shelley in order to escape government surveillance, creditors and his entanglements in local politics. The Shelleys and Eliza fled to Ireland, then London.


title: Percy Bysshe Shelley

text: Back in England, Shelley's debts mounted as he tried unsuccessfully to reach a financial settlement with his father. On 23 June Harriet gave birth to a girl, Eliza Ianthe Shelley, and in the following months the relationship between Shelley and his wife deteriorated. Shelley resented the influence Harriet's sister had over her, while Harriet was alienated by Shelley's close friendship with an attractive widow, Harriet Boinville, and her daughter Cornelia Turner. Following Ianthe's birth, the Shelleys moved frequently across London, Wales, the Lake District, Scotland and Berkshire to escape creditors and search for a home.


title: Percy Bysshe Shelley

text: In March 1814, Shelley remarried Harriet in London to settle any doubts about the legality of their Edinburgh wedding and secure the rights of their child. Nevertheless, the Shelleys lived apart for most of the following months, and Shelley reflected bitterly on: "my rash & heartless union with Harriet".


title: Percy Bysshe Shelley

text: In May 1814, Shelley began visiting his mentor Godwin almost daily, and soon fell in love with Mary, the sixteen-year-old daughter of Godwin and the late feminist author Mary Wollstonecraft. Shelley and Mary declared their love for each other during a visit to her mother's grave in the churchyard of St Pancras Old Church on 26 June. When Shelley told Godwin that he intended to leave Harriet and live with Mary, his mentor banished him from the house and forbade Mary from seeing him. Shelley and Mary eloped to Europe on 28 July, taking Mary's step-sister Claire Clairmont with them. Before leaving, Shelley had secured a loan of £3,000 but had left most of the funds at the disposal of Godwin and Harriet, who was now pregnant. The financial arrangement with Godwin led to rumours that he had sold his daughters to Shelley.


title: Percy Bysshe Shelley

text: Shelley, Mary and Claire made their way across war-ravaged France where Shelley wrote to Harriet, asking her to meet them in Switzerland with the money he had left for her. Hearing nothing from Harriet in Switzerland, and unable to secure sufficient funds or suitable accommodation, the three travelled to Germany and Holland before returning to England on 13 September.


title: Percy Bysshe Shelley

text: Shelley spent the next few months trying to raise loans and avoid bailiffs. Mary was pregnant, lonely, depressed and ill. Her mood was not improved when she heard that, on 30 November, Harriet had given birth to Charles Bysshe Shelley, heir to the Shelley fortune and baronetcy. This was followed, in early January 1815, by news that Shelley's grandfather, Sir Bysshe, had died leaving an estate worth £220,000. The settlement of the estate, and a financial settlement between Shelley and his father (now Sir Timothy), however, was not concluded until April the following year.


title: Percy Bysshe Shelley

text: In February 1815, Mary gave premature birth to a baby girl who died ten days later, deepening her depression. In the following weeks, Mary became close to Hogg who temporarily moved into the household. Shelley was almost certainly having a sexual relationship with Claire at this time, and it is possible that Mary, with Shelley's encouragement, was also having a sexual relationship with Hogg. In May Claire left the household, at Mary's insistence, to reside in Lynmouth.


title: Percy Bysshe Shelley

text: In August Shelley and Mary moved to Bishopsgate where Shelley worked on "Alastor", a long poem in blank verse based on the myth of Narcissus and Echo. "Alastor" was published in an edition of 250 in early 1816 to poor sales and largely unfavourable reviews from the conservative press.


title: Percy Bysshe Shelley

text: On 24 January 1816, Mary gave birth to William Shelley. Shelley was delighted to have another son, but was suffering from the strain of prolonged financial negotiations with his father, Harriet and William Godwin. Shelley showed signs of delusional behaviour and was contemplating an escape to the continent.


title: Percy Bysshe Shelley

text: Claire initiated a sexual relationship with Lord Byron in April 1816, just before his self-exile on the continent, and then arranged for Byron to meet Shelley, Mary and her in Geneva. Shelley admired Byron's poetry and had sent him "Queen Mab" and other poems. Shelley's party arrived in Geneva in May and rented a house close to Villa Diodati, on the shores of Lake Geneva, where Byron was staying. There Shelley, Byron and the others engaged in discussions about literature, science and "various philosophical doctrines". One night, while Byron was reciting Coleridge's "Christabel", Shelley suffered a severe panic attack with hallucinations. The previous night Mary had had a more productive vision or nightmare which inspired her novel "Frankenstein".


title: Percy Bysshe Shelley

text: Shelley and Byron then took a boating tour around Lake Geneva, which inspired Shelley to write his "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty", his first substantial poem since "Alastor". A tour of Chamonix in the French Alps inspired "Mont Blanc", which has been described as an atheistic response to Coleridge's "Hymn before Sunrise in the Vale of Chamoni". During this tour, Shelley often signed guest books with a declaration that he was an atheist. These declarations were seen by other British tourists, including Southey, which hardened attitudes against Shelley back home.


