Kansas–Nebraska Act
The Kansas–Nebraska Act of 1854 was an organic act passed by the 33rd U. S. Congress that created the territories of Kansas and Nebraska and was drafted by Democratic Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois and President Franklin Pierce; the initial purpose of the Kansas–Nebraska Act was to open up thousands of new farms and make feasible a Midwestern Transcontinental Railroad. In addition to creating the U. S. territories of Kansas and Nebraska, the Kansas-Nebraska Act allowed each territory to decide, "under the concept of popular sovereignty, whether they wanted slavery or not." The Kansas-Nebraska Act repealed the Missouri Compromise, which had prohibited slavery in all U. S. territories west of the Mississippi River and north of 36°30' latitude. The popular sovereignty clause of the law led pro- and anti-slavery elements to flood into Kansas with the goal of voting slavery up or down, resulting in a series of armed conflicts known as "Bleeding Kansas". Controversy surrounding the Kansas-Nebraska Act was a cause of the Civil War.
The availability of tens of millions of acres of fertile farmland in the area made it necessary to create a territorial infrastructure to allow settlement. Railroad interests were eager to start operations since they needed farmers as customers. Four previous attempts to pass legislation had failed; the solution was a bill proposed in January 1854 by Douglas — the Democratic Party leader in the US Senate, the chairman of the Committee on Territories, an avid promoter of railroads, an aspirant to the presidency, a fervent believer in popular sovereignty — the policy of letting the voters exclusively white males, of a territory decide whether or not slavery should exist in it. Since the 1840s, the topic of a transcontinental railroad had been discussed. While there were debates over the specifics the route to be taken, there was a public consensus that such a railroad should be built by private interests, financed by public land grants. In 1845, serving in his first term in the US House of Representatives, had submitted an unsuccessful plan to organize the Nebraska Territory formally, as the first step in building a railroad with its eastern terminus in Chicago.
Railroad proposals were debated in all subsequent sessions of Congress with cities such as Chicago, St. Louis, Quincy and New Orleans competing to be the jumping-off point for the construction. Several proposals in late 1852 and early 1853 had strong support, but they failed because of disputes over whether the railroad would follow a northern or a southern route. In early 1853, the House of Representatives passed a bill 107 to 49 to organize the Nebraska Territory in the land west of Iowa and Missouri. In March, the bill moved to the Senate Committee on Territories, headed by Douglas. Missouri Senator David Atchison announced that he would support the Nebraska proposal only if slavery was allowed. While the bill was silent on this issue, slavery would have been prohibited under the Missouri Compromise in territory north of 36°30' latitude and west of the Mississippi River. Other Southern senators were as inflexible as Atchison. By a vote of 23 to 17, the Senate voted to table the motion, with every senator from the states south of Missouri voting to table.
During the Senate adjournment, the issues of the railroad and the repeal of the Missouri Compromise became entangled in Missouri politics, as Atchison campaigned for re-election against the forces of Thomas Hart Benton. Atchison was maneuvered into choosing between antagonizing the state's railroad interests or its slaveholders. Atchison took the position that he would rather see Nebraska "sink in hell" before he would allow it to be overrun by free soilers. Representatives generally found lodging in boarding houses when they were in the nation's capital to perform their legislative duties. Atchison shared lodgings in an F Street house, shared by the leading Southerners in Congress. Atchison himself was the Senate's president pro tempore, his housemates included James Mason and Andrew P. Butler; when Congress reconvened on December 5, 1853, the group, termed the F Street Mess, along with Virginian William O. Goode, formed the nucleus that would insist on slaveholder equality in Nebraska. Douglas knew that he needed to address its concerns.
