Coordinates	12°58′0″N77°34′0″N
Official name	City of Houston
Settlement type	City
Nickname	Space City (official), more. . .
Image seal	Seal of Houston, Texas.png
Pushpin map	USA2
Pushpin map caption	Location in the United States of America
Coordinates region	US-TX
Subdivision type	Country
Subdivision type1	State
Subdivision type2	Counties
Subdivision name	United States of America
Subdivision name1	Texas
Subdivision name2	Harris, Fort Bend, and Montgomery
Government type	Mayor–council
Leader title	Mayor
Leader name	Annise Parker
Area magnitude	1 E8
Area total sq mi	601.3
Area total km2	1558
Area land sq mi	579.4
Area land km2	1,501
Area water sq mi	22.3
Area water km2	57.7
Population as of	2010 US Census
Population total	2099451(4th U.S.)
Population urban	3822509 (10th U.S.)
Population metro	5946800 (6th U.S.)
Population density sq mi	3,623
Population density km2	1,505
Population blank1 title	Demonym
Population blank1	Houstonian
Timezone	CST
Utc offset	-6
Timezone dst	CDT
Utc offset dst	-5
Area code	713, 281, 832
Elevation m	13
Elevation ft	43
Established title	Incorporated
Established date	June 5, 1837
Blank name	FIPS code
Blank info	48-35000
Blank1 name	GNIS feature ID
Blank1 info	1380948
Website	houstontx.gov
Footnotes	}}

Houston () is the fourth-largest city in the United States of America, and the largest city in the state of Texas. According to the 2010 U.S. Census, the city had a population of 2.1 million people within an area of . Houston is the seat of Harris County and the economic center of , which is the metropolitan area in the U.S. of nearly 6 million people.

Houston was founded in 1836 on land near the banks of Buffalo Bayou. It was incorporated as a city on June 5, 1837, and named after then-President of the Republic of Texas—former General Sam Houston—who had commanded at the Battle of San Jacinto, which took place east of where the city was established. The burgeoning port and railroad industry, combined with oil discovery in 1901, has induced continual surges in the city's population. In the mid-twentieth century, Houston became the home of the Texas Medical Center—the world's largest concentration of healthcare and research institutions—and NASA's Johnson Space Center, where the Mission Control Center is located.

Rated as a global city, Houston's economy has a broad industrial base in energy, manufacturing, aeronautics, and transportation. It is also leading in health care sectors and building oilfield equipment; only New York City is home to more Fortune 500 headquarters. The Port of Houston ranks first in the United States in international waterborne tonnage handled and second in total cargo tonnage handled. The city has a population from various ethnic and religious backgrounds and a large and growing international community. It is home to many cultural institutions and exhibits, which attract more than 7 million visitors a year to the Museum District. Houston has an active visual and performing arts scene in the Theater District and offers year-round resident companies in all major performing arts.

History

In August 1836, two real estate entrepreneurs—Augustus Chapman Allen and John Kirby Allen—from New York, purchased of land along Buffalo Bayou with the intent of founding a city. The Allen brothers decided to name the city after Sam Houston, the popular general at the Battle of San Jacinto, who was elected President of Texas in September 1836.

Houston was granted incorporation on June 5, 1837, with James S. Holman becoming its first mayor. In the same year, Houston became the county seat of Harrisburg County (now Harris County) and the temporary capital of the Republic of Texas. In 1840, the community established a chamber of commerce in part to promote shipping and waterborne business at the newly created port on Buffalo Bayou. By 1860, Houston had emerged as a commercial and railroad hub for the export of cotton. Railroad spurs from the Texas inland converged in Houston, where they met rail lines to the ports of Galveston and Beaumont. During the American Civil War, Houston served as a headquarters for General John Bankhead Magruder, who used the city as an organization point for the Battle of Galveston. After the Civil War, Houston businessmen initiated efforts to widen the city's extensive system of bayous so the city could accept more commerce between downtown and the nearby port of Galveston. By 1890, Houston was the railroad center of Texas.

In 1900, after Galveston was struck by a devastating hurricane, efforts to make Houston into a viable deepwater port were accelerated. The following year, oil discovered at the Spindletop oil field near Beaumont prompted the development of the Texas petroleum industry. In 1902, President Theodore Roosevelt approved a $1 million improvement project for the Houston Ship Channel. By 1910 the city's population had reached 78,800, almost doubling from a decade before. An integral part of the city were African Americans, who numbered 23,929 or nearly one-third of the residents. They were developing a strong professional class based then in the Fourth Ward.

President Woodrow Wilson opened the deepwater Port of Houston in 1914, seven years after digging began. By 1930, Houston had become Texas's most populous city and Harris the most populous county.

When World War II started, tonnage levels at the port decreased and shipping activities were suspended; however, the war did provide economic benefits for the city. Petrochemical refineries and manufacturing plants were constructed along the ship channel because of the demand for petroleum and synthetic rubber products during the war. Ellington Field, initially built during World War I, was revitalized as an advanced training center for bombardiers and navigators. The M.D. Anderson Foundation formed the Texas Medical Center in 1945. After the war, Houston's economy reverted to being primarily port-driven. In 1948, several unincorporated areas were annexed into the city limits, which more than doubled the city's size, and Houston proper began to spread across the region.

In 1950, the availability of air conditioning provided impetus for many companies to relocate to Houston resulting in an economic boom and producing a key shift in the city's economy toward the energy sector.

The increased production of the local shipbuilding industry during World War II spurred Houston's growth, as did the establishment in 1961 of NASA's "Manned Spacecraft Center" (renamed the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in 1973), which created the city's aerospace industry. The Astrodome, nicknamed the "Eighth Wonder of the World", opened in 1965 as the world's first indoor domed sports stadium.

During the late 1970s, Houston experienced a population boom as people from Rust Belt states moved to Texas in large numbers. The new residents came for the numerous employment opportunities in the petroleum industry, created as a result of the Arab Oil Embargo.

The population boom ended abruptly in the mid-1980s, as oil prices fell precipitously. The space industry also suffered in 1986 after the Space Shuttle Challenger disintegrated shortly after launch. The late 1980s saw a recession adversely affecting the city's economy.

Since the 1990s, as a result of the recession, Houston has made efforts to diversify its economy by focusing on aerospace and health care/biotechnology and by reducing its dependence on the petroleum industry. In 1997, Houstonians elected Lee P. Brown as the city's first African American mayor.

In June 2001, Tropical Storm Allison dumped up to of rain on parts of Houston, causing the worst flooding in the city's history; the storm cost billions of dollars in damage and killed 20 people in Texas. By December of that same year, Houston-based energy company Enron collapsed into the third-largest ever U.S. bankruptcy during an investigation surrounding fabricated partnerships that were allegedly used to hide debt and inflate profits.

In August 2005, Houston became a shelter to more than 150,000 people from New Orleans who evacuated from Hurricane Katrina. One month later, approximately 2.5 million Houston area residents evacuated when Hurricane Rita approached the Gulf Coast, leaving little damage to the Houston area. This was the largest urban evacuation in the history of the United States.

Geography

According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of ; this comprises of land and of water. Most of Houston is located on the gulf coastal plain, and its vegetation is classified as temperate grassland and forest. Much of the city was built on forested land, marshes, swamp, or prairie, which are all still visible in surrounding areas. Flatness of the local terrain, when combined with urban sprawl, has made flooding a recurring problem for the city. Downtown stands about above sea level, and the highest point in far northwest Houston is about in elevation. The city once relied on groundwater for its needs, but land subsidence forced the city to turn to ground-level water sources such as Lake Houston and Lake Conroe.

Houston has four major bayous passing through the city. Buffalo Bayou runs through downtown and the Houston Ship Channel, and has three tributaries: White Oak Bayou, which runs through the Houston Heights community northwest of Downtown and then towards Downtown; Braes Bayou, which runs along the Texas Medical Center; and Sims Bayou, which runs through the south of Houston and downtown Houston. The ship channel continues past Galveston and then into the Gulf of Mexico.

Geology

Underpinning Houston's land surface are unconsolidated clays, clay shales, and poorly cemented sands up to several miles deep. The region's geology developed from river deposits formed from the erosion of the Rocky Mountains. These sediments consist of a series of sands and clays deposited on decaying organic matter, that over time, transformed into oil and natural gas. Beneath the layers of sediment is a water-deposited layer of halite, a rock salt. The porous layers were compressed over time and forced upward. As it pushed upward, the salt dragged surrounding sediments into salt dome formations, often trapping oil and gas that seeped from the surrounding porous sands. The thick, rich, sometimes black, surface soil is suitable for rice farming in suburban outskirts where the city continues to grow.

The Houston area has over 150 active faults (estimated to be 300 active faults) with an aggregate length of up to , including the Long Point–Eureka Heights fault system which runs through the center of the city. There have been no significant historically recorded earthquakes in Houston, but researchers do not discount the possibility of such quakes occurring in the deeper past, nor in the future. Land in some communities southeast of Houston is sinking because water has been pumped out from the ground for many years. It may be associated with slip along faults; however, the slippage is slow and not considered an earthquake, where stationary faults must slip suddenly enough to create seismic waves. These faults also tend to move at a smooth rate in what is termed "fault creep", which further reduces the risk of an earthquake.

Climate

Houston's climate is classified as humid subtropical (''Cfa'' in Köppen climate classification system). While not necessarily part of "Tornado Alley" like much of the rest of Texas, Spring supercell thunderstorms do sometimes bring tornadoes to the area. Prevailing winds are from the south and southeast during most of the year, bringing heat across the continent from the deserts of Mexico and moisture from the Gulf of Mexico.

During the summer months, it is common for the temperature to reach over , with an average of 99 days per year above . However, the humidity results in a heat index higher than the actual temperature. Summer mornings average over 90 percent relative humidity and approximately 60 percent in the afternoon. Winds are often light in the summer and offer little relief, except near the immediate coast. To cope with the heat, people use air conditioning in nearly every vehicle and building in the city; in 1980 Houston was described as the "most air-conditioned place on earth". Scattered afternoon showers and thunderstorms are common in the summer. The hottest temperature ever recorded in Houston was on September 4, 2000.

Winters in Houston are fairly temperate. The average high in January, the coldest month, is , while the average low is . Snowfall is generally rare. Recent snow events in Houston include a storm on December 24, 2004 when one inch (2.5 cm) fell and more recent snowfalls on December 10, 2008. However, more recently on December 4, 2009 an inch of snow fell in the city. This was the earliest snowfall ever recorded in Houston. In addition, it set another milestone marking the first time in recorded history that snowfall has occurred on two consecutive years, and marks the third accumulating snowfall occurring in the decade of 2000–2010. The coldest temperature ever recorded in Houston was on January 23, 1940. Houston receives a high amount of rainfall annually, averaging about 54 inches a year. These rains tend to cause floods over portions of the city.

Houston has excessive ozone levels and is ranked among the most ozone-polluted cities in the United States. Ground-level ozone, or smog, is Houston’s predominant air pollution problem, with the American Lung Association rating the metropolitan area's ozone level as the 8th worst in the United States in 2011. The industries located along the ship channel are a major cause of the city's air pollution.

Cityscape

Houston was incorporated in 1837 under the ward system of representation. The ward designation is the progenitor of the nine current-day Houston City Council districts. Locations in Houston are generally classified as either being inside or outside the Interstate 610 Loop. The inside encompasses the central business district and many residential neighborhoods that predate World War II. More recently, high-density residential areas have been developed within the loop. The city's outlying areas, suburbs and enclaves are located outside of the loop. Beltway 8 encircles the city another farther out.

Though Houston is the largest city in the United States without formal zoning regulations, it has developed similarly to other Sun Belt cities because the city's land use regulations and legal covenants have played a similar role. Regulations include mandatory lot size for single-family houses and requirements that parking be available to tenants and customers. Such restrictions have had mixed results. Though some have blamed the city's low density, urban sprawl, and lack of pedestrian-friendliness on these policies, the city's land use has also been credited with having significant affordable housing, sparing Houston the worst effects of the 2008 real estate crisis. The city issued 42,697 building permits in 2008 and was ranked first in the list of healthiest housing markets for 2009.

Voters rejected efforts to have separate residential and commercial land-use districts in 1948, 1962, and 1993. Consequently, rather than a single central business district as the center of the city's employment, multiple districts have grown throughout the city in addition to downtown which include Uptown, Texas Medical Center, Midtown, Greenway Plaza, Energy Corridor, Westchase, and Greenspoint.

Government and politics

The city of Houston has a strong mayoral form of municipal government. Houston is a home rule city and all municipal elections in the state of Texas are nonpartisan. The City's elected officials are the mayor, city controller and 14 members of the city council. The mayor of Houston is Annise Parker—a Democrat elected on a nonpartisan ballot who is serving her first term as of January 2010. As the result of a 1991 referendum in Houston, a mayor is elected for a two-year term, and can be elected to as many as three consecutive terms. The term limits were spearheaded by conservative political activist Clymer Wright.

The city council line-up of nine district based and five at-large positions was based on a U.S. Justice Department mandate which took effect in 1979. At-large council members represent the entire city. Under the current city charter, if the population in the city limits goes past 2.1 million residents, the current nine-member city council districts will be expanded with the addition of two city council districts. The City of Houston's population count since January 2011 is 600 shy of the 2.1 million and several redistricting maps have been proposed - a final map will be authorized in August 2011 along with a concurrent election of two new city councilmembers in the proposed Districts J and K. The two new council districts drawn up will encompass minority voters in both African-American and Hispanic voting blocs.

The city controller is elected independently of the mayor and council. The controller's duties are to certify available funds prior to committing such funds and processing disbursements. The city's fiscal year begins on July 1 and ends on June 30. Ronald Green is the city controller, serving his first term as of January 2010.

Houston is considered to be a politically divided city whose balance of power often sways between Republicans and Democrats. Much of the city's wealthier areas vote Republican, while the city's middle class, working class, and minority areas vote Democratic. According to the 2005 Houston Area Survey, 68 percent of non-Hispanic whites in Harris County are declared or favor Republicans while 89 percent of non-Hispanic blacks in the area are declared or favor Democrats. About 62 percent Hispanics (of any race) in the area are declared or favor Democrats. The city has often been known to be the most politically diverse city in Texas, a state known for being generally conservative. |} Houston is recognized worldwide for its energy industry—particularly for oil and natural gas—as well as for biomedical research and aeronautics. Renewable energy sources—wind and solar—are also growing economic bases in Houston. The ship channel is also a large part of Houston's economic base. Because of these strengths, Houston is designated as a global city by the Globalization and World Cities Study Group and Network and by global management consulting firm A.T. Kearney.

The Houston area is a leading center for building oilfield equipment. Much of Houston's success as a petrochemical complex is due to its busy man-made ship channel, the Port of Houston. The port ranks first in the United States in international commerce, and is the tenth-largest port in the world. Unlike most places, high oil and gasoline prices are beneficial for Houston's economy as many of its residents are employed in the energy industry.

The Houston–Sugar Land–Baytown MSA's gross area product (GAP) in 2008 was $440.4 billion. Only 21 countries other than the United States have a gross domestic product exceeding Houston's regional gross area product. Mining, which in Houston consists almost entirely of exploration and production of oil and gas, accounts for 26.3% of Houston's GAP, up sharply in response to high energy prices and a decreased worldwide surplus of oil production capacity; followed by engineering services, health services, and manufacturing.

The University of Houston System's annual impact on the Houston-area's economy equates to that of a major corporation: $1.1 billion in new funds attracted annually to the Houston area, $3.13 billion in total economic benefit, and 24,000 local jobs generated. This is in addition to the 12,500 new graduates the UH System produces every year who enter the workforce in Houston and throughout Texas. These degree-holders tend to stay in Houston. After five years, 80.5 percent of graduates are still living and working in the region.

In 2006, the Houston metropolitan area ranked first in Texas and third in the U.S. within the Category of "Best Places for Business and Careers" by ''Forbes'' magazine. Foreign governments have established 89 consular offices in metropolitan Houston. Forty foreign governments maintain trade and commercial offices here and 23 active foreign chambers of commerce and trade associations. Twenty-five foreign banks representing 13 nations operate in Houston, providing financial assistance to the international community.

In 2008, Houston received top ranking on Kiplinger's Personal Finance ''Best Cities of 2008'' list which ranks cities on their local economy, employment opportunities, reasonable living costs and quality of life. The city ranked fourth for highest increase in the local technological innovation over the preceding 15 years, according to ''Forbes'' magazine. In the same year, the city ranked second on the annual Fortune 500 list of company headquarters, ranked first for ''Forbes'' ''Best Cities for College Graduates'', and ranked first on Forbes list of ''Best Cities to Buy a Home''. In 2010, the city was rated the best city for shopping, according to Forbes.

Demographics

Houston is a multicultural city, in part because of its many academic institutions and strong industries as well as being a major port city. Over 90 languages are spoken in the city. The city has among the youngest populations in the nation, partly due to an influx of immigrants into Texas. An estimated 400,000 illegal aliens reside in the Houston area.

According to the 2010 Census, Whites made up 50.5% of Houston's population, of which 25.6% were non-Hispanic whites. Blacks or African Americans made up 23.7% of Houston's population. American Indians made up 0.7% of Houston's population. Asians made up 6.0% of Houston's population (1.7% Vietnamese, 1.3% Chinese, 1.3% Indian, 0.4% Pakistani, 0.4% Filipino, 0.3% Korean, 0.1% Japanese), while Pacific Islanders made up 0.1%. Individuals from some other race made up 15.2% of the city's population, of which 0.2% were non-Hispanic. Individuals from two or more races made up 3.3% of the city's population. People of Hispanic or Latino origin made up 43.8% of Houston's population; 32.1% of Houston is Mexican, 3.6% Salvadoran, 1.6% Honduran, 1.2% Guatemalan, 0.5% Colombian, 0.4% Puerto Rican, 0.4% Cuban, 0.2% Nicaraguan, 0.2% Venezuelan, and 0.2% Peruvian.

As of the 2000 Census, there were 1,953,631 people and the population density was 3,371.7 people per square mile (1,301.8/km²). The racial makeup of the city was 49.3% White, 25.3% African American, 5.3% Asian, 0.4% American Indian, 0.1% Pacific Islander, 16.5% from some other race, and 3.1% from two or more races. In addition, Hispanics and Latinos made up 37.4% of Houston's population while non-Hispanic whites made up 30.8%.

The median income for a household in the city was $36,616, and the median income for a family was $40,443. Males had a median income of $32,084 versus $27,371 for females. The per capita income for the city was $20,101. Nineteen percent of the population and 16 percent of families were below the poverty line. Out of the total population, 26.1 percent of those under the age of 18 and 14.3 percent of those 65 and older were living below the poverty line.

Culture

Houston is a diverse city with a large and growing international community. The metropolitan area is home to an estimated 1.1 million (21.4 percent) residents who were born outside the United States, with nearly two-thirds of the area's foreign-born population from south of the United States–Mexico border. Additionally, more than one in five foreign-born residents are from Asia. The city is home to the nation’s third largest concentration of consular offices, representing 86 countries.

Many annual events celebrate the diverse cultures of Houston. The largest and longest running is the annual Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, held over 20 days from late February to early March, which happens to be the largest annual Livestock Show and Rodeo anywhere in the world. Another large celebration is the annual night-time Houston Pride Parade, held at the end of June. Other annual events include the Houston Greek Festival, Art Car Parade, the Houston Auto Show, the Houston International Festival, and the Bayou City Art Festival, which is considered to be one of the top five art festivals in the United States.

Houston received the official nickname of "Space City" in 1967 because it is the location of NASA's Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center. Other nicknames often used by locals include "Magnolia City," and "H-Town."

Arts and theatre

The Houston Theater District, located downtown, is home to nine major performing arts organizations and six performance halls. It is the second-largest concentration of theater seats in a downtown area in the United States. Houston is one of few United States cities with permanent, professional, resident companies in all major performing arts disciplines: opera (Houston Grand Opera), ballet (Houston Ballet), music (Houston Symphony Orchestra), and theater (The Alley Theatre). Houston is also home to folk artists, art groups and various small progressive arts organizations. Houston attracts many touring Broadway acts, concerts, shows, and exhibitions for a variety of interests. Facilities in the Theater District include the Jones Hall—home of the Houston Symphony Orchestra and Society for the Performing Arts—and the Hobby Center for the Performing Arts.

The Museum District's cultural institutions and exhibits attract more than 7 million visitors a year. Notable facilities the include The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston Museum of Natural Science, the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, the Station Museum of Contemporary Art, Holocaust Museum Houston, and the Houston Zoo. Located near the Museum District are The Menil Collection, Rothko Chapel, and the Byzantine Fresco Chapel Museum.

Bayou Bend is a facility of the Museum of Fine Arts that houses one of America's best collections of decorative art, paintings and furniture. Bayou Bend is the former home of Houston philanthropist Ima Hogg.

Venues across Houston regularly host local and touring rock, blues, country, dubstep, and Tejano musical acts. While Houston has never been a widely renowned for its music scene, Houston hip-hop has become a significant, independent music scene, influencing some larger Southern hip hop communities.

Tourism and recreation

The Theater District is a 17-block area in the center of downtown Houston that is home to the Bayou Place entertainment complex, restaurants, movies, plazas, and parks. Bayou Place is a large multilevel building containing full-service restaurants, bars, live music, billiards, and art house films. The Houston Verizon Wireless Theater stages live concerts, stage plays, and stand-up comedy.

Space Center Houston is the official visitors’ center of NASA's Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center. The Space Center has many interactive exhibits including moon rocks, a shuttle simulator, and presentations about the history of NASA's manned space flight program. Other tourist attractions include the Galleria (Texas's largest shopping mall located in the Uptown District), Old Market Square, the Downtown Aquarium, and Sam Houston Race Park. SplashTown Waterpark Houston is a water park located north of Houston. Earth Quest Adventures is a theme park planned to open in 2013/2014.

Houston is home to 337 parks including Hermann Park, Terry Hershey Park, Lake Houston Park, Memorial Park, Tranquility Park, Sesquicentennial Park, Discovery Green, and Sam Houston Park. Within Hermann Park are the Houston Zoo and the Houston Museum of Natural Science. Sam Houston Park contains restored and reconstructed homes which were originally built between 1823 and 1905.

Of the 10 most populous U.S. cities, Houston has the most total area of parks and green space, The city also has over 200 additional green spaces—totaling over that are managed by the city—including the Houston Arboretum and Nature Center. The Lee and Joe Jamail Skatepark is a public skatepark owned and operated by the city of Houston, and is one of the largest skateparks in Texas consisting of 30,000 (2,800 m2) square foot in-ground facility. The Gerald D. Hines Waterwall Park—located in the Uptown District of the city—serves as a popular tourist attraction, weddings, and various celebrations.

Media

The Houston–Sugar Land–Baytown metropolitan area is served by a public television station and two public radio stations. KUHT (''HoustonPBS'') is a PBS member station and is the first public television station in the United States. Houston Public Radio is listener-funded and comprises two NPR member stations: KUHF (''KUHF News'') and KUHA (''Classical 91.7''). KUHF is news/talk radio and KUHA is a classical music station. The University of Houston System owns and holds broadcasting licenses to KUHT, KUHF, and KUHA. The stations broadcast from the Melcher Center for Public Broadcasting, located on the campus of the University of Houston.

Houston is served by the ''Houston Chronicle'', its only major daily newspaper with wide distribution. The Hearst Corporation, which owns and operates the ''Houston Chronicle'', bought the assets of the ''Houston Post''—its long-time rival and main competition—when ''Houston Post'' ceased operations in 1995. The ''Houston Post'' was owned by the family of former Lieutenant Governor Bill Hobby of Houston. The only other major publication to serve the city is the ''Houston Press''—a free alternative weekly with a weekly readership of more than 300,000.

Education

Seventeen school districts exist within the city of Houston. The Houston Independent School District (HISD) is the seventh-largest school district in the United States. HISD has 112 campuses that serve as magnet or vanguard schools—specializing in such disciplines as health professions, visual and performing arts, and the sciences. There are also many charter schools that are run separately from school districts. In addition, some public school districts also have their own charter schools.

