- The USA is about 400 years old as a "civilization" (idk) and 250 years old as a nation. - Throughout all that time, immigrants were mostly trying to escap

- The USA is about 400 years old as a "civilization" (idk) and 250 years old as a nation. - Throughout all that time, immigrants were mostly trying to escape political and economic conditions in older nations - The first 300 of those years, the majority of the land was sparsely populated frontier - Its settlers were in violent competition with the original inhabitants - Its settlers were often also in violent competition with each other, mostly over natural resources (mining claims, grazing range, etc.) but also over political control (slave vs free, Mormon vs non, etc.). Wild-West cowboys vs other cowboys (and cowboys vs. indians) fighting was still happening up to the 1920s - Regional governments arose mostly bottom-up from settlers self organizing. This was a matter of principle, but also a practical necessity in privately-settled sparsely populated regions. - The nation was established by a civil war although it's not called that (England vs colony) - *When the nation was founded, a future civil war was a foregone conclusion.* (North/"Free" vs South/"Slave" although this was *not* a strict equivalence) The first hundred years ish was a mostly linear progression to this civil war! And the subsequent 150 years have been strongly influenced by it as well.