1776 · 250 Years · 2026
The American Story
On July 4, 2026, the United States marked 250 years since the Declaration of Independence. This is the whole national story in seven chapters: the founding and its promises, the struggle over slavery and the Union, invention, war, and the work of free people governing themselves.
250 Years at a Glance
1776
Declaration of Independence adopted
The Continental Congress declares the thirteen colonies free and independent states.
1781
Victory at Yorktown
The surrender of Lord Cornwallis’s army to American and French forces effectively wins the Revolutionary War.
1787
Constitution signed in Philadelphia
Delegates to the Constitutional Convention sign a new framework of government for the United States.
1789
Washington becomes first president
George Washington takes the oath of office in New York City, the first capital under the Constitution.
1791
Bill of Rights ratified
The first ten amendments to the Constitution take effect, guaranteeing fundamental liberties.
1803
The Louisiana Purchase
The United States buys the Louisiana Territory from France, roughly doubling its size.
1814
Fort McHenry inspires the anthem
Francis Scott Key writes the verses of “The Star-Spangled Banner” after watching the fort withstand a British bombardment.
1848
Seneca Falls Convention
The first women’s rights convention in the United States calls for equality, including the right to vote.
1854
Republican Party founded
Opponents of slavery’s expansion organize the Republican Party after passage of the Kansas–Nebraska Act.
1861
Civil War begins
Confederate forces fire on Fort Sumter, beginning four years of civil war.
1863
Emancipation Proclamation takes effect
President Lincoln declares free the enslaved people in areas still in rebellion.
1865
Thirteenth Amendment abolishes slavery
Ratification ends slavery throughout the United States.
1868
Fourteenth Amendment ratified
The amendment guarantees birthright citizenship, due process and the equal protection of the laws.
1869
Transcontinental railroad completed
A ceremonial golden spike at Promontory Summit, Utah, joins the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads.
1886
Statue of Liberty dedicated
A gift from France, the statue in New York Harbor becomes a symbol of freedom and of welcome to immigrants.
1903
First powered flight
Orville and Wilbur Wright fly the first successful powered airplane near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.
1917
America enters World War I
Congress declares war on Germany, and some two million Americans go on to serve in France.
1920
Nineteenth Amendment ratified
Women win the constitutional right to vote.
1929
Stock market crashes
The Wall Street crash of “Black Tuesday” ushers in the Great Depression.
1941
Attack on Pearl Harbor
Japan’s surprise attack brings the United States into World War II.
1944
D-Day in Normandy
Allied forces land in France to begin the liberation of Western Europe.
1945
World War II ends
Japan formally surrenders aboard USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay.
1954
Brown v. Board of Education
The Supreme Court strikes down state-mandated segregation in public schools.
1964
Civil Rights Act signed
Landmark legislation outlaws segregation in public accommodations and discrimination in employment.
1969
Apollo 11 lands on the Moon
Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin become the first people to walk on the Moon.
1976
The Bicentennial
Americans celebrate 200 years of independence with ceremonies, parades and tall ships in New York Harbor.
1989
Berlin Wall falls
The opening of the Berlin Wall signals the collapse of communist rule in Eastern Europe.
1991
Soviet Union dissolves
The Soviet Union breaks apart, ending the Cold War.
2001
September 11 attacks
Terrorist attacks kill nearly 3,000 people in New York, at the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania.
2026
America turns 250
The United States marks the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
Revolution and Founding
1763–1791
From the end of the French and Indian War to the Bill of Rights, thirteen British colonies became a self-governing republic under a written Constitution.
Britain’s victory in the Seven Years’ War, known in America as the French and Indian War, left it with vast new territory and a heavy debt. When Parliament tried to raise revenue in the colonies through the Stamp Act of 1765 and later taxes, colonists argued that they could not be taxed by a legislature in which they had no representation. Protests, boycotts and confrontations such as the Boston Massacre of 1770 and the Boston Tea Party of 1773 led Parliament to punish Massachusetts, and in 1774 the colonies answered by meeting in a Continental Congress.
Fighting began at Lexington and Concord in April 1775. On July 4, 1776, Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence, grounding the break with Britain in natural rights and government by consent. With French help, the Continental Army and state militias won independence, which Britain recognized in the Treaty of Paris in 1783.
