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Welcome to THE MAKING OF A NATION – American history in VOA Special English.

In March of eighteen sixty-eight, Congress tried to remove President Andrew Johnson from office. But the Senate failed in the effort by one vote. Andrew Johnson was a Democrat. Congress was controlled by radical members of the Republican Party.

Most of the charges at Johnson's trial were based on his dismissal of the secretary of war. A new law said the president could not remove a cabinet officer without Senate approval. Johnson said the law was unconstitutional.

The impeachment trial of President Andrew Johnson

Although Congress failed to remove him, the vote did not end a conflict with the White House over the future of the South. But it did have an effect on efforts to rebuild the South following the war.

Radical Republicans wanted to punish the South for starting the war. They also wanted to be sure new governments in the southern states would support the Republican Party.

This week in our series, Doug Johnson and Frank Oliver tell about the reconstruction of the South.

DOUG JOHNSON:

One way radical Republicans gained support was by helping give blacks the right to vote. They knew former slaves would vote for the party which had freed them.

Another way Republicans kept control in the South was by preventing whites from voting there. They passed a law saying no southerner could vote if he had taken part in the rebellion against the Union. This prevented the majority of southern whites from voting for Democrats and against Republicans.

FRANK OLIVER:

Thomas Nast made this wood engraving of a carpetbagger

The radicals did not rest with changes in the law. They also sent their supporters south to organize blacks for the Republican Party. Many southern whites hated these men from the North. They had a special name for them: carpetbaggers.

The name arose because many of the northerners who went south arrived with all their possessions in a carpet handbag. Southerners also had a name for their own people who cooperated with the carpetbaggers. They called them scalawags. Neither name was friendly.

DOUG JOHNSON:

Southern whites had a reason to be bitter. They had lost the Civil War. Now much of their power was gone, and they were suffering. But there was another side to the story, as well.

Southern whites had held black people in slavery for many years. Now, the former slaves were getting to enjoy a small taste of freedom. Also, the South had started the Civil War which had caused so much death and destruction. It was not surprising that the North showed little sympathy when the fighting stopped and the South lay in ruins.

Southern states organized conventions to form new governments. Soon, all but three southern states had new legislatures.

Not surprisingly, radical Republicans held firm control in every one of the new governments. Many of the new governors and state officials were carpetbaggers from outside the state. Others were southern scalawags.

FRANK OLIVER:

Many of these new state officials were dishonest. They began using their power to become rich.

In South Carolina, for example, the new governor was a former army officer from the state of Ohio. He gave government jobs to many dishonest men, including some who were wanted for crimes in other states.

The same situation existed in other state governments in the South. In Louisiana, for example, the governor was a carpetbagger from the state of Illinois. He left office after four years with one million dollars. His official pay during that time was only thirty-two thousand dollars.

DOUG JOHNSON:

The South was not the only place where public officials were dishonest.

The period after the Civil War in the United States was marked by several famous incidents involving violations of the public trust. Some of these incidents took place in the North, even in the White House. They were among the worst examples of dishonesty and poor government ever to take place in American history.

It also is important to note that not everyone in the South was dishonest. The new state governments did many good things.

They built roads and bridges, schools and hospitals. They improved transportation and education. They loaned money to companies to build railroads. Most important, they helped give hope to former slaves. These people were struggling to create a new life in the land of their former owners.

FRANK OLIVER:

So, the record of reconstruction in the South was mixed. Many southerners believe, even today, that reconstruction was a bitter time of defeat. But others now say this period after the Civil War was a necessary step in creating a different kind of South from the one which had existed before.

Historians do agree that reconstruction changed the United States in several important ways. One of the most important changes was in the Constitution. Congress passed three historic amendments to the Constitution during this period.

DOUG JOHNSON:

The first was the Thirteenth Amendment. It ended slavery in the United States.

The next was the Fourteenth Amendment. It said all persons born or naturalized in the United States were citizens of the United States and of the state in which they lived. It said no state could limit the rights of these citizens.

Finally, there was the Fifteenth Amendment. It said a citizen of the United States could not be prevented from voting because of his color.

The Thirteenth Amendment freed all Negro slaves. The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments were supposed to protect their rights. These laws alone, however, did not succeed in doing this. It would take another century -- until Martin Luther King and other civil rights leaders -- to make these rights a reality.

Yet the passage of these three amendments to the Constitution was still a historic step in making blacks full and equal citizens.

FRANK OLIVER:

These same laws and other actions of the radical Republicans changed the South in other -- less desirable, ways. They helped cause angry whites to form the Ku Klux Klan and other groups that terrorized blacks for years to come.

The laws also increased bitterness between the North and South that lasted many years.

Reconstruction changed the economy of the South, too. White landowners broke up their big farms into smaller pieces of land. They rented these to black farmers. With the land came seed, tools and enough supplies for a year. In exchange for this, the owner would get a large share of the crop raised by the tenant farmer.

This system, called share-cropping, spread through the South. It lasted for almost one hundred years.

Share-cropping made it possible for blacks to work the land for themselves for the first time in their lives. But it also made it difficult for them to earn enough money to improve their condition. As a result, the majority of southern blacks remained in poverty. The system helped cause the South to be the poorest part of the United States for many years.

DOUG JOHNSON:

The reconstruction period changed the face of the South and of the United States. The events of reconstruction also were central to one of the nation's most interesting presidential elections.

That will be our story next week.

(MUSIC)

BOB DOUGHTY:

Our program was written by David Jarmul. The narrators were Doug Johnson and Frank Oliver. Transcripts, MP3s and podcasts of our programs are online, along with historical images, at voaspecialenglish.com. 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.

Learning English MP3

Welcome 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 Andrew Johnson, a Democrat. The president opposed radical efforts to force solutions on the South. He vetoed a number of programs that he thought interfered with rights given to the states by the Constitution.

This week in our series, Kay Gallant and Harry Monroe continue the story of President Andrew Johnson.

(MUSIC)

VOICE ONE:

Andrew Johnson

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.

VOICE TWO:

Thaddeus Stevens speaks during the debate over impeachment in the House of Representatives

Most of the charges were based on Johnson's removal from office of his secretary of war. Radicals charged that this violated a new law. The law said the president 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.

(MUSIC)

VOICE ONE:

The great impeachment trial began on March fifth, eighteen sixty-eight. The president refused to attend. But his lawyers were there to defend him.

One 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.

VOICE TWO:

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.

VOICE ONE:

The impeachment trial

It soon became clear that the radicals had thirty-five of these votes. Only seven senators remained undecided. If one of the seven voted guilty, Johnson would be removed.

Radicals put great pressure on the seven men. They tried to buy their votes. Party leaders threatened them. Supporters in the senators' home states were told to write hundreds of letters demanding that Johnson be found guilty.

VOICE TWO:

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."

VOICE ONE:

In the final days before the vote, six of the seven remaining Republican 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. His brother was offered twenty thousand dollars for information about how the senator would vote. Everywhere he turned, he found someone demanding that 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.

VOICE TWO:

The vote of Senator Edmund Ross of Kansas saved the presidency of Andrew Johnson

"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."

VOICE ONE:

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.

(MUSIC)

VOICE TWO:

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 was re-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."

VOICE ONE:

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.

(MUSIC)

ANNOUNCER:

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 voaspecialenglish.com. 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.

Learning English MP3

Welcome to THE MAKING OF A NATION -- American history in VOA Special English.

In the spring of eighteen sixty-five, the American Civil War was over. And the president who had led the Union during that war was dead. Abraham Lincoln had been murdered before the final surrender of Confederate forces.

Andrew Johnson, left, at President Abraham Lincoln's deathbed in April 1865

The chief justice of the United States swore Johnson into office a few hours after Lincoln's death. Most of Lincoln's cabinet was there, together with leading members of Congress. They looked to the new president with a mixture of shock and hope.

This week in our series, Shep O'Neal and Tony Riggs begin the story of America's seventeenth president.

VOICE ONE:

Andrew Johnson was -- like Abraham Lincoln -- a man of the people. He was born in North Carolina. His family was poor. There was no money, or time, for young Andrew to go to school.

When he was fourteen years old, his mother sent him to work for a tailor to learn to make clothes. Andrew worked hard. He opened his own tailoring business in the eastern part of the state of Tennessee. When he was eighteen, he married. His wife, Eliza, taught him to read and write.

VOICE TWO:

Andrew became active in politics.

At the age of twenty-one, he was elected to the town council. Two years later, he became mayor of the town. At thirty-five, he won a seat in Congress, in Washington.

Next, he became governor of Tennessee. Then the state made him one of its two senators. The poor tailor boy was a success.

VOICE ONE:

Andrew Johnson was a member of the Democratic Party. In the presidential election of eighteen-sixty, he supported his party's candidate, not the candidate of the Republican Party: Abraham Lincoln. But, Lincoln won the election.

And, as a result, southern states carried out their earlier threat. They began leaving the Union to form their own nation.

Johnson opposed this secession. He believed the South should remain part of the United States. He decided he had no choice but to support the Republican president.

Most of the other citizens in Tennessee disagreed with him. They decided to leave the Union. Andrew Johnson had to flee his home to save his life. He returned only after Union forces took control of Tennessee and made him military governor.

VOICE TWO:

A political banner supporting Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson

Lincoln hoped Johnson would win the support of Union-loving Democrats. He hoped Johnson would help heal the wounds between North and South.

Now, Lincoln was dead. And Johnson was president. It was up to this little-known former tailor to make the decisions on reconstruction -- on rebuilding the Union.

Johnson, not Lincoln, would decide if reconstruction would be easy or hard. Johnson would choose if the North would punish the defeated rebel states or be merciful to them.

VOICE ONE:

The radicals of Lincoln's Republican Party wanted severe reconstruction. They said the South was a defeated enemy. They demanded strong punishment for all southerners who took part in the rebellion.

These radicals had disliked Lincoln's plans for reconstruction. They felt he was too weak. Now, they hoped Johnson would share their ideas. They urged him to call a special session of Congress to pass strong legislation against the South.

The radicals had reason to believe the new president agreed with them. He had called the rebels traitors. He had demanded strong action against them when the war ended.

"The time has come," Johnson had said, "when the American people should understand what crime is. And that it should be punished."

VOICE TWO:

But Andrew Johnson surprised the radicals. He did not call the special session of Congress. Instead, he announced his own program for the southern states.

Johnson declared a pardon for all former confederates who promised to support the Union and obey laws against slavery. Then, he permitted former officials of the confederacy to run for office in their states' new elections. Many of these former rebels were elected.

The radical Republicans were angry. They saw these elections as proof that the South had not really changed. They accused Johnson of being too soft. They urged him to punish the rebels.

One radical newspaper wrote: "There is only one sure and safe policy for the immediate future. The North must remain the dictator of the republic until the spirit of the North shall become the spirit of the whole country. The South's treason is still unpunished. Southerners cannot be trusted. "

VOICE ONE:

The radicals also worried about what would happen to the recently freed slaves. They said the new state governments of the South would not treat blacks as free and equal citizens. As proof, they pointed to new laws the southern legislatures passed.

For example, the state legislature in Mississippi said no black person could rent farmland. It said a black person needed special permission to work at any job except farming.

Mississippi also passed a law saying a black person could be forced to work for a white man -- usually his former owner -- if he had no other job.

Another way the state governments in the South acted against blacks was by refusing to give them the right to vote.

VOICE TWO:

Andrew Johnson

The radicals tried to take control in two ways.

First, they refused to let many of the recently elected southern congressmen take their seats when Congress opened.

Then they formed their own joint committee on reconstruction. This committee -- not the Senate or the House of Representatives -- would make many of the decisions about reconstruction.

VOICE ONE:

Radical lawmakers took other steps to seize control of reconstruction efforts in the South.

Congress had established a government agency to take care of black refugees in the South. The agency gave food and clothing to former slaves who had no food, money, or jobs. It began to teach them to read and write.

Republicans in Congress moved to extend the life of the agency and increase its powers. They passed a bill and sent it to the White House for the president's approval.

President Johnson vetoed the bill. He said it would create false hopes among former slaves. He also said it was unconstitutional. The radicals tried to overturn Johnson's veto. However, they failed to get the necessary votes.

VOICE TWO:

Congress passed several other bills giving the federal government power to protect the rights of blacks in the southern states. President Johnson vetoed these bills, too. He said they interfered with the rights of the states.

These defeats made the radicals even more angry. Their newspapers began a steady attack against the president and his policy toward the South. Some even accused him of treason.

VOICE ONE:

Many Americans agreed with this criticism of President Johnson. They gave the radicals a big victory in congressional elections of eighteen sixty-six.

Radical leaders gained the power to pass any bill they wished, even over the president's veto. And they wasted no time doing just that. Time after time, they voted to overturn Andrew Johnson's vetoes.

The atmosphere in Washington became very tense. Relations between Congress and the White House sank to their lowest level in history. The political skies darkened. Soon, the storm broke. The radicals tried something that had never been tried before. They tried to remove the president from office.

The conflict between the radicals and Andrew Johnson would provide some of the most historic and intense moments in American history. That will be our story in the next program of THE MAKING OF A NATION.

(MUSIC)

ANNOUNCER:

Our program was written by David Jarmul and Frank Beardsley. The narrators were Shep O'Neal and Tony Riggs. Transcripts, podcasts and historical images from our series are at voaspecialenglish.com. You can also comment on our programs. And we invite you to 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.

Learning English MP3

Welcome to THE MAKING OF A NATION -- American history in VOA Special English.

President Abraham Lincoln

By that time, however, the American Civil War really was over.

General Robert E. Lee surrendered in early April, bringing an end to four years of fighting. Several other Confederate armies were still in the field. But they were too small and too weak to continue the fight.

This week in our series, Maurice Joyce and Leo Scully tell the story of the final surrender of the Confederate armies.

VOICE ONE:

General William T. Sherman

Sherman met with Johnston a few days later. He offered him the same surrender terms that General Lee had accepted. He said the Confederates must give up their weapons and promise to fight no more. Then they would be free to return to their homes.

Johnston said he could not accept these terms. Johnston said he had the power to surrender all the Confederate armies everywhere in the South he said he would do so if Sherman agreed on a political settlement.

VOICE TWO:

The two generals 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.

When the agreement was completed, Sherman sent it immediately to Washington for approval by the new president, Andrew Johnson. The agreement seemed to give the South everything it wanted.

VOICE ONE:

General Joe Johnston

In exchange for this, Sherman said the president would recognize state governments in the south which promised to support the Constitution. He said federal courts would be established in the south again. And he said the president -- as well as he could -- would protect the political rights promised to all people by the Constitution of the United States and the state constitutions.

And Sherman said the United States government would not interfere with any of the southern people, if they remained peaceful and obeyed the laws.

VOICE TWO:

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.

President Johnson rejected the agreement. He said Johnston's army must surrender within forty-eight hours or be destroyed. He said the surrender terms could be no better than those given General Lee.

VOICE ONE:

Johnston decided to surrender. On April twenty-sixth, his army laid down its weapons. One by one, the remaining armies surrendered. The soldiers began returning home.

General Nathan Bedford Forrest

Said Forrest in a farewell speech to his men:

"It is a clear fact that we are beaten. We would be foolish to try to fight further. The government which we tried to establish is at an end. Civil War -- such as you have just passed through -- naturally causes feelings of bitterness and hatred. We must put these feelings aside. Whatever your responsibilities may be, meet them like men. You have been good soldiers. You can be good citizens."

VOICE TWO:

Confederate President Jefferson Davis fled south after the fall of his government. He hoped to get across the Mississippi River. He believed that he could form a new Confederate army. If this failed, he planned to escape to Mexico.

President Lincoln had hoped that Davis would escape. He felt that punishing Davis would only create more bitterness and make reconstruction -- the rebuilding of the South -- more difficult. But President Johnson did not share Lincoln's feelings. He believed Davis had a part in the plot to kill Lincoln. He said Davis must be captured.

On May tenth, Union forces found the Confederate president's camp in southern Georgia. They seized him and took him to Fort Monroe, Virginia. He remained there for many months under close guard. His trial was never held. And finally, in eighteen sixty-seven, he was freed.

VOICE ONE:

Union soldiers march in the Grand Review in Washington in May 1865

For two days, the soldiers marched past the White House. Many of the marching men had fought at Bull Run, at Fredericksburg, Antietam, Gettysburg, Petersburg, and Appomattox. Sherman's western army was there from battles at Shiloh, Vicksburg, Murfreesboro, Chickamauga and Atlanta.

The soldiers marched proudly past the president and other government leaders.

(MUSIC)

VOICE TWO:

All along the way, from the Capitol building to the White House, were huge crowds of cheering people. Hour after hour, the soldiers passed. Never had the city seen such a celebration. Each group of soldiers had its band and carried its own battle flags. Some proudly carried flags that had been torn in fierce fighting.

Finally, late on the second day, the final group of soldiers passed the White House. The grand parade was over. The battle flags were put away, and the marching bands fell silent. The war was ended. Now, men could look about them and count the cost of the war.

VOICE ONE:

Four years of bloody fighting had saved the Union of states. The northern victory had settled for all time the question of whether states could leave the Union. And it had put to rest the great problem of slavery, which had troubled the nation for so many years.

But the costs were great. More than six hundred thousand men of the North and South lost their lives. Hundreds of thousands more were wounded. Many had lost their arms or legs.

VOICE TWO:

The war cost the North almost three-and-one-half thousand million dollars. It was almost as costly to the Confederates. Most of the war was fought in the southern states. And most of the war damage was there.

Hundreds of cities and towns suffered damage. Some -- like Atlanta -- were completely destroyed by Union forces. The damage outside the populated areas was almost as great. Union armies had marched across the South leaving behind them widespread destruction. Farm houses and buildings had been burned; animals and crops seized or destroyed.

VOICE ONE:

Transport in the South was especially hard hit. Union soldiers had destroyed most of the railroads. The few Confederate trains that escaped capture were worn out from heavy use. River boats had been destroyed. And roads and bridges were in terrible condition.

The South had no money to rebuild. Businessmen and rich landowners had put their money in Confederate bonds, now completely worthless. Confederate war debts would never be paid.

There was also the question of the four million former slaves. They were free now. But few could take care of themselves. They needed jobs and training.

