Our National Government
L E S S O N 2 9
Key Questions
1. What is a national
government?
2. What are the threemain
branches of our national
government?
3. What are the functions for the
branches of government?
KeyWords & Places
federal
Washington, D.C.
district
Potomac River
capital
capitol
balance of power
legislative
executive
judicial
bill
Senate
senator
House of Representatives
representative
Congress
simplemajority
act
Cabinet
Secretary
Supreme Court
Potomac River
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Chapter 10
What Is Our National
Government?
E
very country can be called a nation.
That is where we get the word
national
. The word
country
is a
geographic term. Each country has borders.
Thewordnation is apolitical term. Itmeans
that one country is organized under a
written plan of rules called a constitution.
Sometimes, theword
federal
is alsoused to
mean our national government. The words
politics, civics,
and
government
refer to the
citizens or people of a nation.
The name of our country is the United
States of America. Sometimes we shorten
the name to U.S.A. Every country has a
national capital. Our national capital is
called
Washington, D.C.
The D.C. stands
for District of Columbia. A
district
is an
area of land set aside for some specific
purpose. For example, Pennsylvaniahas 501
school districts. In the case of D.C., it was
an area of land set aside for our national
government. The city is located along the
PotomacRiver
on theMaryland side. The
river empties intoChesapeake Bay 20miles
farther away.
WhywouldWashington, D.C., not be on
a map before 1800? You are correct if you
said it was not built until then. This special
place was selected to be center of our
national, or federal, government. Plans for
building our national capital and Capitol
buildingwerebegun in1792 and completed
