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| | Top20UnitedStates.com - Your Top20 Guide to United States! (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-09) |
 | | The United States may be regarded as an example of a constitutional republic or as a liberal democracy, with a government composed of and operating through a set of limited powers imposed by its design and enumerated in that design or Constitution of the United States of America. |
 | | Under this new union, the continued status of the individual states as sovereign nation states fell into dispute in 1861, as several states attempted to secede from the union; in response, then-President Abraham Lincoln claimed that such secession was illegal, and the result was the American Civil War. |
 | | The United States also holds several other territories, districts and possessions, notably the federal district of the District of Columbia, which is the nation's capital, and several overseas insular areas, the most significant of which are Puerto Rico, American Samoa, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, and the United States Virgin Islands. |
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