It is moving, it is sobering, it is a reach back into history. The tales about the family tree of first lady Michelle Obama and an American map that traces her back to the slaves and slave owners that were in her past. This woman who made it all the...
Welcome to THE MAKING OF A NATION American history in VOA Special English. South Carolina withdrew from the United States on December twentieth, eighteen sixty. The state seceded because a Republican, Abraham Lincoln, had been elected president. The...
Welcome to THE MAKING OF A NATION American history in VOA Special English. Abraham Lincoln won the presidential election in November of eighteen sixty. When he took office several months later, he faced the most serious crisis in American history. T...
Welcome to the MAKING OF A NATION American history in VOA Special English. Eighteen sixty was a year of mixed feelings of hope and fear. Americans had hope for the future, because they would be electing a new president. But they had fear that even a...
Welcome to THE MAKING OF A NATION American history in VOA Special English. Throughout most of the eighteen fifties, war was a continual threat between the North and the South over the issue of slavery. Then, in the autumn of eighteen fifty-nine, the...
Welcome to THE MAKING OF A NATION American history in VOA Special English. Early in eighteen fifty-seven, the United States Supreme Court announced one of its most important rulings. The high court decided the case of a slave named Dred Scott. This...
Welcome to THE MAKING OF A NATION -- American history in VOA Special English. Now, we continue the story of America's fourteenth president, Franklin Pierce. Pierce was elected in eighteen fifty-two. He was a compromise candidate of the Democratic Pa...
ANNOUNCER: Welcome to THE MAKING OF A NATION American history in VOA Special English. Franklin Pierce was elected the fourteenth president in eighteen fifty-two. He was forty-eight years old, one of America's youngest presidents. Pierce was the comp...
Welcome to THE MAKING OF A NATION -- American history in VOA Special English. Millard Fillmore In eighteen fifty, President Zachary Taylor died after serving about a year and a half in office. Taylor's vice president, Millard Fillmore, took his plac...
ANNOUNCER: Welcome to THE MAKING OF A NATION American history in VOA Special English. In eighteen fifty, the United States Congress debated a proposal for an important compromise. The compromise dealt mostly with the national dispute over slavery. T...