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ЛЕКЦИЯ 4
THE CIVIL WAR: PRE-WAR SITUATION IN THE NORTH & SOUTH; THE WAR; THE YEARS OF RECONSTRUCTION
THE CIVIL WAR
The opposition of the North and the South did not come about overnight. In the north, the abolitionist sentiment grew more and more powerful as new territories were acquired, and they were thought of only in the context of slave-free organization. It was important at that stage because those territories were not yet organized into states.
By 1850, slavery in the South was well over 200 years old, and had become an integral part of the basic economy of the region. In 15 southern and border states, the black population was approximately half as large as the white, while in the north it was an insignificant fraction.
From the middle 1840s, the issue of slavery overshadowed everything else in American politics. The south, from the Atlantic to the Mississippi and beyond, was a relatively compact political unit that agreed on all fundamental policies affecting cotton culture and slavery-The majority of southern planters came to regard slavery as necessary and permanent. Cotton culture, using only primitive implements, was singularly adapted to the employment of slaves. It involved work nine months of the year and permitted the use of women and children as well as men.
THE SOUTH
The South, which includes eleven states (Virginia, Kentucky, North Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South California, Florida), is economically, historically, and culturally a distinct region. With its warm climate and rich soil, it soon developed an economy based on export crops like cotton. These were grown on farms worked by slaves from Africa. Conflicts between the North and the South, especially over slavery, led in 1861 to the Civil War. (All the southern states became part of the Confederate States of America with the exception of Kentucky, which, although a slave state, remained with the North.)
In the last few decades, the South has become more industrial and urban than in the past. Some parts of the South are among the fastest-growing areas in the country. But the South also preserves its traditions – for example, its emphasis on good cooking and its slower, more hospitable way of life.
The South before the Civil War
The South has a warm climate and a long growing season for crops. So it’s not surprising that the South’s economy came to depend on agriculture. By the 1820s, the South felt no need to develop factories.
Crops like cotton were best grown on plantations – large landholdings. They also required a large labour force. For this, the old South depended on slaves, who were originally brought from Africa. Slavery was the basis for the South's economy; it was also what, more than anything, made the South different from the rest of the country. (By 1820, the other states had ended slavery.)
Slaves’ lives depended on their white masters. The basic fact was that slaves had no real control over what happened to them. A husband and wife could be sold to different owners and never see each other again. Slaves often worked for long hours in the fields and received insufficient food, clothing, and shelter.
Slaves were able to survive because they developed a strong culture of their own. This culture combined African and American elements. Songs and stories, religion and community were all important.
For a long time, the North and the South each developed differently but without conflicts. The conflicts came when the nation began to expand west. Southern states said the new areas that were being settled should allow slavery, the Northern states disagreed. In the 1840s and 1850s, Congress passed a series of laws that were compromises between the North and the South. In the end, the compromises failed.
The Union in Crisis. The 1850s
President Lincoln was unalterably opposed to the extension of slavery to the other territories, though he readily acknowledged its rights to exist in the southern states.
As the Americans were moving westward the prospect of slaves in the territories broadened, the moral dispute over slavery moved to matters of basic American liberties. The planters also wanted to reopen the African slave trade and to acquire territory in the Caribbean. Fear of the sinister Slave Power transformed the abolitionist impulse into a broader and more influential antislavery movement.
In the election of 1860 the Democratic Party1 split in half. Political leaders in the North and in the South tragically misjudged each other.
On December 20, 1860 South Carolina passed an ordinance of secession3 amid jubilation and cheering. After that they quickly called conventions and passed secession ordinances in six other states: Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas.
By February 1861, these states had joined with South Carolina to form a new government: the Confederate States of America. Choosing Jefferson Davis4 as their president, they began to function independently of the United States.
The South and the North in the War
Lincoln’s call for troops to put down the Confederate insurrection stimulated an outpouring of loyalty that unified the classes. And in the South a half-million men volunteered to fight; there were so many would-be soldiers that the government could not arm them all. As 1861 faded into 1862 the North undertook a massive buildup of troops in northern Virginia following a few military failures. The North also moved to blockade southern ports in order to choke off the Confederacy’s avenues of commerce and supply.
Both soldiers and civilians were beginning to recognize the enormous costs of this war. As the spring of 1862 approached, southern officials, worried about the strength of their armies, instituted a draft. It was the first conscription law in American history.
As the war developed the southern armies moved into heavier fighting. Most of the combat centered in Virginia. Meanwhile the southern economy was developing along new lines. A large bureaucracy sprang up to administer the military and economic operations. Over 70,000 civilians were needed to run the Confederate war machine. The mushrooming bureaucracy expanded the cities. New housing construction was stimulated. The traditionally agricultural South was also developing its industries in order to supply the army. Mass poverty descended on the South. Inflation became a major problem as prices rose by almost 7,000 per cent.
People saw that the wealthy curtailed only their luxuries, while many poor families went without necessities. They saw that the government favored the upper class. Until the last year of the war, for example, prosperous southerners could avoid military service by furnishing a hired substitute. Anger at such discrimination exploded, when in October 1862 the Confederate Congress5 exempted from military duty anyone who was supervising at least 20 slaves. The so-called “twenty nigger law” became notorious. Immediately, protests arose from every corner of the Confederacy. Dissention spread as growing numbers of citizens concluded that the struggle was “a rich man's war and a poor man’s fight”.