The Articles of Confederation proved too weak to govern the new nation, and in 1787 delegates in Philadelphia drafted a Constitution creating a stronger federal government of separated powers. It was ratified after a vigorous public debate, and a Bill of Rights followed in 1791. The founding left its deepest contradiction unresolved. Northern states began to abolish slavery and the Northwest Ordinance barred it north of the Ohio River, but the Constitution also accommodated slavery—counting three-fifths of enslaved people toward representation, requiring the return of those who escaped, and barring Congress from ending the Atlantic slave trade before 1808.
Treaty of Paris ends the French and Indian War
Britain gains Canada and the lands east of the Mississippi River from France. Months later a royal proclamation limits colonial settlement west of the Appalachian Mountains.
Historical RecordBoston Tea Party
Protesting the Tea Act, colonists, some disguised as Mohawk Indians, dump 342 chests of East India Company tea into Boston Harbor. Parliament responds with the Coercive Acts.
Historical RecordLexington and Concord
The Revolutionary War begins as Massachusetts militia confront British regulars sent to seize colonial military stores.
Historical RecordDeclaration of Independence
The Continental Congress adopts the Declaration, drafted by Thomas Jefferson, holding that “all men are created equal” and that governments derive “their just powers from the consent of the governed.”
Primary SourceVictory at Saratoga
The surrender of a British army in New York helps persuade France to recognize American independence and sign a treaty of alliance in February 1778.
Historical RecordPennsylvania begins gradual abolition
Pennsylvania adopts a law for the gradual abolition of slavery, among the first in the new nation. By 1804 every northern state had acted to end slavery, though often only gradually.
Historical RecordSurrender at Yorktown
American and French forces compel Lord Cornwallis to surrender his army in Virginia, ending major fighting in the war.
Historical RecordTreaty of Paris
Great Britain recognizes the independence of the United States, with territory reaching west to the Mississippi River.
Primary SourceNorthwest Ordinance
Congress sets terms for governing the territory north of the Ohio River and admitting new states on an equal footing, guarantees basic rights there and prohibits slavery.
Primary SourceConstitution signed
Thirty-nine delegates sign the Constitution in Philadelphia. It takes effect after New Hampshire becomes the ninth state to ratify, in June 1788.
Primary SourceWashington inaugurated
George Washington takes the oath of office as the first president at Federal Hall in New York City.
Historical RecordBill of Rights ratified
Virginia’s ratification adds the first ten amendments, protecting freedoms of religion, speech, press and assembly, the right to keep and bear arms, and the rights of the accused.
Primary Source
A Growing Republic
1792–1850
The young republic doubled in size, fought a second war with Britain and built canals and telegraph lines—while dividing ever more deeply over slavery.
The new government established its credit, its courts and its first political parties. George Washington’s Farewell Address in 1796 warned against faction and foreign entanglements, and the election of 1800 brought the first peaceful transfer of power between rival parties when Thomas Jefferson succeeded John Adams. The Louisiana Purchase of 1803 doubled the nation’s size, and the Lewis and Clark expedition crossed the continent to the Pacific.
After the War of 1812, Americans built roads, canals and eventually railroads and telegraph lines that tied distant markets together, and the Monroe Doctrine of 1823 warned European powers against new colonization in the Western Hemisphere. As property requirements fell, voting opened to most white men, and religious revivals and reform movements—temperance, public schooling, women’s rights and abolition—reshaped public life. Expansion came at a heavy cost to Native nations, thousands of whose people died during forced removals west of the Mississippi in the 1830s.
Slavery spread with cotton across the Deep South even after Congress ended the Atlantic slave trade in 1808. The Missouri Compromise of 1820 drew a line between slave and free territory, but the annexation of Texas and the war with Mexico reopened the question of whether slavery would follow the flag into the West.
Washington’s Farewell Address
Declining a third term, Washington publishes his parting counsel, warning against the spirit of party, sectional division and permanent foreign alliances.
Primary SourceThe first transfer of power between parties
Thomas Jefferson, a Democratic-Republican, succeeds Federalist John Adams after the bitterly contested election of 1800, and power changes hands peacefully.
Historical RecordLouisiana Purchase
The United States buys the Louisiana Territory from France for $15 million, roughly doubling the size of the nation.
