Читать книгу Anglo-American Cultural Studies - Jody Skinner - Страница 50

Fort SumterFort SumterIf we start with the first shots, we’d have to begin at a small island in the harbor of CharlestonCharleston, South CarolinaSouth Carolina, with a fort manned by Union, that is, Northern forces, who refused to give up the fort. The first shots fired at Fort SumterFort Sumter in 1861 are seen as the start of the war.

Emancipation ProclamationEmancipation ProclamationTwo years after the beginning of the war, the President of the Union, Abraham LincolnLincoln, Abraham, issued the Emancipation ProclamationEmancipation Proclamation. The Proclamation wasn’t supposed to free all slaves at once and everywhere – Lincoln was an astute politician who wanted more than anything to restore the Union – but only in those Confederate states that didn’t return to the Union by a certain date, in effect an attempt at political blackmail. Perhaps slavery would’ve continued if the southern states had given in to Lincoln’s demands and returned to the Union. But no Confederate state was willing to take up Lincoln’s offer, and so slavery was forbidden as of 1 January 1863 in all Confederate states not then under Union control. Interestingly enough it wasn’t until the passage of the 13^th Amendment13th Amendment after the end of the Civil War that [45]slavery was also prohibited in the slave states that had not seceded from the Union.

GettysburgGettysburg AddressGettysburg AddressAlmost three years after the first shots at Fort SumterFort Sumter in a small town in PennsylvaniaPennsylvania near the bloodiest battlefield of the entire war, GettysburgGettysburg, President Abraham LincolnLincoln, Abraham made history with an address that was to be given the same name as the battlefield. The Gettysburg AddressGettysburg Address was only a few lines long and began with the beginning of the nation a mere 87 years earlier “four score and seven years ago,” then echoed the Declaration of IndependenceDeclaration of Independence that “a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal,” now being tested by a “great civil war” if “it can long endure.” Lincoln concludes by dedicating himself to the “great task” remaining, “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 peoplegovernment of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

AppomattoxAlthough the Battle of GettysburgGettysburg was considered the turning point of the Civil War with Union forces defeating the Confederacy, the Civil War was to continue after this bloodiest battle for almost another two years until Confederate General Robert E. LeeLee, General Robert E. surrendered to Union General Ulysses S. GrantGrant, Ulysses S. near the small town with the somewhat strange-sounding name of Appomattox Court HouseAppomattox Court House. The formal ceremony of surrender involved no cheering. The American Civil WarCivil War, American, the bloodiest in the nation’s history, ended in April 1865 not with a celebration but with an act of mourning. The war was over; the reconstruction of the Union was, however, just beginning. (But in light of the controversies about the commemoration of the 150^th anniversary of the Civil War between 2011 and 2015, you could see that in some important ways the effects of the Civil War are still present in American life in the 21^st century).