Meanwhile war production promoted the development of heavy industry and business in the North. At the highest level of government there was lack of clarity about the purpose of the war. Through the first several months of struggle Davis and Lincoln studiously avoided references to slavery, the crux of the matter. Not wishing to antagonize non-slaveholders, Davis told southerners that they were fighting for constitutional liberty. Lincoln, hoping that a pro-Union majority would assert itself in the South, recognized that mention of slavery would end any chance of coaxing the states which had seceded back into the Union. Moreover, many Republicans were not vitally interested in the slavery issue. An early presidential stand making the abolition of slavery and not the preservation of the Union the war's objective would have split the party.
In August 1861 Congress passed its first confiscation act. The law confiscated all property used for “unsurrectionaiy purposes”. A second confiscation act – July 1862 – was much more drastic; it confiscated the property of all those who supported the rebellion, even those who merely resided in the South and paid Confederate taxes. Their slaves were “forever free of their servitude, and not again to be held as slaves”.
Lincoln took a stronger stand on slavery in 1864. He proposed the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution for “abolishing and prohibiting slavery forever” which went to the States for ratification. In 1865 Lincoln was re-elected and considered allowing the defeated southern states to re-enter the Union.
Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation stimulated a vital infusion of manpower into the Union armies. Beginning in 1863, blacks shouldered arms for freedom and the Union. Their participation was crucial to the Northern victory.
After many victories and defeats on both sides the end finally came in April 1865. Lincoln did not live to see the last victory. On the evening of April 14, he went to Ford’s theatre in Washington, where an assassin named John Booth shot him at point-blank range. Lincoln died the next day. The Union lost its wartime leader.
The costs of the Civil War were enormous. Yet one crucial question remained unanswered: what was the place of black men and women in American life? They awaited an answer which would have to be found during Reconstruction.
Two important amendments were passed: the 14th – 1868 and the 15th – 1870 which guaranteed basic rights to freed men.
Reconstruction. 1865–1877
Reconstruction of the Union held many promises. Black men and women in the South could move to their new home in Florida. Black refugees quickly poured into these lands. By 1865 40 thousand freedmen were living in their new home. But the opposition to the Reconstruction in the South steadily grew. In 1869 the Ku-Klux-Klan added organized violence to the whites' resistance. Despite federal efforts to protect them, black people were intimidated at the polls, robbed of their earnings, beaten, or murdered. By the early 1870s the failure of the Reconstruction was apparent. The Military Reconstruction Act of 1867 called for new governments in the South; it barred from political office those Confederate leaders who were listed in the Fourteenth Amendment. But the law required no redistribution of land and guaranteed no basic changes in southern social standards.
Terrorism against blacks was widening. Nighttime visits, whippings, beatings, and murder became common. In time, however, the Klan’s purpose became not only economic (to keep the slaves) but also openly political and social. Klansmen also attacked white Republicans and school teachers who were aiding the freedmen. No one who helped to raise the status of the blacks was safe. Then in 1871 the actions of Ku-Klux-Klan moved Congress to pass two acts directed against the KKK's violence. These acts permitted the use of martial law, but they were unsuccessful in combatting the Klan’s activities.
The Klan’s terror frightened many voters and weakened local party organization, but it did not stop Reconstruction. Throughout the South conventions met and drafted new constitutions. New governments were set up, and Republicans won majorities nearly everywhere. But they failed to break down the social structure or the distribution of wealth and of power. Freedmen were exploited during the Reconstruction as well. Without land of their own, they were dependent on white landowners. Then the retreat from Reconstruction began. The rights of black citizens were insecure. Under the new interpretation of the 15th Amendment blacks were actually denied suffrage on the grounds that they lacked education, property or a grandfather who h been qualified to vote before the Reconstruction Act. In 18/2 Amnesty Act was adopted which pardoned the rebels.
After 1877 thousands of blacks gathered up their possessions and migrated to Kansas. They were disappointed people who were searching for their share in the American dream.
Thus the nation ended over 15 years of bloody civil war without establishing full freedom for black Americans.
Commentary
Mount Rushmore is a 6,200-foot mountain in the state of South Dakota. The faces of four American presidents – George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt – are carved into the mountain. Their faces, known as the Mount Rushmore National Memorial, are the largest carved figures in the world. The memorial is the work of the sculptor Gutson Borglum. He began work in 1927. It took fourteen years to complete. The memorial was opened to the public in 1941.
Only about half of the United States had been engaged in the Civil War and in Reconstruction. As late as 1860, not a single state except Texas had been set up on the vast plains beyond the Mississippi Valley. Farther West in the Rockies and the Sierras and in the Great Basin between these ranges, political organization by the white population had hardly begun. News of the events of the Civil War, of the breaking away of the Southern States from the Union often failed to reach the men who roamed this distant wilderness – and even those who heard the news were not always interested in it.
Thomas Jefferson’s Ten Rules
ЛЕКЦИЯ 5
THE ECONOMY
The Free Enterprise System
The United States economy is based on the free enterprise system: Private businesses compete against one another with relatively little interference from the government. Since the depression of the 1930s, when the economy essentially collapsed, laws have been made giving the government a more active role in economic and other matters.
Changes over Time
Until the second half of the last century, the United States was mainly an agricultural nation. The Civil War (1861–1865) helped stimulate industry. In the years that followed industrialization transformed the country, although many areas, especially the South, remained mainly agricultural and rural.
As the United States developed the struggle for material success, the presence of considerable affluence brought the label of materialism. Fierce personal competition tended to produce a self-absorbed people who were coarse and sometimes indifferent to the fine things in life. But of course, American society was not wholly uniform.
As the United States developed into an urban industrial society after the Civil War, the reconciliation of wealth and public virtues became even more difficult. Unheard of levels of income were attained by captains of industry, skilful professionals, new merchants, and the fortunate owner of mineral-rich properties.
Within a few decades the country was transformed from an undeveloped backwater into a primary world economy with enormous productive capacity and extensive markets for manufactured goods.