The Houston area encompasses more than 300 private schools, many of which are accredited by Texas Private School Accreditation Commission recognized agencies. The Houston Area Independent Schools offer education from a variety of different religious as well as secular viewpoints. The Houston area Catholic schools are operated by the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston.

Colleges and universities

Four distinct state universities are located in Houston. The University of Houston is a nationally recognized research university, and is the flagship institution of the University of Houston System. The institution ranks among the Top 50 American Research Universities. The university in Texas, UH has over 38,750 students on its 667 acre campus in southeast Houston. The University of Houston–Clear Lake and the University of Houston–Downtown are universities; they are not branch campuses of the University of Houston. Located in the historic community of Third Ward is Texas Southern University—one of the largest historically black colleges and universities in the United States.

Several private institutions of higher learning—ranging from liberal arts colleges to a nationally recognized research university—are located within the city. Rice University is one of the leading teaching and research universities of the United States and ranked the nation's 17^th best overall university by ''U.S. News & World Report''.

Three community college districts exist with campuses in and around Houston. The Houston Community College System serves most of Houston. The northwestern through northeastern parts of the city are served by various campuses of the Lone Star College System, while the southeastern portion of Houston is served by San Jacinto College. The Houston Community College and Lone Star College systems are within the 10 largest institutions of higher learning in the United States.

Healthcare and medicine

Houston is the seat of the internationally renowned Texas Medical Center, which contains the world's largest concentration of research and healthcare institutions. All 47 member institutions of the Texas Medical Center are non-profit organizations. They provide patient and preventive care, research, education, and local, national, and international community well-being.

Employing more than 73,600 people, institutions at the medical center include 13 hospitals and two specialty institutions, two medical schools, four nursing schools, and schools of dentistry, public health, pharmacy, and virtually all health-related careers. It is where one of the first—and still the largest—air emergency service, Life Flight, was created, and a very successful inter-institutional transplant program was developed. More heart surgeries are performed at the Texas Medical Center than anywhere else in the world.

Some of the academic and research health institutions at the center include MD Anderson Cancer Center, Baylor College of Medicine, UT Health Science Center, Memorial Hermann Hospital, The Methodist Hospital, Texas Children's Hospital, and University of Houston College of Pharmacy.

The Baylor College of Medicine has annually been considered within the top ten medical schools in the nation; likewise, the MD Anderson Cancer Center has consistently ranked as one of the top two U.S. hospitals specializing in cancer care by ''U.S. News & World Report'' since 1990. The Menninger Clinic, a renowned psychiatric treatment center, is affiliated with Baylor College of Medicine and The Methodist Hospital System. With hospital locations nationwide and headquarters in Houston, the Triumph Healthcare hospital system is the third largest long term acute care provider nationally.

Transportation

Highways

The predominant form of transportation in Houston is the automobile with 71.7 percent of residents driving alone to work This is facilitated through Houston's freeway system, comprising of freeways and expressways in a ten-county metropolitan area. However, the Texas Transportation Institute's annual Urban Mobility Report found that Houston had the fourth-worst congestion in the country with commuters spending an average of 58 hours in traffic in 2010.

Houston's highway system has a hub-and-spoke freeway structure serviced by multiple loops. The innermost loop is Interstate 610, which encircles downtown, the medical center, and many core neighborhoods with around a diameter. Beltway 8 and its freeway core, the Sam Houston Tollway, form the middle loop at a diameter of roughly . A proposed highway project, State Highway 99 (Grand Parkway), would form a third loop outside of Houston. As of 2010, only two out of eleven segments of State Highway 99 have been completed. Houston is located along the route of the proposed Interstate 69 NAFTA superhighway that would link Canada, the U.S. industrial Midwest, Texas, and Mexico. Other spoke freeways either planned or under construction include the Fort Bend Parkway, Hardy Toll Road, Crosby Freeway, and the future Alvin Freeway.

Houston's freeway system is monitored by Houston TranStar—a partnership of four government agencies that are responsible for providing transportation and emergency management services to the region. Houston TranStar was the first center in the nation to combine transportation and emergency management centers, and the first to bring four agencies (Texas Department of Transportation, Harris County, Metropolitan Transit Authority of Harris County, and the City of Houston) together to share their resources.

Mass transit

The Metropolitan Transit Authority of Harris County (METRO) provides public transportation in the form of buses, light rail, and lift vans. METRO's various forms of public transportation still do not connect many of the suburbs to the greater city.

METRO began light rail service on January 1, 2004 with the inaugural track ("Red Line") running about from the University of (UHD), which traverses through the Texas Medical Center and terminates at Reliant Park. METRO is currently in the design phase of a 10-year expansion plan that will add five more lines to the existing system.

Amtrak, the national rail passenger system, provides service to Houston via the (Los Angeles–New Orleans), which stops at a train station on the north side of the downtown area. The station saw 14,891 boardings and alightings in fiscal year 2008.

Airports

Houston is served by three airports, two of which are commercial that served 52 million passengers in 2007 and managed by the Houston Airport System. The Federal Aviation Administration and the state of Texas selected the "Houston Airport System as Airport of the Year" for 2005, largely because of its multi-year, $3.1 billion airport improvement program for both major airports in Houston.

The primary city airport is George Bush Intercontinental Airport (IAH), the sixth-busiest in the United States for total passengers, and fourteenth-busiest worldwide. Bush Intercontinental currently ranks third in the United States for non-stop domestic and international service with 182 destinations. In 2006, the United States Department of Transportation named George Bush Intercontinental Airport the fastest-growing of the top ten airports in the United States. The Houston Air Route Traffic Control Center stands on the George Bush Intercontinental Airport grounds.

Houston was the headquarters of Continental Airlines until its 2010 merger with United Airlines with headquarters in Chicago; regulatory approval for the merger was granted in October of that year. Bush Intercontinental will become United Airline's largest hub. The airline will retain a significant operational presence in Houston while offering more than 700 daily departures from the city. In early 2007, Bush Intercontinental Airport was named a model "port of entry" for international travelers by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

The second-largest commercial airport is William P. Hobby Airport (named Houston International Airport until 1967) which operates primarily small to medium-haul domestic flights. Houston's aviation history is showcased in the 1940 Air Terminal Museum located in the old terminal building on the west side of the airport. Hobby Airport has been recognized with two awards for being one of the top five performing airports in the world and for customer service by Airports Council International.

Houston's third municipal airport is Ellington Airport (a former U.S. Air Force base) used by military, government, NASA, and general aviation sectors.

Walkability

A 2011 study by Walk Score ranked Houston the 23rd most walkable of fifty largest cities in the United States.

Architecture

Houston has the third tallest skyline in North America and one of the top 10 in the world. A seven-mile (11 km) system of tunnels and skywalks link downtown buildings containing shops and restaurants, enabling pedestrians to avoid summer heat and rain while walking between buildings.

In the 1960s, Downtown Houston consisted of a collection of mid-rise office structures. Downtown was on the threshold of an energy industry led boom in 1970. A succession of skyscrapers were built throughout the 1970s—many by real estate developer Gerald D. Hines—culminating with Houston's tallest skyscraper, the 75-floor, -tall JPMorgan Chase Tower (formerly the Texas Commerce Tower), completed in 1982. It is the tallest structure in Texas, 10th tallest building in the United States and the 30th tallest skyscraper in the world, based on height to roof. In 1983, the 71-floor, -tall Wells Fargo Plaza (formerly Allied Bank Plaza) was completed, becoming the second-tallest building in Houston and Texas. Based on height to roof, it is the 13th tallest in the United States and the 36th tallest in the world. As of 2007, downtown Houston had over 43 million square feet (4,000,000 m²) of office space.

Centered on Post Oak Boulevard and Westheimer Road, the Uptown District boomed during the 1970s and early 1980s when a collection of mid-rise office buildings, hotels, and retail developments appeared along Interstate 610 west. Uptown became one of the most prominent instances of an edge city. The tallest building in Uptown is the 64-floor, -tall, Philip Johnson and John Burgee designed landmark Williams Tower (known as the Transco Tower until 1999). At the time of construction, it was believed to the be the world's tallest skyscraper outside of a central business district. The Uptown District is also home to buildings designed by noted architects I. M. Pei, César Pelli, and Philip Johnson. In the late 1990s and early 2000s decade, there was a mini-boom of mid-rise and high-rise residential tower construction, with several over 30 stories tall. In 2002, Uptown had more than 23 million square feet (2,100,000 m²) of office space with 16 million square feet (1,500,000 m²) of Class A office space.

Sports

Houston has sports teams for every major professional league, except the National Hockey League.

Minute Maid Park (home of the Astros) and Toyota Center (home of the Rockets and Aeros), are located in Downtown. Houston has the NFL's first retractable-roof stadium, Reliant Stadium (home of the Texans). In addition, Reliant Astrodome, the first domed stadium in the world. Other sports facilities include Robertson Stadium (home of the Houston Cougars football team and the Dynamo), Hofheinz Pavilion (Houston Cougars basketball), Rice Stadium (Rice Owls football), and Reliant Arena. A soccer-specific stadium for the Dynamo—to be located just east of Downtown—is expected to be finished by 2012.

The city has hosted several major professional and college sporting events, including the annual Shell Houston Open golf tournament. Houston hosts the annual NCAA College Baseball Minute Maid Classic every February and NCAA football's Texas Bowl in December.

Crime

Houston's murder rate ranked 46th of U.S. cities with a population over 250,000 in 2005 (per capita rate of 16.3 murders per 100,000 population). In 2010, the city's murder rate (per capita rate of 11.8 murders per 100,000 population) was ranked sixth among U.S. cities with a population of over 750,000 (behind New York City, Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia and Los Angeles). according to the FBI.

Murders fell by 37 percent in Jan-Jun 2011 compared with the same period in 2010. Houston's total crime rate including violent and nonviolent crimes decreased by 11 percent.

Houston—due to its size and proximity to major illegal drug exporting nations—is a significant hub for trafficking of cocaine, marijuana, heroin, MDMA, and methamphetamine. In the early 1970s, Houston, Pasadena and several coastal towns were the site of the '' 'Houston Mass Murders' '' which at the time were the deadliest case of serial killing in American history.

Further reading

Houston, New York Has a Problem, ''City Journal,'' Summer 2008

174 Years of Historic Houston ''Houstonhistory.com''. 2007. Retrieved on 2007-01-13.

''A thumb-nail history of the city of Houston, Texas, from its founding in 1836 to the year 1912'', published 1912, hosted by the Portal to Texas History, republished 2007 by Copano Bay Press.

''True stories of old Houston and Houstonians: historical and personal sketches / by S. O. Young.'', published 1913, hosted by the Portal to Texas History, republished 2007 by Copano Bay Press.

.

References

External links

City of Houston official website

Greater Houston Partnership

174 Years of Historic Houston

Greater Houston Convention & Visitors Bureau

Greater Houston Transportation and Emergency Management Center

Houston Public Library official website

Houston Downtown District

Uptown Houston District

Midtown Houston District

Houston Airport System

Greater Houston Preservation Alliance

Houston Wilderness Organization

Historical photos of Houston at the University of Houston Digital Library

Category:Cities in Texas Category:Populated places established in 1836 Category:Populated coastal places in Texas Category:Port settlements in the United States

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Coordinates	12°58′0″N77°34′0″N
Name	Texas
Fullname	State of Texas
Former	Republic of Texas
Flag	Flag of Texas.svg
Flaglink	Flag
Seal	Seal of Texas.svg
Seallink	Seal
Map	Map_of_USA_TX.svg
Nickname	The Lone Star State
Motto	Friendship
Demonym	TexanTexian (archaic)
Capital	Austin
Largestcity	Houston
Largestmetro	Dallas–Fort Worth–Arlington
Governor	Rick Perry (R)
Lieutenant governor	David Dewhurst (R)
Legislature	Texas Legislature
Upperhouse	Senate
Lowerhouse	House of Representatives
Senators	Kay Bailey Hutchison (R)John Cornyn (R)
Representative	23 Republicans, 9 Democrats
Postalabbreviation	TX
Tradabbreviation	Tex.
Borderingstates	Arkansas, Louisiana,New Mexico, Oklahoma
Officiallang	No official language(see Languages spoken in Texas)
Languages	English 68.7%Spanish 27.0%
Arearank	2nd
Totalareaus	268,581
Totalarea	696,241
Landareaus	261,797
Landarea	678,051
Waterareaus	6,784
Waterarea	17,574
Pcwater	2.5
Poprank	2nd
2000pop	25,145,561 (2010 Census)
Densityrank	26th
2000densityus	96.3
2000density	37.2
Total gdp	$1,065,891,000
Total gdp rank	2nd
Per capita gdp	$43,283
Per capita gdp rank	16th
Admittanceorder	28th
Admittancedate	December 29, 1845
Timezone	Central: UTC−6/−5
Tz1where	most of state
Timezone2	Mountain: UTC−7/−6
Tz2where	tip of West Texas
Latitude	25° 50′ N to 36° 30′ N
Longitude	93° 31′ W to 106° 39′ W
Widthus	773
Width	1,244
Lengthus	790
Length	1,270
Highestpoint	Guadalupe Peak
Highestelevus	8,751
Highestelev	2,667
Meanelevus	1,700
Meanelev	520
Lowestpoint	Gulf of Mexico coast
Lowestelevus	0
Lowestelev	0
Isocode	US-TX
Electoralvotes	34
Website	www.texas.gov/ }}

Texas () is the second-largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state in the contiguous United States. The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in East Texas. Located in the South Central United States, Texas is bordered by Mexico to the south, New Mexico to the west, Oklahoma to the north, Arkansas to the northeast, and Louisiana to the east. Texas has an area of , and a growing population of 25.1 million residents.

Houston is the largest city in Texas and the fourth-largest in the United States, while San Antonio is the second largest in the state and seventh largest in the United States. Dallas–Fort Worth and Greater Houston are the fourth and sixth largest United States metropolitan areas, respectively. Other major cities include El Paso and Austin—the state capital. Texas is nicknamed the ''Lone Star State'' to signify Texas as an independent republic and as a reminder of the state's struggle for independence from Mexico. The "Lone Star" can be found on the Texas State Flag and on the Texas State Seal today.

Due to its size and geologic features such as the Balcones Fault, Texas contains diverse landscapes that resemble both the American South and Southwest. Although Texas is popularly associated with the Southwestern deserts, less than 10% of the land area is desert. Most of the population centers are located in areas of former prairies, grasslands, forests, and the coastline. Traveling from east to west, one can observe terrain that ranges from coastal swamps and piney woods, to rolling plains and rugged hills, and finally the desert and mountains of the Big Bend.

The term "six flags over Texas" came from the several nations that had ruled over the territory. Spain was the first European country to claim the area of Texas. France held a short-lived colony in Texas. Mexico controlled the territory until 1836 when Texas won its independence, becoming an independent Republic. In 1845 it joined the United States as the 28th state. The state's annexation set off a chain of events that caused the Mexican–American War in 1846. A slave state, Texas declared its secession from the United States in early 1861, joining the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War. After the war and its restoration to the Union, Texas entered a long period of economic stagnation.

One Texas industry that thrived after the Civil War was cattle. Due to its long history as a center of the industry, Texas is associated with the image of the cowboy. The state's economic fortunes changed in the early 20th century, when oil discoveries initiated an economic boom in the state. With strong investments in universities, Texas developed a diversified economy and high tech industry in the mid-20th century. As of 2010 it shares the top of the list of the most Fortune 500 companies with California at 57. With a growing base of industry, the state leads in many industries, including agriculture, petrochemicals, energy, computers and electronics, aerospace, and biomedical sciences. It leads the nation in export revenue since 2002 and has the second-highest gross state product.

Geography

Texas is the second largest U.S. state, behind Alaska, with an area of . It is 10% larger than France and almost twice as large as Germany or Japan, though it ranks only 27th worldwide amongst country subdivisions by size. If it were a country, Texas would be the 40th largest behind Chile and Zambia.

Texas is in the south-central part of the United States of America. Three of its borders are defined by rivers. The Rio Grande river forms a natural border with the Mexican states of Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo León, and Tamaulipas to the south. The Red River forms a natural border with Oklahoma and Arkansas to the north. The Sabine River forms a natural border with Louisiana to the east. The Texas Panhandle has an eastern border with Oklahoma at 100° W, a northern border with Oklahoma at 36°30' N and a western border with New Mexico at 103° W. El Paso lies on the state's western tip at 32° N and the Rio Grande.

With 10 climatic regions, 14 soil regions, and 11 distinct ecological regions, regional classification becomes problematic with differences in soils, topography, geology, rainfall, and plant and animal communities. One classification system divides Texas, in order southeast to west, into the following: Gulf Coastal Plains, Interior Lowlands, Great Plains, and Basin and Range Province. The Gulf Coastal Plains region wraps around the Gulf of Mexico on the southeast section of the state. Vegetation in this region consists of thick pineywoods. The Interior Lowlands region consists of gently rolling to hilly forested land is part of a larger pine-hardwood forest. The Great Plains region in central Texas is located in spans through the state's panhandle and Llano Estacado to the state's hill country near Austin. This region is dominated by prairie and steppe. "Far West Texas" or the "Trans-Pecos" region is the state's Basin and Range Province. The most varied of the regions, this area includes Sand Hills, the Stockton Plateau, desert valleys, wooded mountain slopes and desert grasslands.

Texas has 3,700 named streams and 15 major rivers. The largest of these rivers is the Rio Grande. Other major rivers include the Pecos, the Brazos, Colorado, and Red River, which forms the border with Oklahoma. While Texas has few natural lakes, Texans have built over 100 artificial reservoirs.

Texas's size and unique history make its regional affiliation debatable: it can be fairly considered a Southern or a Southwestern state, or both. The vast geographic, economic, and cultural diversity within the state itself prohibits easy categorization of the whole state into a recognized region of the United States. The East, Central, and North Texas regions have a stronger association with the American South than with the Southwest. Others, such as far West Texas and South Texas share more similarities with the latter.

Geology

Texas is the southernmost part of the Great Plains, which ends in the south against the folded Sierra Madre Occidental of Mexico. The continental crust forms a stable Mesoproterozoic craton which changes across a broad continental margin and transitional crust into true oceanic crust of the Gulf of Mexico. The oldest rocks in Texas date from the Mesoproterozoic and are about 1,600 million years old. These Precambrian igneous and metamorphic rocks underlie most of the state, and are exposed in three places: Llano uplift, Van Horn, and the Franklin Mountains, near El Paso. Sedimentary rocks overlay most of these ancient rocks. The oldest sediments were deposited on the flanks of a rifted continental margin, or passive margin that developed during Cambrian time. This margin existed until Laurasia and Gondwana collided in the Pennsylvanian subperiod to form Pangea. This is the buried crest of the Appalachian Mountains–Ouachita Mountains zone of Pennsylvanian continental collision. This orogenic crest is today buried beneath the Dallas–Waco—Austin–San Antonio trend.

The late Paleozoic mountains collapsed as rifting in the Jurassic period began to open the Gulf of Mexico. Pangea began to break up in the Triassic, but seafloor spreading to form the Gulf of Mexico occurred only in the mid and late Jurassic. The shoreline shifted again to the eastern margin of the state and the Gulf of Mexico passive margin began to form. thumb|left|Palo Duro Canyon Today to of sediments are buried beneath the Texas continental shelf and a large proportion of remaining US oil reserves are located here. At the start of its formation, the incipient Gulf of Mexico basin was restricted and seawater often evaporated completely to form thick evaporite deposits of Jurassic age. These salt deposits formed salt dome diapirs, and are found in East Texas along the Gulf coast.

East Texas outcrops consist of Cretaceous and Paleogene sediments which contain important deposits of Eocene lignite. The Mississippian and Pennsylvanian sediments in the north; Permian sediments in the west; and Cretaceous sediments in the east, along the Gulf coast and out on the Texas continental shelf contain oil. Oligocene volcanic rocks are found in far west Texas in the Big Bend area. A blanket of Miocene sediments known as the Ogallala formation in the western high plains region is an important aquifer. Located far from an active plate tectonic boundary, Texas has no volcanoes and few earthquakes.

Climate

The large size of Texas and its location at the intersection of multiple climate zones gives the state highly variable weather. The Panhandle of the state has colder winters than North Texas, while the Gulf Coast has mild winters. Texas has wide variations in precipitation patterns. El Paso, on the western end of the state, averages as little as of annual rainfall while Houston, in southeast Texas, averages as much as per year. Dallas in the North Central region averages a more moderate per year.

Snow falls multiple times each winter in the Panhandle and mountainous areas of West Texas, once or twice a year in North Texas, and once every few years in Central and East Texas. Snow rarely falls south of San Antonio or on the coast except in rare circumstances. Of note is the 2004 Christmas Eve Snowstorm, when of snow fell as far south as Kingsville, where the average high temperature in December is 65° F.

Maximum temperatures in the summer months average from the 80s °F (26 °C) in the mountains of West Texas and on Galveston Island to around in the Rio Grande Valley, but most areas of Texas see consistent summer high temperatures in the range.

Night time summer temperatures range from the upper 50s °F (14 °C) in the West Texas mountains to in Galveston.

Thunderstorms strike Texas often, especially the eastern and northern portions of the state. Tornado Alley covers the northern section of Texas. The state experiences the most tornadoes in the United States, an average of 139 a year. These strike most frequently in North Texas and the Panhandle. Tornadoes in Texas generally occur in the months of April, May, and June.

Some of the most destructive hurricanes in U.S. history have impacted Texas. A hurricane in 1875 killed approximately 400 people in Indianola, followed by another hurricane in 1886 that destroyed the town. These events allowed Galveston to take over as the chief port city. The Galveston hurricane of 1900 subsequently devastated that city killing approximately 8,000 people (possibly as many as 12,000), making it the deadliest natural disaster in U.S. history. Other devastating Texas hurricanes include the 1915 Galveston Hurricane, Hurricane Audrey in 1957 which killed over 600 people, Hurricane Carla in 1961, Hurricane Beulah in 1967, Hurricane Alicia in 1983, Hurricane Rita in 2005, and Hurricane Ike in 2008. Tropical storms have also caused their share of damage: Allison in 1989 and again during 2001, and Claudette in 1979 among them.

Texas emits the most greenhouse gases in the U.S. The state emits nearly 1.5 trillion pounds (680 billion kg) of carbon dioxide annually. As an independent nation, Texas would rank as the world's seventh-largest producer of greenhouse gases. Causes of the state's vast greenhouse gas emissions include the state's large number of coal power plants and the state's refining and manufacturing industries.

History

Pre-European era

Texas lies between two major cultural spheres of Pre-Columbian North America: the Southwestern and the Plains areas. Archaeologists have found that three major indigenous cultures lived in this territory, and reached their developmental peak before the first European contact. These were:

the Pueblo from the upper Rio Grande region, centered west of Texas;

the Mississippian culture, also known as Mound Builder, which extended along the Mississippi River Valley east of Texas; and

the civilizations of Mesoamerica, centered south of Texas. Influence of Teotihuacan in northern Mexico peaked around AD 500 and declined over the 8th to 10th centuries.

No culture was dominant in the present-day Texas region, and many peoples inhabited the area. Native American tribes that lived inside the boundaries of present-day Texas include the Alabama, Apache, Atakapan, Bidai, Caddo, Coahuiltecan, Comanche, Choctaw, Coushatta, Hasinai, Jumano, Karankawa, Kickapoo, Kiowa, Tonkawa, and Wichita. The name ''Texas'' derives from '''', a word in the Caddoan language of the ''Hasinai'', which means "friends" or "allies".

Whether a Native American tribe was friendly or warlike was critical to the fates of European explorers and settlers in that land. Friendly tribes taught newcomers how to grow indigenous crops, prepare foods, and hunt wild game. Warlike tribes made life difficult and dangerous for Europeans through their attacks and resistance to the newcomers.

Colonization

The first historical document related to Texas was a map of the Gulf Coast, created in 1519 by Spanish explorer Alonso Álvarez de Pineda. Nine years later, shipwrecked Spanish explorer Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca and his cohort became the first Europeans in Texas. European powers ignored Texas until accidentally settling there in 1685. Miscalculations by René Robert Cavelier de La Salle resulted in his establishing the colony of Fort Saint Louis at Matagorda Bay rather than along the Mississippi River. The colony lasted only four years before succumbing to harsh conditions and hostile natives.

