United States Steel Corporation

144px
Type	Public
Traded as	NYSE: X S&P 500 Component
Industry	Steel
Founded	1901 by merger/buyout of Carnegie Steel Elbert Gary William Moore J. P. Morgan
Headquarters	U.S. Steel Tower Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States
Area served	Worldwide
Key people	John P. Surma (Chairman and CEO)
Products	Flat-rolled steel Tubular steel
Services	Consulting
Revenue	US$ 17.374 billion (2010)[1]
Operating income	US$ -385 million (2010)[1]
Net income	US$ -482 million (2010)[1]
Total assets	US$ 15.350 billion (2010)[1]
Total equity	US$ 3.851 billion (2010)[1]
Employees	42,000 (2010)[1]
Website	USSteel.com

The United States Steel Corporation (NYSE: X), more commonly known as U.S. Steel, is an integrated steel producer with major production operations in the United States, Canada, and Central Europe. The company is the world's tenth largest steel producer. It was renamed USX Corporation in 1991 and back to United States Steel Corporation in 2001 when the shareholders of USX spun off its steel-making assets following the acquisition of Marathon Oil and Texas Gas in 1982. It is still the largest domestically owned integrated steel producer in the United States, although it produces only slightly more steel than it did in 1902.^[2]

U.S. Steel is a former Dow Jones Industrial Average component, listed from April 1, 1901 to May 3, 1991. It was removed under its USX Corporation name with Navistar International and Primerica Corporation.^{[3][4][dead link]}

History[link]

J. P. Morgan and the attorney Elbert H. Gary founded U.S. Steel in 1901 (incorporated on February 25) by combining Andrew Carnegie's Carnegie Steel Company with Gary's Federal Steel Company and William Henry "Judge" Moore's National Steel Company^[5] for $492 million ($13.74 billion today). It was capitalized at $1.4 billion ($39.11 billion today),^[2] making it the world's first billion-dollar corporation.^[6] At one time, U.S. Steel was the largest steel producer and largest corporation in the world. In 1907 it bought its largest competitor Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company which was headquartered in Birmingham, Alabama. This led to Tennessee Coal's being replaced in the Dow Jones Industrial Average by the General Electric Company.^[4] The federal government attempted to use federal antitrust laws to break up U.S. Steel in 1911, but that effort ultimately failed. Time and competitors have, however, accomplished nearly the same thing. In its first full year of operation, U.S. Steel made 67 percent of all the steel produced in the United States. It now produces less than 10 percent.

The Corporation, as it was known on Wall Street,^[2] always distinguished itself to investors by virtue of its size, rather than for its efficiency or creativeness during its heyday. In 1901, it controlled two-thirds of steel production.^[2] Because of heavy debts taken on at the company's formation — Carnegie insisted on being paid in gold bonds for his stake — and fears of antitrust litigation, U.S. Steel moved cautiously. Competitors often innovated faster, especially Bethlehem Steel, run by U.S. Steel's former first president, Charles M. Schwab. U.S. Steel's share of the expanding market slipped to 50 percent by 1911.^[2]

U.S. Steel's production peaked at more than 35 million tons in 1953. Its employment was greatest in 1943 (during World War II) when it had more than 340,000 employees; by 2000, however, it employed 52,500 people.^[2] The federal government has also intervened on other occasions to try to control U.S. Steel. President Harry S. Truman attempted to take over its steel mills in 1952 to resolve a crisis with its union, the United Steelworkers of America. The Supreme Court of the United States blocked the takeover by ruling that the president did not have the constitutional authority to seize the mills (see Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 343 U.S. 579 (1952)). President John F. Kennedy was more successful in 1962 when he pressured the steel industry into reversing price increases that Kennedy considered dangerously inflationary. The federal government prevented U.S. Steel from acquiring National Steel in 1984 and political pressure from the United States Congress forced it to abandon plans to import British Steel slabs.^[2] It finally acquired National Steel's assets in 2003 after National Steel went bankrupt. U.S. Steel acquired Marathon Oil in 1982, as well as Texas Oil & Gas several years later. It reorganized its holdings as USX Corporation in 1986, with U.S. Steel (renamed USS, Inc.,) as a major subsidiary.

At the end of the 20th century, the corporation found itself deriving much of its revenue and net income from its energy operations, so led by CEO Thomas Usher, U.S. Steel spun off Marathon and other non-steel assets (except railroad company Transtar) in October, 2001, and expanded internationally for the first time by purchasing operations in Slovakia and Serbia.^[7]

Labor[link]

U.S. Steel maintained the labor policies of Andrew Carnegie, which called for low wages and opposition to unionization. The Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers union that represented workers at the Homestead, Pennsylvania plant was, for many years, broken after a violent strike in 1892. U.S. Steel defeated another strike in 1901, the year it was founded. U.S. Steel built the city of Gary, Indiana in 1906, and 100 years later it remained the location of the largest integrated steel mill in the Northern Hemisphere. U.S. Steel reached a détente with unions during World War I, when under pressure from the Wilson Administration it relaxed its opposition to unions enough to allow some to operate in certain factories. It returned to its previous policies as soon as the war ended, however, and in a 1919 strike defeated union-organizing efforts by William Z. Foster of the AFL, later a leader of the Communist Party USA.

