American Civilization

Program postuniversitar de conversie profesională
pentru cadrele didactice din mediul rural

Specializarea LIMBA ŞI LITERATURA ENGLEZĂ
Forma de învăţământ ID - semestrul III
AMERICAN CIVILISATION
Constantin - Sorin PÎRVU
2006
Ministerul Educaţiei şi Cercetării
Proiectul pentru Învăţământul Rural
LIMBA ŞI LITERATURA ENGLEZĂ
American Civilisation
Constantin – Sorin PÎRVU
2006
© 2006 Ministerul Educaţiei şi Cercetării
Proiectul pentru Învăţământul Rural
Nici o parte a acestei lucrări

nu poate fi reprodusă fără
acordul scris al Ministerului Educaţiei şi Cercetării
Area coordinator: Anca Cehan
ISBN 10 973-0-04574-7;
ISBN 13 978-973-0-04574-1.
Contents
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION 1
UNIT 1
1 Consumer Society .....................................................................................4

Unit Objectives...........................................................................................5
1.1 Consumer Goods.......................................................................................5
1.1.1 Coca-Cola....................................................................................................5
1.1.2 Fast-Food ....................................................................................................7
1.1.3 Cars and Motorcycles ..................................................................................8
1.1.4 Jeans .........................................................................................................10
1.2 Popular Culture ........................................................................................11
1.2.1 Hollywood ..................................................................................................12
1.2.2 The Pin-Up.................................................................................................13
1.2.3 The Pulp ....................................................................................................14
Summary ..................................................................................................16
Key Terms ................................................................................................17
Glossary of Terms and Comments.........................................................17
SAA No. 1 .................................................................................................18
Answers to SAQs.....................................................................................19
Further Readings .....................................................................................20
UNIT 2
2 Education and Recreation.......................................................................21

Unit Objectives.........................................................................................22
2.1 Education .................................................................................................22
2.1.1 Harvard ......................................................................................................24
2.2 Holidays....................................................................................................25
2.2.1 Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas ...................................................25
2.3 Sports .......................................................................................................27
2.3.1 Baseball .....................................................................................................27
2.3.2 Football ......................................................................................................29
Summary ..................................................................................................31
Key Terms ................................................................................................32
Glossary of Terms and Comments.........................................................32
Further Readings .....................................................................................32
UNIT 3
3 The Melting Pot ........................................................................................33

Unit Objectives.........................................................................................34
3.1 Settlers and Pioneers ..............................................................................37
3.2 The Native American ...............................................................................41
3.2.1 Indian Homes.............................................................................................43
3.2.2 Indian Food: The Buffalo............................................................................45
3.3 The Afro-American...................................................................................47
Summary ..................................................................................................50
Key Terms ................................................................................................51
Proiectul pentru Învăţământul Rural i
Contents
Glossary of Terms and Comments ........................................................ 51
SAA No. 2 ................................................................................................. 53
Answers to SAQs .................................................................................... 53
Further Readings..................................................................................... 54
UNIT 4
4 American Geography and Economy...................................................... 55

Unit Objectives ........................................................................................ 56
4.1 Transport ................................................................................................. 56
4.2 Rivers and Lakes..................................................................................... 59
4.3 Land and People...................................................................................... 61
4.4 Farming .................................................................................................... 63
4.5 Precipitation............................................................................................. 65
4.6 Manufacturing.......................................................................................... 67
4.7 The Skyscraper........................................................................................ 69
Summary.................................................................................................. 71
Key Terms ................................................................................................ 72
Glossary of Terms of Comments ........................................................... 72
SAA no. 3 ................................................................................................. 74
Answers to SAQs .................................................................................... 75
Further Readings..................................................................................... 76
UNIT 5
5 American History..................................................................................... 77
Unit Objectives ........................................................................................ 78
5.1 Settling Down .......................................................................................... 78
5.1.1 Jamestown Settlement .............................................................................. 78
5.1.2 Mayflower Compact................................................................................... 79
5.1.3 Boston ....................................................................................................... 80
5.2 The American Revolution ....................................................................... 81
5.2.1 Towards the Declaration of Independence................................................ 81
5.2.2 Towards the American Constitution........................................................... 87
5.3 Falling Apart ............................................................................................ 90
5.3.1 The War of 1812 ....................................................................................... 90
5.3.2 The Monroe Doctrine ................................................................................ 92
5.3.3 The Mexican War ..................................................................................... 93
5.3.4 The Election of 1860 ................................................................................ 94
5.4 The American Civil War ......................................................................... 96
5.4.1 Gettysburg and Vicksburg ........................................................................ 97
5.4.2 The Election of 1864 ............................................................................... 99
5.4.3 The Compromise of 1877 ....................................................................... 101
5.5 The Twentieth Century ......................................................................... 103
5.5.1 The World Wars ..................................................................................... 103
5.5.2 The Nuclear Arms Race ......................................................................... 107
5.5.3 The Vietnam War ................................................................................... 108
5.5.4 The Civil Rights Race Riots .................................................................... 111
5.5.5 The New Left and the Counterculture ..................................................... 115
5.5.6 The End of the Cold War ........................................................................ 117
Summary ............................................................................................... 118
Key Terms ............................................................................................. 118
Glossary of Terms and Comments ..................................................... 119
Gallery of Personalities ...................................................................... 124
ii Proiectul pentru Învăţământul Rural
Contents
SAA No. 4 ..............................................................................................130
Answers to SAQs ..................................................................................131
Further Readings ..................................................................................133
Appendix ...............................................................................................135
Bibliography ..........................................................................................162
Proiectul pentru Învăţământul Rural iii

Contents
iv Proiectul pentru Învăţământul Rural

Introduction
INTRODUCTION
This module is meant as a survey of American civilisation,

with special references to the attributes that provide its
uniqueness: i.e. its consumerism, its social commitment, its
tolerance and availability, its practical-mindedness and
common-sense creativity, and its democratic spirit. Each of these
attributes stands out in bold relief in one particular unit but,
interrelated as they are, they come together everywhere, only that
the focus is different.
Unit 1 “Consumer Society” describes American civilisation
in terms of such cultural myths as coca-cola, fast-food, Hollywood,
pin-up, pulp, jeans, cars and motorcycles; Unit 2 “Education and
Recreation” describes it in terms of cultural myths like public
school, adult education, Thanksgiving and Halloween, baseball
and football; Unit 3 “The Melting Pot” describes it in terms of
cultural myths like Native Americans, Afro-Americans, settlers and
pioneers; Unit 4 “American Geography and Economy” (with its
surveys of transport, skyscraper, farming, manufacturing, land and
people) and Unit 5 “American History” (with its emphasis, in the
main, on the making of the nation: the Revolution and the Civil
War) are less culturally oriented, although the cultural myths are
not missing altogether: the railway, the Mississippi.
The units come complete with: a Summary, which
encapsulates topical ideas by focusing on the effects of the topics
in question on human psyche and human mores; Key Concepts,
a list of the basic concepts; a Glossary of Terms and
Comments, with entries to special terms; and a Gallery of
Personalities, with entries that draw the portraits of the
personalities referred to in the unit. The terms, concepts and
names listed in the Key Concepts section or explained in the
Glossary of Terms and Comments and Gallery of
Personalities sections are marked using the * symbol. An
Appendix (actually three documents that are essential for the
development of American civilisation as we know it: The
Declaration of Independence, The Constitution, Martin Luther
King’s speech I have a dream) has also been added to Unit 5.
Learning tasks
Each of these five units contains a certain number of

learning tasks marked as Stop and Think, Self-Assessed
Questions (SAQs); all but one (respectively, Unit 1, Unit 3, Unit 4,
and Unit 5) also contain a Send-Away Assignment (SAA).
The Stop and Think assignments elicit the students’ own
opinions with regard to certain ideas in the unit; they rely heavily
on the students’ cultural background — in other words, on their
involvement in, and understanding of, Romanian culture and
civilisation. Each Stop and Think assignment is provided with a
Proiectul pentru Învăţământul Rural 1

Introduction
blank space to be filled out. Where there is no clue leading to an
answer, the Stop and Think tasks ask students to devise a
portfolio to be discussed in the tutorials.
The Self-Assessed Questions (SAQs) anticipate the
students’ need to build on the ideas presented. They pose
questions which refer the students back to the essential aspects
treated in the respective unit. The students’ answers, written in the
blank spaces of the SAQ boxes, should be confronted to those
given in the Answers to SAQs section at the end of the unit.
The Send Away Assignments (SAAs) elicit the students’
global understanding and acquisition of the essential aspects
treated in each of the units. The completed SAAs will be sent to
the tutor, at times set in agreement with him/her, by regular mail or
e-mail.
Assessment
Students are required to write essay-projects for four
sections of the module (Units 1, 3, 4 and 5) which is the equivalent
in the distance learning system of continuous assessment (four
projects for 40% of the final grade). The final test will be an oral
exam counting for 60% of the final grade. On a 0 to 10 points
yardstick, the evaluation criteria will be the following: 1 base point,
theoretical approach of the topic – 4 points, richness and
relevance of the examples given – 3 points, focused argument of
the specificity of each of the five topic studied – 2 points.
2 Proiectul pentru Învăţământul Rural

Introduction
Baseball: players, cheerleaders, field and stadium

Consumer Society
UNIT 1
CONSUMER SOCIETY
Unit Outline
Unit objectives ............................................................................... 5
1.1 Consumer Goods........................................................................... 5
1.1.1 Coca-Cola........................................................................................ 5
1.1.2 Fast-Food ........................................................................................ 7
1.1.3 Cars and Motorcycles ...................................................................... 8
1.1.4 Jeans ............................................................................................... 10
1.2 Popular Culture .............................................................................. 11
1.2.1 Hollywood ........................................................................................ 12
1.2.2 The Pin-Up....................................................................................... 13
1.2.3 The Pulp .......................................................................................... 14

Summary ........................................................................................ 16
Key Terms ...................................................................................... 17
Glossary of Terms and Comments............................................... 17
SAA No. 1 ....................................................................................... 18
Answers to SAQs........................................................................... 19
Further Readings ........................................................................... 20

Consumer Society
By the end of this unit you should be able to

• see that (modern) American society / civilisation is, by common
Unit objectives consent, synonymous with consumer society by and large;
• identify the consumer myth as both product and image;
• understand the new quality of the consumer myths, now fully
accessible or “pop” (popular, like in “pop music”), and playfully
true or “real” (reality, like in “reality show”);
• draw the ambiguous quality of the consumer myths.
1.1 Consumer Goods

By the early 1900s many of the key inventions which were to
become fundamental to life in the new century were becoming
increasingly available to the everyday American consumer: electric
The consumer lighting and domestic appliances; homogenizing communications
world implies media such as the telephone, the gramophone, and the cinema;
general prosperity and the automobile which also played a key role in bringing
together rural and urban communities. Before long the radio and
the aeroplane further transformed people’s lives in terms of
dissolving national and regional barriers.
Fordism* dramatically cut down the time for car production,
and had obvious wider economic implications for standardized
mass-production (and thus patterns of consumption) throughout
the industrialized world. Henry Ford, whose assembly-line
techniques were increasingly widely applied in factories, was a
particular target for those who saw life in the USA as shaped by
the spiritual dictatorship of machinery, warfare and magazines, and
newspapers of large circulation, and, last but not least, by ready-
made clothes, fast-food and refreshing drinks.
We must admit that the average man was simply delighted to
see that American consumers (the rich and famous included) buy
essentially the same things as the poorest. As they often say: “All
the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good, no matter how
much or how little you pay for them.”
1.1.1 Coca-Cola
Coca-Cola = The star of the consumer world is Coca-Cola, already on the

equality market in 1886. The capitalist system of American, and
Americanized, consumer culture culminates in the success of this
product (and other products like Pepsi-Cola and Seven-Up), Coca-
Cola being seen as one of the most potent symbols of the
“American way of life.”
Coca-Cola became a truly global product by the mid-20th-
century, much stimulated by its popularity amongst American

Consumer Society
troops stationed across the world during the Second World War
and its aftermath. It came to be associated with the material values
and desires of American consumer society, a symbol of material
affluence, of the All-Mighty Dollar itself.
From the early years of the century the publicity campaigns
were mounted on a sophisticated level, with all kinds of associated
promotional material, as well as an annual budget exceeding
$1 million by 1914. The company’s association with modern
transportation systems (advertisements used to read: “through
skyways, as on highways, railways and busy streets”) points to its
growing international presence.
Stop and think!
Is Coca-Cola good value for money or is it largely the result of an

offensive advertising strategy?
Use your personal experience and create a portfolio of such

answers to be discussed in the tutorials. Give your answer (of no
more than 100 words) in the space provided below.

Consumer Society
1.1.2 Fast Food

(Ham)burgers were first marketed from White Castle
Fast-food: restaurant outlets which were launched in Wichita, Kansas in 1921,
burgers, hot-dogs, the decade in which fast-food franchising was launched by Howard
ketch-up Johnson. Another well-known product was the hot-dog, both
burgers and hot-dogs coming complete with ketch-up. Another
well-known chain is Harland Sanders’s Kentucky Fried Chicken,
which became prominent by the 1950s. However, it was the readily
identifiable corporate symbolism of McDonald’s (later including the
parabolic arches) which represented the American lifestyle across
Fast-food: the world. McDonald’s is the world’s largest food-service
McDonald’s, organization and the leading brand-name in the United States.
Burger King, KFC Consumer demand was much stimulated by the growth of such
(Kentucky Fried stores in the second half of the 19th century: R.H. Macy in New
Chicken) York and Marshall Field in Chicago were early leaders in the field.
Such stores brought together under one roof the whole range of
industrially produced goods and soon became socially acceptable
places for unaccompanied women to meet as well as to shop
without damaging their reputations. By the early years of the 20th
century, department stores, centrally-heated and electrically-lit,
were a feature of cities across the industrialized world.
The post - Second World War pattern of much larger
developments was set by the Northgate Shopping Center, erected
in a Seattle suburb in 1950. It was in the form of a mall of forty
shops, centered around a Bon Marché department store, with
segregated parking and underground access for delivery vehicles.
The first covered mall, the Southdale Center, opened six years
later in a suburb of Minneapolis, and in many ways set the pattern
for subsequent developments around the world.

Consumer Society
SAQ 1
Given the fast-food restaurant / classical restaurant choice, where
would you go if you’d like to do it:
a) cheap; b) time-friendly; c) formal; d) healthy?
Write your answers in the space provided above (in no more than
60 words) and compare them to those in the “Answers to SAQs”
section at the end of the unit.
1.1.3 Cars and Motorcycles

Cadillac was the dream image of young American women
Cars: and the envy, it was said, of women all over the world. The
Cadillac, Ford American housewife – freed by science and labor-saving
appliances from household drudgery and the dangers of childbirth,
now afforded to be healthy, beautiful, educated, concerned only
about her husband, her children, and her home. As a housewife
Motorcycles: and mother, she was respected as a full and equal partner to man.
Harley Davidson She was free to choose automobiles, clothes, appliances,
supermarkets; she had everything that women ever dreamed of.
So, an essential ingredient of postwar suburban life was the
possession of an automobile. Although production was extremely
limited in the middle of the war, by 1949 it was running at over
5 million per annum. By 1950 it reached 8 million, with the figure
rising until 1955, the apex of the boom. The automobile became an
emblem of conspicuous consumption in itself, but also exerted a
considerable impact on the ornament of the urban environment,
whether in terms of roads, drive-in cinemas, motels, diners,
shopping centers, car washes, or simply signs which could be read
and absorbed quickly while traveling down the highway at speed.

Consumer Society
SAQ 2
Given category systems like gender, age, education, class, race,

nation, religion, when will someone have a motorcycle rather than
a car?

Consumer Society
1.1.4 Jeans
Although jeans originated in the mid-nineteenth century as
Californian workers’ clothing made by Levi Strauss (a classical
Jeans = freedom advertisement used to read: “Since 1850 jeans have been called
Levi’s in the USA!”), they have since become potent and expressive
emblems of wide-differing values throughout the 20th century.
Associated with teenage rebellion in the 1950s on the one hand, or
expensive ‘designer’ brand names in the late 1970s and early 1980s
on the other, their changing meanings paralleled those of the T-shirt
which successfully made the transition from working vest to
emblematic carrier of slogans and images.
But, whatever the differences in generic and designer names,
jeans are universally seen as informal, classless, unisex, and
appropriate to city or country; wearing them is a sign of freedom
from the constraints on behavior and identity that social categories
impose. By the way, free was the single most common adjective
used frequently with the meaning of “free to be myself.”
Free as they certainly are in connotations, jeans are not entirely
free of criticism. They are often blamed for their implicit impersonality, or
rather for having no human physical warmth and consequently no
spiritual dimension – unlike, perhaps, the cowboy boots and cowboy
hats.
To sum it up, celebrities wear jeans to get mixed up with the
crowd and fans wear jeans to be the spitting image of their idols.
Jeans, along with a few other “American” clothing items: sneakers,
T-shirts and cowboy boots and hats are supremely functional
garments, comfortable, tough, sometimes cheap and requiring “low
maintenance.” Their popularity is also explained by their unique
ability to transect almost every social category one could think of:
one cannot define a jeans-wearer by any of the major social
category systems – gender, class, race, age, nation, religion, and
education.

Consumer Society
SAQ 3
Given such category systems as class, place, social status,

gender, job, tradition, fashion, what will someone have:
a) generic jeans; b) designer jeans?
1.2 Popular Culture

Popular culture, describing certain commodities, is produced
“Popular” does not for a sector of the market, a body of consumers; it refers to
mean “folk.” audience size – to be popular a record, a film or fiction must sell or
be viewed in relatively large numbers. It also refers to the quality of
these consumers and viewers, to their attitudes to and uses of
culture of goods – to be “popular” a record or film or fiction must be
consumed in ways that are clearly differentiated from those in
which cultural elites consume their goods. In the end the qualitative
measure is more important than the quantitative measure in this
context. Although many “popular” songs, films, and television
shows have smaller sales and viewing figures than successful
classical records, art movies and high-quality TV programs, the
distinguishing label “popular” still seems appropriate.

Consumer Society
1.2.1 Hollywood
If ancient myths represent collective memories, modern
myths, created by the so-called “Dream Factory,” are collective
Hollywood = fabrications of an individual character. And Hollywood has been a
Dream Factory masterhand at making up such myths around manufactured
commodities, automobiles, ships (e. g. the Titanic), railways (e. g.
the Orient Express), even places or regions: it has also made it its
business to help film stars take on virtually mythical proportions.
One such myth, the westerner, proved to be a big hit.
The Westerner’s loneliness is organic, not imposed on him by
the situation, but belonging to him intimately. He is prepared to
accept life, perhaps, but he never asks of it more than it can give;
and we see him constantly in situations where love is at best
irrelevant. If there is a woman he loves, she is usually unable to
understand his motives; she is against killing and being killed, and
he finds it impossible to explain to her that there is no point in
being against these things: they belong to his world.
The Westerner is also a man of leisure. Even when he wears
the badge of a marshal he appears to be unemployed. We see him
standing at a bar or playing poker – a game which expresses
perfectly his talent for remaining relaxed in the midst of tension. If
he does own a ranch, it is in the background; we are not actually
aware that he owns anything except his horse, his guns, and the
one worn suit of clothing which is likely to remain unchanged all
through the movie. As a rule we do not even know were he sleeps
at night. Yet it never seems that he is a poor man – there is no
poverty in Western movies. When he accepts employment of some
kind, it is not because he needs to make a living, he simply wants
to “get ahead.” What does he fight for? We know he is on the side
of justice and order, and of course, it can be said he fights for
these things. When an explanation is asked of him he is likely to
say that he does what he ”has to do.” If justice and order did not
continually demand his protection, he would be without a calling.
But what he defends, at bottom, is the purity of his own image – in
fact, his honor.

Consumer Society
SAQ 4
Given your age and education, what kind of movie would you like
to see:
a) adventure; b) drama; c) science-fiction; d) comedy; e)

cartoon; f) horror; g) thriller?
1.2.2 The Pin-Up

The “pin-up” image shows a full-length view of its subject and
generally has some kind of story. The woman in a pin-up is usually
dressed in a form-revealing outfit, either one that may be worn in
public, such as a bathing suit, sun suit, or skimpy dress, or one that
is more provocative and intimate, such as lingerie. Sometimes, a
pin-up may be shown as a nude, but this is more the exception
than the rule. Oftentimes she is immersed in bubbles and within
easy reach of lollipops or ice-cream.
A difference is sometimes made between “pin-up” art and
“glamour” art, whose woman is generally attired in an evening
gown or a fancy dress that is less revealing that that in a pin-up
proper.

Consumer Society
Stop and think!
Could the theme of pin-ups be defined as “glorifying the American

woman?”
Use your personal experience to answer this question and create a

portfolio of such answers to be discussed in the tutorials. Give
your answer (in no more than 90 words) in the space provided
below.
1.2.3 The Pulp

The pulp drew heavily on pin-up imagery. Of lower price and
lesser quality than mainstream magazines, the pulps were
exceedingly prolific and popular in their heyday, which dated from
1920 to the early 1950s. By the mid-1930s there were about two
hundred of such cheap magazines (issued on pulpwood paper),
published weekly, fortnightly or monthly, and sold largely by
subscription at a cost of anything between a dime and twenty-five
cents. The writers were badly paid – often at a cent a word – and
unsung, many of them hidden behind a range of pseudonyms. The
subject-matter was wide-ranging – detective stories, science-
fiction, horror, adventure, crime, romance, Westerns – and their
front covers frequently employed suggestive, provocative and often
explicit pin-ups, sometimes smoking a cigarette or speaking on the
telephone.
Pulp magazines began to disperse about 1952, when digest
and paper-back novels began soliciting the artist’s talents for their
new and rapidly expanding audience.

Consumer Society
SAQ 5
Will you define the difference between pulp (roughly equivalent to

paperback these days) and hardback in terms of cost, size, paper,
cover, or genre?

Consumer Society
Summary
The Americans themselves insist, not without some self-

I am what I shop. irony, that they are what they shop: namely, what they drink (Coca
Cola), what and where they eat (fast-food), what they drive (cars
and motorcycles), what they wear (jeans and T-shirts), what they
see (movies, pin-ups), and what they read (pulp). In other words,
they admit they are consumers and that their way of thinking is
ultimately determined by the needs of their everyday life.
This unit starts from the premise that such statements are
correct and goes on to imply that they explain a lot about the
Americans’ turn of the mind, about their practical-mindedness,
about their common-sense and equalitarian spirit. The above
statements also imply that opportunities are easily available and
therefore equal for everyone, and that it stands within everyone’s
power to be a “self-made” individual, if only he / she makes the
best use of them.

Consumer Society
Key Terms
• Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola
• Burgers and hot-dogs
• Cadillac and Ford
• Jeans and T-shirts
Glossary of Terms and Comments

• Fordism is related to Henry Ford’s introduction of the moving
assembly line for the Model T Ford automobile in 1913; it cut-
down costs by cutting down the time for car production.

Consumer Society
SAA No. 1
Intended to process consumer-imagery as he is, pop artist Richard
Hamilton associates Americanism with a number of products in the
collage below, entitled Just what is it that makes today’s homes so
different, so appealing?
Make a list of the trivial contents and formal characteristics, and

see their logic. Are they supposed to make a comment on
American society? Is this commentary ironic? Indeed, just what is it
that makes today’s American homes so different from ours, and so
appealing?
Please send your answers to your tutor by mail.

Your paper should not be longer than two pages.
Please note that the quality of your ideas and the coherence of the
essay will be 70% of your grade, while the accuracy of your
language will count for 30%.

Consumer Society
Answers to SAQs
Should your answer to SAQ 1 not be comparable to that
given below, please revise section 1.1.2 of the unit.
SAQ 1 If I am on a low-budget, I will certainly go to McDonald’s, KFC or

Burger King. I will also go there if I am interested in a friendly
atmosphere. If I am dressed to kill, and I would like to show off, a
fancy restaurant will be my choice – this last choice also holds if I
am keen on my figure.
Should your answers to SAQ 2 not be comparable to

those given below, please revise section 1.1.3 of the unit.
SAQ 2 Motorcycles are certainly for boys rather than girls, for youth rather
than the elders – adventure and “rebellion without cause” are both
part of the myth. As for the other categories, it all depends upon
these two dimensions, adventure and rebellion being constituents
of their semantic field. For example, one could expect a BA to be
more responsible and see the risks he takes if he drives a
motorcycle on a busy street. Or, you expect misfits to be more
rebellious than aristocracy because they do not have much to lose.
Or, you expect the minority race / nation / religion to be more
dynamic (i. e. adventurous) than the majority, simply because they
are not happy about their racial / national / religious status and they
would like to have it changed.

SAQ 3 The oppositions between generic jeans and designer jeans can be
summarized like this: (generic / designer) classless / upscale;
country / city; communal / socially distinctive; unisex / feminine (or,
more rarely, masculine); work / leisure; traditional / contemporary;
unchanging / transient.

SAQ 4 If you are relatively young, you will arguably like adventure,
science-fiction, horror; if very young, you are expected to love
cartoons; if less than “young and restless,” you will be more willing
to take time and follow the more complicated plots in thrillers and
dramas. Comedy goes for all ages, with a plus for the middle-aged,
who might feel comfortable to see that the bright side of life, even if
only in fantasies, has not disappeared altogether. This same
reasoning stands when the reference point is education.

SAQ 5 Pulp is by definition low-cost and small-size, even pocket-size; the

Consumer Society
paper (pulpwood) is necessarily cheap, but the covers tend to
provide some sort of compensation, and are consequently
imaginative and even luxurious. As for the literary genre at issue,
popular fiction seems to be born for it; next comes best-selling
mainstream fiction; poetry and drama are hardly ever in place.
Further Readings
1. Bogdan S. Pîrvu, Dicţionar de Genetică literară, Institutul
European, Iaşi, 2005, pp. 52-62.
2. Gheorghe Stan, OK pentru America, Institutul European, Iaşi,
2006, pp. 136-150.
3. Ştefan Avădanei, Acolada atlantică, Institutul European, Iaşi,
2001, pp. 196-204.
4. Sorin Pârvu (coord.), Dicţionar de Postmodernism, vol. II,
Institutul European, Iaşi, 2006, pp. 7-20.

Education and Recreation
UNIT 2
EDUCATION AND RECREATION
Unit Outline
Unit Objectives ................................................................................ 22
2.1 Education ......................................................................................... 22
2.1.1 Harvard.............................................................................................. 24
2.2 Holidays ........................................................................................... 25
2.2.1 Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas........................................... 25
2.3 Sports ............................................................................................... 27
2.3.1 Baseball............................................................................................. 27
2.3.2 Football.............................................................................................. 29
Summary .......................................................................................... 31
Key Terms ........................................................................................ 32
Glossary of Terms and Comments ................................................ 32
Further Readings............................................................................. 32

By the end of this unit, you should be able to

Unit objectives • see that American society has always depended on education;
• see that education has been interpreted ever since the
beginning of the 20th century as an all-encompassing process,
involving young and old alike;
• understand the specific quality of American holidays and
sports.
2.1 Education
Part of the program of reform in the United States was the
argument that increased education was necessary for intelligent
participation in political democracy. Congress created the first
Department of Education in 1867 to disseminate the gospel of the
The system of free-school. Nineteen states had adopted compulsory education
education is a laws by 1881, and by the time of the First World War, nearly 19
matter of each percent of American children between seven and thirteen were
individual state. attending school.
Adult education was booming as well. $31 million was given
in support of public libraries at the end of the nineteenth century;
and by 1900 the Commissioner of Education reported over 9000
free circulating libraries in the country. Similarly, the Chautauqua*
movement evoked an astounding response from the adult
population.
The United States does not have a national system of
education. Education is considered to be a matter for the people
of each state who have the real control at the public school level.
Although there is a federal Department of Education, its function is
merely to gather information, to advise, and to help finance certain
educational programs. Education, Americans say, is “a national
concern, a state responsibility, and a local function.” Since the
Constitution does not state that education is a responsibility of the
federal government, all educational matters are left to the
individual states. As a result, each of the 50 state legislatures is
free to determine its own system for its own public schools. Each
sets whatever basic, minimal requirements for teaching and
teachers it judges to be appropriate.
In turn, however, state constitutions give the actual
administrative control of the public schools to the local
communities. There are some 16,000 school districts within 50
states. School boards made up of individual citizens elected from
each community oversee the schools in each district. They, not
the state, set school policy and actually decide what is to be
taught.

SAQ 1
True (T) or False (F)?
The Department of Education

a) coordinates the educational programs in every state;
b) finances the educational programs in every state;
c) decides what textbooks will be used in every state.
Compare your answers to those in the “Answers to SAQs” section

at the end of the unit.
Early 19-th century public school
Princeton University
Massachussetts Institute of Technology

2.1.1
Harvard
Found in 1636 (by vote of the Great and General Court of
the Massachusetts Bay Colony) and named for its first
benefactor, John Harvard of Charlestown (a young minister
who, upon his death in 1638, left his library and half his estate
to the new institution), Harvard University has grown from nine
students with a single master to an enrollment of more than
18,000 degree candidates, including undergraduates and
students in 10 principal academic units. An additional 13,000
students are enrolled in one or more courses in the Harvard
Extension School. Over 14,000 people work at Harvard,
including more than 2,000 faculties. There are also 7,000
faculties’ appointments in affiliated teaching hospitals.
Even if the College was consistent with the prevailing
Puritan philosophy of the first colonists, it offered from the
beginning a classic academic course based on the English
university model. An early brochure, published in 1643,
justified the College’s existence: “To advance Learning and
perpetuate it to Posterity; dreading to leave an illiterate
Ministry to the Churches.” Around 1644, “Old College,”
Harvard’s first new academic building, was completed.
Unequal to the harsh New England weather, the wooden
structure had a useful life of only 34 years. The College never
again built on the site.

