The United States economy is based on the free enterprise system: Private businesses compete against one another with relatively little interference from the government. Since the depression of the 1930s, when the econ­omy essentially collapsed, laws have been made giving the government a more active role in economic and other matters. Changes Over Time Until […]

John Singleton Copley painted Boston’s elite. Elites don’t fit the American ideal of equality, and the United States has had few elites. The Boston Brahmins, however, were certainly an elite. The Boston Brahmins were wealthy, well – educated. and exclusive. They were always Protestants and belonged to old Yankee fam­ilies. Prominent among them were Cabots, […]

A scene from Gone l/V/fh the ІЛЛ/hd   The South has a warm climate and a long growing season for crops. So it’s not surpris­ing that the South’s economy came to depend on agriculture. By the 1820s, the South pro­duced and exported rice, sugar, and especially, cotton. The South felt no need to develop fac­tories. […]

In the 1880s, an Indian named Wovoka claimed he had a revelation from the Great Spirit. If the Indians lived in a way that was good and if they did a certain dance, great changes would come about—the buffalo would again be plentiful, the Indian dead would live, and whites would be driven from the […]

Although the Tetons are lower than many other mountain ranges in the Rockies, they are very dramatic. When they were formed, the valley floor sank. So the Tetons rise straight up from the valley, without the usual foothills. The valley at the foot of the Tetons is called Jackson Hole. Hole is the word that […]