During the 1920s, U.S. Steel, like many other large employers, coupled paternalistic employment practices with "employee representation plans" (ERPs), which were company unions sponsored by management. These ERPs eventually became an important factor leading to the organization of the United Steelworkers of America. The Company dropped its hard-line, anti-union stance in 1937, when Myron Taylor, then president of U.S. Steel, agreed to recognize the Steel Workers Organizing Committee, an arm of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) led by John L. Lewis. Taylor was an outsider, brought in during the Great Depression to rescue U.S. Steel, and had no emotional investment in the Company's long history of opposition to unions. Watching the upheaval caused by the United Auto Workers' successful sit-down strike in Flint, Michigan, and convinced that Lewis was someone he could deal with on a businesslike basis, Taylor sought stability through collective bargaining.^[8]

The Steelworkers continue to have a contentious relationship with U.S. Steel, but far less so than the relationship that other unions had with employers in other industries in the United States. They launched a number of long strikes against U.S. Steel in 1946 and a 116-day strike in 1959, but those strikes were over wages and benefits and not the more fundamental issue of union recognition that led to violent strikes elsewhere.

The Steelworkers union attempted to mollify the problems of competitive foreign imports by entering into a so-called Experimental Negotiation Agreement (ENA) in 1974. This was to provide for arbitration in the event that the parties were not able to reach agreement on any new collective bargaining agreements, thereby preventing disruptive strikes. The ENA failed to stop the decline of the steel industry in the U.S.

U.S. Steel and the other employers terminated the ENA in 1984. In 1986, U.S. Steel locked out thousands of its employees when it shut down a number of its facilities as a result of a drop in orders on the eve of a threatened strike. In addition, U.S. Steel and other steel producers demanded extensive concessions from their employees in the early 1980s through the direction of J. Bruce Johnston, U.S. Steel executive vice president. In a letter to striking employees in 1986, Johnston warned, "There are not enough seats in the steel lifeboat for everybody."^[9] In addition to reducing the role of unions, the steel industry had sought to induce the federal government to take action to counteract dumping of steel by foreign producers at below-market prices. Neither the concessions nor anti-dumping laws have restored the industry to the health and prestige it once had.

Environmental record[link]

Between October 26 and October 31, 1948 an air inversion trapped industrial effluent (air pollution) from the American Steel and Wire plant and U.S. Steel's Donora Zinc Works in Donora, Pennsylvania. "In three days, 20 people died... After the inversion lifted, another 50 died, including Lukasz Musial, the father of baseball great Stan Musial. Hundreds more finished the rest of their lives with damaged lungs and hearts. But another 40 years would pass before the whole truth about Donora's bad air made public-health history." ^[10] Today the town is home to the Donora Smog Museum which tells the impact of the Donora Smog on the air quality standards enacted by the federal government in subsequent years.

Researchers at the Political Economy Research Institute have ranked U.S. Steel as the eighth-greatest corporate producer of air pollution in the United States (down from their 2000 ranking as the second-greatest).^[11] In 2008, the company released more than one million kg (2.2 million pounds) of toxins, chiefly ammonia, hydrochloric acid, ethylene, zinc compounds, methanol, and benzene, but including manganese, cyanide, and chromium compounds.^[12] In 2004, the city of River Rouge, Michigan and the residents of River Rouge and the nearby city of Ecorse filed a class-action lawsuit against the company for "the release and discharge of air particulate matter...and other toxic and hazardous substances"^[13] at its River Rouge plant.^[14] In 2005, the Illinois Attorney General brought suit against U.S. Steel for alleged air pollution in Granite City, Illinois.^[15]

The Company has also been implicated in generating water pollution and toxic waste. In 1993, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued an order for U.S. Steel to clean up a site in Fairless Hills, Pennsylvania, on the Delaware River, where the soil had been contaminated with arsenic, lead, and other heavy metals, as well as naphthalene; groundwater at the site was found to be polluted with polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon and trichloroethylene (TCE).^[16] In 2005, the EPA, United States Department of Justice, and the State of Ohio reached a settlement requiring U.S. Steel to pay more than $100,000 in penalties and $294,000 in reparations in answer to allegations that the company illegally released pollutants into Ohio waters.^[17] U.S. Steel's Gary, Indiana facility has been repeatedly charged with discharging polluted wastewater into Lake Michigan and the Grand Calumet River, and in 1998 agreed to a $30 million settlement to clean up contaminated sediments from a five-mile (8 km) stretch of the river.^[18]

It should be noted, however, that with the exception of the Fairless Hills and Gary facilities, the lawsuits concern facilities acquired via U.S. Steel's purchase of National Steel Corporation in 2003.

The U.S. Steel Tower in downtown Pittsburgh.

Legacy[link]

The U.S. Steel Tower in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania is named after the company and the company's offices take up a part of the building. It is the tallest skyscraper in the downtown Pittsburgh skyline.

