Encyclopedias

According to the 2000 U.S. Census, 46.5 million Americans claimed German ancestry, making Germans the largest nationality group in the United States. There was no nation called Germany prior to…

Georgia was admitted to the Union on January 2, 1788. It is named after King George II (1683–1760) of England and claims Atlanta as its capital. Georgia is the largest…

The 1960s were characterized by several movements calling for social and political change, chiefly the civil rights movement (1954–65), the antiwar movement, the women’s liberation movement (also known as the…

James A. Garfield (1831–1881; served 1881) served one of the shortest terms as president of the United States. After winning the election in November 1880, he was shot the following…

In 1853, the United States purchased lands from Mexico that had been in dispute since the border settlement that followed the MexicanAmerican War (1946–48). In this transaction, known as the…

After explorers Meriwether Lewis (1774–1809) and William Clark (1770–1838) led the first expedition of white explorers across the western half of North America in 1804–6, a large group of hardy…

Fugitive slave laws were laws that allowed slave owners to recover runaway slaves from other states, even free states (nonslaveholding states). The laws had their basis in the U.S. Constitution…

Betty Friedan was born on February 4, 1921, just one year after women in the United States won the right to vote. Friedan’s parents encouraged her to excel in everything…

The French and Indian War (1754–63) was fought in America between England and France from 1754 to 1763. It was one war in a long and complicated history of conflicts…

During the seventeenth century, France and the Netherlands sought to expand their empires in the New World. Both countries established important colonies in North America but could not maintain them.…