2.2 Holidays
2.2.1 Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas
Halloween (the night of October 31, when people once

believed that ghosts could be seen) is a time when children have
parties, dress up as witches, make lanterns out of pumpkins from
which the inside has been removed and play trick or treat,
meaning that they will play ‘trick’ or joke on the people in the
house unless they are given a ‘treat’, e.g. sweets or money. Of
course, most people prefer to give treats rather than having tricks
played on them.
Thanksgiving (celebrated on the fourth Thursday in
November) is associated with the time when Europeans first came
to North America. In 1620 the ship the Mayflower arrived, bringing
about 150 people, who today are usually called “pilgrims.” They
arrived at the beginning of a very harsh winter which killed
approximately one-half of the original 102 colonists. In the
following spring of 1621, the Indians taught the survivors how to
Halloween:
plant corn (called ‘’maize” by the natives) and how to catch
fancy (witch)
alewives (a variety of the herring family) in order that the fish might
parties, pumpkin
be used as a fertilizer to growing pumpkins, beans and other
lanterns, “trick or
crops. They also instructed the Pilgrims in the arts of hunting and
treat”
angling. By that summer, despite poor crops of peas, wheat and
barley, a good corn yield was expected and the pumpkin crop was
Thanksgiving:
bountiful. In early autumn, to recognize the help afforded the
turkey, yams,
colonists by the Indians and to give thanks for having survived, the
cranberry sauce,
Pilgrims arranged for a harvest festival. Four men were sent
pumpkin pie
‘’fowling” after ducks and geese. Turkey may or may not have
been a part of the forthcoming meal since the term ‘’turkey” was
used by the Pilgrims to mean any type of wild fowl.
The festival lasted three days and there can be little doubt
that the majority of the feast was most likely furnished by the
indigenous population. It is certain that they provided venison. The
remainder of the meal, eaten outdoors around large tables, also
probably included fish, berries, boiled pumpkin, watercress, leeks,
lobster, dried fruit, clams, wild plums and cornbread.
Today Americans celebrate Thanksgiving to remember these
early days. The most important part of the celebration is a
traditional dinner with foods that come from North America. The
meal includes turkey, sweet potatoes (also called yams) and
cranberries, which are made into a kind of sauce or jelly. The
turkey is filled with stuffing or dressing, and many families have
their own special recipe. Desert is pumpkin made into a pie.
Christmas (held on December 25 to celebrate the birth of
Jesus Christ) is still the most significant holiday of the year, due to
its economic overtones – the exchange of gifts among friends and
family members is the climax of it all. The presents are found
under a Christmas Tree, and the main dish is turkey.

Stop and think!
What does the phrase “Merry Christmas” mean to you?
Use your personal experience and create a portfolio of such

answers to be discussed in the tutorials. Give your answer in the
space provided below.

2.3 Sports
2.3.1 Baseball
Baseball is played with long wooden bats and a small, hard
ball, by two teams of nine players each. The infield has three
Baseball, played at bases
a slow pace, might (= bags filled with sand) and a home plate, also called home,
just as well be arranged in a diamond. The distance between each base is 90 feet
about socializing. (27.4 meters). The pitcher, who throws the ball to the batter at the
home plate, stands in the center of the diamond. The distance from
the pitcher’s mound to the home plate is 60.5 feet (18.4 meters).
The team that scores the most runs as its players move round the
bases is the winner.
Each game lasts nine innings. In each inning the visiting
team is first to bat (= hit the ball), while the home team plays
defense. Players bat in turn but when a team has three outs, it
must let the other side bat. If a batter hits the ball and it is not
caught in the air for an out, he runs to first base. If the ball is
thrown to first base before the batter gets there, he is out. If not,
then he tries to advance to second base, third base, and back to
home for a run while other players bat. A base runner is out if
another player in his team hits the ball and it is thrown to second or
third base before he gets there. The most exciting play is when the
batter hits a ball very far and can go round all the bases for a home
run, also called a homer.
An umpire judges the throws. If a pitch (= ball that is thrown)
is not hit, the ball is caught by the catcher behind the batter and
returned to the pitcher. A batter strikes out (= is out) if the pitcher
throws three balls within the strike zone (= the area between the
batter’s shoulders and knees) and he misses then or does not try
to hit them. A batter can go to first base on a walk if the pitcher
throws four balls outside the strike zone. As well as the pitcher and
the catcher, the defense has four other players in the infield and
three in the outfield.
The professional season lasts from April to October. Major
league baseball is organized into the American League and the
National League. At the end of the season the four best teams in
each league play to decide which two will go forward to the World
Series. The team that wins four games in this competition are the
World Champions.

SAQ 2
Fill in the blanks:
Baseball is played by two teams of ................... (1) players

each. The infield has ................... (2) bases and a home,
arranged in a diamond. The distance between each base is
................... (3) feet. The distance from the pitcher’s mound to
the home plate is ................... (4). The team that scores
................... (5) as its players move round the bases is the
winner. Each game lasts ................... (6) innings. In each
inning ................... (7) is first to bat, while ................... (8) plays
defense.
Compare your answers to those in the “Answers to SAQs”


2.3.2. Football
Football is one of the major sports in the US. In Britain and
elsewhere the game is often called “American football” to
distinguish it from soccer. American football developed from the
games of football and rugby. There is a lot of dangerous play, so
helmets and thick pads must be worn. Each game has
cheerleaders and bands of musicians who march on the field
between the halves of the game. Whole families go to watch
games, and there is almost no violence from supporters. Many
games are shown live on US television. British television now also
Football is not
shows some games each week. In US high schools, colleges and
soccer.
universities, football games are the centre of many social events,
such as homecoming.
The game is played by two teams of 11 players each, with
different players used for defense, offense and kicks. The field is
100 yards (91.5 meters) long and 53 yards 1 foot (49 meters) wide.
It is sometimes called a gridiron because the lines across it that
mark every 10 yards (9 meters) make it look like the metal tray on
which meat is grilled or broiled. At each end of the field there is an
extra
10 yards (9 meters) called the end zone, with a goal post in the
shape of an ‘H'. The ball is oval-shaped and sometimes called a
pigskin because the balls were formerly made from pig’s skin.
A team scores when its players send the ball down the field
and across the opponent’s goal line for a touchdown of seven
points. They can then add a point after touchdown (PAT) if they
kick the ball through the goal posts. A team can get three points if
the ball is kicked between the goal posts without a touchdown and
two points if their defense stops the opponents in their own end
zone.
The team with the ball must move it 10 yards (9 meters) in
four downs (= separate actions). This is done from behind linemen
who face the defense’s linemen. An action begins when the
quarterback takes the ball from between the legs of the center and
runs with it, hands it to another runner or passes (= throws) it to
another player. Between actions, the team with the ball has a
huddle, so the quarterback can tell them what to do next. If 10
yards (9 meters) are not made in four downs, the team must punt
(= kick the ball to the other team). The defense can also get the
ball by an interception (= a catch of the opponent’s pass) or a
fumble (= a ball accidentally dropped).
The National Football League (NFL) has 30 professional
teams. Six teams in the American Football Conference, and six in
the National Football Conference play against each other to decide
the two that will meet in the Super Bowl.

SAQ 3
Fill in the blanks:
Football is played by two teams of ................... (1) players each,

with different players used for defense, offense and kicks. The field
is ................... (2) yards long and ................... (3) yards wide. It is
sometimes called a gridiron because the lines across it that mark
every ................... (4) yards make it look like the metal tray on
which meat is grilled or broiled. At each end of the field there is an
extra ................... (5) yards called the end zone, with a goal post in
the shape of an ‘H'. The ball is oval-shaped and sometimes called
................... (6) because the balls were formerly made from pig’s
skin. A team scores when its players send the ball down the field
and across the opponent’s goal line for a ................... (8).


Summary
American education is a continuous process; e. g. it is never
too late to go to college (90 year-old students are often reported to
have done well in the finals). It is also a flexible process; e. g. one
particularly gifted student could have his / her classes compressed
and thus go to college when he / she is hardly 10 years old.
Holidays (because of the mingling of peoples, races and
religions) tend to lose their religious impact and now they have a
primarily economic character. Preceded and followed by big sales,
they are a good opportunity for everyone to be both on the giving
end and the receiving end – they are all about getting and giving.
Sports have, like education and holidays, a universal
character, getting everyone involved as a practitioner (jogging,
bowling) or at least as a fan (baseball, football) – in this latter
capacity, the American mostly means to socialize.

Key Terms
• Public school
• Adult education
• Thanksgiving and Halloween
• Baseball and football

• Chautauqua movement was founded in 1874 by Methodist
Minister John H. Vincent; it spread rapidly until seventy such
assemblies were operating at the century’s end. Courses in
science, literature, music, religion and government were
given. Six presidents of the United States lectured by the
shores of the Chautauqua Lake. Vincent claimed in 1886
that there were more than one hundred thousand readers.
Answers to SAQs
Should your answers to SAQ 1 not be comparable to those given
below, please revise section 2.1 of the unit.
SAQ 1 a) F; b) F; c) F.

below, please revise section 2.3.1 of the unit.
SAQ 2 (1) – nine; (2) – three; (3) – 90; (4) – 60.5; (5) – the most runs; (6) –
nine; (7) – the visiting team; (8) – the home team.

below, please revise section 2.3.2 of the unit.
SAQ 3 (1) – eleven; (2) – 100; (3) – 53 yards and 1 foot; (4) – 10; (5) – 10; (6)
– pigskin; (7) – touchdown.
Further Readings
1. Sorin Pârvu, Dicţionar de Scriitori americani, Editura
Universităţii „Al. I. Cuza”, Iaşi, 1990, pp. 45-51.
2. Gheorghe Stan, OK pentru America, Institutul European,
Iaşi, 2006, pp. 115-130.

The Melting Pot
UNIT 3
THE MELTING POT
Unit Outline
Unit Objectives .................................................................................34
3.1 Settlers and Pioneers.......................................................................37
3.2 The Native American ........................................................................41
3.2.1 Indian Homes .....................................................................................43
3.2.2 Indian Food: The Buffalo ....................................................................45
3.3 The Afro-American ...........................................................................47

Summary ...........................................................................................50
Key Terms .........................................................................................51
Glossary of Terms and Comments .................................................51
SAA No. 2 ..........................................................................................53
Answers to SAQs .............................................................................53
Further Readings..............................................................................54

The Melting Pot

Unit objectives • describe American civilisation as a “melting pot”;
• identify the directions of this process, of constant assimilation.
American history is one of crossing barriers (social and

political, but basically geographical) from east to west, from coast
to coast to cover an area of 9,372,614 sq. km. How history moved
in space may be illustrated by the five frontier phases, whose
boundaries are both temporal and geographical: the tidewater
phase of settlement, up to 1700 (on the coast and further inland
along tidal rivers, from southern Maine to South Carolina); the
settling of fertile river valleys between 1700 and 1750 (from New
England to Pennsylvania, to Virginia, the Carolinas and Georgia to
the Appalachian “block”); the fertile lands of Kentucky and
Tennessee opened to explorers by Daniel Boone and his party of
axmen through the forested Cumberland Gap (1750 – 1775); the
treaty of 1783 setting the western boundary of the US on the
Mississippi; the 1803 Louisiana purchase, giving the US the vast
territory that stretches from the Gulf of Mexico to the Canadian
border and westward to the Rocky Mountains, (adding to the land
area of the US all or parts of present day’s Louisiana, Oklahoma,
Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, Colorado, Nebraska, Iowa, North
Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, Wyoming and Montana,
including the Great Plains or the Western Prairies); the last
continental frontier (the “fever” resulting in the annexation
of Washington, Oregon, Idaho and parts of Montana and Wyoming
in 1846). To all these must be added the purchase of Texas – the
“Lone Star Republic” –, parts of California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona
and New Mexico in 1848, that of Alaska in 1867 and the
Six cultural regions: annexation of the Hawaiian islands in 1898 (both of which became
New England, the states only in 1959).
Middle Atlantic, the The Westward movement and the historical development
South, the Midwest, of America created today’s fifty governmental units and, more
the Southwest, the importantly, the six cultural regions shaped both by the variety in
West geographical areas and the historical, economic, literary and
folkloric realities: New England (the five states along the Atlantic
seaboard, plus parts of Vermont and New York); the Middle
Atlantic Region (New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware,
Maryland); the South (Virginia, West Virginia, Florida, Kentucky,
Tennessee, Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana, and parts of Missouri);
the Midwest (from Ohio to Nebraska and from North Dakota to
Kansas, including eastern Colorado); the Southwest (Western
Texas, portions of Oklahoma, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada,
southern California); and the West (Colorado, Wyoming, Montana,
Utah, California, Nevada, Idaho, Oregon, Washington, Alaska,
Hawaii). There are also a number of sub-regions, such as the
Mississippi Valley, the Ohio Valley, Sacramento Valley, the Blue
Ridge county in Virginia, and the Ozark county in Arkansas and
Missouri. Their features range from regional differences in foods, to
language (few and clipped words and choppy sentences in New
England as compared to the slower, more musical southern drawl
for instance), attitudes and outlooks.
The Melting Pot
New England’s economic mainstays are fishing, shipbuilding
and trade. Its preeminent cultural role is primarily given by the
many (and great) colleges and universities, including Harvard,
Yale, Brown, and Dartmouth. This hilly region, with a rather bad
climate, is inhabited by shrewd, thrifty, hardworking and inventive
people, from among whom rose such figures as Hawthorne,
Emerson, Thoreau and many, many others.
The Middle Atlantic Region is one of great cities (New York,
Philadelphia, Baltimore), of much history, and heavy industry; also
one of many “nations”: the Dutch colonists of the lower Hudson
area, the Swedes of Delaware, the English of Maryland, the
German Mennonites of Pennsylvania (Amish), the Jews of New
York, the Italians, East Europeans and many others inhabiting this
bridge between New England and the South.
The most different of all is, probably, the South, with its
plantations and slaves, warm-hot climate, vacation centers of
Florida and Georgia, the booming industry of today, Negro
Spirituals and jazz, and the literary space of Wolfe, Warren,
McCullers, Faulkner, Williams and O’Connor.
The Nation’s breadbasket is the Midwest of mighty
Mississippi; a cultural crossroads of open, friendly, straightforward
and down-to-earth people (or peoples: Germans, Swedes,
Norwegians, Irish, Finns, Poles, Ukrainians); a region with its hub
in Chicago and its many cultural accomplishments.
The Southwest is drier, emptier and less densely populated,
with a different ethnic mix (a large Spanish-speaking population in
Texas, New Mexico and Arizona) and with endless wide-open
spaces.
The last frontier includes the eleven states of the West:
scenic beauty on a grand scale, flamboyant life-styles covering the
period from the Gold Rush of 1848 to Hollywood, Los Angeles
(former hodge-podge of adobe huts called “El Pueblo de Nuestra
Most Americans are Senora la Reina de Los Angeles de Porciuncula”), and San
Protestants. Francisco.
The great majority of Americans are Protestants, which by
mid-18th century had come to be of several kinds: German
Lutherans, Presbyterians (Calvinists), Huguenots,
Congregationalists (the former Puritans, still dominating in New
England), and adepts of the Dutch Reformed Church. The Great
Awakening of the 1740s brought a new feeling and strength into
religion, while the 18th century Enlightenment in general had one
of its offsprings in the deists. Freedom of religion was then
stimulated by the Declaration of Independence and the 1st
Amendment to the Constitution (Government would not meddle in
religious affairs). The Second Great Awakening of early 19th
century meant another upswelling of religious feeling which led to
Evangelism (Methodist preachers and Baptist missionaries spread
about the country and the world). The religious spectrum of a
nation where there is no such thing as a state-protected religion,
also includes over 50 million Catholics, about 4 million Jewish
people, many Adventists, Reformists, Mormons, and Jehovah
Witnesses, a number of Islamics, Buddhists and Hindus.
(Source: Ştefan Avădanei, North American Literary History)
The Melting Pot
SAQ 1
In what cultural region will you place:
a) New York City; b) Harvard College; c) Hollywood?


The Melting Pot
3.1 Settlers and Pioneers
The settling of North America did not truly begin till the early
1600s, over a century after its discovery, by which time Spain
already had thriving colonies in Mexico, the West Indies and South
America. It was the Spanish empire that had also founded the first
enduring colony on the territory of North America (1565): Saint
Augustine, located in present-day Florida.
Jamestown (1607): Another notable attempt in this direction belonged to the British
the first permanent Empire, when organizing Roanoke Colony in 1585. The colony,
however, disappeared by 1591. Britain’s next attempt, over twenty
colony
years later, would be more successful, with its first permanent
colony in the Americas founded in 1607 – Jamestown.
In order to understand how the next successful English
Mayflower colonies, that were entirely different, came to exist, it is important
Compact (1620): to note the religious happenings in England. The established
the first document church there was the Anglican Church, which had broken away
of American from the Roman-Catholic Church during the reign of Henry VIII
democracy (1509 – 1547). Relatively soon after that, however, a group of
religious dissenters appeared. They were called Puritans, as they
wanted to ‘purify’ the church by eliminating the remaining Catholic
Plymouth colony elements. Some of them, who would become known as Pilgrims,
held the first were more radical in their beliefs, considering that the Anglican
Thanksgiving feast Church could not be reformed. They originated in a small
in 1621. Protestant congregation in Scrooby Manor, England and had sailed
in 1605 for the Netherlands, which was establishing itself as a
haven for the persecuted. Dissatisfied with the heavy Dutch
influence on their children and with their poor economic conditions,
some of these emigrants joined a larger group of Separatists who
had remained in England, and sailed for the New World on board
the Mayflower; they came instead to what is now called
Massachusetts, and landed on the west side of Lower Cape Cod;
believing themselves outside the jurisdiction of any organized
government, the men drew up a formal agreement to abide by “just
and equal laws” drafted by leaders of their choosing. This was the
Mayflower Compact. The document, which was to be the official
Constitution of Plymouth Colony for over 70 years, is the first
document of American Democracy. The Pilgrims later relocated to
Plymouth Colony on the mainland, establishing that settlement on
December 21, 1620. Like the settlers at Jamestown, the Pilgrims
had a difficult first winter, having had no time to plant crops.
However, in 1621 they enlisted the aid of Squanto and Samoset,
two American Indians who had learned to speak some English.
That fall brought a bountiful harvest, and the first Thanksgiving
feast was held.
A second group of colonists established the Massachusetts
Bay Colony in 1629. This expedition consisted of 400 Puritans, but
in the next two years 2,000 other people arrived in America in
waves of emigration known as the “Great Migration.” In the New
World the Puritans created a deeply religious, socially tight-knit and
politically innovative culture that still lingers on in the modern
United States.

The Melting Pot
A Maryland Family Farm
Along a tidal stretch of the Potomac River, Maryland side, a

modest family farm, free of debt but without slaves was unlikely
to grow beyond 200 acres. Three acres of Orinoco tobacco
planted in mounds (1) was the first crop established on newly
cleared land. Stored in a barn to cure (2), tobacco was later
packed into hogsheads (3), which were pulled by horse to a
nearby wharf. There, as required after 1747, the tobacco was
inspected as a condition of export. With the proceeds of a year’s
sales, perhaps £14, the family could buy hoes and drawknives,
tea and pepper, shoes and cloth.
In a former tobacco field, some five acres of corn were planted
in hillocks about eight feet apart (4), most often a tall-growing
variety, gourdseed, and a type for roasting, flint.
About ten acres of wheat (5) and some cotton (6) were
contained by fencing called drunken man (7).
Red Devon cattle were kept in pasturage (8). Slaughtered
hogs were preserved in the smokehouse (9). The kitchen garden
(10) provided vegetables and herbs; the orchard (11), apples for
cider and for drying. The kitchen (12), a fire hazard, was separate
from the house (13), behind which was a pile of spent oyster
shells (14) and the necessary (15).
(Source: National Geographic Society, Historical Atlas of the United States,
1993)

The Melting Pot
Although it is a circulated idea that the Puritans came to
America seeking religious freedom, perhaps a more accurate term
would be “religious domination.” Despite the fact that they had fled
from religious repression in England, the Puritans did not seek to
establish toleration in America. Their social ideal was that of the
“nation of saints” or the “City upon a Hill”, an intensely religious,
thoroughly righteous community that would serve as an example
for all of Europe and stimulate mass conversion to Puritanism.
The political structure of the Puritan colonies is often
misunderstood, as well. Officials were elected by the community,
but only white males who were members of a Congregationalist
church could vote. From a modern American standpoint, Puritan
society was by no means a democracy. Officials had no
responsibility to “the people” – their function was to serve God by
best overseeing the moral and physical improvement of the
community. However, it was not a theocracy either –
Congregationalist ministers had no special powers in the
government. On the other hand, by contemporary European
“The City upon the standards, it was quite politically liberal – arguably more so than
Hill’: the ideal any European power of the day.
Puritan community Socially, the Puritan society was tightly knit. No one was
allowed to live alone for fear that their temptation would lead to the
moral corruption of all of Puritan society. Because marriage
generally took place within the geographic location of the family,
within several generations many “towns” were more like clans,
composed of several large, intermarried families. The strength of
Puritan society was reflected through its institutions – specifically,
its churches, town halls, and militias. All members of the Puritan
community were expected to be active in all three of these
organizations, ensuring the moral, political, and military safety of
their community. Although some characterize the strength of
Puritan society as repressively communal, others point to it as the
basis of the later American value on civic virtue, which proved to
be essential for the development of democracy.
Economically, Puritan New England fulfilled the expectations of
its founders. The Puritan economy was based on the efforts of
individual farmers, who harvested enough crops to feed
themselves and their families and to trade for goods they could not
produce themselves. There was a generally high economic
standing and standard of living in New England. On the other hand,
town leaders in New England could literally rent out the town’s
impoverished families for a year to anyone who could afford to
board them, as a form of alms and as a form of cheap labor. Along
with farming growth, New England became an important mercantile
and shipbuilding center, often serving as the connection between
the South and Europe.
Most settlers who came to America in the 17th century were
English, but there were also Dutch, Swedes and Germans in the
middle region, a few French Huguenots in South Carolina and
elsewhere, slaves from Africa, primarily in the South, and isolated
groups of Spaniards, Italians and Portuguese throughout the
colonies. After 1680, however, England ceased to be the chief
source of immigration.
(Source: Ştefan Avădanei, North American Literary History, 2001)

The Melting Pot
SAQ 2
Have a look at the following pictures (the picture of A Maryland Family

Farm may also help you) representing the history of a farm, and put
captions to each of them.
a) b)
c) d)
Compare your answers to those in the “Answers to SAQs” section at

the end of the unit.

The Melting Pot
3.2 The Native American

Historians generally speak today about five Indian cultures
(most of them being connected by totems*, committed to
powwow*, fond of wampum* beads, and need of scalps*), the
culture (or rather the way of life) being a group united by the
language the Indians spoke, the religion they believed in, the
clothes they used to wear and the food they used to eat.
Culture Home Food Clothing

Northwest salmon and made of tree
wooden lodge
other fish bark
California- acorn; fish and made of animal
wickiup
Intermountain shellfish skins
adobe
corn; beans, made of cotton
Southwest apartment
squash fibers
building
made of buffalo
Plains tepee buffalo
hides
made from
Eastern longhouse; deer; rabbit;
hides of small
Woodland wigwam squirrel; berries
animals

The Melting Pot
SAQ 3
Match the two columns to remember what food a certain Indian

culture eats:
fish Plains
corn Southwest
buffalo Eastern Woodland
deer Northwest, California-
Intermountain


The Melting Pot
3.2.1 Indian Homes

The Iroquois (including the ferocious Mohawks) and the
Cherokee Indians (part of the Eastern Woodland Culture) lived in
wigwams made by bending young trees to form the round shape of
the home. Tree bark and over it a layer of thatch (dried grass)
Indian homes: served as a roof to protect the inhabitants from bad weather. A
wigwams, small hole on top of this roof allowed smoke from the fire to
longhouses, tepees, escape.
wickiups, adobe Longhouses, on the other hand, were made by building a
apartment buildings frame from young trees and covering it with bark sewn together.
Over a dozen families (related to each other) could live in this 100
feet long structure, in the rooms on either side of the hall way,
wigwam sleeping on the platforms, covered with deerskin. The higher
platforms were used for storing baskets, pots, and pelts (the skins
of animals with the fur attached).
The Iroquois built a log wall all around their village, with only
one opening that they could close if their enemies came near.
Beyond this high wall was cleared land used to raise crops and to
see approaching enemies.
Because the Plains Indians followed the buffalo migration,
they needed a kind of shelter that could be quickly and easily put
together and taken down. Their home, the tepee was made by
pointing long wooden poles together, fastening them at the top and
covering them with buffalo hide fastened to the ground. The long
poles of the tepee were dragged behind the horse when the
Indians moved their village (travois).
The California Intermountain Indians lived in circular homes
(wickiups) made by arching poles and covering them with brush
and mat. This type of home was just temporary, to be used when
the Indians were hunting.
The Southwest Indians (‘benefiting’ by very little rainfall and a
hot desert climate) lived in apartment-style buildings, made of
adobe, clay and vegetables dried in the sun. Several families lived
in each apartment, and as they grew, rooms were added on top of
the rooms that were already there.
Cherokee homes were usually wattle (twigs, branches, and
stalks woven together) and daub (a sticky substance like mud or
clay), the daub covering the wattle frame – which created the look of
an upside down basket. The Cherokee villages also had fences
around them to prevent enemies from entering.

The Melting Pot
SAQ 4
Match the two columns to recall what home a certain Indian culture
has:
wickiup Southwest
adobe apartment building California-Intermountain
tepee Eastern Woodland
wigwam plains


The Melting Pot
3.2.2 Indian Food: the Buffalo

The Plains Indians (Dakota, Cheyenne, Sioux, and
Comanche) lived in the area known as the Great Plains and had
the buffalo as the most important natural resource. It provided
them with all of their basic needs: food, clothing, and shelter.
The buffalo provided When the buffalo herd was spotted by the scouts, the women
food, clothing and set up the tepees while the warriors began the hunt. They mounted
shelter. their horses, rode right into the herd and used bows and arrows to
kill the buffalo. Or, again on horseback they chased the buffalo off
a cliff. Or, strange enough this time, they sneaked up on the buffalo
with wolf skins covering their bodies, then killed them with bows
and arrows. When the hunt was over, the women and children
The Plains Indians joined the warriors to cut up the buffalo.
only killed what was The Indians used the meat of the buffalo for food, roasting the
needed to survive. fresh meat on a stick over the fire or sometimes boiled it with fresh
vegetables. They also made a sort of sausage by stuffing meat and
herbs into the buffalo's gut. The meat that could not be eaten right
away was cut into strips and hung on racks to dry. It would then
keep for a long time. The skin (hide) of the buffalo was used for
clothing and shelter, but not before it was treated. First, the hide
was staked to the ground or tied to a frame. Then the flesh was
scraped off the inside, and the hair was scraped off the outside.
When the hide was clean, the inside was rubbed with a mixture of
liver, fat, and brains. This was done several times and then
washed in a stream. Finally, it was softened by pulling it back and
forth through a loop of rope. The hide was then used as the outer
covering of the tepee or, decorated with beads, porcupine quills,
and feathers, provided the Plains Indians’ clothing.
No part of the buffalo went to waste. The horns were used as
spoons, cups, and toys. The bones were used as tools and
weapons. The tail was used as a fly brush or whip. The stomach
and intestines were cleaned and then used to carry water. The
Plains Indians only killed what was needed to survive, never more.
It was only when the white man started moving west that the
slaughter of the buffalo occurred.
SAQ 5
Fill in the blanks with the appropriate word or phrase:
When the buffalo herd was spotted by .............. (1), the women set
up .............. (2), while the warriors began the hunt. They mounted
their horses, rode right into the herd and used .............. (3) to kill
the buffalo. Or, again on horseback they chased the buffalo off a
cliff. Or, strange enough this time, they sneaked up on the buffalo
with .............. (4) covering their bodies, then .............. (5) them with
bows and arrows.


