THE MAKING OF A NATION #098 - Abraham Lincoln, Part 3 (Attack on Fort Sumter)
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Nineteen-Seventies. For a while, these years remained tied to
Then they showed signs of what American would be like in the Nineteen-Eighties. There were a number of reasons for the change. One reason was that the United States
politics.
For example, one of the most popular television programs of that time was about
serious social issues. It was called "All in the Family". It was about a factory worker who hates black people and opposes equal rights for
and Nineteen-Eighties.
An economics professor from the United States was teaching in Britain in the early
Nineteen-Eighties. One of his students asked this question: "What is most important to Americans these
common interests. Now, many wanted to spend more time on
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5
This is Rich Kleinfeldt. And this is Stan Busby with THE MAKING OF
A NATION, a VOA Special English program about the
history of the United States. Today, we tell about life in the United States
groups. A time of innocence and hope soon began to look like a time of anger
and violence.
More Americans protested to demand an end to the unfair treatment of black citizens.
sixty-eight. Several weeks later, Robert Kennedy -- John Kennedy's brother - was shot in Los Angeles, California. He was campaigning to win his party's nomination for president. Their deaths resulted in riots in cities across
Your Hand. " It went on sale in the United States at the
end of nineteen-sixty-three.
Within five weeks, it was the biggest-selling record in America. Other songs, including some by the Beatles,
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about the history of America and its people, but a series of lessons.
The subjects include exploration, revolution,
because the citizens of the new country wanted him as their first leader.
After two terms, he gave up power by his own choice. He once again became a farmer and a
on radio but also on the Internet.
At , you can download MP3 files and transcripts.
That way you can listen anytime or anyplace --
Constitution give women the right to vote. Later,
another change lowered the voting age for Americans from twenty-one to eighteen.
Our programs explain the thinking behind these and other rights.
should have a voice in its decisions. British citizens in the American colonies paid taxes but had no representatives in
04.4.012810_3.The Making of a Nation
American History Series No. 121:Trial of Andrew JohnsonCongress acted in 1868 after the president dismissed the secretary of war. But the Senate found him not guilty by a single vote. Transcript of radio broadcast:Thursday, January 28, 2010Welcome to THE MAKING OF A NATION -- American history in VOA Special English.The Civil War ended in eighteen sixty-five. After that, tensions grew between Congress and the new president, Andrew Johnson.The Republican Party was still new. It was formed to oppose slavery. Radical members of the party controlled Congress. They wanted strong policies to punish the southern states that left the Union and lost the war.Standing in the way of the Republicans was Array Andrew Johnson, a Democrat. Thepresident opposed radical efforts to forcesolutions on the South. He vetoed anumber of programs that he thoughtinterfered with rights given to the states bythe Constitution.This week in our series, Kay Gallant andHarry Monroe continue the story ofAndrew Johnson President Andrew Johnson.In the congressional elections of eighteen sixty-six, radicals wonfirm control of both houses of Congress. They were able to pass a number of bills over the president's veto. But Johnson refused tostand aside in the face of radical attempts to seize all powers of government.This conflict between Johnson and the Congress caused much bitterness. Finally, the radicals decided to get him out of the way. For the first time in American history, Congress would try to remove the President from office.Under the United States Constitution, the House of Representatives has the power to bring charges against the president. The Senate acts as the jury to decide if the president is guilty of the charges. The chief justice of the United States serves as judge.If two-thirds of the senators find the president guilty, he can be removed from office.Radicals in the House of Representativesbrought eleven charges againstPresident Johnson.Most of the charges were based onJohnson's removal from office of hissecretary of war . Radicals charged thatthis violated a new law. The law said thepresident could not remove a cabinet officer without approval by the Senate. Johnson refused to recognize the law. He said it was not constitutional.Radicals in the House of Representatives also charged Johnson with criticizing Congress. They said his statements dishonored Congress and the presidency.The great impeachment trial began on March fifth, eighteensixty-eight. The president refused to attend. But his lawyers were there to defend him.Thaddeus Stevens speaks during the debate overimpeachment in the House of RepresentativesOne by one, the senators swore an oath to be just. They promised to make a fair and honest decision on the guilt or innocence of Andrew Johnson.A congressman from Massachusetts opened the case for the radicals. He told the senators not to think of themselves as members of any court. He said the Senate was a political body that was being asked to settle a political question. Was Johnson the right man for the White House? He said it was clear that Johnson wanted to overthrow Congress.Other radical Republicans then joined him in condemning Johnson. They made many charges. But they offered little evidence