The Pittsburgh Steelers professional football team borrowed elements of its logo, a circle containing three hypocycloids, from the Steelmark logo belonging to the American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI) and created by U.S. Steel. In the 1950s, when helmet logos became popular, the Steelers added players' numbers to either side of their gold helmets. Later that decade, the numbers were removed and in 1962, Cleveland's Republic Steel suggested to the Steelers that they use the Steelmark as a helmet logo.

When the Steelmark logo was created, U.S. Steel attached the following meaning to it: "Steel lightens your work, brightens your leisure and widens your world."^[19] The logo was used as part of a major marketing campaign to educate consumers about how important steel is in people's daily lives. The Steelmark logo was used in print, radio and television ads as well as on labels for all steel products, from steel tanks to tricycles to filing cabinets.

In the 1960s, U.S. Steel turned over the Steelmark program to the AISI, where it came to represent the steel industry as a whole. During the 1970s, the logo's meaning was extended to include the three materials used to produce steel: yellow for coal, orange for ore and blue for steel scrap. In the late 1980s, when the AISI founded the Steel Recycling Institute (SRI), the logo took on a new life reminiscent of its 1950s meaning.

U.S. Steel financed and constructed the Unisphere in Corona Park, Queens, New York for the 1964 World's Fair. It is the largest globe ever made and is one of the world's largest free standing sculptures.

The Chicago Picasso sculpture was fabricated by U.S. Steel in Gary, Indiana before being disassembled and relocated to Chicago

U.S. Steel donated the steel for the Polish Cathedral of St. Michael's in Chicago since 90 percent of the parishioners worked at its mills.

U.S. Steel sponsored The United States Steel Hour television program from 1945 until 1963 on CBS.

U.S. Steel built both the Disney's Contemporary Resort and the Disney's Polynesian Resort in 1971 at Walt Disney World, in part to showcase it's residential steel building "modular" residential products to high-end and luxury consumers.

In the film The Godfather Part II, Hyman Roth tells Michael Corleone "Michael, we're bigger than U.S. Steel", which was a paraphrase of longtime Mob kingpin Meyer Lansky.

Dividends[link]

It is the present policy of the Board of Directors to consider the declaration of dividends four times each year, with checks for dividends declared on common stock mailed for receipt on the 10th of March, June, September and December. The dividend as of 2008 was $0.30 per share.^[20] On Apr. 27, 2009, it was reduced to $0.05 per share. Dividends may be paid by, mailed check, direct electronic deposit into a bank account, or be reinvested in additional shares of U.S. Steel common stock.^[21]

Facilities[link]

U.S. Steel has multiple domestic and international facilities.^[22] Of note in the United States is Clairton Works and Edgar Thomson Works, both members of Mon Valley Works and just outside Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Clairton Works is the largest coking facility in North America. Edgar Thomson Works is one of the oldest steel mills in the world. The Company acquired Great Lakes Works and Granite City Works, both large integrated steel mills, in 2003 and is partnered with Severstal North America in operating the world's largest electro-galvanizing line, Double Eagle Steel Coating Company, at the historic Rouge complex in Dearborn, Michigan.

U.S. Steel's largest domestic facility is Gary Works, in Gary, Indiana; Gary is also home to the U.S. Steel Yard baseball stadium.

U.S. Steel operates a tin mill they acquired in East Chicago now known as E.C. Tin after L.T.V. went bankrupt. U.S. Steel operates a sheet and tin finishing facility in Portage, Indiana. known as Midwest Plant acquired from the National Steel bankruptcy. U.S. Steel operates Fairfield Works in Fairfield, Alabama (Birmingham), employing 1500 people, and still operates a sheet galvanizing operation at the Fairless Works facility in Fairless Hills, Pennsylvania, employing 75 people.

U.S. Steel acquired National Steel and subsequently operates Great Lakes Works in Ecorse, Michigan, Midwest Plant in Portage, Indiana, and Granite City Steel in Granite City, Illinois. In 2008 a major expansion of Granite City was announced, including a new coke plant with an annual capacity of 650,000 tons.^[23]

U.S. Steel operates five pipe mills: Fairfield Tubular Operations in Fairfield, Alabama (Birmingham), Lorain Tubular Operations in Lorain, Ohio, McKeesport Tubular Operations, in McKeesport, PA, Texas Operations (Formerly Lone Star Steel) in Lone Star, TX, and Bellville Operations in Bellville, TX.

U.S. Steel operates two major taconite mining and pelletizing operations in northeastern Minnesota's Iron Range under the operating name Minnesota Ore Operations. The Minntac mine is located near Mountain Iron, Minnesota and the Keetac mine is near Keewatin, Minnesota. U.S. Steel announced on February 1, 2008 that it would be investing approximately $300 Million in upgrading the operations at Keetac, a facility purchased in 2003 from the now-defunct National Steel Corporation.^[24]

U.S. Steel has completely closed two of its major integrated mills. The Duluth Works in Duluth, Minnesota closed in 1987, followed by South Chicago's South Works in 1992.

Internationally, U.S. Steel operates facilities in Slovakia (former East Slovakian Iron Works in Košice) and Serbia (former Sartid company with facilities in Smederevo (steel plant, hot and cold mill) and Šabac (tin mill).^[25]

Recently, U.S. Steel added facilities in Texas with the purchase of Lone Star Steel Company, entered a venture in Pittsburg, California with POSCO of South Korea, and purchased Stelco (now U.S. Steel Canada) to expand into the Canadian market, with works in Hamilton and Nanticoke, Ontario.