Primary SourceAtlantic slave trade banned
A federal ban on importing enslaved people takes effect on the earliest date the Constitution allowed, but slavery itself continues to grow within the United States.
Historical Record“The Star-Spangled Banner”
After watching the British bombardment of Fort McHenry during the War of 1812, Francis Scott Key writes the verses that became the national anthem.
Historical RecordMissouri Compromise
Congress agrees to admit Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state and bars slavery in the rest of the Louisiana Purchase north of latitude 36°30′.
Primary SourceErie Canal completed
The 363-mile canal links the Hudson River to Lake Erie, opening a water route from New York City to the Great Lakes and the growing West.
Historical RecordIndian Removal Act
Congress authorizes the president to negotiate the removal of Native nations to lands west of the Mississippi. The forced removals that followed, including the Cherokee “Trail of Tears” of 1838–1839, cost thousands of lives.
Historical RecordThe Liberator
William Lloyd Garrison begins publishing The Liberator in Boston, demanding the immediate abolition of slavery. Frederick Douglass, who escaped slavery in 1838, soon became one of the movement’s most powerful voices.
Historical RecordThe telegraph
Samuel F. B. Morse sends the message “What hath God wrought” over an experimental line from Washington to Baltimore, opening an age of near-instant long-distance communication.
Historical RecordTreaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
The Mexican–American War ends with the cession of California and much of the Southwest. Gold discovered in California days earlier soon draws hundreds of thousands of newcomers.
Primary SourceSeneca Falls Convention
The first women’s rights convention in the United States, organized by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott and others, adopts a Declaration of Sentiments that calls for equal rights, including the vote.
Historical Record
Union in Crisis
1850–1877
Compromise over slavery failed, the Republican Party rose, and a civil war preserved the Union and ended slavery—followed by Reconstruction’s promise and retreat.
The Compromise of 1850 admitted California as a free state but strengthened the Fugitive Slave Act, drawing Northerners into the enforcement of slavery. When the Kansas–Nebraska Act of 1854 opened territory long closed to slavery, opponents of its expansion organized the Republican Party. In the Dred Scott decision of 1857 the Supreme Court declared that Congress could not bar slavery from the territories and that Black Americans could not be citizens.
Abraham Lincoln’s election in 1860 on a platform opposing slavery’s expansion led eleven Southern states to secede, and four years of civil war followed. The Union’s victory, the Emancipation Proclamation and the Thirteenth Amendment ended slavery. The wartime Republican Congress also passed the Homestead Act, the Pacific Railway Act and the Morrill Land-Grant College Act, laying foundations for the nation’s growth.
During Reconstruction, the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments guaranteed citizenship and the equal protection of the laws and barred denying the vote on account of race. Hundreds of thousands of freedmen voted and many held office. But violence by the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist groups, waning Northern resolve and disputed elections undermined these gains, and after the contested election of 1876 the last federal troops guarding Southern statehouses were withdrawn.
Compromise of 1850
Congress admits California as a free state and passes a stronger Fugitive Slave Act, which required citizens of free states to help return people who had escaped slavery.
Primary SourceKansas–Nebraska Act
The act lets settlers of the Kansas and Nebraska territories decide whether to allow slavery, overturning the Missouri Compromise line. Opponents organize the Republican Party that year.
Primary SourceDred Scott v. Sandford
The Supreme Court rules that Black Americans cannot be citizens and that Congress cannot prohibit slavery in the territories, inflaming the sectional crisis.
Primary SourceLincoln elected
Abraham Lincoln, the first Republican president, wins on a platform opposing slavery’s expansion. South Carolina secedes in December, and war begins when Confederate forces fire on Fort Sumter in April 1861.
Historical RecordHomestead Act
Lincoln signs a law offering 160 acres of public land to settlers who live on and improve it for five years; the Pacific Railway Act and the Morrill Land-Grant College Act follow that summer.
Primary SourceEmancipation Proclamation
Lincoln declares free the enslaved people in areas still in rebellion and authorizes the enlistment of Black soldiers and sailors.
Primary SourceGettysburg Address
Months after the Union victory at Gettysburg, Lincoln dedicates a national cemetery there and calls for “a new birth of freedom.”