Iowa Senator Augustus C. Dodge reintroduced the same legislation to organize Nebraska that had stalled in the previous session. Douglas, hoping to achieve the support of the Southerners, publicly announced that the same principle, established in the Compromise of 1850 should apply in Nebraska. In the Compromise of 1850, Utah and New Mexico Territories had been organized without any restrictions on slavery, many supporters of Douglas argued that the compromise had superseded the Missouri Compromise; the two territories, unlike Nebraska, had not been part of the Louisiana Purchase and had never been subject to the Missouri Compromise. The bill was reported to the main body of the Senate on January 4, 1854, it had been modified by Douglas, who had authored the New Mexico Territory and Utah Territory Acts, to mirror the language from the Compromise of 1850. In the bill, a vast new Nebraska Territory was created to extend from Kansas north all the way to the 49th parallel, the US–Canada border. A large portion of Nebraska Territory would soon be split off into Dakota Territory, smaller portions transferred to Colorado Territory and Idaho Territory before the ba
William Lloyd Garrison
William Lloyd Garrison was a prominent American abolitionist, journalist and social reformer. He is best known as the editor of the abolitionist newspaper The Liberator, which he founded with Isaac Knapp in 1831 and published in Massachusetts until slavery was abolished by Constitutional amendment after the American Civil War, he was one of the founders of the American Anti-Slavery Society, promoted "immediate emancipation" of slaves in the United States. Born in Newburyport, Garrison began his newspaper career as an apprentice compositor for the Newburyport Herald, he became involved in the anti-slavery movement in the 1820s, over time he rejected both the American Colonization Society and the gradualist views of most others involved in the movement. Garrison co-founded The Liberator to espouse his abolitionist views, in 1832 he organized the New-England Anti-Slavery Society; this society expanded into the American Anti-Slavery Society, which espoused the position that slavery should be abolished.
Garrison emerged as a leading advocate of women's rights, which prompted a split in the abolitionist community. In the 1870s, Garrison became a prominent voice for the women's suffrage movement. Garrison was born on December 10, 1805, in Newburyport, the son of immigrants from the British colony of New Brunswick, in present-day Canada. Under An Act for the relief of sick and disabled seamen, Abijah Garrison, a merchant sailing pilot and master, had obtained American papers and moved his family to Newburyport in 1806; the U. S. Embargo Act of 1807, intended to injure Great Britain, caused a decline in American commercial shipping; the elder Garrison became unemployed and deserted the family in 1808. Garrison's mother was Frances Maria Lloyd, reported to have been tall, of a strong religious character, she started referring to their son William as his middle name, to preserve her family name. She died in the city of Baltimore, Maryland. Garrison sold home-made lemonade and candy as a youth, delivered wood to help support the family.
In 1818, at 13, Garrison began working as an apprentice compositor for the Newburyport Herald. He soon began writing articles under the pseudonym Aristides. Aristides was an Athenian statesman and general nicknamed "the Just." After his apprenticeship ended, Garrison and a young printer named Isaac Knapp bought their own newspaper in 1826, the short-lived Free Press. One of their regular contributors was abolitionist John Greenleaf Whittier. In this early work as a small town newspaper writer, Garrison acquired skills he would use as a nationally known writer and newspaper publisher. In 1828, he was appointed editor of the National Philanthropist in Boston, the first American journal to promote legally-mandated temperance. At the age of 25, Garrison joined the anti-slavery movement crediting the 1826 book of Presbyterian Reverend John Rankin, Letters on Slavery, for attracting him to the cause. For a brief time he became associated with the American Colonization Society, an organization that promoted the resettlement of free blacks to a territory on the west coast of Africa.
Although some members of the society encouraged granting freedom to slaves, others considered relocation a means to reduce the number of free blacks in the United States. Southern members thought reducing the threat of free blacks in society would help preserve the institution of slavery. By late 1829–1830, "Garrison rejected colonization, publicly apologized for his error, as was typical of him, he censured all who were committed to it." Garrison began writing for and became co-editor with Benjamin Lundy of the Quaker newspaper Genius of Universal Emancipation in Baltimore, Maryland. With his experience as a printer and newspaper editor, Garrison changed the layout of the paper and handled other operation issues. Lundy was freed to spend more time touring as an anti-slavery speaker. Garrison shared Lundy's gradualist views, but while working for the Genius, he became convinced of the need to demand immediate and complete emancipation. Lundy and Garrison continued to work together on the paper in spite of their differing views.
Each signed his own editorials. Garrison introduced "The Black List," a column devoted to printing short reports of "the barbarities of slavery—kidnappings, murders." For instance, Garrison reported that Francis Todd, a shipper from Garrison's home town of Newburyport, was involved in the domestic slave trade, that he had had slaves shipped from Baltimore to New Orleans in the coastwise trade on his ship the Francis. Todd filed a suit for libel in Maryland against both Lundy; the state of Maryland brought criminal charges against Garrison finding him guilty and ordering him to pay a fine of $50 and court costs. Garrison was sentenced to a jail term of six months, he was released after seven weeks when the anti-slavery philanthropist Arthur Tappan donated the money for the fine. Garrison decided to leave Baltimore, he and Lundy amicably agreed to part ways. In 1831, Garrison returned to New England, where he co-founded a weekly anti-slavery newspaper, The Liberator, with his friend Isaac Knapp.