title: Percy Bysshe Shelley

text: Relations between Byron and Shelley's party became strained when Byron was told that Claire was pregnant with his child. Shelley, Mary, and Claire left Switzerland in late August, with arrangements for the expected baby still unclear, although Shelley made provision for Claire and the baby in his will. In January 1817 Claire gave birth to a daughter by Byron who she named Alba, but later renamed Allegra in accordance with Byron's wishes.


title: Percy Bysshe Shelley

text: Shelley and Mary returned to England in September 1816, and in early October they heard that Mary's half-sister Fanny Imlay had killed herself. Godwin believed that Fanny had been in love with Shelley, and Shelley himself suffered depression and guilt over her death, writing: "Friend had I known thy secret grief / Should we have parted so." Further tragedy followed in December when Shelley's estranged wife Harriet drowned herself in the Serpentine. Harriet, pregnant and living alone at the time, believed that she had been abandoned by her new lover. In her suicide letter she asked Shelley to take custody of their son Charles but to leave their daughter in her sister Eliza's care.


title: Percy Bysshe Shelley

text: Shelley married Mary Godwin on 30 December, despite his philosophical objections to the institution. The marriage was intended to help secure Shelley's custody of his children by Harriet and to placate Godwin who had refused to see Shelley and Mary because of their previous adulterous relationship. After a prolonged legal battle, the Court of Chancery eventually awarded custody of Shelley and Harriet's children to foster parents, on the grounds that Shelley had abandoned his first wife for Mary without cause and was an atheist.


title: Percy Bysshe Shelley

text: In March 1817 the Shelleys moved to the village of Marlow, Buckinghamshire, where Shelley's friend Thomas Love Peacock lived. The Shelley household included Claire and her baby Allegra, both of whose presence was resented by Mary. Shelley's generosity with money and increasing debts also led to financial and marital stress, as did Godwin's frequent requests for financial help.


title: Percy Bysshe Shelley

text: On 2 September Mary gave birth to a daughter, Clara Everina Shelley. Soon after, Shelley left for London with Claire, which increased Mary's resentment towards her step-sister. Shelley was arrested for two days in London over money he owed, and attorneys visited Mary in Marlowe over Shelley's debts.


title: Percy Bysshe Shelley

text: Shelley took part in the literary and political circle that surrounded Leigh Hunt, and during this period he met William Hazlitt and John Keats. Shelley's major work during this time was "Laon and Cythna", a long narrative poem featuring incest and attacks on religion. It was hastily withdrawn after publication due to fears of prosecution for religious libel, and was re-edited and reissued as "The Revolt of Islam" in January 1818. Shelley also published two political tracts under a pseudonym: "A Proposal for putting Reform to the Vote throughout the Kingdom" (March 1817) and "An Address to the People on the Death of Princess Charlotte" (November 1817). In December he wrote "Ozymandias", which is considered to be one of his finest sonnets, as part of a competition with friend and fellow poet Horace Smith.


title: Percy Bysshe Shelley

text: On 12 March 1818 the Shelleys and Claire left England to escape its "tyranny civil and religious". A doctor had also recommended that Shelley go to Italy for his chronic lung complaint, and Shelley had arranged to take Claire's daughter, Allegra, to her father Byron who was now in Venice.


title: Percy Bysshe Shelley

text: After travelling some months through France and Italy, Shelley left Mary and baby Clara at Bagni di Lucca (in today's Tuscany) while he travelled with Claire to Venice to see Byron and make arrangements for visiting Allegra. Byron invited the Shelleys to stay at his summer residence at Este, and Shelley urged Mary to meet him there. Clara became seriously ill on the journey and died on 24 September in Venice. Following Clara's death, Mary fell into a long period of depression and emotional estrangement from Shelley.


title: Percy Bysshe Shelley

text: The Shelleys moved to Naples on 1 December, where they stayed for three months. During this period Shelley was ill, depressed and almost suicidal: a state of mind reflected in his poem "Stanzas written in Dejection – December 1818, Near Naples".


title: Percy Bysshe Shelley

text: While in Naples, Shelley registered the birth and baptism of a baby girl, Elena Adelaide Shelley (born 27 December), naming himself as the father and falsely naming Mary as the mother. The parentage of Elena has never been conclusively established. Biographers have variously speculated that she was adopted by Shelley to console Mary for the loss of Clara, that she was Shelley's child to Claire, that she was his child to his servant Elise Foggi, or that she was the child of a "mysterious lady" who had followed Shelley to the continent. Shelley registered the birth and baptism on 27 February 1819, and the household left Naples for Rome the following day, leaving Elena with carers. Elena was to die in a poor suburb of Naples on 9 June 1820.