to support the charges.Johnson's lawyers called for facts, instead of emotion. They said the Constitution required the radicals to prove that the president had committed serious crimes. Andrew Johnson had committed no crime, they said. This was purely a political trial.They warned of serious damage to the American form of government if the president was removed for political reasons. No future president would be safe, they said, if opposed by a majority of the House and two-thirds of the Senate.The trial went on day after day. The Array decision would be close. Fifty-foursenators would be voting. Thirty-sixvotes of guilty were needed toremove the president from office.It soon became clear that the radicalshad thirty-five of these votes. Onlyseven senators remained undecided.The impeachment trialIf one of the seven voted guilty,Johnson would be removed.Radicals put great pressure on the seven men. They tried to buytheir votes. Party leaders threatened them. Supporters in the senators' home states were told to write hundreds of letters demanding that Johnson be found guilty.A senator from Maine was one who felt the pressure. But he refused to let it force him to do what others wished. He answered one letter this way:"Sir , I wish you and all my other friends to know that I, not they, am sitting in judgment upon the president. I, not they, have sworn to do impartial justice. I, not they, am responsible to God and man for my action and its results."A senator from Kansas was another who refused to let pressure decide his vote. He said, "I trust that I shall have the courage to vote as I judge best."In the final days before the vote, six of the seven remainingRepublican senators let it be known that they would vote not guilty. But the senator from Kansas still refused to say what his vote would be. His was the only vote still in question. His vote would decide the issue.Now, the pressure on him increased. Hisbrother was offered twenty thousanddollars for information about how thesenator would vote. Everywhere heturned, he found someone demandingthat he vote guilty.The vote took place on May sixteenth.Every seat in the big Senate room was filled. The chief justice began to call on the senators. One by one, they answered guilty or not guilty. Finally, he called the name of the senator from Kansas.The senator stood up. He looked about him. Every voice was still.The vote of Senator Edmund Ross of Kansas saved thepresidency of Andrew JohnsonEvery eye was upon him."It was like looking down into an open grave," he said later. "Friendship, position, wealth -- everything that makes life desirable to an ambitious man -- were about to be swept away by my answer."He spoke softly. Many could not hear him. The chief justice asked him to repeat his vote. This time, the answer was clearly heard across the room: "Not guilty."The trial was all but done. Remaining senators voted as expected. The chief justice announced the result. On the first charge,thirty-five senators voted that President Johnson was guilty. Nineteen voted that he was not guilty. The radicals had failed by one vote.When the Senate voted on the other charges, the result was the same. The radicals could not get the two-thirds majority they needed. President Johnson was declared not guilty.Radical leaders and newspapers bitterly denounced the small group of Republican senators who refused to vote guilty. They called them traitors. Friends and supporters condemned them. None wasre-elected to the Senate or to any other government office.It was a heavy price to pay. And yet, they were sure they had done the right thing. The senator from Kansas told his wife, "The millions of men cursing me today will bless me tomorrow for having saved the country from the greatest threat it ever faced."He was right. The trial of Andrew Johnson was an important turning point in the making of the American nation.His removal from office would have established the idea that the president could serve only with the approval of Congress. The president would have become, in effect, a prime minister. He would have to depend on the support of Congress to remain in office.Johnson's victory kept alive the idea of an independent presidency. However, the vote did not end the conflict between Congress and the White House over the future of the South.That will be our story in the next program of THE MAKING OF A NATION.Our program was written by David Jarmul and Frank Beardsley. The narrators were Kay Gallant and Harry Monroe. Transcripts, podcasts and historical images from our series are at . You can also comment on our programs. And you can follow us on Twitter at VOA Learning English. Join us again next week for THE MAKING OF A NATION -- an American history series in VOA Special English.。
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January twentieth, nineteen-sixty-one. John Kennedy was to be sworn-in that day
as president of the United States. It had snowed heavily the night before. Few cars were in the streets of Washington.
Yet, somehow, people got to the ceremony at the Capitol building.
The outgoing president, Dwight Eisenhower, was seventy years old.
John Kennedy was just forty-three. He was the first American president born in
Still, the poet could not continue. Those in the crowd felt concerned for the
eighty-six-year-old man. Suddenly, he stopped trying to say his
special poem. Instead, he began to say the words of another one, one he knew from memory.
history. The time of his inauguration was a time of tension and fear about nuclear weapons. The United States had nuclear weapons. Its main political enemy, the Soviet Union,
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joined with conservative Republicans in voting.