VOICE TWO:

The people of the South faced a difficult future. They had been defeated in battle. Their economy was destroyed. In many areas, there was little food and the people were hungry. Farmers could not plant crops, because they had no seed and no animals to break the ground. There was no money for rebuilding.

President Andrew Johnson

VOICE ONE:

President Andrew Johnson, himself a southerner from Tennessee, opposed the radical plans. He had his own program of reconstruction for the South.

(MUSIC)

ANNOUNCER:

Our program was written by Frank Beardsley. The narrators were Maurice Joyce and Leo Scully. Transcripts, podcasts and historical images from our series are at voaspecialenglish.com. You can also comment on our programs. And we invite you to 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.

Learning English MP3

Abraham Lincoln

President Abraham Lincoln led the Union of northern states in four years of civil war against the southern Confederacy. But he did not live to see the end of the war. He did not live to see the nation re-united. He was assassinated in April of eighteen sixty-five.

This week in our series, Shep O'Neal and Maurice Joyce tell what happened after Lincoln died.

VOICE ONE:

Mary Todd Lincoln

Then she said the Capitol building in Washington. A tomb had been built there for America's first President, George Washington. But it had never been used.

Finally, she remembered a country cemetery they had visited. At the time, her husband had said: "When I am gone, lay my remains in some quiet place like this." So Missus Lincoln decided that the president's final resting place would be in the quiet, beautiful Oak Ridge Cemetery outside their home town of Springfield, Illinois.

VOICE TWO:

President Lincoln's funeral procession in Washington

Four years earlier, President-elect Lincoln had traveled by train from Illinois to Washington. He stopped to make speeches in cities along the way. Now, on this sad return trip, the train stopped at those same cities: Baltimore. Philadelphia. New York. Cleveland. Indianapolis. Chicago.

VOICE ONE:

In every town, people lined the railroad. They stood silently, with tears in their eyes, as the train moved slowly past. Farmers working in the fields saw the train and dropped to their knees in prayer. For the wise man who had led the Union through four years of bloody civil war -- Father Abraham -- was dead.

Churches throughout the country held memorial services. Ministers told their people that God had taken Lincoln because the president had completed the job God had given him. He had brought peace to the Union, and freedom to all men.

VOICE TWO:

The final service was at the cemetery outside Springfield. It ended with the words from Lincoln's second inaugural speech.

"With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right -- as God gives us to see the right -- let us strive on to finish the work we are in. Let us heal the nation's wounds. Let us do all possible to get and keep a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."

VOICE ONE:

John Wilkes Booth

The investigation produced the names of several people who were friends of Booth. One was John Surratt. Like Booth, he supported the southern Confederacy during the Civil War. Another was David Herold, a young man who worked in a store in Washington. Others were George Atzerodt, Lewis Paine, Sam Arnold, and Michael O'Laughlin.

Most of these men had stayed at a house owned by John Surratt's mother, Mary.

VOICE TWO:

A poster offering money for the capture of those involved in Lincoln's killing

At the end of a week, only two of the plotters were still free: David Herold and John Wilkes Booth.

Booth broke his leg when he jumped from the presidential box to the stage at Ford's Theater. A few hours later, he and Herold stopped at the home of a Doctor Samuel Mudd. They reportedly gave the doctor false names. They asked him to fix Booth's broken leg.

Doctor Mudd agreed. And he let the two men sleep at his home. Federal troops chasing the assassins arrested the doctor. They accused him of being part of the plot.

VOICE ONE:

John Wilkes Booth and David Herold ran and hid for six days. They crossed the Potomac River from Maryland into Virginia. Finally, twelve days after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, soldiers found the two men. They were hiding in a tobacco barn near the town of Port Royal.

Herold agreed to surrender. He came out of the barn with his hands in the air. He shouted again and again that he was innocent.

Booth refused to come out. The soldiers set fire to the barn.

VOICE TWO:

The fire forced Booth to move close to the door. The soldiers could see him now. He was aiming a gun at them. The soldiers had been ordered to capture Booth alive. But one of them raised his gun and shot Booth in the neck.

The actor fell. Some of the soldiers ran to the burning barn and pulled him out. They carried him to a nearby house. He died two hours later.

VOICE ONE:

John Wilkes Booth carried a notebook. He wrote in it every day. On the day Lincoln was killed, he wrote: "For six months we had worked to kidnap Lincoln. But with the Confederacy being almost lost, something decisive and great must be done. I struck boldly."

Booth described how and why he had shot the president. "Our country," Booth wrote, "owed all her troubles to him. And God simply made me the instrument of his punishment."

Booth's body was returned to Washington. Men who knew him confirmed that it was the body of John Wilkes Booth. The body was buried under the stone floor of the Washington prison. A few years later, his family received permission to move the body to a cemetery in the city of Baltimore.

VOICE TWO:

Evidence showed that only a few people were actually involved in the plot against the president. Most had agreed to work with Booth because they believed he planned to kidnap Lincoln, not kill him.

Of the hundreds of persons arrested, only eight were brought to trial. The secretary of war decided that they would be tried by a military court. He argued that Lincoln had been commander-in-chief of all military forces and had been murdered during wartime.

VOICE ONE:

The military commission that tried the case. From left, Judge Joseph Holt, General Robert Foster, Colonel H. L. Burnett, and Colonel C. R. Clendemin

The secretary of war announced that the prisoners could not meet privately with their defense lawyers. They could meet only in the courtroom. Guards could hear everything they said.

One of the defense lawyers recognized that the job was hopeless. He said the trial was a contest between the defense lawyers and the whole United States. There was no question, he said, what the military court's decision would be.

VOICE TWO:

The government tried to prove that Lincoln's assassination was a Confederate plot. Witnesses told how Confederate supporters reportedly planned to cause trouble in the North. But none could prove that Confederate President Jefferson Davis -- or any other southern leader -- played a part in Booth's plot to kill Lincoln.

Four hundred witnesses appeared. Many of the important ones had been arrested as suspects. They agreed to give evidence if the government dropped the charges against them.

For six weeks, the court heard evidence against the eight prisoners. The prisoners themselves could say nothing. They could only listen.

VOICE ONE:

Officials prepare to hang the plotters in Washington

All eight prisoners were found guilty. One received a prison sentence of six years. Three were sentenced to life in prison. Four were sentenced to die.

Defense lawyers appealed for mercy. The appeal was rejected. On July seventh, David Herold, Lewis Paine, George Atzerodt and Mary Surratt were hanged for the murder of Abraham Lincoln.

(MUSIC)

ANNOUNCER:

Our program was written by Frank Beardsley. The narrators were Shep O'Neal and Maurice Joyce. You can find transcripts, MP3s and podcasts of our programs, along with historical images, at voaspecialenglish.com. 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.

Learning English MP3

Welcome to THE MAKING OF A NATION – American history in VOA Special English.

On April ninth, eighteen sixty-five, Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered his army to Union General Ulysses Grant. Within weeks, the Civil War would be over.

When people in Washington learned of Lee's surrender, they hurried to the White House. The crowd wanted to hear from President Abraham Lincoln.

The speech he gave would be one of his last, as Kay Gallant and Harry Monroe explain this week in our series.

VOICE ONE:

One of the last portraits taken of President Lincoln

Already, he was moving forward from victory to the difficult times ahead. The southern rebellion was over. Now, he faced the task of re-building the Union. Lincoln did not want to punish the South. He wanted to re-join the ties that the Civil War had broken. So, when the people of the North expected a speech of victory, he gave them a speech of reconstruction, instead.

On the night of April eleventh, Lincoln appeared before a crowd outside the White House. He held a candle in one hand and his speech in the other.

VOICE TWO:

"Fellow citizens," Lincoln said. "We meet this evening not in sorrow, but in gladness of heart. The surrender of the main army of the Confederacy gives hope of a righteous and speedy peace. The joy cannot be held back. By these recent successes, we have had pressed more closely upon us the question of reconstruction.

"We all agree," Lincoln continued, "that the so-called seceded states are out of their correct relation with the Union. We also agree that what the government is trying to do is get these states back into their correct relation.

"I believe it is not only possible, but in fact easier to do this without deciding the legal question of whether these states have ever been out of the Union. Finding themselves safely at home, it would be of no importance whether they had ever been away."

VOICE ONE:

There was cheering and applause when President Lincoln finished, but less than when he began. The speech had been too long and too detailed to please the crowd. Lincoln, however, believed it a success. He hoped he had made the country understand one thing: the great need to forget hatred and bitterness in the difficult time of re-building that would follow the war.

The president continued to discuss his ideas on reconstruction over the next few days. On Friday, April fourteenth, he agreed to put this work aside for a while.

In the afternoon, he took his wife Mary for a long drive away from the city. In the evening, they would go to the theater.

VOICE TWO:

One of the popular plays of the time, called "Our American Cousin," was being performed at Ford's Theatre, not far from the White House. The Secretary of War did not want the Lincolns to go alone. He ordered an army officer to go with them.

The President and Misses Lincoln sat in special seats at Ford's Theatre. The presidential box was above and to one side of the stage. A guard always stood outside the door to the box. On this night, however, the guard did not remain. He left the box unprotected.

VOICE ONE:

John Wilkes Booth shoots President Abraham Lincoln

Then the man jumped from the box to the stage three meters below. Many in the theater recognized him. He was an actor: John Wilkes Booth.

Booth broke his leg when he hit the stage floor. But he pulled himself up, shouted "Sic semper tyrannis!" -- "Thus ever to tyrants!" -- and ran out the door. He got on a horse, and was gone.

VOICE TWO:

The attack was so quick that the audience did not know what had happened. Then a woman shouted, "The president has been shot!"

Lincoln had fallen forward in his seat, unconscious. Someone asked if it was possible to move him to the White House. A young army doctor said no. The president's wound was terrible. He would die long before reaching the White House.

So Lincoln was moved to a house across the street from Ford's Theatre. A doctor tried to remove the bullet from the president's head. He could not. Nothing could be done, except wait. The end was only hours away.

VOICE ONE:

A print showing President Lincoln on his deathbed

An official of the War Department described the situation. "The extent of the plot was unknown. From so horrible a beginning, what might come next. How far would the bloody work go. The safety of Washington must be looked after. The people must be told. The assassin and his helpers must be captured."

VOICE TWO:

Early the next morning, April fifteenth, Abraham Lincoln died. A prayer was said over his body. His eyes were closed.

The news went out by telegraph to cities and towns across the country. People read the words, but could not believe them. To millions of Americans, Abraham Lincoln's death was a personal loss. They had come to think of him as more than the President of the United States. He was a trusted friend.

People hung black cloth on their doors in sorrow. Even the South mourned for Lincoln, its former enemy. Southern General Joe Johnston said: "Mr. Lincoln was the best friend we had. His death is the worst thing that could happen for the South."

VOICE ONE:

Messages of regret came from around the world.

British labor groups said they could never forget the things Lincoln had said about working people. Things such as: "The strongest tie of human sympathy should be one uniting all working people of all nations and tongues."

A group representing hundreds of French students sent this message:

"In President Lincoln we mourn a fellow citizen. There are no longer any countries shut up in narrow frontiers. Our country is everywhere where there are neither masters nor slaves. Wherever people live in liberty or fight for it. We look to the other side of the ocean to learn how a people which has known how to make itself free, knows how to preserve its freedom."

The assassination of Abraham Lincoln touched the imagination of America's writers. Many tried to put their feelings into words. Walt Whitman wrote several poems of mourning. Here is part of one of them, "O Captain! My Captain!"

READER:

Here captain! Dear father!

This arm beneath your head!

It is some dream that on the deck,

You've fallen cold and dead.

My captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,

My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will.

The ship is anchor'd safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,

From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;

Exult o shores, and ring o bells!

But I with mournful tread,

Walk the deck my captain lies,

Fallen cold and dead.

VOICE TWO:

Walt Whitman

READER:

When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom'd

And the great star early droop'd in the western sky in the night,

I mourned, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.

Ever-returning spring, trinity sure to me you bring,

Lilac blooming perennial and drooping star in the west,

And thought of him I love ...

Coffin that passes through lanes and streets,

Through day and night with the great cloud darkening the land ...

With the countless torches lit,

With the silent sea of faces and the unbared heads ...

With the tolling, tolling bells' perpetual clang,

Here, coffin that slowly passes,

I give you my sprig of lilac.

(MUSIC)

ANNOUNCER:

Our program was written by Harold Berman and Frank Beardsley. The narrators were Kay Gallant and Harry Monroe, and the poems were read by Shep O'Neal. You can find transcripts, MP3s and podcasts of our programs, plus historical images, at voaspecialenglish.com. 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.

Learning English MP3

Welcome to THE MAKING OF A NATION -- American history in VOA Special English.

Surrender finally came for General Robert E. Lee and the Confederacy he had served as a great soldier.

It was mostly his military skill and intelligence that kept the South in the field so long. But even his extraordinary skill could not save the South from the industrial power of the North and its mighty armies -- armies that were well-fed and well-equipped.

This week in our series, Stuart Spencer and Leo Scully continue the story of the American Civil War.

VOICE ONE:

General Robert E. Lee

Lee fled westward across Virginia. His tired, hungry soldiers tried to turn south, to reach safety in the Carolinas. But always, the Union army blocked the way.

Finally on Saturday, April eighth, Lee's army found it could flee no farther. A Union force at Appomattox Station blocked any further movement to the west.

Early the next morning, Lee tried to break through the ring of Union soldiers that surrounded his army. But he failed. Nothing was left. Nothing but surrender.

VOICE TWO:

The McLean house in 1865

General Lee was waiting for him at the home of a man named Wilmer McLean. Lee rose as Grant walked into the house.

Grant did not look like a great military leader, the chief of all Union armies. He was dressed simply. His clothes were the same as those worn by the lowest soldiers in his army. His boots and pants were covered with mud. His blue coat was dirty and wrinkled. But on its shoulders were the three gold stars of the Union's highest general.

VOICE ONE:

Lee was dressed in his finest clothing. He wore a beautiful gray coat with a red sash tied around it. At his side, he carried an ivory and silver sword.

The two generals greeted each other and shook hands. Grant said: "I met you once before, General Lee, while we were serving in Mexico. I have always remembered your appearance. I think I would have recognized you anywhere."

Lee said: "Yes, I know I met you then. And I have often tried to remember how you looked. But I have never been able to remember a single feature."

VOICE TWO:

Grant continued to talk of their service in the Mexican War. He said later that he did so because he was finding it difficult to bring up the question of surrender.

Lee took part in the light talk for several minutes. Finally, he said: "I suppose, General Grant, that the purpose of our meeting is fully understood. I asked to see you to learn upon what terms you would receive the surrender of my army."

Grant answered: "The terms I propose are those I offered in my earlier note to you. That is, the officers and men surrendered will not take up arms again. And all your weapons and supplies will become captured property."

VOICE ONE:

Generals Grant and Lee at Appomattox

It took him several minutes to write the surrender agreement. Only once did he look up.

He had just written the sentence: "The arms, artillery and public property will be given over to the Union army." Grant stopped writing and looked over at the sword the old general wore.

He decided there was no need to hurt Lee's pride by taking away his sword. So he added:

'This will not include the side arms of the officers nor their horses or other private property. Each officer and man shall be allowed to return to his home. He will not be disturbed by United States authorities as long as he honors this agreement and obeys the laws where he lives.'

VOICE TWO:

Grant gave the paper to Lee. Lee read it slowly. When he finished, Grant asked if the Confederate general wished to propose any changes. Lee was silent for a moment. "There is one thing," he said. "The cavalrymen and artillerymen in our army own their own horses. I would like to understand if these men will be allowed to keep their horses."

"You will find," Grant said, "that the terms as written do not allow it. Only the officers are permitted to take their private property."

"You are correct," said Lee. "I see the terms do not allow it. That is clear."

VOICE ONE:

Until now, Lee's face had shown no emotion. But for a moment, his self-control weakened. Grant could see how badly Lee wanted this.

"Well," said Grant, "I did not know that any private soldiers owned their horses. But I think that this will be the last battle of the war. I sincerely hope so. I think that the surrender of this army will be followed soon by that of all the others.

"I take it that most of your soldiers are small farmers and will need the horses to put in a crop that will carry themselves and their families through the next winter. I will not change the terms as they are written. But I will tell my officers to let all the men who claim to own a horse or mule take the animals home with them to work their little farms."

VOICE TWO:

'Surrender at Appomattox" by artist Tom Lovell

While waiting for the surrender papers to be copied, Grant presented Lee to the other Union officers in the room. Lee had known some of them before the war.

After a few minutes, Lee turned to Grant. He told him that his army held about one thousand Union soldiers as war prisoners. He said that for the past few days, he had no food but cracked corn to give them. He said he had nothing to give his own men to eat.

Grant called in his supply officer and ordered him to feed the Confederate army. He told him to send to Lee's army enough food for twenty-five thousand men.

VOICE ONE:

Detail of "The Surrender at Appomattox" by Keith Rocco

Lee got on his horse and rode slowly back to his army. As he entered Confederate lines, men began to cheer. But the cheering died when the soldiers saw the pain and sorrow in Lee's face. Tears filled the old man's eyes. He could not speak. Soldiers removed their hats and watched silently as Lee rode past. Many wept.

VOICE TWO:

A crowd of soldiers waited at Lee's headquarters. They pushed close around him trying to touch him, trying to shake his hand.

Lee began to speak. "Boys, I have done the best I could for you. Go home now. And if you make as good citizens as you have soldiers, you will do well. I shall always be proud of you. Goodbye. And God bless you all."

From the crowd came a loud cry. "Farewell, General Lee! I wish for your sake and mine that every damned Yankee on earth was sunk ten miles in hell!"

VOICE ONE:

On the other side of the lines, Union soldiers began to celebrate. Artillerymen fired their guns to salute the victory over Lee.

Grant heard the artillery booming and sent orders that it should stop. "The rebels are our countrymen again," he said. "We can best show our joy by refusing to celebrate their downfall."

VOICE TWO:

General Grant left Appomattox Court House to return to his headquarters a few kilometers away. Suddenly, he stopped his horse. He had forgotten to tell President Lincoln or War Secretary Stanton that Lee had surrendered. He sat down at the side of the road and wrote a telegram to Secretary Stanton.

