Republican Party (United States)
The Republican Party referred to as the GOP, is one of the two major political parties in the United States. The GOP was founded in 1854 by opponents of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which had expanded slavery into U. S. territories. The party subscribed to classical liberalism and took ideological stands that were anti-slavery and pro-economic reform. Abraham Lincoln was the first Republican president in the history of the United States; the Party was dominant over the Democrats during the Third Party System and Fourth Party System. In 1912, Theodore Roosevelt formed the Progressive Party after being rejected by the GOP and ran unsuccessfully as a third-party presidential candidate calling for social reforms. After the 1912 election, many Roosevelt supporters left the Party, the Party underwent an ideological shift to the right; the liberal Republican element in the GOP was overwhelmed by a conservative surge begun by Barry Goldwater in 1964 that continued during the Reagan Era in the 1980s. After the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the party's core base shifted, with the Southern states becoming more reliably Republican in presidential politics and the Northeastern states becoming more reliably Democratic.
White voters identified with the Republican Party after the 1960s. Following the Supreme Court's 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade, the Republican Party made opposition to abortion a key plank of its national party platform and grew its support among evangelicals. By 2000, the Republican Party was aligned with Christian conservatism; the Party's core support since the 1990s comes chiefly from the South, the Great Plains, the Mountain States and rural areas in the North. The 21st century Republican Party ideology is American conservatism, which contrasts with the Democrats' liberal platform and progressive wing; the GOP supports lower taxes, free market capitalism, a strong national defense, gun rights and restrictions on labor unions. The GOP was committed to protectionism and tariffs from its founding until the 1930s when it was based in the industrial Northeast and Midwest, but has grown more supportive of free trade since 1952. In addition to advocating for conservative economic policies, the Republican Party is conservative.
Founded in the Northern states in 1854 by abolitionists, modernizers, ex-Whigs and ex-Free Soilers, the Republican Party became the principal opposition to the dominant Democratic Party and the popular Know Nothing Party. The party grew out of opposition to the Kansas–Nebraska Act, which repealed the Missouri Compromise and opened Kansas Territory and Nebraska Territory to slavery and future admission as slave states; the Northern Republicans saw the expansion of slavery as a great evil. The first public meeting of the general anti-Nebraska movement, at which the name Republican was suggested for a new anti-slavery party, was held on March 20, 1854 in a schoolhouse in Ripon, Wisconsin; the name was chosen to pay homage to Thomas Jefferson's Republican Party. The first official party convention was held on July 1854 in Jackson, Michigan. At the 1856 Republican National Convention, the party adopted a national platform emphasizing opposition to the expansion of slavery into U. S. territories. While Republican candidate John C.
Frémont lost the 1856 United States presidential election to James Buchanan, he did win 11 of the 16 northern states. The Republican Party first came to power in the elections of 1860 when it won control of both houses of Congress and its candidate, former congressman Abraham Lincoln, was elected President. In the election of 1864, it united with War Democrats to nominate Lincoln on the National Union Party ticket. Under Republican congressional leadership, the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution—which banned slavery in the United States—passed the Senate in 1864 and the House in 1865; the party's success created factionalism within the party in the 1870s. Those who felt that Reconstruction had been accomplished, was continued to promote the large-scale corruption tolerated by President Ulysses S. Grant, ran Horace Greeley for the presidency; the Stalwart faction defended Grant and the spoils system, whereas the Half-Breeds pushed for reform of the civil service. The Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act was passed in 1883.
The Republican Party supported hard money, high tariffs to promote economic growth, high wages and high profits, generous pensions for Union veterans, the annexation of Hawaii. The Republicans had strong support from pietistic Protestants, but they resisted demands for Prohibition; as the Northern postwar economy boomed with heavy and light industry, mines, fast-growing cities, prosperous agriculture, the Republicans took credit and promoted policies to sustain the fast growth. The GOP was dominant over the Democrats during the Third Party System. However, by 1890 the Republicans had agreed to the Sherman Antitrust Act and the Interstate Commerce Commission in response to complaints from owners of small businesses and farmers; the high McKinley Tariff of 1890 hurt the party and the Democrats swept to a landslide in the off-year elections defeating McKinley himself. The Democrats elected Grover Cleveland in 1884 and 1892; the election of William McKinley in 1896 was marked by a resurgence of Republican dominance that lasted until 1932.