The new rich tried to break through the older bastions of privilege and proclaim their new gentility. Etiquette writers flourished. Genealogists devised coats of arms. Tensions between the establishment and upstars formed staple themes for comic literature. Novelists like Mark Twain and Henry James analyzed the impact of wealth and cosmopolitan ambition upon social forms. Typically, a small town businessman who struck it rich would move to the city to advance the social fortunes of his family. Comedies of manners examined various aspects of this transition from one world to another and the striving to develop appropriate social styles.
After World War I the themes of wealth and democracy were reinforced by the expansion of mass communications. As a result of rapid industrialization, innovative advertising, and new distribution methods Americans promoted and spread the image of themselves overseas. America exported motion pictures to Europe, and American actors and actresses, supported by American furniture, dress, automobiles, and mannerisms, flooded Europe of the 1920s. Films and advertising in magazines showed how typical Americans were meant to look and interact. By 1929 image industries had become an American speciality. Given the ambivalence with which American manners were viewed historically, it was ironic that Americans had become the world’s pedagogues. Millions of viewer saw how actors walked, dressed, ate, kissed, quarreled, prayed, talked, and traveled – how they entered rooms, paid bills, behaved at parties.
The mixture of reality and fantasy that was Hollywood exploited fan magazines and giant publicity machines to encourage the religion of the stars. Soap and cosmetic manufacturers sought to depict the dangers of poor grooming. Auto makers and clothing stores tried to accustom buyers to the symbolic meaning of brand names, arguing that appearance and success were closely linked and could be achieved best by following advertising’s message.
The Situation Today
The United States is a large country and is rich in natural resources. It is a leading producer of fuel-of oil, natural gas, and coal. It is also a leading producer of many other minerals, including copper, aluminium, iron, and lead. The United States grows wheat, corn, and other crops and raises many cows, pigs, and chickens.
However, the USA is also a major consumer of resources. This means, for example, that the United States must import much of the fuel it uses.
Not surprisingly, international trade is important to the United States. Major exports include machinery, high-technology equipment, chemicals, cars, aircrafts, and grains. Major imports include machinery and telecommunications equipment, oil, cars, metals, and chemicals.
Today, the United States faces some major economic challenges. One important challenge is increasing its productivity or the efficiency of the labour force, in order to increase the rate of economic growth. Another challenge, as the country shifts from manufacturing to service, is to train people to fill new kinds of jobs.
In the 1950s and 1960s, the US economy grew rapidly. Many companies moved to the South and Southwest, and these areas experienced change and growth. Then, in the mid-1970s, economic growth began to slow down.
Just as there had been a shift from agriculture to industry, there is now a shift from industry to services. (Services are provided by hospitals, banks, law firms, hotels and restaurants, and so on.) In recent years, most new jobs have been service jobs.
The American admiration for business success is as strong today as ever. Modern heroes are men like Steven Jobs, who founded the Apple computer business, and Lee Iacocca of Chrysler, whose book describing his road to success was a bestseller. But in spite of these stories, many people are worried about their country’s industrial base. They see factories closing and people losing their jobs. They point to towns like Homestead, Pennsylvania, where 14,000 people once worked in a giant steel factory. Now the factory is closed and over half the town is unemployed. Such examples are numerous.
American industry is changing. Old industries, like steel, textiles, and shoes, are losing their places in the international market. Many new industries, such as those that use computer techniques do not need to employ many people. As a result, people who worked in the factories often years ago are working in restaurants, offices, or airlines today.
The second half of the 1990s was an extended period in which the stock market reached record levels and the economy was booming, so much so that there was talk of a “new economy” that was recession proof During this time Bill Gates became famous for the great success of his company Microsoft. Since 2000 both the stock market and the economy have cooled off considerably.
Taxes, Taxes and More Taxes
Americans often say that there are only two things a person can be sure of in life: death and taxes. Many people feel that the United States has the worst taxes in the world.
Taxes consist of the money which people pay to support their government. There are three levels of government in the United States: federal, state and city, therefore there are three types of taxes.
People who earn more than four to five thousand dollars per year must pay a certain percentage of their salaries to the federal government. The percentage depends on their salaries. The federal government has a two-level income tax; that is 15 or 28 percent. People are not very happy on April 15 when the federal taxes are due because they are very high.
The second tax is for the state government: New York, California, North Dakota, or any of the other forty-seven states. Some states have an income tax similar to that of the federal government. Other states have a sales tax, which is a percentage charged on any item which you buy in this state. For example, a person wants to buy a package of gum for twenty five cents. If there is a sales tax of eight percent in that state, then the cost of the gum is twenty-seven cents. This figure includes the sales tax. The state tax laws are different.
The third tax is for the city. This tax has two forms: property tax (people who own a home must pay taxes on it) and excise tax, which is taken on vehicles in a city. The cities use this money for education, police, fire departments, public works (street repairs, water and sanitation) and municipal buildings.
Americans pay such high taxes, that they often feel they work one day each week just to pay taxes. People always complain, about taxes. Although Americans have different points of view on religion, culture, politics, they agree on one subject: taxes are too high.
American Profiles
1. Thomas Edison
In the history of applied science, Thomas Alva Edison stands alone. One thousand two hundred patents are credited to him.
He was a man of great energy and intelligence.
Edison was born in Milan, Ohio, on February 11, 1847. He started to work when he was twelve years old. He began working as a train boy in order to help support himself. Three years later he began publishing a small newspaper for the railroad employees.
At sixteen, he began to learn telegraphy by himself. He kept on studying telegraphy until he became a capable operator.