The Melting Pot

The Melting Pot
3.3 The Afro-American

The Europeans first came to North America in the second half
of the 15th century and, if in the next two centuries they visited the
The race-based New Continent sporadically. In the 17th century such visits were
slavery system made on a regular basis. The explorers, attracted by the Promised
was in full bloom in Land, became settlers and were soon in need of labor to clear the
early eighteenth forests and tend the plantations and farms. These ’’messengers”
century. traveled to Africa, and the slave trade would bring millions of
captives in the years to come. Before the 17th century was over a
new race-based slavery system developed and by early 18th
century most of the Africans and African-Americans were slaves
for life. At first, however, like their poor English counterparts, the
Africans were treated as servants, who would be freed of their
obligations to their owners after serving for several years. But
rebellion and fear of rebellion spread and control over the captive
population (fond of spirituals and later on keen on jazz*) became a
Slaves mostly significant issue for whites.
worked on rice 1700s: Almost half of the slaves coming to North America
plantations in the arrive in Charleston. Many stay in South Carolina to work on rice
first half of the plantations. Successful trade owners here take advantage of the
eighteenth century. fact that at the end of the 17th century, some of the earliest African
arrivals showed English settlers how rice could be grown in the
swampy coastal environment. With cheap and permanent workers
available in the form of slaves, plantation owners now realize this
new crop (alien to Europeans, but familiar to many of the Africans)
could make them rich. As rice booms, land owners need to import
more African slaves to clear the swamps and cultivate this strange
crop. By 1710, the Africans now outnumbering the Europeans in
South Carolina, Carolina authorities develop laws to keep the
African American population under control. Whipping, branding,
dismembering, castrating, or killing a slave are legal under many
circumstances. Freedom of movement and access to education
Most slaves are outlawed.
worked the 1750: Georgia is the last of the British North American
tobacco fields in colonies to legalize slavery which is now legal in each of the
the second half of thirteen British colonies that are soon to become the United States.
the eighteenth 61% of all British North American slaves — nearly 145,000 — live
century. in Virginia and Maryland, working the tobacco fields. White slave
owners live in towns like Charleston or Savannah; most of the
40,000 slaves live on plantations in South Carolina and Georgia in
which the coastal rice belt has a slave population of 40,000. As rice
needs irrigating and requires a large labor force, slaves live and
work in larger groups, coordinated by overseers who assign a task
Most slaves lived in the morning, the slaves being on their own when the assigned
on cotton work is over.
plantations in early 1793: The cotton gin is invented, and so, the economy of the
nineteenth century. South is changed, with cotton the money-making crop. Slavery
takes on new importance with a massive influx of slaves to the
cotton-growing states in the lower South and the West. In the
Cotton belt, most slaves live on plantations with less than 50
slaves, pressed on by an overseer, for the year-long cycle of

The Melting Pot
cultivation culminating in ginning and pressing the crop in January
and February. The slave population almost triples in size between
1790 and 1830. Since children are most likely to be sold, this
tragedy touches nearly every black family. The cotton boom and
the resulting demand for slaves bring increased danger for
northern free blacks: the possibility of being kidnapped and sold
into slavery in the South. The practice of kidnapping is actually
widespread, many southern slave owners taking a ”no question
asked” approach to purchasing slaves. The 1793 Fugitive Slave
Act enables any white person to claim a black person as a fugitive,
unless another white person testifies otherwise. Blacks are not
Philadelphia: allowed to testify against whites in court according to southern law.
a way to solve the
contradiction of a The Black Community in Philadelphia (1810-1831)
country founded
on independence, In cities like Philadelphia, free blacks in their ’’pursuit of life, liberty
but built on slavery and happiness” build churches and schools, forming beneficial
societies. Philadelphia seems to be showing the way for the rest of
the country to resolve the contradiction of a country founded on
independence but built on slavery. People come from rural areas in
a hundred-mile radius around Philadelphia, as well as from the
South, attracted by job prospects and the promise of living among
other free black people. A small but growing number of black
professionals include doctors, teachers, clergymen, hairdressers,
shoemakers, bakers, tailors, sailmakers, food caterers, carpenters,
musicians, and many other professions. In 1811, the city directory
lists 81 black men who own their own businesses; by 1816, the
number is 180. Most women work as domestic laborers, but some
are teachers, or own their own businesses. Together these people
create a black middle class. Philadelphia now has the largest, most
aggressive, and wealthiest free black population in the western
world. Philadelphians know it. Americans know it. Everybody sees
a Philadelphian as the prototype of what a free African American
would look like, and what a free African American would do. That is
to say, they would buy property; they would take over the public
space; they would see themselves as gentlemen and ladies.

The Melting Pot
SAQ 6
Fill in the blanks:
In the 1700s almost half of the slaves coming to North America

arrive in .............. (1). Many stay in South Carolina to work on
................. (2). Freedom of movement and ................. (3) are
outlawed. 61% of the slaves live in Virginia and Maryland, working
................. (4). As rice needs irrigating and requires a large
................. (5), slaves live and work in larger groups, coordinated
by ................. (6). In 1793 ................. (7) is invented, and so, the
economy of the South is changed, with ................. (8) the money-
making crop. In the Cotton belt, most slaves live on plantations,
with less then ................. (9) slaves, pressed on by an overseer,
for the year-long cycle of cultivation, culminating in ................. (10)
the crop in January and February.


The Melting Pot
Summary
American civilisation, a “melting pot” of peoples and races is
one of crossing barriers. Everyone (group or individual) means to
make a difference, now they are on the wining side, and now on
the losing side. A formidable sense of competition was activated
from the start — philosophers and economists call it “capitalist
spirit.”
The settlers, mostly English and protestants created a
deeply religious, socially tight-knit and politically innovative culture
that is still alive, 400 years since its inception. Of course, the
system as such has suffered many changes, mostly through
contacts with the Native Americans (all through the seventeenth
century and in the first half of the eighteen century) and the African
Americans (from mid-eighteenth century to this day).

The Melting Pot
Key Terms
• Puritan society
• Wigwam
• Tepee
• Buffalo
• Slavery

• totem The Northwest Indians lived in wooden lodges holding
several families under a roof made of pieces of bark sewn
together or wooden planks, or boards. The inside of the building
had a pit in the middle with a fire in it to be used for cooking.
The families would share the fireplace in the middle. Outside of
each wooden lodge was a totem pole which was considered a
very important part of the lodge. Some lodges even had totem
poles decorated on the inside beams of their homes. Each
lodge had a different totem pole.
• wampum Wampum belts and necklaces were made from
wampum beads (white and purple shells). They were used as a
form of communication between Indian tribes, all Indian
messengers carrying wampum belts when going to other tribes.
Wampum was also used as money between white man and
Indians.
• powwow The Plains Indians believed the gods showed
themselves in the form of the sun, moon, stars, and anything
that was strong or strange, such as an animal, person, or even
an odd-shaped stone. And they tried to assimilate this strength
in the course of self-induced visions: going to a lonely place
and staying there for several days without food or water. Not
everyone received such visions; it is the medicine men that did.
These men were also said to be able to see the future and cure
diseases. The powwow was a celebration or prayer to the Great
Spirit, an important ceremony being the Sun Dance which took
place in the summer months, and lasted around four days.
During this time dancers performed the same exact movements
and had nothing to eat or drink. They lifted their eyes to the sun
for as long as they could endure it. Some men would even
pierce their chests. Another important dance was the Ghost
Dance, performed nightly in order to draw the attention of the
gods and their ancestors.
• scalp The Plains Indian warrior could earn respect through

battle only. When killing an enemy he brought home his scalp
to prove it. He then trimmed his pants and shirts with scalps to
show his success. Indians would keep count of how many
enemies they had killed by adding a feather to their
headdresses (war bonnets).
• jazz was begun in the South by African-Americans, many of its

rhythms coming from the work songs and spirituals (religious
The Melting Pot
songs) of Black slaves. New Orleans street bands first made it
popular. Early forms of jazz created at the beginning of the 20th
century were ragtime (with its strong rhythm which is ”ragged”,
i.e. not regular) and the blues (with a slow sad sound) that
would develop in the 1950s into rock and roll (drawing on
country music too), and finally into soul (an emotional music
developing out of gospel) and rhythm and blues (with added
rhythms, popular in the 1950s and the 1960s). Dixieland
developed from ragtime and blues and made a feature from the
improvisation (making up the music as it is being played),
especially on the trumpet and saxophone. In the 1920s many
African-Americans moved North taking jazz with them, and
Chicago and New York became centers for their music. This
was the beginning of the bigband era. In the 1940s there were
new styles such as bebop (emphasizing the creative playing of
individual musicians in small groups). Freer forms such as
progressive jazz developed in the 1950s, and cool jazz followed
in the 1960s. More recent styles have included funky jazz,
jazzrock and hip-hop jazz.

The Melting Pot
SAA No. 2
Have a good look at the pictures below and describe the work that
the settler, the Native American and the African American does in
the woods, in the camp and, respectively, in the field.
Please send your answers to your tutor.

Your paper should not be longer than three pages.
Answers to SAQs
SAQ 1 Should your answers to SAQ 1 not be comparable to those

given below, please revise pp. 35 - 36 of the unit.
a) the Middle Atlantic Region; b) New England; c) the West.
Should your answers to SAQ 2 not be comparable to that

given below, please revise section 3.1 of the unit.
SAQ 2 a) clearing land around a small cabin; b) felling trees to build; c)

building to acommodate livestock; d) the modern farm is now an
estate.
Should your answers to SAQ 3 not be comparable to those

SAQ 3 fish – Northwest, California Intermountain; corn – Southwest;

buffalo – Plains; deer – Eastern Woodland.

SAQ 4 wickiup – California Intermountain; adobe apartment building –

Southwest; tepee – Plains; wigwam – Eastern Woodland.

The Melting Pot
SAQ 5 (1) – the scouts; (2) – tepees; (3) – bows and arrows; (4) –
wolfskins; (5) – killed.

SAQ 6 (1) – Charleston; (2) – rice plantations; (3) – access to education;

(4) – the tobacco fields; (5) – labor foce; (6) – overseers; (7) – the
cotton gin; (8) – cotton; (9) – 50; (10) – ginning and pressing.
Further Readings
1. Dumitru Dorobăţ, Din Ţara Făgăduinţei, Institutul European,
Iaşi, 2000, pp. 65-71
2. Ştefan Avădanei, North American Literary History, Institutul
European, Iaşi, 2004, pp. 18-19, pp. 20-21, pp. 30-31, pp. 24-32.
3. Ştefan Avădanei, Acolada Atlantică, Institutul European, Iaşi,
2001, pp. 57-60, pp. 196-204.
4. Gheorghe Stan, Unchiul Sam la el acasă, Panfilius, Iaşi, 2002,
pp. 7-10.

American Geography and Economy
UNIT 4
AMERICAN GEOGRAPHY AND ECONOMY
Unit Outline
Unit Objectives ................................................................................. 56
4.1 Transport........................................................................................... 56
4.2 Rivers and Lakes .............................................................................. 59
4.3 Land and People............................................................................... 61
4.4 Farming ............................................................................................. 63
4.5 Precipitation...................................................................................... 65
4.6 Manufacturing................................................................................... 67
4.7 The Skyscraper................................................................................. 69
Summary ........................................................................................... 71
Key Terms ......................................................................................... 72
Glossary of Terms of Comments .................................................... 72
SAA no. 3 .......................................................................................... 74
Answers to SAQs ............................................................................. 75
Further Readings.............................................................................. 76


• describe American geography as the world’s largest stage for
Unit objectives the world’s greatest economy;
• see the extraordinary diversity of American farming and
manufacturing;
• understand the changing quality of transport and house
building.
4.1 Transport
The development of transport facilities was of crucial
importance in the growth of the United States. The first routes
Transport: were natural waterways; the earliest overland routes were rough
from going on trails suitable for travel on foot or horseback. No surfaced roads
horseback and by boat existed until the 1790s, when the first turnpikes were built, some
to going by rail, by under private auspices and some by state government. Besides
road and by air the overland roads, many canals were constructed between the
late 18th century and 1850 to link navigable rivers and lakes in
the eastern United States and in the Great Lakes region.
Steam railways began to appear in the East in the 1820s.
The first transcontinental railway was constructed between 1862
and 1869 by the Union Pacific and Central Pacific companies,
both of which received large subsidies from the federal
government. Transcontinental railways were the chief means of
transport used by European settlers who populated the West in
the latter part of the 19th century and were also of utmost
importance for moving goods from one part of the country to
another. The railways continued to expand until 1917, when the
length of operated track reached a peak of about 407,165 km.
Thereafter, motor transport became a serious competitor both for
passengers and freight.
Air transport began to compete with other modes of
transport in the United States after World War I. The first
commercial flights in the United States were made in 1918 and
carried mail. Passenger service began to gain importance in the
late 1920s, but not until the advent of commercial jet craft after
World War II did air transport become a leading mode of travel.
During the early 1990s railways annually handled 37.4 per
cent of the total freight traffic, trucks carried 27.6 per cent of the
freight, and oil pipelines conveyed 19.3 per cent. Some 15.3 per
cent was shipped on inland waterways. Although the freight
handled by airlines amounted to only 0.4 per cent of the total,
much of the cargo consisted of high-priority or high-value items.
Private cars accounted for about 80 per cent of the total
annual passenger traffic. Airlines came second, carrying nearly
18 per cent; buses were responsible for 1.1 per cent, and railways
carried 0.7 per cent.
In 1999 the United States had about 6.3 million km of
streets, roads, and highways. About 21 per cent of the roadways
were in urban areas. The National Interstate Highway System,
74,717 km in length, connected the nation’s principal cities and
carried nearly one quarter of all the road and street traffic. Around
478 passenger vehicles per 1,000 people were registered.
As of 1992, Class I railways—the 13 largest railway
companies in the United States—operated 74 per cent of the total
amount of track, employed 89 per cent of the railway workers,
and generated 91 per cent of the railway revenue. Overall, the
United States had 272,761 km of operated railway track in 1998.
Railways employ about 223,000 people and transport nearly 25
million cars of freight each year. Amtrak (the National Railroad
Passenger Corporation), a federally subsidized concern, operates
almost all the intercity passenger trains in the United States; it
carried more than 51 million passengers annually in the early
1990s, including some 29 million metropolitan commuters.
The United States has a relatively small merchant marine. In
1995 only 543 vessels of 1,000 gross tonnes and over were
registered in the United States, of which only 354 were privately
owned. Many American ship-owners register their ships in foreign
countries such as Liberia and Panama, however, so they can
operate the ship at a lower cost.
The leading seaport in the United States in the early 1990s
was the Port of New Orleans, Louisiana. Other leading ports
included New York; Houston; Valdez Harbor, Alaska; Baton
Rouge, Louisiana; Corpus Christi, Texas; Long Beach, California;
Norfolk Harbor, Virginia; Tampa Harbor, Florida; and Los
Angeles. Although it no longer ranks first among US seaports, the
Port of New York remains a significant destination for both
passenger and freight traffic.
The inland waterway network of the United States has three
main components—the Mississippi river system, the Great Lakes,
and the coastal waterways. About 60 per cent of the annual freight
traffic is on the Mississippi and its tributaries, about 19 per cent is on
the Great Lakes, and the remaining 21 per cent is on the coastal
waterways.
The Mississippi river system has a combined network of
waterways that exceed about 24,000 km in length; St Louis,
Missouri, is the leading port. The Great Lakes carry more
commerce than any other lakes in the world. The leading Great
Lakes seaport is Duluth, Minnesota-Superior, Wisconsin. Ocean-
going vessels can sail between the Great Lakes and the Atlantic
Ocean via the St Lawrence Seaway (opened in 1959). The
Intracoastal Waterway is a navigable, toll-free shipping route
extending for about 1,740 km along the Atlantic Coast and for
about 1,770 km along the Gulf of Mexico coast. About 45 per cent
of the total annual traffic on all coastal waterways is on the Gulf
Intracoastal Waterway, about 30 per cent is on the Atlantic
Intracoastal Waterway, and about 25 per cent is on Pacific Coast
waterways.
Airlines in the United States annually carry 528 million
passengers, the vast majority of whom are domestic travellers. In
the mid-1990s, the nation had about 5,474 public and 12,896
private airports. Among the busiest are Chicago-O’Hare
International Airport; Dallas/Fort Worth Airport, in Texas; William
B. Hartsfield International Airport, near Atlanta, Georgia; Los
Angeles International Airport; and San Francisco International
Airport.

SAQ 1
1. The first routes used on the American continent were the rough
trails.
2. The surfaced roads appeared at the end of the 18th century.
3. The first man-made canals were built at the end of the 18th
century.
4. The two companies which built the first transcontinental railway
(Union Pacific and Central Pacific) got no money from the Federal
Government.
5. Transcontinental railways made an important contribution to the
colonization of the West.
6. At the beginning of the 20th century trucks and vans started to
replace trains.
7. Air transport became a serious competition after WWII.
8. Today the most important means of freight transport is the road.
9. Passenger traffic is handled mainly by cars.
10. American airlines carry more than 500 million passengers every
year.


4.2 Rivers and Lakes

The rivers of the eastern United States, principal among
which are the Hudson, Delaware, Susquehanna, Potomac, and
Savannah, receive rainfall in every month and are therefore
reliable routes for water-borne commerce. Rivers of the interior,
such as the Ohio, Tennessee, Illinois, and Mississippi, often flood
in spring and decrease in size during the hot weeks of late summer
and the snowy winter months. Some degree of flow regulation and
flood control has been achieved on these rivers through a costly
and controversial system of dams and levees.
In the western United States where mountain snowmelt is the
principal source of water for the eastward-flowing Missouri, Platte,
Arkansas, and Rio Grande rivers and the westward-flowing
Colorado, Sacramento, Snake, and Columbia rivers. Most of these
rivers shrink in volume as they flow away from their mountain
sources; some, like the Colorado, are dammed and diverted for so
many urban or agricultural uses that they no longer carry water to
the sea. In Alaska the drainage system is dominated by the Yukon,
a river as long as the Rio Grande but considerably greater in
volume.
Most of the waters in Missouri flow into the Mississippi River,
either independently or through the Missouri River. The Missouri
crosses the state from west to east, where it flows into the
Mississippi. The huge Mississippi River defines most of the state’s
eastern border.
The five Great Lakes – Ontario, Erie, Huron, Michigan, and
Superior – occupy an interconnected set of glacial basins and
together serve as a major artery of transport. Glaciers also left tens
of thousands of smaller lakes throughout the north-eastern United
States, the upper Midwest, and much of Alaska. Among the larger
of these are Champlain, Winnipesaukee, and Cayuga in the north-
east and Winnebago, Red, and Mille Lacsin the Midwest. The
Great Salt Lake of Utah and many smaller salt basins of the
Mountain states are remnants of much larger Ice Age lakes that
competed with huge forests for absolute supremacy over the Great
Planes.

SAQ 2
Make your choice:
1. The Hudson, Delaware, Potomac, Savannah etc. are:

a) eastern rivers; b) western rivers; c) tributaries of the Mississippi;
d) flowing into the Great Lakes.
2. The most important river in the United States is:

a) the Missouri; b) the Ohio; c) the Tennessee; d) the Mississippi.
3. During the Great Depression, President Franklin Roosevelt

initiated a program of building dams on:
a) the Mississippi; b) the Tennessee; c) the Ohio; d) the Potomac.
4. Besides Lake Superior, the other four of the five Great Lakes are:
a) Ontario, Hudson, Michigan and Champlain;
b) Huron, Erie, Michigan and Red;
c) Ontario, Michigan, Erie and Huron;
d) Winnebago, Erie, Ontario and Red.
5. The Great Salt Lake belongs to the state(s) of:

a) California and Nevada;
b) Nevada;
c) Arizona and New Mexico;
d) Utah.


4.3 Land and People

United States: a United States of America or United States, popularly referred
federal republic to as the United States or as America, is a federal republic on the
continent of North America, consisting of 48 adjacent states and
the non-adjacent states of Alaska and Hawaii. Outlying areas
include Puerto Rico, American Samoa, Guam, and the US Virgin
Islands. The 48 states are bounded on the north by Canada, on the
east by the Atlantic Ocean, on the south by the Gulf of Mexico and
Mexico, and on the west by the Pacific Ocean. The northern
boundary is partly formed by the Great Lakes and the St Lawrence
River; the southern boundary is partly formed by the Rio Grande.
The total area of the United States (including the District of

Columbia) is 9,629,047 sq km, of which 1,593,438 sq km are in
Alaska and 16,729 sq km are in Hawaii. Inland, coastal, and Great
Lakes bodies of water cover 470,129 sq km of the total area.
Mount McKinley (6,194 m) in Alaska, is the highest point in North
America; Death Valley, a depression 86 m below sea level, in
California, is the lowest point.
The population of the United States is highly mobile. In the
An increasingly 1980s and early 1990s redistribution from the north-central and
diverse population, north-eastern states to the south and west continued to be a major
in its ethnic trend, as the American population became increasingly diverse in
composition, its ethnic composition, characteristics, language, and religion.
characteristics, According to the 1990 census, the resident population of the
language and United States was 248,709,873. The population grew by
religion 22,164,068 people or 9.8 per cent during the decade from 1980 to
1990. This increase was not evenly distributed: about 12 million, or
54.3 per cent of the growth, occurred in the states of California,
Texas, and Florida. The population of the United States is
280,562,490 (2002 estimate).
Another trend evident during the 1980s was that although
urban areas grew at a somewhat higher rate than rural areas,
growth rates were low in some of the largest metropolitan areas,
and from 1980 to 1990 the population of a number of major cities
such as Chicago, Philadelphia, and Detroit decreased.
SAQ 3
Make your choice:
1. The United States of America is a:

a) federal republic;
b) parliamentary republic.
2. Puerto Rico is:

a) an American state;
b) an American territory.
3. The District of Columbia is:

a) the 51st American state;
b) not a state.
4. The highest point in North America is:

a) Mount Denali in Alaska;
b) Death Valley.
5. The most populated American state is:

a) California;
b) Texas.


4.4 Farming
Farming accounts for less than 2 per cent of annual income
The number of farms and employs less than 3 per cent of US workers, yet the
is on the decrease. Americans lead the world in many aspects of agricultural
production. Farmers not only produce enough to meet domestic
needs, they also enable the United States to export more farm
products per year than any other nation in the world. The total
annual value of farm output increased from about $55 billion in
1970 to about $202 billion in 1994. Excluding inflation, the increase
in the farm output was 2 per cent annually.
The small subsistence farm run by a farmer primarily to meet
personal needs has virtually disappeared from the American
scene; most agricultural products are grown on large commercial
farms for shipment to urban and industrial markets. The number of
farms in the United States decreased from more than 5.6 million in
1950 to about 2.1 million in 1995. At the same time, average farm
size increased from 86 hectares to 190 hectares. In the mid-1990s
livestock and livestock products accounted for 49 per cent of the
value of all farm marketings, and crops for the remainder.
California led all states in the yearly value of farm receipts; it was
followed by Texas, Iowa, Nebraska, Illinois, Kansas, and
Minnesota.
Beef cattle rank as the most valuable product of the nation’s
farms, accounting for almost one fifth of total annual farm receipts.
Many are raised on large ranches in south-western states, rich in
grass. Dairy products represent about 11 per cent of the yearly
value of farm marketings and are the second most valuable item
coming from American farms. Other major livestock and livestock
products include pigs, chickens, eggs, turkeys, sheep and lambs.
Leading agricultural crops are corn, vegetables, soya beans,
California, closely
fruits and nuts, wheat, cotton, and tobacco. Illinois, Iowa,
followed by Texas
Nebraska, Minnesota, and Indiana together produce about two
with its beef cattle, thirds of the annual corn crop, while Kansas usually leads all states
comes first in the in yearly wheat production. For more than a century and a half,
yearly value of farm cotton was the predominant cash crop in the South. Today,
receipts. however, it is no longer important in some of the traditional cotton-
growing areas east of the Mississippi River and is now
concentrated in relatively flat areas amenable to large-scale
mechanization, such as the lower Mississippi Valley, the plains of
Texas, and the valleys of California and Arizona. Tobacco remains
an important cash crop. The leading tobacco-producing states are
North Carolina and Kentucky.
Other leading crops include peanuts, peaches, tomatoes, and
apples. More than 75 per cent of the oranges and about 50 per
cent of the tomatoes are produced in Florida; some 84 per cent of
the grapes are raised in California; and about 50 per cent of the
commercial apples come from orchards in Washington state.
Additional major vegetable crops are sugar cane, rice, sorghum
grain, dry beans, broccoli, cabbage, carrots, celery, cucumbers,
lettuce, onions, green peppers, and mushrooms; valuable fruit
crops include cantaloupe melons and watermelons, cherries,
pears, plums and strawberries. Major nut crops include almonds,
pecans, and walnuts.

SAQ 4
Fill in the blanks with the appropriate word:

Nothing like the great ................ (1) of America a) scarcity;
exists anywhere in Europe. They are far larger b) productive;
and more ................ (2) than European farms, c) harvesting;
and they employ fewer people. Less than 3 d) farms;
percent of the population ................ (3) in e) works.
agriculture. The contrast between abundance of
land and ................ (4) of man-power is evident.
Farmers have tractors and mechanized
equipment for tilling, seeding and ................ (5).
The soil is sprayed with fertilizers and
insecticides and the farm output is huge.


4.5 Precipitation
The pattern of precipitation is largely a consequence of the
interaction of wind and topography. The wind system of the Earth
Precipitation = balances temperatures by taking heat from the equator and
interaction of wind carrying it towards the poles. Two features of this global
and topography atmospheric circulation are particularly significant for the United
States. One is a current of sinking air, a gentle but persistent
downward movement of air from the upper atmosphere; the air
loses moisture as it rises to the upper atmosphere and begins to
move polewards. At about latitude 30° north the air begins to sink,
bringing hot and dry conditions to the south-western United States,
especially in summer.
The other significant part of atmospheric circulation is the jet
stream, a shifting zone of fast winds blowing high above the
ground, generally from west to east. The path of the jet stream on
any given day is a key to surface weather. In summer, the jet
stream is usually near the Canadian border, though it may loop as
far north as Alaska or as far south as Louisiana. It brings wet
Pacific air onshore in Washington and Alaska, but in other western
states dry air masses from Mexico and Canada dominate. In the
east, by contrast, the jet can pull moist air masses northward from
the Gulf of Mexico all the way to Canada.
In winter, the entire wind system follows the sun southward.
Pacific air masses now bring clouds and rain to the coastal
mountains from California to southern Alaska. The jet usually
crosses the country at the latitude of Oklahoma, and cold, dry
Canadian air covers the northern half of the country; however, day-
to-day shifts of the jet may pull warm, moist Gulf air as far north as
Illinois or bring Canadian air to Florida.
Regional weather hazards are closely associated with the
seasonal position of the jet stream and associated fronts. Torrential
rains are most common near the Gulf of Mexico, which is the major
source of moisture for the country. Tornadoes occur in the centre
of the United States, where Canadian and Gulf air masses often
collide violently; hurricanes arise out of the late-summer warmth of
the Atlantic Ocean and drift towards the south-eastern states in the
autumn. Southern California experiences smog and forest fires in
late summer.
Heavy winter snows in the eastern United States are caused
by the rapid cooling of Gulf air, amplified in the Great Lakes region
by local lake breezes. December and March are the major months
for snow in Minnesota and the Dakotas; in January there is a time
of intense cold and little snowfall, because Gulf air cannot
penetrate that far north. Finally, the occasional west coast storms
of Hawaii are wintertime incursions of North Pacific air that occur
when the jet stream curves far to the south. Normal weather
consists of trade winds that cause rain only on the north-eastern
slopes of each island.

SAQ 5
Regional weather hazards are closely associated with ............. (1)

of .............. (2) and associated fronts. Torrential rains are most
common near the ................ (3), which is the major source of
moisture for the country. Tornadoes occur .............. (4) the United
States, where Canadian and Gulf air masses often collide violently;
.. (5) arise out of the late-summer warmth of the ................ (6) and
drift towards ........................ (7) in the autumn. Southern California
experiences ............... (8) and .................... (9) in late summer.


4.6 Manufacturing
The United States has been the world’s leading industrial
nation since early in the 20th century. Until the second half of the
Manufacturing is 19th century, agriculture remained the dominant economic activity.
traditionally After the American Civil War, great advances were made in the
located in the production of basic industrial goods. By World War I, exports of
North. manufactured goods had become more important than the export
of raw materials; as manufacturing grew, agriculture became
increasingly mechanized and efficient, employing fewer and fewer
workers.
Perhaps the most important change in recent decades has
been the growth of manufacturing outside the north-eastern and
north-central regions. The nation’s industrial core developed in the
north-east and this is still the location of the greatest concentration
of industry, but it has become relatively less significant than in the
past.
In the early 1990s about half of the nation’s manufacturing
employees were found in the 21 north-eastern and north-central
states that extend from New England to Kansas; in 1947 about 75
per cent of the manufacturing employees lived in the same region.
Since 1947 the South’s share of the nation’s manufacturing
workers has increased from 19 to 32 per cent, and that in the West
has grown from 7 to 18 per cent.
Within the North, manufacturing is centered in the Middle
Atlantic and eastern north-central states, which account for about
37 per cent of the annual value added by all manufacturing in the
United States. Located in this area are five of the top seven
manufacturing states—New York, Ohio, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and
Michigan—which together are responsible for approximately 27 per
cent of the value added by manufacturing in all states each year.
The greatest gains in manufacturing in the South have been
in Texas, and the most phenomenal growth in the West has been
in California, which in the early 1990s was the leading
manufacturing state, accounting for more than 10 per cent of the
annual value added by manufacturing.
Ranked by value of manufacturers’ shipments, the leading
categories of US manufactured goods are processed foods,
transport equipment, chemicals, industrial machinery, and
electronic equipment.

SAQ 6
True (T) or False (F) ?
1. The United States has been the world's leading industrial nation
since mid-20th century.
2. Until the first half of the 20th century, agriculture remained the
dominant economic activity.
3. By World War II, export of manufactured goods had become

more important than the export of raw materials.
4. American industrial core developed in the north-east.
5. Within the North, manufacturing is centred in the Middle Atlantic

and eastern north-central states.


