American  Essay Topics

Although the United States of America is only several hundred years old, the history of America goes much farther back than when the country was first founded.   Many of the topics include the American Indian and Mexican culture as it has influenced America throughout time.  Looking beyond this aspect of American history, there is a plethora of subjects that can be addressed when writing an American essay.

• ?  Choose any foreign country and look at the impact it has had on American culture as it is today
• ?  What was the impetus in leaving England to find a new land of opportunity?
• ?  The first explorers who came to America
• ?  Why the name America was chosen and who chose it
• ?  Abraham Lincoln
• ?  Robert E. Lee
• ?  Ulysses S. Grant
• ?  Gettysburg Address
• ?  Immigration
• ?  The original 13 colonies
• ?  The Jamestown Colony
• ?  The Plymouth Colony
• ?  American folklore and the American Indians
• ?  Trail of Tears
• ?  Wounded Knee
• ?  The American Revolution
• ?  Spanish American War
• ?  Colonization of the first thirteen States
• ?  An eminent personality reflected in the history of America
• ?  The Civil War
• ?  Reconstruction
• ?  Slavery
• ?  The Union and the Confederacy
• ?  The First President of the USA
• ?  Any president of the USA
• ?  The Declaration of Independence
• ?  The Constitution
• ?  John Hancock
• ?  Betsy Ross
• ?  Inventors such as Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Marconi, Albert Einstein,  and the Wright Brothers
• ?  Inventions such as the cotton gin, automobile, airplane, radio and television, computer and telephone
• ?  The Industrial Revolution
• ?  Politics as it arose and has changed throughout history
• ?  Prohibition
• ?  The Roaring 20’s
• ?  World War I
• ?  World War II
• ?  Pearl Harbor
• ?  The Holocaust
• ?  The Atomic Bomb in Hiroshima and Nagasaki
• ?  Korean War
• ?  Vietnam Conflict
• ?  The Cuban Missile Crisis and the Bay of Pigs
• ?  Threat of Nuclear War
• ?  The Cold War
• ?   American poets and writers
• ?  Different states and how they came to be
• ?  The Statue of Liberty and its history
• ?  Ellis Island
• ?  Economics and the growth of America
• ?  Education in America
• ?  Geography of the United States
• ?  The Great Depression
• ?  Religion
• ?  American holidays such as Thanksgiving
• ?  The history of the postal service
• ?  Government, election process, judicial system,
• ?  Each of the 50 States and how they were formed
• ?  Civil Rights
• ?  Women in American History
• ?  Women’s Suffrage
• ?  Winning the vote for women
• ?  Women and their role during wars
• ?  Transportation and the building of the railroad
• ?  Western Migration and the Wild Western Frontier
• ?  The American/Indian Wars such as the Battle of Little Big Horn and George Custer
• ?  The 1849 Gold Rush
• ?  Natural and man-made disasters
• ?  Martin Luther King
• ?  Civil Rights Movement
• ?  The Kennedy Family
• ?  The Alamo
• ?  Davy Crockett
• ?  Daniel Boone
• ?  The building of the Erie Canal
• ?  Las Vegas
• ?  Space Exploration and the disasters encompassed
• ?  The Louisiana Purchase
• ?  Jim Jones
• ?  Nuclear energy
• ?  The Emancipation Proclamation
• ?  The growth of the Mafia
• ?  The Cold War

As seen, the list is endless when it comes to writing an essay about America.  These are but a few of the topics that might spark one’s interest when writing about the history of this great nation.