The Americans are expansionist and industrious. They start the game with Pottery and Masonry and build F-15s instead of normal jet fighters. The United States is relatively young by Civilization standards, being barely more than 200 years old; it achieved its current size and influence only in the mid-20th century. America was the first of the European colonies to separate successfully from its motherland, and it was the first nation to be established on the premise that sovereignty rests with its citizens and not with the government. In its first century and a half, the country was mainly preoccupied with its own territorial exploration and expansion and with economic growth. American politics became increasingly democratic during the 1820s and '30s. But a matter of freedom would bring the nation to its greatest crisis: the American Civil War. On February 4, 1861 - a month before Abraham Lincoln (1860-1865) could be inaugurated in Washington - six Southern states sent representatives to Montgomery to declare a new independent government. With Jefferson Davis at its head, the Confederate States of America came into being, set up its own bureaus and offices, occupied federal buildings, issued its own money, raised its own taxes, and flew its own flag. With the Union preserved, the nation entered a period of unprecedented prosperity after the long conflict and reconstruction. In the ensuing two decades industrial production, the number of industrial workers, and the number of factories all more than doubled. European immigration, westward expansion, urban growth, technological advances and a host of American inventions - including the telephone, typewriter, linotype, phonograph, electric light, cash register, air brake, refrigerator car, and the automobile - contributed to the American explosion, while widespread use of corporate organization offered new opportunities for large-scale financing of business enterprise and attracted new capital. Militarily speaking, the Spanish-American War of 1898 was so brief and relatively bloodless as to have been a mere passing episode in the history of modern warfare, but it catapulted the United States into the world arena. Before the 1890s, roughly speaking, most Americans had stubbornly adhered to the belief, as old as the