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I'm unsure of US law, but unless you specifically assign or specifically transfer the copyright as part of the contract or conditions of publication, it stays your copyright. More than one author has actually sold their copyrights (Georgette Heyer sold one or two of her copyrights; The Peter Pan copyrights were assigned to the Ormond St children's hospital in London), and therefore no longer have any rights over the works. Some magazines or publishers demand assignment of copyright to them as part of the contract.
pwalker8 is right: you are dealing with two bodies of law: copyright (a statute) and contract (common law, but often codified into statue law different jurisdictions).
When I was published commercially long ago, my standard contract licensed the publisher to exclusive publication rights so long as they stayed in print. Publication rights (not copyright, which was always mine) reverted automatically to me after a fixed period, so I could find another publisher if any might be interested.
You've got to read in the fine print in the contract. If there's no written contract, and you've entered some competition or another, you've got to read the fine print in the conditions of entry. They bind you.
It's a minefield for the innocent.
As I think Dean Koontz once noted, an author is not in the business of selling copyrights, but only in licensing the use of his work to a publisher under agreed conditions.
(If you really want to get rich, become a lawyer...)
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