In 1690 Spanish authorities, concerned that France posed competitive threat, constructed several missions in East Texas. After Native American resistance, the Spanish missionaries returned to Mexico. When France began settling Louisiana, mostly in the southern part of the state, in 1716 Spanish authorities responded by founding a new series of missions in East Texas. Two years later, they created San Antonio as the first Spanish civilian settlement in Texas.

Hostile native tribes and distance from nearby Spanish colonies discouraged settlers from moving to Texas. It was one of New Spain's least populated provinces. In 1749, the Spanish peace treaty with the Lipan Apache angered many tribes, including the Comanche, Tonkawa, and Hasinai. The Comanche signed a treaty with Spain in 1785 and later helped to defeat the Lipan Apache and Karankawa tribes. With more numerous missions being established, priests led a peaceful conversion of most tribes. By the end of the 18th century only a few nomadic tribes had not converted to Christianity.

When the United States purchased Louisiana from France in 1803, American authorities insisted that the agreement also included Texas. The boundary between New Spain and the United States was finally set at the Sabine River in 1819. Eager for new land, many United States settlers refused to recognize the agreement. Several filibusters raised armies to invade Texas. In 1821, the Mexican War of Independence included the Texas territory, which became part of Mexico. Due to its low population, Mexico made the area part of the state of Coahuila y Tejas.

Hoping that more settlers would reduce the near-constant Comanche raids, Mexican Texas liberalized its immigration policies to permit immigrants from outside Mexico and Spain. Under the Mexican immigration system, large swathes of land were allotted to ''empresarios'', who recruited settlers from the United States, Europe, and the Mexican interior. The first grant, to Moses Austin, was passed to his son Stephen F. Austin after his death.

Austin's settlers, the Old Three Hundred, made places along the Brazos River in 1822. Twenty-three other empresarios brought settlers to the state, the majority of whom were from the United States. The population of Texas grew rapidly. In 1825, Texas had a population of approximately 3,500, with most of Mexican descent. By 1834, Texas had grown to approximately 37,800 people, with only 7,800 of Mexican descent.

Many immigrants openly flouted Mexican law, especially the prohibition against slavery. Combined with United States' attempts to purchase Texas, Mexican authorities decided in 1830 to prohibit continued immigration from the United States. New laws also called for the enforcement of customs duties angering both native Mexican citizens (''Tejanos'') and recent immigrants.

The Anahuac Disturbances in 1832 were the first open revolt against Mexican rule and they coincided with a revolt in Mexico against the nation's president. Texians sided with the federalists against the current government and drove all Mexican soldiers out of East Texas. They took advantage of the lack of oversight to agitate for more political freedom. Texians met at the Convention of 1832 to discuss requesting independent statehood, among other issues. The following year, Texians reiterated their demands at the Convention of 1833.

Republic

Within Mexico, tensions continued between federalists and centralists. In early 1835, wary Texians formed Committees of Correspondence and Safety. The unrest erupted into armed conflict in late 1835 at the Battle of Gonzales. This launched the Texas Revolution, and over the next two months, the Texians successfully defeated all Mexican troops in the region. Texians elected delegates to the Consultation, which created a provisional government. The provisional government soon collapsed from infighting, and Texas was without clear governance for the first two months of 1836.

During this time of political turmoil, Mexican President Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna personally led an army to end the revolt. The Mexican expedition was initially successful. General Jose de Urrea defeated all the Texian resistance along the coast culminating in the Goliad Massacre. Santa Anna's forces, after a thirteen-day siege, overwhelmed Texian defenders at the Battle of the Alamo. News of the defeats sparked panic amongst Texas settlers. The newly elected Texian delegates to the Convention of 1836 quickly signed a Declaration of Independence on March 2, forming the Republic of Texas. After electing interim officers, the Convention disbanded. The new government joined the other settlers in Texas in the Runaway Scrape, fleeing from the approaching Mexican army. After several weeks of retreat, the Texian Army commanded by Sam Houston attacked and defeated Santa Anna's forces at the Battle of San Jacinto. Santa Anna was captured and forced to sign the Treaties of Velasco, ending the war.

While Texas had won their independence, political battles raged between two factions of the new Republic. The nationalist faction, led by Mirabeau B. Lamar, advocated the continued independence of Texas, the expulsion of the Native Americans, and the expansion of the Republic to the Pacific Ocean. Their opponents, led by Sam Houston, advocated the annexation of Texas to the United States and peaceful co-existence with Native Americans. The conflict between the factions was typified by an incident known as the Texas Archive War. Mexico launched two small expeditions into Texas in 1842. The town of San Antonio was captured twice and Texans were defeated in battle in the Dawson Massacre. Despite these successes, Mexico did not keep an occupying force in Texas, and the republic survived. The republic's inability to defend itself added momentum to Texas's eventual annexation into the United States.

Statehood

As early as 1837, the Republic made several attempts to negotiate annexation with the United States. Opposition within the republic from the nationalist faction, along with strong abolitionist opposition within the United States, slowed Texas's admission into the Union. Texas was finally annexed when the expansionist James K. Polk won the election of 1844. On December 29, 1845, Congress admitted Texas to the U.S. as a constituent state of the Union.

After Texas's annexation, Mexico broke diplomatic relations with the United States. While the United States claimed that Texas's border stretched to the Rio Grande, Mexico claimed it was the Nueces River. While the former Republic of Texas could not enforce its border claims, the United States had the military strength and the political will to do so. President Polk ordered General Zachary Taylor south to the Rio Grande on January 13, 1846. A few months later Mexican troops routed an American cavalry patrol in the disputed area in the Thornton Affair starting the Mexican-American War. The first battles of the war were fought in Texas: the Siege of Fort Texas, Battle of Palo Alto and Battle of Resaca de la Palma. After these decisive victories, the United States invaded Mexican territory ending the fighting in Texas.

After a series of United States victories, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the two year war. In return, for US $18,250,000, Mexico gave the U.S. undisputed control of Texas, ceded the Mexican Cession in 1848, most of which today is called the American Southwest, and Texas's borders were established at the Rio Grande.

The Compromise of 1850 set Texas's boundaries at their present form. Texas ceded its claims to land which later became half of present day New Mexico, a third of Colorado, and small portions of Kansas, Oklahoma, and Wyoming to the federal government, in return for the assumption of $10 million of the old republic's debt. Post-war Texas grew rapidly as migrants poured into the cotton lands of the state.

Civil War and Reconstruction

Texas was at war again after the election of 1860. Abraham Lincoln's election triggered South Carolina's declaration of secession from the Union, which was quickly followed by that of five other Lower South states. A State Convention considering secession opened in Austin on January 28, 1861. On February 1, by a vote of 166–8, the Convention adopted an Ordinance of Secession from the United States. Texas voters approved this Ordinance on February 23, 1861. Texas joined the Confederate States of America, ratifying the permanent C.S. Constitution on March 23, 1861. Not all Texans favored secession initially, although many of the same would later support the Southern cause. Texas's most notable unionist was the state Governor, Sam Houston. Not wanting to aggravate the situation, Houston refused two offers from President Lincoln for Union troops to keep him in office. After refusing to swear an oath of allegiance to the Confederacy, Houston was deposed as governor.

While far from the major battlefields of the American Civil War, Texas contributed large numbers of men and equipment to the rest of the Confederacy. Union troops briefly occupied the state's primary port, Galveston. Texas's border with Mexico was known as the "backdoor of the Confederacy" because trade occurred at the border, bypassing the Union blockade. The Confederacy repulsed all Union attempts to shut down this route, but Texas's role as a supply state was marginalized in mid-1863 after the Union capture of the Mississippi River. The final battle of the Civil War was fought near Brownsville Texas at Palmito Ranch with a confederate victory.

Texas descended into anarchy for two months between the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia and the assumption of authority by Union General Gordon Granger. Violence marked the early months of Reconstruction. Juneteenth commemorates the announcement of the Emancipation Proclamation in Galveston by General Gordon Granger, over two and a half years after the original announcement. President Johnson, in 1866, declared the civilian government restored in Texas. Despite not meeting reconstruction requirements, Congress readmitted Texas into the Union in 1870. Social volatility continued as the state struggled with agricultural depression and labor issues.

20th century to present

On January 10, 1901, the first major oil well in Texas, Spindletop, was found south of Beaumont. Other fields were later discovered nearby in East Texas, West Texas, and under the Gulf of Mexico. The resulting "Oil Boom" transformed Texas. Oil production eventually averaged three million barrels per day at its peak in 1972.

The Great Depression and the Dust Bowl dealt a double blow to the state's economy, which had significantly improved since the Civil War. Migrants abandoned the worst hit sections of Texas during the Dust Bowl years. Especially from this period on, blacks left Texas in the Great Migration to get work in the Northern United States or California and to escape the oppression of segregation.

World War II had a dramatic impact on Texas, as federal money poured in to build military bases, munitions factories, POW detention camps and Army hospitals; 750,000 young men left for service; the cities exploded with new industry; the colleges took on new roles; and hundreds of thousands of poor farmers left for much better paying war jobs, never to return to agriculture.

Texas modernized and expanded its system of higher education through the 1960s. The state created a comprehensive plan for higher education, funded in large part by oil revenues, and a central state apparatus designed to manage state institutions more efficiently. These changes helped Texas universities receive federal research funds.

On November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas.

Government and politics

The current Texas Constitution was adopted in 1876. Like many states, it explicitly provides for a separation of powers. The state's Bill of Rights is much larger than its federal counterpart, and has provisions unique to Texas.

State government

Texas has a plural executive branch system limiting the power of the Governor. Except for the Secretary of State, voters elect executive officers independently making candidates being directly answerable to the public, not the Governor. This election system has led to some executive branches split between parties. When Republican President George W. Bush served as Texas's governor, the state had a Democratic Lieutenant Governor, Bob Bullock. The executive branch positions consist of the Governor, Lieutenant Governor, Comptroller of Public Accounts, Land Commissioner, Attorney General, Agriculture Commissioner, the three-member Texas Railroad Commission, the State Board of Education, and the Secretary of State.

The bicameral Texas Legislature consists of the House of Representatives, with 150 members, and a Senate, with 31 members. The Speaker of the House leads the House, and the Lieutenant Governor, the Senate. The Legislature meets in regular session biennially, but the Governor can call for special sessions as often as desired. The state's fiscal year spans from the previous calendar year's September 1 to the current year's August 31. Thus, the FY dates from September 1, through August 31, .

The judicial system of Texas is one of the most complex in the United States, with many layers and overlapping jurisdictions. Texas has two courts of last resort: the Texas Supreme Court, for civil cases, and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. Except for some municipal benches, partisan elections select judges at all levels of the judiciary; the Governor fills vacancies by appointment. Texas leads the nation in executions– 442 as of October 2009 (see Capital punishment in Texas).

The Texas Ranger Division of the Texas Department of Public Safety is a law enforcement agency with statewide jurisdiction. Over the years, the Texas Rangers have investigated crimes ranging from murder to political corruption. They have acted as riot police and as detectives, protected the Texas governor, tracked down fugitives, and functioned as a paramilitary force both for the republic and the state. The Texas Rangers were unofficially created by Stephen F. Austin in 1823 and formally constituted in 1835. The Rangers were part of several important events of Texas history and some of the best-known criminal cases in the history of the Old West.

Politics

+ Texas Presidential elections results
! Year	Republican Party (United States)>Republican	Democratic Party (United States)>Democratic
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As in other "Solid South" states, whites resented the Republican Party after the American Civil War, and the Democratic Party dominated Texas politics from the end of Reconstruction until the late 20th century. The state has since become a Republican stronghold.

The Texas political atmosphere leans towards fiscal and social conservatism. Since 1980, most Texas voters have supported Republican presidential candidates. In 2000 and 2004, Republican George W. Bush won Texas with 60.1% of the vote, partly due to his "favorite son" status as a former Governor of the state. John McCain won the state in 2008, but with a smaller margin of victory compared to Bush at 55% of the vote. Austin consistently leans Democratic in both local and statewide elections. Counties along the Rio Grande generally vote for Democrats, while most rural and suburban areas of Texas vote Republican.

The 2003 Texas redistricting of Congressional districts led by the Republican Tom Delay, was called by the ''New York Times'' "an extreme case of partisan gerrymandering". A group of Democratic legislators, the "Texas Eleven", fled the state in a quorum-busting effort. Despite these efforts, the legislature passed a map heavily in favor of Republicans. Protests of the redistricting reached the national Supreme Court in the case ''League of United Latin American Citizens v. Perry'', but the ruling went in the Republicans' favor.

As of the general elections of 2010, a large majority of the members of Texas's U.S. House delegation are Republican, along with both U.S. Senators. In the 111th United States Congress, of the 32 Congressional districts in Texas, 23 are held by Republicans and 9 by Democrats. Texas's Senators are Kay Bailey Hutchison and John Cornyn. Since 1994, Texans have not elected a Democrat to a statewide office. The state's Democratic presence comes primarily from some minority groups in East Texas and South Texas as well as urban voters, particularly in Beaumont, El Paso, Austin, San Antonio, Dallas, and Houston.

Administrative divisions

Texas has 254 counties— the most nationwide. Each county runs on Commissioners' Court system consisting of four elected commissioners (one from each of four precincts in the county, roughly divided according to population) and a county judge elected at large from the entire county. County government runs similar to a "weak" mayor-council system; the county judge has no veto authority, but votes along with the other commissioners.

Although Texas permits cities and counties to enter "interlocal agreements" to share services, the state does not allow consolidated city-county governments, nor does it have metropolitan governments. Counties are not granted home rule status; their powers are strictly defined by state law. The state does not have townships— areas within a county are either incorporated or unincorporated. Incorporated areas are part of a municipality. The county provides limited services to unincorporated areas. Municipalities are classified either "general law" cities or "home rule". A municipality may elect home rule status once it exceeds 5,000 population with voter approval. Municipal elections are nonpartisan as are elections for school boards and community college districts.

Economy

As of 2008, Texas had a gross state product (GSP) of $1.224 trillion, the second highest in the U.S. Its GSP is comparable to the GDP of India or Canada which are ranked 12th and 11th worldwide. Texas's economy is the fourth largest in the world of country subdivisions behind England (as part of the UK), California and Tokyo Prefecture. Its Per Capita personal income in 2009 was $36,484, ranking 29th in the nation. Texas's large population, abundance of natural resources, and diverse population and geography have led to a large and diverse economy. Since oil was discovered, the state's economy has reflected the state of the petroleum industry. In recent times, urban centers of the state have increased in size, containing two-thirds of the population in 2005. The state's economic growth has led to urban sprawl and its associated symptoms.

As of January 2010, the states unemployment rate is 8.2%.

Texas has a "low taxes, low services" reputation. According to the Tax Foundation, Texans' state and local tax burdens rank among the lowest in the nation, 7th lowest nationally; state and local taxes cost $3,580 per capita, or 8.4% of resident incomes. Texas is one of seven states that lack a state income tax. Instead, the state collects revenue from a state property tax and sales tax, which is charged at the rate of 6.25%, but local taxing jurisdictions (cities, counties, special purpose districts, and transit authorities) may also impose sales and use tax up to 2% for a total maximum combined rate of 8.25%. Texas is a "tax donor state"; in 2005, for every dollar Texans paid to the federal government in federal income taxes, the state received approximately $0.94 in benefits.

In 2004, ''Site Selection Magazine'' ranked Texas as the most business-friendly state in the nation in part because of the state's three-billion-dollar Texas Enterprise Fund. The state shares the most Fortune 500 company headquarters along with, California, in the United States.

In 2010, there were 346,000 millionaires in the state, second highest in the nation.

Agriculture and mining

Texas has the most farms and the highest acreage in the United States. Texas leads the nation in livestock production. Cattle is the state's most valuable agricultural product, and the state leads nationally in production of sheep and goat products. Texas leads the nation in production of cotton. The state grows significant amounts of cereal crops and produce. Texas has a large commercial fishing industry. With mineral resources, Texas leads in creating cement, crushed stone, lime, salt, sand and gravel.

Energy

Ever since the discovery of oil at Spindletop, energy has been a dominant force politically and economically within the state. According to the Energy Information Administration, Texans consume the most energy in the nation per capita and as a whole. Unlike the rest of the nation, most of Texas is on its own alternating current power grid, the Texas Interconnection. Texas has a deregulated electric service.

The Railroad Commission of Texas, contrary to its name, regulates the state's oil and gas industry, gas utilities, pipeline safety, safety in the liquefied petroleum gas industry, and surface coal and uranium mining. Until the 1970s, the commission controlled the price of petroleum because of its ability to regulate Texas's oil reserves. The founders of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) used the Texas agency as one of their models for petroleum price control.

Texas has known petroleum deposits of about , which makes up approximately one-fourth of the known U.S. reserves. The state's refineries can process of oil a day. The Baytown Refinery in the Houston area is the largest refinery in America. Texas also leads in natural gas production, producing one-fourth of the nation's supply. Several petroleum companies are based in Texas such as: Conoco-Phillips, Exxon-Mobil, Halliburton, Valero, and Marathon Oil.

The state is a leader in renewable energy sources; it produces the most wind power in the nation. The Roscoe Wind Farm in Roscoe, Texas, is the world's largest wind farm as of October 2009 with a 781.5 megawatt (MW) capacity. The Energy Information Administration states that the state's large agriculture and forestry industries could give Texas an enormous amount biomass for use in biofuels. The state also has the highest solar power potential for development in the nation.

Technology

With large universities systems coupled with initiatives like the Texas Enterprise Fund and the Texas Emerging Technology Fund, a wide array of different high tech industries have developed in Texas. The Austin area is nicknamed the "Silicon Hills" and the north Dallas area the "Silicon Prairie". Texas has the headquarters of many high technology companies, such as Dell, Inc., Texas Instruments, Perot Systems, AT&T and Electronic Data Systems (EDS, acquired by Hewlett-Packard, August 2008), as well as the former headquarters of Compaq Computer Corp, which exists today as the largest campus of Hewlett-Packard (headquartered in CA).

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center (NASA JSC) located in Southeast Houston, sits as the crown jewel of Texas's aeronautics industry. Fort Worth hosts both Lockheed Martin's Aeronautics division and Bell Helicopter Textron. Lockheed builds the F-16 Fighting Falcon, the largest Western fighter program, and its successor, the F-35 Lightning II in Fort Worth.

Commerce

Texas's affluence stimulates a strong commercial sector consisting of retail, wholesale, banking and insurance, and construction industries. Examples of Fortune 500 companies not based on Texas traditional industries are AT&T, Men's Warehouse, Landry's Restaurants, Kimberly-Clark, Blockbuster, Whole Foods Market, and Tenet Healthcare. Nationally, the Dallas–Fort Worth area, home to the second shopping mall in the United States, has the most shopping malls per capita of any American metropolitan area.

Mexico, the state's largest trading partner, imports a third of the state's exports because of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). NAFTA has encouraged the formation of controversial maquiladoras on the Texas/Mexico border.

Demographics

As of 2009, the state has an estimated population of 24,782,406, an increase of 1.97% from the prior year and 16.1% since the year 2000. The state's rate of natural increase (births and deaths) since the last census was 1,389,275 people, immigration from outside the United States resulted in a net increase of 801,576 people, and migration within the country produced a net increase of 451,910 people. As of 2004, the state had 3.5 million foreign-born residents (15.6 percent of the state population), of which an estimated 1.2 million are illegal aliens. Texas from 2000–2006 had the fastest growing illegal immigration rate in the nation. In 2010, illegal aliens constituted an estimated 6.0% of the population. This was the fifth highest percentage of any state in the country.

Texas's population density is 34.8 persons/km² which is slightly higher than the average population density of the US as a whole, at 31 persons/km². In contrast, while Texas and France are similarly sized geographically, the European country has a population density of 116 persons/km².

Two-thirds of all Texans live in a major metropolitan area such as Houston. The Dallas-Fort Worth Metropolitan Area is the largest in Texas. While Houston is the largest city in Texas and the fourth largest city in the United States, the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area is considerably larger than that of Houston.

Racial groups and ethnic origins

According to the 2010 United States census, the racial and ethnic composition of Texas was the following:

White: 70.4% (Non-Hispanic Whites: 45.3%)

Black or African American: 11.8%

Native American: 0.7%

Asian: 3.8% (1.0% Indian, 0.8% Vietnamese, 0.6% Chinese, 0.4% Filipino, 0.3% Korean, 0.2% Pakistani, 0.07% Japanese, 0.05% Laotian, 0.05% Cambodian)

Pacific Islander: 0.1% (0.02% Guamanian, 0.01% Samoan, 0.01% Tongan, 0.01% Native Hawaiian)

Some other race: 10.5%

Two or more races: 2.7%

Hispanic or Latino (of any race): 37.6% (31.6% Mexican, 0.5% Puerto Rican, 0.2% Cuban)

White Americans are the racial majority in Texas. However, non-Hispanic whites represent roughly 48% of the population; therefore, Texas is a minority-majority state. Just over 17,020,000 Texans are white (both non-Hispanic and Hispanic), and roughly 11.4 million are non-Hispanic whites. German, Irish, and English Americans are the three largest European ancestry groups in Texas. German Americans make up 11.3% of the population, and number over 2.7 million members. Irish Americans make up 8.2% of the population, and number over 1.9 million members. English Americans make up 7.7% of the population, and number over 1.8 million members. There are roughly 600,000 French Americans and 472,000 Italian Americans residing in Texas; these two ethnic groups make up 2.5% and 2.0% of the population respectively.

Black Americans are the largest racial minority in Texas. Blacks of both Hispanic and non-Hispanic origin make up 11.5% of the population; blacks of non-Hispanic origin form 11.3% of the populace. Black Americans of both Hispanic and non-Hispanic origin number at roughly 2.7 million individuals.

Native Americans are a smaller minority in the state. Native Americans make up 0.5% of Texas' population, and number over 118,000 individuals. Native Americans of non-Hispanic origin make up 0.3% of the population, and number over 75,000 individuals. Cherokee Indians made up 0.1% of the population, and numbered over 19,400 members. In contrast, only 583 were identified as Chippewa.

Asian Americans are a sizable minority group in Texas. Americans of Asian descent form 3.4% of the population, with those of non-Hispanic descent making up 3.3% of the populace. Altogether, they number over 808,000 individuals. Non-Hispanic Asians number over 795,000. Just over 200,000 Indians make Texas their home. Texas is also home to over 187,000 Vietnamese and 136,000 Chinese. In addition to 92,000 Filipinos and 62,000 Koreans, there are 18,000 Japanese Americans living in the state. Lastly, over 111,000 people are of other Asian ancestry groups, such as Cambodian, Thai, and Hmong.

Americans with origins from the Pacific are the smallest minority in Texas. According to the survey, only 18,000 Texans are Pacific Islanders; 16,400 are of non-Hispanic descent. There are roughly 5,400 Native Hawaiians, 5,300 Guamanians, and 6,400 people from other groups. Samoan Americans were very scant; only 941 people were from this group.

Multiracial individuals are also a visible minority in Texas. People of multiracial heritage form 1.9% of the population, and number over 448,000 people. Almost 80,000 Texans claim European and African heritage, and make up 0.3% of the population. People of European and Native American heritage number over 108,800 (close to the number of Native Americans), and make up 0.5% of the population. People of European and Asian heritage number over 57,600, and form just 0.2% of the population. People of African and Native American heritage were even smaller in number (15,300), and make up just 0.1% of the total population.

Hispanics and Latinos are the second largest group in Texas after non-Hispanic European Americans. Over 8.5 million people claim Hispanic or Latino ethnicity. This group forms 36% of Texas' population. People of Mexican descent alone number over 7.3 million, and make up 30.7% of the population. Over 104,000 Puerto Ricans live in the state. Roughly 38,000 Cubans reside in the state. Over 1.1 million people (4.7% of the population) are of varying Hispanic and Latino ancestries, such as Costa Rican, Venezuelan, and Argentine.

