The Linguistic Culture-6 (Fight for Independence) (1157933), страница 3
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Hisvotes were drawn only from the Northern States. A few days after A. Lincoln’selection the South Carolina convention voted for secession. By February 1861many other southern states: Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana andTexas followed. In February the congress of seceded states formed the ConfederateStates of America and announced slavery as the corner stone of their constitution.In April 1861 the civil war between the North and the South actuallybegan. Although abolition of slavery was to be one of its problems, the war wasfought not only to destroy slavery but first of all to preserve the union. When theCivil war broke out, the North could expect an easy victory.
It had superiority inmaterial resources and more than double the population of the South (20.7 millionagainst 9 million, of which 3,5 were blacks). On the other hand, the South was insome respects very favorably placed for resisting invasion from the North. Thecountry abounded in strong positions for defense, which could be held by arelatively small force while the northerners had to advance long distances, thusexposing their lines of communication to attack. As soldiers, the Southernersstarted with certain superiority for most of them were accustomed to fighting as anormal and suitable occupation for men.
Besides among their leaders there weretwo men of great military talent – generals Jackson and Lee, while the Northernerslacked such brilliant officers. During the first stages of the war the Union Armieshad a lot of failures. But Lincoln himself read books on strategy, scanned militarymaps, and outlined plans of campaigns. And his determination soon began to bewidely felt and appreciated by common people.
The belief that he could be trustedspread quickly and at the end the Northern army acted as an emancipating crusade.Lincoln’s greatness of mind and heart were unexcelled. In his famous GettysburgAddress (1863) Lincoln made public his great plans of reconstructing the countryon a new, more democratic basis: “The great task remains before us – which thisnation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom and the government of thepeople, by the people, for the people”.Since 1862 the blacks were allowed to join the Northern army and by the end ofthe war one Northern soldier in eight was black commanded of course by whiteofficers. Soon the segregated troops proved themselves in battle: 38,000 werekilled, a rate of loss 40 times higher than among white troops.In the summer of 1863 General Grant of the North won several decisive battles andcut Tennessee and Arkansas.
In a series of fierce battles he lost 60,000 but gainedhis objectives, destroying everything on its way that might help the Southernerscontinue the fight.In 1864 Abraham Lincoln was unanimously renominated President. He gave theclosest attention to the final military phase of the war, visiting the army. On April3, 1865, Grant and Lee had to recognize the futility of further resistance. Theconfederate soldiers laid down their arms and were allowed to return to theirhomes in peace. The war lasted four years and cost the nation 600,000 lives but theconcept of an indissoluble union won universal acceptance.A more technically advanced and productive economic system resulted from thewar.The war forced the Government to proclaim emancipation for slave-soldiersfighting for the Union.
In 1865 it was followed by the antislavery amendment tothe Constitution making slavery illegal throughout the whole country. Lincoln’spart in this matter was undoubtedly central and the liberation of American slaveswill be always associated with his name.On April 14, 1865 during a theatrical performance in Washington, Lincoln waslethally wounded by a southern conspirator John Booth and early next morning hedied. The feat of Abraham Lincoln’s life is best summed up in the following linesfrom the poem by Walt Whitman dedicated to the memory of this great American:O Captain! My Captain! Our fearful trip be done,The ship has weathered every rock; the prize we sought is won.Shortly before his death, the president endorsed suffrage for “very intelligent”blacks and former black soldiers in the Union army.
After Lincoln’s assassinationpresident Andrew Johnson continued Lincoln’s moderate policies. The14PthAmendment, defining national citizenship so as to include blacks, was passedby Congress in 1866 and was ratified despite rejection of most Southern states.That Northern victory launched the era of Congressional Reconstructionwhich lasted 10 years starting with the Reconstruction Acts of 1867.Under thatlegislation the 11 Confederate states were readmitted to the Union and had toaccept the 14-th and later the 15Pth Constitutional Amendments, intended to ensurethe civil rights of the black freedmen.At first Reconstruction of the Union seemed to hold many promises for Blackmen and women in the South, who were allowed to leave their former owners andmove to other states.
But in reality the Northern efforts brought few seriouschanges in the status of black people. The laws did not guarantee any social rightsof the Blacks. They did not require redistribution of land or wealth and power andonly temporarily interrupted white supremacy in the South. Without land andproperty black freedmen again became dependent on white landowners andworked for them as tenants. Harsh labor-contract laws, imprisonment for minorcrimes, work under deplorable conditions for coal, lumber, or railroad-buildingcorporations left most blacks in situation slightly improved from slavery. Thepolitical rights of Black people were not secured either. Under the freeinterpretation of the 15Pth amendment the freedmen were actually denied suffrageon the grounds that they lacked education and property.At the same time the white opposition to the Reconstruction in the Southernstates was growing.
In 1869 the racist organization Ku-Klux-Klan added violenceto the whites’ resistance. Despite federal efforts to protect black people, they wereintimidated at the polls, robbed of their earnings, beaten, or murdered. The Klan’spurpose was not only economic (to keep the slavery) but also openly political andsocial, as Klansmen also attacked white philanthropists and schoolteachers whoopenly showed their support of the Black people. None who helped to raise thestatus of the blacks was safe.The K.K.K’s actions moved Congress in 1871 to pass two Force acts directedagainst its violence.
These acts permitted the use of martial law against theKlansmen, but for a long time proved unsuccessful in combating the Klan’sactivities. In 1870s the failure of the Reconstruction became apparent. Americanreform movements achieved only partial success.When in 1872 the Amnesty Act was adopted which amnestied the white rebels,terrorism against blacks even widened. Between 1874 and 1876 a series of “raceriots” swept across the South. Nighttime visits; whippings, and murder becamecommon phenomena.
After that thousands of blacks started migrating to the North,first to Kansas City and then farther North. Thus the nation ended over 16 years ofbloody war without establishing real freedom for Black Americans.The Indian PolicyThe fate of the Indian population was even worse. The land-hungryAmerican pioneers stopped at nothing in their drive to the West.
In 1830 theIndian Removal Act was passed. The terrible implementation of this Actproduced one of the darkest chapters in American history. The story of treatiesand broken agreements, raids and massacres, was repeated in the settlement ofthe trans-Mississippi West and the Northwest.The period after the Civil War was the period of the reservation policy.
Theblocks of land where Indians were forced to live were usually the poorest barrenplaces where nobody else wanted to live. Extermination of the buffalo herdseventually led to destruction of the traditional Indian life as they had alwayslived on the buffalo hunt, and their ritual and worship had been dedicated to itssuccess. The disappearance of the buffalo left the Indians starving, purposelessand hopeless.By the 20-th century poverty, perpetual hunger, European diseases andhostilities had reduced the Indian population in reservations to only 250000.TheIndian civilization was facing extinction.
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