"America" redirects here.

For the landmass comprising North and South America,

see Americas. For other uses, see America (disambiguation).
Several terms redirect here. For other uses, see US (disambiguation), USA
(disambiguation), United States (disambiguation), and The United States of America
(disambiguation).

United States of America

Flag

Coat of arms

Motto: "In God We Trust"[1]

show
Other traditional mottos:[2]

Anthem: "The Star-Spangled Banner"[3]

Duration: 1 minute and 19 seconds.1:19
 Show globe (states and D.C. only) Show the

U.S. and its territories Show territories with their

exclusive economic zone Show all

Capital Washington, D.C.

38°53′N 77°1′W

Largest city New York City

40°43′N 74°0′W

Official lang None at the federal level[a]

uages

National English[b]
language

Ethnic grou By race:

ps
 61.6% White
(2020)[4][5][6]
 12.4% Black
 6% Asian
 1.1% Native American
 0.2% Pacific Islander
 10.2% two or more races
 8.4% other
By origin:

 81.3% non-Hispanic or
Latino
 18.7% Hispanic or Latino

Religion 
(2023)[7] o 67% Christianity
 33% Protest
antism
 22% Catholic
ism
 1% Mormoni
sm
  11%
other Christian
 22% unaffiliated
 2% Judaism
 6% other religion
 3% unanswered

Demonym(s) American[c][8]

Government Federal presidential republic

• President Donald Trump
• Vice President JD Vance
• House Mike Johnson
Speaker
• Chief Justice John Roberts

Legislature Congress
• Upper house Senate
• Lower house House of Representatives

Independence
from Great Britain
• Declaration July 4, 1776; 248 years ago
• Confederation March 1, 1781
• Recognition September 3, 1783
• Constitution June 21, 1788

Area
• Total area 3,796,742 sq mi (9,833,520 km2)[10]
[d]
(3rd)
• Water (%) 7.0[9] (2010)
• Land area 3,531,905 sq mi (9,147,590 km2)
(3rd)

Population
• 2024 estimate 340,110,988[11]
• 2020 census 331,449,281[e][12] (3rd)
• Density 87/sq mi (33.6/km2) (185th)

GDP (PPP) 2024 estimate

• Total $29.168 trillion[f][13] (2nd)
• Per capita $86,601[13] (8th)
 GDP (nomina 2024 estimate
l)
• Total $29.168 trillion[13] (1st)
• Per capita $86,601[13] (6th)

Gini (2023) 41.6[g][14]

medium inequality

HDI (2022) 0.927[15]

very high (20th)

Currency U.S. dollar ($) (USD)

Time zone UTC−4 to −12, +10, +11

• Summer (DST UTC−4 to −10[h]
)

Date format mm/dd/yyyy[i]

Calling code +1

ISO 3166 US
code

Internet TLD .us[16]

The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.)
or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of
50 states and Washington, D.C. as its federal capital district. The 48 contiguous
states border Canada to the north and Mexico to the south, with the semi-exclavic state
of Alaska in the northwest and the archipelagic state of Hawaii in the Pacific Ocean.
Some 574 federally recognized tribal governments and 326 Indian reservations are
legally classified as domestic dependent nations with tribal sovereignty rights. The U.S.
asserts sovereignty over five major island territories and various uninhabited islands.[k] It
is a megadiverse country, with the world's third-largest land area[d] and third-largest
population, exceeding 340 million.[l]

Paleo-Indians migrated to North America across the Bering land bridge more than
12,000 years ago, and formed various civilizations and societies. Spanish exploration
and colonization led to the establishment in 1513 of Spanish Florida, the first European
colony in what is now the continental United States. France also began to colonize at
this time, but major settlements came much later. Subsequent British colonization led to
the first settlement of the Thirteen Colonies in Virginia in 1607. Intensive agriculture in
the rapidly expanding Southern Colonies encouraged the forced migration of enslaved
Africans. Clashes with the British Crown over taxation and political
representation sparked the American Revolution, with the Second Continental
Congress formally declaring independence on July 4, 1776. Following its victory in the
1775–1783 Revolutionary War, the country continued to expand westward across North
America, dispossessing Native Americans as it fought the Indian Wars. The
1803 purchase of Louisiana from Napoleonic France and the end of the Mexican–
American War in 1848 provided vast territories for expansion. As more states were
admitted, a North–South division over slavery led to the secession of the Confederate
States of America, which fought the Union in the 1861–1865 American Civil War. With
the victory and preservation of the United States, slavery was abolished nationally. By
the late 19th century, the United States established itself as a great power with victory in
the Spanish–American War, a status solidified with its participation in World War I.
Following Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, the U.S. entered World
War II; its aftermath left the U.S. and the Soviet Union as the world's superpowers.
During the Cold War, both countries struggled for ideological
dominance and international influence. The end of the Cold War and the Soviet Union's
collapse in 1991 left the U.S. as the world's sole superpower.