The company opened a new training facility, the Mon Valley Works Training Hub, in Duquesne, Pennsylvania in 2008. The state-of-the-art facility, located on a portion of the property once occupied by the company's Duquesne Works, serves as the primary training site for employees at U.S. Steel's three Pittsburgh-area Mon Valley Works locations. This site also served as the company's temporary technical support headquarters during the 2009 G20 Summit.^[26]

Northampton & Bath Railroad[link]

U.S. Steel once owned the Northampton & Bath Railroad. The N&B was an 11-kilometer (6.8 mi) short line railroad built in 1904 that served Atlas Cement in Northampton, Pennsylvania, and Keystone Cement in Bath, Pennsylvania. By 1979 cement shipments had dropped off such that the railroad was no longer economically viable and the line was abandoned. A 1.5-kilometer (0.93 mi) section of track was retained to serve Atlas Cement. The remainder of the right-of-way was transformed into the Nor-Bath Trail.

References[link]

Bibliography[link]

• Brody, David (1987). Labor in Crisis: The Steel Strike of 1919. University of Illinois Press. ISBN 0-252-01373-5. http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=34200941. 
• Burn, Duncan (1961). The Steel Industry, 1939-1959: A Study in Competition and Planning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-04385-9. http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=94134586. 
• Meade, Edward Sherwood. "The Genesis of the United States Steel Corporation," Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 15, No. 4 (Aug., 1901), pp. 517–550 in JSTOR
• Meade, Edward Sherwood. "Capitalization of the United States Steel Corporation," Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 16, No. 2 (Feb., 1902), pp. 214–232 in JSTOR
• Misa, Thomas (1998). Nation of Steel: The Making of Modern America, 1865-1925. Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-6052-0. 
• Scheuerman, William (1986). The Steel Crisis: The Economics and Politics of a Declining Industry. New York: Praeger Publishers. ISBN 0-275-92124-7. http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=14201453. 
• Urofsky, Melvin (1969). Big Steel and the Wilson Administration: A Study in Business-Government Relations. Columbus, Ohio: Ohio State University Press. http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=97407297. 
• Warne, Colston (1963). R.D. Cross. ed. The Steel Strike of 1919. D. C. Heath. http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=10469556. 
• Warren, Kenneth (2001). Big Steel: The First Century of the United States Steel Corporation, 1901-2001. University of Pittsburgh Press. ISBN 0-8229-4160-0. 
• "History of U.S. Steel". U.S. Steel. http://www.uss.com/corp/company/profile/history.asp. Retrieved 2008-08-03. 

External links[link]

	Pittsburgh portal
	Companies portal

• U.S. Steel
• United Steelworkers
• Yahoo! — United States Steel Corporation Company Profile
• Documentary Photographs of U.S. Steel from the 1940s and 1950s
• U.S. Steel Gary Works Photograph Collection, 1906-1971
• U.S. Steel Movie clip of the Contemporary Resort Construction, compliments of BigFloridaCountry.com
• BigFloridaCountry
• The "World's Largest Plate Mill," formerly a part of U.S. Steel-Gary Works
• River Rouge Class Action Litigation Update Archived 26 March 2007 at the Wayback Machine
• History of the United States Steel Corporation, 1873-2011
• Guide to United States Steel Corporation. Training manuals. 5342. Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation and Archives, Martin P. Catherwood Library, Cornell University.

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United States of America
Flag Great Seal
Motto: In God We Trust  (official) E Pluribus Unum  (traditional) (Latin: Out of Many, One)
Anthem: "The Star-Spangled Banner"
Capital		Washington, D.C. 38°53′N 77°01′W / 38.883°N 77.017°W / 38.883; -77.017
Largest city		New York City
Official language(s)		None at federal level[a]
National language		English (de facto)[b]
Demonym		American
Government		Federal presidential constitutional republic
-	President	Barack Obama (D)
-	Vice President	Joe Biden (D)
-	Speaker of the House	John Boehner (R)
-	Chief Justice	John Roberts
Legislature		Congress
-	Upper house	Senate
-	Lower house	House of Representatives
Independence		from the Kingdom of Great Britain
-	Declared	July 4, 1776
-	Recognized	September 3, 1783
-	Current constitution	June 21, 1788
Area
-	Total	9,826,675 km2 [1][c](3rd/4th) 3,794,101 sq mi
-	Water (%)	6.76
Population
-	2012 estimate	313,802,000[2] (3rd)
-	Density	33.7/km2  87.4/sq mi
GDP (PPP)		2011 estimate
-	Total	$15.094 trillion[3] (1st)
-	Per capita	$48,386[3] (6th)
GDP (nominal)		2011 estimate
-	Total	$15.094 trillion[3] (1st)
-	Per capita	$48,386[3] (15th)
Gini (2007)		45.0[1] (39th)
HDI (2011)		0.910[4] (very high) (4th)
Currency		United States dollar ($) (USD)
Time zone		(UTC−5 to −10)
-	Summer (DST)	(UTC−4 to −10)
Date formats		m/d/yy (AD)
Drives on the		right
Internet TLD		.us .gov .mil .edu
Calling code		+1
^ a. English is the official language of at least 28 states—some sources give a higher figure, based on differing definitions of "official".[5] English and Hawaiian are both official languages in the state of Hawaii. ^ b. English is the de facto language of American government and the sole language spoken at home by 80% of Americans age five and older. Spanish is the second most commonly spoken language. ^ c. Whether the United States or China is larger is disputed. The figure given is from the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency's World Factbook. Other sources give smaller figures. All authoritative calculations of the country's size include only the 50 states and the District of Columbia, not the territories. ^ d. The population estimate includes people whose usual residence is in the fifty states and the District of Columbia, including noncitizens. It does not include either those living in the territories, amounting to more than 4 million U.S. citizens (mostly in Puerto Rico), or U.S. citizens living outside the United States.