Together, these lawmakers defeated
some of Truman's most important proposals. This included a bill for health care insurance
majority from Mister Truman's Democratic Party. The president might have expected such a Congress to support his policies.
It did not, however, always support him. Time after time,
power throughout his presidency. On June twenty-fifth, nineteen-fifty, forces
from North Korea invaded South Korea.
Two days later, the united nations security council
and technology. Months later, Congress approved twenty-
five thousand-million dollars
for the first part of this program. In nineteen-fifty-one,
President Truman asked Congress to establish a new foreign aid program. The aid was for some countries in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, East Asia and South Asia, and Latin America.
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trained by America's Central Intelligence Agency, invaded Cuba.
Their goal was to overthrow Cuba's communist leader, Fidel Castro.
approval when
he visited French leader general Charles de Gaulle.
The French were very interested in the new American president.
They were even more interested in his beautiful wife.
Texas.
He hoped to help settle a local dispute in his Democratic Party.
The dispute might have affected chances for his re-election in nineteen-sixty-four. He arrived in the city of Dallas in the late morning of November twenty-second. Dallas was known to be a center of opposition to Kennedy. Yet many people waited to see him.
President Kennedy said the situation was causing a moral crisis in America.
special english
President Johnson held a cabinet meeting to discuss the agreement Sherman had signed. War Secretary Stanton and the other members of the cabinet were violently opposed to it. They said Sherman had no power to make any kind of political settlement.
VOICE ONE:
Instead of surrendering to Sherman, the Confederate Armies would break up. The soldiers would return to their homes, taking their weapons with them. They would sign a promise not to fight again and to obey state and federalerals met again the next day. Sherman listened as Johnston explained his demands. Most of them, Sherman accepted. He believed that President Lincoln wanted to help the South as much as possible. He had heard Lincoln say that he wanted to make it easy for the southern states to return to the Union.
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THE MAKING OF A NATION #98- Abraham Lincoln, Part 3 (Attack on Fort Sumter)By Frank BeardsleyBroadcast: January 20, 2005(MUSIC)VOICE ONE:THE MAKING OF A NATION -- a program in Special English.(MUSIC)Just before sunrise on the morning of April twelfth, eighteen-sixty-one, the first shot was fired in the American Civil War. A heavy mortar roared, sending a shell high over the harbor at Charleston, South Carolina. The shell dropped and exploded above Fort Sumter, a United States fort on an island in the harbor.The explosion was a signal for all southern guns surrounding the fort to open fire. Shell after shell smashed into the island fort.The booming of the cannons woke the people of Charleston. They rushed to the harbor and cheered as the bursting shells lighted the dark sky.VOICE TWO:Confederate leaders ordered the attack after President Abraham Lincolnrefused to withdraw the small force of American soldiers at Sumter. Foodsupplies at the fort were very low. And southerners expected hungerwould force the soldiers to leave. But Lincoln announced he was sendinga ship to Fort Sumter with food.Confederate President Jefferson Davis ordered his commander inCharleston, General [Pierre] Beauregard, to destroy the fort before the Abraham Lincolnfood could arrive.VOICE ONE:The attack started from Fort Johnson across the harbor from Sumter. A Virginia Congressman, Roger Pryor, was visiting Fort Johnson when the order to fire was given. The fort's commander asked Pryor if he would like the honor of firing the mortar that would begin the attack. "No," answered Pryor, and his voice shook. "I cannot fire the first gun of the war."But others could. And the attack began.VOICE TWO:At Fort Sumter, Major Robert Anderson and his men waited three hours before firing back at the Confederate guns.Anderson could not use his most powerful cannons. They were in the open at the top of the fort, where there was no protection for the gunners. Too many of his small force would be lost if he tried to fire these guns.So Anderson had his men fire the smaller cannon from better-protected positions. These, however, did not do much damage to the Confederate guns.VOICE ONE:The shelling continued all day. A big cloud of smoke rose high in the air over Fort Sumter.The smoke was seen by United States navy ships a few miles outside Charleston Harbor. They had come with the ship bringing food for the men at Sumter. There were soldiers on these ships. But they could not reach the fort to help Major Anderson. Confederate boats blocked the entrance to the harbor. And confederate guns could destroy any ship that tried to enter.The commander of the naval force, Captain [Gustavus] Fox, had hoped to move the soldiers to Sumter in small boats. But the sea was so rough that the small boats could not be used. Fox could only watch and hope for calmer seas.VOICE TWO:Confederate shells continued to smash into Sumter throughout the night and into the morning of the second day. The fires at Fort Sumter burned higher. And