The United States, Drawn Together

A HISTORY RIVER / 1763 → PRESENT

HOW
THE UNION
HELD & CHANGED

The United States grew through several kinds of political change. Follow places through acquisition, territorial government, statehood, secession and return. Separate routes show administrations that ended without becoming states.

Time falls. Institutions persist. Jurisdictions move.

↓READ DOWNCalendar time runs from imperial North America to the present.

+WATCH INVENTORYA band grows when routes enter and shrinks when they transfer out.

∿FOLLOW THE FADEA dissolving light-blue route marks the end of U.S. administration.

01 / A national stock-and-flow history

Three institutions, 262 years of movement

A bonded red, grey-white, and blue colonial braid forms the United States. The dark, mid, and light-blue bands then persist through time: acquisitions feed them; thirty-two statehood passages move routes between them; Civil War removes and Reconstruction restores eleven.

THE THREE INSTITUTIONS

United Statesdark blue / states

U.S. Territoriesmid blue / nonstate territorial routes

U.S. Colonieslight blue / external administration

Skip to data table

Thirteen colonies enter one United States in 1776. Continental and island acquisitions accumulate in a persistent Territories band before statehood or continued territorial status. Eleven state routes leave during the Civil War and return during Reconstruction. Cuba, the Philippines, Pacific trust successors, and canal control leave a separate colonies-and-administration band without being forced into statehood.

Width counts one status-bearing jurisdiction or polity thread, regardless of land area or population. It does not compare land area, population, wealth, legitimacy, or the intensity of control. Source lineages already present before 1763 blur in at the top boundary; the three founding-region bundles and the 1783 interior cessions enter sharply because this model creates them inside the displayed period. The three blue institutions are intentionally not bonded: the space between them makes each legal-status transfer visible. “United States Colonies” is an analytical administration band, not a claim that Cuba, the Canal Zone, or a U.N. trust shared one constitutional status. The federal district is outside this focused comparison rather than being mislabeled as a territory.

02 / Three movements worth following

Formation is a sequence of residence, transfer, rupture, and exit.

1783 → 1959 / inventory before admissionStatehood is a transfer, not an arrival from nowhere.Acquisitions collect inside Territories, sometimes for generations. Thirty-two routes eventually cross into the United States; five inhabited territorial routes still do not.

1860 → 1870 / rupture and returnThe state river tears from within.Eleven routes leave in two secession waves, then return in three unequal Reconstruction passages. Military defeat in 1865 does not instantly restore political representation.

1898 → 1999 / exits without statehoodThe colonial branch is not a waiting room.Cuba leaves occupation, the Philippines reaches independence, three Pacific trust successors become sovereign, and canal control returns to Panama. None moves into the state band.

03 / Routes that leave

Some administrations end instead of becoming states.

Light-blue routes show the duration of U.S. administration. Each holds its color until that administration ends, then fades.

Cuba appears twice because occupation ended in 1902 and resumed from 1906 to 1909. It was never annexed as a U.S. territory. Philippine rule is shown as one long route with contested military, colonial, and Commonwealth phases.

14 Aug 1898 → 4 Jul 1946 / military government, colonial possession, then Philippine CommonwealthPhilippines

U.S. rule was contested by the Philippine Republic and the Philippine–American War. The later Commonwealth carried a statutory independence timetable and was not equivalent to Puerto Rico's status.

Philippine independence

Jul 1898 → 20 May 1902 / military occupation, never annexed as a U.S. territoryCuba — first U.S. occupation

Spanish rule ended and Cuban sovereignty emerged under U.S. military occupation. The light-blue band is an analytical administration bucket, not a claim that Cuba became a U.S. colony in law.

Cuban republican government

29 Sep 1906 → 28 Jan 1909 / temporary military occupation under the Platt Amendment frameworkCuba — second U.S. occupation

Cuba re-enters the administration band temporarily; sovereignty does not transfer to the United States.

Cuban government restored

18 Nov 1903 → 31 Dec 1999 / special control and jurisdiction, not an ordinary U.S. territoryPanama Canal control

Panama resumed territorial jurisdiction in 1979; canal operation transferred completely in 1999. One fading route compresses those two treaty steps without treating the zone as sovereign U.S. land.