German descendants inhabit much of central and southeast-central Texas. Over one-third of Texas residents are of Hispanic origin; while many have recently arrived, some Tejanos have ancestors with multi-generational ties to 18th century Texas. In addition to the descendants of the state's former slave population, many African American college graduates have come to the state for work recently in the New Great Migration. Recently, the Asian population in Texas has grown—primarily in Houston and Dallas. Other communities with a significantly growing Asian American population is in Austin, Corpus Christi, and the Sharyland area next McAllen, Texas. Currently, three federally recognized Native American tribes reside in Texas: the Alabama-Coushatta Tribe, the Kickapoo Traditional Tribe, and the Ysleta Del Sur Pueblo.

Based on Census Bureau data released at Medio February 2011, for the first time in recent history, Texas' white population is below 50 percent (45 percent) and Hispanics grew to 38 percent. Between 2000 and 2010, the total population growth by 20.6 percent, but Hispanics growth by 65 percent, whereas non-Hispanic whites only grew by 4.2 percent.

Religion

!Religion	!
Roman Catholic	28%
Baptist	21%
	11%
Methodist	8%
Christian – Others	7%
Lutheran	3%
Pentecostal	3%
Presbyterian	2%
Non-denominational	2%
	2%
	1%
Islam	1%
Jehovah's Witnesses	1%
	1%
Church of God	1%
Other	2%

The largest denominations by number of adherents in 2000 were the Roman Catholic Church with 4,368,969; the Southern Baptist Convention with 3,519,459; and the United Methodist Church with 1,022,342.

Known as the buckle of the Bible Belt, East Texas is socially conservative. Dallas-Fort Worth is home to three major evangelical seminaries and a host of monasteries. Lakewood Church in Houston, boasts the largest attendance in the nation averaging more than 43,000 weekly. Lubbock, according to local lore, has the most churches per capita in the nation.

Adherents of many non-Christian religions reside predominantly in the urban centers of Texas. The Jewish population stands at around 128,000. Approximately 146,000 adherents of non-Abrahamic religions such as Hinduism and Sikhism live in Texas.

Cities and towns

The state has three cities with populations exceeding one million: Houston, San Antonio, and Dallas. These three rank among the 10 most populous cities of the United States. As of 2000, six Texas cities had populations greater than 500,000 people. Austin, Fort Worth, and El Paso are among the 25 largest U.S. cities. Texas has four metropolitan areas with populations greater than a million: , , , and . The Dallas–Fort Worth and Houston metropolitan areas number about 6.3 million and 5.7 million residents, respectively. Three interstate highways I-35 to the west (Dallas–Fort Worth to San Antonio, with Austin in between), I-45 to the east (Dallas to Houston), and I-10 to the south (San Antonio to Houston) define the Texas Urban Triangle region. The region of contains most of the state's largest cities and metropolitan areas as well as 17 million people, nearly 75 percent of Texas's total population. Dallas and Houston have been recognized as beta world cities. These cities are spread out amongst the state. Texas has 254 counties, which is more than any state by 95. (Georgia)

In contrast to the cities, unincorporated rural settlements known as colonias often lack basic infrastructure and are marked by poverty. As of 2007, Texas had at least 2,294 colonias, located primarily along the state's border with Mexico. Texas has the largest concentration of people, approximately 400,000, living in colonias.

Culture

Historically, Texas culture comes from a blend of Southern (Dixie), Western (frontier), and Southwestern (Mexican/Anglo fusion), influences. A popular food item, the breakfast burrito, draws from all three, having a soft flour tortilla wrapped around bacon and scrambled eggs or other hot, cooked fillings. Adding to Texas's traditional culture, established in the 18th and 19th centuries, immigration has made Texas a melting pot of cultures from around the world.

Arts

Houston is one of only five American cities with permanent professional resident companies in all of the major performing arts disciplines: the Houston Grand Opera, the Houston Symphony Orchestra, the Houston Ballet, and The Alley Theatre. Known for the vibrancy of its visual and performing arts, the Houston Theatre District— a 17-block area in the heart of Downtown Houston— ranks second in the country in the number of theater seats in a concentrated downtown area, with 12,948 seats for live performances and 1,480 movie seats.

Founded in 1892, Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, also called "The Modern", is Texas's oldest art museum. Fort Worth also has the Kimbell Art Museum, the Amon Carter Museum, the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame, the Will Rogers Memorial Center, and the Bass Performance Hall downtown. The Arts District of Downtown Dallas has arts venues such as the Dallas Museum of Art, the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center, the Margot and Bill Winspear Opera House, the Trammell & Margaret Crow Collection of Asian Art, and the Nasher Sculpture Center.

The Deep Ellum district within Dallas became popular during the 1920s and 1930s as the prime jazz and blues hotspot in the Southern United States. The name Deep Ellum comes from local people pronouncing "Deep Elm" as "Deep Ellum". Artists such as Blind Lemon Jefferson, Robert Johnson, Huddie "Leadbelly" Ledbetter, and Bessie Smith played in early Deep Ellum clubs.

Austin, ''The Live Music Capital of the World'', boasts "more live music venues per capita than such music hotbeds as Nashville, Memphis, Los Angeles, Las Vegas or New York City." The city's music revolves around the nightclubs on 6th Street; events like the film, music, and multimedia festival South by Southwest; the longest-running concert music program on American television, ''Austin City Limits''; and the Austin City Limits Music Festival held in Zilker Park.

Since 1980, San Antonio has evolved into the "The Tejano Music Capital Of The World." The Tejano Music Awards have provided a forum to create greater awareness and appreciation for Tejano music and culture.

Education

The second president of the Republic of Texas, Mirabeau B. Lamar, is the ''Father of Texas Education''. During his term, the state set aside three leagues of land in each county for equipping public schools. An additional 50 leagues of land set aside for the support of two universities would later become the basis of the state's Permanent University Fund. Lamar's actions set the foundation for a Texas-wide public school system. Texas ranked 29th in the American Legislative Exchange Council's Report Card on American Education. Texas students ranked higher than average in mathematics, but lower in reading. Between 2006–2007, Texas spent $7,275 per pupil ranking it below the national average of $9,389. The pupil/teacher ratio was 14.9, below the national average of 15.3. Texas paid instructors $41,744, below the national average of $46,593. The state provided 88.0% of the funding for education, the federal government 12.0%.

The Texas Education Agency (TEA) administers the state's public school systems. Texas has over 1,000 school districts- all districts except the Stafford Municipal School District are independent from municipal government and many cross city boundaries. School districts have the power to tax their residents and to assert eminent domain over privately owned property. Due to court-mandated equitable school financing for school districts, the state has a controversial tax redistribution system called the"Robin Hood plan". This plan transfers property tax revenue from wealthy school districts to poor ones. The TEA has no authority over private or home school activities.

Students in Texas take the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS) in primary and secondary school. TAKS assess students' attainment of reading, writing, mathematics, science, and social studies skills required under Texas education standards and the No Child Left Behind Act. In spring 2007, Texas legislators replaced the TAKS for freshmen in the 2011–2012 school year and onward with End of Course exams for core high school classes.

Colleges and universities

Texas's controversial alternative affirmative action plan, Texas House Bill 588, guarantees Texas students who graduated in the percent of their high school class automatic admission to state-funded universities. The bill encourages diversity while avoiding problems stemming from the ''Hopwood v. Texas'' (1996) case. Six state university systems and four independent public universities exist in Texas. Discovery of minerals on Permanent University Fund land, particularly oil, has helped fund the rapid growth the state's largest university systems: University of Texas and Texas A&M. The PUF principal in fall 2005 was approximately $15 billion, second in size only to Harvard University's endowment. The other four university systems are the , the University of North Texas, , and . Texas has three nationally recognized top-tier public research universities: The University of Texas at Austin, Texas A&M University, and the University of Houston. The University of Texas at Austin and Texas A&M University are flagship universities of the state of Texas. Both were established by the Texas Constitution and hold stakes in the Permanent University Fund. The state has been putting effort to expand the number of flagship universities by elevating some of its seven institutions designated as "emerging research universities." The two that are expected to emerge first are the University of Houston and Texas Tech University, likely in that order according to discussions during the 82^nd Texas Legislature. The state is home to many private institutions ranging from liberal arts colleges to a nationally recognized top-tier research university. in Houston is one of the leading teaching and research universities of the United States and is ranked the nation's 17th-best overall university by ''U.S. News & World Report''. The former republic chartered the private universities , , and .

Universities in Texas currently host two presidential libraries: George Bush Presidential Library at Texas A&M University and the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum at The University of Texas at Austin. An agreement has been reached to create a third; the George W. Bush Presidential Library at Southern Methodist University.

Healthcare

The Commonwealth Fund ranks the Texas healthcare system the third worst in the nation. Texas ranks close to last in access to healthcare, quality of care, avoidable hospital spending, and equity among various groups. Causes of the state's poor rankings include politics, a high poverty rate, and the highest rate of illegal immigration in the nation. In May 2006, Texas initiated the program "code red" in response to the report that the state had 25.1% of the population without health insurance, the largest proportion in the nation. Texas also has controversial non-economic damages caps for medical malpractice lawsuits, set at $250,000, in an attempt to "curb rising malpractice premiums, and control escalating healthcare costs".

The Trust for America's Health ranked Texas 15th highest in adult obesity, with 27.2% of the state's population measured as obese. The 2008 Men's Health obesity survey ranked four Texas cities among the top 25 fattest cities in America; Houston ranked 6th, Dallas 7th, El Paso 8th, and Arlington 14th. Texas had only one city, Austin, ranked 21st, in the top 25 among the "fittest cities" in America. The same survey has evaluated the state's obesity initiatives favorably with a "B+". The state is ranked forty-second in the percentage of residents who engage in regular exercise.

Medical research

Many elite research medical centers are located in Texas. The state has nine medical schools, three dental schools, and one optometry school. Texas has two Biosafety Level 4 (BSL-4) laboratories: one at The University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) in Galveston, and the other at the Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research in San Antonio—the first privately owned BSL-4 lab in the United States.

The Texas Medical Center in Houston, holds the world's largest concentration of research and healthcare institutions, with 47 member institutions. Texas Medical Center performs the most heart transplants in the world. The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston is a highly regarded academic institution that centers around cancer patient care, research, education and prevention.

San Antonio's South Texas Medical Center facilities rank sixth in clinical medicine research impact in the United States. The University of Texas Health Science Center is another highly ranked research and educational institution in San Antonio.

Both the American Heart Association and the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center call Dallas home. The Southwestern Medical Center ranks "among the top academic medical centers in the world". The institution's medical school employs the most medical school Nobel laureates in the world.

Transportation

Texans have historically had difficulties traversing Texas due to the state's large size and rough terrain. Texas has compensated by building both America's largest highway and railway systems in terms of length, as well as the largest number of airports. The regulatory authority, the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) maintains the state's immense highway system, regulates aviation, and public transportation systems. Located centrally in North America, the state is an important transportation hub. From the Dallas/Fort Worth area, trucks can reach 93% of the nation's population within 48 hours, and 37% within 24 hours. Texas has 33 foreign trade zones (FTZ), the most in the nation. In 2004, a combined total of $298 billion of goods passed though Texas FTZs.

Highways

Texans have heavily traveled their freeways since the 1948 opening of the Gulf Freeway in Houston. As of 2005, of public highway crisscrossed Texas (up from in 1984). To fund recent growth in the state highways, Texas has 17 toll roads (see list) with several additional tollways proposed. In west Texas, both I-10 and I-20 have speed limits of , the highest in the nation. All federal and state highways in Texas are paved.

In March 2011, Texas ranked as a bottom-ten "Worst" state (tied with Montana and North Dakota) in the American State Litter Scorecard, presented at the American Society for Public Administration national conference. Public roadways in the Lone Star State suffer from an overall poor quality of landscape cleanliness, attributed to ineffective roadside and adjacent property litter/debris abatement standards, seemingly politicized procedural efforts, and other relevant public performance indicators.

Airports

Texas has the most airports of any state in the nation. Largest in Texas by size and passengers served, Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport (DFW) is the second largest by area in the United States, and fourth in the world with . In traffic, DFW is the busiest in the state and the fourth in the United States, and sixth worldwide. AMR Corporation's American / American Eagle, the world's second largest airline in total passengers-miles transported (after Delta Air Lines, and soon third, after the combined United and Continental airlines) and passenger fleet size, uses DFW as its largest and main hub. Southwest Airlines, also headquartered in Dallas, has its operations currently at Dallas Love Field. It ranks as the largest airline in the United States by number of passengers carried domestically per year and the largest airline in the world by number of passengers carried.

Texas's second-largest air facility is Houston's George Bush Intercontinental Airport (IAH) with. It serves as Houston based Continental Airlines's largest hub. IAH offers service to the most Mexican destinations of any U.S. airport. The next four largest airports in the state all serve over 4 million passengers annually; they include:Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, William P. Hobby Airport, San Antonio International Airport, and Dallas Love Field. The smallest airport in the state to be designated an international airport is Del Rio International Airport.

Ports

Around 1,150 seaports dot Texas's coast with over of channels. Ports employ nearly one-million people and handle an average of 317 million metric tons. Texas ports connect with the rest of the U.S. Atlantic seaboard with the Gulf section of the Intracoastal Waterway. The Port of Houston today is the busiest port in the United States in foreign tonnage, second in overall tonnage, and tenth worldwide in tonnage. The Houston Ship Channel currently spans wide by deep by long.

Railroads

Part of the state's tradition originates from cattle drives in which wranglers herded livestock to railroads in Kansas. The first railroad to operate in Texas was the Buffalo Bayou, Brazos and Colorado Railway, opening in August 1853. The first railroad to enter Texas from the north, completed in 1872, was the . Since 1911, Texas has led the nation in railroad length. Texas railway length peaked in 1932 at , but declined to by 2000. While the Railroad Commission of Texas originally regulated state railroads, in 2005 the state reassigned these duties to TxDOT.

Both Dallas and Houston feature light rail systems. Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) built the first light rail system in the Southwest United States. The Trinity Railway Express (TRE) commuter rail service that links Fort Worth and Dallas is provided by the Fort Worth Transportation Authority (the T) and DART. In the Austin area Capital Metropolitan Transportation Authority operates a commuter rail service known as Capital MetroRail to the northwestern suburbs. The Metropolitan Transit Authority of Harris County, Texas (METRO) operates light rail lines in the Houston area.

Amtrak provides Texas limited intercity passenger rail service both in size and frequency. Just three scheduled routes serve the state: the daily ''Texas Eagle'' ; the tri-weekly ''Sunset Limited'' , with stops in Texas; and the daily ''Heartland Flyer'' .

Sports

While American football has long been considered "king" in the state, Texans today enjoy a wide variety of sports.

Texans can cheer for a plethora of professional sports teams. Within the "Big Four" professional leagues, Texas has two NFL teams (the Dallas Cowboys and the Houston Texans), two Major League Baseball teams (the Texas Rangers and the Houston Astros), three NBA teams (the Houston Rockets, the San Antonio Spurs, and the Dallas Mavericks), and one National Hockey League team (the Dallas Stars). The Dallas – Fort Worth Metroplex is one of only thirteen American metropolitan areas that hosts sports teams from all the "Big Four" professional leagues. Outside of the "Big Four" leagues, Texas also has one WNBA team (the San Antonio Silver Stars) and two Major League Soccer teams (the Houston Dynamo and FC Dallas).

Collegiate athletics have deep significance in Texas culture, especially football. The state has ten Division I-FBS schools, the most in the nation. Four of the state's universities, the Baylor Bears, Texas Longhorns, Texas A&M Aggies, and Texas Tech Red Raiders, compete in the Big 12 Conference. Also, four of the state's schools, the Texas Longhorns, the Texas A&M Aggies, the TCU Horned Frogs, and the SMU Mustangs claim at least one national championship in the sport.

According to a survey of Division I-A coaches the rivalry between the University of Oklahoma and the University of Texas, the Red River Shootout, ranks the third best in the nation. A fierce rivalry, the Lone Star Showdown, also exists between the state's two largest universities, Texas A&M University and the University of Texas.left|thumb|2006 Lone Star Showdown football game at Darrell K. Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium The TCU Horned Frogs and SMU Mustangs also share a rivalry and compete annually in the Battle for the Iron Skillet.

The University Interscholastic League (UIL) organizes most primary and secondary school competitions. Events organized by UIL include contests in athletics (the most popular being high school football) as well as artistic and academic subjects.

Texans also enjoy the rodeo. The world's first rodeo was hosted in Pecos, Texas. The annual Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo is the largest rodeo in the world. It begins with trail rides that originate from several points throughout the state that convene at Reliant Park. The Southwestern Exposition and Livestock Show in Fort Worth is the oldest continuously running rodeo incorporating many of the state's most historic traditions into its annual events. Dallas hosts the State Fair of Texas each year at Fair Park.

From 2012 Austin will play host to a round of the Formula 1 World Championship – the first at a permanent road circuit in the United States since the 1980 Grand Prix at Watkins Glen International

See also

Gulf of Mexico

List of National Register of Historic Places in Texas

List of people from Texas

U.S. state

Footnotes

References

originally published 2004 by New York: Free Press

External links

;State Government

The State of Texas

Texas State Databases – Annotated list of searchable databases produced by Texas state agencies and compiled by the ''Government Documents Roundtable of the American Library Association''.

Texas Politics. An online textbook from the College of Liberal Arts, The University of Texas.

;U.S. Government

Energy Profile for Texas- Economic, environmental, and energy data

USGS real-time, geographic, and other scientific resources of Texas

Texas State Facts

South and West Texas, a National Park Service ''Discover Our Shared Heritage'' Travel Itinerary

;Other

The Texas State History Museum

The Handbook of Texas Online Published by the ''Texas State Historical Association''

''Texas Register'', hosted by the ''University of North Texas Libraries''

South and West Texas: A National Register of Historic Places Travel Itinerary

Texas Heritage Society

View historical photographs at the University of Houston Digital Library.

Category:States of the United States Category:Former Spanish colonies Category:States of the Confederate States of America Category:States and territories established in 1845 Category:States of the Southern United States

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Coordinates	12°58′0″N77°34′0″N
Order5	8th
Office5	Governor of Tennessee
Term start5	October 1, 1827
Term end5	April 16, 1829
Lieutenant5	William Hall
Predecessor5	William Carroll
Successor5	William Hall
Order4	1st President of the Republic of Texas
Term start4	October 22, 1836
Term end4	December 10, 1838
Predecessor4	David G. Burnet (interim)
Successor4	Mirabeau B. Lamar
Order3	3rd President of the Republic of Texas
Term start3	December 13, 1841
Term end3	December 9, 1844
Predecessor3	Mirabeau B. Lamar
Successor3	Anson Jones
Jr/sr2	United States Senator
State2	Texas
Term start2	February 21, 1846
Term end2	March 4, 1859
Predecessor2	None
Successor2	John Hemphill
Order1	7th Governor of Texas
Term start1	December 21, 1859
Term end1	March 18, 1861
Lieutenant1	Edward Clark
Predecessor1	Hardin Richard Runnels
Successor1	Edward Clark
Birth date	March 02, 1793
Birth place	Rockbridge County, Virginia
Death date	July 26, 1863
Death place	Huntsville, Texas
Party	Democratic
Signature	Sam Houston signature.svg }}

Samuel Houston, known as Sam Houston (March 2, 1793 July 26, 1863), was a 19th-century American statesman, politician, and soldier. He was born in Timber Ridge in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, of Scots-Irish descent. Houston became a key figure in the history of Texas and was elected as the first and third President of the Republic of Texas, U.S. Senator for Texas after it joined the United States, and finally as governor of the state. He refused to swear loyalty to the Confederacy when Texas seceded from the Union, and resigned as governor. To avoid bloodshed, he refused an offer of a Union army to put down the Confederate rebellion. Instead, he retired to Huntsville, Texas, where he died before the end of the Civil War.

His earlier life included migration to Tennessee from Virginia, time spent with the Cherokee Nation (into which he later was adopted as a citizen and took a wife), military service in the War of 1812, and successful participation in Tennessee politics. Houston is the only person in U.S. history to have been the governor of two different states (although other men had served as governors of more than one American territory).

In 1827 Houston was elected Governor of Tennessee as a Jacksonian. In 1829 Houston resigned as Governor and relocated to Arkansas Territory. Shortly afterwards he relocated to Texas, then a Mexican province, and became a leader of the Texas Revolution. He supported annexation by the United States. In 1832 Houston was involved in an altercation with a U.S. Congressman, followed by a high-profile trial. The city of Houston is named after him. Houston's reputation was honored after his death: posthumous commemoration has included a memorial museum, a U.S. Army base, a national forest, a historical park, a university, and the largest free-standing statue of an American.

Early life and family heritage

Sam Houston was the son of Major Samuel Houston and Elizabeth Paxton. Houston's ancestry is often traced to his great-great grandfather Sir John Houston, who built a family estate in Scotland in the late 17th century. His second son John Houston emigrated to Ulster, Ireland, during the English plantation period. Under the system of primogeniture, he did not inherit the estate. After several years in Ireland, John Houston emigrated in 1735 with his family to the North American colonies, where they first settled in Pennsylvania. As it filled with Lutheran German immigrants, Houston decided to move his family with other Scots-Irish who were migrating to lands in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia.

An historic plaque in Townland tells the story of the Houston family. It is located in Ballyboley Forest Park near the site of the original John Houston estate. It is dedicated to "One whose roots lay in these hills whose ancestor John Houston emigrated from this area."

The Shenandoah Valley had many farms of Scots-Irish migrants. Newcomers included the Lyle family of the Raloo area, who helped found Timber Ridge Presbyterian Church. The Houston family settled nearby. Gradually John developed his land and purchased slaves. Their son Robert inherited his father's land. His youngest of five sons was Samuel Houston. Samuel Houston became a member of Morgan's Rifle Brigade and was commissioned a major during the American Revolutionary War. At the time militia officers were expected to pay their own expenses. He had married Elizabeth Paxton and inherited his father's land, but he was not a good manager and got into debt, in part because of his militia service. Their children were born on his family's plantation near Timber Ridge Church, including Sam Houston on March 2, 1793, the fifth of nine children and the fifth son born.

Planning to move on as people did on the frontier to leave debts behind, the elder Samuel Houston patented land in Maryville the county seat of Blount Co.in East Tennessee near relatives. He died in 1807 before he could move with his family, and they moved on without him: Elizabeth taking their five sons and three daughters to the new state. Having received only a basic education on the frontier, young Sam was 14 when his family moved to Maryville. In 1809, at age 16, Houston ran away from home, because he was dissatisfied to work as a shop clerk in his older brothers' store.

He went southwest, where he lived for a few years with the Cherokee tribe led by ''Ahuludegi'' (also spelled Oolooteka) on Hiwassee Island, on the Hiwassee River above its confluence with the Tennessee. Having become chief after his brother moved west in 1809, ''Ahuludegi'' was known to the European Americans as John Jolly. He became an adoptive father to Houston, giving him the Cherokee name of ''Colonneh'', meaning "the Raven". Houston learned fluent Cherokee, while visiting his family in Maryville every several months. Finally he returned to Maryville in 1812, and at age 19, Houston founded a one-room schoolhouse in Knox county between Maryville and Knoxville. This was the first school built in Tennessee, which had become a state in 1796.

War of 1812

In 1812 Houston reported to a training camp in Knoxville, Tennessee,

Houston became close to Jackson, who was impressed with him and acted as a mentor. In 1817 Jackson appointed him sub-agent in managing the business relating to Jackson's removal of the Cherokees from East Tennessee to a reservation in what is now Arkansas. He had differences with John C. Calhoun, then Secretary of War, who chided him for appearing dressed as a Cherokee at a meeting. More significantly, an inquiry was begun into charges related to Houston's administration of supplies for the Indians. Offended, he resigned in 1818.

Tennessee politics

Following six months of study at the office of Judge James Trimble, Houston passed the bar examination in Nashville, after which he opened a legal practice in Lebanon, Tennessee. In 1818 Houston was appointed as the local prosecutor in Nashville, and was also given a command in the state militia.

In 1822 Houston was elected to the US House of Representatives for Tennessee, where he was a staunch supporter of fellow Tennessean and Democrat Andrew Jackson. He was widely considered to be Jackson's political protégé, although their ideas about appropriate treatment of Native Americans differed greatly. Houston was a Congressman from 1823 to 1827, re-elected in 1824.