The U.S. national government is a presidential constitutional federal republic and liberal
democracy with three separate branches: legislative, executive, and judicial. It has
a bicameral national legislature composed of the House of Representatives, a lower
house based on population, and the Senate, an upper house based on equal
representation for each state. The country's Democratic and Republican parties have
dominated American politics since the 1850s. Federalism provides substantial
autonomy to the 50 states, while American values are based on a political tradition that
draws its inspiration from the European Enlightenment movement. A melting
pot of many ethnicities and customs, the culture of the United States has been shaped
by centuries of immigration, and its soft power influence has a global reach.

One of the world's most developed countries, the U.S. ranks among the
highest in economic competitiveness, productivity, innovation, human rights, and higher
education. The United States accounted for over a quarter of nominal global economic
output in 2024, and its economy has been the world's largest by nominal GDP since
about 1890. It possesses by far the largest amount of wealth of any country and has
the highest disposable household income per capita among OECD countries,
though U.S. wealth inequality is higher than in most other developed countries. The
U.S. is a member of multiple international organizations and plays a leading role in
global political, cultural, economic, and military affairs.

Etymology
Further information: Names of the United States, Demonyms for the United
States, United Colonies, and Naming of the Americas
The first documented use of the phrase "United States of America" is a letter from
January 2, 1776. Stephen Moylan, a Continental Army aide to General George
Washington, wrote to Joseph Reed, Washington's aide-de-camp, seeking to go "with full
and ample powers from the United States of America to Spain" to seek assistance in
the Revolutionary War effort.[20][21] The first known public usage is an anonymous
essay published in the Williamsburg newspaper, The Virginia Gazette, on April 6, 1776.
[20][22][23]
By June 1776, the "United States of America" appeared in the Articles of
Confederation,[24][25] and in July, the Declaration of Independence.[24] The Second
Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776.[26]

The term "United States" and its initialism "U.S.", used as nouns or as adjectives in
English, are common short names for the country. The initialism "USA", a noun, is also
common.[27] "United States" and "U.S." are the established terms throughout the U.S.
federal government, with prescribed rules.[m] "The States" is an established colloquial
shortening of the name, used particularly from abroad;[29] "stateside" is the
corresponding adjective or adverb.[30]

"America" is the feminine form of the first word of Americus Vesputius, the Latinized
name of Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci (1454–1512); it was first used as a place
name by the German cartographers Martin Waldseemüller and Matthias Ringmann in
1507.[31][n] Vespucci first proposed that the West Indies discovered by Christopher
Columbus in 1492 were part of a previously unknown landmass and not among the
Indies at the eastern limit of Asia.[32][33][34] In English, the term "America" rarely refers to
topics unrelated to the United States, despite the usage of "the Americas" to describe
the totality of North and South America.[35]

History
Main article: History of the United States
For a topical guide, see Outline of the history of the United States.
Indigenous peoples
Main articles: History of Native Americans in the United States and Pre-Columbian era

Cliff Palace, a settlement of ancestors of the Native

American Pueblo peoples in present-day Montezuma County, Colorado, built between c. 1200
and 1275[36]
The first inhabitants of North America migrated from Siberia over 12,000 years ago,
either across the Bering land bridge or along the now-submerged Ice Age coastline.[37]
[38]
The Clovis culture, which appeared around 11,000 BC, is believed to be the first
widespread culture in the Americas.[39][40] Over time, indigenous North American cultures
grew increasingly sophisticated, and some, such as the Mississippian culture,
developed agriculture, architecture, and complex societies.[41] In the post-archaic period,
the Mississippian cultures were located in the midwestern, eastern,
and southern regions, and the Algonquian in the Great Lakes region and along
the Eastern Seaboard, while the Hohokam culture and Ancestral Puebloans inhabited
the southwest.[42] Native population estimates of what is now the United States before
the arrival of European immigrants range from around 500,000[43][44] to nearly 10 million.[44]
[45]

European exploration, colonization and conflict (1513–1765)

Main articles: Colonial history of the United States and Colonial American military
history