News of the surrender reached Washington late on Sunday. Most citizens in the capital did not learn of it until early the next morning. Then cannons began to boom out over the city. Crowds rushed to the White House to cheer the president. They asked Lincoln to make a victory speech.

Lincoln said he had not prepared a statement. He wished to wait until the next night. He asked the people to come back then and he would have something to say.

(MUSIC)

ANNOUNCER:

Our program was written by Frank Beardsley. The narrators were Stuart Spencer and Leo Scully. You can find transcripts, MP3s and podcasts of our programs along with historical images at voaspecialenglish.com. You can also 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.

Learning English MP3

Welcome to THE MAKING OF A NATION – American history in VOA Special English.

On March fourth, eighteen sixty-five, Abraham Lincoln was sworn-in as president after winning a second term. The election had taken place in the Union of northern states. The Union still followed the United States Constitution. The Confederacy of southern states had left the Union. The South had its own Constitution.

On the evening of Inauguration Day, the White House was opened to the public. The party ended near midnight. Thousands of people went to see President Lincoln.

This week in our series, Kay Gallant and Harry Monroe continue the story of President Lincoln and the American Civil War.

VOICE ONE:

Lincoln was glad the celebrations were over. Now he could get back to the urgent problems that faced him. He hoped that during his second four-year term he could end the Civil War. He hoped he could ease the bitterness and hatred the war had brought.

Lincoln hoped for an easy peace. He wanted no hangings or other brutal acts against the losers. He wanted to see Confederate soldiers go back to their homes to become peaceful citizens of a united country.

Lincoln wanted the nation to grow together again.

VOICE TWO:

General Robert E. Lee

General Robert E. Lee's army still held the area around Richmond, Virginia. Richmond was the Confederate capital. Lee did not believe, however, that he could hold the city much longer.

His once mighty army now had less than fifty thousand men. These men were tired and hungry. And they had to defend a line almost sixty kilometers long, from Richmond to the city of Petersburg.

There just were not enough Confederate soldiers left to fight.

VOICE ONE:

Lee decided that his only hope was to give up the two cities. He would march south and join General Joe Johnston's army in North Carolina. Perhaps the two armies could defeat Union forces moving up through the state. Then they could turn to meet the army of General Ulysses Grant.

This plan had little chance of success. But it would keep the Confederate armies active for a few more weeks or months.

Lee soon discovered that it would not be easy to break out of the trap that Richmond and Petersburg had become. Grant's army seemed to be everywhere.

Lee put eleven thousand of his men into position near Grant's line. They waited for the enemy to attack.

At first, the Confederates received some help from the weather. Heavy rains fell for more than a day. Many roads and fields were flooded. The Union army could not move forward. When it did, the Confederates were ready. They pushed back the attackers.

VOICE TWO:

The Battle of Petersburg

The Confederates moved slowly, then more quickly as Union troops chased them. They began to flee wildly. About half of them were captured.

Grant ordered an immediate attack all along Lee's line. He was sure the line was weak. He was sure he could break it.

A Union army doctor watched the battle from a distance. He said he could see the flash of light from Confederate guns along a line a kilometer long.

After a while, part of the line went dark. Then another part. And another. Flashes of gunfire became fewer. Finally, all of the line was dark. The doctor said he knew then that the Confederate line had fallen.

VOICE ONE:

General Grant had been trying to break General Lee's line for almost a year. Now he had done it.

His troops raced forward to seize the railroad. Lee no longer had a way to supply his troops in Petersburg. He no longer had a quick way to move his army south. He would have to move west first, then turn south. This meant he would have to give up Richmond.

The government of the Confederacy would have to go with him or be captured. Confederate President Jefferson Davis gave the order to go.

VOICE TWO:

The fall of Richmond

Union troops quickly moved into Richmond. Then they raised the United States flag over the once proud capital of the Confederacy.

VOICE ONE:

President Lincoln visited Richmond on April fourth. He visited the Confederate state house where the rebel Congress had met. He had lunch in the Confederate White House where Confederate President Jefferson Davis had lived.

Richmond in ruins

VOICE TWO:

In the next few days, Lincoln followed carefully Grant's campaign against Lee's withdrawing army. By telegraph and messenger, he was informed of every move.

Lee's men marched without food. They did not have time to search for it. They could not stop. The Union army was only a day behind them.

On and on they marched. Many of them -- weak from hunger and tired beyond belief -- could go no farther. They left the road to sleep. Most never got back. Others continued to March. But many threw down their guns and equipment.

Union forces attacked the moving line when they could. There were battles at such places as Amelia Court House, Sayler's Creek, High Bridge and Farmville. Lee's army fought off each attack. But it was slowly bleeding and starving to death.

VOICE ONE:

Lee asked one of his officers to report on the situation. "There is no situation," the officer said. "Nothing remains, General Lee, but to put your poor soldiers on their poor horses and send them home in time to plant the spring crops."

Lee answered: "What would the country think of me, if I did that."

"Country." the officer cried. "There is no country. You are the country to these men. They have fought for you. Without pay or food. There are still thousands of us who will die for you."

VOICE TWO:

General Lee is defeated at Appomattox Station

Lee did not agree that the situation was hopeless. He believed there was still one small chance to escape. He wanted to reach a place called Appomattox Station. There his men could get food. Then they could march to Lynchburg where a railroad would carry them south to safety.

But the Union Army reached Appomattox Station first.

Lee and his officers decided to make a final effort to break out of the circle of Union forces. If their plan failed, Lee would have no other choice. He would have to surrender.

VOICE ONE:

Lee rose early on the appointed day. He put on a new gray coat and a bright red sash. He looked as if he were going to a parade. His officers wondered. Then Lee explained: "I probably will be General Grant's prisoner. I thought I should look my best."

At sunrise, Lee arrived on a hill outside the town of Appomattox Court House. He looked down on what was to be his final battlefield.

His men fought hard and well. But they could not break through the Union line. Finally, Lee said: "There is nothing left me but to go see General Grant. And I would rather die a thousand deaths."

Lee was sure Grant would not demand unconditional surrender. He said: "Grant will give us good terms -- as good as we have the right to demand. I can surrender this army on the condition that its members will never fight again."

Lee turned his horse toward the enemy lines behind his army. He sent a message to General Grant. It said: "I now request to meet with you at such time and place as you may name to discuss the terms of the surrender of this army."

VOICE TWO:

The place would be a home in a town called Appomattox Court House. That will be our story next week.

(MUSIC)

ANNOUNCER:

Our program was written by Frank Beardsley. The narrators were Kay Gallant and Harry Monroe. You can find transcripts, MP3s and podcasts of our programs along with historical images at voaspecialenglish.com. You can also 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.

Learning English MP3

Welcome to THE MAKING OF A NATION – American history in VOA Special English.

In eighteen sixty-four the Union of northern states and the Confederacy of southern states were still fighting. The Civil War began in eighteen sixty-one.

Each side had its own constitution. Under the Union constitution, Americans were supposed to elect a president every four years. Eighteen sixty-four was such a year. And even though a great civil war was being fought, citizens of the North prepared to choose a leader.

This week in our series, Shep O'Neal and Maurice Joyce tell the story of the election of eighteen sixty-four.

VOICE ONE:

Abraham Lincoln

Lincoln's Republican Party was divided. Moderate Republicans wanted to re-build the Union as soon as the war ended. They believed southern states should be welcomed back with full rights. Radical Republicans disagreed strongly. They demanded severe punishment for the southern rebels.

VOICE TWO:

For many months, President Lincoln worked to build a political majority. He formed a new group called the National Union Party. It included moderate Republicans and some Democrats.

Lincoln succeeded in gaining the support of state and local political leaders. It soon became clear that Lincoln would be the party's presidential candidate in the election.

VOICE ONE:

A political banner for the Radical Democracy party candidates John Freemont, right, and John Cochrane

Most of the radical Republicans in Congress did not take part in the convention in Cleveland. They refused to support Fremont. They felt he had no chance to win the election.

VOICE TWO:

President Lincoln's new National Union Party held its convention in Baltimore, Maryland. Convention delegates quickly approved a party statement. The statement supported the Union and the war. It opposed slavery.

Delegates then were ready to nominate their candidates for president and vice president. On the first ballot, they chose Lincoln to run again. And they chose Democrat Andrew Johnson of Tennessee to run as vice president.

VOICE ONE:

During the campaign, Lincoln was advised to begin peace talks with the South. End the war, he was told. Bring southern states back into the Union. Settle the question of slavery later.

Lincoln, however, believed his policies were right for the nation. He would not surrender them, even if they meant his defeat in the election.

Lincoln hated the war. But he would not end it until military victory ended slavery and guaranteed political union.

VOICE TWO:

In August, eighteen sixty-four, Lincoln wrote:

"For some days past, it seems that this administration probably will not be re-elected. Then it will be my duty to cooperate with the president-elect to save the Union. We must do this between election day and inauguration day. For he will have been elected on such ground that he cannot possibly save the Union afterwards."

VOICE ONE:

The Democratic Party held its nominating convention in Chicago, Illinois. Peace Democrats were in firm control.

Peace Democrats demanded an immediate end to the Civil War. They did not care if the North and South remained apart permanently.

The party's statement contained these words: "After four years of failure to restore the Union by war…justice, humanity, liberty, and the public welfare demand that immediate efforts be made to end the fighting. Let us look to a convention of states -- or other peaceable means -- to restore the Union."

VOICE TWO:

General George McClellan

Convention delegates approved the statement. Then they nominated General George McClellan as their candidate for president.

VOICE ONE:

Three days after the Democratic Party convention closed, the Union won an important military victory. Union troops captured Atlanta, Georgia. Atlanta was one of the last remaining industrial cities of the South. Its loss seriously hurt the Confederacy.

A political banner for President Lincoln and Andrew Johnson

Even some supporters of Radical Republican candidate John Fremont turned to Lincoln. Fremont withdrew from the race.

VOICE TWO:

When the people voted in November, their choice was between Abraham Lincoln and George McClellan.

A vote for Lincoln meant a vote for continuing the Civil War until it was won. Until the Union was saved. A vote for McClellan meant a vote for stopping the war. Stopping short of victory.

By midnight of election day, it was clear that Lincoln had won. He got only about a half-million more popular votes than McClellan. But when electoral votes were counted, he got two hundred twelve to McClellan's twenty-one.

VOICE ONE:

Before Lincoln's second inaugural, he agreed to hold peace talks with representatives of the Confederacy. The talks would be held at a Union fort on the Chesapeake Bay.

Lincoln was very firm in one demand. The talks, he said, must discuss peace for "our one common country." There could be no talk, he said, of Confederate independence.

The Confederate representatives said they could not accept those terms. The peace talks ended in failure.

VOICE TWO:

Lincoln returned to Washington. He prepared a message that he wished to send to Congress. It contained a program he felt could end the war within a few weeks.

Lincoln proposed four hundred million dollars in economic aid to the southern states. The money could be used to pay slave owners for freeing their slaves.

Half the money would be paid if the southern states gave up their struggle by April first. The other half would be paid if they approved -- by July first -- a constitutional amendment ending slavery.

As part of the program, Lincoln would pardon all political crimes resulting from the southern rebellion. He also would return all property seized by Union forces.

VOICE ONE:

Lincoln's cabinet officers rejected the program. They urged him not to send it to Congress. They said it would be seen as a sign of weakness.

Lincoln was surprised by the reaction. He thought his cabinet would gladly end the war...a war that was costing the government three million dollars a day and the lives of the nation's young men. But he accepted the cabinet's advice. He did not send his message to Congress.

VOICE TWO:

On March fourth, eighteen sixty-five, Abraham Lincoln was sworn-in as president for a second term. This is part of what he said:

Abraham Lincoln's inauguration in 1864

"We hope -- and we pray -- that this terrible war may pass away quickly. But God may wish it otherwise. He may have it continue until the riches earned from two hundred fifty years of slavery are gone. It may continue until every drop of blood made by the slaveowner's whip is paid for by another made by the soldier's sword.

"With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right -- as God gives us to see the right -- let us strive on to finish the work we are in. Let us heal the nation's wounds. Let us do all possible to get and keep a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."

VOICE ONE:

That night, the White House was open to the public. Thousands of people went to see the president. Poet Walt Whitman gave this description:

"I saw Mr. Lincoln, dressed all in black. He was shaking hands, looking very sad, as if he would give anything to be somewhere else."

(MUSIC)

ANNOUNCER:

Our program was written by Frank Beardsley. The narrators were Shep O'Neal and Maurice Joyce. You can find transcripts, MP3s and podcasts of our programs along with historical images at voaspecialenglish.com. You can also 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.

Learning English MP3

Welcome to THE MAKING OF A NATION -- American history in VOA Special English.

In eighteen sixty-four, the battle at Cold Harbor in Virginia ended a month of fighting by the Union Army of the Potomac. The campaign had brought the army almost to the edge of Richmond, the Confederate capital.

But General Ulysses Grant had paid a terrible price: more than fifty thousand Union dead and wounded. Confederate losses were much lighter -- about twenty thousand.

Grant was beginning to learn an important lesson of the war. The methods of defense had improved much more than the methods of attack.

This week in our series, Harry Monroe and Kay Gallant continue the story of the American Civil War.

VOICE ONE:

By the autumn of eighteen sixty-four, it appeared that the North would defeat the South in the war between the states. The southern army needed men and supplies. There was little hope of getting enough of either to win.

The northern army was stronger and better-equipped. But it, too, had suffered. Much of the death and destruction was the result of new military technology.

VOICE TWO:

Example of a minie ball

Before the minie ball, few soldiers could hit a target more than thirty meters away. With the new bullet, they could hit targets more than one hundred fifty meters away. Soldiers with such weapons could be put into position behind stone or earth walls. Then it was almost impossible to defeat them.

VOICE ONE:

Most American generals, however, seemed unable to accept this. They continued to use the old methods of attack that had worked before the minie ball was invented.

Hundreds or thousands of men were put in long lines across the front of the enemy position. A signal was given. The men began to march forward. When they got close, they fired their guns. Then they ran at the enemy and struck with their knives or hands. The idea was to shock the enemy, frighten him, and make him run away.

As generals on both sides learned, this method no longer worked. The attackers were shot down before they could get close enough to hurt the defenders.

VOICE TWO:

After three and a half years of fighting, hundreds of thousands of Union and Confederate soldiers had been killed or wounded. Still the war continued.

In the East, Union armies were slowly pushing forward toward their main target. That was the Confederate capital at Richmond, Virginia. In the West, Union armies were slowly pushing deeper into Confederate territory. The western armies were led by General William Sherman.

VOICE ONE:

General Joe Johnston

Sherman's army was stronger than Johnston's army. But the Confederates usually got into better defensive positions. Sherman refused to attack in such situations. It was easier to march around the Confederates and force them to withdraw. This happened again and again.

VOICE TWO:

Confederate President Jefferson Davis began to believe that General Johnston was afraid to fight. He replaced him with another general. Within two days, that general attacked the Union Army. The attack began without enough planning. It was based on false information. It was a disaster.

In eleven days of fighting, one-third of the Confederate Army in Georgia was destroyed. The remaining force was too weak to defend Atlanta. The city fell.

VOICE ONE:

The Battle of Atlanta

Before leaving, his men set fire to the city. Almost all of Atlanta was destroyed. Sherman's army would continue to do this all the way to Savannah, Georgia, three hundred fifty kilometers away. It cut a path of destruction more than one hundred kilometers wide.

This campaign would be known as Sherman's March to the Sea.

VOICE TWO:

Sherman's march to the sea

Union soldiers stopped at every farm and village. They took food and clothing. They took horses, cows, and other farm animals. What they could not take, or did not want, they destroyed.

They set fire to houses and farm buildings. They burned crops. They destroyed stores and factories. They burned bridges and pulled up railroad tracks.

Day by day, the Union army of General William Sherman cut and burned its way across Georgia.

VOICE ONE:

The army faced little opposition. Small groups of Confederate horse soldiers struck at the edges of the army. But they did little damage. On December twenty-second, eighteen sixty-four, Sherman reached Savannah. He sent a message to President Abraham Lincoln in Washington. He said: "I beg to present you, as a Christmas holiday gift, the city of Savannah."

Sherman's campaign had cut a great wound in the heart of the Confederacy. All that remained were the states of South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia.

His march to the sea had a great, destructive effect on the spirit of the South.

VOICE TWO:

General William Sherman

As Sherman's army moved across South Carolina, it destroyed almost everything in sight.

The soldiers remembered that South Carolina had been the first state to rebel and leave the Union. They remembered that South Carolina had fired the first shots of the war. This time -- against orders -- they destroyed the land they left behind. Confederate forces could not stop them.

VOICE ONE:

The same thing happened in the Shenandoah River Valley northwest of Richmond.

In the early years of the war, Confederate forces had moved through the valley to strike northern territory. They had invaded Maryland and Pennsylvania, and had threatened Washington, from there.

General Grant decided that the Confederates had used the Shenandoah Valley long enough. He sent some of his men into the valley. He ordered them to destroy everything that might be of use to the enemy. "Eat up Virginia," he said, "clear and clean as far as you can go."

Farms were burned. Crops were destroyed. Farm animals were taken away or killed. Nothing was left that could feed a man or animal. Nothing but blackened earth.

VOICE TWO:

General Philip Sheridan

By the end of the year, Union troops had complete control of the valley. The only Confederate power that remained was the army of General Robert E. Lee.

VOICE ONE:

With the Shenandoah Valley closed to the Confederates, food supplies fell very low. There was almost nothing to feed the soldiers in Lee's army. Wagons would go out each day in search of food. They returned almost empty.

More and more Confederate soldiers were running away. Some returned to their homes. Others surrendered to Union forces.

Confederate leaders no longer could find soldiers to take the places of those who left. Men would not answer the army's call. There was, however, a huge labor force in the South that the army had not called: slaves.

VOICE TWO:

A black Union soldier

Confederate lawmakers finally began to discuss the idea of using slaves as soldiers. A bill was proposed that would free any slave who joined the army to fight.

Many southern leaders opposed the bill, even if it would save the Confederacy. Said one: "Do not arm the slaves. The day you make them soldiers is the beginning of the end of the revolution. If slaves make good soldiers, our whole idea of slavery is wrong."

