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Eras

17 entries

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Age of Exploration and Contact
The 115 years of European arrival that reshaped two continents, 1492–1607
Civil Rights Era
The 14 years of legislation, protest, and federal action that dismantled legal segregation, 1954–1968
Colonial America
The 168 years of English settlement that built the society the Revolution would transform, 1607–1775
Early Republic
The 28 years that turned a coastal experiment into a continental power, 1800–1828
All Eras (A–Z)
A C E G J M P R W

A

Age of Exploration and Contact
The 115 years of European arrival that reshaped two continents, 1492–1607
The Antebellum Period
The decades of deepening crisis that made the Civil War inevitable, 1848–1861

C

Civil Rights Era
The 14 years of legislation, protest, and federal action that dismantled legal segregation, 1954–1968
The Civil War
The conflict that tore the United States apart and abolished slavery, 1861–1865
The Cold War
The ideological standoff between the United States and Soviet Union, 1945–1991
Colonial America
The 168 years of English settlement that built the society the Revolution would transform, 1607–1775

E

Early Republic
The 28 years that turned a coastal experiment into a continental power, 1800–1828

G

The Gilded Age
The era of industrialists, immigrants, and inequality that remade America, 1877–1900
The Great Depression
The economic catastrophe of 1929–1941 that reshaped American life and government

J

Jacksonian Democracy
The 20 years of democratic expansion — and brutal exclusion — that remade American politics, 1828–1848

M

Modern America
The post–Cold War decades — and the unraveling of their assumptions, 1991–present

P

Pre-Columbian America
The 15,000-year human history of the Americas before European contact
The Progressive Era
The reform movement that used government to rein in the Gilded Age's excesses, 1900–1920

R

Reconstruction
The unfinished project of rebuilding the South and remaking American citizenship, 1865–1877
Revolutionary Era
The 25 years that broke from Britain and built a republic, 1775–1800
The Roaring Twenties
The decade of prosperity, prohibition, and cultural upheaval that ended in catastrophe, 1920–1929

W

World War II
The global conflict that made America a superpower and reshaped the world order, 1941–1945