4.7 The Skyscraper

American architecture properly began in the 17th century
with the colonization of the North American continent. Settlers
from various European countries brought with them the building
techniques and prevailing forms of their respective home-lands.
Colonial architecture was subsequently adapted to the
topography and climate of the chosen site, the availability of
building materials, the dearth of trade builders and artisans, and
the general poverty of the settlers.
The English settlements were of two basic types: the small
town in the north and the large plantation in the south. In New
England settlers erected many-gabled houses of wood with
prominant brick chimney stacks of late Gothic inspiration. In the
South, brick rapidly replaced wood as the chief building material.
Pioneer building techniques persisted well into the 18th century
on the Western frontier where settlers often built cabins of logs or
later of sod.
A major breakthrough was made by Frank Lloyd Wright*,
with his “Prairie Style.”
The skyscraper is definitely the star of American

architecture. The first outstanding achievements in the field are in
Chicago: the Home Insurance Building, designed in 1883 by
William Le Baron Jenney, employed a steel skeleton construction
and embodied the general characteristics of a modern
skyscraper. A number of similar buildings made Chicago the
center of the early skyscraper architecture. In New York City, the
Flatiron Building was constructed by D. H. Burnham in 1902, the
Metropolitan Life Insurance Tower in 1909, and the Woolworth
Building, 60 stories high, by Cass Gilbert, in 1913. The last one
exemplifies the general tendency at that time to adapt earlier
architectural styles to modern construction. The radical innovator
Louis Henry Sullivan gave impetus to a new aesthetic for
skyscrapers.
The Building Zone Resolution adopted by New York City in
1916, established legal control over the height and plan of
buildings and over the factors relating to health, fire hazard, and
assurance of adequate light and air to buildings and streets. It
also provided regulations regarding the setting back of exterior
walls above a determined height, largely intended to allow light to
reach the streets. Other “monuments” in New York City worth
mentioning are: the Empire State Building (with 102 stories, 381
m high), the Chrysler Building (with 77 stories, 319 m high), 60
Wall Tower (with 67 stories, 290 m high), the GE (formerly RCA)
Building in Rockefeller Center (with 70 stories, 259 m high), the
Former World Trade Center (with its two unstepped, rectangular
towers of 110 stories each, one 415 m high and the other 417 m
high).

SAQ 9
Fill in the blanks with the appropriate word:
The Manhattan island is ................. (1) a) theatre;

packed with every size and shape of
building, large and small. There is the b) converted;
Empire State Building, the …................ (2)
building in New York City today. There is c) tallest;
Rockefeller …................. (3), the “city-within-
a-city”, which is a group of …................. (4) d) street;
buildings, of which the highest has 70
storeys. The Center houses Radio City, one e) avenue;
of the world’s largest indoor ….................
(5), the headquarters of the National f) center;
Broadcasting Company, the consulates of
different nations, the offices of some air and g) tightly;
railway lines, plenty of restaurants, hundreds
of shops, banks, offices of several important h) high;
publishers, dentists’, opticians’, and
chiropodists’ premises. All this is contained i) acres;
in an area of 12,5 …................. (6).
But Manhattan has lower buildings, too. The j) 15.
residential cross-town streets between
Washington Square and 23rd ….................
(7) are lined with charming old “brownstone”
houses, now …................. (8) into
apartments, and only four or six storeys …
(9). And from the skyscrapers and glittering
stores of Fifth …................. (10) it is only a
few minutes walk to shabby, squalid
buildings in the dirty streets down by the
Hudson and the East River.


Summary
The United States of America, popularly referred to as the
United States or as America, is a federal republic on the continent of
North America, consisting of 48 adjacent states and the non-adjacent
states of Alaska and Hawaii. Outlying areas include Puerto Rico,
American Samoa, Guam, and the US Virgin Islands.
In general, sun intensity and, consequently, temperatures
decrease from south to north; in summer, however, the decrease in
intensity is partly offset by longer days in the north. Montana, North
Dakota, and Minnesota actually have higher record temperatures
than New Mexico and Alabama. In winter, on the other hand, the
short days in the north exaggerate the effect of low sun angles,
creating wide temperature differences from south to north. Forests
use up much solar energy to evaporate water, and therefore the
humid states of the eastern United States do not get as warm as the
dry western deserts. Oceans and lakes moderate temperatures, and
mountains are somewhat cooler by day and much colder at night than
surrounding lowlands.
Farming accounts for less than 2 per cent of annual income and
employs less than 3 per cent of US workers, yet the Americans lead
the world in many aspects of agricultural production. Farmers not only
produce enough to meet domestic needs, they also enable the United
States to export more farm products per year than any other nation in
the world.
The United States has been the world’s leading industrial nation since
early in the 20th century. Until the second half of the 19th century,
agriculture remained the dominant economic activity. After the
American Civil War, great advances were made in the production of
basic industrial goods. By World War I, exports of manufactured
goods had become more important than the export of raw materials;
as manufacturing grew, agriculture became increasingly mechanized
and efficient, employing fewer and fewer workers.

Key Terms
• The railway
• The Mississippi
• The Great Lakes
• The skyscraper

• Frank Lloyd Wright, generally acknowledged as one of the
greatest architects of the 20th century, developed a highly
original approach to residential design before World War I,
which became known as the “Prairie Style”, actually a new
aesthetic for American domestic building – something
home-grown which did not refer to European models but
used local materials from local sites for local clients. He
used the landscape – the flat open spaces of the mid-West
– and its materials – local brick and stone – to create
buildings that enhanced the lives of the families who lived
within them. His houses encouraged access to almost any
room by more than one doorway but with a central gathering
point, usually a fireplace. These Prairie houses offered
protection from the baking heat of summer: they had
overhanging eaves (the roof extending out beyond the
walls) with casement windows opening just beneath them.


SAA No. 3
How would you describe the ''Promised Land'' (the dream of all
settlers and pioneers), which you can see in the picture below?

Your paper should not be longer than two pages.
Houses designed by F. L. Wright

Answers to SAQs
SAQ 1 1. F (natural waterways); 2. T (in the 1790’s); 3. T (between the

late 18th century and 1850); 4. F (they received large subsidies); 5.
T (they were the chief means of transport used by European
settlers); 6. T (motor transport became a serious competitor); 7. F
(WWI); 8. F (railways handled 37,4 percent); 9. T (80% of the total
annual passenger traffic); 10. T (528 million passengers).

SAQ 2 1. a); 2. d); 3. b); 4. c); 5. d).

SAQ 3 1. a); 2. b); 3. b); 4. a); 5. a).

SAQ 4 (1) – d; (2) – b; (3) – e; (4) – a; (5) – c.

SAQ 5 (1) – seasonal position; (2) – jet stream; (3) – Gulf of Mexico; (4) –
in the center; (5) – hurricanes; (6) – Atlantic Ocean; (7) – the
south-eastern states; (8) – smog; (9) – forest fires.

SAQ 6 1. F (early 20th century); 2. F (the second half of the 19th century);
3. F (by World War I); 4. T; 5. T.

SAQ 7 (1) – g; (2) – c; (3) – f; (4) – j; (5) – a; (6) – i; (7) – d; (8) – b; (9) – h;
(10) – e.

Further Readings
1. Ştefan Avădanei, North American Literary History, Institutul

2. Ştefan Avădanei, Acolada atlantică, Institutul European, Iaşi,
2001, pp. 7-11, pp. 14-16.
3. Gheorghe Stan, Unchiul Sam la el acasă, Panfilius, Iaşi, 2002,
pp. 212-229.

American History
UNIT 5
AMERICAN HISTORY
Unit Outline
Unit Objectives ................................................................................. 78
5.1 Settling Down ................................................................................... 78
5.1.1 Jamestown Settlement ....................................................................... 78
5.1.2 Mayflower Compact............................................................................ 79
5.1.3 Boston ................................................................................................ 80
5.2 The American Revolution ................................................................ 81
5.2.1 Towards the Declaration of Independence ......................................... 81
5.2.2 Towards the American Constitution.................................................... 87
5.3 Falling Apart ..................................................................................... 90
5.3.1 The War of 1812 ................................................................................ 90
5.3.2 The Monroe Doctrine ......................................................................... 92
5.3.3 The Mexican War .............................................................................. 93
5.3.4 The Election of 1860 ..........................................................................94
5.4 The American Civil War .................................................................. 96
5.4.1 Gettysburg and Vicksburg ................................................................. 97
5.4.2 The Election of 1864 ......................................................................... 99
5.4.3 The Compromise of 1877 ................................................................101
5.5 The Twentieth Century .................................................................. 103
5.5.1 The World Wars .............................................................................. 103
5.5.2 The Nuclear Arms Race .................................................................. 107
5.5.3 The Vietnam War ............................................................................. 109
5.5.4 The Civil Rights Race Riots ............................................................. 111
5.5.5 The New Left and the Counterculture .............................................. 115
5.5.6 The End of the Cold War ................................................................. 117
Summary ........................................................................................ 118
Key Terms ...................................................................................... 118
Glossary of Terms and Comments .............................................. 118
Gallery of Personalities ................................................................ 124
SAA No. 4 ....................................................................................... 130
Answers to SAQs .......................................................................... 131
Further Readings ........................................................................... 133
Appendix ........................................................................................ 135
Bibliography .................................................................................. 162

American History

• describe the course that American History first followed as
Unit objectives “falling in piece,” the various parts fitting in nicely and
becoming one unanimous voice in the Revolution;
• describe the course that the independent American nation next
followed as “falling apart,” the divided house of America
seeking for a second, and better unity in the Civil War;
• describe the course that American History then followed as
dedicated to the three principles of the French Revolution
which constituted its basic model: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.
5.1 Settling Down
5.1.1 Jamestown Settlement

In 1607, 13 years before the Pilgrims landed in
Jamestown Massachusetts, a group of 104 English men and boys began a
Settlement: settlement on the banks of Virginia’s James River. They were
the first permanent sponsored by the Virginia Company of London, whose stockholders
English colony hoped to make a profit from the resources of the New World. The
community suffered terrible hardships in its early years, but
managed to endure, earning the distinction of being America’s first
permanent English colony.

American History
5.1.2 Mayflower Compact

An agreement reached by the Pilgrims on the ship the
Mayflower in 1620, just before they landed at Plymouth Rock,
through which the first American settlement based upon a social
Mayflower contract was created: “In The Name of God, Amen. We, whose
Compact: names are underwritten, the Loyal Subjects of our dread Sovereign
the first American Lord King James, by the Grace of God, of Great Britain, France, and
settlement based Ireland, King, Defender of the Faith, &c. Having undertaken for the
upon a social Glory of God, and Advancement of the Christian Faith, and the
contract Honor of our King and Country, a Voyage to plant the first colony in
the northern Parts of Virginia; Do by these Presents, solemnly and
mutually in the Presence of God and one another, covenant and
combine ourselves together into a civil Body Politick, for our better
Ordering and Preservation, and Furtherance of the Ends aforesaid;
And by Virtue hereof do enact, constitute, and frame, such just and
equal Laws, Ordinances, Acts, Constitutions, and Offices, from time
to time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the
general Good of the Colony; unto which we promise all due
Submission and Obedience. In Witness whereof we have hereunto
subscribed our names at Cape Cod the eleventh of November, in
the Reign of our Sovereign Lord King James of England, France,
and Ireland, the eighteenth and of Scotland, the fifty-fourth. Anno
Domini, 1620.”

American History
5.1.3 Boston
Established by the elder John Winthrop in 1630 as the main
settlement of the Massachusetts Bay Company, Boston’s deep
Boston: harbor and advantageous geographic position helped it to become
America’s largest, the busiest port in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, surpassing
wealthiest and Plymouth, and Salem. From its founding until the 1760s, Boston was
most influential city America’s largest, wealthiest, and most influential city. Early
until the 1760s colonists believed that Boston was a community with a special
covenant with God. Winthrop’s sermon, “a City upon a Hill“, captured
this idea, which influenced every facet of Boston life, and made it
imperative that colonists legislate morality, enforce marriage,
enforce church attendance, enforce education in the Word of God,
and enforce the persecution of sinners. These values molded an
extremely stable and well-structured society in Boston, which
became an early center of American Puritanism, with a vigorous
intellectual life. The nation’s oldest public school, Boston Latin, was
opened in 1635; Harvard, the nation’s oldest college, was founded
at Cambridge in 1636; a public library was started in 1653; and the
first newspaper in the colonies, the Newsletter, appeared in 1704.
Puritan values of hard work, moral uprightness, and education
remain a part of Boston’s culture.
SAQ 1
Fill in the blanks with the appropriate word or phrase
In 1607, a group of 104 English men and boys began

................ (1) on the banks of Virginia’s James River. The community
suffered ................ (2) in its early years, but managed to endure,
earning the distinction of being ................. (3). An agreement was
reached by the Pilgrims on the ship ... (4) in 1620, just before they
landed at .................... (5), through which the first American
settlement based upon ................. (6) was created. Established by
................. (7) in 1630 as the main settlement of .................... (8),
Boston’s deep harbor and advantageous geographic position helped
it to become the busiest port in the Massachusetts Bay Colony,
surpassing ................(9). From its founding until ................. (10),
Boston was America’s largest, wealthiest, and most influential city.


American History
5.2 The American Revolution
5.2.1 Towards the Declaration of Independence

The year 1763 could be considered as the beginning of an
overt parting of the ways between the British Empire and the
Colonies. It also represented the end of the Seven Years War (1756-
1763), the European counterpart to the French and Indian War
The British Empire (1754-1763), which resulted in France relinquishing its territories in
and the Colonies America (Canada, the Great Lakes and the upper Mississippi Valley)
fall out gradually. to the British Empire. This meant that Britain had to reorganize its
now vast possessions, the old colonial system being no longer
adequate for the defense and administration of the new territories.
The measures that the Parliament adopted, however, did not meet
with the approval of the colonies, often clashing with their interests.
Britain needed a new imperial design, but the situation in
America was anything but favorable to change. Long accustomed to
a large measure of independence, the colonies were demanding
more, not less, freedom, particularly now that the French menace
had been eliminated. To put a new system into effect, and to tighten
control, Parliament had to contend with colonists trained in self-
government and impatient with interference.
The Royal Proclamation of 1763 (which reserved all the
western territory between the Alleghenies, Florida, the Mississippi
River and Quebec for use by Native Americans) was meant to stop
the colonies’ westward expansion, so as not to cause a series of
Indian wars. It was never effectively enforced, but this did not
prevent it from being viewed as a blatant disregard of the colonists’
most elementary right of settling new lands.
The British government, which needed more money to support
its growing empire, also introduced a new financial policy, sustained
by:
• the Sugar Act of 1764, which increased the duties on imported

The British financial sugar and other items such as textiles, coffee, wines and
policy is sustained indigo. It doubled the duties on foreign goods reshipped from
by the 1764 Sugar England to the colonies and also forbade the import of foreign
Act, the 1764 rum and French wines;
Currency Act, the • the Currency Act of 1764, which by prohibiting the colonists
1765 Quartering from issuing any legal tender paper money threatened to
Act, the 1765 destabilize the entire colonial economy of both the industrial
Stamp Act, the North and agricultural South, thus uniting the colonists against
1766 Declaratory it;
Act, the 1767 • the Quartering Act of 1765, which required colonies to provide
Townshend Acts, royal troops with provisions and barracks, was equally
and finally the 1773 objectionable from the colonial viewpoint.
Tea Act. • the Stamp Act (under which all printed materials were taxed,
including: newspapers, pamphlets, bills, legal documents,
licenses, almanacs, dice and playing cards) was met with the
greatest resistance and eventually led to its being nullified. An
underground organization that opposed to the Stamp Act was
American History
formed in a number of colonial towns. Its members used
violence and intimidation to force all of the British stamp agents
to resign and also to stop many American merchants from
ordering British trade goods. Moreover, in October 1765, the
Stamp Act Congress convened in New York City, with
representatives from nine of the colonies. The Congress
prepared a resolution to be sent to King George III and the
English Parliament, which requested the repeal of the Stamp
Act and the Acts of 1764. The petition asserted that only
colonial legislatures could tax colonial residents and that
taxation without representation violated the colonists’ basic civil
rights. In fact, “no taxation without representation” was the
slogan that would draw many to the American cause against
the mother country.
In 1766 the Stamp Act was repealed and the Sugar Act was
modified as well, but these actions were soon followed by the
Declaratory Act (March 1766), which stated in part that Parliament
“had, hath, and of right ought to have, full power and authority to
make laws and statutes of sufficient force and validity to bind the
colonies and people of America, subjects of the crown of Great
Britain, in all cases whatsoever.”
The next year, 1767, brought another series of measures
known as the Townshend Acts. These were based on the premise
that taxes imposed on goods imported by the colonies were legal
while internal taxes (like the Stamp Act) were not. The new
measures were also resisted, although with less violence, as
merchants resorted once again to non-importation agreements.
However, on March 5, 1770, two British regiments, dispatched to
collect duties, stirred up the Boston population, and an altercation
evolved into shooting, five Bostonians being killed. The incident was
dubbed the “Boston Massacre” and was used for propaganda
purposes. Consequently, the Townshend duties – except for the one
on tea – were repealed in 1770 and three years of calm followed.
In 1773, however, the East India Company was granted a
monopoly on exported tea (the Tea Act), which inflamed the colonial
traders, and ultimately culminated with the Boston Tea Party, when
colonists disguised as Indians threw the tea overboard. The “Tea
The Restraining Party” was quickly restaged in other port cities in America and
Acts: the American tended to polarize the sides in the widening dispute, as the Patriots
response to the (the ones who wanted to break away from the British Empire) and
British acts the Loyalists (who remained loyal to the Crown) became more
ardent about their views. Official opinion in Britain almost
unanimously condemned the Boston Tea Party as an act of
vandalism and to restore order, new laws were passed by the
Parliament, the so-called Restraining Acts*, or Coercive Acts.

American History
SAQ 2
True (T) or false (F)?
1. After the French and Indian war, France got Canada, the Great
Lakes and the upper Mississippi Valley.
2. It was easy for the British to administer the new territories in
North America.
3. The measures adopted by the British Parliament did not satisfy
the colonies in America.
4. The Royal Proclamation of 1763, which was meant to stop the
westward expansion of the colonists, did not prevent them to
settle on new lands.
5. New taxes were imposed on the colonists (the Sugar Act, the
Stamp Act).
6. The colonists obeyed all the new acts imposed on them by the
British Crown and Parliament.
7. During the Boston Tea Party the colonists disguised as British
not to be recognized by the British soldiers.
8. The First Continental Congress in Philadelphia adopted a
Declaration that opposed the Coercive Acts taken by the
British.

Responses came in several forms. Massachusetts, long viewed

with suspicion by the other colonies, now received the sympathy and
grudging respect of its neighbors. Also, moderates in both England
and America were surprised by the harshness of the measures and
many began drifting toward radical views. Perhaps the most
important result of the Coercive Acts was the summoning of the First
Continental Congress in Philadelphia, in September 1774. There 56
delegates, representing every colony, except Georgia, adopted a
Declaration of Rights and Grievances (also called Declaration and
Resolves) that opposed the Coercive Acts, the Quebec Act, and the
other measures taken by the British and undermining self-rule. The
rights of the colonists were asserted, including the rights to life,
liberty and property. The most important action taken by the
Congress, however, was the formation of the Continental
Association in which delegates agreed to a boycott of English
imports, effected an embargo of exports to Britain, and discontinued
the slave trade. The Association immediately assumed the
leadership in the colonies as well.

American History
The battles of Lexington and Concord were the opening
engagements of the American Revolution, on April 19, 1775. The
British commander at Boston sought to avoid armed rebellion by
sending a column of royal infantry from Boston to capture colonial
military stores at Concord. News of his plan was dispatched to the
countryside by Paul Revere, William Dawes, and Samuel Prescott.
As the British advance column reached Lexington, they came upon
a group of militia (the minutemen). After a brief exchange of shots in
which several Americans were killed, the colonials withdrew, and the
British continued to Concord. Here they destroyed some military
supplies, fought another engagement, and began a hurried
withdrawal to Boston, which cost them over 200 casualties.
While the alarms of Lexington and Concord were still
resounding, the Second Continental Congress met in Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania, on May 10, 1775. By May 15, the Congress voted to
go to war, inducting the colonial militias into continental service and
appointing Colonel George Washington of Virginia as commander-
The opening in-chief of the American forces. In the meantime, the Americans
engagements of would suffer high casualties at Bunker Hill just outside Boston. This
the Revolution was the first great battle of the Revolutionary War and it was an
occurred in late encouragement to the colonies, as it proved that American forces,
April 1777. The with sufficient supplies, could inflict heavy losses on the British.
Congress voted to Congress also ordered American expeditions to march northward
go to war in mid- into Canada by fall. Although the Americans later captured Montreal,
May 1775. they failed in a winter assault on Quebec, and eventually retreated to
New York.
Despite the outbreak of armed conflict, the idea of complete
separation from England was still repugnant to some members of
the Continental Congress. In July, the Continental Congress
adopted the Olive Branch Petition, which expressed hope for
reconciliation with Britain and appealed directly to the King for help
in achieving this. The petition fell on deaf ears, however, and King
George III issued a proclamation on August 23, 1775, declaring the
colonies to be in a state of rebellion.
There still remained the task, however, of gaining each colony’s
approval of a formal declaration. Thomas Paine's Common Sense
helped persuade the majority of colonists to take the path of
revolution. On May 10, 1776 a resolution was adopted calling for
separation. Now only a formal declaration was needed. On June 7,
Richard Henry Lee of Virginia introduced a resolution declaring “That
these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and
independent states...” Immediately, a committee of five, headed by
Thomas Jefferson of Virginia, was appointed to prepare a formal
declaration. Largely Jefferson’s work, the Declaration of
The Declaration of Independence, adopted July 4, 1776, not only announced the birth
Independence was of a new nation, but also set forth a philosophy of human freedom
adopted on July 4, that would become a dynamic force throughout the entire world. The
1776. Declaration drew upon French and English Enlightenment political
philosophy, but one influence in particular stood out: John Locke’s
Second Treatise on Government, which took conceptions of the
traditional rights of Englishmen and universalized them into the
natural rights of all humankind. The Declaration’s opening passage
echoed Locke’s social-contract theory of government. It further

American History
linked Locke’s principles directly to the situation in the colonies. To
fight for American independence was to fight for a government
based on popular consent, rather than a government by a king,
because the former could secure natural rights to life, liberty and the
pursuit of happiness. Thus, to fight for American independence was
to fight on behalf of one’s own natural rights.
In short, the Declaration of Independence was made up of five
distinct parts: the introduction; the preamble; the body, which could
be divided into two sections; and a conclusion. The introduction
stated that this document would “declare the causes” that had made
it necessary for the American colonies to leave the British Empire.
Having stated in the introduction that independence was
unavoidable, even necessary, the preamble set out principles that
were already recognized to be “self-evident” by most 18th century
Englishmen, closing with the statement that if “a long train of abuses
and usurpations . . . evinces a design to reduce [a people] under
absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such
Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”
The first section of the body of the Declaration gave evidence of the
“long train of abuses and usurpations” heaped upon the colonists by
King George III. The second section of the body stated that the
colonists had appealed in vain to their “British brethren” for a redress
of their grievances. Having stated the conditions that made
independence necessary and having shown that those conditions
existed in British North America, the Declaration concluded that
“these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and
Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the
British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the
State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved.”
The victory of After the early military engagements occurred at Bunker Hill
Saratoga in 1777 (June 1775), in the Canadian campaign (1775-1776) and in the
was the turning South, the action shifted to the New York campaign (1776).
point in the Washington temporarily reversed a series of defeats at Trenton and
development of Princeton (late 1776 and early 1777), but British forces succeeded in
hostilities. The taking Philadelphia in late 1777.
main British force The turning point of the War came at Saratoga (1777), a victory
surrendered in that enabled American diplomats to negotiate a French Alliance
October 1781. (1778). Hostilities continued in the Western Theater and the
Southern Theater. The main British force surrendered at Yorktown in
October 1781.
Peace was achieved in the Treaty of Paris* (1783), with
Benjamin Franklin* playing a prominent role.

American History
SAQ 3
True (T) or false (F)?
1. The American Revolution started at Lexington and Concord in

April 1775.
2. During the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia (May
1775) George Washington was elected as the first President of
the United States.
3. At the beginning of the Revolution, the Americans were
victorious in a lot of battles.
4. The Declaration of Independence was fathered by George
Washington.
5. The Declaration of Independence, largely the work of Thomas
Jefferson, was adopted on July 4th.
6. The Declaration of Independence was influenced by John
Locke’s principles as well as by the ideas of the French
Revolution.
7. After the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, the
British stopped the war and went back home.


American History
5.2.2 Towards the American Constitution

Following independence, the American states began the
process of drafting new state constitutions, many of which reflected
increased democratic elements (women and slaves excepted). The
nation’s governing document was the Articles of Confederation
whose weaknesses led to a so-called “critical period” in the 1780s.
Desire to overcome it eventually led to the Federal Convention in the
Philadelphia State House in May 1787. All of the states were
represented except for Rhode Island, which declined to attend.
George Washington, noted for his patience and fairness, was
selected as the presiding officer.
The Convention had only been authorized to draft amendments
to the Articles of Confederation, but it soon discarded the idea and
began working on a new constitution.
The 18th-century statesmen who met in Philadelphia were
Montesquieu’s adherents of Montesquieu’s concept of the balance of power in
concept of the politics. This principle was supported by colonial experience and
balance of power in strengthened by the writings of John Locke, with which most of the
politics, delegates were familiar. These influences led to the conviction that
strengthened by three equal and coordinate branches of government should be
John Locke’s established. Legislative, executive and judicial powers were to be so
writings, led to the harmoniously balanced that no one could ever gain control. The
establishment of delegates agreed that the legislative branch, like the colonial
three equal and legislatures and the British Parliament, should consist of two houses.
On these points there was unanimity within the assembly. But
coordinate
sharp differences arose as to the method of achieving them.
branches of
Representatives of the small states – New Jersey, for instance –
government, in
objected to changes that would reduce their influence in the national
charge of the
government by basing representation upon population rather than
legislative,
upon statehood, as was the case under the Articles of
executive and Confederation.
judicial powers. On the other hand, representatives of large states, like Virginia,
argued for proportionate representation. This debate threatened to
go on endlessly until Roger Sherman came forward with arguments
for representation in proportion to the population of the states in one
house of Congress, the House of Representatives, and equal
representation in the other, the Senate.
The alignment of large against small states then dissolved. But
almost every succeeding question raised new problems, to be
resolved only by new compromises. Northerners wanted slaves
counted when determining each state’s tax share, but not in
determining the number of seats a state would have in the House of
Representatives. According to a compromise reached with little
dissent, the House of Representatives would be calculated
according to the number of free inhabitants plus three-fifths of the
slaves.
There was no serious difference on such national economic
questions as paper money, laws concerning contract obligations or
the role of women, who were excluded from politics. But there was a
need for balancing sectional economic interests; for settling
arguments as to the powers, term and selection of the chief

American History
executive; and for solving problems involving the tenure of judges
and the kind of courts to be established.
On September 17, 1787, after sixteen weeks of deliberation,
the finished Constitution was signed by 39 of the 42 delegates
present. The new government it prescribed came into existence on
March 4, 1789, after fierce fights over ratification in many of the
states.
In summary, the basic principles of the American Constitution
are:
• The three main branches of government are separate and

distinct from one another. The powers given to each are
The finished
balanced by the powers of the other two. Each branch serves as
Constitution,
a check on the potential excess of the others – in other words, a
signed on
system of checks and balances*, making compromise in politics
September 17,
a matter of necessity, not choice.
1787, was soon
supplemented by • The Constitution, together with laws passed according to its
10 Amendments provisions, and treatises entered into by the president and
(the Bill of Rights) approved by the Senate, stands above all other laws, executive
and then by 17 acts and regulations.
others. • All persons are equal before the law and are equally entitled to
its protection. All states are equal, and none can receive special
treatment from the federal government. Within the limits of the
Constitution, each state must recognize and respect the laws of
the others. State governments, like the federal government, must
be democratic in form, with final authority resting with the people.
• The people have their right to change their form of national
government by legal means defined in the Constitution itself.
Within two years there were ten Amendments to the

Constitution and then seventeen others.