VOICE ONE:

General Robert E. Lee did not agree. He believed slaves could be made into good soldiers if they believed they had an interest in Confederate victory.

He proposed giving immediate freedom to any slave who joined the army. The Confederate Congress passed a bill in March of eighteen sixty-five to accept Negroes as soldiers. The bill did not promise to free them. By then, however, it was too late. An army of freed slaves could not be trained in time to save the Confederacy.

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ANNOUNCER:

Our program was written by Frank Beardsley and Christine Johnson. The narrators were Harry Monroe and Kay Gallant. Transcripts, MP3s and podcasts of our programs are online, along with historical images, at voaspecialenglish.com. Join us again next week for THE MAKING OF A NATION -- an American history series in VOA Special English.

Learning English MP3

Welcome to THE MAKING OF A NATION -- American history in VOA Special English.

On July fourth, eighteen sixty-three, a huge Confederate army surrendered at Vicksburg, Mississippi. Union forces had surrounded the city for forty-seven days. Food was gone. The situation was hopeless. The Confederate commander gave up.

The terms of surrender were simple. The Confederate soldiers promised not to fight anymore. In return for this promise, they were released on parole and sent home to their families.

Never had Union forces won such a victory. Thirty thousand Confederate soldiers were now out of the war. Sixty thousand guns and one hundred seventy cannon were now in Union hands. The Mississippi River was now under Union control.

This week in our series, Larry West and Maurice Joyce continue our story of the American Civil War.

VOICE ONE:

General Ulysses Grant

The Union army there had just been defeated in a battle along a little river called the Chickamauga. Now the Union soldiers were resting and re-organizing in Chattanooga. The Confederate line stretched halfway around the city.

The Confederates had artillery on Lookout Mountain. They controlled every road into the city except a rough one through the mountains. They had blocked the Tennessee River above and below the city. And they had cut the railroad. The Confederate general said he would let hunger force the Union Army to surrender.

VOICE TWO:

Grant arrived in Chattanooga late in October. The city was full of hungry Union soldiers. They had been without supplies for almost a month.

Grant wasted no time. He quickly sent troops to fight the Confederate force blocking the Tennessee River. He sent others to fight the Confederates blocking the road to the nearest Union supply center. Within one week, supply wagons were rolling into Chattanooga. Within a few weeks, the defeated Union army was ready to fight again.

VOICE ONE:

Fighting on Lookout Mountain in Tennessee

There were few Confederate soldiers at Lookout Mountain. That end of the line fell easily. The center of the line was along a low hill called Missionary Ridge. It held for a while. Then Union soldiers -- acting without orders -- forced their way to the top of the hill. The Confederate line broke. Southern soldiers threw down their guns and ran for their lives.

The Confederate army withdrew south into the state of Georgia. Tennessee was completely in Union hands. The way was now open for the armies of the North to march into the heart of the Confederacy.

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VOICE TWO:

It was clear that the South could not win the war. Too many Confederate soldiers had fallen in battle. None were left to take their place. Supplies were very low. There was not enough food to eat, no shoes to wear, and little left to fight with.

No one held any hope of getting supplies from outside the Confederacy. The South was circled by Union troops and warships. All seemed lost.

Yet Confederate soldiers refused to stop fighting. They would not surrender. The war would not end until the Confederate armies were defeated by military force.

VOICE ONE:

There was no question that the North had the military strength. Supplies were no problem. Factories were producing more than ever before. Manpower was no problem. Men continued to join the Union army. Fewer than before, but still enough to make it a powerful force.

The problem with the Union army was its generals. Some were too careful. Some were unwilling to fight. Some did not know how to fight.

The only general who seemed able to win victories was Ulysses Grant. That is why President Abraham Lincoln named Grant commander of all Union armies. Lincoln depended on him to end the Civil War.

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VOICE TWO:

Grant went east in March eighteen sixty-four, five months after the battle at Chattanooga. He decided to make his headquarters in the field with the Army of the Potomac. He said he would not command from an office in Washington. But he went to the city to explain his plans to President Lincoln.

Grant noted that, in the past, the separate Union armies had moved and fought independently. He said they were like a poorly trained team of horses. No two of them ever pulled at the same time in the same direction.

Under his command, Grant said, the Union armies would pull together. They would hit the Confederates with so much strength in so many places that the rebels could not stop them.

Grant said all the armies would attack at the same time.

VOICE ONE:

Grant spent the month of April preparing for the big campaign. The main target, once again, was the Confederate capital at Richmond, Virginia.

The Army of the Potomac had one hundred twenty thousand men. It would move against Richmond from the north. General Ben Butler had fifty thousand men. He would move against Richmond from the east. General Franz Sigel would bring thousands more through the Shenandoah Valley to the northwest.

These forces were three times the size of Robert E. Lee's army near Richmond.

In the west, William Sherman had three armies with more than one hundred thousand men. His opponent, Joe Johnston, had just sixty thousand.

VOICE TWO:

General Grant kept details of the campaign as secret as possible. Reporters asked President Lincoln when Grant would move.

The president answered, "Ask General Grant."

"General Grant will not tell us," said the reporters. Said Lincoln, "He will not tell me, either."

The final Union campaign of the Civil War began on May third, eighteen sixty-four.

After two days of marching, the Army of the Potomac reached the wilderness. It was a thickly wooded area west of Fredericksburg, Virginia. That was where the Union army had lost a battle to the Confederates one year before. That was where the two armies would fight again.

VOICE ONE:

The battle quickly became a blind struggle. The woods were thick. The smoke was heavy. The soldiers could not see each other until they were very close. Shells set the trees on fire. The wounded could not escape the flames. Their screams filled the air.

After two days, General Grant decided that the wilderness was not the place to fight Robert E. Lee. He wanted to get around the end of Lee's army. He wanted to fight in the open, where he could use his artillery. So he began to march his men toward a place called Spotsylvania Court House.

VOICE TWO:

General Grant at his headquarters in Cold Harbor

For several more days, the two armies fought. At times, they were so close they had no time to load and fire their guns. So they used their guns to hit each other.

The Confederate line bent. But it never broke. Once again, Lee had stopped the Union army.

Grant refused to accept defeat. He said he would fight to the finish, if it took all summer. Once again, he ordered his men to march around the end of Lee's line. Lee quickly pulled his men back to a place called Cold Harbor, not far from Richmond. There they waited.

VOICE ONE:

The Battle of Cold Harbor

Grant finally stopped the attack. The Union soldiers returned to their lines. They left behind hundreds of wounded men.

For four days, the wounded lay on the battlefield crying for help, for water. Men who tried to rescue them were shot down. Finally, Grant and Lee agreed on a ceasefire to take care of the wounded and bury the dead. It was too late for most of the wounded. They had died.

VOICE TWO:

The battle at Cold Harbor ended one month of fighting for the Army of the Potomac. The campaign had brought it almost to the edge of Richmond, the Confederate capital. But Grant had paid a terrible price: more than fifty thousand dead and wounded.

Confederate losses were much lighter: about twenty thousand.

General Grant was beginning to learn an important lesson of the war. The methods of defense had improved much more than the methods of attack.

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ANNOUNCER:

Our program was written by Frank Beardsley. The narrators were Larry West and Maurice Joyce. You can find transcripts, MP3s and podcasts of our programs, along with historical images, at voaspecialenglish.com. 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.

Learning English MP3

Welcome to THE MAKING OF A NATION -- American history in VOA Special English.

In eighteen sixty-three, Union forces defeated Confederate forces in the bloodiest battle of the American Civil War -- the Battle of Gettysburg. Soon after that, the Union won another important victory, seizing Vicksburg, Mississippi.

This week in our series, Kay Gallant and Harry Monroe continue our story of the Civil War with the Battle of Vicksburg.

VOICE ONE:

Abraham Lincoln in 1863

The president remained in bed. Few visitors could see him. There was a danger the smallpox could spread.

Lincoln got better after a few weeks. He began working on his yearly message to Congress. After two-and-a-half years of war, he had good news to report. Union armies had gained two important victories at about the same time.

VOICE TWO:

One was the battle of Gettysburg. Union forces led by General George Meade had defeated Confederate forces led by General Robert E. Lee. They pushed Lee back into Virginia. It was the last Confederate invasion of the North.

The day after the battle of Gettysburg, Union forces defeated Confederate forces at Vicksburg, Mississippi. This victory gave them control of the Mississippi River. And it split the states of the Confederacy.

VOICE ONE:

Union General Ulysses Grant had been trying to seize Vicksburg for several months. It was not easy. Vicksburg lay on the east side of the Mississippi River. It was built high above the water on a rocky cliff. As the river flowed past Vicksburg, it turned in sharply at the base of the cliff and then continued on to the Gulf of Mexico.

The Confederates had placed cannon all along the sharp turn in the river. Enemy boats sailing past, made easy targets.

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VOICE TWO:

Ulysses Grant

First, Grant planned to cross the river into northern Mississippi state. Then he would march south to Vicksburg. He crossed the river. But Confederate forces destroyed his transportation and supply lines. He withdrew. Early in eighteen sixty-three, he tried again.

VOICE ONE:

This time, he planned to sail his men past Vicksburg. They would cross the river a little downstream, turn and attack.

Grant moved forty thousand men to a point ten kilometers from Vicksburg. He told the men to put down their guns and take up digging tools. They would build a canal to carry them past the turn in the river, past the Confederate cannon.

VOICE TWO:

For weeks, the Union soldiers worked on the canal. They dug through mud and wet clay. Many died of disease. After more than a month of digging, engineers decided that the canal would not work. Grant ordered the men to build another canal. Then another. They did not work, either.

By this time, the Union soldiers had become experts at digging canals. One of them said: "As soon as the canals at Vicksburg are finished, we are going to cut a canal across the upper part of Florida. We will cut that state off from the Confederacy, and give it to the alligators!"

VOICE ONE:

Finally, in April, eighteen sixty-three, Grant gave up all ideas of getting past Vicksburg without a fight. He decided to march most of his men down the west side of the river to a steamboat landing thirty kilometers below Vicksburg. He would send his navy boats past the city at night and hope for the best.

It took three weeks for Grant's men to reach the steamboat landing. The roads were very rough. In many places, they were covered with water. Engineers had to cut trees and cover the muddy roads with logs so wagons would not sink. They had to build bridges over the many streams.

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VOICE TWO:

On the night of April sixteenth, the Union navy made its run past Vicksburg. Eight gunboats and three empty troop boats floated down the dark river. Their engines were silent.

The Confederates, however, had built fires along the river. They saw the Union boats and began to shoot. They hit most of the boats, but destroyed only one. The damaged boats reached safety below the city.

On the last day of April, the Union troop boats began carrying soldiers to the east side of the river. About twenty-three thousand men crossed. Right away, they faced a force of eight thousand Confederate soldiers. They drove the Confederates back.

VOICE ONE:

Grant then ordered the rest of his army to cross to the east side of the river. Some of his officers protested. They said it would be impossible to get supplies to a large army east of the river.

Grant was not worried about supplies. He said the men should bring only coffee, hard bread, and salt. Anything else could be taken from the farmers of Mississippi. Their homes, he said, were full of food.

VOICE TWO:

Grant decided not to throw his men against the strong defenses around Vicksburg immediately. Instead, he marched them east toward Jackson, the state capital.

Jackson was the supply base for the Confederate army defending Vicksburg. Grant wanted to cut the supply lines between the two cities. He also wanted to prevent the soldiers in Jackson from joining the soldiers in Vicksburg.

Grant captured Jackson easily. He left some troops to destroy enemy supplies. He took the remaining troops and turned back toward Vicksburg.

VOICE ONE:

Siege of Vicksburg

Grant closed in with men and artillery. As one soldier wrote: "The circle of Union forces around the city was so tight that a cat could not have crept out without being discovered."

Nothing could get out. Nothing could get in.

Weeks passed. The Union army shelled the city. The Confederate army answered from time to time. Food supplies dropped. There was little to eat except corn bread and the meat of mules. Some people caught rats and ate them.

VOICE TWO:

Union positions near Vicksburg

The two commanders met under a white flag of truce. Grant demanded unconditional surrender. Pemberton rejected the demand.

Pemberton's men were to be prisoners. That was a fact. But Pemberton wanted them released immediately on parole. He told Grant that his men would promise to stay out of the war if permitted to return to their homes. If not, he said, they would continue to fight.

VOICE ONE:

Grant agreed to let the Confederate soldiers go home. He and Pemberton signed the surrender agreement on July fourth. The siege of Vicksburg had lasted forty-seven days.

Never had a Union army won such a victory. Grant had taken thirty thousand Confederate soldiers out of the war. He had captured sixty thousand guns and one hundred seventy cannons.

These were serious losses for the Confederacy. It already was low on manpower and weapons. But an even greater loss was the control of the Mississippi River. With Vicksburg in Union hands, the North could control the whole length of the river. And the confederacy was split badly.

(MUSIC)

ANNOUNCER:

Our program was written by Frank Beardsley. The narrators were Kay Gallant and Harry Monroe. You can find transcripts, MP3s and podcasts of our programs, along with historical images, at voaspecialenglish.com. 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.

Learning English MP3

Welcome to THE MAKING OF A NATION -- American history in VOA Special English.

In November of eighteen sixty-three, President Abraham Lincoln traveled to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. He went there to make a speech at a ceremony establishing a military burial ground.

Five months earlier, Confederate General Robert E. Lee had marched his army up from Virginia to invade the North. The Union Army of the Potomac went after him. They met at Gettysburg in the bloodiest battle of the Civil War.

This week in our series, Kay Gallant and Frank Oliver tell the story of Abraham Lincoln's speech -- the Gettysburg Address.

VOICE ONE:

The battle of Gettysburg lasted three days. General Lee threw his men against the Union Army. The northern soldiers refused to break. Lee, at last, had to stop fighting. Badly hurt, his army went back to Virginia.

Union dead at Gettysburg

The terrible job of clearing the battlefield fell to the Union soldiers who had won the battle. Many thousands on both sides had been wounded. The wounded were moved to medical centers for treatment. The dead were buried.

Most of the bodies were buried where they fell. The Confederate dead generally were buried together in large, shallow graves. Union troops who fell were buried in separate graves all over the battlefield.

VOICE TWO:

A few weeks after the battle, the governor of Pennsylvania visited Gettysburg. As he walked over the battlefield, he saw where rains had washed away the earth covering many of the fallen soldiers. He said men who died so bravely should have a better resting place than that.

The governor said a new cemetery should be built for the bodies of the Union soldiers. He asked the governors of other northern states to help raise money for the cemetery.

Within a month, there was money enough to buy a large area of the battlefield for a military cemetery. Work began almost immediately. The human remains were moved from other places on the battlefield and put into graves in the new cemetery.

VOICE ONE:

Edward Everett

An invitation was sent to the White House, too. The governor asked President Lincoln to come to the ceremony. He asked Lincoln to say a few words.

Lincoln agreed to do so. He felt it was his duty to go. He wanted to honor the brave men who had died at Gettysburg. Lincoln hoped his words might ease the sorrow over the loss of these men and lift the spirit of the nation.

VOICE TWO:

Lincoln was advised to talk about democracy. He recently had received a letter from a man in Massachusetts. The man had just returned from a visit to Europe.

The man told Lincoln that Europeans saw the war more clearly than Americans, who were in the middle of it. He said they saw it as a war between the people and an aristocracy. The South, he said, was ruled by a small group of aristocrats. He said once the people understood that it was a war for democracy, they would win it quickly.

The man urged Lincoln to explain to the common people that the war was not the North against the South, but democracy against the enemies of democracy.

VOICE ONE:

Lincoln was busy during the two weeks before the ceremony at Gettysburg. He did not have much time to work on his speech. He decided what to say. But he did not choose the exact words he would use.

Lincoln left Washington November eighteenth for the train ride to Gettysburg. The train stopped in Baltimore. A crowd waited to see him.

An old man came up and shook Lincoln's hand. He told the president that he had lost a son in the fighting at Gettysburg. Lincoln said he understood the man's sorrow.

Lincoln said to the old man: "When I think of the sacrifices of life still to be offered, and the hearts and homes to be made lonely before this terrible war is over, my heart is like lead. I feel at times like hiding in a deep darkness."

VOICE TWO:

Lincoln arrived at Gettysburg at sundown. He had dinner. Then he went to his room to complete the speech he would give the next day. He worked for several hours. Finally, it was done.

The next morning, Lincoln -- on horseback -- led a slow parade to the new cemetery. A huge crowd waited before the place where Lincoln and the other important visitors would sit. Military bands played. Soldiers saluted.

VOICE ONE:

The ceremonies began with a prayer. Then Edward Everett rose to speak.

Everett stood silent for a moment. He looked out across the battlefield and the crowds that now covered it. He began to talk about the Civil War and what had caused it. He spoke about Lee's invasion of the North. He told how northern cities would have fallen had Lee not been stopped at Gettysburg. He praised the men who had given their lives in the great battle.

Everett spoke for almost two hours. He closed his speech with the hope that the nation would come out of the war with greater unity than ever before.

Then Lincoln stood up. He looked out over the valley, then down at the papers in his hand. He began to read:

VOICE THREE:

The only known photograph of President Lincoln, center, at the Civil War cemetery at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania

"Now we are engaged in a great civil war testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

"But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate -- we cannot consecrate -- we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract.

"The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work for which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.

It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us - that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion - that we here highly resolve 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 people, shall not perish from the earth."

VOICE TWO:

The crowd applauded for several minutes. Then the people began to leave.

Lincoln turned to a friend. He said he feared his speech had been a failure. He said he should have prepared it more carefully.

Edward Everett did not agree with Lincoln. He said the president's speech was perfect. He said the president had said more in two minutes than he, Everett, had said in two hours.

Newspapers and other publications praised Lincoln's Gettysburg address. Said one: "The few words of the president were from the heart, to the heart. They cannot be read without emotion."

Abraham Lincoln went back to Washington that night. He was very tired. Within a week, his secretary announced that the president was sick. He was suffering from smallpox.

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ANNOUNCER:

Our program was written by Frank Beardsley. The narrators were Kay Gallant and Frank Oliver. You can find transcripts, MP3s and podcasts of our programs, along with historical images, at voaspecialenglish.com. You can also comment on our programs and read what other people are saying. 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.