In the first issue, Garrison stated: I am aware that many object to the severity of my language. I will be as harsh as truth, as uncompr
Utica, New York
Utica is a city in the Mohawk Valley and the county seat of Oneida County, New York, United States. The tenth-most-populous city in New York, its population was 62,235 in the 2010 U. S. census. Located on the Mohawk River at the foot of the Adirondack Mountains, Utica is 95 miles northwest of Albany, 55 mi east of Syracuse and 240 miles northwest of New York City. Utica and the nearby city of Rome anchor the Utica–Rome Metropolitan Statistical Area, which comprises all of Oneida and Herkimer counties. A river settlement inhabited by the Mohawk tribe of the Iroquois Confederacy, Utica attracted European-American settlers from New England during and after the American Revolution. In the 19th century, immigrants strengthened its position as a layover city between Albany and Syracuse on the Erie and Chenango Canals and the New York Central Railroad. During the 19th and 20th centuries, the city's infrastructure contributed to its success as a manufacturing center and defined its role as a worldwide hub for the textile industry.
Utica's 20th-century political corruption and organized crime gave it the nickname "Sin City."Like other Rust Belt cities, Utica underwent an economic downturn beginning in the mid-20th century. The downturn consisted of industrial decline due to globalization and the closure of textile mills, population loss caused by the relocation of jobs and businesses to suburbs and to Syracuse, poverty associated with socioeconomic stress and a decreased tax base. With its low cost of living, the city has become a melting pot for refugees from war-torn countries around the world, encouraging growth for its colleges and universities, cultural institutions and economy. Several theories exist regarding the history of the name "Utica". Although surveyor Robert Harpur stated that he named the village, the most accepted theory involves a 1798 meeting at Bagg's Tavern where the name was picked from a hat holding 13 suggestions. Utica was included because Utica is a city of antiquity: several other upstate New York cities had adopted classical Mediterranean city names earlier, such as Troy and Rome, or would as with Syracuse.
Utica was established on the site of Old Fort Schuyler, built by English colonists for defense in 1758 during the French and Indian War, the North American front of the Seven Years' War against France. Prior to construction of the fort, the Mohawk and Oneida tribes had occupied this area south of the Great Lakes region as early as 4000 BC; the Mohawk were the largest and most powerful tribe in the eastern part of the Mohawk Valley. Colonists had a longstanding fur trade with them, in exchange for firearms and rum; the tribe's dominating presence in the region prevented the Province of New York from expanding past the middle of the Mohawk Valley until after the American Revolutionary War, when the Iroquois were forced to cede their lands as allies of the defeated British. The land housing Old Fort Schuyler was part of a 20,000 acres portion of marshland granted by King George II to New York governor William Cosby on January 2, 1734. Since the fort was located near several trails, its position—on a bend at a shallow portion of the Mohawk River—made it an important fording point.
The Mohawk called the bend Unundadages, the Mohawk word appears on the city's seal. During the American Revolution, border raids from British-allied Iroquois tribes harried the settlers on the frontier. George Washington ordered Sullivan's Expedition, Rangers, to enter Central New York and suppress the Iroquois threat. More than 40 Iroquois villages were destroyed and their winter stores, causing starvation. In the aftermath of the war, numerous European-American settlers migrated into the state and this western region from New England Connecticut. In 1794 a state road, Genesee Road, was built from Utica west to the Genesee River; that year a contract was awarded to the Mohawk Turnpike and Bridge Company to extend the road northeast to Albany, in 1798 it was extended. The Seneca Turnpike was key to Utica's development; the village became a rest and supply area along the Mohawk River for goods and the many people moving through Western New York to and from the Great Lakes. The boundaries of the village of Utica were defined in an act passed by the New York State Legislature on April 3, 1798.