The United States of America (commonly abbreviated to the United States, the U.S., the USA, America, and the States) is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its forty-eight contiguous states and Washington, D.C., the capital district, lie between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, bordered by Canada to the north and Mexico to the south. The state of Alaska is in the northwest of the continent, with Canada to the east and Russia to the west, across the Bering Strait. The state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific. The country also possesses several territories in the Pacific and Caribbean.

At 3.79 million square miles (9.83 million km²) and with over 312 million people, the United States is the third or fourth largest country by total area, and the third largest by both land area and population. It is one of the world's most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, the product of large-scale immigration from many countries.^[6] The U.S. economy is the world's largest national economy, with an estimated 2011 GDP of $15.1 trillion (22% of nominal global GDP and over 19% of global GDP at purchasing-power parity).^[3][7] Per capita income is the world's sixth-highest.^[3]

Indigenous peoples descended from forebears who migrated from Asia have inhabited what is now the mainland United States for many thousands of years. This Native American population was greatly reduced by disease and warfare after European contact. The United States was founded by thirteen British colonies located along the Atlantic seaboard. On July 4, 1776, they issued the Declaration of Independence, which proclaimed their right to self-determination and their establishment of a cooperative union. The rebellious states defeated the British Empire in the American Revolution, the first successful colonial war of independence.^[8] The current United States Constitution was adopted on September 17, 1787; its ratification the following year made the states part of a single republic with a stronger central government. The Bill of Rights, comprising ten constitutional amendments guaranteeing many fundamental civil rights and freedoms, was ratified in 1791.

Through the 19th century, the United States displaced native tribes, acquired the Louisiana territory from France, Florida from Spain, part of the Oregon Country from the United Kingdom, Alta California and New Mexico from Mexico, and Alaska from Russia, and annexed the Republic of Texas and the Republic of Hawaii. Disputes between the agrarian South and industrial North over the expansion of the institution of slavery and states' rights provoked the Civil War of the 1860s. The North's victory prevented a permanent split of the country and led to the end of legal slavery in the United States. By the 1870s, its national economy was the world's largest.^[9] The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the country's status as a military power. It emerged from World War II as the first country with nuclear weapons and a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union left the United States as the sole superpower. The country accounts for 41% of global military spending,^[10] and is a leading economic, political, and cultural force in the world.^[11]

Etymology[link]

In 1507, German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a world map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere "America" after Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci.^[12] The former British colonies first used the country's modern name in the 1776 Declaration of Independence, the "unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America".^[13] On November 15, 1777, the Second Continental Congress adopted the Articles of Confederation, which states, "The Stile of this Confederacy shall be 'The United States of America'." The Franco-American treaties of 1778 used "United States of North America", but from July 11, 1778, "United States of America" was used on the country's bills of exchange, and it has been the official name ever since.^[14]

The short form "United States" is also standard. Other common forms include the "U.S.", the "USA", and "America". Colloquial names include the "U.S. of A." and, internationally, the "States". "Columbia", a once popular name for the United States, derives from Christopher Columbus; it appears in the name "District of Columbia".

The standard way to refer to a citizen of the United States is as an "American". Although "United States" is the official appositional term, "American" and "U.S." are more commonly used to refer to the country adjectivally ("American values", "U.S. forces"). "American" is rarely used in English to refer to people not connected to the United States.^[15]

The phrase "United States" was originally treated as plural—e.g., "the United States are"—including in the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified in 1865. It became common to treat it as singular—e.g., "the United States is"—after the end of the Civil War. The singular form is now standard; the plural form is retained in the idiom "these United States".^[16]

Geography and environment[link]

The land area of the contiguous United States is approximately 1,900 million acres (7,700,000 km²). Alaska, separated from the contiguous United States by Canada, is the largest state at 365 million acres (1,480,000 km²). Hawaii, occupying an archipelago in the central Pacific, southwest of North America, has just over 4 million acres (16,000 km²).^[17] The United States is the world's third or fourth largest nation by total area (land and water), ranking behind Russia and Canada and just above or below China. The ranking varies depending on how two territories disputed by China and India are counted and how the total size of the United States is measured: calculations range from 3,676,486 square miles (9,522,055 km²)^[18] to 3,717,813 square miles (9,629,091 km²)^[19] to 3,794,101 square miles (9,826,676 km²).^[1] Including only land area, the United States is third in size behind Russia and China, just ahead of Canada.^[20]