Learning English MP3

Welcome to THE MAKING OF A NATION – American history in VOA Special English.

America's civil war in the eighteen sixties did not have the full support of the people. Many said they did not care who won -- North or South. They just wanted to be left alone.

General Robert E. Lee

Southern leaders were pleased with the anti-war movement in the North. Confederate General Robert E. Lee saw it as a sign of weakness in the northern war effort. He also saw it as an opening for a military victory. Lee hoped for a final, decisive blow that would bring the war to an end.

This week in our series, Kay Gallant and Harry Monroe talk about General Lee's campaign north to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

VOICE ONE:

Gettysburg was a small town. Many roads came together there. Robert E. Lee needed those roads to pull his army together quickly. He had seventy thousand men in all. But they were spread over a wide area of southern Pennsylvania.

Some were at York, to the east. Some were at Carlisle, to the north. And most were at Chambersburg, to the west. All of them were ordered to move against the Union force at Gettysburg.

General Robert E. Lee had not planned to go to Gettysburg. He had planned to capture Harrisburg, the state capital, and then Philadelphia. If successful, he would turn south to seize Baltimore and Washington.

Lee had not worried about the large Union Army of the Potomac. He believed it was far behind him, in Virginia. But Lee was wrong. The Union Army had followed him. And it had reached Gettysburg first.

VOICE TWO:

The first group of northern soldiers formed a thin line of defense outside Gettysburg. The first group of southern soldiers attacked this line. It was the morning of July first, eighteen sixty-three.

When the guns began to roar, both sides hurried more men to the front.

After hours of fighting, the Confederates had pushed the Union soldiers back through the town. The Union soldiers formed a new line along a place called Cemetery Hill.

General Robert E. Lee decided not to attack the hill immediately. He would wait for more men. But as he waited, more and more Union soldiers arrived. By sunrise the next day, Lee's seventy thousand men faced a Union army of ninety thousand men.

VOICE ONE:

General George Meade

The fighting stopped at sunset. Union commander George Meade met with his generals. He said he was sure General Lee would attack again the next day. The next attack, Meade said, would be against the center of the Union line.

Meade was right. Lee planned to send fifteen thousand men against the Union center. They would be under the command of General George Pickett.

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VOICE TWO:

The Battle of Gettysburg

The morning passed. The day grew hotter. A little past one o'clock in the afternoon, a Confederate gun fired, once. Then again. That was the signal to attack.

All at once, the Confederate artillery thundered with a deafening roar. The cannon sent iron and smoke into the Union soldiers on Cemetery Hill. Within minutes, hundreds lay dead or dying.

Union artillery on the hill answered the Confederate cannon. Men lay flat on the ground. They prayed for the shelling to stop. Finally, it did. And the smoke of battle began to clear.

VOICE ONE:

Now the Union soldiers could see across the valley. They watched as the Confederate soldiers formed a long line. It was a sight to take your breath away.

Facing Cemetery Hill, the Confederates stood shoulder to shoulder in a line almost two kilometers long. Sunlight shone from their guns. Their battle flags waved. Slowly, the line began to move. It seemed more like a parade than an attack.

Shouts went up and down the Union line. "Here they come! Here come the rebels!"

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VOICE TWO:

Union soldiers rose up from behind stone walls and fallen trees. They poured even more gunfire into the Confederate line. More and more bodies fell to the ground. Still, the line moved forward.

A few Confederates reached the Union line, but not enough to seize it. They were shot down. Suddenly, the Confederates began racing down the hill. Many raised their hands in surrender. Fifteen thousand began the attack. Only half returned.

The battle of Gettysburg was over.

The Union commander, General Meade, was told that the Confederate attack had been broken. He said, simply: "Thank God." The Confederate commander, General Lee, said: "This has been a sad day for us, a sad day."

VOICE ONE:

Lee's invasion of the North had failed. There was only one thing he could do now: retreat. He must get his army back to Virginia. He could only hope that the Union Army was hurt too badly to chase him.

The line of wagons carrying wounded soldiers was twenty-five kilometers long. Many of the wounded needed treatment. But the wagons were not permitted to stop for any reason.

Suffering was terrible. An officer who led the wagon train said he learned more about the horrors of war on that one trip than he had learned in all of his battles.

Twenty thousand Confederate soldiers were killed, wounded, or listed as missing in the battle of Gettysburg. Twenty-three thousand Union soldiers were killed, wounded or missing.

VOICE TWO:

General Meade lost so many men that he was in no hurry to chase General Lee. He believed it might be best to let Lee escape than to take a chance on losing what remained of the Army of the Potomac.

Meade waited for a week until his army was stronger. But by then, Lee and his men had crossed safely back into Virginia.

President Abraham Lincoln was angry. He had told General Meade that driving the Confederates out of the North was not enough. The southern army must be destroyed.

"We had them," Lincoln said. "We had only to stretch out our hands and take them. And nothing I could do or say could make the army move."

VOICE ONE:

President Lincoln believed that General Meade had made a mistake. But he felt that the general had ability. Lincoln was thankful for what Meade had done at Gettysburg. He said Meade would continue to command the Army of the Potomac.

In November of eighteen sixty-three, President Lincoln went to Gettysburg. He attended the opening of a new burial place for the Union soldiers who had died in the great battle there.

VOICE TWO:

The governor of Pennsylvania had asked the president to say a few words at the ceremony. Lincoln agreed. He felt it was his duty to go to honor the brave men who lost their lives to save the Union. Lincoln hoped his words might help lift the spirit of the nation.

Lincoln did not have much time to prepare his speech. He wrote it down the night before the ceremony. Lincoln was sure the speech was not a good one. But it came to be one of the most famous speeches in American history.

We will tell the story of Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address next week.

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ANNOUNCER:

Our program was written by Frank Beardsley. The narrators were Kay Gallant and Harry Monroe. Transcripts, MP3s and podcasts of our programs are online, along with historical images, at voaspecialenglish.com. And you can follow our weekly programs 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.

Learning English MP3

Welcome to THE MAKING OF A NATION -- American history in VOA Special English.

By eighteen sixty-three, America's northern states and southern states had been fighting a bitter civil war for two years. Both sides felt the pressure of the costly struggle.

The South was beginning to suffer from a lack of supplies and men for its armies. The North was beginning to suffer from a lack of fighting spirit.

This week in our series, Larry West and Tony Riggs describe an anti-war movement that was growing.

VOICE ONE:

Abraham Lincoln

Coal miners in Pennsylvania protested against a law drafting men into the Union army. They rioted and attacked officials who tried to take them. Soldiers were sent to Pennsylvania to put down the riots.

Farmers in Ohio also protested. They refused to be drafted. They attacked soldiers who were sent to arrest them. The worst anti-war riots, however, took place in New York City.

VOICE TWO:

On July thirteenth, eighteen sixty-three, a crowd formed outside a New York draft office. Inside, army officials were choosing the names of men who would be taken into the army.

Each name was written on a separate piece of paper. The papers were mixed together in a big box. The officials then began to remove the papers one at a time. They made a list of the names. These were the men of New York who must go off to fight.

On that day, however, the list was never completed. The crowd outside the draft office became louder. There were shouts of protest against the draft and against the Civil War.

VOICE ONE:

Police struggling to control rioters in New York

The riot began as a political protest against the draft. Poor men opposed the draft, because it permitted rich men to escape military service.

The law said a man who was drafted could stay out of the army by doing one of two things. He could pay the government three hundred dollars. Or he could pay another man to serve in his place. If a drafted man could not do either thing, then he must join the army or be shot as a deserter.

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VOICE TWO:

In the wartime economy of the North, prices were rising much faster than wages. Even a man with a good job had a difficult time feeding his family. It was impossible for him to pay the government three hundred dollars or pay someone else to serve for him in the army.

Poor men protested against the law. They said it was unfair. "It's a rich man's war," they cried, "but a poor man's fight. The rich man's money against the poor man's blood."

VOICE ONE:

There was something else that deeply troubled working men in the North. Anti-war activists told them that the war was not being fought to save the Union, but to free Negro slaves.

The activists said the freed Negroes would move north and take jobs away from whites. Many men believed this. They said they would not fight.

VOICE TWO:

An orphanage for black children burns during the riots in New York

The rioters beat many policemen to death. They beat, burned, and hanged every Negro they could find. They also killed many whites who tried to protect the Negroes. By the time soldiers stopped the rioting, one thousand persons had been killed.

VOICE ONE:

The leaders of the anti-war movement in the north were members of the opposition Democratic Party. They wore on their coats a copper penny showing the head of a Native American Indian. This gave them the name "Copperheads." One important Copperhead was a former congressman from Ohio, Clement Vallandigham.

Vallandigham made a speech criticizing the Union government. He was charged with violating a military law that banned such criticism. He was arrested.

VOICE TWO:

Clement Vallandigham

The military judges rejected his argument. They found him guilty. And they sentenced him to remain in a Union military prison until the end of the war.

People throughout the north were angry. Many did not support Clement Vallandigham's ideas. But they supported his right to speak freely.

President Lincoln could approve or reject Vallandigham's sentence. His decision would show which issue was more important: the citizens' right to free speech, or national security.

VOICE ONE:

Lincoln was a good politician and a smart lawyer. He found an unexpected way to deal with the problem. He neither approved nor rejected the sentence. He changed it.

Lincoln ordered Vallandigham to be turned over to the Confederate army. Then he explained that Vallandigham had not been arrested for criticizing the government.

"His arrest was made," Lincoln said, "because he was trying -- with some success -- to prevent men from entering the army. He was urging soldiers already in the army to leave it. Mister Vallandigham was not arrested because he was damaging the political chances of the administration, or the interests of the commanding general, but because he was damaging the army, upon which the life of the nation depends."

The Confederates welcomed the anti-war leader. They helped him get to Canada. Vallandigham continued his anti-war campaign from there.

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VOICE TWO:

President Lincoln was troubled by the anti-war movement and violent opposition to the draft laws. He felt he had to make citizens understand why such laws were necessary. He prepared a speech which explained his thoughts.

"There can be no army without men," Lincoln wrote. "Men can be had only with their permission or without it. We can no longer get enough men willingly, so there is a draft. If you dispute this, and declare that men are still willing to serve in the army, then prove it by volunteering yourselves in large numbers. Then I will give up the draft."

VOICE ONE:

Lincoln never gave this speech. He felt it was too direct. Instead, he gave a different kind of speech to the people of the Union.

"You want peace," Lincoln said, "and you blame me that we do not have it. But how can we get it. There are but three ways possible."

"First, to put down the southern rebellion by force of arms. This I am trying to do. Are you for it? If you are, then we are so far agreed. If you are not for it, a second way is to give up the Union. I am against this. Are you for the Union? If you are, you should say so clearly. If you are not for force, and not for dissolving the Union, there only remains some kind of compromise. I do not believe any such compromise is possible."

VOICE TWO:

Politicians urged President Lincoln to investigate the anti-war protests in New York to learn who had led them. He refused.

Lincoln believed that starting an investigation would be like lighting a barrel of gunpowder. He already was fighting a bitter struggle against rebels in the South. He did not want to fight the people of the North, too.

Southern leaders were pleased with the Copperheads' anti-war movement. Confederate General Robert E. Lee saw it as a sign of weakness in the northern war effort. He also saw it as an opening for a military victory.

That will be our story next week.

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ANNOUNCER:

Our program was written by Frank Beardsley. The narrators were Larry West and Tony Riggs. Transcripts, MP3s and podcasts of our programs are online, along with historical images, at voaspecialenglish.com. Join us again next week for THE MAKING OF A NATION - an American history series in VOA Special English.

Learning English MP3

Welcome to THE MAKING OF A NATION -- American history in VOA Special English.

Two years of a bitter, bloody civil war started to show their effects on both the Confederate states of the South and the Union states of the North. Both sides began to feel the pressure of the costly struggle. The South, however, felt the pressure more severely, because it was weaker in troop strength and industrial strength.

This week in our series, Maurice Joyce and Jack Moyles discuss the early summer of eighteen sixty-three in the American Civil War.

VOICE ONE:

General Robert E. Lee

Men were also needed. More and more men. There seemed to be no end to the demand for men to fill the places left empty by dead and wounded soldiers.

Many in the South were heavy of heart. And the hope among them slowly started to sink. The war was tiring. Its suffering was more than they could bear. And the situation in the West made matters worse.

Union Armies were on the move in the states of Mississippi and Tennessee. Their successes were becoming a serious threat. They might soon win control of the whole Mississippi river. This would split the states of the Confederacy and might end its very existence.

Something was needed to raise up the spirits of the South to break the pressure of Union armies.

VOICE TWO:

General Robert E. Lee believed he had the answer: an invasion of the north. This, he felt, would throw fear into the people of the north and weaken the Union war effort.

Lee had organized an army of seventy-five-thousand men at Fredericksburg, Virginia, halfway between Washington and Richmond.

Lee began moving his men June third. They marched northwest into the Shenandoah Valley. The valley led north to the Potomac River. Across the river was the narrow neck of western Maryland, then Pennsylvania.

Pennsylvania was the target. Its rich farmland produced plenty of food -- enough to feed Lee's hungry army for the summer.

VOICE ONE:

Standing in the way of Lee's army was a small Union force at Winchester, in northern Virginia. There were only seven-thousand Union soldiers. And they had no idea that the Confederate army was nearby.

The Confederates easily defeated them. More than half of the Union troops were captured. The others fled.

Now there was nothing to stop Lee from marching into Pennsylvania.

The huge Army of the Potomac was behind him, near Washington. The Union commander, General Hooker, had to keep his army between Lee and Washington to prevent the Confederates from seizing the national capital.

VOICE TWO:

A painting of a Confederate attack near the town of Greencastle in the northern state of Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania had not been touched by the war. Its big farms were rich. Its towns and villages were full of food and goods of all kinds.

The hungry, poorly-clothed soldiers could not believe their eyes. This was the land of the enemy, they cried, and they could take whatever they wished.

But General Lee said "No." He said supplies could be taken only by Confederate supply officers. And he said they must pay -- in Confederate money -- for everything they took.

VOICE ONE:

Lee did not want to anger these people in Pennsylvania. Many of them did not support the Union war effort. Some of the rich farmers said openly that they did not care who won the war. They said they only wanted to be left alone.

Lee was sure that many in the north felt the same way. There had been signs that people were growing tired of the war.

Coal miners in eastern Pennsylvania had shown their feelings toward the war a few months earlier.

They rose up against a new law drafting men into the Union army. The miners did not want to fight. They refused to join the army. They rioted and attacked officials who tried to take them. Soldiers were sent to the mining areas to put down the riots.

VOICE TWO:

A cartoon in the magazine Harper's Weekly showing anti-war Copperheads as snakes threatening the Union

Feelings against the war were growing stronger, not only in Pennsylvania and Ohio, but also in several other farm states of the north. These areas saw a growing support for a peace party -- a political party opposed to the war.

Leaders of this movement were Democrats called "Copperheads." They got this name because they wore on their coats a copper penny with the head of an Indian.

VOICE ONE:

The chief Copperhead was a former Ohio congressman. His name was Clement Vallandigham.

As a member of Congress, Vallandigham criticized the war and the Republicans. He told them:

"The war for the Union is, in your hands, a most bloody and costly failure. War for the Union was abandoned. And war for the Negro was openly begun with stronger effort than before. With what success." Vallandigham asked. "Let the dead at Fredericksburg and Vicksburg answer."

Vallandigham said he wanted peace, and he wanted it immediately. He offered a simple program: stop the fighting. Make a ceasefire. And let some friendly foreign nation negotiate peace between North and South.

VOICE TWO:

Clement Vallandigham

The Union military commander for Ohio was General Ambrose Burnside, a former commander of the Army of the Potomac. After losing the battle of Fredericksburg, Lincoln removed Burnside as army commander and sent him to Ohio.

Burnside was worried. Too many people in Ohio opposed the war. He believed that much of what was being said and done in Ohio was close to the crime of treason.

VOICE ONE:

Burnside announced several new measures to quiet the opponents of the war.

One of these orders limited the right of citizens to criticize government military policy. Another declared that statements of support for the enemy would be punished as treason.

Vallandigham refused to recognize Burnside's right to give such orders to civilians. On May first, he made a campaign speech to a big crowd at Mount Vernon, Ohio. He denounced Burnside's orders and spoke of the President as "King Lincoln."

Vallandigham claimed that Lincoln was using the war to become a dictator. He said Lincoln did not want peace, that the president had rejected peace offers from the South. Once again, he said the war was not a struggle for the Union, but a fight to free the slaves of the south. And he said men of Ohio who let themselves be drafted into the Union army were no better than slaves themselves.

VOICE TWO:

General Ambrose Burnside

Late the next night, soldiers went to Vallandigham's home in Dayton. They knocked on the door and said they had come to arrest him.

Vallandigham called for help and refused to let the soldiers enter. They broke down the door, seized him and took him to a military prison in Cincinnati.

A few days later, Vallandigham went on trial before a military court in Cincinnati. That will be our story in the next program of THE MAKING OF A NATION.

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ANNOUNCER:

Our program was written by Frank Beardsley. The narrators were Maurice Joyce and Jack Moyles. Transcripts, MP3s and podcasts of our programs are online, along with historical images, at voaspecialenglish.com. Join us again next week for THE MAKING OF A NATION -- an American history series in VOA Special English.

Learning English MP3

Welcome to THE MAKING OF A NATION -- American history in VOA Special English.

In the early weeks of eighteen sixty-three, the American Civil War took a new political direction. President Abraham Lincoln had announced the Emancipation Proclamation. That measure freed the slaves in the rebel states of the South, though Lincoln's words fell on deaf ears.

Yet no longer was the Civil War a struggle just to save the Union. It had become a struggle for human freedom.

There was a change on the military side of the war, too. President Lincoln named a new commander for the Union's Army of the Potomac. This was the force that would try again to capture the Confederate capital at Richmond, Virginia.

This week in our series, Harry Monroe and Kay Gallant describe events during the spring of eighteen sixty-three.

VOICE ONE:

General Joe Hooker

Hooker had one hundred thirty thousand men. They were well-trained and well-supplied.