Utica expanded its borders in subsequent 1817 charters. On April 5, 1805, the village's eastern and western boundaries were expanded, on April 7, 1817, Utica separated from Whitestown on its west. After completion of the Erie Canal in 1825, the city's growth was stimulated again; the municipal charter was passed by the state legislature on February 13, 1832. The city's growth during the 19th century is indicated by the increase in its population. Utica's location on the Erie and Chenango canals encouraged industrial development, allowing the transport of anthracite from northeastern Pennsylvania for local manufacturing and distribution. Utica's economy centered around the manufacture of furniture, heavy machinery and lumber; the combined effects of the Embargo Act of 1807 and local investment enabled further expansion of the textile industry. Like other upstate New York cities, mills in Utica processed cotton from the Deep South, a slave society. Much of the New York economy was involved with slavery.
Zachary Taylor
Zachary Taylor was the 12th president of the United States, serving from March 1849 until his death in July 1850. Taylor was a career officer in the United States Army, rose to the rank of major general and became a national hero as a result of his victories in the Mexican–American War; as a result, he won election to the White House despite his vague political beliefs. His top priority as president was preserving the Union, but he died sixteen months into his term, before making any progress on the status of slavery, inflaming tensions in Congress. Taylor was born into a prominent family of plantation owners who moved westward from Virginia to Kentucky in his youth, he was commissioned as an officer in the U. S. Army in 1808 and made a name for himself as a Captain in the War of 1812, he climbed the ranks establishing military forts along the Mississippi River and entered the Black Hawk War as a Colonel in 1832. His success in the Second Seminole War attracted national attention and earned him the nickname "Old Rough and Ready".
In 1845, during the annexation of Texas, President James K. Polk dispatched Taylor to the Rio Grande in anticipation of a battle with Mexico over the disputed Texas–Mexico border; the Mexican–American War broke out in April 1846, Taylor defeated Mexican troops commanded by General Mariano Arista at the battles of Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma and drove his troops out of Texas. Taylor led his troops into Mexico, where they defeated Mexican troops commanded by Pedro de Ampudia at the Battle of Monterrey. Defying orders, Taylor led his troops further south and, despite being outnumbered, dealt a crushing blow to Mexican forces under Antonio López de Santa Anna at the Battle of Buena Vista. Taylor's troops were transferred to the command of Major General Winfield Scott, but Taylor retained his popularity; the Whig Party convinced the reluctant Taylor to lead their ticket in the 1848 presidential election, despite his unclear political tenets and lack of interest in politics. At the 1848 Whig National Convention, Taylor defeated Scott and former Senator Henry Clay to take the nomination.
He won the general election alongside New York politician Millard Fillmore, defeating Democratic Party candidates Lewis Cass and William Orlando Butler, as well as a third-party effort led by former president Martin Van Buren and Charles Francis Adams, Sr. of the Free Soil Party. Taylor became the first president to be elected without having served in a prior political office; as president, Taylor kept his distance from Congress and his cabinet though partisan tensions threatened to divide the Union. Debate over the status of slavery in the Mexican Cession dominated the political agenda and led to threats of secession from Southerners. Despite being a Southerner and a slaveholder himself, Taylor did not push for the expansion of slavery, sought sectional harmony above all other concerns. To avoid the issue of slavery, he urged settlers in New Mexico and California to bypass the territorial stage and draft constitutions for statehood, setting the stage for the Compromise of 1850. Taylor died of a stomach-related illness in July 1850, with his administration having accomplished little aside from the ratification of the Clayton–Bulwer Treaty.
Fillmore served the remainder of his term. Historians and scholars have ranked Taylor in the bottom quartile of U. S. presidents, owing in part to his short term of office, he has been described as "more a forgettable president than a failed one." Zachary Taylor was born on November 24, 1784, on a plantation in Orange County, Virginia, to a prominent family of planters of English ancestry. His birthplace may have been Hare Forest Farm, the home of his maternal grandfather William Strother, though this has not been determined with certainty, he had three younger sisters. His mother was Sarah Dabney Taylor, his father, Richard Taylor, had served as a lieutenant colonel in the American Revolution. Taylor was a descendant of Elder William Brewster, a Pilgrim leader of the Plymouth Colony, a Mayflower immigrant, a signer of the Mayflower Compact. Taylor's second cousin through that line was the fourth president, his family forsook their exhausted Virginia land, joined the westward migration and settled near future Louisville, Kentucky, on the Ohio River.