The Bald Eagle, national bird of the United States since 1782

The coastal plain of the Atlantic seaboard gives way further inland to deciduous forests and the rolling hills of the Piedmont. The Appalachian Mountains divide the eastern seaboard from the Great Lakes and the grasslands of the Midwest. The Mississippi–Missouri River, the world's fourth longest river system, runs mainly north–south through the heart of the country. The flat, fertile prairie of the Great Plains stretches to the west, interrupted by a highland region in the southeast. The Rocky Mountains, at the western edge of the Great Plains, extend north to south across the country, reaching altitudes higher than 14,000 feet (4,300 m) in Colorado. Farther west are the rocky Great Basin and deserts such as the Chihuahua and Mojave. The Sierra Nevada and Cascade mountain ranges run close to the Pacific coast. At 20,320 feet (6,194 m), Alaska's Mount McKinley is the tallest peak in the country and in North America. Active volcanoes are common throughout Alaska's Alexander and Aleutian Islands, and Hawaii consists of volcanic islands. The supervolcano underlying Yellowstone National Park in the Rockies is the continent's largest volcanic feature.^[21]

The United States, with its large size and geographic variety, includes most climate types. To the east of the 100th meridian, the climate ranges from humid continental in the north to humid subtropical in the south. The southern tip of Florida is tropical, as is Hawaii. The Great Plains west of the 100th meridian are semi-arid. Much of the Western mountains are alpine. The climate is arid in the Great Basin, desert in the Southwest, Mediterranean in coastal California, and oceanic in coastal Oregon and Washington and southern Alaska. Most of Alaska is subarctic or polar. Extreme weather is not uncommon—the states bordering the Gulf of Mexico are prone to hurricanes, and most of the world's tornadoes occur within the country, mainly in the Midwest's Tornado Alley.^[22]

The U.S. ecology is considered "megadiverse": about 17,000 species of vascular plants occur in the contiguous United States and Alaska, and over 1,800 species of flowering plants are found in Hawaii, few of which occur on the mainland.^[23] The United States is home to more than 400 mammal, 750 bird, and 500 reptile and amphibian species.^[24] About 91,000 insect species have been described.^[25] The Endangered Species Act of 1973 protects threatened and endangered species and their habitats, which are monitored by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service. There are fifty-eight national parks and hundreds of other federally managed parks, forests, and wilderness areas.^[26] Altogether, the government owns 28.8% of the country's land area.^[27] Most of this is protected, though some is leased for oil and gas drilling, mining, logging, or cattle ranching; 2.4% is used for military purposes.^[27]

Political divisions[link]

The United States is a federal union of fifty states. The original thirteen states were the successors of the thirteen colonies that rebelled against British rule. Early in the country's history, three new states were organized on territory separated from the claims of the existing states: Kentucky from Virginia; Tennessee from North Carolina; and Maine from Massachusetts. Most of the other states have been carved from territories obtained through war or purchase by the U.S. government. One set of exceptions comprises Vermont, Texas, and Hawaii: each was an independent republic before joining the union. During the American Civil War, West Virginia broke away from Virginia. The most recent state—Hawaii—achieved statehood on August 21, 1959.^[28] The states do not have the right to secede from the union.

The states compose the vast bulk of the U.S. land mass; the two other areas considered integral parts of the country are the District of Columbia, the federal district where the capital, Washington, is located; and Palmyra Atoll, an uninhabited but incorporated territory in the Pacific Ocean. The United States also possesses five major overseas territories: Puerto Rico and the United States Virgin Islands in the Caribbean; and American Samoa, Guam, and the Northern Mariana Islands in the Pacific.^[29] Those born in the major territories (except for American Samoa) possess U.S. citizenship.^[30] American citizens residing in the territories have many of the same rights and responsibilities as citizens residing in the states; however, they are generally exempt from federal income tax, may not vote for president, and have only nonvoting representation in the U.S. Congress.^[31]

History[link]

Native American and European settlement[link]

The indigenous peoples of the U.S. mainland, including Alaska Natives, are believed to have migrated from Asia, beginning between 40,000 and 12,000 years ago.^[32] Some, such as the pre-Columbian Mississippian culture, developed advanced agriculture, grand architecture, and state-level societies. After Europeans began settling the Americas, many millions of indigenous Americans died from epidemics of imported diseases such as smallpox.^[33]

The Mayflower transported Pilgrims to the New World in 1620, as depicted in William Halsall's The Mayflower in Plymouth Harbor, 1882.