He set up a small laboratory in the baggage car of the train and failed to pay attention to the orders of his employers. He often forgot to do the things he was paid for. His employers asked him to stop using their equipment for such purposes but he kept on experimenting until he was fired one day when one of his experiments caused a big explosion in the baggage car.
This episode finished Edison’s laboratory as well as his job.
When he was seventeen years old, he invented an automatic telegraph repeater. This was the first of his many inventions. He continued inventing useful things the rest of his life.
When he was twenty-two, he sold four patents for $ 40,000. With this money, he began to set up an enormous laboratory in Newark, New Jersey. He was extremely happy with his new laboratory. He worked all day and a good part of every night.
Edison avoided participating in social activities because he felt that they were a waste of his time. He never remembered to keep his appointments, much to the annoyance of his wife and his friends.
He lived in this manner until his death in 1931.
His life was an illustration of his own formula for success: “Two percent inspiration and ninety-eight percent perspiration”.
Answer the following questions:
ЛЕКЦИЯ 6
The Roaring Twenties, Great Depression,
The New Deal, World War II.
The Great Depression in Outline
The Great Depression has central place in twentieth century economic history.
It is straightforward to narrate the slide of the world into the Great Depression. The 1920’s saw a stock market boom in the U.S. as the result of general optimism: businessmen and economists believed that the newly-born Federal Reserve would stabilize the economy, and that the pace of technological progress guaranteed rapidly rising living standards and expanding markets. The U.S. Federal Reserve’s attempts in 1928 and 1929 to raise interest rates to discourage stock speculation brought on an initial recession.
The U.S. stock market boomed in the 1920s. Prices reached levels, measured as a multiple of corporate dividends or corporate earnings that made no sense m terms of traditional patterns and rules of thumb for valuation. A range of evidence suggests that at the market peak in September 1929 something like forty percent of stock market values were pure air: prices above fundamental values for no reason other than that a wide cross-section of investors thought that the stock market would go up because it had gone up.
The U.S. economy was already past the peak of the business cycle when the stock market crashed in October of 1929. So it looks as though the Federal Reserve did “overdo it” – did raise interest rates too much, and bring on the recession that they had hoped to avoid.
The stock market did crash in October of 1929; “Black Tuesday”, October 29.
On October 24, 1924 stock prices dropped dramatically. The nation succumbed to panic. The money crash unleashed a devastating depression. The causes were the following: the agricultural sector was plagued with overproduction during the decade so that prices for farm products were declining; debts were mounting; there were bankruptcies, and small banks failures. Some industries, like coal, railroads, construction, and textiles were in distress long before 1929. The depression also came about in part because of unregulated spending on the stock market. Finally, low wages resulted in under consumption.
The first instinct of governments and central banks faced with this gathering Depression began was to do nothing. Businessmen, economists, and politicians (memorably Secretary of the Treasury Mellon) expected the recession of 1929-1930 to be self-limiting. Earlier recessions had come to an end when the gap between actual and trend production was as large as in 1930. They expected workers with idle hands and capitalists with idle machines to try to undersell their still at-work peers. Prices would fall. When prices fell enough, entrepreneurs would gamble that even with slack demand production would be profitable at the new, lower wages. Production would then resume.
A great change took place with the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt as president in March 1933. Roosevelt took active measures to stabilize banking and put right agricultural production by paying subsidies to farmers to reduce their acreage or plow under crops already in the field. He introduced a system of regulated prices for corn, cotton, wheat, rice, hogs, and dairy products. He also proposed a plan for public works and relief payments to the needied citizens. Fifteen major pieces of legislation were enacted within 100 days. As a result unemployment dropped from 13 million people in 1933 to 9 million in 1936.
All these measures taken together were called the New Deal. The New Deal was criticized from the right and the left and even threatened by the Supreme Court on the grounds that it gave excessive legislative power to the White House. Roosevelt's industrial recovery program was dead. In January 1936 his farm program met a similar fate when the Court invalidated the Agricultural Act declaring that agriculture was a local problem and thus under the Tenth Amendment subject to state action only. The Supreme Court was dismantling the New Deal. Then, in the spring and summer of 1936 Roosevelt took the initiative once more, and the New Deal scored some of its biggest victories. So impressive was the legislation that it was called the Second New Deal. The Act authorizing the President to establish massive public works for the jobless was passed in April 1935. Under the program more than 8.5 million people were ultimately employed. By the time of its termination in 1943 over 65,000 miles of highways, streets, roads, 125,000 public buildings and 8,000 parks were built, as well as numerous bridges, airports, and other structures.
Partly because he was the champion of the urban masses, he won landslide victory in the 1936 election. Even so, the New Deal brought about limited change in the nation’s power structure. There was no real increase in the power of Afro-Americans and other minorities. And, if people wanted their voices to be heard, they had to organize in labor unions. The New Deal also failed in its primary purpose of putting people back to work. As late as 1938, over 10 million men and women were still jobless, and the nation was plagued by underconsumption.
Black Americans and the Depression
Those Americans whose access to opportunities had been limited even in prosperity found the Depression especially devastating. Thus black Americans encountered special hardships in the 1930s. As the Depression began, over half of all American blacks still lived in the South, most of them farmers. Unemployed whites believed they had first claim to all work, and some now began to take positions as janitors, street cleaners, and domestic servants, displacing the blacks who formerly occupied them.