The Confederate force opposing Hooker's was under the command of General Robert E. Lee. Lee had only about sixty thousand men. They did not have good equipment. And their supplies were low. But their fighting spirit was high. They had defeated the Union army before. They were sure they could do it again.

VOICE TWO:

Lee's army still held strong defensive positions along high ground south of Fredericksburg. This was almost halfway between the capitals of the opposing sides: Washington and Richmond.

General Hooker did not plan to make the same mistake which General Burnside made at Fredericksburg. Burnside had thrown his army against Lee's defensive positions six times. Each time, the Confederates pushed them back easily. In one day of fighting, more than twelve thousand Union soldiers were killed or wounded.

General Hooker had rebuilt the Army of the Potomac. Now he was ready to carry out his plan against General Lee.

Hooker left half his men at Fredericksburg, in front of Lee's army. He would move the other half into position behind Lee's army. If Lee turned to meet him, the troops at Fredericksburg would attack. The Confederate army would be caught between two powerful forces. Lee would have to withdraw, or lose his army.

VOICE ONE:

Hooker moved around past the end of Lee's line. Then he turned and started marching back behind it.

It was a hard march through thick woods, and across rough hills and valleys. The country was so wild that it was called the wilderness.

On the last day of April, eighteen sixty-three, the Union force reached Chancellorsville. Chancellorsville was a crossroads near the edge of the wilderness. The next day, the soldiers would be in open country. There, General Hooker could make the best use of his men.

Hooker was extremely pleased. Everything was going as he had planned. He told his officers: "I have Lee in one hand and Richmond in the other."

The next day, Union soldiers began moving out of Chancellorsville and the wilderness. They did not get far. They ran into several thousand Confederate soldiers. Lee had sent them to slow the Union force.

VOICE TWO:

The Confederate force was weak. General Hooker's officers believed they could smash through it without difficulty. They did not get a chance to try.

Hooker sent new orders: break off the fight. Return to Chancellorsville. Put up defensive positions.

Hooker's officers were shocked. They protested. Hooker stood firm. He said, "Lee must fight me on my own ground."

Robert E. Lee could not understand why the Union force had returned to Chancellorsville. But he was happy it did. Now he had time to prepare his men for battle.

VOICE ONE:

The last meeting of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson

The center of the Union line was strong. The right side was not. Jackson was sure he could get around behind it. Lee asked Jackson how many men he would take. "All of them," Jackson answered. "Twenty-eight thousand."

This meant Lee would have only fourteen thousand men to face General Hooker. If the Union force attacked before Stonewall Jackson got into position, Lee could not possibly hold it back.

Lee was taking a huge chance. He thought about it for a moment. Then he told Jackson to get started.

VOICE TWO:

Jackson's men began to leave the next morning. Union soldiers watched as they marched away. General Hooker thought Lee was withdrawing.

It took Jackson only half a day to get behind the Union force. He spent a few more hours putting his troops into position. Then he attacked. It was six o'clock in the evening.

The right end of the Union force was not prepared for an attack. The soldiers could not believe their eyes when they saw Confederate troops running out of the woods behind them. Many Union soldiers were killed or wounded. Thousands fled.

The sun went down. The fighting continued under a bright moon. The Confederate troops kept moving forward. The Union troops kept falling back. One northern soldier wrote later: "Darkness was upon us. Jackson was upon us. And fear was upon us."

VOICE ONE:

Jackson seemed to be everywhere. He rode his horse among his men, urging them forward. He would not let the Union force escape.

The Battle of Chancellorsville

Jackson fell from his horse. Two bullets had smashed his left arm. Another bullet had hit his right hand. He was hurried to the back of the line. A doctor quickly cut off his left arm and stopped the heavy bleeding.

Jackson seemed to get better. Then he developed pneumonia. He was unconscious most of the time. He seemed to dream of battle, and shouted commands to his officers. Then he grew quiet. He opened his eyes and said, "Let us pass over the river and rest in the shade of the trees."

The great Confederate General, Stonewall Jackson, was dead.

VOICE TWO:

While Jackson lay dying, the battle of Chancellorsville continued.

Robert E. Lee's Confederate army was much smaller than Joe Hooker's Union army. But for five days, Lee kept part of his army moving between Chancellorsville and Fredericksburg. Wherever the Union army attacked, Lee quickly added more men to his lines. The Union army could not break through.

The fighting was taking place on the south side of the Rappahannock River. The Union army's supply lines were on the north side.

Spring rains were beginning to make the Rappahannock rise. General Hooker did not want to get trapped without food and ammunition. So he ordered his men back across the river.

VOICE ONE:

The South had won the battle of Chancellorsville. Robert E. Lee was sure of that. Once again, he had forced back the Army of the Potomac. But the Union army was not hurt seriously. New soldiers would soon take the place of those lost in battle.

Lee, however, would find it more difficult to replace his soldiers. The South was running out of manpower. Every Confederate army needed men -- more and more men. Yet fewer and fewer southern boys were willing to become soldiers.

Anti-war movements were, in fact, active in both the North and South. There were a number of protests against the military draft. Some turned violent.

In the North, a political party was created to oppose the Civil War. Leaders of this peace party were called Copperheads. They got the name because they wore a copper penny showing the head of an Indian.

That will be our story in our next program on the Civil War.

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ANNOUNCER:

Our program was written by Frank Beardsley. The narrators were Harry Monroe and Kay Gallant. Our series can be found online with transcripts, podcasts and historical images at voaspecialenglish.com. You can also follow our weekly programs 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.

Learning English MP3

Welcome to THE MAKING OF A NATION – American history in VOA Special English.

The Civil War began in eighteen sixty-one as a struggle over the right of states to leave the Union. President Abraham Lincoln firmly believed that a state did not have that right. And he declared war on the southern states that tried to leave.

Lincoln had only one reason to fight: to save the Union. In time, however, there was another reason to fight: to free the black people held as slaves in the South.

Today, Kay Gallant and Harry Monroe continue the story of how President Lincoln dealt with this issue.

VOICE ONE:

Abraham Lincoln

Lincoln also needed the support of the four slave states that had not left the Union: Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland and Missouri. He could not be sure of their support if he declared that the purpose of the war was to free the slaves.

Lincoln was able to follow this policy, at first. But the war to save the Union was going badly. The North had not won a decisive victory in Virginia, the heart of the Confederacy.

To guarantee continued support for the war, Lincoln was forced to recognize that the issue of slavery was, in fact, a major issue. And on September twenty-second, eighteen sixty-two, he announced a new policy on slavery in the rebel southern states. His announcement became known as the Emancipation Proclamation.

VOICE TWO:

A printed version of the Emancipation Proclamation

I, Abraham Lincoln, president of the United States and commander in chief of the Army and Navy, do hereby declare that on the first day of January, eighteen sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any state then in rebellion against the United States, shall then become and be forever free.

The government of the United States, including the military and naval forces, will recognize and protect the freedom of such persons, and will interfere in no way with any efforts they may make for their actual freedom.

For political reasons, the proclamation did not free slaves in the states that supported the Union. Nor did it free slaves in the areas around Norfolk, Virginia, and New Orleans, Louisiana.

VOICE ONE:

Most anti-slavery leaders praised the Emancipation Proclamation. They had waited a long time for such a document.

But some did not like it. They said it did not go far enough. It did not free all of the slaves in the United States, only those held by the rebels.

Lincoln answered that the Emancipation Proclamation was a military measure. He said he made it under his wartime powers as commander in chief. As such, it was legal only in enemy territory.

Lincoln agreed that all slaves should be freed. It was his personal opinion. But he did not believe that the Constitution gave him the power to free all the slaves. He hoped that could be done slowly, during peacetime.

VOICE TWO:

Lincoln's new policy on slavery was welcomed warmly by the people of Europe. It won special praise in Britain.

The British people were deeply concerned about the Civil War in America. The United States navy had blocked southern exports of cotton. The British textile industry -- which depended on this cotton -- was almost dead. Factories were closed. Hundreds of thousands of people were out of work.

The British government watched and worried as the war continued month after month. Finally, late in the summer of eighteen sixty-two, British leaders said the time had come for them to intervene. They would try to help settle the American dispute.

Britain would propose a peace agreement based on northern recognition of southern rights. If the North rejected the agreement, Britain would recognize the Confederacy.

VOICE ONE:

Then came the news that President Lincoln was freeing the slaves of the South. Suddenly, the Civil War was a different war.

No longer was it a struggle over southern rights. Now it was a struggle for human freedom.

The British people strongly opposed slavery. When they heard that the slaves would be freed, they gave their support immediately to President Lincoln and the North. Britain's peace proposals were never offered.

The Emancipation Proclamation had cost the South the recognition of Britain and France.

VOICE TWO:

The South was furious over the proclamation. Southern newspapers attacked Lincoln. They accused him of trying to create a slave rebellion in states he could not occupy with troops. They also said the proclamation was an invitation for Negroes to murder whites.

The Confederate Congress debated several resolutions to fight Lincoln's proclamation.

One resolution would make slaves of all Negro soldiers captured from the Union army. Another called for the execution of white officers who led black troops. Some southern lawmakers even proposed the death sentence for anyone who spoke against slavery.

VOICE ONE:

In the North, most people cheered the new policy on slaves. Some, however, opposed it. They said the policy would cause the slave states of the Union to secede. Those states would join the Confederacy. Or, they said, it would cause freed slaves to move north and take away jobs from whites.

There also was another reason. Eighteen sixty-two was a congressional election year. The Democratic Party was the opposition party at that time. Party leaders believed their candidates would have a better chance of winning if they opposed the policy.

Democrats said the policy was proof that anti-slavery extremists were in control of the government.

VOICE TWO:

As we said, Abraham Lincoln announced the Emancipation Proclamation on September twenty-second, eighteen sixty-two. But Lincoln said he would not sign the proclamation until the first day of eighteen-sixty-three.

That gave the southern states one hundred days to end their rebellion, or face the destruction of slavery.

VOICE ONE:

Some people thought Lincoln would withdraw the proclamation at the last minute. They did not believe he would sign a measure that was so extreme. They said the new policy would only make the South fight harder. And, as a result, the Civil War would last longer.

Others charged that the proclamation was illegal. They said the Constitution did not give the president the power to violate the property rights of citizens.

VOICE TWO:

Lincoln answered the charges. He said:

I think the Constitution gives the commander in chief special powers under the laws of war. The most that can be said -- if so much -- is that slaves are property. Is there any question that, by the laws of war, property -- both of enemies and friends -- may be taken when needed.

VOICE ONE:

Just before the first of the year, a congressman asked the president if he still planned to sign the Emancipation Proclamation.

VOICE TWO:

"My mind is made up," Lincoln answered. "It must be done. I am driven to it. There is no other way out of our troubles. But although my duty is clear, it is in some way painful. I hope that the people will understand that I act not in anger, but in expectation of a greater good."

VOICE ONE:

The morning of New Year's Day was a busy time for Lincoln. It was a tradition to open the White House on that day so the president could wish visitors a happy new year.

After the last visitor had gone, Lincoln went to his office. He started to sign the Emancipation Proclamation. Then he stopped. He said:

VOICE TWO:

Lincoln signing the Emancipation Proclamation

VOICE ONE:

With those words, he wrote his name at the bottom of the paper. He had issued one of the greatest documents in American history. We will continue our story of the Civil War next week.

(MUSIC)

ANNOUNCER:

Our program was written by Frank Beardsley. The narrators were Kay Gallant and Harry Monroe.

THE MAKING OF A NATION is a radio series written with English learners in mind. Each weekly program is fifteen minutes long. The series was first broadcast in nineteen sixty-nine. People who grew up listening to it are now old enough to listen with their own children, or even their grandchildren.

These days, people can download MAKING OF A NATION transcripts, MP3s and podcasts at voaspecialenglish.com. They can also follow the weekly series on Twitter at VOA Learning English.

There are more than two hundred programs in the complete series, which starts over again every five years. New programs with recent history are added at the end of each cycle.

Most of the shows, however, were originally produced years ago. In fact, some of the narrators are not even alive anymore. But we know from our audience that THE MAKING OF A NATION is the most popular of the feature programs in VOA Special English.

Special English is a radio, TV and Internet service of the Voice of America. Programs are written with a limited vocabulary and are read at a slower speed. The purpose is to help people improve their American English as they learn about news and other subjects.

Join us again next week for THE MAKING OF A NATION -- an American history series in VOA Special English.

Learning English MP3

Welcome to THE MAKING OF A NATION – American history in VOA Special English

By the summer of eighteen sixty-two, the American Civil War had been going on for more than a year. The Union had won some battles. The Confederacy had won others. But neither side was in a position to win the war.

President Abraham Lincoln needed a major victory. He was losing the support of both politicians and the public. A major victory would not only help him that way. It also would make it easier for him to make an important announcement.

For a number of months, he had been planning an announcement about the black people held as slaves in the South. It would come to be known as the Emancipation Proclamation.

Today, Kay Gallant and Harry Monroe tell about Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation.

VOICE ONE:

General Robert E. Lee

The battlefield was less than fifty kilometers from Washington.

The year before, Confederate troops had sent the Union army fleeing from that same battlefield. Now they had done it again.

With this latest victory, General Lee decided on a major move. He would carry the war into the northern states.

Lee took his army of sixty thousand men across the Potomac River into Maryland. He ordered some of his men to capture the Union position at Harpers Ferry. He moved the others to Sharpsburg, a town on the Potomac River.

He put his men into position along Antietam Creek, just outside of town. His lines extended almost three kilometers. There, at Antietam, he would make his stand.

He was still close enough to Virginia to withdraw, if the Union force following him proved too strong.

VOICE TWO:

The Battle of Antietam

The Union general, George McClellan, planned to attack all along the Confederate line at the same time. But this did not happen.

First, Union troops attacked one end of the line, which extended into a field full of tall corn plants. Then they attacked the center of the line, which was in an old, deeply sunken road that gave it good protection. Finally, they attacked at the other end of the line.

For each northern attack, General Lee was able to move men to where they were needed. The northern troops got within twenty-five meters of the Confederate line. But they could not break through anywhere.

VOICE ONE:

On the first day of battle at Antietam, Lee lost twenty-five percent of his men. On the second day, the two armies faced each other without firing. They were too tired to fight.

As they rested, however, fresh Union soldiers moved into position. Lee knew they would attack with full force the next day. He knew he could not win. Sadly, he ordered his men back to Virginia.

It was now clear: Antietam was a northern victory.

It was not a complete victory. The Union army could have chased the Confederate army and destroyed it. But General McClellan did not do this. He was satisfied that he had stopped the invasion.

VOICE TWO:

In Washington, President Lincoln welcomed the news. He had waited a long time for a northern victory.

Detail from a painting of President Lincoln first reading the Emancipation Proclamation to his cabinet

"As you remember," he said, "I put the declaration aside several weeks ago, until I could issue it supported by a military victory. The action of the army against the rebels has not been exactly what I should have liked. But the rebels have been driven out of Maryland. And Pennsylvania is no longer in danger of invasion."

President Lincoln said he thought the time was right to announce the Emancipation Proclamation. The cabinet made some minor changes in the document, and Lincoln signed it.

VOICE ONE:

Newspapers printed the proclamation. This is what it said:

VOICE TWO:

"I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States and Commander-in-Chief of the army and navy, do hereby declare that on the first day of January, eighteen-sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any state then in rebellion against the United States, shall then become and be forever free.

"The government of the United States, including the military and naval forces, will recognize and protect the freedom of such persons, and will interfere in no way with any efforts they may make for their actual freedom."

VOICE ONE:

Signing the proclamation

Lincoln feared that the issue of slavery would weaken the northern war effort. Many men throughout the north would fight to save the Union. They would not fight to free the slaves.

Lincoln also needed the support of the four slave states that did not leave the Union: Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, and Missouri. He could not be sure of their support if he declared that the purpose of the war was to free the slaves.

As Lincoln waited for a Union victory to announce his Emancipation Proclamation, he wrote a letter to the New York Tribune newspaper. The letter was to prepare the public for what was to come. This is what Lincoln said:

VOICE TWO:

"My chief object in this struggle is to save the Union. It is not either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it. And if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it. And if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that.

"What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union. This is how I see my official duty. It does not change my wish -- as a person -- that all men everywhere could be free."

VOICE ONE:

President Lincoln failed to keep the question of slavery out of the Civil War. As the war went on, month after long month, people in the North began to see it as more than a struggle for national unity. They began to see it as a struggle for human freedom.

Abolitionists were active. In speeches and writings, they said over and over again that slavery was evil.

As public opinion began to change, anti-slavery members of Congress gained more power.

By the summer of eighteen sixty-two, they had enough support to pass laws ending slavery in Washington, D.C. and United States territories. They also pushed through Congress a bill that would do much to end slavery in the states.

VOICE TWO:

The bill was called the Confiscation Act. It gave the federal government the power to confiscate, or seize, the property of all persons who supported the southern rebellion. Slaves were considered property. So any slaves seized under the act would become free immediately. Slaves who escaped from rebel slave owners also would be free. The bill would not affect slaves owned by persons who supported the Union.

President Lincoln did not like the Confiscation Act. He thought it interfered with his wartime powers as Commander-in-Chief.

VOICE ONE:

However, Lincoln was under great pressure from Abolitionists. So he signed the new law. But he did not plan to enforce it. He still hoped for a plan that would free the slaves slowly, over time.

He proposed such a plan, but only for the border states between north and south. Under his plan, the federal government would buy slaves in the border states and free them.

Lawmakers from the border states rejected Lincoln's plan. And that is when he decided to issue the Emancipation Proclamation.

We will tell about the effects of that decision next week.

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ANNOUNCER:

Our program was written by Frank Beardsley. The narrators were Kay Gallant and Harry Monroe.

THE MAKING OF A NATION is a radio series written with English learners in mind. Each weekly program is fifteen minutes long. The series began in May of nineteen sixty-nine. People who grew up listening to it are now old enough to listen with their own children, or even their grandchildren.

These days, with the Internet, people can download the transcripts and MP3s of our series at voaspecialenglish.com. They can also follow us on Twitter at VOA Learning English.

There are more than two hundred programs in the complete series, which starts over again every five years. New programs with recent history are added at the end of each cycle.