In 1827 he declined to run for re-election to Congress. Instead he ran for, and won, the office of governor of Tennessee, defeating the former governor, William Carroll. He planned to stand for re-election in 1828, but resigned after the dissolution of his first marriage.

Marriage and family

On January 22, 1829, at the age of 35, Houston married 19-year-old Eliza Allen, the daughter of the well-connected planter Colonel John Allen (1776–1833) of Gallatin, Tennessee, who was a friend of Andrew Jackson. Houston's friends thought he was genuinely in love with the girl, but for unknown reasons Eliza left him shortly after the marriage and returned to her father and the couple never reconciled. Neither Houston nor Eliza Allen ever discussed the reasons for their separation; speculation and gossip accredited their split to Eliza being in love with another man. Houston seemed to care greatly for his wife's reputation and took great care to forestall any possible allegations of infidelity on their parts, writing to her father

:''April 9, 1829'' :''Mr. Allen, the most unpleasant & unhappy circumstance has just taken place in the family, & one that was entirely unnecessary at this time. Whatever had been my feelings or opinions in relation to Eliza at one time, I have been satisfied & it is now unfit that anything should be averted to....The only way this matter can now be overcome will be for us all to meet as tho it had never occurred, & this will keep the world, as it should ever be, ignorant that such thoughts ever were. Eliza stands acquitted by me. I have received her as a virtuous wife, & as such I pray God I may ever regard her, & trust I ever shall.''

:''She was cold to me, and I thought did not love me. She owns that such was one cause of my unhappiness. You can judge how unhappy I was to think I was united to a woman that did not love me. This time is now past, & my future happiness can only exist in the assurance that Eliza and myself can be happy & that Mrs. Allen & you can forget the past, —forgive all & and find your lost peace & you may rest assured that nothing on my part shall be wanting to restore it. Let me know what is to be done.''

Houston also requested that one of her relatives '' :...publish in the Nashville papers that if any wretch ever dares to utter a word against the purity of Mrs. Houston I will come back and write the libel in his heart's blood.''

In April 1829, in part due to the embarrassment of his well known separation, Houston resigned as governor of Tennessee and went west with the Cherokee to exile in Arkansas Territory. That year he was adopted as a citizen in the nation. There Houston cohabited with Tiana Rogers Gentry, a part-Cherokee widow in her mid-30s. They lived together for several years, and though he was still married under civil law he married Tiana under the Cherokee law. After declining to accompany Houston to Texas in 1832, she later married John McGrady. He officially divorced Eliza Allen in 1837; the following year 1838 Tiana died of pneumonia. (Eliza Allen remarried in 1840, becoming the wife of Dr. Elmore Douglass and stepmother to his 10 children; she bore him 4 children and died in 1861.)

On May 9, 1840, Houston, aged 47 and now the President of Texas, married for a third time. The bride was 21-year-old Margaret Moffette Lea of Marion, Alabama. The union was far longer lived than his two previous unions and produced eight children born between Houston's 50th and 67th years. Margaret Houston acted as a tempering influence on her much older husband and even convinced him to stop drinking. Although the Houstons had numerous houses, they kept only one continuously, Cedar Point (1840–1863) on Trinity Bay. Their children were the following:

Sam Houston, Jr., 1843–1894

Nancy Elizabeth, 1846–1920 (named after her grandmothers)

Margaret Lea, 1848–1906

Mary William, 1850–1931

Antoinette Power, 1852–1932 (named after Margaret's sister)

Andrew Jackson Houston, 1854-1941 (U.S. Senator from Texas)

William Rogers, 1858–1891

Temple Lea Houston, 1860–1905 (named after Margaret's father) (state senator of Texas legislature, 1885–1888)

Indian Territory

Houston went west and lived again among the Cherokee in the Arkansas Territory, who in October 1829 formally adopted him as a citizen of their nation. He set up a trading post (''Wigwam Neosho'') near Fort Gibson, Cherokee Nation, by the Verdigris River near its confluence with the Arkansas. The Cherokee gave him a nickname meaning "The Raven". During this time Houston was interviewed by the author Alexis de Tocqueville, who was traveling in the United States and its territories. Houston's abandonment of his gubernatorial office and his wife all caused a rift with his mentor President Jackson. They were not reconciled for several years.

Controversy and trial

In 1830 and again in 1832 Houston visited Washington, DC to expose the frauds which government agents committed against the Cherokee. While he was in Washington in April 1832, anti-Jacksonian Congressman William Stanbery of Ohio made accusations about Houston in a speech on the floor of Congress. Attacking Jackson through his protégé, Stanbery accused Houston of being in league with John Van Fossen and Congressman Robert S. Rose. The three men had bid on supplying rations to the various tribes of Native Americans who were being forcibly relocated because of Jackson's Indian Removal Act of 1830.

After Stanbery refused to answer Houston's letters about the accusation, Houston confronted him on Pennsylvania Avenue and beat him with a hickory cane. Stanbery drew one of his pistols and pulled the trigger—the gun misfired.

On April 17 Congress ordered Houston's arrest. Pleading self-defense, he hired Francis Scott Key as his lawyer. Houston was found guilty, but thanks to highly placed friends (among them James K. Polk), he was only lightly reprimanded. Stanbery filed charges against Houston in civil court. Judge William Cranch found Houston liable and fined him $500. Houston left the United States for Mexico without paying the fine.

Republic of Texas

The publicity surrounding the trial raised Houston's unfavorable political reputation. He asked his wife, Tiana Rodgers, to go with him to Mexican Texas, but she preferred to stay at their cabin and trading post in Oklahoma. She later married a man named Sam McGrady and died of pneumonia in 1838. Houston married again after her death.

Houston left for Texas in December 1832 and was immediately swept up in the politics of what was still a territory of the Mexican state of Coahuila-Texas. Historians have speculated that Houston went to Texas at the request of President Jackson to seek U.S. annexation.

Attending the Convention of 1833 as representative for Nacogdoches, Houston emerged as a supporter of William Harris Wharton and his brother, who promoted independence from Mexico, the more radical position of the American settlers and Tejanos in Texas. He also attended the Consultation of 1835. The Texas Army commissioned him as Major General in November 1835. He negotiated a peace settlement with the Cherokee of East Texas in February 1836 to allay their fears about independence. At the convention to declare Texan Independence in March 1836, he was made Commander-in-Chief.

On March 2, 1836, his 43rd birthday, Houston signed the Texas Declaration of Independence. He soon joined his volunteer army at Gonzales, but retreated before the superior forces of Mexican General (and dictator) Antonio López de Santa Anna. Mexican soldiers killed all those at The Alamo Mission at the end of the Battle of the Alamo on March 6. At Goliad, Santa Anna ordered the execution of approximately 400 volunteer Texas militia led by James Fannin, who had surrendered his forces.

Houston continued his retreat eastward towards the Gulf coast, drawing criticism for his perceived lack of willingness to fight. Finally, Santa Anna caught up with Houston's army, but had split his own army into three separate forces in an attempt to encircle the Texans. At the Battle of San Jacinto on April 21, 1836, Houston surprised Santa Anna and the Mexican forces during their afternoon "siesta." The Texans won a decisive victory in under 18 minutes, suffering few casualties, although Houston's ankle was shattered by a stray bullet. Badly beaten, Santa Anna was forced to sign the Treaty of Velasco, granting Texas its independence. Although Houston stayed on briefly for negotiations, he returned to the United States for treatment of his ankle wound.

Houston was twice elected president of the Republic of Texas. On September 5, 1836 he defeated Stephen F. Austin and Henry Smith with a landslide of over 79% of the vote. Houston then served from October 22, 1836, to December 10, 1838, and again from December 12, 1841, to December 9, 1844. On December 20, 1837, Houston presided over the convention of Freemasons that formed the Grand Lodge of the Republic of Texas, now the Grand Lodge of Texas.

While he initially sought annexation by the U.S., Houston dropped that goal during his first term. In his second term, he strove for fiscal prudence and worked to make peace with the Native Americans. He also struggled to avoid war with Mexico, whose forces invaded twice during 1842. In response to the Regulator-Moderator War of 1844, he sent in Republic militia to put down the warfare.

Settlement of Houston

The settlement of Houston was founded in August 1836 by brothers J.K. Allen and A.C. Allen. It was named in Houston's honor and served as capital. Gail Borden helped lay out Houston's streets.

In 1835, one year before being elected first President of the Republic of Texas, Sam Houston founded the Holland Masonic Lodge. The initial founding of the lodge took place in Brazoria and was relocated to what is now Houston in 1837.

The city of Houston served as the capital until President Mirabeau Lamar signed a measure that moved the capital to Austin on January 14, 1839. Between his presidential terms (the constitution did not allow a president to serve consecutive terms), Houston was a representative in the Texas House of Representatives for San Augustine. He was a major critic of President Mirabeau Lamar, who advocated continuing independence of Texas and the extension of its boundaries to the Pacific Ocean.

U.S. Senator from Texas

After the annexation of Texas by the United States in 1845, Houston was elected to the U.S. Senate, along with Thomas Jefferson Rusk. Houston served from February 21, 1846, until March 4, 1859. He was a Senator during the Mexican-American War, when the U.S. defeated Mexico and acquired vast expanses of new territory in the Southwest as part of the concluding treaty.

Throughout his term in the Senate, Houston spoke out against the growing sectionalism of the country. He blamed the extremists of both the North and South, saying: "Whatever is calculated to weaken or impair the strength of [the] Union,– whether originating at the North or the South,– whether arising from the incendiary violence of abolitionists, or from the coalition of nullifiers, will never meet with my unqualified approval."

Houston supported the Oregon Bill in 1848, which was opposed by many Southerners. In his passionate speech in support of the Compromise of 1850, echoing Matthew 12:25, Houston said "A nation divided against itself cannot stand." Eight years later, Abraham Lincoln would express the same sentiment.

Houston opposed the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854, and correctly predicted that it would cause a sectional rift in the country that would eventually lead to war, saying: " ... what fields of blood, what scenes of horror, what mighty cities in smoke and ruins– it is brother murdering brother ... I see my beloved South go down in the unequal contest, in a sea of blood and smoking ruin." He was one of only two Southern senators (the other was John Bell of Tennessee) to vote against the act. At the time, he was considered a potential candidate for President of the United States. But, despite the fact that he was a slave-owner, his strong Unionism and opposition to the extension of slavery alienated the Texas legislature and other southern States.

Governor of Texas

Houston twice ran for governor of Texas as a Unionist, unsuccessfully in 1857, and successfully against Hardin R. Runnels in 1859. Upon election, he became the only person in U.S. history to serve as governor of two states, as well as the only governor to have been a foreign head of state. Although Houston was a slave owner and opposed abolition, he opposed the secession of Texas from the Union.

An elected convention voted to secede from the United States on February 1, 1861, and Texas joined the Confederate States of America on March 2, 1861. Houston refused to recognize its legality, but the Texas legislature upheld the legitimacy of secession. The political forces that brought about Texas's secession were powerful enough to replace the state's Unionist governor. Houston chose not to resist, stating, "I love Texas too well to bring civil strife and bloodshed upon her. To avert this calamity, I shall make no endeavor to maintain my authority as Chief Executive of this State, except by the peaceful exercise of my functions ... " He was evicted from his office on March 16, 1861, for refusing to take an oath of loyalty to the Confederacy, writing,

"Fellow-Citizens, in the name of your rights and liberties, which I believe have been trampled upon, I refuse to take this oath. In the name of the nationality of Texas, which has been betrayed by the Convention, I refuse to take this oath. In the name of the Constitution of Texas, I refuse to take this oath. In the name of my own conscience and manhood, which this Convention would degrade by dragging me before it, to pander to the malice of my enemies, I refuse to take this oath. I deny the power of this Convention to speak for Texas....I protest....against all the acts and doings of this convention and I declare them null and void."

He was replaced by Lieutenant Governor Edward Clark. To avoid more bloodshed in Texas, Houston turned down U.S. Col. Frederick W. Lander's offer from President Lincoln of 50,000 troops to prevent Texas's secession. He said, "Allow me to most respectfully decline any such assistance of the United States Government."

After leaving the Governor's mansion, Houston traveled to Galveston. Along the way, many people demanded an explanation for his refusal to support the Confederacy. On April 19, 1861 from a hotel window he told a crowd:

"Let me tell you what is coming. After the sacrifice of countless millions of treasure and hundreds of thousands of lives, you may win Southern independence if God be not against you, but I doubt it. I tell you that, while I believe with you in the doctrine of states rights, the North is determined to preserve this Union. They are not a fiery, impulsive people as you are, for they live in colder climates. But when they begin to move in a given direction, they move with the steady momentum and perseverance of a mighty avalanche; and what I fear is, they will overwhelm the South."

Electoral history

Later life

In 1854, Houston was baptized by Rev. Rufus C. Burleson. At the time Burleson was the pastor of the Independence Baptist Church in Washington County, which Houston and his wife attended. Then the wealthiest community in Texas, Independence had won the bid for Baylor College, where Burleson served as second president. Houston was also close friend of Rev. George Washington Baines, who preceded Burleson at the church. Baines was the maternal great-grandfather of President Lyndon B. Johnson.

In 1862, Houston returned to Huntsville, Texas, and rented the Steamboat House; the hills in Huntsville reminded him of his boyhood home in Tennessee. Houston was active in the Masonic Lodge, transferring his membership to Forrest Lodge #19. His health deteriorated in 1863 due to a persistent cough. In mid-July, Houston developed pneumonia. He died on July 26, 1863 at Steamboat House, with his wife Margaret by his side. His last recorded words were, "Texas! Texas! Margaret..."

The inscription on his tomb reads: :A Brave Soldier. A Fearless Statesman. :A Great Orator– A Pure Patriot. :A Faithful Friend, A Loyal Citizen. :A Devoted Husband and Father. :A Consistent Christian– An Honest Man.

Sam Houston was buried in Huntsville, Texas, where he lived in retirement; his wife Margaret Lea was buried after her death in Independence at her family's cemetery.

Monuments and museums

Huntsville, Texas, is the home of the Sam Houston Memorial Museum, a statue, Sam Houston State University, and Houston's gravesite. The statue (which is the world's largest statue of an American hero, easily visible by motorists traveling on Interstate 45) is the title and subject of a country music song by Merle Haggard.

A bronze equestrian sculpture of Houston is located in Hermann Park in Houston, Texas This statue depicts Houston atop his horse with a single hand out stretched pointing directly towards San Jacinto.

The ''Sam Houston Wayside'' near Lexington, Virginia, is a 38,000-pound piece of Texas pink granite commemorating Houston's birthplace.

The Sam Houston Schoolhouse in Maryville, Tennessee, is Tennessee's oldest schoolhouse. In addition to the schoolhouse there is a museum on the grounds.

USS ''Sam Houston'', an Ethan Allen class submarine, was named after Houston.

The Sam Houston National Forest, one of four national forests in Texas, was named after Houston.

The Sam Houston Regional Library and Research Center, located outside of Liberty, Texas has the largest known collection of photographs and illustrations of Houston.

Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas, is named after Houston.

Many cities in the U.S. have a street, school, or park named for Houston; however, New York City's Houston Street is not named after Sam Houston. Instead, it is named after William Houstoun, and pronounced HOW-stin.

The State of Texas has placed a statue of Sam Houston inside Statuary Hall of the United States Capitol.

The Sam Houston Coliseum (now demolished) in Houston, Texas, was named after Houston. The Beatles performed there in 1965.

There is a mural depicting Sam Houston on a gas tank near State Hwy 225 in Houston. Sam Houston High School, in Lake Charles, Louisiana Sam Houston Middle School, in Garland, Texas Sam Houston Elementary Schools in Lebanon and Maryville, Tennessee; Eagle Pass, Huntsville, Conroe and Bryan, Texas, and Houston, Texas

A bust of Sam Houston is located inside the Virginia State Capitol Building in Richmond, Virginia

The City of Houston, Texas was named after Houston

The City of Houston, Mississippi was named after Houston

The City of Houston, Minnesota was named after Houston

A toll road encirling the city of Houston is named the Sam Houston Tollway

The song "SayHo" by Scott Miller is about Sam Houston

The State of Tennessee has a county named for him, Houston Co. the county seat is Erin, TN

In Texas, Houston County is named in honour of the renowned statesman. Its county seat is Crockett, Texas.

Notes

References

The following are reference sources (alphabetical by author):

''Andrew Jackson-His Life and Times''; Brands, H.W.; Doubleday: ISBN 0-385-50738-0.

''The Texas Revolution''; Brinkley, William; Texas A&M Press: ISBN 0-87611-041-3.

''Sword of San Jacinto'', Marshall De Bruhl; Random House: ISBN 0-394-57623-3.

''Sam Houston'', Haley, James L.; University of Oklahoma Press: ISBN 0-8061-3644-8.

''The Raven: A Biography of Sam Houston''; James, Marquis; University of Texas Press: ISBN 0-292-77040-5.

''The Eagle and the Raven''; Michener, James A.; State House Press: ISBN 0-938349-57-0.

Further reading

John F. Kennedy: ''Profiles in Courage'', 1956

External links

''Life of General Houston, 1793-1863'' published 1891, hosted by the Portal to Texas History.

''Sam Houston ; David Crockett.'' published 1901, hosted by the Portal to Texas History.

Sam Houston Memorial Museum

Sam Houston Memorial Museum Antiquities Collection From Texas Tides

Sam Houston's Obituary - The Tri Weekly Telegraph, Houston, Texas July 29, 1863 - TexasBob.com

Sam Houston Historic Schoolhouse in Maryville, TN USA

Tennessee Encyclopedia entry

Tennessee State Library & Archives, Papers of Governor Sam Houston, 1827-1829

Sam Houston Rode a Gray Horse

Houston Family Papers, 1836-1869 and undated, in the Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library at Texas Tech University

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Coordinates	12°58′0″N77°34′0″N
name	Mac Miller
background	solo_singer
birth name	Malcolm McCormick
birth date	January 19, 1992
birth place	Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
genre	Hip hop, hipster hop, comedy hip hop, pop rap
occupation	Rapper
years active	2007 – present
label	Rostrum Records
associated acts	Wiz Khalifa, Beedie, The Ill Spoken, ID Labs, Just Blaze, Phonte
website	}}

Malcolm McCormick (born January 19, 1992), known by his stage name Mac Miller (previously Easy Mac), is an American rapper from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He is signed to Rostrum Records.

Early life

Mac Miller was born Malcolm McCormick on January 19, 1992 and raised in the Point Breeze part of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the son of an architect and a photographer. His father is Christian and his mother is Jewish; Miller was raised Jewish and had a Bar Mitzvah. Before attending Taylor Allderdice High School, Miller attended Winchester Thurston School. In high school, Miller decided to focus on his hip-hop career, later noting, "Once I hit 15, I got real serious about it and it changed my life completely... I used to be into sports, play all the sports, go to all the high school parties. But once I found out hip-hop is almost like a job, that's all I did." Miller, also a self-taught musician, plays piano, guitar and the drums.

Career

Before his solo career, he was part of a rap group, The Ill Spoken with fellow Pittsburgh rapper, Beedie. Upon turning 18, he signed with Rostrum Records and released his mixtape debut, titled ''K.I.D.S.'' with the label in August 2010.

Mac Miller includes Big L, Lauryn Hill, The Beastie Boys, Outkast, and A Tribe Called Quest among his influences. He also has a close relationship with fellow Pittsburgh rapper Wiz Khalifa, saying "Wiz has been a big brother to me with this music thing so far. Our relationship is beyond music. He really is just my homie, whether I will be making music or not."

On November 22, 2010 his first single "Knock Knock" premiered its video on YouTube.

On March 29, 2011, he released an EP called ''On And On And Beyond''. The six-track work was produced by Rostrum Records.

On July 5, 2011, he announced the title of his first album ''Blue Slide Park'' on his YouTube channel, set for a Fall release.

Miller's most recent release was a mixtape titled ''Best Day Ever''. The mixtape features his singles "Get Up", "Wear My Hat", and the more favorites "Donald Trump", "BDE Bonus" and "All Around The World".

The video for the first single released from this mixtape, "Donald Trump", has reached 19 million views on YouTube, and Donald Trump himself, who is referenced on the song, acknowledged the video on the social networking site Twitter when it reached 16 million views stating "Who wouldn't be flattered?". The song also charted on the Billboard Hot 100 debuting at #80 and peaking at #79. This is an impressive feat considering he is not signed to a major label and the song didn't receive major radio airplay. He now has his debut album scheduled to come out soon and a tour for it called Blue Slide Park

In 2011 his first TV appearance took place in the VH1 show Single Ladies; he played a fictionalized version of himself that succeeded in selling one of his mixtapes to one of the main characters.

Discography

Albums

''Blue Slide Park'' (2011)

EPs

''On and On and Beyond'' (2011)

Mixtapes

''But My Mackin' Ain't Easy'' (2007)

''How High: The Mixtape'' (2008) (with The Ill Spoken)

''The Jukebox: Prelude to Class Clown'' (2009)

''The High Life'' (2009)

''K.I.D.S (Kickin' Incredibly Dope Shit)'' (2010)

''Best Day Ever'' (2011)

References

External links

Rostrum Records: Mac Miller

TreeJTV

Category:1992 births Category:American Jews Category:Articles created via the Article Wizard Category:Jewish rappers Category:Living people Category:Musicians from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Category:Rappers from Pennsylvania

de:Mac Miller fr:Mac Miller hr:Mac Miller it:Mac Miller no:Mac Miller pl:Mac Miller pt:Mac Miller ru:Мак Миллер fi:Mac Miller sv:Mac Miller

Coordinates	12°58′0″N77°34′0″N
Office	35th President of the United States
Vicepresident	Lyndon Johnson
Term start	January 20, 1961
Term end	November 22, 1963
Predecessor	Dwight Eisenhower
Successor	Lyndon Johnson
Jr/sr2	United States Senator
State2	Massachusetts
Term start2	January 3, 1953
Term end2	December 22, 1960
Predecessor2	Henry Lodge
Successor2	Benjamin Smith
State3	Massachusetts
District3	11th
Term start3	January 3, 1947
Term end3	January 3, 1953
Predecessor3	James Curler
Successor3	Tip O'Neill
Birth date	May 29, 1917
Birth place	Brookline, Massachusetts, U.S.
Death date	November 22, 1963
Death place	Dallas, Texas, U.S.
Party	Democratic Party
Spouse	Jacqueline Bouvier
Children	ArabellaCarolineJohnPatrick
Alma mater	Harvard College
Profession	Author
Religion	Roman Catholicism
Signature	John F Kennedy Signature 2.svg
Signature alt	Cursive signature in ink
Allegiance	United States
Branch	United States Navy
Serviceyears	1941–1945
Rank
Unit	Motor Torpedo Boat PT-109
Battles	World War IISolomon Islands campaign
Awards	30px Navy and Marine Corps Medal30px Purple Heart30px American Defense Service Medal30px American Campaign Medal 30px Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal (3 bronze stars)30px World War II Victory Medal }}

John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy (May 29, 1917 November 22, 1963), often referred to by his initials JFK, was the 35th President of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963.

After military service as commander of the Motor Torpedo Boat ''PT-109'' and Motor Torpedo Boat ''PT-59'' during World War II in the South Pacific, Kennedy represented Massachusetts's 11th congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1947 to 1953 as a Democrat. Thereafter, he served in the U.S. Senate from 1953 until 1960. Kennedy defeated then Vice President and Republican candidate Richard Nixon in the 1960 U.S. presidential election. He was the youngest elected to the office, at the age of 43, the second-youngest President (after Theodore Roosevelt), and the first president to have been born in the 20th century. Kennedy is the only Catholic president, and is the only president to have won a Pulitzer Prize. Events during his presidency included the Bay of Pigs Invasion, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the building of the Berlin Wall, the Space Race, the African American Civil Rights Movement and early stages of the Vietnam War.

Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas. Lee Harvey Oswald was charged with the crime but was shot and killed two days later by Jack Ruby before any trial. The FBI, the Warren Commission, and the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) concluded that Oswald was the assassin, with the HSCA allowing for the probability of conspiracy based on disputed acoustic evidence. Today, Kennedy continues to rank highly in public opinion ratings of former U.S. presidents.