McKinley promised that high tariffs would end the severe hardship caused by the Pa
1928 United States presidential election
The United States presidential election of 1928 was the 36th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 6, 1928. Republican Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover defeated the Democratic nominee, Governor Al Smith of New York. Hoover was the last Republican to win a presidential election until 1952. After President Calvin Coolidge declined to seek reelection, Hoover emerged as his party's front-runner; as Hoover's intra-party opponents failed to unite around a candidate, Hoover received a large majority of the vote at the 1928 Republican National Convention. The strong state of the economy discouraged some Democrats from running, Smith was nominated on the first ballot of the 1928 Democratic National Convention. Hoover and Smith had been known as potential presidential candidates long before the 1928 campaign, both were regarded as outstanding leaders; each candidate was a newcomer to the presidential race and presented in his person and record an appeal of unknown potency to the electorate.
Each candidate faced serious discontent within his party membership, neither had the wholehearted support of his party organization. In the end, the Republicans were identified with the booming economy of the 1920s, whereas Smith, a Roman Catholic, suffered politically from anti-Catholic prejudice, his anti-prohibitionist stance, his association with the legacy of corruption of Tammany Hall. Hoover won a third straight Republican landslide and made substantial inroads in the traditionally Democratic Solid South, winning several states that had not voted for a Republican since the end of Reconstruction. Hoover's victory made him the first president born west of the Mississippi River, he is the most recent sitting member of the Cabinet to win a major party's presidential nomination. Republican candidates: With President Coolidge choosing not to enter the race, the race for the nomination was wide open; the leading candidates were Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover, former Illinois Governor Frank Orren Lowden and Senate Majority Leader Charles Curtis.
A draft-Coolidge movement failed to gain traction with party insiders and failed to persuade Coolidge himself. In the few primaries that mattered, Hoover did not perform as well as expected, it was thought that the president or Vice-President Charles G. Dawes might accept a draft in case of a deadlock, but Lowden withdrew just as the convention was about to start, paving the way for a Hoover victory; the Republican Convention, held in Kansas City, from June 12 to 15, nominated Hoover on the first ballot. With Hoover disinclined to interfere in the selection of his running mate, the party leaders were at first partial to giving Dawes a shot at a second term, but when this information leaked, Coolidge sent an angry telegram saying that he would consider a second nomination for Dawes, whom he hated, a "personal affront." To attract votes from farmers concerned about Hoover's pro-business orientation, it was instead offered to Senator Curtis, who accepted. He was nominated overwhelmingly on the first ballot.
In his acceptance speech eight weeks after the convention ended, Secretary Hoover said: "We in America today are nearer to the final triumph over poverty than before in the history of this land... We shall soon with the help of God be in sight of the day when poverty will be banished from this land." The phrase would haunt Hoover during the Great Depression. Democratic candidates: With the memory of the Teapot Dome scandal fading, the current state of prosperity making the party's prospects look dim, most of the major Democratic leaders, such as William Gibbs McAdoo, were content to sit this one out. One who did not was New York Governor Al Smith, who had tried twice before to secure the Democratic nomination; the 1928 Democratic National Convention was held in Houston, Texas, on June 26 to 28, Smith became the candidate on the first ballot. The leadership asked the delegates to nominate Sen. Joseph Taylor Robinson of Arkansas, in many ways Smith's political polar opposite, to be his running mate, he was nominated for vice-president.