Canal transfer completed

18 Jul 1947 → 3 Nov 1986 / U.N. strategic trust under U.S. administration, not U.S. territorial sovereigntyFederated States of Micronesia

The Federated States of Micronesia becomes a sovereign state in free association, not a U.S. territory.

Micronesian free association

18 Jul 1947 → 21 Oct 1986 / U.N. strategic trust under U.S. administration, not U.S. territorial sovereigntyRepublic of the Marshall Islands

The Republic of the Marshall Islands becomes a sovereign state in free association, not a U.S. territory.

Marshallese free association

18 Jul 1947 → 1 Oct 1994 / U.N. strategic trust under U.S. administration, not U.S. territorial sovereigntyRepublic of Palau

Palau becomes a sovereign state in free association when the final trusteeship agreement ends.

Palauan independence

04 / What a route means

Count status-bearing paths, then preserve the legal differences.

One unit is one jurisdiction route. A route follows a named polity or a modern jurisdiction precursor through a legal-status change; it does not measure land, people, wealth, or legitimacy.

Each modern jurisdiction follows its main acquisition route in the source records. Where today’s state includes land acquired in several ways, the notes explain the additional history.

The Confederate branch represents secession ordinances, de facto government, loss of ordinary Union representation, and later Reconstruction. It does not imply U.S. recognition that the states lawfully ceased to be part of the Union.

The labels distinguish occupation, possession, trusteeship, treaty control and other arrangements. Open a tooltip to read the status of a particular route.

SOURCE 01 / U.S. Census BureauStatehood and admission chronologyStatehood dates and state order SOURCE 02 / U.S. Census BureauTerritorial Acquisitions of the United StatesBroad acquisition chronology and provenance streams SOURCE 03 / National ArchivesFounding-era milestone documents: Declaration, Treaty of Paris, Constitution1776, 1783, and constitutional chronology SOURCE 04 / U.S. Department of the InteriorDefinitions of Insular Area Political OrganizationsPossession, territory, incorporation, organization, commonwealth, and Philippines chronology SOURCE 05 / U.S. Department of the InteriorTrust Territory and Compacts of Free Association referencesTTPI, CNMI divergence, and freely associated states SOURCE 06 / United States SenateThe Civil War: The Senate's Story — chronologySecession, wartime representation, and Civil War chronology SOURCE 07 / United States SenateAdmission to representation during ReconstructionTennessee restoration, Reconstruction Acts, military districts, and reentry SOURCE 08 / U.S. Department of the InteriorInsular political-organization definitions: Philippine chronologyU.S. insular status, commonwealth, and 1946 independence SOURCE 09 / Office of the Historian, U.S. Department of StateThe Panama Canal and the Torrijos–Carter TreatiesCanal Zone/control distinction and 1979–1999 transfer SOURCE 10 / Office of the Historian, U.S. Department of StateU.S. relations with Cuba, including military occupations1898–1902 and 1906–1909 occupations

05 / Let the institutions persist

Build an event ledger, not a stack of snapshots.

Each acquisition, admission, secession, restoration, and administrative exit is one dated transaction. ProcessSankey holds the inventory between transactions, reuses short-lived source lanes, and renders lifecycle fades on the vertical time axis. Adaptive feeder runway lets compressed events begin curving earlier; the source band hands each route to its curve at that same visual point without changing the historical date.

JSX

import { ProcessSankey, inventoryAtTime } from "semiotic" // Docs demos use layoutExecution="sync" for deterministic first paint. // Production apps should use "auto" (default) so large graphs can use a worker. <ProcessSankey nodes={institutionsAndSources} edges={jurisdictionEvents} domain={[1763, 2025]} axisTicks={historicalMilestones} nodeLabel="shortLabel" colorBy="category" groupBy="group" systemInTimeAccessor="systemInTime" systemOutTimeAccessor="systemOutTime" ribbonMinRun="auto" {...historyRiverDefaults} /> // US_STATES, US_TERRITORIES, and US_COLONIES are long-lived nodes. // Pre-domain sources blur into view. Acquisitions add stock; statehood // transfers it; secession removes and Reconstruction returns it. // Colonial exits fade at systemOutTime. // Width counts jurisdiction routes—one polity thread per unit. // inventoryAtTime(nodeId, t, edges) folds the edge ledger for tooltips.