Early life and education

John Fitzgerald Kennedy was born at 83 Beals Street in Brookline, Massachusetts on Tuesday, May 29, 1917, at 3:00 pm, the second son of Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr., and Rose Fitzgerald; Rose, in turn, was the eldest child of John "Honey Fitz" Fitzgerald, a prominent Boston political figure who was the city's mayor and a three-term member of Congress. Kennedy lived in Brookline for ten years and attended Edward Devotion School, Noble and Greenough Lower School, and the Dexter School, through 4th grade. In 1927, the family moved to 5040 Independence Avenue in Riverdale, Bronx, New York City; two years later, they moved to 294 Pondfield Road in Bronxville, New York, where Kennedy was a member of Scout Troop 2 (and was the first Boy Scout to become President). Kennedy spent summers with his family at their home in Hyannisport, Massachusetts, and Christmas and Easter holidays with his family at their winter home in Palm Beach, Florida. For the 5th through 7th grade, Kennedy attended Riverdale Country School, a private school for boys. For 8th grade in September 1930, the 13-year old Kennedy attended Canterbury School in New Milford, Connecticut. In late April 1931, he had appendicitis requiring an appendectomy, after which he withdrew from Canterbury and recuperated at home.

In September 1931, Kennedy was sent to The Choate School in Wallingford, Connecticut, for his 9th through 12th grade years. His older brother Joe Jr., was already at Choate, two years ahead of him, a football star and leading student in the school. Jack spent his first years at Choate in his brother's shadow, and compensated for this with rebellious behavior that attracted a coterie. Their most notorious stunt was to explode a toilet seat with a powerful firecracker. In the ensuing chapel assembly, the strict headmaster, George St. John, brandished the toilet seat and spoke of certain "muckers" who would "spit in our sea". The defiant Jack Kennedy took the cue and named his group "The Muckers Club", which included roommate and friend Kirk LeMoyne "Lem" Billings. While at Choate, Kennedy was beset by health problems, culminating in 1934 with his emergency hospitalization at Yale - New Haven Hospital. In June 1934, he was admitted to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota and diagnosed with colitis. Kennedy graduated from Choate in June 1935. For the school yearbook, of which he had been business manager, Kennedy was voted the "Most likely to Succeed".

In September 1935, he made his first trip abroad, with his parents and sister Kathleen, to London, with the intent of studying at the London School of Economics (LSE) as his older brother Joe had done. There is uncertainty about what he did at LSE before returning to America in October 1935, when he enrolled late and spent six weeks at Princeton University. He was then hospitalized for two months of observation for possible leukemia at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston. He convalesced further at the Kennedy winter home in Palm Beach, then spent the spring of 1936 working as a ranch hand on a 40,000-acre (160 km²) cattle ranch outside Benson, Arizona. That summer he raced sailboats at the Kennedy home in Hyannisport.

In September 1936, Kennedy enrolled at Harvard College, where he produced that year's annual "Freshman Smoker", called by a reviewer "an elaborate entertainment, which included in its cast outstanding personalities of the radio, screen and sports world". He tried out for the football, golf, and swim teams and earned a spot on the varsity swim team. In July 1937, Kennedy sailed to France, with his convertible on board, and spent ten weeks driving through Europe with Billings. In June 1938, Kennedy sailed overseas with his father and brother Joe to work with his father, Roosevelt's U.S. Ambassador to the Court of St. James's, at the American embassy in London. In August the family went to a villa near Cannes. In 1939, Kennedy toured Europe, the Soviet Union, the Balkans, and the Middle East in preparation for his Harvard senior honors thesis. He then went to Czechoslovakia and Germany before returning to London on September 1, 1939, the day Germany invaded Poland. On September 3, 1939, the family was in the House of Commons for speeches endorsing the United Kingdom's declaration of war on Germany. Kennedy was sent as his father's representative to help with arrangements for American survivors of the SS ''Athenia'', before flying back to the U.S. from Foynes, Ireland to Port Washington, New York on his first transatlantic flight.

As an upperclassman at Harvard, Kennedy became a more serious student and developed an interest in political philosophy. In his junior year he made the Dean’s List. In 1940, Kennedy completed his thesis, "Appeasement in Munich", about British participation in the Munich Agreement. He initially intended his thesis to be private, but his father encouraged him to publish it. He graduated from Harvard College with a S.B. ''cum laude'' in international affairs in 1940. His thesis, published that year as a book entitled ''Why England Slept'', became a bestseller. Kennedy enrolled and audited classes at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. In early 1941, he helped his father complete the writing of a memoir of his three years as an American ambassador and then traveled throughout South America.

Military service

In September 1941, after medical disqualification by the Army for his chronic lower back problems, Kennedy joined the U.S. Navy, with the influence of the director of the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI), former naval attaché to Joseph Kennedy. Kennedy was an ensign serving in the office of the Secretary of the Navy when the attack on Pearl Harbor occurred. He then attended the Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps and Motor Torpedo Boat Squadron Training Center, was assigned duty in Panama and later in the Pacific theater where he earned the rank of lieutenant, commanding a patrol torpedo (PT) boat.

On August 2, 1943, Kennedy's boat, ''PT-109'', along with ''PT-162'' and ''PT-169'', were ordered to continue nighttime patrol near New Georgia in the Solomon Islands, when it was rammed by the Japanese destroyer ''Amagiri''. Kennedy gathered his surviving crew members together in the water around the wreckage, to vote on whether to "fight or surrender". Kennedy stated, "There's nothing in the book about a situation like this. A lot of you men have families and some of you have children. What do you want to do? I have nothing to lose." Shunning surrender, the men swam towards a small island. Kennedy, despite re-injury to his back in the collision, towed a badly burned crewman through the water with a life jacket strap clenched between his teeth. He towed the wounded man to the island and later to a second island from where his crew was subsequently rescued. For these actions, Kennedy received the Navy and Marine Corps Medal with the following citation:

'' For extremely heroic conduct as Commanding Officer of Motor Torpedo Boat 109 following the collision and sinking of that vessel in the Pacific War Theater on August 1–2, 1943. Unmindful of personal danger, Lieutenant (then Lieutenant, Junior Grade) Kennedy unhesitatingly braved the difficulties and hazards of darkness to direct rescue operations, swimming many hours to secure aid and food after he had succeeded in getting his crew ashore. His outstanding courage, endurance and leadership contributed to the saving of several lives and were in keeping with the highest traditions of the United States Naval Service.''

In October 1943, Kennedy took command of a PT boat converted into a gun boat, ''PT-59'', which in November took part in a Marine rescue on Choiseul Island. Kennedy was honorably discharged in early 1945, just prior to Japan's surrender. Kennedy's other decorations in World War II included the Purple Heart, American Defense Service Medal, American Campaign Medal, Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal with three bronze service stars, and the World War II Victory Medal. When later asked by a reporter how he became a war hero, Kennedy joked: "It was involuntary. They sank my boat."

Congressional career

House of Representatives

While Kennedy was still serving, his older brother Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr. was killed in action on August 12, 1944 while part of Operation Aphrodite. Since Joe Jr. had been the family's political standard-bearer, the task now fell on John.

In 1946, U.S. Representative James Michael Curley vacated his seat in the strong Democratic 10th Congressional district in Massachusetts to become mayor of Boston. Kennedy ran for the seat, beating his Republican opponent by a large margin; this, despite not having previously included politics in his career planning. He was a congressman for six years but had a mixed voting record, often diverging from President Harry S. Truman and the rest of the Democratic Party.

Senate

In 1952, he defeated incumbent Republican Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. for the U.S. Senate. The following year he was married to wife Jacqueline.

Kennedy underwent several spinal operations over the following two years, was at times critically ill and received Catholic last rites, and was often absent from the Senate. During his convalescence in 1956, he published ''Profiles in Courage'', a book about U.S. Senators who risked their careers for their personal beliefs, and which received the Pulitzer Prize for Biography in 1957. Rumors that this work was co-authored by his close adviser and speechwriter, Ted Sorensen, were confirmed in Sorensen's 2008 autobiography.

At the 1956 Democratic National Convention, Kennedy was nominated for Vice President, for the presidential nominee Adlai Stevenson, but finished second in that balloting to Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee. Kennedy received national exposure from that episode; his father thought it just as well that his son lost, due to the political debility of his Catholicism, and the strength of the Eisenhower ticket.

One of the matters demanding Kennedy's attention in the Senate was President Eisenhower's bill for the Civil Rights Act of 1957 Kennedy cast a procedural vote on this which was considered by some as an appeasement of Southern Democratic opponents of the bill. Kennedy also voted for Title IV, termed the "Jury Trial Amendment". Many civil rights advocates at the time criticized that vote as one which would weaken the act. A final compromise bill, which Kennedy supported, was passed in September 1957. In 1958, Kennedy was re-elected to a second term in the Senate, defeating his Republican opponent, Boston lawyer Vincent J. Celeste, by a wide margin.

Senator Joseph McCarthy was a friend of the Kennedy family; Joseph Kennedy, Sr. was a leading McCarthy supporter, Robert F. Kennedy worked for McCarthy's subcommittee, and McCarthy dated Patricia Kennedy. In 1954, when the Senate voted to censure McCarthy, Kennedy had drafted, but not delivered, a speech supporting the censure, but was in the hospital. Though absent, he could have participated procedurally by "pairing" his vote against that of another senator, but did not do so. He never indicated how he would have voted, but the episode damaged Kennedy's support in the liberal community, including Eleanor Roosevelt, in the 1956 and 1960 elections.

1960 presidential election

On January 2, 1960, Kennedy initiated his campaign for President in the Democratic primary election, where he faced challenges from Senator Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota and Senator Wayne Morse of Oregon. Kennedy defeated Humphrey in Wisconsin and West Virginia, Morse in Maryland and Oregon, as well as token opposition (often write-in candidates) in New Hampshire, Indiana, and Nebraska. Kennedy made a point of visiting a coal mine in West Virginia; most miners and others in that predominantly conservative, Protestant state were quite wary of Kennedy's Roman Catholicism. His victory in West Virginia confirmed his broad popular appeal. At the Democratic Convention, he gave his well-known "New Frontier" speech, saying: "For the problems are not all solved and the battles are not all won—and we stand today on the edge of a New Frontier ... But the New Frontier of which I speak is not a set of promises—it is a set of challenges. It sums up not what I intend to offer the American people, but what I intend to ask of them."

With Humphrey and Morse eliminated, Kennedy's main opponent at the Los Angeles convention was Senator Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas. Kennedy overcame this formal challenge as well as informal ones from Adlai Stevenson, the Democratic nominee in 1952 and 1956, Stuart Symington, as well as several favorite sons, and on July 13 the Democratic convention nominated Kennedy as its candidate. Kennedy asked Johnson to be his Vice Presidential candidate, despite opposition from many liberal delegates and Kennedy's own staff, including brother Robert. He needed Johnson's strength in the South to win what was considered likely to be the closest election since 1916. Major issues included how to get the economy moving again, Kennedy's Roman Catholicism, Cuba, and whether the Soviet space and missile programs had surpassed those of the U.S. To address fears that his being Catholic would impact his decision-making, he famously told the Greater Houston Ministerial Association on September 12, 1960, "I am not the Catholic candidate for President. I am the Democratic Party candidate for President who also happens to be a Catholic. I do not speak for my Church on public matters – and the Church does not speak for me." Kennedy questioned rhetorically whether one-quarter of Americans were relegated to second-class citizenship just because they were Catholic, and once stated that, "No one asked me my religion [serving the Navy] in the South Pacific."

In September and October, Kennedy appeared with Republican candidate Richard Nixon, then Vice President, in the first televised U.S. presidential debates in U.S. history. During these programs, Nixon, with a sore injured leg and his "five o'clock shadow", looked tense, uncomfortable, and perspiring, while Kennedy, choosing to avail himself of makeup services, appeared relaxed, leading the huge television audience to favor Kennedy as the winner. Radio listeners either thought Nixon had won or that the debates were a draw. The debates are now considered a milestone in American political history—the point at which the medium of television began to play a dominant role in politics. After the first debate Kennedy's campaign gained momentum and he pulled slightly ahead of Nixon in most polls. On Tuesday, November 8, Kennedy defeated Nixon in one of the closest presidential elections of the twentieth century. In the national popular vote Kennedy led Nixon by just two-tenths of one percent (49.7% to 49.5%), while in the Electoral College he won 303 votes to Nixon's 219 (269 were needed to win). Another 14 electors from Mississippi and Alabama refused to support Kennedy because of his support for the civil rights movement; they voted for Senator Harry F. Byrd of Virginia. He was the youngest man elected president, succeeding Eisenhower who was then the oldest (Ronald Reagan surpassed Eisenhower as the oldest president in 1981).

Presidency

John F. Kennedy was sworn in as the 35th President at noon on January 20, 1961. In his inaugural address he spoke of the need for all Americans to be active citizens, famously saying, "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country." He also asked the nations of the world to join together to fight what he called the "common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease, and war itself." He added: "All this will not be finished in the first one hundred days. Nor will it be finished in the first one thousand days, nor in the life of this Administration, nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin." In closing, he expanded on his desire for greater internationalism: "Finally, whether you are citizens of America or citizens of the world, ask of us here the same high standards of strength and sacrifice which we ask of you."

In its scope, the address also reflected Kennedy’s confidence that his administration would chart a historically significant course in both domestic policy and foreign affairs. The contrast between this optimistic vision and the pressures of managing daily political realities at home and abroad would be one of the main tensions running through the early years of his administration.

Kennedy brought to the White House a stark contrast in organization compared to the decision making structure of the former general, Eisenhower; and he wasted no time in dismantling it. Kennedy preferred the organizational structure of a wheel, with all the spokes leading to the president. He was ready and willing to make the increased number of quick decisions required in such an environment, and did a monumental job of selecting his cabinet and other appointments, some experienced and some not. In those cases of inexperience, he stated, "we can learn our jobs together". There were a couple instances where the president got ahead of himself, as when he announced in a cabinet meeting, without prior notice, that Edward Lansdale would be Ambassador to South Vietnam, a decision which Secretary of State Rusk later had Kennedy alter. There was also the rapid appointment of Harris Wofford who was summoned and arrived at the White House for swearing in, without knowing the position he was to assume.

Kennedy further demonstrated his decision making agility with Congress and his staff. Much to the chagrin of his economic advisors who wanted him to reduce taxes, he quickly agreed to a balanced budget pledge when this was needed in exchange for votes to expand the membership of the House Rules Committee in order to give the Democrats a majority in setting the legislative agenda. The president insisted on a focus upon immediate and specific issues facing the administration, and quickly voiced his impatience with ponderings of deeper meanings. Deputy national security advisor, Walt Whitman Rostow, once began a diatribe about the growth of communism and Kennedy abruptly cut him off, asking, "What do you want me to do about that today?"

Foreign policy

President Kennedy's foreign policy was dominated by American-Soviet confrontations, manifested by proxy contests in the early stage of the Cold War. In 1961 Kennedy anxiously anticipated a summit with Nikita Khrushchev. Unfortunately, he [Kennedy] started off on the wrong foot by reacting aggressively to a routine Khrushchev speech on Cold War confrontation in early 1961. The speech was intended for domestic audiences in the Soviet Union, but Kennedy interpreted it as a personal challenge. His mistake helped raise tensions going into the Vienna Summit. On the way to the summit was a stop in Paris in June to meet Charles de Gaulle, whose advice to Kennedy was to expect and ignore the abrasive style of Khrushchev. The French president was nationalistic, and disdainful of the United States' presumed influence in Europe, in his talks with Kennedy. Nevertheless de Gaulle was quite impressed with the young president and family. Kennedy picked up on this in his speech in Paris, saying he would be remembered as "the man who accompanied Jackie Kennedy to Paris."

On June 4, 1961 the president met with Khrushchev in Vienna and left the meetings angry and disappointed that he had allowed the Premier to bully him, despite warnings received. Khrushchev for his part was impressed with the president's intelligence but thought him weak. Kennedy did succeed in conveying the bottom line to Khrushchev on the most sensitive issue before them, a proposed treaty between Moscow and East Berlin. He made it clear that any such treaty which interfered with U.S access rights in West Berlin would be regarded as an act of war. Shortly after the president returned home, the U.S.S.R. announced an intent to treat with East Berlin, regardless of any third party occupation rights in either sector of the city. A depressed and angry president then assumed his obligation was to prepare the country for nuclear war as the only option, and which he then personally thought had a one in five chance of occurring.

In the weeks immediately after the Vienna summit, more than 20 thousand people fled from East Berlin to the western sector in reaction to statements from the U.S.S.R. Kennedy began intensive meetings on the Berlin issue, where Dean Acheson took the lead in recommending a military buildup with NATO allies as the appropriate response. In a July 1961 speech, Kennedy announced his decision to add $3.25 billion to the defense budget, along with over 200 thousand additional troops for the military, saying an attack on West Berlin would be taken as an attack on the U.S. The speech received an 85% approval rating. The following month, the U.S.S.R. and East Berlin officials began blocking any further passage of East Berliners into West Berlin, erecting barbed wire fences across the city, which were quickly upgraded to the Berlin Wall. Kennedy's initial reaction was to ignore this, as long as free access from West to East Berlin continued. This course was altered when it was learned that the West Berliners had lost confidence in the defense of their position by the United States. Kennedy sent V.P. Johnson, along with a host of other military personnel, in convoy through West Germany, including Soviet armed checkpoints, to demonstrate the continued commitment of the U.S. to West Berlin.

John F. Kennedy gave a speech at Saint Anselm College on May 5, 1960, regarding America's conduct in the emerging Cold War. Kennedy's speech detailed how American foreign policy should be conducted towards African nations, noting a hint of support for modern African nationalism by saying that "For we, too, founded a new nation on revolt from colonial rule".

Cuba and the Bay of Pigs Invasion

Prior to Kennedy's election to the presidency, the Eisenhower Administration created a plan to overthrow the Fidel Castro regime in Cuba. Central to the plan, led by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) with help from the US Military, but with no covert help from the United States, was the arming of a counter-revolutionary insurgency composed of anti-Castro Cuban exiles U.S.-trained Cuban insurgents, led by CIA paramilitary officers were to invade Cuba and instigate an uprising among the Cuban people in hopes of removing Castro from power. On April 17, 1961, Kennedy ordered the previously planned invasion of Cuba to proceed. In what is known as the "Bay of Pigs Invasion", 1,500 U.S.-trained Cubans, called "Brigade 2506," returned to the island in the hope of deposing Castro. In keeping with prior plans, no U.S. air support was provided. As CIA director Allen Dulles latter stated, they thought that once the troops were on the ground any action required for success would be authorized by the president to prevent failure. By April 19, 1961, the Cuban government had captured or killed the invading exiles, and Kennedy was forced to negotiate for the release of the 1,189 survivors. After twenty months, Cuba released the captured exiles in exchange for $53 million worth of food and medicine. Furthermore, the incident made Castro wary of the U.S. and led him to believe that another invasion would occur. According to biographer Richard Reeves, Kennedy primarily focused on the political repercussions of the plan rather than the military considerations; when it failed, he was convinced the plan was a set up to make him look bad. Nevertheless, in the end, Kennedy took the blame himself. Afterwards, he opined, "...We got a big kick in the leg and we deserved it. But maybe we'll learn something from it."

Late in 1961 the White House formed the "Special Group (Augmented)", headed by Robert Kennedy and including Edward Lansdale, Sec. McNamara and others. The group's objective, to overthrow Castro via espionage, sabotage and other covert tactics, was never pursued.

Cuban Missile Crisis

On October 14, 1962, CIA U-2 spy planes took photographs in Cuba of intermediate-range ballistic missile sites under construction by the Soviets in previous months. The deployment of these missiles had come to the attention of the intelligence community when Soviet shipments to Cuba began and a debate had ensued in the National Security Council (NSC) as to whether the intended use of the weapons was offensive or defensive. The photos were shown to Kennedy on October 16, 1962, and a consensus was reached that the missiles were offensive in nature and thus posed an immediate nuclear threat. Kennedy faced a dilemma: if the U.S. attacked the sites, it might lead to nuclear war with the U.S.S.R., but if the U.S. did nothing, it would be faced with the increased threat from close range nuclear weapons. The U.S. would as well appear to the world as less committed to the defense of the hemisphere. On a personal level, Kennedy needed to show resolve in reaction to Khrushchev, especially after the Vienna summit.

More than a third of the members of the NSC favored an unannounced air assault on the missile sites, but for some of them this conjured up an image of "Pearl Harbor in reverse". There was as well some reaction from the international community (asked in confidence) that the assault plan was an overreaction in light of U.S. missiles placed in Turkey by Eisenhower. There also could be no assurance from the Council that the assault would be 100% effective. In concurrence with a majority vote of the NSC, Kennedy decided on a naval quarantine, and on October 22 dispatched a message of this to Khrushchev and announced the decision on TV.

The U.S. Navy would stop and inspect all Soviet ships arriving off Cuba, beginning October 24. The Organization of American States surprisingly gave unanimous support to the removal of the missiles. The president exchanged two sets of letters with Khrushchev to no avail. UN Secretary General U Thant requested both parties reverse their decisions and allow a cooling off period. Khrushchev said yes but Kennedy replied no. After one Soviet-flagged ship was stopped and boarded, on October 28 Khrushchev agreed to dismantle the missile sites subject to UN inspections. The U.S. publicly promised never to invade Cuba and privately agreed to remove its Jupiter missiles in Turkey, which were at that time obsolete and had been supplanted by missile-equipped US Navy Polaris subs. This crisis had brought the world closer to nuclear war than at any point known before or since. In the end, "the humanity" of the two men prevailed. The crisis improved the image of American willpower and the president's credibility. His approval rating increased from 66% to 77% immediately thereafter.

Latin America and communism

Arguing that "those who make peaceful revolution impossible, will make violent revolution inevitable," Kennedy sought to contain communism in Latin America by establishing the Alliance for Progress, which sent aid to troubled countries and sought greater human rights standards in the region. He worked closely with Governor of Puerto Rico Luis Muñoz Marín for the development of the Alliance of Progress, as well as developments in the autonomy of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico.

When the president took office the Eisenhower administration, through the CIA, has begun putting into place assassination plots in Cuba against Castro and in the Dominican Republic against Rafael Trujillo. Kennedy instructed the CIA privately that any such planning must include plausible deniability by the U.S. His public position was in opposition. In June 1961 the Dominican Republic's leader was assassinated; in the days following the event, Undersecretary of State Chester Bowles led a cautious reaction by the nation, and Robert Kennedy, substituting for his brother who was in France, and who saw an opportunity for the U.S., called him "a gutless bastard" to his face.

Peace Corps

As one of his first presidential acts, Kennedy asked Congress to create the Peace Corps. His brother-in-law, Sargent Shriver was the first director. Through this program, Americans volunteer to help underdeveloped nations in areas such as education, farming, health care, and construction. The authorization grew to 5,000 members by March 1963 and 10,000 the following year. Since 1961, over 200,000 Americans have joined the Peace Corps, serving in 139 countries.

Southeast Asia

When briefing Kennedy, Eisenhower emphasized the communist threat in Southeast Asia as requiring priority; Eisenhower considered Laos to be "the cork in the bottle" in regards to the regional threat. In March 1961, Kennedy voiced a change in policy from supporting a "free" Laos to a "neutral" Laos, indicating privately that Vietnam, and not Laos, should be deemed America's tripwire for communism's spread in the area. In May 1961, he dispatched Lyndon Johnson to meet with South Vietnam's President Ngo Dinh Diem. Johnson assured Diem of more aid in molding a fighting force that could resist the Communists. Kennedy announced a change of policy from support to partnership with Diem in defeat of communism in South Vietnam.