Smith was the first Roman Catholic to gain a major party's nomination for president, his religion became an issue during the campaign. Many Protestants feared that Smith would take orders from church leaders in Rome in making decisions affecting the country. Source: US President - D Convention. Our Campaigns.. The Prohibition Party Convention was held in Chicago from July 10 through July 12. Smith opposed Prohibition; some members of the Prohibition Party wanted to throw their support to Hoover, thinking that their candidate would not win and that they did not want their candidate to provide the margin by which Smith would win. Nonetheless, William F. Varney was nominated for president over Hoover by a margin of 68–45. Anti-Catholicism was a significant problem for Smith's campaign. Protestant ministers warned that he would take orders from the pope who, many Americans sincerely believed, would move to the United States to rule the country from a fortress in Washington, D. C. if Smith won. According to a popular joke, after the election he sent a one-word telegram advising Pope Pius XI to "Unpack".
Beyond the conspiracy theories, a survey of 8,500 Southern Methodist Church ministers found only four who supported Smith, the northern Methodists, Southern Baptists, Disciples of Christ were similar in their opposition. Many voters who sincerely rejected bigotry and the anti-Catholic Ku Klux Klan—which had declined during the 1920s until the 1928 campaign revived it—justified their opposition to Smith on their belief that the Catholic Church was an "un-American", "alien culture" that opposed freedom and democracy. An example was a statement issued in September 1928 by the National Luthe
1916 United States presidential election
The United States presidential election of 1916 was the 33rd quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 7, 1916. Incumbent Democratic President Woodrow Wilson defeated Supreme Court Justice Charles Evans Hughes, the Republican candidate. Wilson was the only sitting Democratic president to win re-election between 1832 and 1936. Wilson was re-nominated without opposition at the 1916 Democratic National Convention; the 1916 Republican National Convention chose Hughes as a compromise between the conservative and progressive wings of the party. Hughes defeated John W. Weeks, Elihu Root, several other candidates on the third ballot of the convention, becoming the only Supreme Court Justice to serve as a major party's presidential nominee. While conservative and progressive Republicans had been divided in the 1912 election between the candidacies of then-incumbent President William Howard Taft and former President Theodore Roosevelt, they united around Hughes in his bid to oust Wilson.
The election took place during the time of the Mexican Revolution and World War I. Although neutral in the European conflict, public opinion in the United States leaned towards the Allied forces headed by Great Britain and France against the German Empire and Austria-Hungary, due in large measure to the harsh treatment of civilians by the German Army in Belgium and northern France and the militaristic character of the German and Austrian monarchies, but in spite of their sympathy with the Allied forces most American voters wanted to avoid involvement in the war and preferred to continue a policy of neutrality. Wilson's campaign used the popular slogans "He kept us out of war" and "America First" to appeal to those voters who wanted to avoid a war in Europe or with Mexico. Hughes criticized Wilson for not taking the "necessary preparations" to face a conflict, which only served to strengthen Wilson's image as an anti-war candidate; the United States would enter the war in April 1917, one month after Wilson's inauguration as president.
After a hard-fought contest, Wilson defeated Hughes by nearly 600,000 votes in the popular vote. The 1916 election saw an increase in Wilson's popular vote from the four-way election of 1912, but a major decline in the number of electoral votes won. Wilson secured a narrow majority in the Electoral College by sweeping the Solid South and winning several swing states with razor-thin margins. Wilson won California by just 3,773 votes. Allan L. Benson of the Socialist Party and Frank Hanly of the Prohibition Party each finished with greater than 1% of the popular vote. Republican candidates: Charles Evans Hughes, U. S. Supreme Court Justice and former Governor of New York John W. Weeks, U. S. senator from Massachusetts Elihu Root, former U. S. senator from New York Theodore E. Burton, former U. S. senator from Ohio Charles W. Fairbanks, former Vice President of the United States from Indiana Albert B. Cummins, U. S. senator from Iowa The 1916 Republican National Convention was held in Chicago between June 7 and 10.
