After its civil war, America experienced an accelerated rate of industrialization, mainly in the northern states. However, Reconstruction and its failure left the Southern whites in a position of firm control over its black population, denying them their Civil Rights and keeping them in a state of economic, social and political servitude. Since the late 1800s, the United States has been formally grouped amongst the Great Powers, and has also become a dominant economic force.

U.S. Federal government policy, since the James Monroe administration, had been to move the indigenous population beyond the reach of the white frontier into a series of Indian Reservations. In 1876, the last serious Sioux war erupted, when the Dakota gold rush penetrated the Black Hills.

An unprecedented wave of immigration to the United States served both to provide the labor for American industry and to create diverse communities in previously undeveloped areas. Native American tribes were generally forced onto small reservations as white farmers and ranchers took over their lands. Abusive industrial practices led to the often violent rise of the labor movement in the United States.

The United States began its rise to international power in this period with substantial population and industrial growth domestically, and a number of military ventures abroad, including the Spanish-American War, which began when the United States blamed the sinking of the USS Maine (ACR-1) on Spain without any real evidence.

This period was capped by the 1917 entry of the United States into World War I.

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