As the Depression deepened, whites in many Southern cities began to demand that all blacks be dismissed from their jobs. In Atlanta in 1930, an organization calling itself the Black Shirts organized a campaign with the slogan “No Jobs for Niggers until Every White Man Has a job!” In other areas, whites used intimidation and violence to drive blacks from jobs. By 1932, over half the blacks in the South were without employment. Unsurprisingly, therefore, many Southern blacks – perhaps 400,000 in all – left the South in the 1930s and journeyed to the cities of the North. There they found less direct discrimination, perhaps, but conditions that were in most respects little better than those in the South. A black sociologist reported in 1932 that a third of all black Americans were unemployed and another third underemployed. Traditional patterns of segregation and disfranchisement in the South survived largely unchallenged. But several particularly notorious examples of racism did attract the attention of the nation.
Although the Depression generally did little to alter white racial attitudes, it was a time of important changes in the role and behavior of the leading black organizations. In the Steelworkers Union, for example, blacks constituted about 20 percent of the membership. Similar patterns of discrimination confronted many Mexicans and Mexican-Americans.
America and the Soviet Union
America’s hopes of expanding its foreign trade produced particular efforts by the administration to improve its diplomatic posture in two areas: the Soviet Union and Latin America. The United States and Russia had viewed each other with mistrust and even hostility since the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, and the American government still had not officially recognized the Soviet regime by 1933. But powerful voices within the United States were urging a change in policy – less because the revulsion with which most Americans viewed communism had diminished than because the Soviet Union appeared to be a possible source of important trade. The Russians, too, were eager for a new relationship. They were hoping for American cooperation in containing the power of Japan on Russia’s southeastern flank. In November 1933, therefore, Soviet Foreign Minister Maxim Litvinov reached an agreement with the president in Washington. The Soviets would cease their propaganda efforts in the United States and protect American citizens in Russia; in return, the United States would recognize the communist regime.
Despite this promising beginning, however, relations with the Soviet Union soon soured once again. American trade failed to establish a foothold in Russia, disappointing hopes in the United States; and the American government did little to reassure the Soviets that it was interested in stopping Japanese expansion in Asia, dousing expectations in Russia. By the end of 1934, the Soviet Union and the United States were once again viewing each other with considerable mistrust. And Stalin, having abandoned whatever hopes he might once have had of cooperation with America, was beginning to consider making agreements of his own with the fascist governments of Japan and Germany.
The Road to Pearl Harbor
The Japanese had not sat idle during the crisis in Europe. With Great Britain preoccupied with Germany, and with Soviet attention diverted to the west, Japan sensed an unparalleled opportunity to extend its empire in the Pacific. And in September 1940, Japan signed the Tripartite Pact, a loose defensive alliance with Germany and Italy that seemed to extend the Axis into Asia. (In reality, the European Axis powers never developed a very strong relationship with Japan.)
The Japanese drive continued. In July 1941, imperial troops moved into Indochina and seized the capital of Vietnam. The president froze all Japanese assets in the United States, severely limiting Japan’s ability to purchase needed American supplies.
Tokyo now faced a choice
At first, the Tokyo government seemed willing to compromise. And in August he increased the pace by requesting a personal meeting with President Roosevelt. Roosevelt replied that he would meet with the prime minister only if Japan would give guarantees in advance that it would respect the territorial integrity of China. There seemed little alternative now to war. American intelligence had already decoded Japanese messages which made clear that war was imminent, that after November 29 an attack would be only a matter of days.
A routine warning was sent to the United States naval facility at Pearl Harbor, near Honolulu. Officials were paying far more attention, however, to a large Japanese convoy moving southward through the China Sea. A combination of confusion and miscalculation caused the government to overlook clear indications that Japan intended a direct attack on American forces.
At 7:55 a.m. on Sunday, December 7, 1941, a wave of Japanese bombers attacked the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor. A second wave came an hour later. Because the military commanders in Hawaii had taken no precautions against such an attack, allowing ships to remain bunched up defenselessly in the harbor and airplanes to remain parked in rows on airstrips, the results of the raid were catastrophic. Within two hours, the United States lost 8 battleships, 3 cruisers, 4 other vessels, 188 airplanes, and several vital shore installations. More than 2,000 soldiers and sailors died, and another 1,000 were injured. The Japanese suffered only light losses.
Within four hours, the Senate unanimously and approved a declaration of war against Japan. Three days later, Germany and Italy, Japan’s European allies, declared war on the United States; Congress reciprocated without a dissenting vote. For the second time in less than twenty-five years, the United States had joined in a terrible international conflagration.
Whatever political disagreements and social tensions the war may have produced among the American people, there was from the beginning a remarkable unity of opinion about the conflict itself – “a unity,” as one member of Congress proclaimed shortly after Pearl Harbor, “never before witnessed in this country.” But that unity and confidence were severely tested in the first, troubled months of 1942. One after another, Allied strongholds in the Pacific were falling to the forces of Japan. But despite the setbacks in the struggle with Japan, American policymakers remained committed to a decision they had made in 1940. The defeat of Germany would be the nation’s first priority.
Holding Off the Germans
In the European war, the United States was less able to shape military operations to its liking. It had to cooperate with Britain and with the exiled “Free French” forces in the west; and it had to conciliate its new ally, the Soviet Union, which was engaged in a savage conflict with Hitler in the east. The Soviet Union, which was absorbing (as it would throughout the war) the brunt of the German war effort, was desperate for relief and wanted the Allied invasion to proceed at the earliest possible moment. The British, however, wanted to wait. The conflicting pressures came to a head in the spring of 1942.
In May the Russian foreign minister, Vyacheslav Molotov, visited Washington to demand an immediate second front that would divert at least forty German divisions from Russia; otherwise, he warned, the Soviet effort might collapse. A month later, however, Churchill arrived in Washington to urge an invasion of North Africa instead.
By now, however, the threat of a Soviet collapse seemed much diminished; for during the winter of l942-1943, the Red Army had successfully held off a major German assault at Stalingrad in southern Russia. Hitler had committed such enormous forces to the battle, and had suffered such appalling losses, that his ability to continue his eastern offensive was now shattered.