American History
SAQ 4
Put the words in the margin into their correct
places:
“In addition to passing laws needed to get the a) rights
government started, Congress had another very b) believed
important job to do. It had to make some c) guaranteed
additions to the Constitution. Although the d) important
Founding Fathers had drawn up a fine plan for e) supreme
government, they had left out ................ (1) that f) something
the liberty-loving people of America considered g) wanted
most ................ (2). When the Constitution was h) people
given to the States for ................ (3), people i) amending
said: ”Our Declaration Of Independence states j) approval
that we, the people, have certain unalienable
................ (4). But nowhere in the Constitution is
there any guaranteed free speech, freedom of
religion, and other rights that belong to a free
................ (5). We want these rights written into
our Constitution!”. Many thoughtful men such as
Thomas Jefferson and Samuel Adams
................ (6) that the Constitution should
include a „Bill of Rights.”
The men who wrote the Constitution wisely
included rules for ................ (7) it. James
Madison worked out a list of amendments which
................ (8) the rights that the people................
(9). [...] These rights cannot be taken away by a
law of Congress nor by the President nor by
the................ (10) Court.”
(from America is My Country, by Harriett Brown)


American History
5.3 Falling Apart
5.3.1 The War of 1812

In the years between 1803 and 1812 the United States’
relations with Great Britain grew worse, and the two countries
moved rapidly toward war. The president, James Madison, laid
before Congress a detailed report, showing several thousand
The War of 1812 instances in which the British had hurt American citizens in one way
on Britain began or another. In addition, northwestern settlers had suffered from
with an invasion of attacks by Indians whom they believed had been incited by British
Canada, came to agents in Canada. This led many Americans to favor conquest of
an end in Canada. Success in such an endeavor would eliminate British
December 1814, influence among the Indians and open up new lands for colonization.
and was followed The desire to conquer Canada, coupled with deep resentment over
by an “era of good impressment of sailors, generated war fervor, and in 1812 the United
feelings.” States declared war on Britain.
As the country prepared for war, the United States suffered
from internal divisions. While the South and West favored war, New
York and New England opposed it because it interfered with their
commerce. The declaration of war had been made with military
preparations still far from complete. There were fewer than 7,000
regular soldiers, distributed in widely scattered posts along the
coast, near the Canadian border and in the remote interior. These
soldiers were to be supported by the undisciplined militia of the
states.
Hostilities between the two countries began with an invasion of
Canada, which, if properly timed and executed, would have brought
united action against Montreal. But the entire campaign miscarried
and ended with the British occupation of Detroit. The U.S. Navy,
however, scored successes and restored confidence. In addition,
American privateers, swarming the Atlantic, captured 500 British
vessels during the fall and winter months of 1812 and 1813.
The campaign of 1813 centered on Lake Erie. General William
Henry Harrison – who would later become president – led an army of
militia, volunteers and regulars from Kentucky with the object of re-
conquering Detroit. On September 12, while he was still in upper Ohio,
news reached him that Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry had
annihilated the British fleet on Lake Erie. Harrison occupied Detroit and
pushed into Canada, defeating the fleeing British and their Indian allies
on the Thames River. The entire region now came under American
control.
Another decisive turn in the war occurred a year later when
Commodore Thomas Macdonough won a point-blank gun duel with
a British flotilla on Lake Champlain in upper New York. Deprived of
naval support, a British invasion force of 10,000 men retreated to
Canada. At about the same time, the British fleet was harassing the
Eastern seaboard with orders to “destroy and lay waste.” On the
night of August 24, 1814, an expeditionary force burst into
Washington, D.C., home of the federal government, and left it in
flames. President James Madison fled to Virginia.
American History
As the war continued, British and American negotiators each
demanded concessions from the other. The British envoys decided
to concede, however, when they learned of Macdonough’ victory on
Lake Champlain. Urged by the Duke of Wellington to reach a
settlement, and faced with the depletion of the British treasury due in
large part to the heavy costs of the Napoleonic Wars, the negotiators
for Great Britain accepted the Treaty of Ghent in December 1814. It
provided for the cessation of hostilities, the restoration of conquests
and a commission to settle boundary disputes. Unaware that a
peace treaty had been signed, the two sides continued fighting in
New Orleans, Louisiana. Led by General Andrew Jackson, the
Americans scored the greatest land victory of the war.
Following the War of 1812, there existed a superficial “Era of
Good Feelings” in which partisan issues declined. Also, the war had
produced positive economic effects. There was the growth of
manufacturers during and after the war, technological developments
– including the steam engine. Demand for products as well as prices
increased due to dropping imports and the needs of the war effort.
The capital that inundated New England went to profitable
manufacturers.
Much of the country’s energy was channeled into westward
movement, with settlers beginning to cross the Mississippi River,
while the Native Americans were pushed farther west.
The post-war prosperity (critically described in Alexis de
Tocqueville's Democracy in America*) ended abruptly in the
Panic of 1819, which was the first major financial crisis in the United
States. The worst of this crisis was over by 1824, and the rest of the
decade saw a gradual recovery of the U.S. economy.
SAQ 5
Choose the correct answer:
1.In the years between 1803 and 1812:

a) the United States' relations with Great Britain grew worse.
b) the United States' relations with France grew worse.
2)The attacks on many American citizens:

a) led many Americans to favor conquest of Canada.
b) led many Americans to favor conquest of Mexico.
3)The vote for war ran as follows:

a) New York and New England favored it.
b) the South and West opposed it.
4) The Treaty of Ghent (December 1814) provided for:

a) the cessation of hostilities.
b) the restoration of conquests.
c) the retreat of British forces from Canada.
d) a commission to settle boundary disputes.

American History
5.3.2 The Monroe Doctrine
During the first decades of the 19th century the people of Latin
America, influenced by the American precedent, turned to revolution in
order to gain their independence. By 1822 Central and South America
The Monroe had new, free countries. The same year, President James Monroe
Doctrine: the received authority to recognize them. In his seventh annual message to
refusal to tolerate Congress, (December 2, 1823), he pronounced what become known as
any further the Monroe Doctrine – the refusal to tolerate any further extension of
extension of European domination in the Americas. It also expressed a spirit of
European solidarity with the newly independent republics of Latin America. These
domination in the nations in turn recognized their political affinity with the United States by
Americas basing their new constitutions, in many instances, on the North
American model.
In his message, Monroe set forth certain principles, namely:
o that the Western Hemisphere was no longer open for
colonization;
o that the political system of the Americas was different from
Europe;
o that the United States would regard any interference in
Western hemispheric affairs as a threat to its security;
o that the United States would refrain from participation in
European wars and would not disturb existing colonies in the
Western Hemisphere.
The impact of the Monroe Doctrine was mixed. It was
successful to the extent that the continental powers did not
immediately attempt to revive the Spanish empire, but this was on
account of the strength of the British Navy, not American military
might. The Doctrine also was successful in that it kept France, Spain
and other powers out of the region, but Britain would long remain the
dominant trade power in Latin America. The Doctrine was, however,
a failure because the Latin American nations resented the Big
Brother behavior of the U.S..
SAQ 6
1. According to the Monroe Doctrine, the United States did not tolerate
any extension of European domination in North America.
2. It sympathized with the newly independent republics of Latin
America.
3. According to the Doctrine, the Americans should consider any
attempt of the European powers to extend their system to any
portion of this hemisphere a dangerous thing to America.
4. The Monroe Doctrine stipulates that the Americans will have the
right to interfere with the colonies of the European countries on the
American continents.
5. The Americans will not interfere with the wars waged by the
European countries.

American History
5.3.3 The Mexican War
The Mexican War (1846–1848) was waged between the United
States and Mexico, resulting in the cession by Mexico of lands now
constituting all or most of the states of California, Arizona, New Mexico,
The United States
Nevada, Utah, and Colorado. It was a training ground for the American
got all or most of officers who would fight in the Civil War, but it was also one of its
the states of causes, as the question arose whether the new states would be slave-
California, Arizona, free.
New Mexico, Senator Henry Clay proposed a compromise, the measures of
Nevada, Utah and which were:
Colorado. • the admission of California as a free state;
• the organization of New Mexico and Utah territories without
mention of slavery, the status of that institution to be determined
by the territories themselves when they were ready to be
admitted as states (this formula came to be known as popular
sovereignty);
• the prohibition of the slave trade in the District of Columbia;
• a more stringent fugitive slave law;
• and the settlement of Texas boundary claims by federal payment of
10 million dollars on the debt contracted by the Republic of Texas.
• Although this compromise did settle the situation for a period of
time, it also led to Northerners becoming more supportive
towards the antislavery movement.
SAQ 7
1. President James K. Polk wanted to
a) buy California from Mexico
b) buy Texas from New Mexico
c) conquer Mexico
d) conquer New Mexico
2. President Polk proposed to ask the American Congress
a) to buy California
b) to declare war to Mexico
c) to order General Zachary Taylor to retreat from the Mexican border
d) to wait until the Mexicans open the fire
3. On April 25, 1846 Mexican troops
a) retreated from the border
b) accepted the money offered by the Americans
c) attacked the American troops
d) replaced their commander, Santa Ana
4. After the war it was signed the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo on
February 2, 1848. The terms of the Treaty were __________
a) breathtaking
b) humiliating
c) what the President expected to be
d) what the Mexicans wished
5. The United Stated agreed to pay __________ for the land
stretching westward to Oregon and the ocean.
a) 13 million
b) 15 million
c) 25 million
d) 75 million

American History
5.3.4 The Election of 1860
As the territory west of the states of Missouri and Iowa was
being rapidly settled, thus prompting the need for some form of local
government, the issue of slavery resurfaced. Stephen A. Douglas,
The issue of Democratic senior senator, initiated the Kansas-Nebraska Act,
slavery resurfaced. passed in 1854, which divided the territory west of the states of
Abraham Lincoln: Missouri and Iowa and the territory of Minnesota into two new
“A house divided territories, Kansas and Nebraska. The law was extremely
against itself controversial because it did not exclude slavery from either territory,
cannot stand.” despite the fact that the Missouri Compromise prohibited slavery in
these territories. By effectively repealing the Missouri Compromise,
the law outraged many northerners and it led to the collapse of the
Whig party. In its place, a new organization rose, the Republican
Party, whose primary demand was that slavery be excluded from all
territories. Most importantly, the Kansas-Nebraska Act moved the
nation closer to civil war, as proslavery settlers from Missouri and
antislavery newcomers from the northeastern states that came to
Kansas ended up in armed conflict. The territory was soon called
“bleeding Kansas.”
In 1858, in the election of Illinois for the U.S. Senate, Stephen A.
Douglas of the Democratic Party was opposed by the Republican
Abraham Lincoln. The latter gave a famous speech after being chosen
to run for Senator. In it he said, “A house divided against itself cannot
stand. I believe that the government cannot last as long as America is
half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to fall apart – the
house to fall. I do expect that it will become either all one thing or all the
other – either all slave or all free. Either the people against slavery will
stop it forever, or it will become lawful in all the states, old and new,
north and south alike.” Fundamental to Lincoln’s argument was his
conviction that slavery must be dealt with as a moral wrong. It violated
the statement in the Declaration of Independence that all men are
created equal, and it ran counter to the intentions of the Founding
Fathers.
Lincoln supported a national legislation that would restrict and
eventually abolish slavery and challenged the concept of popular
sovereignty, arguing that slavery in the western territories was not
only the concern of the local inhabitants, but of the United States as
a whole. During the campaign, the two candidates met in seven
debates which drew the attention of the entire nation. Although
Lincoln lost the election by a small margin, he achieved the status of
a national figure.
In the presidential election of 1860, the Republicans chose
Lincoln as their candidate, whereas the Democrats were not united.
Southerners split from the party and nominated Vice President John C.
Breckenridge of Kentucky for president. Stephen A. Douglas was the
nominee of northern Democrats. Diehard Whigs from the border states
formed into the Constitutional Union Party, nominated John C. Bell of
Tennessee.
Lincoln and Douglas competed in the North, and Breckenridge
and Bell in the South. Lincoln won only 39 percent of the popular
vote, but had a clear majority of 180 electoral votes, carrying all 18
free states. Bell won Tennessee, Kentucky and Virginia;
Breckenridge took the other slave states except for Missouri, which
was won by Douglas. Despite his poor electoral showing, Douglas
trailed only Lincoln in the popular vote.
American History
SAQ 8
1. When he delivered his famous speech „A House Divided” in

1858, Abraham Lincoln was:
a) a candidate for the American Presidency
b) a candidate for US Congress (Senate)
c) a candidate for the post of a governor in Illinois
2. The word „house” refers to:
a) the White House
b) the United States
c) Lincoln’s house in Springfield, Illinois
3. Lincoln was a ...................
a) supporter of slavery
b) fighter against the black people’s rights
c) supporter of the idea that half of America should keep
slavery and the other half should abolish it
4. After the famous debate with Stephen Douglass Lincoln
................
a) became President of USA
b) became Senator of Illinois
c) lost the elections
5. Lincoln became President of the USA representing
a) the Whig Party
b) the Democratic Party
c) the Republican Party
6. For the Presidential Elections of '86 Lincoln was ...................
a) certain to succeed
b) not credited with many chances to win
c) killed
7. The famous Gettysburg Address was ...................
a) the address of the White House
b) a better read by Lincoln in front of the Congress
c) a speech delivered at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, on
November 19, 1863
8. After the 1864 election, Abraham Lincoln ...................
a) gave the Proclamation of Emancipation
b) offered a plan for reconstruction
c) aimed to punish severely the seceding States
9. He was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth because the latter
..........
a) considered the he was doing a patriotic thing
b) hated Lincoln and his family
c) Lincoln had punished him
10. After A. Lincoln, the President of the United States was
.................
a) a Democrat
b) a Whig
c) a Republican

American History
5.4 The American Civil War
As soon as the result of the 1860 election was certain, South
Carolina – that had long been waiting for an event that would unite
the South against the antislavery forces – declared “that the Union
South Carolina was
now subsisting between South Carolina and other states under the
the first state to
name of the ‘United States of America’ is hereby dissolved,” thus
dissolve the Union.
being the first state to secede on December 20, 1860. By February,
Mississippi, Florida,
six more Southern states (Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia,
Alabama, Georgia,
Louisiana and Texas) followed suit. The Confederate States of
Louisiana and
America (also called the Confederacy) was formed on February 4,
Texas followed its
1861, and Jefferson Davis was selected as its first President the
example.
next day.
The attempts of the seceding states to take over federal property
within their borders led to the first military engagement of the Civil War,
as on April 12, 1861 the South fired upon the Federal troops stationed
at Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina until the troops
surrendered.
This action, as well as Abraham Lincoln* mobilizing the militia,
Abraham Lincoln prompted the state of Virginia to secede. It was soon followed by
mobilized the others (Arkansas, North Carolina and Tennessee), thus raising the
militia, which number of the Confederate States to eleven.
prompted the state The North held many advantages over the South during the
of Virginia to Civil War. Its population was several times that of the South, a
secede, to be soon potential source for military enlistees and civilian manpower. The
followed by South lacked the substantial number of factories and industries of
Arkansas, North the North that produced much needed war materials. The North had
Carolina and a better transportation network, mainly highways, canals, and
Tennessee. railroads, which could be easily used to re-supply military forces in
the field. At sea, the Union navy was more capable and dominant,
while the army was better trained and better supplied. The rest of
the world also recognized the United States as a legitimate
government, allowing U.S. diplomats to obtain loans and other trade
concessions.
The South had fewer advantages, but it held many that would
threaten attempts by the North to end the rebellion. The South was
able to fight on its home terrain, and it could win the war simply by
continuing to exist after the hostilities ended later. The South also
had a military tradition that encouraged young men to serve in the
armed forces or attend a military school; many had served the U.S.
military prior to the Civil War, only to resign and fight for their states
and family. In addition, the South had the leadership of great
commanders, including Robert E. Lee, Joseph Johnston, and
“Stonewall” Jackson.

American History
5.4.1 Gettysburg and Vicksburg
None of the Confederate victories was decisive. The federal
government simply mustered new armies and tried again. Believing that
The northern the North’s crushing defeat at Chancellorsville gave him his chance, Lee
victories of July struck northward into Pennsylvania, in July 1863, almost reaching the
1863 marked the state capital at Harrisburg. A strong Union force intercepted Lee’s march
turning point of the at Gettysburg, where, in a titanic three-day battle – the largest of the Civil
war. War – the Confederates made a valiant effort to break the Union lines.
They failed, and Lee’s veterans, after crippling losses, fell back to the
Potomac.
More than 3,000 Union soldiers and almost 4,000 Confederates
died at Gettysburg; wounded and missing totaled more than 20,000 on
each side. On November 19, 1863, Lincoln dedicated a new national
cemetery at Gettysburg with perhaps the most famous address in U.S.
history, the so-called Gettysburg Address*.
On the Mississippi, Union control was blocked at Vicksburg,
where the Confederates had strongly fortified themselves on bluffs too
high for naval attack. By early 1863 Grant began to move below and
around Vicksburg, subjecting the position to a six-week siege. On July
4, he captured the town, together with the strongest Confederate Army
in the West. The river was now entirely in Union hands. The
Confederacy was broken in two, and it became almost impossible to
bring supplies from Texas and Arkansas.
The Northern victories at Vicksburg and Gettysburg in July 1863
marked the turning point of the war, although the bloodshed continued
for more than a year-and-a-half.
Lincoln brought Grant east and made him commander-in-chief of
all Union forces. In May 1864 Grant advanced deep into Virginia and
met Lee’s Confederate Army in the three-day Battle of the Wilderness.
Losses on both sides were heavy, but unlike other Union commanders,
Grant refused to retreat. Instead, he attempted to outflank Lee,
stretching the Confederate lines and pounding away with artillery and
infantry attacks.
In the West, Union forces gained control of Tennessee in the fall
of 1863 with victories at Chattanooga and nearby Lookout Mountain,
opening the way for General William T. Sherman to invade Georgia.
Sherman outmaneuvered several smaller Confederate armies,
occupied the state capital of Atlanta, then marched to the Atlantic
coast, systematically destroying railroads, factories, warehouses and
other facilities in his path. His men, cut off from their normal supply
lines, ravaged the countryside for food. From the coast, Sherman
marched northward, and by February 1865, he had taken Charleston,
South Carolina, where the first shots of the Civil War had been fired.
Sherman, more than any other Union general, understood that
destroying the will and morale of the South was as important as
defeating its armies.
Grant, meanwhile, lay siege to Petersburg, Virginia, for nine
months, before Lee, in March 1865, abandoned both Petersburg and
the Confederate capital of Richmond in an attempt to retreat south. But
it was too late, and on April 9, 1865, surrounded by huge Union armies,
Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Courthouse. Although
scattered fighting continued elsewhere for several months, the Civil
War was over.

American History
SAQ 9
South Carolina is the first state to have dissolved the Union. By

February, six more Southern states, ............................................ (1),
............................................ (2), ............................................ (3),
............................................ (4), ............................................ (5) and
............................................ (6), followed suit. More than
............................................ (7) and almost 4,000 Confederates died at
Gettysburg. On November 19, 1863, Lincoln dedicated a
............................................ (8) at Gettysburg with perhaps the most
famous address in U.S. history, the so-called .................................... (9).


American History
5.4.2 The Election of 1864
For the election of 1864 there were only two candidates –

Abraham Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln, nominated by the Republican Party, and the
the Republican Democrat George McClellan, the general whom Lincoln had
nominee, dismissed. After three years of a war that showed no signs of an
announced a plan immediate victory, and plans to continue until victory was achieved,
for reconstruction. Lincoln was not credited with too many chances to win. The capture
of Atlanta and a series of other victories, however, represented a
turning point, and Lincoln was re-elected for another term.
Abraham Lincoln had thought about the process of restoring
the Union from the earliest days of the war. His guiding principles
were to accomplish the task as rapidly as possible and ignore calls
for punishing the South.
In late 1863, Lincoln announced a formal plan for
reconstruction:
• a general amnesty would be granted to all who would take an
oath of loyalty to the United States and pledge to obey all federal
laws pertaining to slavery;
• high Confederate officials and military leaders were to be
temporarily excluded from the process;
• when one-tenth of the number of voters who had participated in
the 1860 election had taken the oath within a particular state,
then that state could launch a new government and elect
representatives to Congress.
The states of Louisiana, Arkansas and Tennessee rapidly
acted to comply with these terms. However, the Lincoln plan was not
acceptable to Congress.
The Radical Republicans voiced immediate opposition to
Lincoln’s reconstruction plan, objecting to its leniency and lack of
protections for freed slaves. Congress refused to accept the
rehabilitation of Tennessee, Arkansas and Louisiana, and proposed
another plan, which was, however, vetoed by Lincoln.
The confrontation between Lincoln and the Congress over

President Lincoln competing reconstruction plans never occurred. The president was
was assassinated assassinated on April 14, 1865. His successor, Andrew Johnson of
on April 14, 1865. Tennessee, envisioned the following:
• pardons would be granted to those taking a loyalty oath;
• no pardons would be available to high Confederate officials and
persons owning property valued in excess of 20,000 dollars;

American History
• a state needed to abolish slavery before being readmitted;
• a state was required to repeal its secession ordinance before
being readmitted.
Most of the seceded states began compliance with the
president’s program. Congress was not in session, so there was no
immediate objection from that quarter. However, Congress
reconvened in December and refused to seat the Southern
representatives.
The postwar Congress pushed through a number of measures
designed to assist the freed men, but also demonstrate the
supremacy of Congress over the president. These measures
included the Civil Rights Act of 1866, the Fourteenth Amendment,
the Tenure of Office Act and the Army Appropriations Act.
The culmination of this process occurred in 1867 and 1868 when
Congress passed a series of Reconstruction Acts; these measures
were implemented and constituted the final restoration program for the
South.
SAQ 10
1. For the 1864 election, one of the candidates was Abraham Lincoln,
nominated by the Democratic Party.
2. Lincoln's guiding principle was to punsish the South.
3. Lincoln's reconstruction plan stipulated that all who would take an
oath of loyalty to the United States should be granted a general
amnesty.


American History
5.4.3 The Compromise of 1877
The Compromise of 1877 was a compromise made necessary

by the disputed Election of 1876. While an Electoral Commission
The Compromise
awarded the election to Rutherford B. Hayes, Southern Democrats
of 1877: A series of
planned to block the Commission’s report. The compromise resolved
secret negotiations
the constitutional crisis through a series of secret negotiations
involving
involving Republican and Democratic politicians, and various interest
Republican and
groups, most notably the railroad companies. The compromise
Democrat
stipulated that the South would acknowledge Hayes as President if
politicians, ending
the Republicans acceded to various demands, including:
reconstruction in
• the removal of Federal troops from the former Confederate states
the former
– these troops only remained in Louisiana, South Carolina, and
Confederacy.
Florida, but the Compromise finalized the process;
• the appointment of at least one Southern Democrat to Hayes’
cabinet;
• the construction of a transcontinental railroad in the South;
• legislation to help industrialize the South.
This compromise effectively ended Reconstruction in the
former Confederacy, and the autonomy of the Democratic Party in
the South was cemented with the ascent of the “Redeemer”
governments that displaced the Republican “carpetbagger”
governments. After the Compromise of 1877, the South generally
voted solidly Democratic until the middle of the 20th century.
The end of Reconstruction essentially signaled the end of civil
rights for African Americans; as the years passed after the end of
the war, the North lost interest in continuing to pursue the matter and
instead turned its attention towards other concerns. The South was
allowed to establish a segregated society in return for accepting its
integration into the Union, and the initial civil rights measures were
eroded over time. The South also swayed Congress to pass the
Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibited federal military authorities
from exercising localized civilian police powers. In the aftermath of
Reconstruction, much of the civil rights legislation was later
overturned by the United States Supreme Court. Most notably, the
court suggested in the “Slaughterhouse Case” (1873), and then held
in the Civil Rights Cases (1883), that the Fourteenth Amendment
only gave Congress the power to outlaw public, rather than private
discrimination. Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) went even further,
providing that state-mandated segregation was legal as long as the
statute or ordinance provided for “separate but equal” facilities.
It was not until 1964 that the federal government made a
concerted attack on the system of private racial discrimination when
it passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlawed discrimination
in “public accommodations,” i.e., restaurants, hotels and businesses
open to the public, as well as in private schools and workplaces.

American History
SAQ 11
Fill in the blanks with the correct words in the
margin:
''Reconstruction, for better or .............. (1), a) slavery

was officially ended. For generations to b) whites
come, southern blacks were .............. (2) to c) condemned
eke out a threadbare living under conditions d) opportunities
scarcely better than .............. (3). As e) masters
sharecroppers or tenant farmers, they f) tools
.............. (4) at the economic mercy of g) were
former .............. (5). Segregated in woefully h) worse
inferior schools, they had few .............. (6) to i) facilities
improve their lot through education. Denied j) citizenship
the ballot by fraud and intimidation, they
lacked the political .............. (7) to protest
their condition. Legally separated from
..............(8) in virtually all public .............. (9),
including railroad cars and even restrooms,
they were assaulted daily by galling
reminders of their second- class ..............
(10). ”
(The American Pageant , by Thomas A.
Bailey and David M. Kennedy)


American History
5.5 The Twentieth Century
5.5.1 The World Wars

The nation’s interest in world peace had already been
expressed through participation in the Hague Conferences, and
In 1914, when
when in 1914 World War I started in Europe, president Woodrow
World War I started
Wilson made efforts to keep the United States neutral. In fact, he
in Europe, the
was reelected in 1916, on the strength of his party’s slogan: “He kept
United States
us out of war.” However, American sympathies and interests were
claimed their
actively with the Allies (especially with Great Britain and France),
neutrality. They
and although Britain and Germany both violated American neutral
entered the war on
rights on the seas, German submarine attacks constituted the more
the side of the
dramatic provocation. On April 6, 1917, the United States entered
Allies on April 6,
the war on the side of the Allies and provided significant manpower
1917.
and supplies for the Allied victory. The U.S. Navy was crucial in
helping the British break the submarine blockade, and in the
summer of 1918, during a long-awaited German offensive, fresh
American troops, under the command of General John J. Pershing,
played a decisive role on land. Later in November, American forces
took an important part in the vast Meuse-Argonne offensive, which
cracked Germany’s Hindenburg Line.
President Wilson contributed greatly to an early end to the war
by defining the war aims of the Allies, and by insisting that the
In President
struggle was being waged not against the German people but
Wilson’s 14 points
against their autocratic government. His famous Fourteen Points,
(January 1918), it submitted to the Senate in January 1918 as the basis for a just
was stated that the peace, called for abandonment of secret international agreements, a
struggle was being guarantee of freedom of the seas, the removal of tariff barriers
waged not against between nations, reductions in national armaments, and an
the German adjustment of colonial claims with due regard to the interests of the
people, but against inhabitants affected. Other points sought to ensure self-rule and
their government. unhampered economic development for European nationalities. The
Fourteenth Point constituted the keystone of Wilson’s arch of peace
– the formation of an association of nations to afford “mutual
guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great
and small states alike.”
By the summer of 1918, when Germany’s armies were being
beaten back, the German government appealed to Wilson to
negotiate on the basis of the Fourteen Points. The
president conferred with the Allies, who acceded to the
German proposal. An armistice was concluded on
November 11.
It was Wilson’s hope that the final treaty would have
the character of a negotiated peace, but he feared that the
passions aroused by the war would cause the Allies to
make severe demands. In this he was right. The concept of
self-determination proved impossible to implement.
Persuaded that his greatest hope for peace, the League of
Nations, would never be realized unless he made
concessions to the Allies, Wilson compromised on the
issues of self-determination, open diplomacy and other
specific points during the peace negotiations in Paris.
American History
However, he resisted the demands of the French premier, Georges
Clemenceau, to detach the entire Rhineland from Germany,
prevented France from annexing the Saar Basin, and frustrated a
proposal to charge Germany with the whole cost of the war –
America played a although the Versailles Peace Treaty did levy a heavy burden of
key role in the reparations upon Germany.
peace negotiations In the end, there was little left of Wilson’s proposals for a
generous and lasting peace but the League itself. Wilson’s belief in a
of Versailles during
moral and legal basis for war and peace had inspired the nation.
1919.
However, when events did not live up to this optimistic standard,
Wilsonian idealism gave way to disillusion, and the nation withdrew
into isolationism. Isolationist sentiment prevailed during the 1920s,
and while the United States played a major role in the naval
conferences for disarmament and in the engineering of the Kellogg-
Briand Pact, which outlawed war, its general lack of interest in
international concerns was compensated for in the domestic policies
and achievements of the so-called ''New Era''*.
SAQ 12
True (T) or False (F) ?
1. The United States entered World War I at the outbreak of

hostilities in Europe.
2. President Wilson insisted that World War I was being waged
not against the German people but against their autocratic
government.
3. The League of Nations was expected to afford guarantees of
territorial integrity to all the states, and political independence to the
beligerant states.
4. The concept of self-determination was easy to implement,
even without concessions to the Allies.