Taylor grew up in a small woodland cabin until, with increased prosperity, his family moved to a brick house. The rapid growth of Louisville was a boon for Taylor's father, who by the start of the 19th century had acquired 10,000 acres throughout Kentucky, as well as 26 slaves to cultivate the most developed portion of his holdings. Taylor's formal education was sporadic because Kentucky's education system was just taking shape during his formative years, his mother taught him to read and write, he attended a school operated by Elisha Ayer, a teacher from Connecticut. He attended a Middletown, Kentucky academy run by Kean O'Hara, a classically trained scholar from Ireland, the father of Theodore O'Hara. Ayer recalled Taylor as a patient and quick learner, but his early letters showed a weak grasp of spelling and grammar, as well as poor handwriting. All improved over time. In June 1810, Taylor married Margaret Mackall Smith, whom he had met the previous autumn in Louisville. "Peggy" Smith came from a prominent family of Maryland planters—she was the daughter of Major Walter Smith, who had served in the Revolutionary War.
The couple had six children: Ann Mackall Taylor
Elections in the United States
Elections in the United States are held for government officials at the federal and local levels. At the federal level, the nation's head of state, the President, is elected indirectly by the people of each state, through an Electoral College. Today, these electors always vote with the popular vote of their state. All members of the federal legislature, the Congress, are directly elected by the people of each state. There are many elected offices at state level, each state having at least an elective Governor and legislature. There are elected offices at the local level, in counties, towns, townships and villages. According to a study by political scientist Jennifer Lawless, there were 519,682 elected officials in the United States as of 2012. While the United States Constitution does set parameters for the election of federal officials, state law, not federal, regulates most aspects of elections in the U. S. including primaries, the eligibility of voters, the running of each state's electoral college, as well as the running of state and local elections.
All elections—federal and local—are administered by the individual states. The restriction and extension of voting rights to different groups has been a contested process throughout United States history; the federal government has been involved in attempts to increase voter turnout, by measures such as the National Voter Registration Act of 1993. The financing of elections has long been controversial, because private sources make up substantial amounts of campaign contributions in federal elections. Voluntary public funding for candidates willing to accept spending limits was introduced in 1974 for presidential primaries and elections; the Federal Elections Commission, created in 1975 by an amendment to the Federal Election Campaign Act, has the responsibility to disclose campaign finance information, to enforce the provisions of the law such as the limits and prohibitions on contributions, to oversee the public funding of U. S. presidential elections. The most common method used in U. S. elections is the first-past-the-post system, where the highest polling candidate wins the election.
Some may use a two-round system, where if no candidate receives a required number of votes there is a runoff between the two candidates with the most votes. Since 2002, several cities have adopted instant-runoff voting in their elections. Voters rank the candidates in order of preference rather than voting for a single candidate. If a candidate secures more than half of votes cast, that candidate wins. Otherwise, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated. Ballots assigned to the eliminated candidate are recounted and assigned to those of the remaining candidates who rank next in order of preference on each ballot; this process continues. In 2016, Maine became the first state to adopt instant-runoff voting statewide for its elections, although due to state constitutional provisions, the system is only used for federal elections and state primaries; the eligibility of an individual for voting is set out in the constitution and regulated at state level. The constitution states that suffrage cannot be denied on grounds of race or color, sex, or age for citizens eighteen years or older.
Beyond these basic qualifications, it is the responsibility of state legislatures to regulate voter eligibility. Some states ban convicted criminals felons, from voting for a fixed period of time or indefinitely; the number of American adults who are or permanently ineligible to vote due to felony convictions is estimated to be 5.3 million. Some states have legacy constitutional statements barring declared incompetent from voting. While the federal government has jurisdiction over federal elections, most election laws are decided at the state level. All U. S. states. Traditionally, voters had to register at state offices to vote, but in the mid-1990s efforts were made by the federal government to make registering easier, in an attempt to increase turnout; the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 required state governments that receive certain types of federal funding to make the voter registration process easier by providing uniform registration services through drivers' license registration centers, disability centers, schools and mail-in registration.