The 1750 colonial possessions of Britain (in pink and

purple), France (in blue), and Spain (in orange) in present-day Canada and the United States
Christopher Columbus began exploring the Caribbean for Spain in 1492, leading
to Spanish-speaking settlements and missions from Puerto Rico and Florida to New
Mexico and California. The first Spanish colony in what is now the continental United
States was Spanish Florida, chartered in 1513.[46][47][48][49] After several settlements failed
there due to hunger and disease, Spain's first permanent town, Saint Augustine, was
founded in 1565.[50] France established its own settlements in French Florida in 1562,
but they were either abandoned (Charlesfort, 1578) or destroyed by Spanish raids (Fort
Caroline, 1565); permanent French settlements would be founded much later along
the Great Lakes (Fort Detroit, 1701), the Mississippi River (Saint Louis, 1764) and
especially the Gulf of Mexico (New Orleans, 1718).[51] Early European colonies also
included the thriving Dutch colony of New Nederland (settled 1626, present-day New
York) and the small Swedish colony of New Sweden (settled 1638 in what is now
Delaware). British colonization of the East Coast began with the Virginia Colony (1607)
and the Plymouth Colony (Massachusetts, 1620).[52][53] The Mayflower Compact in
Massachusetts and the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut established precedents for
representative self-governance and constitutionalism that would develop throughout the
American colonies.[54][55] While European settlers in what is now the United States
experienced conflicts with Native Americans, they also engaged in trade, exchanging
European tools for food and animal pelts.[56][o] Relations ranged from close cooperation to
warfare and massacres. The colonial authorities often pursued policies that forced
Native Americans to adopt European lifestyles, including conversion to Christianity.[60]
[61]
Along the eastern seaboard, settlers trafficked African slaves through the Atlantic
slave trade.[62]

The original Thirteen Colonies[p] that would later found the United States were
administered as possessions of Great Britain,[63] and had local governments with
elections open to most white male property owners.[64][65] The colonial population grew
rapidly from Maine to Georgia, eclipsing Native American populations;[66] by the 1770s,
the natural increase of the population was such that only a small minority of Americans
had been born overseas.[67] The colonies' distance from Britain allowed for the
development of self-governance,[68] and the First Great Awakening, a series of Christian
revivals, fueled colonial interest in religious liberty.[69]

American Revolution and the early republic (1765–1800)

Main articles: History of the United States (1776–1789), History of the United States
(1789–1815), and American Revolution

Declaration of Independence, a portrait by John

Trumbull depicting the Committee of Five presenting the draft of the Declaration to
the Continental Congress on June 28, 1776, in Philadelphia
Following their victory in the French and Indian War, Britain began to assert greater
control over local colonial affairs, resulting in colonial political resistance; one of the
primary colonial grievances was a denial of their rights as Englishmen, particularly the
right to representation in the British government that taxed them. To demonstrate their
dissatisfaction and resolve, the First Continental Congress met in 1774 and passed
the Continental Association, a colonial boycott of British goods that proved effective.
The British attempt to then disarm the colonists resulted in the 1775 Battles of Lexington
and Concord, igniting the American Revolutionary War. At the Second Continental
Congress, the colonies appointed George Washington commander-in-chief of
the Continental Army, and created a committee that named Thomas Jefferson to draft
the Declaration of Independence. Two days after passing the Lee Resolution to create
an independent nation the Declaration was adopted on July 4, 1776.[70] The political
values of the American Revolution included liberty, inalienable individual rights; and
the sovereignty of the people;[71] supporting republicanism and
rejecting monarchy, aristocracy, and all hereditary political power; civic virtue; and
vilification of political corruption.[72] The Founding Fathers of the United States, who
included Washington, Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander
Hamilton, John Jay, James Madison, Thomas Paine, and many others, were inspired
by Greco-Roman, Renaissance, and Enlightenment philosophies and ideas.[73][74]

The Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union were ratified in 1781 and established
a decentralized government that operated until 1789.[70] After the British surrender at
the siege of Yorktown in 1781 American sovereignty was internationally recognized by
the Treaty of Paris (1783), through which the U.S. gained territory stretching west to the
Mississippi River, north to present-day Canada, and south to Spanish Florida.
[75]
The Northwest Ordinance (1787) established the precedent by which the country's
territory would expand with the admission of new states, rather than the expansion of
existing states.[76] The U.S. Constitution was drafted at the 1787 Constitutional
Convention to overcome the limitations of the Articles. It went into effect in 1789,
creating a federal republic governed by three separate branches that together ensured
a system of checks and balances.[77] George Washington was elected the country's first
president under the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights was adopted in 1791 to allay
skeptics' concerns about the power of the more centralized government.[78][79] His
resignation as commander-in-chief after the Revolutionary War and his later refusal to
run for a third term as the country's first president established a precedent for the
supremacy of civil authority in the United States and the peaceful transfer of power.[80][81]

Westward expansion and Civil War (1800–1865)

Main articles: History of the United States (1815–1849) and History of the United
States (1849–1865)

Historical territorial expansion of the United States

Division of the states during the American Civil War:

Union states
Border states
Confederate states
Territories
The Louisiana Purchase of 1803 from France nearly doubled the territory of the United
States.[82][83] Lingering issues with Britain remained, leading to the War of 1812, which
was fought to a draw.[84][85] Spain ceded Florida and its Gulf Coast territory in 1819.[86] In
the late 18th century, American settlers began to expand westward, many with a sense
of manifest destiny.[87][88] The Missouri Compromise of 1820, which admitted Missouri as
a slave state and Maine as a free state, attempted to balance the desire of northern
states to prevent the expansion of slavery into new territories with that of southern
states to extend it there. The compromise further prohibited slavery in all other lands of
the Louisiana Purchase north of the 36°30′ parallel.[89] As Americans expanded further
into land inhabited by Native Americans, the federal government often
applied policies of Indian removal or assimilation.[90][91] The most significant removal
legislation in U.S. history was the Indian Removal Act of 1830. It culminated in the Trail
of Tears (1830–1850), in which an estimated 60,000 Native Americans living east of
the Mississippi River were forcibly removed and displaced to lands far to the west,
resulting in anywhere from 13,200 to 16,700 deaths.[92] These and earlier organized
displacements prompted a long series of American Indian Wars west of the Mississippi.
[93][94]
The Republic of Texas was annexed in 1845,[95] and the 1846 Oregon Treaty led to
U.S. control of the present-day American Northwest.[96] Victory in the Mexican–American
War resulted in the 1848 Mexican Cession of California, Nevada, Utah, and much of
present-day Colorado and the American Southwest.[87][97] The California gold rush of
1848–1849 spurred a huge migration of white settlers to the Pacific coast, leading to
even more confrontations with Native populations. One of the most violent,
the California genocide of thousands of Native inhabitants, lasted into the early 1870s,
[98]
just as additional western territories and states were created.[99]

During the colonial period, slavery had been legal in the American colonies, especially
in the agriculture-intensive Southern Colonies from Maryland to Georgia. The practice
began to be significantly questioned during the American Revolution.[100] Spurred by an
active abolitionist movement that had reemerged in the 1830s, states in the
North enacted anti-slavery laws.[101] At the same time, support for slavery had
strengthened in Southern states with inventions such as the cotton gin (1793), which
had long made the institution profitable for Southern elites.[102][103][104] Throughout the
1850s, this sectional conflict regarding slavery was further inflamed by legislation in
Congress and decisions of the Supreme Court: The Fugitive Slave Act of
1850 mandated the return of slaves taking refuge in non-slave states to their owners in
the South. The Kansas–Nebraska Act of 1854 effectively gutted the anti-slavery
requirements of the Missouri Compromise.[105] Finally, in its Dred Scott decision of 1857,
the Supreme Court ruled against a slave brought into non-slave territory and declared
the Missouri Compromise to be unconstitutional. These events exacerbated tensions
between North and South that would culminate in the American Civil War (1861–1865).
[106][107]
Eleven slave states seceded and formed the Confederate States of America, while
the other states remained in the Union.[108][109] War broke out in April 1861 after the
Confederates bombarded Fort Sumter.[110][111] After the January 1863 Emancipation
Proclamation, many freed slaves joined the Union army.[112] The war began to turn in the
Union's favor following the 1863 Siege of Vicksburg and Battle of Gettysburg, and the
Confederacy surrendered in 1865 after the Union's victory in the Battle of Appomattox
Court House.[113] The Reconstruction era followed the war. After the assassination of
President Abraham Lincoln, Reconstruction Amendments were passed to protect the
rights of African Americans. National infrastructure, including transcontinental
telegraph and railroads, spurred growth in the American frontier.[114]

Post–Civil War era (1865–1917)

Main article: History of the United States (1865–1917)
Duration: 2 minutes and 27 seconds.2:27An Edison Studios film showing immigrants arriving
at Ellis Island in New York Harbor, a major point of entry for European immigrants in the late
19th and early 20th centuries[115][116]
From 1865 through 1917, an unprecedented stream of immigrants arrived in the United
States, including 24.4 million from Europe.[117] Most came through the port of New York
City, and New York City and other large cities on the East Coast became home to
large Jewish, Irish, and Italian populations, while many Germans and Central
Europeans moved to the Midwest. At the same time, about one million French
Canadians migrated from Quebec to New England.[118] During the Great Migration,
millions of African Americans left the rural South for urban areas in the North.[119] Alaska
was purchased from Russia in 1867.[120]

The Compromise of 1877 effectively ended Reconstruction and white supremacists took
local control of Southern politics.[121][122] African Americans endured a period of
heightened, overt racism following Reconstruction, a time often called the nadir of
American race relations.[123][124] A series of Supreme Court decisions, including Plessy v.
Ferguson, emptied the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments of their force,
allowing Jim Crow laws in the South to remain unchecked, sundown towns in the
Midwest, and segregation in communities acro