Primary SourceAppomattox
Robert E. Lee surrenders the Army of Northern Virginia to Ulysses S. Grant. Five days later John Wilkes Booth shoots President Lincoln, who dies the next morning.
Historical RecordThirteenth Amendment
Ratification abolishes slavery throughout the United States.
Primary SourceFourteenth Amendment
The amendment makes all persons born or naturalized in the United States citizens and guarantees due process and the equal protection of the laws.
Primary SourceFifteenth Amendment
The amendment bars the federal and state governments from denying the right to vote on account of race, color or previous condition of servitude.
Primary SourceReconstruction ends
After the disputed election of 1876, President Rutherford B. Hayes withdraws federal troops from the statehouses of South Carolina and Louisiana, and Democratic governments take control across the former Confederacy.
Historical Record
Industry and Reform
1877–1917
Railroads, steel, electricity and millions of immigrants remade the country, while workers, farmers, reformers and Black Americans contested who would share in its prosperity.
In the decades after Reconstruction the United States became the world’s leading industrial economy. Railroads spanned the continent, fortunes were made in steel and oil, and inventions such as the telephone, the electric light and the automobile changed daily life. More than 20 million immigrants arrived between 1880 and 1920, many through Ellis Island, while the last armed resistance of Native nations on the Plains came to an end.
Rapid growth raised hard questions. Workers organized and struck for better wages and hours, farmers joined the Populist revolt, and Congress passed the Interstate Commerce Act and the Sherman Antitrust Act to check the power of railroads and trusts. Progressive reformers in both parties, with Theodore Roosevelt the most prominent, pressed for civil service reform, food and drug safety, conservation and cleaner government, and the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Amendments of 1913 brought a federal income tax and the direct election of senators.
The era’s promise was not shared equally. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 closed the door to Chinese laborers, and after Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896 Southern states enforced segregation by law while stripping most Black citizens of the vote. Black Americans answered with institution building and protest, from Booker T. Washington’s Tuskegee Institute to the founding of the NAACP in 1909. Abroad, victory over Spain in 1898 and the building of the Panama Canal made the United States a world power.
Chinese Exclusion Act
Congress suspends the immigration of Chinese laborers, the first major federal law to bar immigrants by nationality. It was not repealed until 1943.
Primary SourceStatue of Liberty dedicated
A gift from the people of France, “Liberty Enlightening the World” is dedicated in New York Harbor, where it becomes a symbol of welcome to arriving immigrants.
Historical RecordSherman Antitrust Act
Signed by President Benjamin Harrison, the law outlaws contracts and combinations in restraint of trade and attempts to monopolize commerce.
Primary SourceWounded Knee
U.S. soldiers kill hundreds of Lakota men, women and children at Wounded Knee Creek in South Dakota, the last major armed confrontation of the Plains wars.
Historical RecordEllis Island opens
The federal immigration station in New York Harbor opens. Over the next six decades more than 12 million immigrants pass through it.
Historical RecordPlessy v. Ferguson
The Supreme Court upholds state-mandated racial segregation under the doctrine of “separate but equal,” over the lone dissent of Justice John Marshall Harlan.
Primary SourceWar with Spain
In a war of less than four months, the United States defeats Spain and acquires Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines; Hawaii is annexed the same year.
Historical RecordFirst powered flight
Orville and Wilbur Wright make the first sustained, controlled flights of a powered airplane near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.
Historical RecordPure Food and Drug Act
President Theodore Roosevelt signs the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act, landmark consumer-protection laws of the Progressive Era.
Historical RecordNAACP founded
Black and white reformers, among them W. E. B. Du Bois and Ida B. Wells, found the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People to fight lynching and segregation through the courts and public advocacy.
Historical RecordThe moving assembly line
Henry Ford’s Highland Park plant in Michigan adopts the moving assembly line, cutting the time needed to build a Model T and helping put the automobile within reach of ordinary families.
Historical RecordPanama Canal opens
The American-built canal opens to shipping, linking the Atlantic and Pacific oceans after a decade of construction.
Historical Record
World Wars and Depression
1917–1945
The United States fought in the Great War, rode the boom of the 1920s into the Great Depression, and helped lead the Allies to victory in World War II.