In 1492, Genoese explorer Christopher Columbus, under contract to the Spanish crown, reached several Caribbean islands, making first contact with the indigenous people. On April 2, 1513, Spanish conquistador Juan Ponce de León landed on what he called "La Florida"—the first documented European arrival on what would become the U.S. mainland. Spanish settlements in the region were followed by ones in the present-day southwestern United States that drew thousands through Mexico. French fur traders established outposts of New France around the Great Lakes; France eventually claimed much of the North American interior, down to the Gulf of Mexico. The first successful English settlements were the Virginia Colony in Jamestown in 1607 and the Pilgrims' Plymouth Colony in 1620. The 1628 chartering of the Massachusetts Bay Colony resulted in a wave of migration; by 1634, New England had been settled by some 10,000 Puritans. Between the late 1610s and the American Revolution, about 50,000 convicts were shipped to Britain's American colonies.^[34] Beginning in 1614, the Dutch settled along the lower Hudson River, including New Amsterdam on Manhattan Island.

In 1674, the Dutch ceded their American territory to England; the province of New Netherland was renamed New York. Many new immigrants, especially to the South, were indentured servants—some two-thirds of all Virginia immigrants between 1630 and 1680.^[35] By the turn of the 18th century, African slaves were becoming the primary source of bonded labor. With the 1729 division of the Carolinas and the 1732 colonization of Georgia, the thirteen British colonies that would become the United States of America were established. All had local governments with elections open to most free men, with a growing devotion to the ancient rights of Englishmen and a sense of self-government stimulating support for republicanism. All legalized the African slave trade. With high birth rates, low death rates, and steady immigration, the colonial population grew rapidly. The Christian revivalist movement of the 1730s and 1740s known as the Great Awakening fueled interest in both religion and religious liberty. In the French and Indian War, British forces seized Canada from the French, but the francophone population remained politically isolated from the southern colonies. Excluding the Native Americans (popularly known as "American Indians"), who were being displaced, those thirteen colonies had a population of 2.6 million in 1770, about one-third that of Britain; nearly one in five Americans were black slaves.^[36] Though subject to British taxation, the American colonials had no representation in the Parliament of Great Britain.

Independence and expansion[link]

Declaration of Independence, by John Trumbull, 1817–18

Tensions between American colonials and the British during the revolutionary period of the 1760s and early 1770s led to the American Revolutionary War, fought from 1775 to 1781. On June 14, 1775, the Continental Congress, convening in Philadelphia, established a Continental Army under the command of George Washington. Proclaiming that "all men are created equal" and endowed with "certain unalienable Rights", the Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence, drafted largely by Thomas Jefferson, on July 4, 1776. That date is now celebrated annually as America's Independence Day. In 1777, the Articles of Confederation established a weak confederal government that operated until 1789.

After the British defeat by American forces assisted by the French and Spanish, Great Britain recognized the independence of the United States and the states' sovereignty over American territory west to the Mississippi River. Those wishing to establish a strong federal government with powers of taxation organized a constitutional convention in 1787. The United States Constitution was ratified in 1788, and the new republic's first Senate, House of Representatives, and president—George Washington—took office in 1789. The Bill of Rights, forbidding federal restriction of personal freedoms and guaranteeing a range of legal protections, was adopted in 1791.

Attitudes toward slavery were shifting; a clause in the Constitution protected the Atlantic slave trade only until 1808. The Northern states abolished slavery between 1780 and 1804, leaving the slave states of the South as defenders of the "peculiar institution". The Second Great Awakening, beginning about 1800, made evangelicalism a force behind various social reform movements, including abolitionism.

Territorial acquisitions by date

Americans' eagerness to expand westward prompted a long series of Indian Wars. The Louisiana Purchase of French-claimed territory under President Thomas Jefferson in 1803 almost doubled the nation's size.^[37] The War of 1812, declared against Britain over various grievances and fought to a draw, strengthened U.S. nationalism. A series of U.S. military incursions into Florida led Spain to cede it and other Gulf Coast territory in 1819. The Trail of Tears in the 1830s exemplified the Indian removal policy that stripped the native peoples of their land. The United States annexed the Republic of Texas in 1845, amid a period when the concept of Manifest Destiny was becoming popular.^[38] The 1846 Oregon Treaty with Britain led to U.S. control of the present-day American Northwest. The U.S. victory in the Mexican-American War resulted in the 1848 cession of California and much of the present-day American Southwest. The California Gold Rush of 1848–49 further spurred western migration. New railways made relocation easier for settlers and increased conflicts with Native Americans. Over a half-century, up to 40 million American bison, or buffalo, were slaughtered for skins and meat and to ease the railways' spread. The loss of the buffalo, a primary resource for the plains Indians, was an existential blow to many native cultures.

Civil War and industrialization[link]

Battle of Gettysburg, lithograph by Currier & Ives, ca. 1863

Tensions between slave and free states mounted with arguments about the relationship between the state and federal governments, as well as violent conflicts over the spread of slavery into new states. Abraham Lincoln, candidate of the largely antislavery Republican Party, was elected president in 1860. Before he took office, seven slave states declared their secession—which the federal government maintained was illegal—and formed the Confederate States of America. With the Confederate attack upon Fort Sumter, the Civil War began and four more slave states joined the Confederacy. Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 declared slaves in the Confederacy to be free. Following the Union victory in 1865, three amendments to the U.S. Constitution ensured freedom for the nearly four million African Americans who had been slaves,^[39] made them citizens, and gave them voting rights. The war and its resolution led to a substantial increase in federal power.^[40] The war remains the deadliest conflict in American history, resulting in the deaths of 620,000 soldiers.^[41]

