The
issues of slavery and central power divided the United States.
Slavery was
concentrated mainly in the southern states by the mid-19th century, where
slaves were used as farm laborers, artisans, and house servants. Chattel
slavery formed the backbone of the largely agrarian southern
economy. In the northern states, industry largely drove the
economy. Many people in the north and the south believed that slavery was
immoral and wrong, yet the institution remained, which created a large chasm on
the political and social landscape.
Southerners felt threatened by the
pressure of northern politicians and “abolitionists,” who included the
zealot John Brown, and claimed that the federal government had no power
to end slavery, impose certain taxes, force infrastructure improvements, or
influence western expansion against the wishes of the state governments.
While some northerners felt that southern politicians wielded too much power in
the House and the Senate and that they would never be appeased.
Still, from the
earliest days of the United States through the antebellum years,
politicians on both sides of the major issues attempted to find a compromise
that would avoid the splitting of the country, and ultimately avert a war.
Eleven states left the United States in the
following order and formed the Confederate States of America: South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennessee.
Abraham Lincoln was the President of the
United States during the Civil War.
Abraham
Lincoln grew up in a log cabin in Kentucky. He worked as a
shopkeeper and a lawyer before entering politics in the 1840s. Alarmed by
his anti-slavery stance, seven southern states seceded soon after he was
elected president in 1860—with four more states to soon follow.
Lincoln
declared that he would do everything necessary to keep the United States united
as one country. He refused to recognize the southern states as an independent
nation and the Civil War erupted in the spring of 1861.
On January 1,
1863, Lincoln issued the Emancipation
Proclamation, which freed the slaves in the areas of the country that
"shall then be in rebellion against the United States." The
Emancipation Proclamation laid the groundwork for the eventual freedom of
slaves across the country.
Lincoln won re-election in 1864 against
opponents who wanted to sign a peace treaty with the southern states. On
April 14, 1865, Lincoln was shot by assassin John Wilkes Booth, a
southern sympathizer. Abraham Lincoln died at 7:22 am the next morning.
A civil war, also known as an intrastate war in
polemology, is a war between organized groups within the
same state or country. ... A civil war is a high-intensity conflict,
often involving regular armed forces, that is sustained, organized
and large-scale.
FThe Civil War was fought between the
Northern and the Southern states from 1861-1865.
The American Civil War was fought between the
United States of America and the Confederate States of America, a collection of
eleven southern states that left the Union in 1860 and 1861. The conflict
began primarily as a result of the
long-standing disagreement over the institution of slavery.
On
February 9, 1861, Jefferson
Davis, a former U.S. Senator and Secretary of War, was
elected President of the Confederate States of America by the members of
the Confederate constitutional convention.
After four bloody years of
conflict, the United States defeated the Confederate States. In the end,
the states that were in rebellion were readmitted to the United States, and the
institution of slavery was abolished nation-wide.
To know about The Civil War in the USA watch the video above.
In November a cold, unseen stranger whom the doctors
called Pneumonia, stalked about the colony, touching one here and there with
his icy fingers. Mr. Pneumonia wasn’t what you would call a chivalric old
gentleman. A mite of a little woman with blood thinned by California zephyrs
was hardly fair game for the red-fisted, short-breathed old duffer. But Johnsy
he smote; and she lay, scarcely moving, on her painted iron bedstead, looking
through the small Dutch window-panes at the blank side of the next brick house.
“She has one chance in – let us say, ten,” said the
doctor to Sue. “And that chance is for her to want to live. Your little lady
has made up her mind that she’s not going to get well.”
After the doctor had gone Sue went into the workroom
and cried a Japanese napkin to a pulp. Then she swaggered into Johnsy’s room.
Johnsy lay, scarcely making aripple under the bedclothes. Sue arranged her board and began a
pen-and-ink drawing to illustrate a magazine story.
Johnsy’s eyes were open wide. she was looking out of
the window and counting – counting backward.
“Twelve,” she said, and a little later “eleven”; and
then “ten”; and “nine”; and then “eight” and “seven” almost together.
Sue looked solicitously out of the window. There was
only a bare, dreary yard to be seen, and the blank side of the brick house
twenty feet away. An old, old ivy vine, gnarled and decayed at the roots,
climbed half way up the brick wall. The cold breath of autumn had stricken its
leaves from the vine until its skeleton branches clung, almost bare, to the
crumbling bricks.
“What is it, dear? Tell you Sudie.”
“Six,” said Johnsy, in almost a whisper. “They are
falling faster now. Three days ago there were almost a hundred. There goes
another one. There are only five left now.”
“Leaves. On the ivy vine. When the last one falls I
must go, too. I’ve known that for three days. Didn’t the doctor tell you?”
“Oh, I never heard of such nonsense,” complained Sue,
with a magnificent scorn… “Johnsy, dear. Will you promise me to keep your eyes
closed, and not to look out of the window until I’m done working? I must call
Behrman up to be my model for the old hermit miner.”
Old Behrman was a painter who lived on the ground
floor beneath them. Behrman was a failure in art. He had been about to paint a
masterpiece, but he had never yet begun it. He drank gin toexcess, and still
talked of his coming masterpiece.
Sue found Behrman smelling strongly of juniper berries
in his dimly lighted den below. She told him of Johnsy’s fancy, and how she
feared she would, indeed, light and fragile as a leaf herself, float away, when
her slight hold upon the world grew weaker. Old Behrman, with his red eyes
plainly streaming, shouted his contempt for such idiotic imagination.
… When Sue awoke from an hour’s sleep the next morning
she found Johnsy with dull, wide-open eyes starting at the drawn green shade.
“Pull it up; I want to see,” she ordered, in a
whisper.
But lo! After the beating rain and fierce gusts of
wind that had endured through the livelong night, there yet stood out against
the brick wall one ivy leaf. It was the last on the vine.
“It is the last one. I thought it would surely fall
during the night. I heard the wind. It will fall today and I shall die at the
same time,” said Johnsy. The loneliest thing in all the world is a soul when it
is making ready on its mysterious, far journey.
The day wore away, and even through the twilight they
could see the lone ivy leaf clinging to its stem against the wall. And then,
with the coming of the night the north wind was again loosed, while the rain
still beat against the windows and pattered down on the low Dutch eaves.
When it was light enough Johnsy, the merciless,
commanded that the shade be raised. The
ivy leaf was still there. Johnsy lay for a long time looking for it.
“I’ve been a bad girl, Sudie”, she said. “Something
has made that last leaf stay there to show me how wicked I was. It’s a sin to
want to die.”
“Even chances,” said the doctor in the afternoon,
taking Sue’s thin shaking hand in his. “With good nursing you’ll win. And now I
must see another case I have downstairs. Behrman, his name is. He is an old,
weak man, and the attack is acute. There’s no hope for him.”
…..The next afternoon Sue came to the bed where Johnsy
lay. “I have something to tell you, little mouse,” she said. “Mr. Behrman died
of pneumonia to-day in hospital. He was ill only two days. The janitor found
him on the morning of the first day in his room downstairs helpless with pain.
His shoes and clothing were wet through and icy cold. They couldn’t have
imagined where he was on such a dreadful night. And then they found a lantern,
still lighted, and some scattered brushes, and – look out of the window, dear,
at the last ivy leafon the wall. It’s Behrman’s masterpiece – he painted it there
the night that the last leaf fell.” Listen to the audio of the storyto practise your pronunciation. http://listentogenius.com/recordings/TheLastLeaf.mp3
Task 1. Read the text and translate it.
Task 2. Find English equivalents of the following words and phrases.