title: Percy Bysshe Shelley

text: In Rome, Shelley was in poor health, probably suffering from nephritis and tuberculosis which later was in remission. Nevertheless, he made significant progress on three major works: "Julian and Maddalo", "Prometheus Unbound" and "The Cenci". "Julian and Maddalo" is an autobiographical poem which explores the relationship between Shelley and Byron and analyses Shelley's personal crises of 1818 and 1819. The poem was completed in the summer of 1819, but was not published in Shelley's lifetime. "Prometheus Unbound" is a long dramatic poem inspired by Aeschylus's retelling of the Prometheus myth. It was completed in late 1819 and published in 1820. "The Cenci" is a verse drama of rape, murder and incest based on the story of the Renaissance Count Cenci of Rome and his daughter Beatrice. Shelley completed the play in September and the first edition was published that year. It was to become one of his most popular works and the only one to have two authorised editions in his lifetime.


title: Percy Bysshe Shelley

text: Shelley's three-year-old son William died in June, probably of malaria. The new tragedy caused a further decline in Shelley's health and deepened Mary's depression. On 4 August she wrote: "We have now lived five years together; and if all the events of the five years were blotted out, I might be happy".The Shelleys were now living in Livorno where, in September, Shelley heard of the Peterloo Massacre of peaceful protesters in Manchester. Within two weeks he had completed one of his most famous political poems, "The Mask of Anarchy", and despatched it to Leigh Hunt for publication. Hunt, however, decided not to publish it for fear of prosecution for seditious libel. The poem was only officially published in 1832.


title: Percy Bysshe Shelley

text: The Shelleys moved to Florence in October, where Shelley read a scathing review of the "Revolt of Islam" (and its earlier version "Laon and Cythna") in the conservative "Quarterly Review". Shelley was angered by the personal attack on him in the article which he erroneously believed had been written by Southey. His bitterness over the review lasted for the rest of his life.


title: Percy Bysshe Shelley

text: On 12 November, Mary gave birth to a boy, Percy Florence Shelley. Around the time of Percy's birth, the Shelleys met Sophia Stacey, who was a ward of one of Shelley's uncles and was staying at the same pension as the Shelleys. Sophia, a talented harpist and singer, formed a friendship with Shelley while Mary was preoccupied with her newborn son. Shelley wrote at least five love poems and fragments for Sophia including "Song written for an Indian Air".


title: Percy Bysshe Shelley

text: The Shelleys moved to Pisa in January 1820, ostensibly to consult a doctor who had been recommended to them. There they became friends with the Irish republican Margaret Mason (Lady Margaret Mountcashell) and her common-law husband George William Tighe. Mrs Mason became the inspiration for Shelley's poem "The Sensitive Plant", and Shelley's discussions with Mason and Tighe influenced his political thought and his critical interest in the population theories of Thomas Malthus.


title: Percy Bysshe Shelley

text: In March Shelley wrote to friends that Mary was depressed, suicidal and hostile towards him. Shelley was also beset by financial worries, as creditors from England pressed him for payment and he was obliged to make secret payments in connection with his "Neapolitan charge" Elena.


title: Percy Bysshe Shelley

text: Meanwhile, Shelley was writing "A Philosophical View of Reform", a political essay which he had begun in Rome. The unfinished essay, which remained unpublished in Shelley's lifetime, has been called "one of the most advanced and sophisticated documents of political philosophy in the nineteenth century".


title: Percy Bysshe Shelley

text: Another crisis erupted in June when Shelley claimed that he had been assaulted in the Pisan post office by a man accusing him of foul crimes. Shelley's biographer James Bieri suggests that this incident was possibly a delusional episode brought on by extreme stress, as Shelley was being blackmailed by a former servant, Paolo Foggi, over baby Elena. It is likely that the blackmail was connected with a story spread by another former servant, Elise Foggi, that Shelley had fathered a child to Claire in Naples and had sent it to a foundling home. Shelley, Claire and Mary denied this story, and Elise later recanted.


title: Percy Bysshe Shelley

text: In July, hearing that John Keats was seriously ill in England, Shelley wrote to the poet inviting him to stay with him at Pisa. Keats replied with hopes of seeing him, but instead, arrangements were made for Keats to travel to Rome. Following the death of Keats in 1821, Shelley wrote "Adonais", which Harold Bloom considers one of the major pastoral elegies. The poem was published in Pisa in July 1821, but sold few copies.


title: Percy Bysshe Shelley

text: In early July 1820, Shelley heard that baby Elena had died on 9 June. In the months following the post office incident and Elena's death, relations between Mary and Claire deteriorated and Claire spent most of the next two years living separately from the Shelleys, mainly in Florence.


title: Percy Bysshe Shelley

text: That December Shelley met Teresa (Emilia) Viviani, who was the 19-year-old daughter of the Governor of Pisa and was living in a convent awaiting a suitable marriage. Shelley visited her several times over the next few months and they started a passionate correspondence which dwindled after her marriage the following September. Emilia was the inspiration for Shelley's major poem "Epipsychidion".