A major goal of the party's bosses at the convention was to heal the bitter split within the party that had occurred in the 1912 presidential campaign. In that year, Theodore Roosevelt bolted the Republican Party and formed his own political party, the Progressive Party, which attracted most of the Republican liberals. William Howard Taft, the incumbent president, won the nomination of the regular Republican Party; this split in the Republican ranks divided the Republican vote and led to the election of Democrat Woodrow Wilson. Although several candidates were competing for the 1916 nomination—most prominently conservative Senator Elihu Root from New York and liberal Senator John W. Weeks from Massachusetts—the party's bosses wanted a moderate who would be acceptable to both factions of the party, they turned to Supreme Court Justice Charles Evans Hughes, serving on the court since 1910 and had the advantage of not having publicly spoken about political issues in six years. Although he had not sought the nomination, Hughes made it known that he would not turn it down.
Former Vice President Charles W. Fairbanks was nominated as his running mate. Hughes was the only Supreme Court Justice. Democratic candidate: Woodrow Wilson, President of the United States The 1916 Democratic National Convention was held in St. Louis, Missouri between June 14 and 16. Given Wilson's enormous popularity within the party as well as being an incumbent President, he was overwhelmingly re-nominated. Vice President Thomas R. Marshall was re-nominated with no opposition. In the campaign Edward M. House declined any public role, but was Wilson's top campaign advisor. Hodgson says, "he planned its structure; the Progressives re-nominated former President Theodore Roosevelt and nominated John Parker of Louisiana as his running-mate. However, Roosevelt telegraphed the convention and declared that he could not accept their nomination and would be endorsing Republican nominee Charles Hughes for the Presidency. With Roosevelt refusing to be their candidate, the Progressive Party fell into disarray.
2016 United States presidential election in North Carolina
The 2016 United States presidential election in North Carolina was won by Republican nominee Donald Trump on November 8, 2016, with a 3.67% winning margin, as part of the 2016 general election. North Carolina voters chose 15 electors to represent them in the Electoral College via a popular vote; the Democratic and Libertarian primaries were on March 15, 2016. In North Carolina, registered members of each party only voted in their party's primary, while voters who were unaffiliated chose any one primary in which to vote. Four candidates appeared on the Democratic presidential primary ballot: Martin O'Malley Bernie Sanders Hillary Clinton Rocky De La Fuente According to a WRAL-TV/SurveyUSA poll conducted the week before the primary: " Clinton holds a commanding lead of 57 percent to 34 percent among Democratic voters over U. S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont." Twelve candidates appeared on the Republican presidential primary ballot: Jeb Bush Ben Carson Chris Christie Ted Cruz Carly Fiorina Jim Gilmore Mike Huckabee John Kasich Rand Paul Marco Rubio Rick Santorum Donald Trump According to a WRAL-TV/SurveyUSA poll conducted the week before the primary: " Trump tops U.
S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas 41 percent to 27 percent among GOP voters. U. S. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida and Ohio Gov. John Kasich trail far behind, at 14 and 11 percent, respectively." Trump managed to pull off a closer than expected win due to both Cruz and his campaigns performances in different metropolitan areas. Trump was strongest in the Charlotte and Wilmington areas. Cruz did best in Greensboro and the Research Triangle region, where North Carolina's major colleges and capitol of Raleigh are located. Eleven candidates appeared on the Libertarian presidential primary ballot:John David Hale Cecil Ince Gary Johnson Steve Kerbel Darryl W. Perry Austin Petersen Derrick Michael Reid Jack Robinson, Jr. Rhett Smith Joy Waymire Marc Allan Feldman In addition to Clinton and Trump, Green Party nominee Jill Stein was granted write-in status by the North Carolina State Board of Elections, the only write-in candidate to qualify. Trump won 10 of 13 congressional districts. Bladen Gates Granville Martin Nash Richmond Robeson Watagua The following were final 2016 predictions from various organizations for North Carolina as of Election Day.
