American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth
Edition - A country of central and northwest North America with
coastlines on the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. It includes the
noncontiguous states of Alaska and Hawaii and various island
territories in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean. The area now
occupied by the contiguous 48 states was originally inhabited by
numerous Native American peoples and was colonized beginning in
the 16th century by Spain, France, the Netherlands, and England.
Great Britain eventually controlled most of the Atlantic coast
and, after the French and Indian Wars (1754-1763), the Northwest
Territory and Canada. The original Thirteen Colonies declared
their independence from Great Britain in 1776 and formed a
government under the Articles of Confederation in 1781, adopting
(1787) a new constitution that went into effect after 1789. The
nation soon began to expand westward. Growing tensions over the
issue of Black slavery divided the country along geographic
lines, sparki