The Soviet victory made it possible, then, for Roosevelt to agree to Churchill's plan for an Allied invasion of Sicily, a plan the two men worked out together in January 1943 at a meeting in Casablanca. General Marshall opposed the plan, fearing that it would further delay the vital invasion of France. But Churchill prevailed with his argument that the operation in Sicily might knock Italy out of the war and force the Germans to tie up many divisions in defense of Italy and the Balkans. On the night of July 9, 1943, American and British armies landed in the extreme southeast of Sicily; thirty-eight days later, they had conquered the island and begun moving onto the Italian mainland. In the face of these setbacks, Mussolini’s government collapsed and the dictator himself fled north to Germany. But although Mussolini’s successor, Marshal Pietro Badoglio, moved quickly to commit Italy to the Allies, Germany moved eight divisions into the country and established a powerful defensive line south of Rome. The Allied offensive on the Italian peninsula, which began on September 3, 1943, soon bogged down against the powerful, entrenched Nazi forces, particularly after a serious Allied setback at Monte Cassino early in 1944. Not until May 1944 did the Allies finally capture Cassino and resume their northward advance. On June 4, 1944, they captured Rome.
The invasion of Italy contributed to the Allied war effort in several important ways, but on the whole it was probably a strategic mistake. It delayed the invasion of France by as much as a year. It deeply embittered the Soviet Union, which was convinced that America and Britain were deliberately delaying in order to force the Russians to absorb the bulk of the German offensive. And it gave the Soviets time to reverse the course of battle and begin moving toward the countries of Eastern Europe.
America and the Holocaust
In the midst of this intensive fighting, the leaders of the American government found themselves confronted with one of history’s great tragedies: the Nazi campaign to exterminate the Jews of Europe – the Holocaust. As early as 1942, high officials in Washington had incontrovertible evidence that Hitler’s forces were rounding up Jews and others from all over Europe, transporting them to concentration camps in eastern Germany and Poland, and systematically murdering them. The American government consistently resisted almost all such entreaties.
The United States also resisted entreaties that it admits large numbers of the Jewish refugees attempting to escape the horrors of Europe. One ship, the St. Louis, arrived in Miami carrying nearly 1,000 escaped German Jews, only to be refused entry and forced to return to Europe. Throughout the war, the State Department did not even use up the number of visas permitted by law; almost 90 percent of the quota remained untouched. One opportunity after another to assist the imperiled Jews was either ignored or rejected.
In fairness to American leaders, there was probably little they could have done to save the majority of Hitler’s victims. But more forceful action by the United States (and Britain, which was even less amenable to Jewish requests for assistance) might well have saved at least some lives. The failure to take such action is difficult to understand; but in the midst of a terrible conflict, policymakers found it possible to justify abandoning the Jews to their fate by concentrating their attention solely on the larger goal of winning the war. Any diversion of energy and attention to other purposes, they apparently believed, would distract them from the overriding goal of victory.
World War II had its most profound impact on American domestic life by ending at last the Great Depression. By the middle of 1941, the economic problems of the 1930s – unemployment, deflation, industrial sluggishness – had virtually vanished before the great wave of wartime industrial expansion.
The most important agent of the new prosperity was federal spending, which within months was pumping far more money into the economy than all the New Deal relief agencies combined had done. The index of industrial production doubled. Seventeen million new jobs were created. Perhaps most striking was the increase in personal income. In New York, the average family income in 1938 had been $2,760; by 1942, it had risen to $4,044.
The war years not only increased the total wealth of the nation; it produced the only significant change of the century in the distribution of wealth among the population. Almost everyone’s income grew during the war. Industrial workers enjoyed somewhat less substantial gains; union leaders agreed to limit wage increases to 15 percent during the war. But workers who had been unemployed or underemployed in the 1930s were now fully employed, often working substantial overtime.
ЛЕКЦИЯ 7
US GOVERNMENT AND POLITICAL PARTIES
US GOVERNMENT
The operation of the US government is based on the US Constitution which was adopted by Congress in 1789.
Under the federal system of government some of the most important powers are given to the federal (or national) government. The rest of the powers are exercised by the states. The national government is composed of three branches: the executive, the legislative, and the judicial. Certain powers are given to each of the branches, but these powers overlap in such a way that the powers of one branch are limited by the powers of the others. This arrangement is known as the system of checks and balances. It is a basic part of the structure of the American governmental system. No person or institution can have unlimited authority. Each branch of the national government shares and limits some of the powers of the other branches.
The system of “checks and balances” is clearly illustrated by the president's relations with the Congress. The president proposes legislation, but the Congress does not have to enact it. He cannot put a treaty into effect without approval by two-thirds of the Senate. In 1973 the legislature limited the President’s powers as commander-in-chief by prohibiting commandment of armed forces abroad for combat without specific congressional approval. The Senate must approve most of the president’s appointments to the executive and judicial branches.
Another example of “checks and balances” is that the Congress must authorize money that is used to pay for programs which are administered by the executive branch. In this way the legislature exercises an important check on the executive branch and the power of the president. The financial authority or spending power of the legislature checks the spending power of the president.
A System of “Checks and Balances”
The Constitution provides for three equal and separate branches but each is to some extent dependent on the other two and there is a partial interweaving of their functions.