Los Angeles Times: Leans Clinton CNN: Tossup Sabato's Crystal Ball: Leans Clinton NBC: Tossup Electoral-vote.com: Leans Clinton RealClearPolitics: Tossup Fox News: Tossup ABC: TossupPrior to the 2016 election, North Carolina had been a Republican stronghold since 1968 with the state voting Democratic only once between and 2008. In 2008, North Carolina voted Democratic for only the second time in 40 years. However, the state returned to the Republicans in 2012 when the party's nominee, Mitt Romney, carried the state. Throughout the 2016 campaign, North Carolina was considered by most a tossup state, the outcome going into election night was debated; the Trump campaign saw winning North Carolina as crucial in order for Trump to win the Electoral College. Both Trump and Clinton campaigned in the state shortly before the general election. Despite winning the state, Trump, in someways, under-performed in comparison to Romney in 2012. Romney won a majority of the vote in 2012 with 50.4% while Trump only managed a plurality of 49.8%.
Clinton under-performed in comparison to Obama, with Clinton winning only 46.2% in comparison to Obama's 48.35%. This situation was the result of the spike in votes for third party candidates in the state as 4% of North Carolinians voted for a candidate other than the Democratic and Republican nominees in 2016 as opposed to just 1.26% in 2012. An increase in turnout in North Carolina allowed both Trump and Clinton to out-perform Romney and Obama in terms of the total votes each candidate received. In 2016 Trump won around 92,000 more votes than Romney did in 2012 while Clinton won around 10,000 more than Obama. Furthermore, Trump outperformed Romney by winning North Carolina by a greater margin than Romney was able to as Trump won the state over Clinton by 3.6% compared to the 2% margin Romney won over Obama. Trump's win in North Carolina marked the 9th time the state has voted Republican in the last 10 elections and, the state continues to leans more Republican at the presidential level. However, the Democratic victory in the concurrent gubernatorial election, changing demographics and close margins, suggest that the Republican advantage in the state is waning and that it will remain a "battleground state".
Democratic Party presidential debates, 2016 Democratic Party presidential primaries, 2016 Republican Party presidential debates, 2016 Republican Party presidential primaries, 2016 Libertarian Party presidential primaries, 2016 North Carolina Bipartisan State Board of Elections and Ethics Enforcement North Carolina Democratic Party North Carolina Republican Party North Carolina Libertarian Party North Carolina Green Party RNC 2016 Republican Nominating Process Green papers for 2016 primaries and conventions
1920 United States presidential election
The United States presidential election of 1920 was the 34th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 2, 1920. In the first election held after the end of World War I and the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, Republican Senator Warren G. Harding of Ohio defeated Democratic Governor James M. Cox of Ohio. Incumbent Democratic President Woodrow Wilson hoped for a third term, but party leaders were unwilling to re-nominate the unpopular incumbent. Former President Theodore Roosevelt had been the front-runner for the Republican nomination, but he died in 1919 without leaving an obvious heir to his progressive legacy. With both Wilson and Roosevelt out of the running, the major parties turned to little-known dark horse candidates from the state of Ohio, a swing state with a large number of electoral votes. Cox won the 1920 Democratic National Convention on the 44th ballot, defeating William Gibbs McAdoo, A. Mitchell Palmer, several other candidates. Harding emerged as a compromise candidate between the conservative and progressive wings of the party, he clinched his nomination on the tenth ballot of the 1920 Republican National Convention.
The election was dominated by the American social and political environment in the aftermath of World War I, marked by a hostile response to certain aspects of Wilson's foreign policy and a massive reaction against the reformist zeal of the Progressive Era. The wartime economic boom had collapsed and the country was deep in a recession. Wilson's advocacy for America's entry into the League of Nations in the face of a return to non-interventionist opinion challenged his effectiveness as president and overseas, there were wars and revolutions. At home, the year 1919 was marked by major strikes in the meatpacking and steel industries and large-scale race riots in Chicago and other cities. Anarchist attacks on Wall Street produced fears of terrorists; the Irish Catholic and German communities were outraged at Wilson's perceived favoritism of their traditional enemy Great Britain, his political position was critically weakened after he suffered a stroke in 1919 that left him disabled. Harding ignored Cox in the race and campaigned against Wilson by calling for a "return to normalcy".