Most of the shows were produced a long time ago. This explains why a few words here and there may sound a little dated. In fact, some of the announcers are not even alive anymore. But we know from our audience that THE MAKING OF A NATION is the most popular of the feature programs in VOA Special English.

Join us again next week for THE MAKING OF A NATION -- an American history series in VOA Special English.

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Welcome to THE MAKING OF A NATION – American history in VOA Special English.

Two summers had gone by since the start of the American Civil War, and the North had not yet won a major battle in Virginia. The Army of the Potomac -- the strongest of the Union armies -- had tried to seize Richmond, the Confederate capital.

General George McClellan moved the army up to the very gates of the city. But then, General Robert E. Lee led his southern forces in a fierce attack. It smashed McClellan's army and drove them away from Richmond.

This week in our series, Maurice Joyce and Jack Moyles continue the story of the Civil War.

VOICE ONE:

General Henry Halleck

Pope began to move south toward Richmond. Halleck ordered McClellan to bring his army up to join Pope. Together, they could smash through the Confederate defenses around Richmond.

Lee decided to hit Pope before McClellan could join him. He left a few thousand troops to guard Richmond, then took the rest north. Lee moved up to the Rappahannock River, across from Pope's army.

VOICE TWO:

Lee sent Stonewall Jackson, with twenty-four thousand men, on a quick march around the western end of Pope's lines. Jackson and his men marched more than eighty kilometers in two days. They got behind Pope and seized a huge northern supply center at Manassas.

Pope moved to smash them. They burned the captured supplies. Then they moved a few kilometers away to a long, low hill just northwest of the Bull Run battleground, where southern forces defeated a northern army a year before.

Jackson hid his troops in woods along the hill and waited for General Lee to arrive with the rest of the southern army.

VOICE ONE:

But before Lee could get there, Union troops -- thousands of them --marched down the road below Jackson. Jackson decided to attack, to hold them there until Lee arrived with help.

The fighting was furious. Neither side broke. The fighting died down at the end of the day, and Jackson's men moved back to their positions on higher ground. They made their lines along a partly-built railroad on the side of the hill.

VOICE TWO:

General John Pope

It was a mighty force, much larger than Jackson's army. Jackson was worried. He sent an officer back to find General Lee. He sent a message: Lee must hurry. Jackson faced a big army.

VOICE ONE:

Pope's army was large. But it was poorly organized. The men had been rushed into position. The order to attack was given before all the troops were ready.

So, the attack began slowly. And Jackson was able to fight it off. But then, more and more northern soldiers joined the fight. The two sides struggled for hours in the hot summer sun. Jackson's men almost broke. Men prayed for the long day to end. The sun seemed to stand still.

VOICE TWO:

General Fitz John Porter

Most of the Union troops had fought bravely. They had hit the Confederate lines time after time. But one large group of soldiers did not get into the battle at all that day. This was the group from McClellan's Army of the Potomac, led by Fitz John Porter.

Pope had ordered Porter to strike at the right end of Jackson's lines. Porter took his troops several kilometers past Jackson's right and stopped them. His soldiers remained there all day, out of the battle. Porter said later he believed the Confederate forces were too strong for his men.

VOICE ONE:

Other groups of McClellan's men were arriving in Alexandria, thirty kilometers to the east. Pope asked that they be sent to help him. McClellan was ordered to send them immediately. But he refused to do so. He said they were not in condition to fight, and he would not send them.

General Pope still thought he was facing only Jackson's army. He refused to believe reports that Lee had arrived on the battlefield with thirty thousand more southern soldiers. Pope thought Lee was still far to the west of Manassas.

VOICE TWO:

Pope knew that Jackson's army had taken a terrible beating in the two days of bloody fighting. And he was sure that Jackson would try to withdraw the next day, to retreat to the west.

Pope divided his forces that night. He left thousands in place in front of Jackson's lines. The others were moved back. They were ordered to get ready for a march west to block Jackson's retreat.

Pope made a terrible mistake. Jackson was not planning to retreat. He was waiting with Lee to smash the northern army. And that is what happened the next day.

VOICE ONE:

The Second Battle of Bull Run

Many of Pope's men were not prepared for battle. They were standing together in groups, ready for marching. They could not stop the southern attack. The Confederates pushed Pope's army back across the Old Bull Run battlefield.

VOICE TWO:

Near the end of the day, northern forces succeeded in organizing a stronger defensive line. The southern attack slowed down, then stopped. Lee sent Jackson around the north end of Pope's line to try to stop the northern retreat. Lee did not want the defeated Union army to escape. He wanted to destroy it.

But heavy rain held up Jackson's troops. They were discovered and attacked by a strong northern force. Jackson could move no farther. He could not stop Pope's retreat to Centreville and Washington. The northern army escaped.

VOICE ONE:

But it left behind thousands and thousands of dead and wounded. Confederate doctors treated their own men, then tried to help the wounded soldiers of the other side. General Lee permitted northern medical wagons to return to the battlefield. And they began to carry the wounded back to Centreville.

Groups of McClellan's army, arriving from Alexandria, met Pope's men in Centreville. They laughed and shouted at the tired, beaten soldiers. Many said they were glad that Pope had lost.

One of McClellan's Generals, Samuel Sturgis, greeted Pope at Centreville: "I always told you, Pope, that if they gave you enough rope, you would hang yourself."

VOICE TWO:

What happened at Bull Run created bitter anger among the people of the North -- anger against their military leaders. People felt that a year had been wasted, that thousands had died for no real purpose. The year before, southern troops sent a northern army fleeing from Bull Run. Now, it was happening again. The Army of the Potomac was back where it started.

As the facts of the battle became known, cries of anger became even louder. The people demanded answers. Why did McClellan and his men move so slowly? Why did they refuse to go to Pope's aid? Why did Pope let Jackson get behind him? Why were fourteen thousand soldiers lost?

VOICE ONE:

Most members of Lincoln's cabinet believed McClellan was responsible.

Secretary of War Edwin Stanton

Lincoln agreed that what McClellan had done was shocking. He said it was clear that McClellan wanted Pope to fail. But Lincoln said he would not remove McClellan. He said he knew that McClellan was not an aggressive general. But he said McClellan was a good organizer who could build the defeated army into a strong force.

VOICE TWO:

General Robert E. Lee, however, would not wait while McClellan rebuilt the army. He decided to carry the war to the North.

(MUSIC)

ANNOUNCER:

Our program was written by Frank Beardsley. The narrators were Maurice Joyce and Jack Moyles. Our series can be found online with transcripts, podcasts and historical images at voaspecialenglish.com. You can also follow our weekly programs 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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Welcome to THE MAKING OF A NATION – American history in VOA Special English.

In any war, the enemy's capital city is an important target. To capture the enemy's capital usually means victory.

In the American Civil War, the North hoped for a quick victory by capturing the southern capital at Richmond, Virginia. Northern forces were strong enough. There were about one hundred fifty thousand Union soldiers in and around Washington.

General George McClellan led this Army of the Potomac. It was the biggest, best-trained and best-equipped of the Union armies.

This week in our series, Larry West and Tony Riggs report on McClellan's move against Richmond.

VOICE ONE:

General George McClellan

McClellan's plan was to put his army on boats in the Potomac River. They would sail down the river to where it emptied into the Chesapeake Bay. Then he would land the boats on the coast of Virginia, east of Richmond.

President Abraham Lincoln wanted to capture the Confederate capital. But he did not like the idea of moving all of McClellan's men. That would leave the city of Washington without protection.

McClellan tried to calm Lincoln's fears. He said that as soon as he marched toward Richmond, any Confederate soldiers near Washington would withdraw. They would be needed to defend their own capital.

VOICE TWO:

The Army of the Potomac began to move on March seventeenth, eighteen sixty-two. Within two weeks, more than fifty thousand had reached Fort Monroe, southeast of Richmond. They were equipped with one hundred big guns and tons of supplies. Day by day, the Union force at Fort Monroe grew larger.

McClellan had planned to move quickly to Yorktown, then push on to Richmond. He would move along the finger of land between the York River and the James River.

He soon learned, however, that he could not move as quickly as planned. Heavy spring rains had turned the dirt roads into rivers of mud. McClellan's men could push through. But there was no way they could bring their big guns. McClellan decided to wait. He did not want to attack Yorktown without artillery.

VOICE ONE:

The Battle of Williamsburg

By the time his artillery had arrived and was in place, Confederate troops had withdrawn. They moved to the woods outside Williamsburg. McClellan chased them. For the first time, his army went into battle.

The fighting was strange. The woods were so thick that the two sides could not often see each other. Soldiers fired at the flash of gunpowder, at noises, anything that moved. Their aim was good enough. About four thousand soldiers were killed.

VOICE TWO:

In his reports to Washington, McClellan claimed great victories at Yorktown and Williamsburg. Yet he was worried. He believed the Confederate force around Richmond was much larger than his. He demanded more men.

The Confederate force was, in fact, much smaller than the Union force. But it was deployed in a way to make it seem much larger.

The trick fooled McClellan. By the middle of May, eighteen sixty-two, his army was only fifteen kilometers from Richmond. Still, he did not attack. He continued to wait for more men and equipment.

Confederate President Jefferson Davis was worried. He knew the Confederate army was smaller than the Union army. Davis' military adviser, General Robert E. Lee, offered a plan.

Lee proposed that General Stonewall Jackson lead his army up Virginia's Shenandoah Valley. The North would see the move as a threat to Washington. Union troops would be kept near Washington, instead of being sent to Richmond. President Davis agreed. Orders were sent to Jackson.

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VOICE ONE:

General Stonewall Jackson

He got the name "Stonewall" at the Battle of Bull Run in the summer of eighteen sixty-one. Southern soldiers were withdrawing. A Confederate officer tried to stop them. He urged them to follow Jackson's example, to stand and fight. He shouted, "There stands Jackson -- like a stone wall."

General Jackson faced three large Union forces in and around the Shenandoah Valley. Yet he struck hard and fast, and soon had control of the valley's main towns.

His campaign is still studied at military schools around the world. It is considered an excellent example of how to move troops quickly to where they are most needed.

VOICE TWO:

Jackson's raids produced the exact effect Robert E. Lee had wanted.

Everyone in Washington feared an immediate attack on the city. Soldiers were hurried to the capital from Baltimore and other nearby cities. And President Lincoln sent thousands of troops to chase Jackson in the Shenandoah Valley, instead of helping McClellan at Richmond.

The Union army outside Richmond was deployed on either side of the Chickahominy River. The Chickahominy was not a big river. It could be crossed easily at several places.

While McClellan waited to attack the Confederate capital, heavy rains began to fall. The little river began to rise. The commander of Confederate forces in Richmond saw this as a chance to smash a large part of McClellan's army.

VOICE ONE:

The flooding river would soon cut the Union force completely in two. When that happened, the Confederates would attack. They expected to destroy at least half of McClellan's army.

The plan seemed good. And after the first few hours of battle, the Confederates were close to victory. But one bridge remained over the Chickahominy River. Union soldiers were able to cross it. The Confederates were forced to withdraw to their earlier positions.

No ground was gained. And more than eleven thousand men were killed or wounded. Among the wounded was the commander of all Confederate forces, General Joe Johnston. General Robert E. Lee would take his place.

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VOICE TWO:

Confederate officer Jeb Stuart

Stuart set off with more than a thousand men on horseback. Theirs was a wild ride around the edge of the Union army. When they reported back three days later, General Lee knew exactly where he would attack.

It would be the first in a series of battles known as the Seven Days Campaign.

VOICE ONE:

Lee took a big chance. He moved most of his men into position to attack what he now knew was the weak, right side of the Union line. He left only a few thousand men to defend Richmond.

He hoped the Union commander, McClellan, would be fooled by this plan. For if McClellan discovered how few men were left behind, he could smash through easily and capture the city.

With the help of Stonewall Jackson's army, Lee's plan worked. McClellan was fooled. And after a day of fierce fighting, he was forced to withdraw from the area.

VOICE TWO:

The Battle of Malvern Hill in Virginia

But victory came at a terrible price. Twenty thousand Confederate soldiers were killed or wounded. As both the North and South were learning quickly, the Civil War was becoming more costly than anyone had imagined.

(MUSIC)

ANNOUNCER:

Our program was written by Frank Beardsley. The narrators were Larry West and Tony Riggs. Our series can be found online with transcripts, podcasts and historical images at voaspecialenglish.com. You can also follow our weekly programs 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.

Learning English MP3

Welcome to THE MAKING OF A NATION – American history in VOA Special English.

The American Civil War in the eighteen sixties was fought not only on land. There was a great deal of fighting between the Union and Confederate navies.

This part of the war -- the sea war -- is often forgotten, but it was important. The Union victory might not have been possible without the successes of its navy.

Many battles took place just off the coast of the United States. Many others took place farther away, in international waters.

This week in our series, Kay Gallant and Harry Monroe talk about the naval side of the Civil War.

VOICE ONE:

Painting of the battle between the Alabama, left, and the Kearsarge

Lincoln's plan was good. But it had one major weakness. The Union navy was too small for the job.

The Confederate seacoast was long. It extended from Chesapeake Bay to Mexico, a distance of five thousand six hundred kilometers. There were not enough ships in the Union navy to blockade all of it. Many months would pass before the Union could build up an effective naval force.

VOICE TWO:

The Confederacy had no navy at the start of the Civil War. The Confederate government had little money to create one. And the South had no factories to build one.

For a while, the Confederacy was able to get warships from Britain. Then the Union put diplomatic pressure on Britain to stop this support. For the most part, the Confederacy depended on privately owned ships to get goods in and out of the South.

About twenty of these private ships flew the Confederate flag. Most were very successful in the beginning.

The Florida, for example, captured more than thirty ships before being captured itself off the coast of Brazil in eighteen sixty-four. The Alabama captured more than sixty ships. It was finally sunk in a battle with the Kearsarge off the coast of France.

The Shenandoah sailed in the Pacific Ocean. It captured forty ships. After the war ended, the Shenandoah tied up in Liverpool, England.

VOICE ONE:

A drawing of the Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley

This ship was ten meters long. It sank four times while being tested. It was raised each time and put back into service. One night, it fired its torpedoes at a much larger Union ship and sank it. But the explosion was so great that it tore apart the submarine. And it sank, too.

The Confederacy also developed very effective underwater explosive devices for use in the harbors.

VOICE TWO:

Even with its victories and technologies, however, the Confederacy could not stop the Union navy. The Union navy was bigger to begin with and grew much faster.

David Farragut

New Orleans lay near the mouth of the Mississippi River. It was the largest city in the south. It was the largest seaport. It had become a busy industrial center, producing war equipment for Confederate forces. If the Union could capture New Orleans, it would control the Mississippi River.

President Lincoln appointed navy officer David Farragut to lead the attack on New Orleans.

VOICE ONE:

To reach the city, Farragut had to sail his ships past two Confederate forts on the Mississippi River. He shelled the forts for six days and nights. But the forts were so strong that the shells caused little damage. He decided not to wait any longer.

Battle of New Orleans

When Farragut reached New Orleans, he found the city defenseless. Several thousand Confederate soldiers had fled. They knew they could not defend against the bigger Union force. Only civilians remained. Farragut captured New Orleans without a fight.

The Confederate flag was lowered. And the United States flag was raised over the city.

VOICE TWO:

Several weeks before Farragut captured New Orleans, a new kind of navy battle was fought off Hampton Roads, Virginia. It was the first battle between iron ships.

On the Confederate side was the Virginia. It had been built from what remained of a captured Union warship called the Merrimack. The Virginia was like no other warship ever seen in the world.

It was eighty meters long. The part that showed above the water line was built of wood sixty centimeters thick. This part was covered with sheets of iron ten centimeters thick.

Ten windows were cut into it. Behind each window was a cannon. In a battle, the windows would open, the cannons would fire, and the windows would close again. At the front was a sharp point of iron that could smash through the sides of wooden ships.

The Virginia could not move fast. And it was difficult to control. It took almost thirty minutes to turn around. Still, there seemed to be no way to stop this iron monster. It already had destroyed two Union warships. And it was coming back for more.

VOICE ONE:

One of the guns of the ironclad Monitor

These two cannons, however, were on a part of the ship that could turn in a complete circle. They could be aimed in any direction.

The Monitor and the Virginia faced each other on the morning of March ninth, eighteen sixty-two. They moved in close -- very close -- then began to fire.

A Confederate cannon ball hit the iron side of the Monitor and bounced away. Union sailors cheered. The cannons of the Virginia could do no damage! But the Union sailors soon discovered that their cannons could do no damage, either.

VOICE TWO:

The men inside the two ships suffered from noise, heat, and smoke. The roar of their own cannons was extremely loud. Even louder was the crash of enemy cannon balls and explosive shells on the iron walls.

Some of the men suffered burst eardrums. At least one man was struck unconscious from the force of a cannon ball against the iron. The men quickly learned to stay away from the walls.

Smoke from the cannons filled the ships. Then it floated out over the water. At times, the two ships could not see each other.

VOICE ONE:

The Battle of Hampton Roads between the Monitor, front, and the Virginia

Then the cannons of the Virginia fell silent. The Confederate ship had used up its gunpowder. It also had used up much of its fuel. It was lighter now and was floating higher in the water. A well-aimed cannon ball could hit below its iron covering and sink it.

The Confederate captain decided to withdraw. The Union captain, too, was ready to break off the battle. He decided not to follow.

Neither ship could claim victory. But the Monitor had kept the Virginia from destroying more of the Union's wooden warships.

The Virginia itself was to live just two more months. Union forces seized the Confederate navy base at Norfolk, where the Virginia was kept. And the iron monster was sunk to keep it from falling into Union hands.

VOICE TWO:

The battle at Hampton Roads between the Virginia and the Monitor was undecisive. It did not have much effect on the final result of America's Civil War. But it was still an important battle. For it marked the beginning of the end of the world's wooden navies.

We will continue our story of the Civil War next week.

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ANNOUNCER:

Our program was written by Frank Beardsley and Christine Johnson. The narrators were Kay Gallant and Harry Monroe. Transcripts, MP3s and podcasts of our programs can be found along with historical images at voaspecialenglish.com. Join us again next week for THE MAKING OF A NATION -- an American history series in VOA Special English.

Learning English MP3

Welcome to THE MAKING OF A NATION -- American history in VOA Special English.