Other states allow citizens same-day registration on Election Day. In many states, citizens registering to vote may declare an affiliation with a political party; this declaration of affiliation does not cost money, does not make the citizen a dues-paying member of a party. A party cannot prevent a voter from declaring his or her affiliation with them, but it can refuse requests for full membership. In some states, only voters affiliated with a party may vote in that party's primary elections. Declaring a party affiliation is never required; some states, including Georgia, Minnesota, Virginia and Washington, practice non-partisan registration. Voters unable or unwilling to vote at polling stations on Election Day can vote via absentee ballots. Absentee ballots are most sent and received via the United States Postal Service. Despite their name, absentee ballots are requested and submitted in person. About half of all states and U. S. territories allow "no excuse absentee," where no reason is required to request an absentee ballot.
Others require a valid reason, such as infirmity or tra
Ohio
Ohio is a Midwestern state in the Great Lakes region of the United States. Of the fifty states, it is the 34th largest by area, the seventh most populous, the tenth most densely populated; the state's capital and largest city is Columbus. The state takes its name from the Ohio River, whose name in turn originated from the Seneca word ohiːyo', meaning "good river", "great river" or "large creek". Partitioned from the Northwest Territory, Ohio was the 17th state admitted to the Union on March 1, 1803, the first under the Northwest Ordinance. Ohio is known as the "Buckeye State" after its Ohio buckeye trees, Ohioans are known as "Buckeyes". Ohio rose from the wilderness of Ohio Country west of Appalachia in colonial times through the Northwest Indian Wars as part of the Northwest Territory in the early frontier, to become the first non-colonial free state admitted to the union, to an industrial powerhouse in the 20th century before transmogrifying to a more information and service based economy in the 21st.
The government of Ohio is composed of the executive branch, led by the Governor. Ohio occupies 16 seats in the United States House of Representatives. Ohio is known for its status as both a bellwether in national elections. Six Presidents of the United States have been elected. Ohio is an industrial state, ranking 8th out of 50 states in GDP, is the second largest producer of automobiles behind Michigan. Ohio's geographic location has proven to be an asset for economic expansion; because Ohio links the Northeast to the Midwest, much cargo and business traffic passes through its borders along its well-developed highways. Ohio has the nation's 10th largest highway network and is within a one-day drive of 50% of North America's population and 70% of North America's manufacturing capacity. To the north, Lake Erie gives Ohio 312 miles of coastline. Ohio's southern border is defined by the Ohio River, much of the northern border is defined by Lake Erie. Ohio's neighbors are Pennsylvania to the east, Michigan to the northwest, Lake Erie to the north, Indiana to the west, Kentucky on the south, West Virginia on the southeast.
Ohio's borders were defined by metes and bounds in the Enabling Act of 1802 as follows: Bounded on the east by the Pennsylvania line, on the south by the Ohio River, to the mouth of the Great Miami River, on the west by the line drawn due north from the mouth of the Great Miami aforesaid, on the north by an east and west line drawn through the southerly extreme of Lake Michigan, running east after intersecting the due north line aforesaid, from the mouth of the Great Miami until it shall intersect Lake Erie or the territorial line, thence with the same through Lake Erie to the Pennsylvania line aforesaid. Ohio is bounded by the Ohio River, but nearly all of the river itself belongs to Kentucky and West Virginia. In 1980, the U. S. Supreme Court held that, based on the wording of the cessation of territory by Virginia, the boundary between Ohio and Kentucky is the northern low-water mark of the river as it existed in 1792. Ohio has only that portion of the river between the river's 1792 low-water mark and the present high-water mark.
The border with Michigan has changed, as a result of the Toledo War, to angle northeast to the north shore of the mouth of the Maumee River. Much of Ohio features glaciated till plains, with an exceptionally flat area in the northwest being known as the Great Black Swamp; this glaciated region in the northwest and central state is bordered to the east and southeast first by a belt known as the glaciated Allegheny Plateau, by another belt known as the unglaciated Allegheny Plateau. Most of Ohio is of low relief, but the unglaciated Allegheny Plateau features rugged hills and forests; the rugged southeastern quadrant of Ohio, stretching in an outward bow-like arc along the Ohio River from the West Virginia Panhandle to the outskirts of Cincinnati, forms a distinct socio-economic unit. Geologically similar to parts of West Virginia and southwestern Pennsylvania, this area's coal mining legacy, dependence on small pockets of old manufacturing establishments, distinctive regional dialect set this section off from the rest of the state.