American History
By the late 1930s the Axis nations in Europe (Germany and

Italy) as well as Japan in East Asia had already disrupted world
peace. As wars began in China, Ethiopia, and Spain, the United
States recovering after the Great Depression* sought at first to
America once safeguard its insular security by the Neutrality Act. As Axis
again stated her aggression led to the outbreak of the European war in September
neutrality at the 1939, the United States still tried to stay out of it, despite increasing
beginning of the sympathy for the Allies. But after the fall of France in June, 1940, the
Second World War, support of the United States for Britain became more overt. In March
in September 1939. 1941, lend-lease aid (arrangement for the transfer of war supplies,
including food, machinery, and services, to nations whose defense
was considered vital to the defense of the United States in World
War II was extended to the British and, in November, to the
Russians. The threat of war had already caused the adoption of
selective service to build the armed strength of the nation.
Hemisphere defense was enlarged, and the United States drew
closer to Great Britain with the issuance of the Atlantic Charter.
In Asian affairs the Roosevelt government had vigorously
protested Japan’s career of conquest and its establishment of the
“Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.” After the Japanese
America entered takeover of French Indochina (July 1941), with its inherent threat to
the war following the Philippines, the U.S. government froze all Japanese assets in
the Japanese the United States. Diplomatic relations grew taut, but U.S.-Japanese
attack on discussions were still being carried on when, on December 7, 1941,
December 7, 1941 Japanese bombs fell on Pearl Harbor, a major United States naval
at Pearl Harbor base in Hawaii. The United States promptly declared war, and four
days later Germany and Italy declared war on the United States.
The country efficiently mobilized its vast resources,
transforming factories to war plants and building a mighty military
force which included most able-bodied young men and many young
women. The creation of a great number of government war agencies
to control and coordinate materials, transportation, and manpower
brought unprecedented government intervention into national life.
Rationing, price controls, and other devices were instituted in an
attempt to prevent serious inflation or dislocation in the civilian
economy.
The war underscored the importance of U.S. resources and the
prestige and power of the United States in world affairs. A series of
important conferences outlined the policies for the war and the
programs for the peace after victory; among these were the Moscow
Conferences, the Casablanca Conference, the Cairo Conference,
the Tehran Conference, and the Yalta Conference, at which
Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin planned for postwar
settlement. Roosevelt was also a key figure in the plans for the
On August 6, 1945 United Nations.
two atomic bombs After Roosevelt’s sudden death in April 1945, Harry S. Truman
were launched by became President. A month later, the European war ended when
an American Germany surrendered on May 7, 1945. Truman went to the Potsdam
aircraft on Conference (July–August), where various questions of the
Hiroshima and peacetime administration of Europe were settled, many on an ad
Nagasaki, thus interim basis, pending the conclusion of peace treaties. Before the
ending the war. war ended with the defeat of Japan, the United States developed
and used a fateful and revolutionary weapon, the atomic bomb. The

American History
Japanese surrender, announced August 14, 1945, and signed
September 2, brought the war to a close.
SAQ 13
Choose the right answer:
1. When WW II started in Europe, the United States

a) tried to stay out of it
b) declared war on Japan
c) declared war on Germany
d) declared war on Russia
2. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, on December 7, 1941,
the United States promptly declared war on.................................
a) Germany and Japan
b) Germany, Japan and Italy
c) Japan
d) Japan and Italy
3. Immediately after WW II the United States was marked by ............
a) a very important economic development
b) a period of „laisser faire”
c) an economic crisis
d) people’s returning to a country life
4. The Great Depression began during the presidency of ..................
a) Franklin D. Roosevelt
b) Calvin Coolidge
c) Woodrow Wilson
d) Herbert Hoover
5. The Depression left millions of Americans jobless, homeless and
penniless, many people depending on
a) the President
b) the Government
c) God’s mercy
d) Foreign relief
6. The New Deal, initiated by Franklin D Roosevelt’s Administration
instituted ........................ measures
a) subversive
b) weak
c) vigorous
d) extravagant
7. President Roosevelt was a great American President who died
.................
a) before the end of WW II
b) in his bed
c) on the battlefield
d) after the end of WW II


American History
5.5.2 The Nuclear Arms Race
Dwight D. Eisenhower, who had assumed the presidency in
1953, was a war hero, with a natural, homey manner that made him
The Nuclear Arms widely popular. In the postwar years, he served as army chief of
Race: America’s staff, the president of Columbia University and finally head of NATO.
commitment to Although he was skillful at getting people to work together, he
contain sought to play a restrained public role. Still, he shared with Truman a
communism basic view of American foreign policy. Eisenhower, too, perceived
communism as a monolithic force struggling for world supremacy.
He believed that Moscow, under leaders such as Stalin, was trying
to orchestrate worldwide revolution.
In office, Eisenhower and his secretary of state, John Foster
Dulles, argued that containment did not go far enough to stop Soviet
expansion. Rather, a more aggressive policy of liberation was
necessary, to free those subjugated by communism. But for all of the
rhetoric, when democratic rebellions broke out in areas under Soviet
domination – such as in Hungary in 1956 – the United States stood
back as Soviet forces suppressed them.
Eisenhower’s basic commitment to contain communism
remained, and to that end he increased American reliance on a
nuclear shield. The Manhattan Project during World War II had
created the first atomic bombs. In 1950 Truman had authorized the
development of a new and more powerful hydrogen weapon. Now
Eisenhower proposed a policy of “massive retaliation.” The United
States, under this doctrine, was prepared to use atomic weapons if
the nation or its vital interests were attacked.
In practice, however, Eisenhower deployed U.S. military forces
with great caution, resisting all suggestions to consider the use of
nuclear weapons in Indochina, where the French were ousted by
Vietnamese communist forces in 1954, or in Taiwan, where the United
States pledged to defend the Nationalist Chinese regime against attack
by the People’s Republic of China. In the Middle East, Eisenhower
resisted the use of force when British and French forces occupied the
Suez Canal and Israel invaded the Sinai in 1956, following Egypt’s
nationalization of the canal. Under heavy U.S. pressure, British, French
and Israeli forces withdrew from Egypt, which retained control of the
canal.
SAQ 14
1. Dwight D. Eisenhower was a famous person before he became
the President of the United States (President of Columbia
University, Head of NATO, Chief of Staff of the American Army).
2. He was a friend to Stalin, the Soviet Union leader.
3. Eisenhower’ s foreign policy was to free the states subjugated by
communism and to stop the Soviet expansion.
4. The first hydrogen bomb was created during his presidency.
5. Eisenhower proposed a policy of using the atomic weapons if the
nation was attacked.
6. He resisted all suggestions to consider the use of nuclear bombs
in Indochina, in Taiwan, in the Suez War, etc.

American History
5.5.3 The Vietnam War
The Election of 1960 returned the Democrats to power with
John F. Kennedy narrowly defeating Richard Nixon. President
The Vietnam War Kennedy faced foreign crises in the Bay of Pigs fiasco, the erection
(1954-1975) of the Berlin Wall and the Cuban Missile crisis. In November 1963,
escalated from a Kennedy was assassinated and was succeeded by Lyndon B.
Vietnamese civil Johnson, who launched a war on poverty and worked for the
war into a limited passage of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act.
international The Election of 1968 brought Nixon to power with a secret plan
conflict. to end the war in Vietnam, which dragged on despite turmoil in
colleges and universities. Cambodia was invaded and peace talks
were opened. Nixon visited China and negotiated the Salt I Treaty
with the Soviet Union. The Watergate burglary occurred with little
initial notice, and Nixon retained office after the Election of 1972.
U.S. forces were withdrawn from Vietnam and the Arabs imposed an
oil embargo. In 1974, Nixon resigned and was followed in the
presidency by Gerald R. Ford.
The Vietnam War was a prolonged military conflict (1954–
1975) between the Communist forces of North Vietnam supported
by China and the Soviet Union and the non-Communist forces of
South Vietnam supported by the United States. The war began soon
after the Geneva Conference provisionally divided Vietnam into the
Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam) and the Republic
of Vietnam (South Vietnam). It escalated from a Vietnamese civil
war into a limited international conflict in which the United States
was deeply involved, and did not end, despite peace agreements in
1973, until North Vietnam’s successful offensive in 1975 resulted in
South Vietnam’s collapse and the unification of Vietnam by the
North.
In 1965 Johnson stationed 22,000 troops in South Vietnam to
support the anticommunist regime. The South Vietnamese
government had long been allied with the United States. The North
Vietnamese under Ho Chi Minh were backed by the Soviet Union
and China. North Vietnam, in turn, supported the National Liberation
Front, which drew its ranks from the South Vietnamese working
class and peasantry. Seeking to contain “Communist expansion,”
Johnson increased the number of troops to 575,000 in 1967.
Neither the Soviet Union nor China intervened directly in the
conflict; they did, however, supply large amounts of aid and material
to the North and supported them diplomatically.
While the early years of the war saw significant U.S. casualties
the administration assured the public that the war was winnable, and
would in the near future result in a U.S. victory. American public’s
faith in the “light at the end of the tunnel” was shattered, on January
30, 1968, when the enemy, supposedly on the verge of collapse,
mounted the Tet Offensive in South Vietnam. Although neither of
these offensives accomplished any military objectives, the surprising
capacity of an enemy that was supposedly on the verge of collapse
to even launch such an offensive convinced many in the U.S. that
victory was impossible.
A vocal and growing peace movement centered on college
campuses became a prominent feature as the counter culture of the
American History
1960s adopted a vocal anti-war position. Especially unpopular was
the draft that threatened to send any young man to fight in the
jungles of Southeast Asia.
Elected in 1968, U.S. President Richard M. Nixon began a
policy of slow disengagement from the war. The goal was to
gradually build up the South Vietnamese Army so that it could fight
the war on its own. This policy became the cornerstone of the so-
called “Nixon Doctrine.” As applied to Vietnam, the doctrine was
called “Vietnamization.” The goal of Vietnamization was to enable
the South Vietnamese army to increasingly hold its own against the
North Vietnamese Army.
The morality of U.S. conduct of the war continued to be an
issue under the Nixon presidency. In 1969, it came to light that Lt.
William Calley, a platoon leader in Vietnam, had led a massacre of
Vietnamese civilians (including small children) during the My Lai
massacre a year earlier. In 1970, Nixon ordered illegal military
incursions into Cambodia in order to destroy communist sanctuaries
bordering on South Vietnam.
The U.S. pulled out in 1973 and the conflict finally ended in
1975 when the North Vietnamese took Saigon, now Ho Chi Minh
City. Millions of Vietnamese died as a consequence of the Vietnam
War. Vietnam released figures on April 3, 1995 that a total of one
million Vietnamese combatants and four million civilians were killed
in the war. The accuracy of these figures has generally not been
challenged. The official estimate for U.S. death toll is about 58,000,
and with thousands more missing and presumed dead.

American History
SAQ 15
Which of the four variants is not correct?
1. During John F. Kennedy’ s presidency the Americans faced the

following crisis:
a) the Berlin wall was built
b) the Soviet Union wanted to install missiles
c) the American intervention at the Bay of Pigs, Cuba
d) the Vietnam War started
2. The following outstanding Americans were assassinated

a) Robert Kennedy
b) John F. Kennedy
c) Lyndon B. Johnson
d) Martin Luther King
3. Three of the American presidents were impeached. Here is a list of

four. Which one was not?
a) Bill Clinton
b) Martin Van Buren
c) Richard Nixon
d) Andrew Johnson
4. a) The Vietnam war was a conflict between communist forces

(North Vietnam supported by China and the Soviet Union) and the
non- communist forces of the South Vietnam ( supported by the
United States)
b) The Americans sent troops in Vietnam when the president was
Lyndon Johnson
c) The Vietnam War was stopped during Johnson’ s
Administration
d) During the Vietnam War the American casualties were
enormous ( 58 000 dead people)
5. a) Richard Nixon wanted to put an end to the war

b) His policy was to build up the South Vietnamese Army
c) The morality of U.S. troops in Vietnam was a serious issue
under Nixon’ s presidency
d) The Americans did not kill Vietnamese civilians


American History
5.5.4 The Civil Rights Race Riots
In the postwar years, African Americans began to challenge

The Civil Rights discrimination and to argue that the time was ripe for racial equality.
Race Riots: Harry Truman supported the civil rights movement. He believed
bringing in political equality, though not in social equality, and recognized the
segregation to an growing importance of the black urban vote. When apprised in 1946
end of lynchings and other forms of mob violence still practiced in the
South, he appointed a committee on civil rights to investigate
discrimination based on race and religion. The report, issued the
next year, documented blacks’ second-class status in American life.
It asserted the need for the federal government to secure the rights
guaranteed to all citizens. Truman responded by sending a 10-point
civil rights program to Congress. When Southern Democrats, angry
about a stronger civil rights stance, left the party in 1948, Truman
issued an executive order barring discrimination in federal
employment, ordered equal treatment in the armed forces and
appointed a committee to work toward an end to military
segregation. The last military restrictions ended during the Korean
War.
Blacks in the South enjoyed few, if any, civil and political rights.
More than 1 million black soldiers fought in World War II, but those
who came from the South could not vote. Blacks who tried to
register faced the likelihood of beatings, loss of job, loss of credit or
eviction from their land. Lynchings still occurred, and Jim Crow laws
enforced segregation of the races in street cars, trains, hotels,
restaurants, hospitals, recreational facilities and employment.
Blacks took matters into their own hands, determined to
overturn the judicial doctrine, established in the court case Plessy v.
Ferguson in 1896, that segregation of black and white students in
schools was constitutional if facilities were “separate but equal. ”
That decree had been used for decades to sanction rigid
segregation in the South, where facilities were seldom, if ever,
equal.
In 1954 the National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People (NAACP) succeeded in overturning Plessy v.
Ferguson (1896) when the Supreme Court handed down its Brown
v. Board of Education (1954) ruling. The Court declared
unanimously that “separate facilities are inherently unequal,” and
decreed that the “separate but equal” doctrine could no longer be
used in public schools. A year later, the Supreme Court demanded
that local school boards move “with all deliberate speed” to
implement the decision.
Eisenhower, although sympathetic to the needs of the South as
it faced a major transition, nonetheless acted quickly to see that the
law was upheld. He ordered the desegregation of Washington, D.C.,
schools to serve as a model for the rest of the country, and sought to
end discrimination in other areas as well.
He faced a major crisis in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957. Just
before implementation of a desegregation plan calling for the
admission of nine black students to a previously all-white high
school, the governor declared that violence threatened, and posted
Arkansas National Guardsmen to keep peace by turning the black

American History
students away. When a federal court ordered the troops to leave, the
students came to school, only to encounter belligerent taunts. As
mobs became hostile, the black students left. Eisenhower
responded by placing the National Guardsmen under federal
command and calling them back to Little Rock. He was reluctant to
do so because federal troops had not been used to protect black
rights since the end of Reconstruction, but he knew he had no
choice. And so desegregation began with soldiers standing in
classrooms to ensure the rule of law.
Another milestone in the civil rights movement occurred in 1955
in Montgomery, Alabama. Rosa Parks, a 42-year-old black
seamstress who was also secretary of the state chapter of the
NAACP, sat down in the front of a bus in a section reserved by law
and custom for whites. Ordered to move to the back, she refused.
Police came and arrested her for violating the segregation statutes.
Black leaders, who had been waiting for just such a case, organized
a boycott of the bus system. Martin Luther King Jr., a young minister
of the Baptist church where the blacks met, became a spokesman
for the protest. “There comes a time,” he said, “when people get
tired... of being kicked about by the brutal feet of oppression.” King
was arrested, as he would be again and again. About a year later,
the Supreme Court ruled that bus segregation, like school
segregation, was unconstitutional. The boycott ended. The civil
rights movement had won an important victory – and discovered its
most powerful, thoughtful and eloquent leader in Martin Luther King
Jr.
SAQ 16
Which is correct ?
1. When the blacks came back from the WW II, they...

a) obtained civil rights
b) were still considered inferior citizens of the USA
2. Harry S Truman...
a) supported the movements of the African Americans
b) was against any civil and political rights for the blacks
3. The Supreme Court of the United States declared that…

a) segregation in schools was illegal
b) segregation in churches was illegal
4. Dwight Eisenhower...
a) faced a serious problem in Little Rock, Arkansas
b) ordered the desegregation of Washington DC schools to serve
as a model for the rest of the country
5. In 1955 Rosa Parks, a black seamstress…

a) sat down in the section of a bus reserved for the whites and
refused to move to the back
b) was assassinated together with Martin Luther King Jr.

American History
African Americans also sought to secure their voting rights.
Although the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guaranteed
the right to vote, many states had found ways – whether by a poll tax
or a literacy test – to circumvent the law. Eisenhower, working with
Senate majority leader Lyndon B. Johnson, lent his support to a
congressional effort to guarantee the vote. The Civil Rights Act of
1957, the first such measure in 82 years, marked a step forward, as
it authorized federal intervention in cases where blacks were denied
the chance to vote.
The struggle of black Americans for equality reached its peak in
the mid-1960s. After their progressive victories in the 1950s, blacks
became even more committed to nonviolent direct action. In 1960
black college students sat down at a segregated Woolworth’s lunch
counter in North Carolina and refused to leave. Their sit-in captured
media attention and led to similar demonstrations throughout the
South. The next year, civil rights workers organized “freedom rides,”
in which blacks and whites boarded buses heading South toward
segregated terminals, where confrontations might capture media
attention and lead to change. They also organized rallies, the largest
of which was the “March on Washington” in 1963. More than
200,000 people gathered in the nation’s capital to demonstrate their
commitment to equality for all. The high point of a day of songs and
speeches came with the address of Martin Luther King Jr., who had
emerged as the preeminent spokesman for civil rights. ‘’I have a
dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, sons of former slaves
and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together
at the table of brotherhood,” King proclaimed. Each time he used the
refrain ‘’I have a dream,” the crowd roared.
But the rhetoric of the civil rights movement at first failed to
bring progress. President Kennedy was initially reluctant to press
white Southerners for support of civil rights because he needed their
votes on other issues. But events forced his hand. When James
Meredith was denied admission to the University of Mississippi in
1962 on account of his race, Kennedy sent federal troops to uphold
the law. After protests aimed at the desegregation of Birmingham,
Alabama, prompted a violent response by the police, he sent
Congress a new civil rights bill mandating the integration of public
places. Not even the “March on Washington,” however, could
extricate the measure from a congressional committee, where it was
still bottled up when Kennedy was assassinated.
President Johnson was more successful. A Southerner from
Texas, he became committed to civil rights as he sought national
office. In 1963, he told Congress: “No memorial oration or eulogy
could more eloquently honor President Kennedy’s memory than the
earliest possible passage of the civil rights bill.” Using all his
authority, he persuaded the Senate to limit debate and secured the
passage of the sweeping Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlawed
discrimination in all public accommodations. The next year, he
pressed further for what became the Voting Rights Act of 1965. It
authorized the federal government to appoint examiners to register
voters where local officials made black registration impossible. The
year after passage, 400,000 blacks registered in the deep South; by
1968 the number reached 1 million and nationwide the number of

American History
black elected officials increased substantially. Finally, in 1968, the
Congress passed legislation banning discrimination in housing.
Violence accompanied militant calls for reform. Riots broke out
in several big cities in 1966 and 1967. In the spring of 1968, Martin
Luther King fell before an assassin’s bullet. Several months later,
Senator Robert Kennedy, a spokesman for the disadvantaged, an
opponent of the Vietnam War and the brother of the slain president,
met the same fate. To many these two assassinations marked the
end of an era of innocence and idealism in both civil rights and the
anti-war movements.
The backlash against preferential treatment for minorities
became even more public in a Supreme Court case in 1978. Allan
Bakke, a white man, claimed that a quota reserving places for
minority applicants was responsible for the rejection of his
application to medical school in California. The court ordered his
admission, arguing that quotas could no longer be imposed, but then
upheld the consideration of race as one of the relevant factors in
selection procedures.
Nevertheless, the controversy over busing and affirmative
action sometimes obscured the steady march of many African
Americans into the ranks of the middle class and suburbia
throughout these tumultuous years.
SAQ 17
Which is correct ?
1. The Civil Rights Act stipulated authorized intervention in cases

where……
a) Blacks were denied the chance to vote
b) Blacks refused to go school
2. The peak of the struggle of the blacks was reached in
a) 1970s
b) 1960s
3. Martin Luther King Jr. was the ……
a) leader of the blacks
b) a student in Montgomery, Alabama
4. The “March on Washington” gathered more than 200,000 blacks
and whites. Martin Luther King Jr. ……
a) was killed during this meeting
b) delivered his famous speech “I Have a Dream”
5. During President Johnson’s Presidency the African Americans got
even more civil rights (Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights
act of 1965, etc ). But there was violence in America. In 1968 ……
a) Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated
b) Rosa Parks was murdered


American History
5.5.5 The New Left and the Counterculture
The term ‘New Left’ generally applied to a generation of
Americans who came of age in the 1960s and were radicalized by
The new
social injustices, the civil rights movement, and the war in Vietnam.
generation of
The New Left was made up largely of college students. The first
Americans (mostly
major group to embody its principles was Students for a Democratic
college students)
Society (SDS), which was formed in Michigan in 1962. Its Port
was radicalized by
Huron Statement attacked social injustice and the values of the so-
social injustices,
called Affluent Society. The New Left grew in 1964 with the onset of
the Civil Rights
the free-speech movement at the University of California at
Movement and the
Berkeley, which was a protest against restrictions on student
war in Vietnam.
involvement in political demonstrations on campus. It also won
followers by denouncing American involvement in Vietnam and
deploring the failure of Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society programs
to eradicate poverty.
The New Left was prominent in countless university
demonstrations, the best known of which took place at Columbia
University in 1968, Harvard University in 1969, and Kent State
University in 1970, when the National Guard killed four students after
being called out to stop antiwar protests. The New Left was also active
in the counterculture of the 1960s.
The 1960s counterculture was a reaction against the
The 1960s conservative social mores of the 1950s, the political conservatism
counterculture was (and the social repression) of the Cold War period, and the US
a reaction against government’s extensive military intervention in Vietnam. Opposition
the conservative, to the war was exacerbated in the US by the compulsory military
social mores of the draft.
1950s, the political Young people in particular rejected the stable patterns of
conservatism of the middle-class life their parents had created in the decades after
Cold War period, World War II. Some plunged into radical political activity; many more
and the military embraced new standards of dress and sexual behavior.
intervention in The visible signs of the counterculture permeated American
Vietnam. society in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Hair grew longer and
beards became common. Blue jeans and tee shirts took the place of
slacks, jackets and ties. The use of illegal drugs increased in an
effort to free the mind from past constraints. Rock and roll grew,
proliferated and transformed into many musical variations. The
Beatles, the Rolling Stones and other British groups took the country
by storm. “Hard rock” grew popular, and songs with a political or
social commentary, such as those by singer-songwriter Bob Dylan,
became common. The youth counterculture reached its apogee in
August 1969 at Woodstock, a three-day music festival in rural New
York State attended by almost half-a-million persons. The festival,
mythologized in films and record albums, gave its name to the era –
The Woodstock Generation.

American History
SAQ 18
1. This movement included….

a) Young people, college students
b) Black people
2. The young people protested against…

a) The blacks
b) Restrictions on student involvement in political demonstrations
on campus, the Vietnam War
3. The young people held university demonstration (Columbia,

Harvard, etc), they were against compulsory military draft, and
they rejected the stable patterns of middle class life their parents
had created. Instead their counterculture permeated American
society. Some characteristics of this new culture are:
a) Long hair and beards; blue jeans and tee shirts; the use of
illegal drugs; rock-and-roll, hard rock
b) They did not like the Beatles because they were British


American History
5.5.6 The End of the Cold War
Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) was the 40th President of the
United States (1981–1989). He went into politics after a career as a
The Cold War: A
film actor. He served as governor of California from 1967 to 1975
hard-line stance
and became a leading spokesman for conservatism in the United
against the Soviet
States. As the nominee of the Republican party, promising to work
Union and other
toward a balanced federal budget, he won a large victory over
communist
President James Earl Carter in 1980 and an even larger one over
countries
Walter Mondale in 1984. Advocating a balanced budget to combat
inflation, he reversed long-standing political trends by successfully
pursuing his supply-side economic program of tax and non-defense
budget cuts through Congress. Adopting a hard-line stance against
the Soviet Union (the ''evil empire') and other Communist countries,
Reagan advocated and oversaw the largest peacetime escalation of
military spending in American history; in 1983 he proposed the
controversial and expensive space-based defense system known as
the Strategic Defense Initiative – some have argued this stance was
responsible for the eventual collapse of Soviet Communism while
others attribute it to the inherent weakness of the Soviet state.
Beginning in 1985, Reagan began to soften his stance toward
the Soviet Union in response to signals of a new openness in foreign
relations under Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. The two leaders
met four times between 1985 and 1988, when they concluded the
Intermediate-Range Nuclear-Force Missile Treaty (INF treaty) which
sharply reduced intermediate nuclear forces.
From 1989 to 1991 the cold war came to an end with the
opening of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of Communist party
dictatorship in Eastern Europe, the reunification of Germany, and the
disintegration of the Soviet Union.
SAQ 19
Choose the correct word in the margin:
''Reagan believed in negotiating with the Soviets- a) burden

but ........ (1) from a position of overwhelming b) with
strength. Accordingly, his strategy for dealing c) tune
........ (2) Moscow was simple: by enormously d) threaten
expanding U.S. military capabilities, he could e) only
........ (3) the Soviets with a fantastically
expensive new round of the arms race. The
American economy, theoretically, could better
shoulder this new financial ........ (4) than could
the creaking Soviet system. Desperate to avoid
economic ruin, Kremlin leaders would come to
the bargaining table and dance to Reagan’ s
........ (5).”
(from America is My Country, by Harriett Brown)


American History
Summary
America, a myth in itself, stands for a lot of things, as diverse
(and contradictory) as could be. And still, most people take this
country for a paragon of virtue and consequently a depository of
ideals. A most dynamic economy, able to cope with any kind of
crisis, a social and political management able to resolve in a spirit of
tolerance any discord that might arise from the collision of races and
religions, and, last but not least, a history that has always shown a
dedicated allegiance to the values of independence, democracy and
fully-fledged sovereignty – all this contributed to the “American
myth,” itself a “melting pot” of history-based trends which come
together to form the fundamental principle of American government:
a system of checks and balances making compromise in politics a
matter of necessity, not choice.
The Revolution (with its notable aftermath: the Constitution) is
certainly responsible for this image. It did not produce the kind of
epoch-breaking rupture with past customs and institutions as the
French Revolution, but it did establish several noteworthy
innovations: the separation of church and state, which ended the
special privileges of the Anglican Church in the South and the
Congregationalist Church in New England; a discourse of liberty and
equality which would prove highly appealing in Europe; the idea that
government should be by consent of the governed (including the
right of rebellion against tyranny); the delegation of power through
written constitutions; and the notion that colonial peoples of the
Americas could become self-governing nations in their own rights.
Key Terms
• The Declaration of Independence

• The American Revolution
• The World Wars

The Restraining Acts (1774), or Coercive Acts, as they were
popularly known in England, included the following:
• the Boston Port act, which closed the port of Boston until the tea
was paid for – an action that threatened the very life of the city,
for to prevent Boston from having access to the sea meant
economic disaster;
• the Quartering Act, which required the colonies to provide the
British troops with housing, not only in public facilities, but in
private homes as well;
• the Administration of Justice Act, which protected royal officials in
Massachusetts from being put on trial in colonial courts;
• the Massachusetts Government Act, which dissolved the local
government of Massachusetts.