Kennedy initially followed Eisenhower's lead, by using limited military action to fight the Communist forces led by Ho Chi Minh. Kennedy continued policies providing political, economic, and military support for the South Vietnamese government. Late in 1961, the Viet Cong began assuming a predominant presence, initially seizing the provincial capital of Phuoc Vinh. Kennedy increased the number of helicopters, military advisors and undeclared U.S. Special Forces in the area, but he was still reluctant to order a full scale deployment of troops. Kennedy formally authorized escalated involvement when he signed the "National Security Action Memorandum – Subversive Insurgency (War of Liberation)" in early 1962. Secretary of State, Dean Rusk voiced strong support for U.S. involvement, as illustrated in his emphatic statement in fall 1962 that, "...neutralism [in South Vietnam] is not neutralism at all; it's tantamount to surrender". "Operation Ranch Hand", a broad scale aerial defoliation effort began on the roadsides in South Vietnam.

In April 1963, Kennedy expressed his assessment of the situation in Vietnam: "We don't have a prayer of staying in Vietnam. Those people hate us. They are going to throw our asses out of there at any point. But I can't give up that territory to the Communists and get the American people to re-elect me". By July 1963, Kennedy faced a crisis in Vietnam; despite increased U.S. support, the South Vietnamese military was only marginally effective against pro-Communist Viet Cong forces.

On August 21, just as the new U.S. Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge arrived, Ngo Dinh Diem, and his brother Ngo Dinh Nhu ordered South Vietnam forces, funded and trained by the CIA, to quell Buddhist demonstrations. The crackdowns heightened expectations of a coup d'état to remove Diem with (or perhaps by) his brother, Nhu. Lodge was instructed to try to get Diem and Nhu to step down and leave the country. Diem would not listen to Lodge. Cable 243 (DEPTEL 243), dated August 24, followed, declaring Washington would no longer tolerate Nhu's actions, and Lodge was ordered to pressure Diem to remove his brother, Nhu. If Diem refused, the Americans would explore alternative leadership. Lodge replied, stating the only workable option was to get the South Vietnamese generals to overthrow Diem and Nhu, as originally planned. At week's end, Kennedy learned from Lodge that the Diem government might, due to France's assistance to Nhu, be dealing secretly with the Communists – and might ask the Americans to leave; orders were sent to Saigon and throughout Washington to "destroy all coup cables". At the same time, the first formal anti-Vietnam war sentiment was expressed by U.S. clergy from the Ministers' Vietnam Committee.

A White House meeting in September was indicative of the very different ongoing appraisals; the President was given updated assessments after personal inspections on the ground by the Department of Defense (Gen. Victor Krulak) and the State Department (Joseph Mendenhall). Krulak said the military fight against the communists was progressing and being won, while Mendenhall stated that the country was civilly being lost to any U.S. influence. Kennedy reacted, saying, "Did you two gentlemen visit the same country?" The president was unaware the two men were at such odds they did not speak on the return flight.

In October 1963, the president appointed Defense Secretary McNamara and Gen. Maxwell D. Taylor to a Vietnam mission in another effort to synchronize the information and formulation of policy. The objective of the McNamara Taylor mission "emphasized the importance of getting to the bottom of the differences in reporting from U.S. representatives in Vietnam". In meetings with McNamara, Taylor and Lodge, Diem again refused to agree to governing measures insisted upon by the U.S., helping to dispel McNamara's previous optimism about Diem. Taylor and McNamara were also enlightened by Vietnam's Vice President, Nguyen Ngoc Tho (choice of many to succeed Diem should a coup occur), who in detailed terms obliterated Taylor's information that the military was succeeding in the countryside. The mission report, after it had been through the NSC, nevertheless retained, at Kennedy's insistence, a recommended schedule for troop withdrawals: 1000 by year's end and complete withdrawal in 1965, something the NSC considered strategic fantasy. The final report also portrayed military progress, an increasingly unpopular Diem-led government, not vulnerable to a coup, albeit possible internal assassination.

In late October, intelligence wires again reported a coup of the Diem government was afoot. The source, Duong Van Minh a/k/a "Big Minh" wanted to know the U.S. position. Kennedy's instructions to Lodge were to offer covert assistance to the coup, excluding assassination, but to ensure deniability by the U.S. Later that month, as the coup became imminent, Kennedy ordered all cables routed through him, and a policy of "control and cut out" was initiated – to insure presidential control of U.S. responses, while cutting him out of the paper trail. On November 1, 1963, South Vietnamese generals, led by "Big Minh", overthrew the Diem government, arresting and then killing Diem and his brother Nhu. Kennedy was shocked by the deaths and by finding out afterwards that Minh had asked the CIA field office to secure safe passage out of the country for Diem and Nhu, but was told 24 hours was needed to get a plane. Minh responded that he could not hold them that long and thus handed them a death sentence. Initially after news of the coup, there was renewed confidence in America and South Vietnam, that now the war might be won. McGeorge Bundy drafted a National Security Action Memo to present to Kennedy upon his return from Dallas. It reiterated U.S. resolve to fight communism in Vietnam, with both military and economic aid at a higher level, including operations in Laos and Cambodia. Before leaving for Dallas, Kennedy told Mike Forrestal that "after the first of the year ... [he wanted] an in depth study of every possible option, including how to get out of there ... to review this whole thing from the bottom to the top". When asked what he thought the president meant, Forrestal said, "it was devil's advocate stuff."

Historians disagree on whether Vietnam would have escalated to the point it did, had Kennedy survived and been re-elected in 1964. Fueling the debate are statements made by Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara in the film, "The Fog of War", that Kennedy was strongly considering pulling out of Vietnam after the 1964 election. The film also contains a tape recording of Lyndon Johnson stating that Kennedy was planning to withdraw, a position Johnson states he strongly disapproved. Further, Kennedy had signed National Security Action Memorandum (NSAM) 263, dated October 11, 1963, which ordered the withdrawal of 1,000 military personnel by the end of 1963. Nevertheless, given the reasons stated for the overthrow of the Diem government, such action would have been a policy reversal, but Kennedy was moving in a less hawkish direction since his acclaimed speech about World Peace at American University on June 10, 1963. According to historian Lawrence Freedman, Kennedy's statements about withdrawing from Vietnam, were "less of a definite decision than a working assumption, based on a hope for stability rather than an expectation of chaos". Some of the details of Kennedy's involvement in Vietnam were classified until the release of the ''Pentagon Papers'' in 1971.

U.S. involvement in the region escalated until Lyndon Johnson, his successor, directly deployed regular U.S. military forces for fighting the Vietnam War. After Kennedy's assassination, the new President Lyndon B. Johnson immediately reversed his predecessor's order to withdraw 1,000 military personnel by the end of 1963 with his own NSAM 273 on November 26, 1963.

American University speech

On June 10, 1963, Kennedy delivered the commencement address at American University in Washington, D.C., "to discuss a topic on which too often ignorance abounds and the truth is too rarely perceived - yet it is the most important topic on earth: world peace...I speak of peace because of the new face of war...in an age when a singular nuclear weapon contains ten times the explosive force delivered by all the allied forces in the Second World War...an age when the deadly poisons produced by a nuclear exchange would be carried by wind and air and soil and seed to the far corners of the globe and to generations yet unborn...I speak of peace, therefore, as the necessary rational end of rational men...world peace, like community peace, does not require that each man love his neighbor - it requires only that they live together in mutual tolerance...our problems are man-made - therefore they can be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants." The president also made two announcements - that the Soviets had expressed a desire to negotiate a nuclear test ban treaty and that the U.S had postponed planned atmospheric tests.

West Berlin speech

upright|thumb|left|Kennedy meeting with West Berlin governing mayor Willy Brandt, March 1961

In 1963, Germany was enduring a time of particular vulnerability, due to Soviet aggression to the east, de Gaulle's French nationalism to the west, and the impending retirement of German Chancellor Adenauer. On June 26, 1963, Kennedy visited West Berlin and gave a public speech reiterating American commitment to Germany and criticizing communism; he was met with an ecstatic response from a massive audience. Kennedy used the construction of the Berlin Wall as an example of the failures of communism: "Freedom has many difficulties and democracy is not perfect, but we have never had to put a wall up to keep our people in." The speech is known for its famous phrase ''"Ich bin ein Berliner"'' ("I am a citizen of Berlin"). Nearly five-sixths of the population was on the street for the speech. He remarked to Ted Sorensen afterwards: "We'll never have another day like this one, as long as we live."

Israel

Kennedy encountered problems with the Israeli government regarding the production of nuclear weapons in Dimona. After the existence of a nuclear plant was initially denied by the Israeli government, David Ben-Gurion, in a speech to the Israeli Knesset on December 21, 1960, stated that the purpose of the nuclear plant at Beersheba was for "research in problems of arid zones and desert flora and fauna". When Ben-Gurion met with Kennedy in New York, he claimed that Dimona was being developed to provide nuclear power for desalinization and "for the time being the only purposes [of the nuclear plant] are for peace". The State Department argued that if Israel wanted arms, it should in return accept international supervision of its nuclear program. Dimona was never placed under IAEA safeguards. On May 1, 1968, Undersecretary of State Katzenbach told President Johnson that Dimona was producing enough plutonium to produce two bombs a year. Attempts to write Israeli adherence to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) into contracts for the supply of U.S. weapons continued throughout 1968.

Iraq

In 1963, the Kennedy administration backed a coup against the government of Iraq headed by General Abdel Karim Kassem, who five years earlier had deposed the Western-allied Iraqi monarchy. The CIA helped the new Ba'ath Party government led by Abdul Salam Arif in ridding the country of suspected leftists and Communists. In a Ba'athist coup, the government used lists of suspected Communists and other leftists provided by the CIA, to systematically murder untold numbers of Iraq's educated elite—killings in which Saddam Hussein himself is said to have participated. The victims included hundreds of doctors, teachers, technicians, lawyers, other professionals, military and political figures. According to an op-ed in ''The New York Times'', the U.S. sent arms to the new regime, weapons later used against the same Kurdish insurgents the U.S. supported against Kassem and then abandoned him. American and UK oil and other interests, including Mobil, Bechtel, and British Petroleum, were conducting business in Iraq.

Ireland

On the occasion of his visit to the Republic of Ireland in 1963, President Kennedy joined with Irish President Éamon de Valera to form The American Irish Foundation. The mission of this organization was to foster connections between Americans of Irish descent and the country of their ancestry. Kennedy furthered these connections of cultural solidarity by accepting a grant of armorial bearings from the Chief Herald of Ireland. Kennedy had near-legendary status in Ireland, due to his ancestral ties to the country. Irish citizens who were alive in 1963 often have very strong memories of Kennedy's momentous visit. He also visited the original cottage at Dunganstown, near New Ross, where previous Kennedys had lived before emigrating to America, and said: "This is where it all began ..." On December 22, 2006, the Irish Department of Justice released declassified police documents that indicated that Kennedy was the subject of three death threats during this visit. Though these threats were determined to be hoaxes, security was heightened.

Nuclear Test Ban Treaty

Troubled by the long-term dangers of radioactive contamination and nuclear weapons proliferation, Kennedy and Khrushchev agreed on the desirability of negotiating a nuclear test ban treaty, originally conceived in Adlai Stevenson's 1956 presidential campaign. In their Vienna summit meeting in June 1961, Khrushchev and Kennedy reached an informal understanding against nuclear testing, but Khrushchev began testing nuclear weapons that September and Kennedy responded by conducting tests 5 days later. Shortly thereafter, new U.S satellites began delivering images which made it clear that the Soviets were substantially behind the U.S. in the "missile gap". Nevertheless, the greater nuclear strength of the U.S. was of little value as long as the U.S.S.R. perceived themselves to be at parity.

In July 1963 the stage was set for negotiations, and Kennedy sent Averell Harriman to Moscow to negotiate a treaty with the Soviets. The introductory sessions began with Khrushchev, who then delegated Soviet representation to Andrei Gromyko. It quickly became clear that the stated objective of a comprehensive test ban would not reach fruition, due largely to the reluctance of the Soviets for inspections to verify compliance. Ultimately, the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union were the initial signatories to a limited treaty, which prohibited atomic testing on the ground, in the atmosphere, or underwater, but not underground; the U.S. Senate ratified this and Kennedy signed it into law in October 1963. France was quick to declare that it was free to further develop and test its nuclear defenses.

Domestic policy

Kennedy called his domestic program the "New Frontier". It ambitiously promised federal funding for education, medical care for the elderly, economic aid to rural regions, and government intervention to halt the recession. Kennedy also promised an end to racial discrimination. In his 1963 State of the Union, he proposed substantial tax reform and reduction, in income tax rates, from the current range of 20-90% to a range of 14-65%; he proposed a reduction in the corporate tax rates from 52 to 47%. Congress did not act until 1964, after his death. To the Economics Club of N.Y., he spoke in 1963 of "...the paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high and revenues too low; and the soundest way to raise revenue in the long term is to lower rates now." Few of Kennedy's major programs passed Congress during his lifetime, although, under his successor Johnson, Congress did vote them through in 1964–65.

Economy

Kennedy ended a period of tight fiscal policies, loosening monetary policy to keep interest rates down and encourage growth of the economy. Kennedy presided over the first government budget to top the $100 billion mark, in 1962, and his first budget in 1961 led to the country's first non-war, non-recession deficit. The economy, which had been through two recessions in three years and was in one when Kennedy took office, accelerated notably during his brief presidency. Despite low inflation and interest rates, GDP had grown by an average of only 2.2% during the Eisenhower presidency (scarcely more than population growth at the time), and had declined by 1% during Eisenhower's last twelve months in office. Stagnation had taken a toll on the nation's labor market, as well: unemployment had risen steadily from under 3% in 1953 to 7%, by early 1961.

The economy turned around and prospered during the Kennedy administration. GDP expanded by an average of 5.5% from early 1961 to late 1963, while inflation remained steady at around 1% and unemployment eased; industrial production rose by 15% and motor vehicle sales leapt by 40%. This rate of growth in GDP and industry continued until around 1966, and has yet to be repeated for such a sustained period of time. There were nevertheless some painful moments, as in the stock market, which had steadily declined since Kennedy's election, and which dropped a full 10% shortly after the administration's action on the steel industry in 1962.

The major steel companies announced in April 1962 a 3.5% price increase (the first in 3 years) within a day of each other. This came just days after the companies had reached a settlement with the steelworkers' union, providing in chief a wage increase of 2.5%. The administration was furious, with Kennedy saying, "Why did they do this? Do they think they can get away with this? God, I hate the bastards." The president took personal charge of a campaign against the industry, assigning to each cabinet member a statement regarding the effects of the price increase on their area. Robert Kennedy, echoing his brother's own sentiments, "We're going for broke...their expense accounts, where they've been and what they've been doing...the FBI is to interview them all...we can't lose this." Robert took the position that the steel executives had illegally colluded in doing this. There was genuine concern about the inflationary effects of the price increase. The administration's actions influenced US Steel not to institute the price increase. ''The Wall Street Journal'' wrote that the administration had acted "by naked power, by threats, by agents of the state security police." Yale law professor Charles Reich wrote in ''The New Republic'' his opinion that the administration had violated civil liberties by calling a grand jury to indict US Steel for collusion so quickly. Nevertheless, the administration's Bureau of Budget reported the price increase would have resulted in a net gain for GDP as well as a net budget surplus.

Kennedy had little knowledge of the agricultural sector of the economy, and farmers were definitely not on his list of priorities, at least in his 1960 campaign. After giving a speech to a farming community, he rhetorically asked an aide, "Did you understand any of what I just said in there? I sure didn't."

Federal and military death penalty

As President, Kennedy oversaw the last pre-''Furman'' federal execution, and, as of 2008, the last military execution. Governor of Iowa Harold Hughes, a death penalty opponent, personally contacted Kennedy to request clemency for Victor Feguer, who was sentenced to death by a federal court in Iowa, but Kennedy turned down the request and Feguer was executed on March 15, 1963. Kennedy commuted a death sentence imposed by military court on seaman Jimmie Henderson on February 12, 1962, changing the penalty to life in prison.

On March 22, 1962, Kennedy signed into law HR5143 (PL87-423), abolishing the mandatory death penalty for first degree murder in the District of Columbia, the only remaining jurisdiction in the United States with a mandatory death sentence for first degree murder, replacing it with life imprisonment with parole if the jury could not decide between life imprisonment and the death penalty, or if the jury chose life imprisonment by a unanimous vote. The death penalty in the District of Columbia has not been applied since 1957, and has now been abolished.

Civil rights

The turbulent end of state-sanctioned racial discrimination was one of the most pressing domestic issues of the 1960s. The Supreme Court of the United States had ruled in 1954 in ''Brown v. Board of Education'' that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. Many schools, especially in southern states, did not obey the Supreme Court's decision. Segregation had also been prohibited by the Court at other public facilities (e.g. buses, restaurants, theaters, courtrooms, bathrooms, and beaches) but continued nonetheless. Kennedy verbally supported racial integration and civil rights; during the 1960 campaign he telephoned Coretta Scott King, wife of the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., who had been jailed while demonstrating for equal access of African Americans; Kennedy secured the early release of King, which drew additional black support to his candidacy.

Nevertheless President Kennedy believed the grass roots movement for civil rights would anger many Southern whites and make it more difficult to pass civil rights laws in Congress, which was dominated by conservative Southern Democrats, and he distanced himself from it. He also was more concerned with other issues early in his presidency, e.g. the "Bay of Pigs" fiasco and Southeast Asia. As articulated by brother Robert, the administration's early priority was to "keep the president out of this civil rights mess". As a result, many civil rights leaders viewed Kennedy as lukewarm, especially concerning the Freedom Riders who organized an integrated public transportation effort in the south, and who were repeatedly met with violence by whites, including law enforcement both federal and state. Kennedy assigned federal marshals to protect the Freedom Riders as an alternative to using federal troops or uncooperative FBI agents. Robert Kennedy, speaking for the president, urged the Freedom Riders to "get off the buses and leave the matter to peaceful settlement in the courts."

In September 1962, James Meredith enrolled at the University of Mississippi, but was prevented from entering. Attorney General Robert Kennedy responded by sending some 400 U.S. Marshals, while President Kennedy reluctantly federalized and sent 3,000 troops after the situation on campus turned violent. Campus Riots left two dead and dozens injured, but Meredith did finally enroll in his first class. On November 20, 1962, Kennedy signed Executive Order 11063, prohibiting racial discrimination in federally supported housing or "related facilities".

In early 1963, Kennedy related to Martin Luther King, Jr., about the prospects for civil rights legislation: "If we get into a long fight over this in Congress, it will bottleneck everything else, and we will still get no bill." However, civil rights clashes were very much on the rise that year. Brother Robert and Ted Sorenson pressed Kennedy to take more initiative on the legislative front. On June 11, 1963, President Kennedy intervened when Alabama Governor George Wallace blocked the doorway to the University of Alabama to stop two African American students, Vivian Malone and James Hood, from attending. Wallace moved aside only after being confronted by Deputy Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach and the Alabama National Guard, which had just been federalized by order of the President, and which had hours earlier been under Wallace's command. That evening Kennedy gave his famous civil rights address on national television and radio, launching his initiative for civil rights legislation - to provide equal access to public schools and other facilities, and greater protection of voting rights. His proposals became part of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The day ended with the murder of a N.A.A.C.P. leader, Medgar Evers, at his home in Mississippi. As the president had predicted, the day after his TV speech, and in reaction to it, House Majority leader Carl Albert called to advise him that his two year signature effort in Congress to combat poverty in Appalachia (Area Redevelopment Administration) had been defeated, primarily by the votes of Southern Democrats and Republicans.

Kennedy signed the executive order creating the Presidential Commission on the Status of Women on December 14, 1961. Former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt led the commission. The Commission statistics revealed that women were also experiencing discrimination; their final report documenting legal and cultural barriers was issued in October 1963. Earlier, on June 10, 1963, Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act of 1963, a federal law amending the Fair Labor Standards Act, aimed at abolishing wage disparity based on sex.

Over a hundred thousand, predominantly African Americans, gathered in Washington for the civil rights March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 28, 1963. Kennedy feared the March would have a negative effect on the prospects for the civil rights bills in Congress, and declined an invitation to speak. He turned over some of the details of the government's involvement to the Dept. of Justice, which channelled hundreds of thousands of dollars to the six sponsors of the March, including the N.A.A.C.P. and Martin Luther King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). To ensure a peaceful demonstration, the organizers and the president personally edited speeches which were inflammatory and agreed the March would be held on a Wednesday and would be over at 4:00 pm Thousands of troops were placed on standby. Kennedy watched King's speech on TV and was very impressed. The March was considered a "triumph of managed protest", and not one arrest relating to the demonstration occurred. Afterwards, the March leaders accepted an invitation to the White House to meet with Kennedy and photos were taken. Kennedy felt the March was a victory for him as well and bolstered the chances for his civil rights bill.

Nevertheless, the struggle was far from over. Three weeks later, a bomb exploded on a Sunday at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham; at the end of the day six children had died in the explosion and aftermath. As a result of this resurgent violence, the civil rights legislation underwent some drastic amendments that critically endangered any prospects for passage of the bill, to the outrage of the president. Kennedy called the congressional leaders to the White House and by the following day the original bill, without the additions, had enough votes to get it out of the House committee.

Civil liberties

In 1963, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, who hated civil-rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. and viewed him as an upstart troublemaker, presented the Kennedy Administration with allegations that some of King's close confidants and advisers were communists. Concerned that the allegations, if made public, would derail the Administration's civil rights initiatives, Robert Kennedy and the president both warned King to discontinue the suspect associations. After the associations continued, Robert Kennedy felt compelled to issue a written directive authorizing the FBI to wiretap King and other leaders of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, King's civil rights organization. Although Kennedy only gave written approval for limited wiretapping of King's phones "on a trial basis, for a month or so", Hoover extended the clearance so his men were "unshackled" to look for evidence in any areas of King's life they deemed worthy. The wire tapping continued through June 1966 and was revealed in 1968.

Immigration

John F. Kennedy initially proposed an overhaul of American immigration policy that later was to become the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, sponsored by Kennedy's brother Senator Edward Kennedy. It dramatically shifted the source of immigration from Northern and Western European countries towards immigration from Latin America and Asia and shifted the emphasis of selection of immigrants towards facilitating family reunification. Kennedy wanted to dismantle the selection of immigrants based on country of origin and saw this as an extension of his civil rights policies.

Space program

As a senator, Kennedy had been opposed to the manned space program. The Apollo program was conceived early in 1960, during the Eisenhower administration, as a follow-up to America's Mercury program. While NASA went ahead with planning for Apollo, funding for the program was far from certain given Eisenhower's ambivalent attitude to manned spaceflight. Early in his presidency, Kennedy was considering plans to dismantle the Apollo program due to its cost, but postponed any decision out of deference to his vice president whom he had appointed chairman of the U.S. Space Council and who strongly supported NASA due to its new Manned Spacecraft Center in Texas. In his January 1961 State of the Union address, Kennedy had suggested international cooperation in space. Sergei Khrushchev said Kennedy approached his father, Nikita, twice about a "joint venture" in space exploration—in June 1961 and autumn 1963. On the first occasion, the Soviet Union was ahead of America in many aspects of space technology.

On April 12, 1961, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first person to fly in space, reinforcing American fears about being left behind in a technological competition with the Soviet Union. Kennedy was eager for the U.S. to take the lead in the Space Race for strategic reasons. Kennedy first announced the goal for landing a man on the Moon in the speech to a Joint Session of Congress on May 25, 1961, stating:

"First, I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth. No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish."

Kennedy later made a speech at Rice University on September 12, 1962, in which he said:

"No nation which expects to be the leader of other nations can expect to stay behind in this race for space."

and

"We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard."

On November 21, 1962, in a Cabinet Room meeting with NASA Administrator James E. Webb and other officials, Kennedy said:

"This is important for political reasons, international political reasons... Because otherwise we shouldn't be spending this kind of money, because I'm not that interested in space. I think it's good, I think we ought to know about it, we're ready to spend reasonable amounts of money. But...we’ve spent fantastic expenditures, we’ve wrecked our budget on all these other domestic programs, and the only justification for it, in my opinion, to do it in the pell-mell fashion is because we hope to beat them [the Soviets] and demonstrate that starting behind, as we did by a couple of years, by God, we passed them. I think it would be a helluva thing for us."

On the second approach to Khrushchev, the Ukrainian was persuaded that cost-sharing was beneficial and that American space technology was forging ahead. The U.S. had launched a geosynchronous satellite in July 1962 and Kennedy had asked Congress to approve more than $25 billion for the Apollo program.