American entry into World War I in 1917 helped tip the balance on the Western Front, but the Senate rejected the Treaty of Versailles and membership in the League of Nations, and the nation turned inward. Women won the vote with the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. The 1920s brought cars, radios and electric appliances to millions of homes, along with Prohibition, new immigration quotas and the Great Migration of Black Americans from the rural South to Northern cities.
The stock market crash of October 1929 began the Great Depression, and by 1933 roughly a quarter of the workforce was unemployed. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal created programs from Social Security to federal bank-deposit insurance and greatly expanded the federal government’s role in the economy—changes that remain debated to this day.
Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, brought the United States into World War II. More than 16 million Americans served, and the nation’s industry became, in Roosevelt’s phrase, the “arsenal of democracy.” The war also brought the incarceration of some 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry, most of them U.S. citizens, for which Congress formally apologized in 1988. It ended in 1945 with the defeat of Germany and, after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, of Japan.
America enters World War I
Congress declares war on Germany; by the war’s end some two million American soldiers had gone to France.
Historical RecordArmistice
Fighting ends on the Western Front. More than 116,000 Americans died in service during the war.
Historical RecordNineteenth Amendment
Tennessee becomes the 36th state to ratify the amendment guaranteeing women the right to vote.
Primary SourceIndian Citizenship Act
Congress grants U.S. citizenship to all Native Americans born in the United States, though some states continued to keep Native people from voting for decades.
Historical RecordLindbergh crosses the Atlantic
Charles Lindbergh makes the first solo nonstop transatlantic flight, from New York to Paris, in the Spirit of St. Louis.
Historical RecordStock market crash
On “Black Tuesday” the collapse of stock prices deepens a panic that marks the start of the Great Depression.
Historical RecordThe New Deal begins
Franklin D. Roosevelt takes office declaring that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” and his first hundred days bring a wave of banking, relief and recovery legislation.
Historical RecordSocial Security Act
The law creates old-age insurance funded by payroll taxes, along with unemployment insurance and aid to dependent children.
Primary SourcePearl Harbor
Japan’s surprise attack on the Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor brings the United States into World War II.
Historical RecordExecutive Order 9066
Roosevelt authorizes military exclusion zones that lead to the forced removal and incarceration of some 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry, most of them U.S. citizens. Congress apologized and provided redress in 1988.
Primary SourceD-Day
Allied forces land in Normandy to begin the liberation of Western Europe. Later that month Roosevelt signs the GI Bill, which would help millions of veterans attend college and buy homes.
Historical RecordWorld War II ends
After the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan signs the instrument of surrender aboard USS Missouri. More than 405,000 Americans died in the war.
Historical Record
Cold War America
1945–1991
A superpower contained Soviet communism abroad, extended prosperity and civil rights at home, reached the Moon, and saw the Cold War end.
After World War II the United States led the rebuilding of Western Europe and Japan and, under the policy of containment, confronted the Soviet Union in a Cold War that lasted more than four decades. It fought in Korea and Vietnam, built alliances such as NATO, and competed in a nuclear arms race and a space race that carried Americans to the Moon in 1969.
At home the postwar decades brought broad prosperity, suburban growth, the interstate highways and the baby boom. The civil rights movement—through court cases, boycotts, marches and the courage of many ordinary citizens—overturned legal segregation. The Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education, followed by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965—both passed with support from members of both parties—made equal citizenship the law of the land.
The 1960s and 1970s were also years of division over the Vietnam War, urban unrest, rising crime and the Watergate scandal, which led to President Richard Nixon’s resignation in 1974. A conservative revival carried Ronald Reagan to the presidency in 1980. The Berlin Wall fell in 1989, and the Soviet Union dissolved in December 1991.
Truman Doctrine
President Harry S. Truman pledges to support free peoples resisting subjugation, launching the policy of containment; the Marshall Plan follows in 1948 to rebuild Western Europe.
Primary SourceArmed forces desegregated
Truman’s Executive Order 9981 calls for equality of treatment and opportunity in the armed services, leading to the end of segregated units.
Primary SourceKorean War begins
North Korea invades South Korea, and U.S. forces fight under the United Nations Command until the armistice of 1953.
Historical RecordBrown v. Board of Education
A unanimous Supreme Court holds that state-mandated segregation of public schools violates the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection.