Harding won a landslide victory, sweeping every state outside of the South and becoming the first Republican since the end of Reconstruction to win a former state of the Confederacy. Harding's victory margin of 26.2% in the popular vote remains the largest popular-vote percentage margin in presidential elections since the unopposed re-election of James Monroe in 1820, though other candidates have since exceeded his share of the popular vote. Cox won just 34.1% of the popular vote, Socialist Eugene V. Debs won 3.4% of the vote. As the election was the first in which women had the right to vote in all 48 states, the total popular vote increased from 18.5 million in 1916 to 26.8 million in 1920. Harding would die in 1923 and be succeeded by Vice President Calvin Coolidge, while the Democratic vice presidential nominee, Franklin D. Roosevelt, would win the 1932 presidential election. Republican candidates: On June 8, the Republican National Convention met in Chicago; the race was wide open, soon the convention deadlocked between Major General Leonard Wood and Governor Frank Orren Lowden of Illinois.
Other names placed in nomination included Senators Warren G. Harding from Ohio, Hiram Johnson from California, Miles Poindexter from Washington, Governor Calvin Coolidge of Massachusetts, philanthropist Herbert Hoover, Columbia University President Nicholas M. Butler. Senator Robert M. La Follette from Wisconsin was not formally placed in nomination, but received the votes of his state delegation nonetheless. Harding was nominated for president on the tenth ballot, after some delegates shifted their allegiances; the results of the ten ballots were as follows: Harding's nomination, said to have been secured in negotiations among party bosses in a "smoke-filled room," was engineered by Harry M. Daugherty, Harding's political manager, who became United States Attorney General after his election. Prior to the convention, Daugherty was quoted as saying, "I don't expect Senator Harding to be nominated on the first, second, or third ballots, but I think we can afford to take chances that about 11 minutes after two, Friday morning of the convention, when 15 or 12 weary men are sitting around a table, someone will say:'Who will we nominate?'
At that decisive time, the friends of Harding will suggest him and we can well afford to abide by the result." Daugherty's prediction described what occurred, but historians Richard C. Bain and Judith H. Parris argue that Daugherty's prediction has been given too much weight in narratives of the convention. Once the presidential nomination was settled, the party bosses and Sen. Harding recommended Wisconsin Sen. Irvine Lenroot to the delegates for the second spot, but the delegates revolted and nominated Coolidge, popular over his handling of the Boston Police Strike from the year before; the Tally: Source for convention coverage: Richard C. Bain and Judith H. Parris, Convention Decisions and Voting Records, pp. 200–208. Democratic candidates: It was accepted prior to the election that President Woodrow Wilson would not run for a third term, would not be nominated if he did make an attempt to regain the nomination. While Vice-President Thomas R. Marshall had long held a desire to succeed Wilson, his indecisive handling of the situation around Wilson's illness and incapacity destroyed any credibility he had as a candidate, in the end he did not formally put himself forward for the nomination.
Although William Gibbs McAdoo (Wi
1984 United States presidential election in North Carolina
The 1984 United States presidential election in North Carolina took place on November 6, 1984, was part of the 1984 United States presidential election. Voters chose 13 representatives, or electors to the Electoral College, who voted for president and vice president. North Carolina voted for the Republican nominee, President Ronald Reagan, over the Democratic nominee, Vice President Walter Mondale in a landslide; the final margin was 61.90% to 37.89%, which compared to the other southern states, was close to the southern average. This margin was a huge swing from 1980. No Democrat would win in North Carolina again until 2008; as of the 2016 presidential election, this is the last election in which Vance County, Chatham County, Scotland County voted for the Republican candidate
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
Hoke County, North Carolina