In September 1963, during a speech before the United Nations, Kennedy again proposed a joint lunar program to the Soviet Union. The proposal was not enthusiastically received by Khrushchev. Kennedy's death only a little more than a month later essentially made the proposal irrelevant. On July 20, 1969, almost six years after his death, Apollo's goal was realized when Americans landed on the Moon.

Native American relations

Construction of the Kinzua Dam flooded of Seneca nation land that they occupied under the Treaty of 1794, and forced approximately 600 Seneca to relocate to the northern shores upstream of the dam at Salamanca, New York. Kennedy was asked by the American Civil Liberties Union to intervene and halt the project but he declined citing a critical need for flood control. He did express concern for the plight of the Seneca, and directed government agencies to assist in obtaining more land, damages, and assistance to help mitigate their displacement.

Assassination

President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, at 12:30 pm Central Standard Time on November 22, 1963, while on a political trip to Texas to smooth over frictions in the Democratic Party between liberals Ralph Yarborough and Don Yarborough (no relation) and conservative John Connally. He was shot once in the upper back and was killed with a final shot to the head. He was pronounced dead at 1:00 pm. Only 46, President Kennedy died younger than any U.S. president to date. Lee Harvey Oswald, an employee of the Texas School Book Depository from which the shots were suspected to have been fired, was arrested on charges for the murder of a local police officer and was subsequently charged with the assassination of Kennedy. He denied shooting anyone, claiming he was a patsy, but was killed by Jack Ruby on November 24, before he could be indicted or tried. Ruby was then arrested and convicted for the murder of Oswald. Ruby successfully appealed his conviction and death sentence but became ill and died of cancer on January 3, 1967, while the date for his new trial was being set.

President Johnson created the Warren Commission—chaired by Chief Justice Earl Warren—to investigate the assassination, which concluded that Oswald was the lone assassin. The results of this investigation are disputed by many. The assassination proved to be an important moment in U.S. history because of its impact on the nation and the ensuing political repercussions.

Funeral

A Requiem Mass was held for Kennedy at the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle on November 25, 1963. Afterwards, John F. Kennedy's body was buried in a small plot, (20 by 30 ft.), in Arlington National Cemetery. Over a period of 3 years, (1964–1966), an estimated 16 million people had visited his grave. On March 14, 1967, Kennedy's body was moved to a permanent burial plot and memorial at the Cemetery. The funeral was officiated by Father John J. Cavanaugh. It was from this memorial that the graves of both Robert and Ted were modeled.

The honor guard at JFK's graveside was the 37th Cadet Class of the Irish Army. JFK was greatly impressed by the Irish Cadets on his last official visit to the Republic of Ireland, so much so that Jackie Kennedy requested the Irish Army to be the honor guard at the funeral.

Kennedy's wife, Jacqueline and their two deceased minor children were buried with him later. His brother, Senator Robert Kennedy, was buried nearby in June 1968. In August 2009, his brother, Senator Edward M. Kennedy, was also buried near his two brothers. JFK's grave is lit with an "Eternal Flame." Kennedy and William Howard Taft are the only two U.S. Presidents buried at Arlington.

Administration, Cabinet and judicial appointments 1961–1963

{| cellpadding="1" cellspacing="4" style="margin:1px; border:1px solid Black; float:left" |- ! style="background:#dcdcdc;" colspan="3"|The Kennedy Cabinet |- |align="left"|OFFICE||align="left"|NAME||align="left"|TERM |- ! style="background:black;" colspan="3"| |- |align="left"|President||align="left"|John F. Kennedy||align="left"|1961–1963 |- |align="left"|Vice President||align="left"|Lyndon B. Johnson||align="left"|1961–1963 |- ! style="background:black;" colspan="3"| |- |align="left"|State||align="left"|Dean Rusk||align="left"|1961–1963 |- |align="left"|Treasury||align="left"|C. Douglas Dillon||align="left"|1961–1963 |- |align="left"|Defense||align="left"|Robert McNamara||align="left"|1961–1963 |- |align="left"|Justice||align="left"|Robert F. Kennedy||align="left"|1961–1963 |- |align="left"|Postmaster General||align="left"|J. Edward Day||align="left"|1961–1963 |- |align="left"| ||align="left"|John A. Gronouski||align="left"|1963 |- |align="left"|Interior||align="left"|Stewart Udall||align="left"|1961–1963 |- |align="left"|Agriculture||align="left"|Orville Freeman||align="left"|1961–1963 |- |align="left"|Commerce||align="left"|Luther H. Hodges||align="left"|1961–1963 |- |align="left"|Labor||align="left"|Arthur Goldberg||align="left"|1961–1962 |- |align="left"| ||align="left"|W. Willard Wirtz||align="left"|1962–1963 |- |align="left"|HEW||align="left"|Abraham A. Ribicoff||align="left"|1961–1962 |- |align="left"| ||align="left"|Anthony J. Celebrezze||align="left"|1962–1963 |}

Judicial appointments

Supreme Court

Kennedy appointed the following Justices to the Supreme Court of the United States: Byron White 1962 Arthur Goldberg 1962

Other courts

In addition to his two Supreme Court appointments, Kennedy appointed 21 judges to the United States Courts of Appeals, and 102 judges to the United States district courts.

Image, social life and family

John Kennedy met his future wife, Jacqueline Bouvier, when he was a congressman. Charles L. Bartlett, a journalist, introduced the pair at a dinner party. They were married a year after he was elected senator, on September 12, 1953. Kennedy and his wife were younger in comparison to the presidents and first ladies that preceded them, and both were popular in ways more common to pop singers and movie stars than politicians, influencing fashion trends and becoming the subjects of numerous photo spreads in popular magazines. Although Eisenhower had allowed presidential press conferences to be filmed for television, Kennedy was the first president to ask for them to be broadcast live and made good use of the medium. Jacqueline brought new art and furniture to the White House, and directed its restoration. They invited a range of artists, writers and intellectuals to rounds of White House dinners, raising the profile of the arts in America. The Kennedy family is one of the most established political families in the United States, having produced a President, three senators, and multiple other Representatives, both on the federal and state level. John Kennedy's father, Joseph P. Kennedy, was a prominent American businessman and political figure, serving in multiple roles, including Ambassador to the United Kingdom, from 1938 to 1940.

Outside on the White House lawn, the Kennedys established a swimming pool and tree house, while Caroline attended a preschool along with 10 other children inside the home.

The president was closely tied to popular culture, emphasized by songs such as "Twisting at the White House." Vaughn Meader's ''First Family'' comedy album—an album parodying the President, First Lady, their family and administration—sold about four million copies. On May 19, 1962, Marilyn Monroe sang "Happy Birthday, Mr. President" at a large party in Madison Square Garden, celebrating Kennedy's upcoming forty-fifth birthday. The charisma of Kennedy and his family led to the figurative designation of "Camelot" for his administration, credited by his wife to his affection for the then contemporary Broadway musical of the same name.

Behind the glamorous facade, the Kennedys also experienced many personal tragedies. Jacqueline had a miscarriage in 1955 and a stillbirth in 1956. Their newborn son, Patrick Bouvier Kennedy, died in August 1963. Kennedy had two children who survived infancy. One of the fundamental aspects of the Kennedy family is a tragic strain which has run through the family, as a result of the violent and untimely deaths of many of its members. John's eldest brother, Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr., died in World War II, at the age of 29. It was Joe Jr. who was originally to carry the family's hopes for the Presidency. Then both John himself, and his brother Robert died as a result of assassinations. Edward had brushes with death, the first in a plane crash and the second as a result of a car accident, known as the Chappaquiddick incident. Edward died at age 77, on August 25, 2009, from the effects of a malignant brain tumor.

Years after Kennedy's death, it was revealed that in September 1947, at age 30, and while in his first term in Congress, he was diagnosed by Sir Daniel Davis at The London Clinic with Addison's disease, a rare endocrine disorder. In 1966, his White House doctor, Janet Travell, revealed that Kennedy also had hypothyroidism. The presence of two endocrine diseases raises the possibility that Kennedy had autoimmune polyendocrine syndrome type 2 (APS 2). He also suffered from chronic and severe back pain, for which he had surgery and was written up in the AMA's ''Archives of Surgery''. Kennedy’s condition may even have had diplomatic repercussions, as he appears to have been taking a combination of drugs to treat severe pain during the 1961 Vienna Summit with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. The combination included hormones, animal organ cells, steroids, vitamins, enzymes, and amphetamines, and potential side effects included hyperactivity, hypertension, impaired judgment, nervousness, and significant mood swings. Kennedy at one time was regularly seen by no less than three doctors, one of whom, Max Jacobson was unknown to the other two, as his mode of treatment was controversial and used for the most severe bouts of pain. There was often disagreement among his doctors, as in late 1961, over the proper balance of medication and exercise, with the president preferring the former as he was short on time and desired immediate relief.

Caroline Bouvier Kennedy was born in 1957 and is the only surviving member of JFK's immediate family. John F. Kennedy, Jr. was born in 1960, just a few weeks after his father was elected. John died in 1999, when the small plane he was piloting crashed en route to Martha's Vineyard, killing him, his wife, Carolyn Bessette, and his sister-in-law.

In October 1951, during his third term as Massachusetts's 11th district congressman, the then 34-year-old Kennedy embarked on a seven-week Asian trip to India, Japan, Vietnam, and Israel with his then 25-year-old brother Robert (who had just graduated from law school four months earlier) and his then 27-year-old sister Patricia. Because of their eight-year separation in age, the two brothers had previously seen little of each other. This trip was the first extended time they had spent together and resulted in their becoming best friends, in addition to being brothers. Robert was campaign manager for Kennedy's successful 1952 Senate campaign and later, his successful 1960 presidential campaign. The two brothers worked closely together from 1957 to 1959 on the Senate Select Committee on Improper Activities in the Labor and Management Field, when Robert was its chief counsel. During Kennedy's presidency, Robert served in his cabinet as Attorney General and was his closest advisor.

Some corroborated reports allege, but others deny, that Kennedy had affairs with a number of women, including: Marilyn Monroe, Gunilla von Post, Judith Campbell, Mary Pinchot Meyer and Mimi Beardsley Alford. There was some medical opinion that the drugs the president required for Addison's had the side effect of increasing virility. Kennedy inspired affection and loyalty from the members of his team and his supporters. According to author Reeves, this included "the logistics of Kennedy's liaisons...[which] required secrecy and devotion rare in the annals of the energetic service demanded by successful politicians."

Kennedy was a Life Member of the National Rifle Association. Kennedy came in third (behind Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mother Teresa) in Gallup's List of Widely Admired People of the twentieth century.

Ancestors

The Kennedy family originally came from Dunganstown, County Wexford. In 1848, Patrick Kennedy left his farm and boarded a ship in New Ross bound for Liverpool on his way to Boston. It was here he met the woman he was to marry, Bridget Murphy. Patrick Kennedy came to Boston, took a job as a migrant worker, and died within eight or nine years, of cholera. He left behind a widow and children to carry on.

Legacy

Television became the primary source by which people were kept informed of events surrounding John F. Kennedy's assassination. Newspapers were kept as souvenirs rather than sources of updated information. In this sense it was the first major "TV news event" of its kind, the TV coverage uniting the nation, interpreting what went on and creating memories of this space in time. All three major U.S. television networks suspended their regular schedules and switched to all-news coverage from November 22 through November 25, 1963, being on the air for 70 hours, making it the longest uninterrupted news event on American TV until 9/11. Kennedy's state funeral procession and the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald were all broadcast live in America and in other places around the world. The state funeral was the first of three in a span of 12 months. The other two were for General Douglas MacArthur and Herbert Hoover. All three have two things in common: the commanding general of the Military District of Washington during those funerals was Army Major General Philip C. Wehle and the riderless horse was Black Jack, who also served in that role during Lyndon B. Johnson's funeral.

The assassination had an effect on many people, not only in the U.S. but around the world. Many vividly remember where they were when first learning of the news that Kennedy was assassinated, as with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 before it and the September 11 attacks after it. UN Ambassador Adlai Stevenson said of the assassination: "all of us... will bear the grief of his death until the day of ours." Many people have also spoken of the shocking news, compounded by the pall of uncertainty about the identity of the assassin(s), the possible instigators and the causes of the killing as an end to innocence, and in retrospect it has been coalesced with other changes of the tumultuous decade of the 1960s, especially the Vietnam War.

Special Forces have a special bond with Kennedy. "It was President Kennedy who was responsible for the rebuilding of the Special Forces and giving us back our Green Beret," said Forrest Lindley, a writer for the newspaper ''Stars and Stripes'' who served with Special Forces in Vietnam. This bond was shown at JFK's funeral. At the commemoration of the 25th anniversary of JFK's death, Gen. Michael D. Healy, the last commander of Special Forces in Vietnam, spoke at Arlington Cemetery. Later, a wreath in the form of the Green Beret would be placed on the grave, continuing a tradition that began the day of his funeral when a sergeant in charge of a detail of Special Forces men guarding the grave placed his beret on the coffin.

Kennedy was the first of six Presidents to have served in the U.S. Navy, and one of the enduring legacies of his administration was the creation in 1961 of another special forces command, the Navy SEALs, which Kennedy enthusiastically supported.

Ultimately, the death of President Kennedy and the ensuing confusion surrounding the facts of his assassination are of political and historical importance insofar as they marked a turning point and decline in the faith of the American people in the political establishment—a point made by commentators from Gore Vidal to Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. and implied by Oliver Stone in several of his films, such as his landmark 1991 ''JFK''.

Kennedy's continuation of Presidents Harry S. Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower's policies of giving economic and military aid to the Vietnam War preceded President Johnson's escalation of the conflict. This contributed to a decade of national difficulties and disappointment on the political landscape.

Many of Kennedy's speeches (especially his inaugural address) are considered iconic; and despite his relatively short term in office and lack of major legislative changes coming to fruition during his term, Americans regularly vote him as one of the best presidents, in the same league as Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Some excerpts of Kennedy's inaugural address are engraved on a plaque at his grave at Arlington.

He was posthumously awarded the Pacem in Terris Award. It was named after a 1963 encyclical letter by Pope John XXIII that calls upon all people of goodwill to secure peace among all nations. Pacem in Terris is Latin for 'Peace on Earth.'

President Kennedy is the only president to have predeceased both his mother and father. He is also the only president to have predeceased a grandparent. His grandmother, Mary Josephine Hannon Fitzgerald, died in 1964, just over eight months after his assassination.

Throughout the English-speaking world, the given name ''Kennedy'' has sometimes been used in honour of President Kennedy, as well his brother Robert.

Eponyms

John F. Kennedy International Airport, American facility (renamed from Idlewild in December 1963) in New York City's Queens County; nation's busiest international gateway

John F. Kennedy Memorial Airport American facility in Ashland County, Wisconsin, near city of Ashland

John F. Kennedy Memorial Bridge American seven-lane transportation hub across Ohio River; completed in late 1963, the bridge links Kentucky and Indiana

John F. Kennedy School of Government, American institution (renamed from Harvard Graduate School of Public Administration in 1966)

John F. Kennedy Space Center, U.S. government installation that manages and operates America's astronaut launch facilities

John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School - trains United States Army personnel for the United States Army Special Operations Command and Army Special Operation Forces

John F. Kennedy University, American private educational institution founded in California in 1964; locations in Pleasant Hill, Campbell, Berkeley, and Santa Cruz

, U.S. Navy aircraft carrier ordered in April 1964, launched May 1967, decommissioned August 2007; nicknamed "Big John"

John F. Kennedy High School is the name of many secondary schools.

, U.S. Navy aircraft carrier to begin construction in 2012, and to be placed in commission in 2018.

Memorials

Coat of arms

In 1961, Kennedy was presented with a grant of arms for all the descendants of Patrick Kennedy from the Chief Herald of Ireland. The design of the arms strongly alludes to symbols in the coats of arms of the O'Kennedys of Ormonde and the Fitzgeralds of Desmond, from whom the family is believed to be descended. The crest is an armored hand holding four arrows between two olive branches, elements taken from the coat of arms of the United States of America and also symbolic of Kennedy and his brothers.

Kennedy received a signet ring engraved with his arms for his 44th birthday as a gift from his wife, and the arms were incorporated into the seal of the USS ''John F. Kennedy''. Following his assassination, Kennedy was honored by the Canadian government by having a mountain, Mount Kennedy, named for him, which his brother, Robert Kennedy, climbed in 1965 to plant a banner of the arms at the summit.

Media

In other media and popular culture

Kennedy's assassination was the subject of the Oliver Stone film ''JFK'', and footage of him appears in the Robert Zemeckis film ''Forrest Gump''.

He features in the video games ''JFK: Reloaded'' and ''Call of Duty: Black Ops''.

During his lifetime Kennedy was the focal point of a Superman comicbook, ''Superman's Mission for President Kennedy''.

Kennedy appears in the 2011 superhero film, ''X-Men: First Class'' in archive footage of his address to the nation regarding the 1962 Cuban missile crisis.

See also

Abraham Zapruder, photographer of the primary film of assassination, the Zapruder film.

Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy

History of the United States (1945–1964)

Jesuit Ivy

John F. Kennedy International Airport

The John F. Kennedy Memorial Park (in Ireland)

Kennedy Curse

Kennedy Doctrine

Kennedy Family

Lincoln-Kennedy coincidences urban legend

List of assassinated American politicians

List of Presidents of the United States

List of Presidents of the United States who died in office

Operation Northwoods

Orville Nix, photographer of the second film of assassination

Peace Corps

"Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy" retort by Senator Lloyd Bentsen, 1988 VP debate

US Presidents on US postage stamps

Kennedy half dollar

Footnotes

References

Alford, Mimi Beardsley & Newman, Judith. ''Once Upon A Secret'' (2010)

Ballard, Robert. ''Collision with History: The Search for John F. Kennedy's PT 109'' (2002)

Barnes, John. ''John F. Kennedy on Leadership'' (2007)

Bilharz, Joy Ann. ''The Allegany Senecas and Kinzua Dam: forced relocation through two generations'' (1998)

Blight, James G. "The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara" (2005)

Brauer, Carl. ''John F. Kennedy and the Second Reconstruction'' (1977)

Bugliosi, Vincent. "Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy" (2007)

Burner, David. ''John F. Kennedy and a New Generation'' (1988)

Casey, Shaun. ''The Making of a Catholic President: Kennedy vs. Nixon 1960'' (2009)

Collier, Peter & Horowitz, David. ''The Kennedys'' (1984)

Cottrell, John. ''Assassination! The World Stood Still'' (1964)

Dallek, Robert. ''An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963'' (2003)

Davis, F. ''Moving the Mountain: The Women's Movement in America since 1960'' (1999). See also: Martin, J. M. ''The Presidency and Women: Promise, Performance, and Illusion'' (2003).

Donovan, Robert J. ''PT-109: John F. Kennedy in WW II'', 40th Anniversary Edition (1961, 2001)

Douglass, James W., ''JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why it Matters'' (2008), positive assessment

Dunnigan, James & Nofi, Albert. ''Dirty Little Secrets of the Vietnam War'' (2000)

Fay, Paul B., Jr. ''The Pleasure of His Company'' (1966)

Freedman, Lawrence. ''Kennedy's Wars: Berlin, Cuba, Laos and Vietnam'' (2000)

Frum, David. ''How We Got Here: The '70s'' (2000)

Fursenko, Aleksandr and Timothy Naftali. ''One Hell of a Gamble: Khrushchev, Castro and Kennedy, 1958–1964'' (1997)

Garrow, David J. ''The FBI and Martin Luther King'' (2002)

Giglio, James. ''The Presidency of John F. Kennedy'' (1991), standard scholarly overview of policies

Goldzwig, Steven R. and Dionisopoulos, George N., eds. ''In a Perilous Hour: The Public Address of John F. Kennedy'', text and analysis of key speeches (1995)

Hamilton, Nigel. ''JFK: Reckless Youth'' (1992)

Harper, Paul, and Joann P. Krieg eds. ''John F. Kennedy: The Promise Revisited'' (1988), scholarly articles on presidency

Harris, Seymour E. ''The Economics of the Political Parties, with Special Attention to Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy'' (1962)

Heath, Jim F. ''Decade of Disillusionment: The Kennedy–Johnson Years'' (1976), general survey of decade

Hellmann, John. ''The Kennedy Obsession: The American Myth of JFK'' (1997), negative assessment

Hersh, Seymour. ''The Dark Side of Camelot'' (1997), highly negative assessment

Herst, Burton. ''Bobby and J. Edger'' (2007)

House Select Committee on Assassinations. ''Final Assassinations Report'' (1979)

Hove, Duane. ''American Warriors: Five Presidents in the Pacific Theater of World War II'' (2003)

Karnow, Stanley. ''Vietnam, A History'' (1991)

Kenney, Charles. ''John F. Kennedy: The Presidential Portfolio'' (2000)

Kunz, Diane B. ''The Diplomacy of the Crucial Decade: American Foreign Relations during the 1960s'' (1994)

Lynch, Grayston L. ''Decision for Disaster Betrayal at the Bay of Pigs'' (2000)

Maier, Thomas. ''The Kennedys: America's Emerald Kings'' (2004)

McNamara, Robert S. "Argument Without End: In Search of Answers to the Vietnam Tragedy" (2000)

Manchester, William. ''Portrait of a President: John F. Kennedy in Profile'' (1967)

Manchester, William. ''The Death of a President: November 20-November 25'' (1967)

Newman, John M., ''JFK and Vietnam: Deception, Intrigue, and the Struggle for Power'' (1992)

O'Brien, Michael. ''John F. Kennedy: A Biography'' (2005), the most detailed biography

Parmet, Herbert. ''Jack: The Struggles of John F. Kennedy'' (1980)

Parmet, Herbert. ''JFK: The Presidency of John F. Kennedy'' (1983)

Parmet, Herbert. "The Kennedy Myth". In ''Myth America: A Historical Anthology, Volume II''. Gerster, Patrick, and Cords, Nicholas. (editors.) (1997)

Piper, Michael Collins. ''Final Judgment'' (2004: sixth edition). American Free Press

Reeves, Richard. ''President Kennedy: Profile of Power'' (1993), balanced assessment of policies

Reeves, Thomas. ''A Question of Character: A Life of John F. Kennedy'' (1991) hostile assessment of his character

Sabato, Larry J. ''The Kennedy Half-Century: The Lasting Legacy of John F. Kennedy'' (forthcoming, 2013)

Salt, Jermey. "The Unmaking of The Middle East" (2008)

Schlesinger, Arthur, Jr. ''A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House'' (1965, 2002), Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award, by a close advisor

Schlesinger, Arthur, Jr. ''Robert Kennedy And His Times'' (1978, 2002), National Book Award

Smith, Jean Edward. ''Kennedy and Defense: The Formative Years''. Air University Review (March–April 1967)

Smith, Jean E. ''The Defense of Berlin'' (1963)

Smith, Jean E. ''The Wall as Watershed'' (1966)

Sorensen, Theodore. ''Kennedy'' (1966), by a close advisor

Walsh, Kenneth T. ''Air Force One: A History of the Presidents and Their Planes'' (2003)

Wyden, Peter, ''Bay of Pigs: The Untold Story'' (1979)

External links

John F. Kennedy: A Resource Guide from the Library of Congress

New video footage released of JFK's last moments

Unpublished Photos From JFK's 1960 Campaign from LIFE

Video of Vincent Bugliosi discussing JFK assassination

Kennedy's Secret White House Recordings via the Miller Center of Public Affairs (UVa)

Video, Audio, Text of John F. Kennedy's Inaugural Address

Kennedy discusses Cuban Missile Crisis with former President Eisenhower

John F. Kennedy Library

The White House Biography

JFK: Unpublished, Never-Seen Photos - slideshow by ''Life magazine''

The Kennedys museum in Berlin, Germany with special exhibit on Kennedy's visit

''Birthplace of John F. Kennedy: Home of the Boy Who Would Be President,'' a National Park Service Teaching with Historic Places lesson plan

Essay on JFK with shorter essays on each member of his cabinet and First Lady from the Miller Center of Public Affairs

Kennedy Administration from Office of the Historian, United States Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C.

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