Primary SourceLittle Rock
President Dwight D. Eisenhower sends Army troops and federalizes the Arkansas National Guard to enforce the desegregation of Central High School after the governor used the Guard to turn away nine Black students.
Primary SourceCuban Missile Crisis
After U.S. reconnaissance flights discover Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba, a naval quarantine and tense negotiations lead the Soviet Union to withdraw them.
Historical RecordCivil Rights Act
Passed with bipartisan support after a long Senate filibuster, the act bans segregation in public accommodations and prohibits employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin.
Primary SourceVoting Rights Act
Months after the marches from Selma to Montgomery, the law suspends literacy tests and brings federal oversight to states and counties with a history of voting discrimination.
Primary SourceApollo 11
Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin become the first people to walk on the Moon while Michael Collins orbits overhead.
Historical RecordParis Peace Accords
The agreement ends direct U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, in which more than 58,000 Americans died; Saigon falls to North Vietnam in 1975.
Historical RecordBerlin Wall falls
East German authorities open the border crossings, and Berliners begin tearing down the wall that Ronald Reagan had challenged Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down two years earlier.
Historical RecordSoviet Union dissolves
A day after Mikhail Gorbachev resigns, the Soviet Union formally ceases to exist, ending the Cold War.
Historical Record
A New Century
1991–present
After the Cold War: a digital economy, the attacks of September 11 and the wars that followed, a financial crisis and a pandemic, and the nation’s 250th birthday.
The United States entered the 1990s as the world’s sole superpower. Victory in the Persian Gulf War was followed by a long economic expansion and the rise of the internet and a digital economy that transformed commerce, communication and daily life.
The attacks of September 11, 2001, killed nearly 3,000 people and led to two decades of war in Afghanistan and Iraq, in which more than 7,000 American service members died. At home the nation weathered Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the financial crisis of 2008 and the Great Recession, and the COVID-19 pandemic that began in 2020, while Americans debated immigration, trade, health care and the proper size and reach of government.
National politics grew closely divided. Barack Obama took office in 2009 as the first African American president, and Donald J. Trump won the presidency in 2016 and again in 2024, becoming the second president, after Grover Cleveland, to serve nonconsecutive terms. On July 4, 2026, Americans marked the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
Kuwait liberated
A U.S.-led coalition ends Operation Desert Storm after about 100 hours of ground combat, having driven Iraqi forces from Kuwait.
Historical RecordSeptember 11 attacks
Al-Qaeda terrorists hijack four airliners and kill nearly 3,000 people in New York, at the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania—the deadliest terrorist attack in American history.
Historical RecordWar in Afghanistan
U.S. and allied forces begin Operation Enduring Freedom against al-Qaeda and the Taliban government that sheltered it.
Historical RecordIraq War begins
A U.S.-led coalition invades Iraq and topples Saddam Hussein; American forces remain in Iraq until the end of 2011.
Historical RecordFinancial crisis
The bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers turns a housing downturn into a global financial panic. Congress creates the Troubled Asset Relief Program weeks later, and the country enters its deepest recession since the 1930s.
Historical RecordObama elected
Democratic Senator Barack Obama of Illinois defeats Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona to become the first African American elected president.
Historical RecordBin Laden killed
U.S. Navy SEALs kill Osama bin Laden, the al-Qaeda leader behind the September 11 attacks, in Abbottabad, Pakistan.
Historical RecordTrump elected
Republican businessman Donald J. Trump defeats Democrat Hillary Clinton, winning a majority in the Electoral College while Clinton wins the national popular vote.
Historical RecordCOVID-19 national emergency
President Trump declares a national emergency as the coronavirus pandemic spreads. The first vaccines, backed by the federal Operation Warp Speed program, are authorized that December.
Historical RecordWithdrawal from Afghanistan
The last U.S. forces leave Kabul, ending the longest war in American history, days after 13 U.S. service members were killed in a bombing at the airport.
Historical RecordTrump elected again
Donald J. Trump defeats Vice President Kamala Harris, winning both the Electoral College and the national popular vote, and becomes the second president after Grover Cleveland elected to nonconsecutive terms.
Historical RecordThe Semiquincentennial
Americans mark 250 years since the adoption of the Declaration of Independence.
Historical Record
Follow one thread of the story in depth: the Republican Party, 1854 to today.