American History
The Parliament followed the enactment of these measures with
the passage of the Quebec Act, an unrelated piece of legislation that
extended the boundaries of the province of Quebec and guaranteed
the right of the French inhabitants to enjoy religious freedom and
their own legal customs. Although not intended as a punitive
measure, it was classed by the Americans with the Coercive Acts,
and all became known as the “Five Intolerable Acts.”
Thomas Paine’s Common Sense (1776) made the following points:

• Governments, even good ones, are at best necessary evils;
they are less desirable the farther the government is from the
governed.
• Ignoring the loyalty many Americans still felt for the king, he
argued ardently for independence; monarchy was branded an
absurd form of government and George III a “Royal Brute.”
• It made no sense, in Paine’s mind, for a small country like
Britain, an island, to rule a continent like America.
• Independence would foster peace and prosperity. An
independent America could avoid the senseless progression of
European wars and grow rich by trading with all countries, not
just the mother country.
The Treaty of Paris (1783) contained the following terms:
• recognizing the colonies as the United States of America

[Article 1];
• establishing the boundaries between the United States and
British North America [Article 2];
• granting fishing rights to United States fishermen in the Grand
Banks, off the coast of Newfoundland and in the Gulf of Saint
Lawrence [Article 3];
• recognizing the lawful contracted debts to be paid to creditors
on either side [Article 4];
• United States Congress will “earnestly recommend” to state
legislatures to recognize the rightful owners of all confiscated
lands, and “provide for the restitution of all estates, rights, and
properties, which have been confiscated belonging to real
British subjects” [never implemented, Article 5];
• United States Congress will prevent future confiscations
[Article 6];
• prisoners of war on both sides are to be released and all
property left by British army in the United States unmolested
[Article 7];
• Great Britain and the United States will each be given perpetual
access to the Mississippi River [Article 8];
• territories captured by Americans subsequent to treaty will be
returned without compensation [Article 9];
• ratification of the treaty will occur within six months from the
signing by the contracting parties [Article 10]

American History
Checks and balances. This fundamental principle makes
compromise in politics a matter of necessity, not choice. For
example, the House of Representatives controls spending and
finance, so the President must have its agreement for his proposals
and programs. He cannot declare war, either, without the approval
of Congress. In foreign affairs, he is also strongly limited. Any treaty
must first be approved by the Senate. If there is no approval, there’s
no treaty. The rule is: ”the President proposes, but Congress
disposes.” What a President wants to do, therefore, is often a
different thing from what a President is able to do.
Congress, the legislative branch of the federal government, is
made up of the Senate and the House of Representatives. There are
100 Senators, two from each state. One third of the Senators are
elected every two years for six-year terms of office. The Senators
represent all of the people in a state and their interests.
The House has 435 members. They are elected every two
years for two-year terms. They represent the population of
”congressional districts” into which each state is divided. The
number of Representatives from each state is based upon its
population. For instance, California, the state with the largest
population, has 45 Representatives, while Delaware has only one.
There is no limit to the number of terms a Senator or a
Representative may serve.
Almost all elections in the United States follow the “winner-
take-all” principle: the candidate who wins the largest number of
votes in a Congressional district is the winner.
The President of the United States is elected every four years
to a four-year term of office, with no more than two full terms
allowed. As is true with Senators and Representatives, the President
is elected directly by the voters (through state electors). In other
words, the political party with the most Senators and
Representatives does not choose the President. This means that the
President can be from one party and the majority of those in the
House of Representatives or Senate (or both) from another.
The Federal Judiciary is the third branch of government, in
addition to the legislative (Congress) and executive (President)
branches. Its main instrument is the Supreme Court, which watches
over the other two branches. It determines whether or not their laws
and acts are in accordance with the Constitution. The Supreme
Court consists of a chief justice and eight associate justices. They
are nominated by the President but must be approved by the
Senate. Once approved, they hold office as Supreme Court Justices
for life. A decision of the Supreme Court cannot be appealed to any
other court. Neither the President nor the Congress can change their
decisions. In addition to the Supreme Court, Congress has
established 11 federal courts of appeal and, below them, 91 federal
district courts.
The Constitution provides for three main branches of
government which are separate and distinct from one another. The
powers given to each are carefully balanced by the powers of the
other two. Each branch serves as a check on the others, so as to
keep any branch from gaining too much power or from misusing its

American History
powers. The Constitution also provides for federalism, i.e. State and
Local Governments.
The individual states all have republican forms of government
with a senate and a house. (There is one exception, Nebraska,
which has only one legislative body of 49 “senators.”) All have
executive branches headed by state governors and independent
court system. Each state also has its own constitution. But all must
respect the federal laws and not make laws that interfere with those
of the other states (e.g., someone who is divorced under the laws of
one state is legally divorced in all). Likewise, cities and local
authorities must make their laws and regulations so that they fit their
own state’s constitution.
Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America (1835, 1840)

is a classic French text on the strengths and weaknesses of the
United States in the 1830s.
The French writer and political theorist Alexis de Tocqueville,
after visiting the United States, wrote what is still considered one of
the most trenchant and insightful analyses of American social and
political practices. De la démocratie en Amérique was published in
two volumes, the first in 1835 and the second in 1840, and is
commonly translated as Democracy in America.
The study concentrates mainly on why republican
representative democracy succeeded in the United States when it
had failed in so many other places. Tocqueville also speculates on
the future of democracy in the United States, discussing both
possible threats to democracy and possible dangers of democracy,
including his belief that democracy has a tendency to degenerate
into what he calls “mild despotism”. The work is often acclaimed for
making a number of predictions which were eventually borne out, as
Tocqueville correctly anticipated the potential of the debate over the
abolition of slavery to tear apart the United States (as it indeed did in
the American Civil War). He also predicted the rise of the United
States and of the Soviet Union as superpowers.
Democracy in America was published in numerous editions in
the 19th century. It was immediately popular in both Europe and the
United States. By the twentieth century, it had become a classic
work of political science, social science, and history.
Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address (1863): “Four score

and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a
new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition
that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that
nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long
endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have
come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for
those who here gave their lives that the nation might live. It is
altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate - we can not
consecrate - we can not hallow - this ground. The brave men, living
and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our
poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long

American History
remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did
here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the
unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly
advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task
remaining before us - that from these honored dead we take
increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full
measure of devotion - that we here highly resolve that these dead
shall not have died in vain - that this nation, under God, shall have a
new birth of freedom - and that government of the people, by the
people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
This speech, regarded as one of Abraham Lincoln’s finest
works, was delivered at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, on November 19,
1863. Ceremonies were held to dedicate a cemetery for those killed
in the battle of July 1-3 between George Gordon Meade’s Army of
the Potomac and Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. The
main speaker was Edward Everett, a renowned orator.
When the board in charge of the event extended invitations to
various national figures, it was expected that Lincoln would not be
present, but he made his attendance a priority. After Everett’s two-
hour oration, Lincoln spoke for only a few minutes. The ten
sentences composing the speech received little attention at the time.
Everett himself, however, appreciated Lincoln’s eloquence, writing
him, “I should be glad if I could flatter myself that I came as near to
the central idea of the occasion in two hours as you did in two
minutes.” Most newspapers also reported positively on the
president’s brief remarks. Through the years, the address,
considered a model of its kind, has been much studied. It is often
pointed out that Lincoln used the word ‘nation’ five times, never
‘union’. He did not use the words ‘slavery’, ‘nullification’, or ‘state’s
rights’, but went back to the Declaration of Independence, and the
powerful statement that “all men are created equal,” and not the
Constitution of 1789 with its implied recognition of slavery. At the
time, the U.S. was split asunder and hardly a union and that is why
restoring the nation - not a collection of sovereign states - was
paramount.
The New Era. In the 1920s the United Slates became

increasingly urban, and everyday life was transformed as the
“consumer revolution” brought the spreading use of automobiles,
telephones, radios, and other appliances. The pace of living
quickened, and mores became less restrained, while fortunes were
rapidly accumulated on the skyrocketing stock market, in real estate
speculation, and elsewhere. To some it seemed a golden age. But
agriculture was not prosperous, and industry and finance became
dangerously overextended.
The Great Depression. In 1929 there began the Great

Depression, which reached worldwide proportions. In October 1929,
when the stock market in the United States dropped rapidly,
thousands of investors lost large sums of money and many were
wiped out, lost everything. The ‘crash’ led the United States into the
Great Depression. The ensuing period ranked as the longest and
worst period of high unemployment and low business activity in

American History
modern times: banks, stores, and factories were closed and left
millions of Americans jobless, homeless, and penniless; many
people came to depend on the government or charity to provide
them with food.
The Depression became a worldwide business slump of the
1930s that affected almost all nations. It led to a sharp decrease in
world trade as each country tried to protect their own industries and
products by raising tariffs on imported goods. Some nations
changed their leader and their type of government. In Germany,
poor economic conditions led to the rise to power of the dictator
Adolf Hitler. The Japanese invaded China, developing industries and
mines in Manchuria. Japan claimed this economic growth would
relieve the depression. This militarism of the Germans and
Japanese eventually led to World War II (1939-1945).
In 1931, President Herbert Hoover proposed a moratorium on
foreign debts, but this and other measures failed to prevent
economic collapse. In the 1932 election Hoover was overwhelmingly
defeated by the Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt. The new President
immediately instituted his New Deal with vigorous measures. To
meet the critical financial emergency he instituted a “bank holiday.”
Congress, called into special session, enacted a succession of laws,
some of them to meet the economic crisis with relief measures,
others to put into operation long-range social and economic reforms.
Some of the most important agencies created were the National
Recovery Administration, the Agricultural Adjustment Administration,
the Public Works Administration, the Civilian Conservation Corps,
and the Tennessee Valley Authority. This program was further
broadened in later sessions with other agencies, notably the
Securities and Exchange Commission and the Works Progress
Administration (later the Work Projects Administration).
Laws also created a social security program. The program was
dynamic and, in many areas, unprecedented. It created a vast
machinery by which the state could promote economic recovery and
social welfare. Opponents of these measures argued that they
violated individual rights, besides being extravagant and wasteful.
Adverse decisions on several of the measures by the U.S. Supreme
Court tended to slow the pace of reform and caused Roosevelt to
attempt unsuccessfully to revise the court. Although interest
centered chiefly on domestic affairs during the 1930s, Roosevelt
continued and expanded the policy of friendship toward the Latin
American nations which Herbert Hoover had initiated; this full-blown
“good-neighbor” policy proved fruitful for the United States in the
long run. Roosevelt was reelected by an overwhelming majority in
1936 and won easily in 1940 even though he was breaking the no-
third-term tradition.
In brief, Roosevelt’s ‘new deal’ reforms gave the government
more power and helped ease the depression; the Great Depression
ended as nations increased their production of war materials at the
start of World War II, which provided jobs and put large amounts of
money back into circulation.

American History
Gallery of Personalities
Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) was an American

journalist, publisher, author, philanthropist,
abolitionist, public servant, scientist, librarian,
diplomat, and inventor. One of the leaders of the
American Revolution, he was well known also for
his many quotations and his experiments with
electricity. Franklin’s inventions include the wood
stove, bifocals, a new ship anchor, the medical
catheter, the lightning rod, swim fins, and the
odometer. The only American of the colonial period
to earn a European reputation as a natural
philosopher, he is best remembered in the United
States as a patriot and diplomat. His
accomplishments were numerous, though.
Printer and Writer. Benjamin Franklin left
school at 10 years of age to help his father, being
apprenticed to his half brother James, a printer and
publisher of the New England Courant. Franklin
secretly contributed to the newspaper. He left his
brother’s employment and went to Philadelphia to work as a printer.
Industry and thrift – qualities he was to praise later – helped him to
better himself. After a sojourn in London (1724–1726), he returned
and in 1729 acquired an interest in the Pennsylvania Gazette. As
owner and editor after 1730, he made the periodical popular. His
common sense philosophy and his neatly turned phrases won public
attention in the Gazette, in the later General Magazine, and
especially in his Poor Richard’s Almanac, which he published from
1732 to 1757. Many sayings of Poor Richard, praising prudence,
common sense, and honesty, became standard American proverbs.
Franklin also interested himself in selling books, established a
circulating library, organized a debating club that developed into the
American Philosophical Society, helped to establish (1751) an
academy that eventually became the University of Pennsylvania,
brought about civic reforms and supported education for everyone,
including women and African-Americans. His writings are still widely
known today, especially his autobiography (covering only his early
years), which is generally considered one of the finest
autobiographies in any language and has appeared in innumerable
editions. Beginning in 1732, he achieved great success with Poor
Richard’s Almanack, a yearly publication that became the most
popular reading material in the colonies after the Bible.
Scientist. Franklin had steadily extended his own knowledge by
study of foreign languages, philosophy, and science. He repeated
the experiments of other scientists and showed his usual practical
bent by inventing such diverse things as the Franklin stove, bifocal
eyeglasses, the glass harmonica, and an armchair that could be
turned into library steps. The phenomenon of electricity interested
him deeply, and in 1748 he turned his printing business over to his
foreman, intending to devote his life to science. His experiment of
American History
flying a kite in a thunderstorm, which showed that lightning is an
electrical discharge (but which he may not have personally
performed), and his invention of the lightning rod were among a
series of investigations that won him recognition from the leading
scientists in England and on the Continent.
Statesman. Franklin held local public offices and served long
(1753–1774) as deputy postmaster general of the colonies. As such
he reorganized the postal system, making it both efficient and
profitable. His status as a public figure grew steadily. A
Pennsylvania delegate to the Albany Congress (1754), he proposed
there a plan of union for the colonies, which was accepted by the
delegates but later rejected by both the provincial assemblies and
the British government. He worked for the British cause in the
French and Indian War, especially by providing transportation for the
ill-fated expedition led by Edward Braddock against Fort Duquesne.
Franklin was a leader of the popular party in Pennsylvania against
the Penn family, who were the proprietors, and in 1757 he was sent
to England to present the case against the Penns. He won for the
colony the right to tax the Penn estates but advised moderation in
applying the right.
Franklin returned to America for two years (1762–1764) but
was in England when the Stamp Act caused a furor. Again he
showed prudent moderation; he protested the act but asked the
colonists to obey the law, thus losing some popularity in the colonies
until he stoutly defended American rights at the time of the debates
on repeal of the act. He was made agent for Georgia (1768), New
Jersey (1769), and Massachusetts (1770) and seriously considered
making his home in England, where his scientific attainments, his
brilliant mind, and his social gifts of wit and urbanity had gained him
a high place.
As trouble between the British government and the colonies
grew with the approach of the American Revolution, Franklin
returned to America in 1775, soon to become one of the greatest
statesmen of the American Revolution and of the newborn nation.
He was a delegate to the Continental Congress, was appointed
postmaster general, and was part of the delegation sent to persuade
the people of Canada to join the patriot cause. He was appointed to
the committee that drafted the Declaration of Independence, which
he signed.
Franklin sailed to France where he did much to gain French
recognition of the new republic in 1778. Franklin helped to direct
U.S. naval operations and was a successful agent for the United
States in Europe – the sole one after suspicions and quarrels
caused Congress to cancel the powers of the other American
commissioners. Chosen as one of the American diplomats to
negotiate peace with Great Britain, he laid the groundwork for the
Treaty of Paris.
Franklin returned in 1785 to the United States and was made
president of the Pennsylvania executive council. The last great
service rendered to his country was his part in the Federal
Constitutional Convention of 1787, where he helped to direct the
compromise that brought the Constitution of the United States into

American History
being. Though not completely satisfied with the
finished product, he worked earnestly for its
ratification.
Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) was born in a log

cabin in Hardin (now Larue) County, KY. His father
belonged to a faction of the Baptist church that
disapproved of slavery, and this affiliation may
account for Abraham’s later statement that he was
‘’naturally anti-slavery” and could not remember when
he ‘’did not so think, and feel.” Indiana was a ‘’wild
region, with many bears and other wild animals still in
the woods,” and Lincoln recalled life in this ‘’unbroken
forest” as a fight ‘’with trees and logs and grubs.”
‘’There was absolutely nothing to excite ambition for
education,” Lincoln later recalled; he attended ‘’some
schools, so called,” but for less than a year altogether.
‘’Still, somehow,” he remembered, ‘’I could read, write, and cipher to
the Rule of Three; but that was all.”
In 1834 Lincoln was elected to the lower house for the first of
four successive terms (until 1841) as a Whig, his membership in this
party being natural, because the party’s ambitious program of
national economic development was the perfect solution to the
problems Lincoln had seen in his rural Indiana past. His first platform
(1832) announced that ‘’Time and experience verified that the
poorest and most thinly populated countries would be greatly
benefited by the opening of good roads, and in the clearing of
navigable streams. There cannot justly be any objection to having
rail roads and canals.”
Already a lawyer in 1836, in 1837 Lincoln moved to Springfield
and married in 1842. He, then, served one term (1847-49) as a
member of the U.S. House of Representatives, where he opposed
the Mexican War, as unnecessary and unconstitutional; he also
opposed any expansion that would allow slavery into new areas.
Lincoln did not run for Congress again, returning instead to
Springfield and the law. He ''was losing interest in politics” when the
Kansas-Nebraska Act was passed by Congress in 1854, making of
slavery a matter of local option (= popular sovereignty); Lincoln
viewed the provisions of the act as immoral. Although he was not an
abolitionist and thought slavery should be protected by the
Constitution in states where it already existed, Lincoln also thought
that America’s founders had put slavery on the way to ‘’ultimate
extinction” by preventing its spread to new territories.
In 1856 Lincoln joined the newly formed Republican Party, and
two years later he campaigned for the Senate. In his speech at
Springfield in acceptance of the Republican senatorial nomination
(June 16, 1858) he expressed the view that the nation would
become either all slave or all free: ‘’A house divided against itself
cannot stand.”
In February 1860, Lincoln made his first major political
appearance in the Northeast when he addressed a rally in New
York. He was now sufficiently well-known to be a presidential

American History
candidate. Indeed, Lincoln won the nomination by being the second
choice of the majority, and went on to win the presidential election.
By the time of Lincoln’s inauguration in March 1861, seven
states had seceded from the Union. His conciliatory inaugural
address had no effect on the South, and, against the advice of a
majority of his cabinet, Lincoln decided to send provisions to Fort
Sumter in Charleston harbor. The fort was a symbol of federal
authority, but on April 12, 1861, South Carolina fired on the fort. The
Civil War began and it was now Lincoln’s assignment to find the best
general there was - he found Ulysses S. Grant, to whom he gave
overall command in 1864. Thereafter, Lincoln took a less direct role
in military planning, but his interest never wavered.
Lincoln tried throughout the war to keep the Republican party
together and never consistently favored one faction in the party over
another. Military appointments, on the other hand, were divided
between Republicans and Democrats. The Constitution protected
slavery in peace, but in war, Lincoln came to believe, the
commander-in-chief could abolish slavery as a military necessity.
The preliminary Emancipation Proclamation of September 22, 1862,
had this military justification, as did all of Lincoln’s racial measures,
including especially his decision in the final proclamation of January
1, 1863, to accept blacks in the army. By 1864, Democrats and
Republicans differed clearly in their platforms on the race issue:
Lincoln’s endorsed the 13th Amendment to the Constitution
abolishing slavery, whereas McClellan’s pledged to return to the
South the rights it had had in 1860.
Lincoln’s victory in that election thus changed the racial future
of the United States. It also agitated a Southern-sympathizer and
Negrophobe, who entered the presidential box at Ford’s Theatre in
Washington and shot Lincoln.
George Washington (1732-1799) was born into a

Virginia planter family and was educated to
become an 18th century Virginia gentleman, with
an interest in military arts and western expansion.
A lieutenant colonel in 1754, Washington
fought the first battles of what grew into the
French and Indian War. The next year, he
escaped injury although four bullets ripped his
coat and two horses were shot from under him. He
then resigned his post to marry a wealthy widow
with two children, and devoted himself to a busy
life, on his lands around Mount Vernon.
Washington was elected to the Virginia
House of Burgesses and became a revolutionary
leader at the outset of the American Revolution.
He was one of the Virginia delegates and was
elected Commander-in-Chief of the Continental
Army. On July 3, 1775, at Cambridge,
Massachusetts, he took command of his ill-trained troops and
realized early that the best strategy was to harass the British. He
reported to Congress, ‘’we should on all Occasions avoid a general

American History
Action, or put anything to risk, unless compelled by a necessity, into
which we ought never to be drawn.” Ensuing battles saw him fall
back slowly, then strike unexpectedly. Finally in 1781, with the aid of
French allies, he forced the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown. He
then retired to his fields at Mount Vernon.
But Washington soon realized that the Nation under its Articles
of Confederation was not functioning well, so he contributed to
organizing the Constitutional Convention at Philadelphia in 1787.
When the new Constitution was ratified, the Electoral College
unanimously elected him President.
The two-term Washington Administration (1789-1797) was
marked by the establishment of key American institutions that
continue to operate. The determination of foreign policy, for
example, became a Presidential concern. When the French
Revolution led to a major war between France and England,
Washington refused to accept entirely the recommendations of
either his Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, who was pro-
French, or his Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton, who
was pro-British. Rather, he insisted upon a neutral course until the
United States could grow stronger.
To Washington’s disappointment, two parties were developing
by the end of his first term. Wearied of politics, feeling old, he retired
to Mount Vernon at the end of his second. In his Farewell Address,
he urged his countrymen to go beyond excessive party spirit and
geographical distinctions. In foreign affairs, he warned against long-
term alliances.
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) was sworn

“against every form of tyranny over the mind of
man.” He wished to be remembered for three
achievements in his public life. He had served as
governor of Virginia, as U.S. minister to France, as
secretary of state under George Washington, as
vice-president in the administration of John Adams,
and as president of the United States from 1801 to
1809. On his tombstone, however, which he
designed and for which he wrote the inscription,
there is no mention of these offices. Rather, it reads
that Thomas Jefferson was ‘’author of the
Declaration of American Independence, of the
Statute of Virginia for religious freedom, and Father
of the University of Virginia.”
Jefferson inherited from his father, a planter
and surveyor, some 5,000 acres of land, and from
his mother, a Randolph, high social standing. He studied at the
College of William and Mary (1760-1762), then read law. In 1772 he
married a widow, and took her to live in his partly constructed
mountaintop home, Monticello, on land inherited from his father. The
mansion, which he designed in every detail, took years to complete.
Awkward as he was, Jefferson was no public speaker. In the
Virginia House of Burgesses (1769-1775) and the Continental
Congress, he contributed his pen rather than his voice to the patriot
cause. As the ‘’silent member” of the Congress, Jefferson, at 33,

American History
drafted the Declaration of Independence, based upon the natural
rights theory. He, then, labored to make its words a reality in
Virginia, while serving from 1776 to 1779, in the House of Delegates.
For example, he wrote a bill establishing religious freedom, enacted
in 1786. The bill stated ‘’that all men shall be free to profess, and by
argument to maintain, their opinions on matters of religion, and that
the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil
capacities.” His bill to create a free system of tax-supported
elementary education for all except slaves was defeated as were his
bills to create a public library and to modernize the curriculum of the
College of William and Mary.
In June 1779, Jefferson was elected governor of Virginia, but
retired in June 1781.
Jefferson succeeded Benjamin Franklin as minister to France
in 1785, but left Paris in 1789, when Congress confirmed his
appointment as secretary of state in the first administration of
George Washington. He accepted the position largely because of
Washington’s insistence, but immediately expressed his alarm at the
elaborate forms and ceremonies that marked the executive office.
He went on for a while, but resigned in 1793.
At home for the next three years, Jefferson devoted himself to
farm and family. He experimented with a new plow and other
ingenious inventions, built a nail factory, rebuild Monticello, set out a
thousand peach trees and received distinguished guests from
abroad.
Sharp political conflict had been developing by now, and two
separate parties, the Federalists and the Democratic-Republicans,
began to form. Jefferson gradually assumed leadership of the
Republicans, who sympathized with the revolutionary cause in
France. Attacking Federalist policies, he opposed a strong
centralized Government and championed the rights of states.
When Jefferson assumed the Presidency, in 1800, the crisis in
France had passed. He slashed Army and Navy expenditures, cut
the budget, eliminated the tax on whiskey, yet reduced the national
debt by a third. Further, although the Constitution made no provision
for the acquisition of new land, Jefferson suppressed his qualms
over constitutionality when he had the opportunity to acquire the
Louisiana Territory from Napoleon in 1803.
Jefferson’s main concern in his second administration was
foreign affairs. In the course of the Napoleonic Wars he attempted to
avoid a policy of war by the use of economic pressure.
Jefferson finally retired to Monticello to focus on such projects
as his grand designs for the University of Virginia. He conceived it,
planned it, designed it, and supervised both its construction and the
hiring of faculty. The university was the last of three contributions by
which Jefferson wished to be remembered; they constituted a trilogy
of interrelated causes: freedom from Britain, freedom of conscience,
and freedom maintained through education.

American History
SAA No. 4
Describe in your own words the stages of the Revolution, with special
emphasis on the War as such. Before describing them, have a close
look at the picture below and have another look at the pictures in the
''The American Revolution'' section (5.2).

Your paper should not be longer than three pages.
essay will be 70% of your grade, while the accuracy of your language
will count for 30%.

American History
Answers to SAQs

SAQ 1 (1) – Jamestown Settlement; (2) – terrible hardships; (3) – America’s

first permanent English colony; (4) – the Mayflower; (5) – Plymouth
Rock; (6) – a social contract; (7) – the elder John Winthrop; (8) –
Massachusetts Bay Company; (9) – Plymouth and Salem; (10) – the
1760s.
Should your answers to SAQs 2 and 3 not be comparable

to those given below, please revise section 5.2.1 of the unit.
SAQ 2 1 – F; 2 – F; 3 – T; 4 – T; 5 – T; 6 – F; 7 – F; 8 – T.
SAQ 3 1 – T; 2 – F; 3– F; 4 – F; 5 – T; 6 – T; 7 – F.

SAQ 4 (1) – f); (2) – d); (3) – j); (4) – a); (5) – h); (6) – b); (7) – i); (8) – c);
(9) – g); (10) – e).

SAQ 5 1 - a); 2 – a); 3 – b); 4 – a, b, d.

SAQ 6 1 – F; 2 – T; 3 – T; 4 – F; 5 – T.

SAQ 7 1 – a); 2 – b); 3 – c); 4) – a; 5) – b.

SAQ 8 1 – b); 2 – b); 3 – a); 4 – c); 5 – c); 6 – b); 7 – c); 8 – b); 9 – a); 10 –
a).
SAQ 9 (1) – Mississippi; (2) – Florida; (3) – Alabama; (4) – Georgia; (5) –
Louisiana; (6) – Texas; (7) – 3,000 Union Soldiers; (8) – new national
cemetery; (9) – Gettysburg Address.

American History
SAQ 10 1 – F (Lincoln was nominated by the Republican Party); 2 – F

(Lincoln's guiding principle was to ignore calls for punishing the
South); 3 – T

SAQ 11 (1) – h); (2) – c); (3) – a); (4) – g); (5) – e); (6) – d); (7) – f); (8) – b);
(9) – i); (10) – j).

SAQ 12 1 – F (The United States kept neutral until April 6, 1917 when they
entered the war on the side of the Allies.); 2 – T; 3 – F (The League
of Nations was pledged to afford guarantees of territorial integrity and
political independence to great and small states alike.); 4 – F (The
concept of self/determination proved impossible to implement unless
the United States made concessions to the Allies.)
SAQ 13 1 – a); 2 – c); 3 – a); 4 – d); 5 – b); 6 – c); 7 – a).

SAQ 14 1 – T; 2 – F; 3 – T; 4 – F; 5 – T; 6 – T.

SAQ 15 1 – d); 2 – c); 3 – b); 4 – c); 5 – d).

SAQ 16 1 – b); 2 – a); 3 – a); 4 – b); 5 – a).
SAQ 17 1 – a); 2 – b); 3 – a); 4 – b); 5 – a).

SAQ 18 1 – a); 2 – b); 3 – a).

SAQ 19 (1) – e); (2) – b); (3) – d); (4) – a); (5) – c.

American History
Further Readings
1. Manfred Pütz, Essays on American Literature and Ideas, Institutul
European, Iaşi,
2. Tzvetan Todorov, Noi si ceilalti, trad. Alex. Vlad, Institutul
3. Gh. Stan, Triunghiul puterii, Panfilius, Iaşi, 2003, pp. 9-34.

American History

Appendix
Appendix
The Declaration of Independence (July 4, 1776)
“When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary

for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected
them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth,
the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of
Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of
mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel
them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created
equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain
unalienable Rights that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit
of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are
instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of
the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes
destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to
abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on
such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them
shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established
should not be changed for light and transient causes; and
accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more
disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right
themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably
the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute
Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such
Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is
now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former
Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great
Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in
direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these
States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
• He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and
necessary for the public good.
• He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and
pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his
Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has
utterly neglected to attend to them.
• He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large
districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right
of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them
and formidable to tyrants only. He has called together legislative
bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the
depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing
them into compliance with his measures. He has dissolved
Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly
firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

Appendix
• He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause
others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of
Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise;
the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of
invasion from without, and convulsions within.
• He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for
that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners;
refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and
raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
• He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his
Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
• He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of
their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
• He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms
of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.
• He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without
the Consent of our legislatures.
• He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior
to the Civil power.
• He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign
to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his
Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for
any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants
of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent: For
depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by
Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended
offences
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a
neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary
government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render
it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the
same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most
valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of
our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures and declaring
themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all
cases whatsoever.
o He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his
Protection and waging War against us. He has plundered our
seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the
lives of our people.
o He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign
Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and
tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy
scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally
unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

Appendix
o He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the
high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the
executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves
by their Hands.
o He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has
endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the
merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an
undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for
Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have
been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is
thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be
the ruler of a free people.
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren.
We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their
legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have
reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and
settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and
magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common
kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably
interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been
deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore,
acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and
hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in
Peace Friends.
We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of
America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the
Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in
the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies,
solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and
of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are
Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all
political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is
and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent
States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract
Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things
which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this
Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine
Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our
Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”
(Signatures follow.)

Appendix
The Constitution of the United States (A Transcription)
(Note: The following text is a transcription of the Constitution in its

original form.)
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect

Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the
common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the
Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and
establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
Article. I.
Section. 1.
All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress
of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of
Representatives.
Section. 2.
The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members
chosen every second Year by the People of the several States, and
the Electors in each State shall have the Qualifications requisite for
Electors of the most numerous Branch of the State Legislature.
No Person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained to
the Age of twenty five Years, and been seven Years a Citizen of the
United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of
that State in which he shall be chosen.
Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the
several States which may be included within this Union, according to
their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to
the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service
for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of
all other Persons. The actual Enumeration shall be made within
three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United
States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such
Manner as they shall by Law direct. The Number of Representatives
shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand, but each State shall
have at Least one Representative; and until such enumeration shall
be made, the State of New Hampshire shall be entitled to chuse
three, Massachusetts eight, Rhode-Island and Providence
Plantations one, Connecticut five, New-York six, New Jersey four,
Pennsylvania eight, Delaware one, Maryland six, Virginia ten, North
Carolina five, South Carolina five, and Georgia three.