smoke filled the rooms where soldiers still tried to fire their cannons.About noon, three men arrived at the fort in a small boat. One of them was Louis Wigfall, a former United States senator from Texas, now a Confederate officer. He asked to see Major Anderson."I come from General Beauregard," he said. "It is time to put a stop to this, sir. The flames are raging all around you. And you have defended your flag bravely. Will you leave, sir?" Wigfall asked.VOICE ONE:Major Anderson was ready to stop fighting. His men had done all that could be expected of them. They had fought well against a much stronger enemy. Anderson said he would surrender, if he and his men could leave with honor.Wigfall agreed. He told Anderson to lower his flag and the firing would stop.Down came the United States flag. And up went the white flag of surrender. The battle of Fort Sumter was over.More than four-thousand shells had been fired during the thirty-three hours of fighting. But no one on either side was killed. One United States soldier, however, was killed the next day when a cannon exploded as Anderson's men prepared to leave the fort.VOICE TWO:The news of Anderson's surrender reached Washington late Saturday, April thirteenth. President Lincoln and his cabinet met the next day and wrote a declaration that the president would announce on Monday.In it, Lincoln said powerful forces had seized control in seven states of the south. He said these forces were too strong to be stopped by courts or policemen. Lincoln said troops were needed. He requested that the states send him seventy-five-thousand soldiers. He said these men would be used to get control of forts and other federal property seized from the Union.VOICE ONE:Lincoln knew he had the support of his own party. He also wanted northern Democrats to give him full support. So, Sunday evening, a Republican congressman visited the top Democrat of the north, Senator Stephen Douglas.The congressman urged Douglas to go to the White House and tell Lincoln that he would do all he could to help put down the rebellion in the south. At first, Douglas refused. He said Lincoln had removed Democrats -- friends of his -- from government jobs and had given the jobs to Republicans. Douglas said he didn't like this. Anyway, he said, Lincoln probably did not want his advice.The congressman, George Ashmun, urged Douglas to forget party politics. He said Lincoln and the country needed the Senator's help. Douglas finally agreed to talk with Lincoln. He and Ashmun went immediately to the White House.VOICE TWO:Lincoln welcomed his old political opponent. He explained his plans and read to Douglas the declaration he would announce the next day.Douglas said he agreed with every word of it except, he said, seventy-five-thousand soldiers would not be enough. Remembering his problems with southern extremists, he urged Lincoln to ask for two-hundred-thousand men. He told the president, "You do not know the dishonest purposes of those men as well as I do."Lincoln and Douglas talked for two hours. Then the Senator gave a statement for the newspapers. He said he still opposed the administration on political questions. But, he said, he completely supported Lincoln's efforts to protect the Union.Douglas was to live for only a few more months. He spent this time working for the Union. He traveled through the states of the northwest, making many speeches. Douglas urged Democrats everywhere to support the Republican government. He told them, "There can be no neutrals in this war -- only patriots or traitors."VOICE ONE:Throughout the north, thousands of men rushed to answer Lincoln's call for troops. Within two days, a military group from Boston left for Washington. Other groups formed quickly in northern cities and began training for war.Lincoln received a different answer, however, from the border states between north and south.Virginia's governor said he would not send troops to help the north get control of the south. North Carolina's governor said the request violated the Constitution. He would have no part of it. Tennessee said it would not send one man to help force southern states back into the Union. But it said it would send fifty-thousand troops to defend southern rights.Lincoln got the same answer from the governors of Kentucky, Arkansas, and Missouri. For several days, it seemed that all these states would secede and join the southern confederacy.VOICE TWO:Lincoln worried most about Virginia, the powerful state just across the Potomac River from Washington. A secession convention already was meeting at the state capital. On April seventeenth, the convention voted to take Virginia out of the Union.Virginia's vote to secede forced an American army officer to make a most difficult decision. The officer was Colonel Robert E. Lee, a citizen of Virginia.The army's top commander, General Winfield Scott, had called Lee to Washington. Scott believed Lee was the best officer in the army. Lincoln agreed. He asked Lee to take General Scott's job, to become the army chief.Lee was offered the job on the same day that Virginia left the Union. He felt strong ties to his state. But he also loved the Union.His decision will be our story in the next program of THE MAKING OF A NATION.(MUSIC)VOICE ONE:You have been listening to the Special English program, THE MAKING OF A NATION. Your narrators were Stuart Spencer and Jack Moyles. THE MAKING OF A NATION can be heard Thursdays.。