The Jamestown settlers were not the first Fmglish people to visit Virginia. Twenty years earlier the adventurer Sir Walter Raleigh had sent ships to find land in the New World where English people might settle. He named the land they visited Virginia, in honor of Elizabeth, England’s un­married Queen. In July 1585, 108 English settlers […]

In 1788 George Washington was elected as the first President of the United States. New York was then the country’s capital city. On April ЗП, 1789, Washington stood on a balcony there and swore a solemn oath “to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” When the ceremony came to an end […]

The asittisitiatwn of President Lincoln. On die night of April 13, 1865, crowds ot people moved through the brightly lit streets of Washington to celebrate Lee’s surrender at Appomattox. A man who was there wrote in his diary: “Guns arc firing, bells ringing, flags flying, men laughing, children cheering, all, all arc jubilant.” The next […]

An iimnignnitftnntly in :eie York in the early 1900s. By 1900 the United States was the richest and most productive industrial country in the world. It produced 31.9 percent of the world’s coal, 34.1 percent ofits iron and 36.7 percent ofits steel. About twenty million ofits seventy-four million people earned a living from jobs in […]

On a cold, grey Saturday in March 1933, Franklin D. Roosevelt took die oath as President of the United States. For a hundred days, from March 8 to June 16 he sent Congress a flood of proposals for new laws. The American people had asked for action. In the “I Iundred Days” Roosevelt gave it […]