Immigrants at Ellis Island, New York Harbor, 1902

After the war, the assassination of Abraham Lincoln radicalized Republican Reconstruction policies aimed at reintegrating and rebuilding the Southern states while ensuring the rights of the newly freed slaves. The resolution of the disputed 1876 presidential election by the Compromise of 1877 ended Reconstruction; Jim Crow laws soon disenfranchised many African Americans. In the North, urbanization and an unprecedented influx of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe hastened the country's industrialization. The wave of immigration, lasting until 1929, provided labor and transformed American culture. National infrastructure development spurred economic growth. The 1867 Alaska Purchase from Russia completed the country's mainland expansion. The Wounded Knee Massacre in 1890 was the last major armed conflict of the Indian Wars. In 1893, the indigenous monarchy of the Pacific Kingdom of Hawaii was overthrown in a coup led by American residents; the United States annexed the archipelago in 1898. Victory in the Spanish–American War the same year demonstrated that the United States was a world power and led to the annexation of Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines.^[42] The Philippines gained independence a half-century later; Puerto Rico and Guam remain U.S. territories.

World War I, Great Depression, and World War II[link]

An abandoned farm in South Dakota during the Dust Bowl, 1936

At the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the United States remained neutral. Most Americans sympathized with the British and French, although many opposed intervention.^[43] In 1917, the United States joined the Allies, and the American Expeditionary Forces helped to turn the tide against the Central Powers. After the war, the Senate did not ratify the Treaty of Versailles, which established the League of Nations. The country pursued a policy of unilateralism, verging on isolationism.^[44] In 1920, the women's rights movement won passage of a constitutional amendment granting women's suffrage. The prosperity of the Roaring Twenties ended with the Wall Street Crash of 1929 that triggered the Great Depression. After his election as president in 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt responded with the New Deal, a range of policies increasing government intervention in the economy, including the establishment of the Social Security system.^[45] The Dust Bowl of the mid-1930s impoverished many farming communities and spurred a new wave of western migration.

Soldiers of the U.S. Army 1st Infantry Division landing in Normandy on D-Day, June 6, 1944

The United States, effectively neutral during World War II's early stages after Nazi Germany's invasion of Poland in September 1939, began supplying materiel to the Allies in March 1941 through the Lend-Lease program. On December 7, 1941, the Empire of Japan launched a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, prompting the United States to join the Allies against the Axis powers as well as the internment of Japanese Americans by the thousands.^[46] Participation in the war spurred capital investment and industrial capacity. Among the major combatants, the United States was the only nation to become richer—indeed, far richer—instead of poorer because of the war.^[47] Allied conferences at Bretton Woods and Yalta outlined a new system of international organizations that placed the United States and Soviet Union at the center of world affairs. As victory was won in Europe, a 1945 international conference held in San Francisco produced the United Nations Charter, which became active after the war.^[48] The United States, having developed the first nuclear weapons, used them on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August. Japan surrendered on September 2, ending the war.^[49]

Cold War and protest politics[link]

Martin Luther King, Jr. delivering his "I Have a Dream" speech, 1963

The United States and the Soviet Union jockeyed for power after World War II during the Cold War, dominating the military affairs of Europe through NATO and the Warsaw Pact, respectively. While they engaged in proxy wars and developed powerful nuclear arsenals, the two countries avoided direct military conflict. Resisting leftist land and income redistribution projects around the world, the United States often supported authoritarian governments. American troops fought Communist Chinese forces in the Korean War of 1950–53. The House Un-American Activities Committee pursued a series of investigations into suspected leftist subversion, while Senator Joseph McCarthy became the figurehead of anticommunist sentiment.

The 1961 Soviet launch of the first manned spaceflight prompted President John F. Kennedy's call for the United States to be first to land "a man on the moon", achieved in 1969. Kennedy also faced a tense nuclear showdown with Soviet forces in Cuba. Meanwhile, the United States experienced sustained economic expansion. A growing civil rights movement, symbolized and led by African Americans such as Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr., used nonviolence to confront segregation and discrimination. Following Kennedy's assassination in 1963, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965 were passed under President Lyndon B. Johnson.^[50][51] He also signed into law the Medicare and Medicaid programs.^[52] Johnson and his successor, Richard Nixon, expanded a proxy war in Southeast Asia into the unsuccessful Vietnam War. A widespread countercultural movement grew, fueled by opposition to the war, black nationalism, and the sexual revolution. Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, and others led a new wave of feminism that sought political, social, and economic equality for women.

As a result of the Watergate scandal, in 1974 Nixon became the first U.S. president to resign, to avoid being impeached on charges including obstruction of justice and abuse of power. The Jimmy Carter administration of the late 1970s was marked by stagflation and the Iran hostage crisis. The election of Ronald Reagan as president in 1980 heralded a rightward shift in American politics, reflected in major changes in taxation and spending priorities. His second term in office brought both the Iran-Contra scandal and significant diplomatic progress with the Soviet Union. The subsequent Soviet collapse ended the Cold War.

Contemporary era[link]