In 1965 the United States Congress passed the Appalachian Regional Development Act, an attempt to "address the persistent poverty and growing economic despair of the Appalachian Region." This act defines 29 Ohio counties as part of Appalachia. While 1/3 of Ohio's land mass is part of the federally defined Appalachian region, only 12.8% of Ohioans live there Significant rivers within the state include the Cuyahoga River, Great Miami River, Maumee River, Muskingum River, Scioto River. The rivers in the northern part of the state drain into the northern Atlantic Ocean via Lake Erie and the St. Lawrence River, the rivers in the southern part of the state drain into the Gulf of Mexico via the Ohio River and the Mississippi; the worst weather disaster in Ohio history occurred along the Great Miami River in 1913. Known as the Great Dayton Flood, the entire Miami River watershed flooded, including the downtown business district of Dayton; as a result, the Miami Conservancy District was created as the first major flood plain engineering project in Ohio and the United States.
Grand Lake St. Marys in the west-central part of the state was constructed as a supply of water for ca
United States
The United States of America known as the United States or America, is a country composed of 50 states, a federal district, five major self-governing territories, various possessions. At 3.8 million square miles, the United States is the world's third or fourth largest country by total area and is smaller than the entire continent of Europe's 3.9 million square miles. With a population of over 327 million people, the U. S. is the third most populous country. The capital is Washington, D. C. and the largest city by population is New York City. Forty-eight states and the capital's federal district are contiguous in North America between Canada and Mexico; the State of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east and across the Bering Strait from Russia to the west. The State of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean; the U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, stretching across nine official time zones. The diverse geography and wildlife of the United States make it one of the world's 17 megadiverse countries.
Paleo-Indians migrated from Siberia to the North American mainland at least 12,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century; the United States emerged from the thirteen British colonies established along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the colonies following the French and Indian War led to the American Revolution, which began in 1775, the subsequent Declaration of Independence in 1776; the war ended in 1783 with the United States becoming the first country to gain independence from a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, with the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, being ratified in 1791 to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties; the United States embarked on a vigorous expansion across North America throughout the 19th century, acquiring new territories, displacing Native American tribes, admitting new states until it spanned the continent by 1848. During the second half of the 19th century, the Civil War led to the abolition of slavery.
By the end of the century, the United States had extended into the Pacific Ocean, its economy, driven in large part by the Industrial Revolution, began to soar. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the country's status as a global military power; the United States emerged from World War II as a global superpower, the first country to develop nuclear weapons, the only country to use them in warfare, a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. Sweeping civil rights legislation, notably the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968, outlawed discrimination based on race or color. During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union competed in the Space Race, culminating with the 1969 U. S. Moon landing; the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the world's sole superpower. The United States is the world's oldest surviving federation, it is a representative democracy.
The United States is a founding member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States, other international organizations. The United States is a developed country, with the world's largest economy by nominal GDP and second-largest economy by PPP, accounting for a quarter of global GDP; the U. S. economy is post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge-based activities, although the manufacturing sector remains the second-largest in the world. The United States is the world's largest importer and the second largest exporter of goods, by value. Although its population is only 4.3% of the world total, the U. S. holds 31% of the total wealth in the world, the largest share of global wealth concentrated in a single country. Despite wide income and wealth disparities, the United States continues to rank high in measures of socioeconomic performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP, worker productivity.
The United States is the foremost military power in the world, making up a third of global military spending, is a leading political and scientific force internationally. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a world map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America in honor of the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci; the first documentary evidence of the phrase "United States of America" is from a letter dated January 2, 1776, written by Stephen Moylan, Esq. to George Washington's aide-de-camp and Muster-Master General of the Continental Army, Lt. Col. Joseph Reed. Moylan expressed his wish to go "with full and ample powers from the United States of America to Spain" to seek assistance in the revolutionary war effort; the first known publication of the phrase "United States of America" was in an anonymous essay in The Virginia Gazette newspaper in Williamsburg, Virginia, on April 6, 1776. The second draft of the Articles of Confederation, prepared by John Dickinson and completed by June 17, 1776, at the latest, declared "The name of this Confederation shall be the'United States of America'".
The final version of the Articles sent to the states for ratification in late 1777 contains the sentence "The Stile of this Confederacy shall be'The United States of America'". In June 1776, Thomas Jefferson wrote the phrase "UNITED STATES OF AMERICA" in all capitalized letters in the headline of his "original Rough draught" of the Declaration of Independence; this draft of the document did not surface unti
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