Executive Branch
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President suggests legislation to Congress |
President appoints federal judges |
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Issues executive orders, rules and regulations with the force of legislation |
May grant pardons from punishment for offences against the United States |
|
May veto legislation passed by Congress |
Legislative Branch
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Appropriates for Executive |
Appropriates funds for the Judiciary |
|
May create or abolish Executive Departments |
May create or abolish lower federal courts |
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May impeach and try members of the Executive Branch |
May impeach and try members of the judiciary |
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May override a Presidential veto |
Decides how many justices may sit on the Supreme Court |
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The Senate must approve Presidential appointments and treaties |
Judicial Branch
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May declare Congressional legislation unconstitutional |
May declare any Presidential or Executive action unconstitutional |
The national government’s power is not limited by states’ power. The only powers the states have are those the Federal government has not reserved for itself. But in a dispute the Federal government can and will use military force if necessary, e. g. integration of schools in Little Rock, Arkansas in the 1950s.
The powers of the national and state governments are limited by certain constitutional guarantees of civil liberties for individual citizens. These guarantees are known as the Bill of Rights. They are amendments to the original constitution. They forbid the government from restriding or limiting such civil liberties as freedom of speech, of religion, and of the press, and they guarantee to all citizens (at least in principle) certain legal procedures and rights.
The powers of the federal (national) government include the right to declare war; the right to tax; the right to borrow and coin money, and to regulate its value; the right to regulate commerce between the states; the right to maintain a postal system.
Every state has its own constitution. It also has the three-branch-es-of-government structure. State chief executives are called governors and state legislators are usually known as representatives and senators.
The powers of the state are to control education, regulate corporations and businesses within the state, determine most election procedures, and regulate local governments. The states also make and administer civil (citizens’ private rights) and criminal laws.
The Constitution has been amended 26 times. An amendment may be proposed by the federal legislature or by a constitutional convention, or a meeting of representatives from two-thirds of the states. In either case the amendment must be approved by three-fourths of the state legislatures.
The Executive Power
The President, as chief executive, is the most important government figure. The president negotiates foreign treaties and appoints government heads. He commands the armed forces and sends and receives diplomatic officials. In effect, he makes foreign policy. As head of the executive branch he sees to it that laws enacted by the legislature are carried out. He is also the leader of his political party. The president and the vice-president are the only officials chosen in a nation-wide election.
According to the Constitution a president’s office is limited to two terms of 4 years each. It also describes how a president can be removed from office (impeachment procedure).
The executive branch consists of 13 departments and many independent agencies. At the time of editing the latest edition of this text these agencies were undergoing a major reorganization designed to strengthen a new agency of Homeland Security. The department heads (most of them called secretaries, except the Attorney General) form the president’s cabinet. The president has many sources of advice and assistance – both private and public, including representatives of the departments and agencies. He also relies very much on members of his own White House staff.
The Executive Departments
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Department |
Head of Department |
|
State |
Secretary of State |
|
Treasury |
Secretary of the Treasury |
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Defense |
Secretary of Defense |
|
Justice |
Attorney General |
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Interior |
Secretary of the Interior |
|
Agriculture |
Secretary of Agriculture |
|
Commerce |
Secretary of Commerce |
|
Labor |
Secretary of Labor |
|
Health and Human Services |
Secretary of Health and Human Services |
|
Housing and Urban Development |
Secretary of Housing and Urban Development |
|
Transportation |
Secretary of Transportation |
|
Energy |
Secretary of Energy |
|
Education |
Secretary of Education |
Almost three million civilians work in the departments and agencies of the executive branch. This number exceeds the total employed by America’s seven largest corporations. These government employees make up the federal bureaucracy. These are civil servants who are hired under a system in which merit and training are supposed to be the basis of employment and promotion. There are approximately ten thousand civil service job classifications which range from a bridge engineer to a clerk. Ten per cent of these federal employees work in Washington D.C.; 6% work outside the U.S.; the rest are located throughout the 50 states.
The Legislature
The legislative branch of the federal government is represented by Congress. There are two houses of Congress: the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Senate is composed of 100 voting members, two from each of the 50 states. They are elected for a six-year term and the number of their terms is unlimited. The House of Representatives has 435 voting members in addition to two representatives from Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia who are not entitled to vote. The members of the House are called representatives or congressmen (or congresswomen). They are elected for a two-year term.
Many members of the Congress are regularly re-elected, and so some of them serve for over 20 years.
The number of representatives from each state depends on the state's population. Every ten years the U.S. Census reports the distribution of the population throughout the entire country. The congressional seats are then re-distributed accordingly. California claims the largest delegation. New York ranks second. Alaska, Nevada, and some others have only one representative.
Congress also performs the function of investigation, which involves examination of government activities to determine if the executive branch is performing its duties properly and if new legislation is needed.
Congress also plays an informative role. It informs the public about different and important subjects, such as crime or space exploration. The most widely publicized Senate investigations in the 1970s were the “Watergate hearings”, when a special Senate committee investigated charges of illegal activities by members of the White House staff during President Nixon’s administration. In the 1980s the so-called “Irangate” hearings drew wide-spread attention.
The Judicial Branch
There is a Supreme Court of the United States, the members of which are appointed for life by the president with Senate approval and federal courts which are created by Congress.
The Supreme Court is composed of nine judges, who are called justices. It is the highest court in the nation. It interprets the laws and reviews them to determine whether they conform to the U.S. Constitution. If the majority of justices rule that the law in question violates the Constitution, the law is declared unconstitutional and becomes invalid. This process is known as judicial review. All lower courts follow the rulings of the Supreme Court.
Federal Courts have the power to rule on both criminal and civil cases. Criminal action under federal jurisdiction includes such cases as treason, destruction of government property, counterfeiting, hijacking, and narcotics violations. Civil cases include violations of other people’s rights, such as damaging property, violating a contract, or making libelous statements. If found guilty, a person may be required to pay a certain amount of money, called damages, but he or she is never sent to prison. A convicted criminal, on the other hand, may be imprisoned.