Appendix
When vacancies happen in the Representation from any State, the

Executive Authority thereof shall issue Writs of Election to fill such
Vacancies.
The House of Representatives shall chuse their Speaker and other
Officers; and shall have the sole Power of Impeachment.
Section. 3.
The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators
from each State, chosen by the Legislature thereof for six Years;
and each Senator shall have one Vote.
Immediately after they shall be assembled in Consequence of the
first Election, they shall be divided as equally as may be into three
Classes. The Seats of the Senators of the first Class shall be
vacated at the Expiration of the second Year, of the second Class at
the Expiration of the fourth Year, and of the third Class at the
Expiration of the sixth Year, so that one third may be chosen every
second Year; and if Vacancies happen by Resignation, or otherwise,
during the Recess of the Legislature of any State, the Executive
thereof may make temporary Appointments until the next Meeting of
the Legislature, which shall then fill such Vacancies.
No Person shall be a Senator who shall not have attained to the Age
of thirty Years, and been nine Years a Citizen of the United States,
and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State for
which he shall be chosen.
The Vice President of the United States shall be President of the
Senate, but shall have no Vote, unless they be equally divided.
The Senate shall chuse their other Officers, and also a President pro
tempore, in the Absence of the Vice President, or when he shall
exercise the Office of President of the United States.
The Senate shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments.
When sitting for that Purpose, they shall be on Oath or Affirmation.
When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice
shall preside: And no Person shall be convicted without the
Concurrence of two thirds of the Members present.
Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to
removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any
Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States: but the Party
convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment,
Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law.
Section. 4.
The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators
and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the
Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make
or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing
Senators.
The Congress shall assemble at least once in every Year, and such
Meeting shall be on the first Monday in December, unless they shall

Appendix
by Law appoint a different Day.
Section. 5.
Each House shall be the Judge of the Elections, Returns and
Qualifications of its own Members, and a Majority of each shall
constitute a Quorum to do Business; but a smaller Number may
adjourn from day to day, and may be authorized to compel the
Attendance of absent Members, in such Manner, and under such
Penalties as each House may provide.
Each House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings, punish its
Members for disorderly Behaviour, and, with the Concurrence of two
thirds, expel a Member.
Each House shall keep a Journal of its Proceedings, and from time
to time publish the same, excepting such Parts as may in their
Judgment require Secrecy; and the Yeas and Nays of the Members
of either House on any question shall, at the Desire of one fifth of
those Present, be entered on the Journal.
Neither House, during the Session of Congress, shall, without the
Consent of the other, adjourn for more than three days, nor to any
other Place than that in which the two Houses shall be sitting.
Section. 6.
The Senators and Representatives shall receive a Compensation for
their Services, to be ascertained by Law, and paid out of the
Treasury of the United States. They shall in all Cases, except
Treason, Felony and Breach of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest
during their Attendance at the Session of their respective Houses,
and in going to and returning from the same; and for any Speech or
Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other
Place.
No Senator or Representative shall, during the Time for which he
was elected, be appointed to any civil Office under the Authority of
the United States, which shall have been created, or the
Emoluments whereof shall have been encreased during such time;
and no Person holding any Office under the United States, shall be
a Member of either House during his Continuance in Office.
Section. 7.
All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of
Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with
Amendments as on other Bills.
Every Bill which shall have passed the House of Representatives
and the Senate, shall, before it become a Law, be presented to the
President of the United States: If he approve he shall sign it, but if
not he shall return it, with his Objections to that House in which it
shall have originated, who shall enter the Objections at large on their
Journal, and proceed to reconsider it. If after such Reconsideration
two thirds of that House shall agree to pass the Bill, it shall be sent,
together with the Objections, to the other House, by which it shall
likewise be reconsidered, and if approved by two thirds of that
House, it shall become a Law. But in all such Cases the Votes of

Appendix
both Houses shall be determined by yeas and Nays, and the Names
of the Persons voting for and against the Bill shall be entered on the
Journal of each House respectively. If any Bill shall not be returned
by the President within ten Days (Sundays excepted) after it shall
have been presented to him, the Same shall be a Law, in like
Manner as if he had signed it, unless the Congress by their
Adjournment prevent its Return, in which Case it shall not be a Law.
Every Order, Resolution, or Vote to which the Concurrence of the
Senate and House of Representatives may be necessary (except on
a question of Adjournment) shall be presented to the President of
the United States; and before the Same shall take Effect, shall be
approved by him, or being disapproved by him, shall be repassed by
two thirds of the Senate and House of Representatives, according to
the Rules and Limitations prescribed in the Case of a Bill.
Section. 8.
The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties,
Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common
Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties,
Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
To borrow Money on the credit of the United States;
To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several
States, and with the Indian Tribes;
To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws on
the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States;
To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and
fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;
To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and
current Coin of the United States;
To establish Post Offices and post Roads;
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for
limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their
respective Writings and Discoveries;
To constitute Tribunals inferior to the supreme Court;
To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high
Seas, and Offences against the Law of Nations;
To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make
Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;
To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that
Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;
To provide and maintain a Navy;
To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and
naval Forces;
To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the
Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;

Appendix
To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and
for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service
of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the
Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia
according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;
To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such
District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of
particular States, and the Acceptance of Congress, become the Seat
of the Government of the United States, and to exercise like
Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the
Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection
of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful
Buildings;--And
To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying
into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by
this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any
Department or Officer thereof.
Section. 9.
The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States
now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by
the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and
eight, but a Tax or duty may be imposed on such Importation, not
exceeding ten dollars for each Person.
The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended,
unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may
require it.
No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.
No Capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion
to the Census or enumeration herein before directed to be taken.
No Tax or Duty shall be laid on Articles exported from any State.
No Preference shall be given by any Regulation of Commerce or
Revenue to the Ports of one State over those of another; nor shall
Vessels bound to, or from, one State, be obliged to enter, clear, or
pay Duties in another.
No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of
Appropriations made by Law; and a regular Statement and Account
of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be
published from time to time.
No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no
Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall,
without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present,
Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King,
Prince, or foreign State.
Section. 10.
No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation;
grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of
Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in

Appendix
Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or
Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of
Nobility.
No State shall, without the Consent of the Congress, lay any
Imposts or Duties on Imports or Exports, except what may be
absolutely necessary for executing it's inspection Laws: and the net
Produce of all Duties and Imposts, laid by any State on Imports or
Exports, shall be for the Use of the Treasury of the United States;
and all such Laws shall be subject to the Revision and Controul of
the Congress.
No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any Duty of
Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into
any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign
Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such
imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.
Article. II.
Section. 1.
The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United
States of America. He shall hold his Office during the Term of four
Years, and, together with the Vice President, chosen for the same
Term, be elected, as follows:
Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof
may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of
Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in
the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding
an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be
appointed an Elector.
The Electors shall meet in their respective States, and vote by Ballot
for two Persons, of whom one at least shall not be an Inhabitant of
the same State with themselves. And they shall make a List of all the
Persons voted for, and of the Number of Votes for each; which List
they shall sign and certify, and transmit sealed to the Seat of the
Government of the United States, directed to the President of the
Senate. The President of the Senate shall, in the Presence of the
Senate and House of Representatives, open all the Certificates, and
the Votes shall then be counted. The Person having the greatest
Number of Votes shall be the President, if such Number be a
Majority of the whole Number of Electors appointed; and if there be
more than one who have such Majority, and have an equal Number
of Votes, then the House of Representatives shall immediately
chuse by Ballot one of them for President; and if no Person have a
Majority, then from the five highest on the List the said House shall
in like Manner chuse the President. But in chusing the President, the
Votes shall be taken by States, the Representation from each State
having one Vote; A quorum for this purpose shall consist of a
Member or Members from two thirds of the States, and a Majority of
all the States shall be necessary to a Choice. In every Case, after
the Choice of the President, the Person having the greatest Number
Appendix
of Votes of the Electors shall be the Vice President. But if there
should remain two or more who have equal Votes, the Senate shall
chuse from them by Ballot the Vice President.
The Congress may determine the Time of chusing the Electors, and
the Day on which they shall give their Votes; which Day shall be the
same throughout the United States.
No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United
States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be
eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be
eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty
five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United
States.
In Case of the Removal of the President from Office, or of his Death,
Resignation, or Inability to discharge the Powers and Duties of the
said Office, the Same shall devolve on the Vice President, and the
Congress may by Law provide for the Case of Removal, Death,
Resignation or Inability, both of the President and Vice President,
declaring what Officer shall then act as President, and such Officer
shall act accordingly, until the Disability be removed, or a President
shall be elected.
The President shall, at stated Times, receive for his Services, a
Compensation, which shall neither be increased nor diminished
during the Period for which he shall have been elected, and he shall
not receive within that Period any other Emolument from the United
States, or any of them.
Before he enter on the Execution of his Office, he shall take the
following Oath or Affirmation:--"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I
will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States,
and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the
Constitution of the United States."
Section. 2.
The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of
the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when
called into the actual Service of the United States; he may require
the Opinion, in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the
executive Departments, upon any Subject relating to the Duties of
their respective Offices, and he shall have Power to grant Reprieves
and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in
Cases of Impeachment.
He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the
Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators
present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice
and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public
Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other
Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein
otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but
the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior
Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of
Law, or in the Heads of Departments.

Appendix
The President shall have Power to fill up all Vacancies that may
happen during the Recess of the Senate, by granting Commissions
which shall expire at the End of their next Session.
Section. 3.
He shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the
State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such
Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient; he may, on
extraordinary Occasions, convene both Houses, or either of them,
and in Case of Disagreement between them, with Respect to the
Time of Adjournment, he may adjourn them to such Time as he shall
think proper; he shall receive Ambassadors and other public
Ministers; he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed,
and shall Commission all the Officers of the United States.
Section. 4.
The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United
States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and
Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and
Misdemeanors.
Article III.
Section. 1.
The judicial Power of the United States shall be vested in one
supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may
from time to time ordain and establish. The Judges, both of the
supreme and inferior Courts, shall hold their Offices during good
Behaviour, and shall, at stated Times, receive for their Services a
Compensation, which shall not be diminished during their
Continuance in Office.
Section. 2.
The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity,
arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and
Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority;--to all
Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls;--
to all Cases of admiralty and maritime Jurisdiction;--to Controversies
to which the United States shall be a Party;--to Controversies
between two or more States;-- between a State and Citizens of
another State;--between Citizens of different States;--between
Citizens of the same State claiming Lands under Grants of different
States, and between a State, or the Citizens thereof, and foreign
States, Citizens or Subjects.
In all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and
Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party, the supreme
Court shall have original Jurisdiction. In all the other Cases before
mentioned, the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both
as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such
Regulations as the Congress shall make.

Appendix
The Trial of all Crimes, except in Cases of Impeachment, shall be by
Jury; and such Trial shall be held in the State where the said Crimes
shall have been committed; but when not committed within any
State, the Trial shall be at such Place or Places as the Congress
may by Law have directed.
Section. 3.
Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War
against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and
Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the
Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession
in open Court.
The Congress shall have Power to declare the Punishment of
Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood,
or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted.
Article. IV.
Section. 1.
Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts,
Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State. And the
Congress may by general Laws prescribe the Manner in which such
Acts, Records and Proceedings shall be proved, and the Effect
thereof.
Section. 2.
The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and
Immunities of Citizens in the several States.
A Person charged in any State with Treason, Felony, or other Crime,
who shall flee from Justice, and be found in another State, shall on
Demand of the executive Authority of the State from which he fled,
be delivered up, to be removed to the State having Jurisdiction of
the Crime.
No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws
thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or
Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, but
shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or
Labour may be due.
Section. 3.
New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union; but no
new State shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any
other State; nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more
States, or Parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of
the States concerned as well as of the Congress.
The Congress shall have Power to dispose of and make all needful
Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property
belonging to the United States; and nothing in this Constitution shall
be so construed as to Prejudice any Claims of the United States, or
of any particular State.

Appendix
Section. 4.
The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a
Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them
against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the
Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened), against
domestic Violence.
Article. V.
The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it
necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on
the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States,
shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either
Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this
Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the
several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the
one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the
Congress; Provided that no Amendment which may be made prior to
the Year One thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner
affect the first and fourth Clauses in the Ninth Section of the first
Article; and that no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of
its equal Suffrage in the Senate.
Article. VI.
All Debts contracted and Engagements entered into, before the
Adoption of this Constitution, shall be as valid against the United
States under this Constitution, as under the Confederation.
This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be
made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be
made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme
Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound
thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the
Contrary notwithstanding.
The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the
Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and
judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States,
shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution;
but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any
Office or public Trust under the United States.
Article. VII.
The Ratification of the Conventions of nine States, shall be sufficient
for the Establishment of this Constitution between the States so
ratifying the Same.
The Word, "the," being interlined between the seventh and eighth
Lines of the first Page, the Word "Thirty" being partly written on an
Erazure in the fifteenth Line of the first Page, The Words "is tried"

Appendix
being interlined between the thirty second and thirty third Lines of
the first Page and the Word "the" being interlined between the forty
third and forty fourth Lines of the second Page.
Attest William Jackson Secretary
Done in Convention by the Unanimous Consent of the States
present the Seventeenth Day of September in the Year of our Lord
one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven and of the
Independence of the United States of America the Twelfth In witness
whereof We have hereunto subscribed our Names,
G. Washington
Presidt and deputy from Virginia
signed by (54 other signatures follow)
• Amendments
The Bill of Rights (A Transcription)
Amendment I
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,

or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of
speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to
assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of
grievances.
Amendment II
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free

State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be
infringed.
Amendment III
No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without

the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be
prescribed by law.
Amendment IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses,

papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures,
shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable
cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing
the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Appendix
Amendment V
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise

infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand
Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the
Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor
shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in
jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case
to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or
property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be
taken for public use, without just compensation.
Amendment VI
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a

speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district
wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall
have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the
nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the
witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining
witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his
defence.
Amendment VII
In Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed

twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no
fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of
the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.
Amendment VIII
Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed,

nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.
Amendment IX
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be

construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Appendix
Amendment X
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution,

nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States
respectively, or to the people.
Amendments 11-27
AMENDMENT XI
Passed by Congress March 4, 1794. Ratified February 7, 1795.
Note: Article III, section 2, of the Constitution was modified by

amendment 11.
The Judicial power of the United States shall not be construed to

extend to any suit in law or equity, commenced or prosecuted
against one of the United States by Citizens of another State, or by
Citizens or Subjects of any Foreign State.
AMENDMENT XII
Passed by Congress December 9, 1803. Ratified June 15, 1804.
Note: A portion of Article II, section 1 of the Constitution was

superseded by the 12th amendment.
The Electors shall meet in their respective states and vote by ballot
for President and Vice-President, one of whom, at least, shall not be
an inhabitant of the same state with themselves; they shall name in
their ballots the person voted for as President, and in distinct ballots
the person voted for as Vice-President, and they shall make distinct
lists of all persons voted for as President, and of all persons voted
for as Vice-President, and of the number of votes for each, which
lists they shall sign and certify, and transmit sealed to the seat of the
government of the United States, directed to the President of the
Senate; -- the President of the Senate shall, in the presence of the
Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates and
the votes shall then be counted; -- The person having the greatest
number of votes for President, shall be the President, if such number
be a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed; and if no
person have such majority, then from the persons having the highest
numbers not exceeding three on the list of those voted for as
President, the House of Representatives shall choose immediately,
by ballot, the President. But in choosing the President, the votes
shall be taken by states, the representation from each state having
one vote; a quorum for this purpose shall consist of a member or
members from two-thirds of the states, and a majority of all the
states shall be necessary to a choice. [And if the House of
Representatives shall not choose a President whenever the right of
choice shall devolve upon them, before the fourth day of March next
Appendix
following, then the Vice-President shall act as President, as in case
of the death or other constitutional disability of the President. --]* The
person having the greatest number of votes as Vice-President, shall
be the Vice-President, if such number be a majority of the whole
number of Electors appointed, and if no person have a majority, then
from the two highest numbers on the list, the Senate shall choose
the Vice-President; a quorum for the purpose shall consist of two-
thirds of the whole number of Senators, and a majority of the whole
number shall be necessary to a choice. But no person
constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to
that of Vice-President of the United States.
*Superseded by section 3 of the 20th amendment.
AMENDMENT XIII
Passed by Congress January 31, 1865. Ratified December 6, 1865.
Note: A portion of Article IV, section 2, of the Constitution was

superseded by the 13th amendment.
Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a

punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly
convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject
to their jurisdiction.
Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by

appropriate legislation.
AMENDMENT XIV
Passed by Congress June 13, 1866. Ratified July 9, 1868.
Note: Article I, section 2, of the Constitution was modified by section

2 of the 14th amendment.
Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and

subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States
and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce
any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of
the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life,
liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any
person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Section 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several

States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole
number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But
when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for
President and Vice-President of the United States, Representatives
in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the
members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male
inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age,* and
Appendix
citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for
participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation
therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such
male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-
one years of age in such State.
Section 3. No person shall be a Senator or Representative in

Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any
office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State,
who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or
as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State
legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to
support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in
insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to
the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of
each House, remove such disability.
Section 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States,

authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions
and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion,
shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State
shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of
insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for
the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations
and claims shall be held illegal and void.
Section 5. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by

appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
*Changed by section 1 of the 26th amendment.
AMENDMENT XV
Passed by Congress February 26, 1869. Ratified February 3, 1870.
Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not
be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on
account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.
Section 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce this article
by appropriate legislation.
AMENDMENT XVI
Passed by Congress July 2, 1909. Ratified February 3, 1913.
Note: Article I, section 9, of the Constitution was modified by

amendment 16.
The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes,
from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the
several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.
Appendix
AMENDMENT XVII
Passed by Congress May 13, 1912. Ratified April 8, 1913.
Note: Article I, section 3, of the Constitution was modified by the

17th amendment.
The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators

from each State, elected by the people thereof, for six years; and
each Senator shall have one vote. The electors in each State shall
have the qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous
branch of the State legislatures.
When vacancies happen in the representation of any State in the

Senate, the executive authority of such State shall issue writs of
election to fill such vacancies: Provided, That the legislature of any
State may empower the executive thereof to make temporary
appointments until the people fill the vacancies by election as the
legislature may direct.
This amendment shall not be so construed as to affect the election

or term of any Senator chosen before it becomes valid as part of the
Constitution.
AMENDMENT XVIII
Passed by Congress December 18, 1917. Ratified January 16,

1919. Repealed by amendment 21.
Section 1. After one year from the ratification of this article the
manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the
importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United
States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage
purposes is hereby prohibited.
Section 2. The Congress and the several States shall have

concurrent power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
Section 3. This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been

ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of
the several States, as provided in the Constitution, within seven
years from the date of the submission hereof to the States by the
Congress.
AMENDMENT XIX
Passed by Congress June 4, 1919. Ratified August 18, 1920.
The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied
or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.

Appendix
Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate
legislation.
AMENDMENT XX
Passed by Congress March 2, 1932. Ratified January 23, 1933.
Note: Article I, section 4, of the Constitution was modified by section

2 of this amendment. In addition, a portion of the 12th amendment
was superseded by section 3.
Section 1. The terms of the President and the Vice President shall
end at noon on the 20th day of January, and the terms of Senators
and Representatives at noon on the 3d day of January, of the years
in which such terms would have ended if this article had not been
ratified; and the terms of their successors shall then begin.
Section 2. The Congress shall assemble at least once in every year,

and such meeting shall begin at noon on the 3d day of January,
unless they shall by law appoint a different day.
Section 3. If, at the time fixed for the beginning of the term of the
President, the President elect shall have died, the Vice President
elect shall become President. If a President shall not have been
chosen before the time fixed for the beginning of his term, or if the
President elect shall have failed to qualify, then the Vice President
elect shall act as President until a President shall have qualified; and
the Congress may by law provide for the case wherein neither a
President elect nor a Vice President shall have qualified, declaring
who shall then act as President, or the manner in which one who is
to act shall be selected, and such person shall act accordingly until a
President or Vice President shall have qualified.
Section 4. The Congress may by law provide for the case of the
death of any of the persons from whom the House of
Representatives may choose a President whenever the right of
choice shall have devolved upon them, and for the case of the death
of any of the persons from whom the Senate may choose a Vice
President whenever the right of choice shall have devolved upon
them.
Section 5. Sections 1 and 2 shall take effect on the 15th day of

October following the ratification of this article.

three-fourths of the several States within seven years from the date
of its submission.

Appendix
AMENDMENT XXI
Passed by Congress February 20, 1933. Ratified December 5, 1933.
Section 1. The eighteenth article of amendment to the Constitution

of the United States is hereby repealed.
Section 2. The transportation or importation into any State,

Territory, or Possession of the United States for delivery or use
therein of intoxicating liquors, in violation of the laws thereof, is
hereby prohibited.

ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by conventions in the
several States, as provided in the Constitution, within seven years
from the date of the submission hereof to the States by the
Congress.
AMENDMENT XXII
Passed by Congress March 21, 1947. Ratified February 27, 1951.

Section 1. No person shall be elected to the office of the President
more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President,
or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which
some other person was elected President shall be elected to the
office of President more than once. But this Article shall not apply to
any person holding the office of President when this Article was
proposed by Congress, and shall not prevent any person who may
be holding the office of President, or acting as President, during the
term within which this Article becomes operative from holding the
office of President or acting as President during the remainder of
such term.

three-fourths of the several States within seven years from the date
of its submission to the States by the Congress.
AMENDMENT XXIII
Passed by Congress June 16, 1960. Ratified March 29, 1961.
Section 1. The District constituting the seat of Government of the

United States shall appoint in such manner as Congress may direct:
A number of electors of President and Vice President equal to the

whole number of Senators and Representatives in Congress to
which the District would be entitled if it were a State, but in no event
more than the least populous State; they shall be in addition to those
appointed by the States, but they shall be considered, for the
purposes of the election of President and Vice President, to be

Appendix
electors appointed by a State; and they shall meet in the District and
perform such duties as provided by the twelfth article of amendment.
Section 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by

AMENDMENT XXIV
Passed by Congress August 27, 1962. Ratified January 23, 1964.
Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote in any

primary or other election for President or Vice President, for electors
for President or Vice President, or for Senator or Representative in
Congress, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or
any State by reason of failure to pay poll tax or other tax.

AMENDMENT XXV
Passed by Congress July 6, 1965. Ratified February 10, 1967.
Note: Article II, section 1, of the Constitution was affected by the

25th amendment.
Section 1. In case of the removal of the President from office or of

his death or resignation, the Vice President shall become President.
Section 2. Whenever there is a vacancy in the office of the Vice

President, the President shall nominate a Vice President who shall
take office upon confirmation by a majority vote of both Houses of
Congress.
Section 3. Whenever the President transmits to the President pro

tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of
Representatives his written declaration that he is unable to
discharge the powers and duties of his office, and until he transmits
to them a written declaration to the contrary, such powers and duties
shall be discharged by the Vice President as Acting President.
Section 4. Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the

principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body
as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro
Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable
to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President
shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as
Acting President.
Thereafter, when the President transmits to the President pro


Appendix
Representatives his written declaration that no inability exists, he
shall resume the powers and duties of his office unless the Vice
President and a majority of either the principal officers of the
executive department or of such other body as Congress may by law
provide, transmit within four days to the President pro tempore of the
Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their
written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the
powers and duties of his office. Thereupon Congress shall decide
the issue, assembling within forty-eight hours for that purpose if not
in session. If the Congress, within twenty-one days after receipt of
the latter written declaration, or, if Congress is not in session, within
twenty-one days after Congress is required to assemble, determines
by two-thirds vote of both Houses that the President is unable to
discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President
shall continue to discharge the same as Acting President; otherwise,
the President shall resume the powers and duties of his office.
AMENDMENT XXVI
Passed by Congress March 23, 1971. Ratified July 1, 1971.
Note: Amendment 14, section 2, of the Constitution was modified by

section 1 of the 26th amendment.
Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States, who are

eighteen years of age or older, to vote shall not be denied or
abridged by the United States or by any State on account of age.

AMENDMENT XXVII
Originally proposed Sept. 25, 1789. Ratified May 7, 1992.
No law, varying the compensation for the services of the Senators

and Representatives, shall take effect, until an election of
representatives shall have intervened.

Appendix
Martin Luther King’s I Have a Dream. An African-American

clergyman and political leader, Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968)
was the most prominent member of the Civil Rights Movement. His
writings and public appearances actually shaped this movement in
the 1950s and 1960s. He became famous through his promotion of
nonviolent methods of opposition to segregation, such as boycotts of
segregated city buses, or sit-ins at lunch counters that would not
serve black people. His philosophy of nonviolent resistance led to
his arrest on numerous occasions. In 1963, the 100th anniversary of
Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, King organized a
march on Washington, D.C. that drew 200,000 people demanding
equal rights for minorities; in 1964, he won the Nobel Peace Prize,
becoming at the time the youngest recipient ever. King was shot to
death while visiting Memphis, Tennessee.
King’s famous I Have a Dream speech was delivered on the
occasion of the 1963 march to Washington. On August 28, 1963,
King addressed the marchers from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial
“Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic
shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation.
This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to
millions of Negro slaves, who had been seared in the flames of
withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long
night of their captivity. But one hundred years later, the Negro still is
not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly
crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of
discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely
island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity.
One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners
of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. So
we’ve come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.
In a sense we have come to our nation’s capital to cash a
check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent
words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they
were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall
heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as
white men, would be guaranteed the inalienable rights of life, liberty
and the pursuit of happiness.
It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this
promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned.
Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the
Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked
"insufficient funds." But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice
is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in
the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So we have come to
cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of
freedom and the security of justice. We have also come to this
hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now. This
is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the
tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the
promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and

Appendix
desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now
is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to
the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a
reality for all of God’s children.
It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the
moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro’s legitimate discontent
will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and
equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end but a beginning. Those who
hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content
will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual.
There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is
granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to
shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice
emerges.
But there is something that I must say to my people who stand
on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the
process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of
wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by
drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must ever
conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We
must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical
violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of
meeting physical force with soul force. The marvelous new militancy
which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a
distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as
evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that
their destiny is tied up with our destiny. They have come to realize
that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot
walk alone.
And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always
march ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking
the devotees of civil rights, "When will you be satisfied?" We can
never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the
unspeakable horrors of police brutality.
We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with
the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the
highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long
as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York
believes he has nothing for which to vote.
No, no, we are not satisfied and we will not be satisfied until
justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty
stream. I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of
great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from
narrow jail cells. Some of you have come from areas where your
quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecutions
and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the
veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that
unearned suffering is redemptive. Go back to Mississippi, go back to
Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to
Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities,
knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. Let us
not wallow in the valley of despair. I say to you today, my friends,

Appendix
that even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow. I still
have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out
the true meaning of its creed--we hold these truths to be self-evident
that all men are created equal.
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the
sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be
able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a
state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of
oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a
nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by
the content of their character.
I have a dream today!
I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious
racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of
interposition and nullification; one day right down in Alabama little
black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white
boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.
I have a dream today!
I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted and
every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be
made plain and the crooked places will be made straight and the
glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.
This is our hope. This is the faith that I will go back to the South with.
With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a
stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling
discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.
With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to
struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom
together, knowing that we will be free one day.
This will be the day, this will be the day when all of God’s
children will be able to sing with new meaning, "My country ‘tis of
thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers
died, land of the Pilgrim’s pride, from every mountainside, let
freedom ring!" And if America is to be a great nation, this must
become true.
And so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New
Hampshire.
Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York.
Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.
Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado.
Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California.
But not only that.
Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.
Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.
Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi, from
every mountainside, let freedom ring!
And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when
we let it ring from every tenement and every hamlet, from every
state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of
God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles,

Appendix
Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the
words of the old Negro spiritual, ‘’Free at last, free at last. Thank
God Almighty, we are free at last.”

Appendix
Bibliography
xxx
1. An Outline of American History, United States Information
Agency, 1994
xxx
2. An Outline of American Economy, United States Information
Agency, 1991
xxx
3. An Outline of American Government, United States
Information Agency, 1990
4. Bailey, Thomas A., David M. Kennedy, The American Pageant:
A History of the Republic, D.C. Heath and Company,
Lexington, Massachusetts, Toronto, 1987
5. Berkin, Carol, Leonard Wood, Land of Promise: A History of the
United Sates, Scott-Foresman, Co., Illinois, 1983
6. Boorstin, Daniel J., The Americans: The Colonial Experience,
Vintage Books, New York, 1954
7. Catton, Bruce, Short History of the Civil War, Dell, New York,
1971
8. Graff, Herny F., ed., The Life History of the United States,
Time-Life Books, New York, vols. 1-9, 1963-1964
9. Heffner, Richard D., A Documentary History of the United
Sates, New American Library, New York and London, 1965
10. Norton, Mary Beth, David M. Katzman, Paul D. Escott, Howard
P. Chudacoff, Thomas G. Peterson, William Tuttle, Jr., A
People and a Nation: A History of the United States, Houghton
Mifflin, Boston, 1982

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Program postuniversitar de conversie profesională

pentru cadrele didactice din mediul rural

Constantin - Sorin PÎRVU

LIMBA ŞI LITERATURA ENGLEZĂ

Constantin – Sorin PÎRVU

Nici o parte a acestei lucrări

Area coordinator: Anca Cehan

1 Consumer Society .....................................................................................4

2 Education and Recreation.......................................................................21

3 The Melting Pot ........................................................................................33

4 American Geography and Economy...................................................... 55

Proiectul pentru Învăţământul Rural iii

iv Proiectul pentru Învăţământul Rural

This module is meant as a survey of American civilisation,

Each of these five units contains a certain number of

Proiectul pentru Învăţământul Rural 1

2 Proiectul pentru Învăţământul Rural

Baseball: players, cheerleaders, field and stadium

Proiectul pentru Învăţământul Rural 3

Unit objectives ............................................................................... 5

1.1 Consumer Goods........................................................................... 5

1.1.2 Fast-Food ........................................................................................ 7

1.1.3 Cars and Motorcycles ...................................................................... 8

1.1.4 Jeans ............................................................................................... 10

1.2 Popular Culture .............................................................................. 11

1.2.1 Hollywood ........................................................................................ 12

1.2.2 The Pin-Up....................................................................................... 13

1.2.3 The Pulp .......................................................................................... 14

4 Proiectul pentru Învăţământul Rural

By the end of this unit you should be able to

1.1 Consumer Goods

Coca-Cola = The star of the consumer world is Coca-Cola, already on the

Proiectul pentru Învăţământul Rural 5

Stop and think!

Is Coca-Cola good value for money or is it largely the result of an

Use your personal experience and create a portfolio of such

6 Proiectul pentru Învăţământul Rural

1.1.2 Fast Food

Proiectul pentru Învăţământul Rural 7

a) cheap; b) time-friendly; c) formal; d) healthy?

1.1.3 Cars and Motorcycles

8 Proiectul pentru Învăţământul Rural

Given category systems like gender, age, education, class, race,

Proiectul pentru Învăţământul Rural 9

10 Proiectul pentru Învăţământul Rural

Given such category systems as class, place, social status,

a) generic jeans; b) designer jeans?

1.2 Popular Culture

Proiectul pentru Învăţământul Rural 11

12 Proiectul pentru Învăţământul Rural

a) adventure; b) drama; c) science-fiction; d) comedy; e)

1.2.2 The Pin-Up

Proiectul pentru Învăţământul Rural 13

Stop and think!

Could the theme of pin-ups be defined as “glorifying the American

Use your personal experience to answer this question and create a

1.2.3 The Pulp

14 Proiectul pentru Învăţământul Rural

Will you define the difference between pulp (roughly equivalent to

Proiectul pentru Învăţământul Rural 15

The Americans themselves insist, not without some self-

16 Proiectul pentru Învăţământul Rural

Glossary of Terms and Comments

Proiectul pentru Învăţământul Rural 17