The Bill of Rights guarantees a trial by jury in all criminal cases. A jury is a group of citizens – usually 12 persons – who make the decision on a case.
The lowest federal court is the district court. Each state has at least one district court. Cases from such a court may be reviewed by the next higher court, and the U.S. Court of Appeals.
For the first 75 years of Supreme Court history, the most important cases involved conflicts over the authority of the national government-From the middle 1800s until the late 1930s the major decisions of the Court concerned economic regulation – control of business activities and setting economic policy by the federal government. During the past 50 years the most important Supreme Court cases have concerned civil rights, civil liberties, and issues of criminal law. Recently, cases involving environmental and consumer law have been gaining importance.
Most state judges are elected for limited terms. State courts handle criminal and other cases that do not come under federal jurisdiction.
The often ambiguous line between state and federal authority has resulted in recurring conflicts between federal and state officials throughout American history.
Political Parties in the United States
In the United States there are two major political parties, the Democratic and the Republican. The Democratic Party is the older of the two, tracing its history back to the time of Andrew Jackson in the 1820. The Republican Party, which followed the Federalist Party and the Whigs, was organized in the 1850, primarily as an antislavery party. In 1860 the Democratic Party was split into two factions, the northern and the southern Democrats, each putting up its own candidate for president. The Republicans received more votes than either faction of the Democrats, and Abraham Lincoln was elected President.
Over the years the positions of the two major parties have been changing and adapting themselves to the currently important problems of public policy. If one reads the platforms of the two parties, one finds that there is very little difference between them.
That the two parties greatly resemble each other comes about chiefly because of the two factors. One is that on a national basis each political party is actually a loose association of the party organizations within the various states. The second reason is that each party is more interested in winning elections than in putting across a particular policy or law. It has been aptly said that each political party is not a single party, but a collection of fifty parties which are temporarily drawn together every four years for the purpose of winning the presidency.
Political parties in the United States are entirely free of the party discipline that characterizes political parties in Europe and Asia. It is not necessary to make an application to join the Democratic or the Republican Party; there are no membership dues; party leaders cannot expel a member. The nature of the election laws in some states, in fact, makes it possible for a voter to keep his political party affiliation secret.
ELECTION SYSTEM
The election of the President of the United States is provided for in the Constitution through the establishment of an electoral college in each State, for each presidential election. Under the Constitution, the November election is not for Presidential candidates themselves but for the electors who subsequently choose a President.
Today, electors are usually selected to run as a token of appreciation for their service to their political party.
Though the Constitution provides that the electors shall vote tor President “by ballot”, a practice implying a secret vote, the voting is not at all secret in many states. After balloting the electors are required to send lists of their votes by registered mail to the President of the Senate in Washington, with duplicate copies to the General Services Administrator and the local U.S. district court. The system can give an electoral majority to a Presidential candidate who does not have a popular majority. That is what happened in 1968 when Nixon was elected President. On January 6, the votes are counted by the President of the Senate in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives.
Today the main stages of the presidential election campaign are:
Словарь
|
provide for |
- предусматривать |
|
establishment |
- образование, учреждение |
|
electoral college |
- коллегия выборщиков |
|
elector |
- выборщик |
|
subsequently |
- впоследствии |
|
select |
- отбирать, выбирать |
|
as a token of appreciation |
- как признание заслуг |
|
by ballot |
- тайным голосованием |
|
require |
- требовать |
|
registered mail |
- заказное письмо |
|
duplicate copy |
- копия |
|
court |
- суд |
|
majority |
- большинство голосов |
|
joint session |
- совместное заседание |
|
inauguration |
- инаугурация, вступление в должность |
The Presidents of the United States
The United States has had over 40 Presidents; Grover Cleveland was elected as the 22nd and the 24th President. The State Department ruled that he must be counted twice. George Bush was the 41st President.
The first President, George Washington, was inaugurated in 1789. He served two terms that ended in 1797. When he died he was mourned in the United States and abroad as one of the great men of the time. He was buried at his home at Mount Vernon, Virginia.
Nine Presidents were elected for two terms. Franklin D. Roosevelt served three full terms. He was elected to a fourth term in 1944. He died in 1945, and his term was completed by Harry Truman.
The shortest term was served by William Henry Harrison who died one month after his inauguration in 1841. Four Presidents were killed while in office. The first of these was the 16th President, Abraham Lincoln. He was shot while attending the theater in Washington. James Oarfield was shot a few months after his inauguration and died at the age of forty-nine. William McKinley was killed in Buffalo, New York in 1901. John Kennedy was killed in Texas in 1963.
James Buchanan was the only bachelor to be elected. He was assisted in the social activities of the White House by his niece.
One of the Presidents (Andrew Johnson) was a tailor before he became President. Three of the Presidents – Washington, Grant and Eisenhower were Generals of the Army before they were elected.
The 26th President, Theodore Roosevelt was a Colonel in the Army before he was elected to serve as Vice-President during William McKinley’s term of office. When President McKinley was killed, Theodore Roosevelt became President. He became the youngest man to be called upon to fill presidency. He was forty-two years old. John Kennedy was the youngest person to be elected to the office. He was forty-three at the time he was chosen.
The State of Virginia is known as the “Presidents’ State”. Eight Presidents were born in Virginia and seven were born in Ohio. Some Presidents will be remembered by people as great men of their times.
Словарь
|
be inaugurated |
- быть введенным в должность |
|
inauguration |
- торжественное введение в должность |
|
bury |
- хоронить |
|
while in office |
- за время пребывания в должности |
|
term of office |
- срок избрания |