In July of eighteen sixty-one, Union soldiers from the North and Confederate soldiers from the South fought the first major battle in the American Civil War. They clashed at Manassas, or Bull Run, Virginia, less than fifty kilometers from Washington.

The Union soldiers fought fiercely. But two large Confederate forces broke the Union attack.

This week in our series, Harry Monroe and Kay Gallant tell about some of the other early battles of the Civil War.

VOICE ONE:

General George McClellan

President Abraham Lincoln named General George McClellan to do this. McClellan was thirty-four years old.

The young general had two important tasks. He must defend Washington from attack. And he must build an army to strike at enemy forces in Virginia. McClellan wasted no time. He put thousands of troops into position around the city. And he built forty-eight forts.

After this rush of activity, however, little more happened for a long time. McClellan told his wife: "I shall take my own time to make an army that will be sure of success. As soon as I feel my army is well-organized and well-trained and strong enough, I will force the rebels to a battle."

McClellan kept making excuses for why he would not move against the enemy. His excuses became a continuing source of trouble for President Lincoln. The public, the press, and politicians all demanded that McClellan do something. They wanted to win the war, and win it right away.

VOICE TWO:

McClellan commanded the biggest army in the Union, the Army of the Potomac. But it was not the only army. Others were battling Confederate forces in the West.

The Confederates had moved up through Tennessee into the border state of Kentucky. They built forts and other defensive positions across the southern part of the state. They also blocked as many railroads and rivers as they could.

General Ulysses Grant

Grant had served in the army for twenty years. He had fought in America's war against Mexico and had won honors for his bravery. When that war ended, he was sent to an army base far from his wife and children. He did not like being without them. And he did not like being an officer in peace time.

Grant began to drink too much alcohol. He began to be a problem. In eighteen fifty-four, he was asked to leave the army. When the Civil War started, Grant organized a group of unpaid soldiers in Illinois. With the help of a member of Congress, he was named a general.

All of the other Union Generals knew Ulysses Grant. Few had any faith in his abilities. They were sure he would always fail.

VOICE ONE:

Grant, however, had faith in himself and his men. He believed he could force Confederate soldiers to withdraw from both Kentucky and Tennessee. Then he would be free to march directly into the Deep South -- Mississippi.

Battle of Fort Donelson

United States Navy gunboats captured the first, Fort Henry, on the Tennessee River. That fort was easy to attack and not well-defended. The fighting was over by the time Grant and his men got there.

The second, Fort Donelson, was nearby on the Cumberland River. It was stronger and defended by twenty thousand soldiers. Grant surrounded the fort and let the navy gunboats shell it. The fighting there lasted several days.

VOICE TWO:

At one point, the Confederates tried to break out of the fort and escape. They opened a hole in the Union line and began to retreat. Suddenly, however, their commanding officer decided it would be wrong to retreat. He ordered them back to the fort.

After that, there was no choice. The Confederates would have to surrender.

The commanding officer sent a message to General Grant. "What were the terms of surrender?" Grant's answer was simple. "No terms except unconditional and immediate surrender."

The Confederates gave up Fort Donelson. Grant took fourteen thousand prisoners.

It was the greatest Union victory since the start of the war. Ulysses Grant was a hero. Newspapers called him "Unconditional Surrender" Grant.

VOICE ONE:

After the Union victory at Fort Donelson, Confederate forces withdrew from Tennessee. They moved farther south and began to re-group at Corinth, Mississippi.

Confederate Generals hoped to build one big army to stop Ulysses Grant. They would have to move fast. Grant was marching toward Corinth with forty thousand men. Another thirty-five thousand, under the command of Don Buell, were to meet him on the way.

Grant arrived in the area first. He waited for Buell thirty kilometers from Corinth, near a small country meeting hall called Shiloh Church.

Confederate General Albert Sydney Johnston was waiting, too. He had more than forty thousand men, about the same as Grant. And he was expecting another twenty thousand. But when he learned that Grant was nearby, he decided not to wait. He would attack immediately.

VOICE TWO:

Johnston did not know it, but his attack came as a surprise to the Union army. Union officers had refused to believe reports that Johnston was on the move. They said his army was not strong enough to attack.

Union troops did not prepare defensive positions. They had no protection when the battle began.

Battle of Shiloh

At first, the Confederates pushed Grant's army back. They had only to break through one more line and victory would be theirs. But in the thick of the struggle, General Johnston was shot in the leg. The bullet cut through an artery. Johnston bled to death before help arrived. Any hope for a southern victory at Shiloh died with him.

By the time the fighting began again the next day, General Buell had arrived to help Grant. The Confederate army retreated. The Union army let it go.

VOICE ONE:

Shiloh. The word itself came to mean death and destruction.

The battle of Shiloh had brought home to the American people -- both of the North and South -- the horror of war. It was the first time so many men -- one hundred thousand -- had fought against each other in the western world. It was the American people's first real taste of the bloodiness of modern warfare.

As one soldier who fought there said: "It was too shocking, too horrible. I hope to God that I may never see such things again."

The North won the battle of Shiloh. But it paid a very high price for victory. More than thirteen thousand union soldiers were killed, wounded, or missing. On the Confederate side, more than ten thousand soldiers were killed or wounded.

The North celebrated the news of its victory. But joy quickly turned to anger when the public learned of the heavy losses. People blamed General Grant. They demanded that President Lincoln dismiss him.

Lincoln thought of the two men who were now his top military commanders: McClellan and Grant. They were so different. McClellan organized an army, and then did nothing. Grant organized an army, and moved.

Lincoln said of Grant: "I cannot do without this man. He fights."

We will continue our story of the Civil War next week.

(MUSIC)

ANNOUNCER:

Our program was written by Frank Beardsley. The narrators were Harry Monroe and Kay Galllant. Our series can be found online with transcripts, podcasts and historical images at voaspecialenglish.com. You can also follow our programs at twitter.com/voalearnenglish. Join us again next week for THE MAKING OF A NATION -- an American history series in VOA Special English.

Learning English MP3

Welcome to THE MAKING OF A NATION -- American history in VOA Special English.

The battle between the North and the South spread in the summer of eighteen sixty-one. Union soldiers fought pro-southern rioters in the streets of Baltimore and Saint Louis. A Confederate supporter shot and killed a young officer from the North. Untrained soldiers from both sides fought in the mountains of western Virginia.

So far, though, the fighting had not claimed many lives. But very soon, the battle would become fierce.

This week in our series, Frank Oliver and Jack Weitzel continue the story of the American Civil War.

General Winfield Scott

The old general who commanded the Union forces, Winfield Scott, did not want to rush his men into battle.

Scott believed it would be a long war. He planned to spend the first year of it getting ready to fight. He had an army of thousands of men, and it would get much larger in coming months. But this army was not trained. His soldiers were civilians who knew nothing about fighting a war. General Scott needed time to make soldiers of these men.

He also needed time to organize a supply system to get to his forces the guns, bullets, food, and clothing they would need. Without supplies, his army could not fight very long.

VOICE TWO:

There were many in the North, however, who thought Scott was too careful. It was true, they said, that Union forces were untrained. But so were those of the South. And the Confederacy's supply problems were even greater than those of the Union. The South had much less industry and fewer railroads. It could not produce as much military equipment, and it could not transport supplies as easily as the North could.

In the early months of the war, Jefferson Davis, the Confederate president, did not even have guns enough for the men in his army.

Those who demanded immediate action expected a short war. They said Scott should take the army and march to Richmond. They were sure that if Union forces seized the Confederate capital, the southern rebellion would end.

Northern newspapers took up the cry, "On to Richmond!" Political leaders began pressing for a quick northern victory. Public pressure forced the army to act.

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VOICE ONE:

General Irvin McDowell

Beauregard had twenty thousand soldiers at Manassas Junction, a railroad village in Virginia less than fifty kilometers from Washington. McDowell planned to move on Manassas Junction July ninth, but was delayed for more than a week.

He planned the attack carefully. McDowell was worried that another large Confederate force west of Manassas Junction might join Beauregard's army.

This force, led by General Joe Johnston, was in the Shenandoah Valley near Harpers Ferry, Virginia. Across from Harpers Ferry, in Maryland, was a Union army almost twice the size of Johnston's. It was ordered to put pressure on Johnston's force to prevent it from helping Beauregard.

VOICE TWO:

Rose O'Neal Greenhow and her daughter Rose

The beautiful Missus Greenhow also had some very special friends. One was Senator Henry Wilson of Massachusetts. He was chairman of the Senate Committee on Military Affairs. Another special friend was Thomas Jordan, a Confederate colonel in Beauregard's army.

VOICE ONE:

Jordan asked Missus Greenhow, soon after the war started, to be a spy for the South. She agreed and sent much valuable information about Union military plans.

Early in July, she sent word to Beauregard that he would be attacked soon. She also sent a map used by the Senate Military Affairs Committee showing how the Union army would reach Manassas Junction.

Then, on the morning of July sixteenth, Missus Greenhow wrote a nine-word message. She gave it to a man to carry to Beauregard. The Confederate general received it that evening. It said: "Order given for McDowell to march upon Manassas tonight."

VOICE TWO:

Beauregard sent a telegram to Richmond. He told the Confederate government that McDowell was on the way. He asked that Johnston's ten thousand-man force in the Shenandoah Valley join him for battle. He was told to expect Johnston's help.

But Johnston's army was threatened by a large Union force that entered Virginia from Maryland. Led by General Robert Patterson, the Union troops moved toward the smaller Confederate force. They were not really interested in fighting Johnston. But they did want to prevent him from reaching Beauregard.

Johnston knew he could not defeat Patterson. So he decided to trick him.

While most of his army withdrew and prepared to join Beauregard, Johnston sent a small force to attack Patterson's army. Patterson believed Johnston was attacking with all his troops. He stopped moving forward and prepared to defend against what seemed to be a strong Confederate attack.

By the time the trick was discovered, Johnston and most of his troops were at Manassas.

VOICE ONE:

General McDowell's huge Union army left Arlington on the afternoon of July sixteenth. It was a hot day, and the road was dusty. The march was not well organized, and the men traveled slowly. They stopped at every stream to drink and wash the dust from their faces. Some of the soldiers left the road to pick fruits and berries from bushes along the way.

To some of those who watched this army pass, the lines of soldiers in bright clothes looked like a long circus parade.

Most of these men had not been soldiers long. Their bodies were soft, and they tired quickly. It took them four days to travel the forty-five kilometers to Centreville, the final town before Bull Run. The battle would start the next morning -- Sunday, July twenty-first.

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VOICE TWO:

The road from Washington was crowded early Sunday morning with horses and wagons bringing people to watch the great battle.

Hundreds of men and women watched the fight from a hill near Centreville. Below them was Bull Run. But the battleground was covered so thickly with trees that the crowds saw little of the fighting. They could, however, see the smoke of battle. And they could hear the sounds of shots and exploding shells.

From time to time, Union officers would ride up the hill to report what a great victory their troops were winning.

VOICE ONE:

A newspaper drawing of the battle

One Confederate officer, trying to prevent his troops from moving back, pointed to a group led by General T. J. Jackson of Virginia. "Look!" He shouted. "There is Jackson, standing like a stone wall! Fight like the Virginians!"

The Confederate troops refused to break.

The fighting was fierce. The air was full of flying bullets. A newsman wrote that the whole valley was boiling with dust and smoke. A Confederate soldier told his friend, "Them Yankees are just marching up and being shot to hell."

Neither side would give up. Then, a large group of Johnston's troops arrived by train and joined in the fight. Suddenly, Union soldiers stopped fighting and began pulling back. General McDowell and his officers tried to stop the retreat, but failed. Their men wanted no more fighting.

VOICE TWO:

The fleeing Union soldiers threw down their guns and equipment, thinking only of escape. Many did not stop until they reached Washington.

It was a bitter defeat. But it made the North recognize the need for a real army -- one trained and equipped for war. President Abraham Lincoln gave the job of building such an army to General George McClellan.

(MUSIC)

ANNOUNCER:

Our program was written by Frank Beardsley. The narrators were Frank Oliver and Jack Weitzel. Our series can be found online with transcripts, podcasts and historical images at voaspecialenglish.com. You can also follow our programs at twitter.com/voalearnenglish. Join us again next week for THE MAKING OF A NATION -- an American history series in VOA Special English.

Learning English MP3

Welcome to THE MAKING OF A NATION – American history in VOA Special English.

The shelling of Fort Sumter

President Abraham Lincoln asked the states of the Union for seventy-five thousand soldiers to help end the southern rebellion. Northern states quickly sent forces to Washington. But border states -- those between the North and the South -- refused to send any. Some prepared to leave the Union and join the Confederacy.

This week in our series, Steve Ember and Shirley Griffith describe the first days of the American Civil War.

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VOICE ONE:

Robert E. Lee as a young officer

Virginia's decision to secede cost the Union a military commander of great ability. He was Robert E. Lee. Lee was a Virginian and had served in the United States Army for more than thirty years. Lincoln asked him to be head of the army when General Winfield Scott retired.

Lee said he could not accept the job. He said he opposed secession and loved the Union. But, he said, he could not make war on his home state. Lee resigned from the army. He did not really want to fight at all. But soon after his resignation, he agreed to command the forces of Virginia.

VOICE TWO:

Virginia's forces moved quickly after the state seceded. A group of one thousand soldiers went to Harpers Ferry, Virginia, where the Union army had a gun factory and arsenal. It was the same town where abolitionist John Brown had tried to start a slave rebellion a few years before.

The United States force at Harpers Ferry was small. The soldiers could not defend the town against the Virginians, so they left. Before marching away, the soldiers set fire to the gun factory and arsenal.

The fire did not destroy all the equipment at the gun factory. When the Virginians captured the town, they sent the equipment south, where it was used to make guns for Confederate soldiers.

VOICE ONE:

Virginia's forces also moved against the United States' biggest navy base, which was at Norfolk, Virginia. Once again, the Union force withdrew. Before leaving, it burned every building and sank every ship.

Detail of an 1871 drawing of the city of Washington

Washington was not strongly defended. It did not have enough soldiers to stop any real attempt by Confederate forces to seize the city. It was extremely important to get more soldiers to Washington as quickly as possible.

VOICE TWO:

Thousands of men were on their way to Washington. But they could not get there quickly.

Troop trains had to pass through the state of Maryland to get to Washington from the North. Many people in the state supported the Confederacy. The governor, however, did not. He refused to call a meeting of the state legislature. He was afraid it might vote to secede. He wanted to keep Maryland neutral.

The first troop train from the North passed through Baltimore, Maryland, without incident. The second train was not so lucky.

A mob blocked the rail line and threw stones at the train. Shots were fired. Four soldiers and twelve civilians were killed.

State and city officials met to discuss the trouble. They agreed that there would be even more violence in the future. So they ordered railroad bridges outside Baltimore destroyed. No more trains from the North could reach Washington that way.

VOICE ONE:

Abraham Lincoln

Landing at Annapolis would be easy. Getting to the capital would not. Supporters of the Confederacy had damaged trains, rail lines and bridges between the two cities. The first soldiers to land at Annapolis had to repair everything as they moved ahead.

Still, with all these difficulties, ten-thousand troops made it to Washington in the first few weeks of the Civil War. The city and government were safe.

VOICE TWO:

President Lincoln worried about the presence of Confederate supporters in Maryland. He knew they would continue to be a threat to the movement of Union troops and supplies.

Lincoln wanted to restrict the activities of the Confederate supporters. So he took an extremely unusual step for an American president. He put much of Maryland under military rule. He gave military officers the power to arrest civilians believed to be hostile to the Union. And he gave them the power to hold these suspects without trial.

This order suspended two of the basic rights under the Constitution. One was the right to go free until officially charged. And the other was the right to a speedy trial.

The chief justice of the United States wrote a letter to President Lincoln. He said the Constitution did not give the president the power to suspend the rights of citizens. Lincoln disagreed. He felt the situation facing the Union permitted him to take such strong measures. If he had not acted, he believed, Maryland would have seceded.

VOICE ONE:

Maryland did not withdraw. But North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas did. There were now eleven states in the Confederacy. There could be two more. No one knew how long Kentucky and Missouri would remain in the Union. Both supported the southern rebels.

President Lincoln treated Kentucky carefully. He did not want the state to secede. Nor did he want it to remain neutral. Kentucky reached from the mountains of Virginia to the Mississippi River. As a neutral state, Kentucky could block northern troops from much of the South. Lincoln wanted it firmly on the side of the Union.

The president did not use force in Kentucky, as he had done in Maryland. Instead, he sent people to Kentucky to organize support for the Union. Newspapers were urged to publish pro-union statements. Home guard forces were formed. They received their weapons and supplies from Lincoln's administration.

Lincoln hoped that, in time, these efforts would win Kentucky's support for his war effort.

(MUSIC)

VOICE TWO:

In Missouri, the governor tried hard to take the state out of the Union. He called a convention to decide the question. A majority of the delegates refused to vote for secession.

The governor organized state soldiers. The Lincoln administration organized home guard forces. The two sides clashed several times. Some civilians were killed.

The United States army finally seized government buildings in the state capital. They forced state officials, including the governor, to flee. Missouri would remain in the Union.

VOICE ONE:

The capital of the Confederate states of America was located far south in Montgomery, Alabama. Within the first few weeks of the Civil War, the Confederate Congress voted to move the capital farther north to Richmond, Virginia. They believed Virginia would be an important battlefield in the war. They were right.

Two days before Confederate President Jefferson Davis left for Richmond, Union troops invaded Virginia. They left Washington, crossed the Potomac River, and seized the towns of Arlington and Alexandria.

No shots were fired. Confederate forces withdrew as Union troops moved forward. Within a month, thousands more Union soldiers were in Virginia. They were to prepare for a major battle at a place called Manassas Junction, or Bull Run.

That will be our story next week.

(MUSIC)

ANNOUNCER:

Our program was written by Frank Beardsley. The narrators were Steve Ember and Shirley Griffith. Transcripts, MP3s and podcasts are online, along with historical images, at voaspecialenglish.com. You can also follow our programs at twitter.com/voalearnenglish. Join us again next week for THE MAKING OF A NATION -- an American history series in VOA Special English.

Learning English MP3

Welcome to THE MAKING OF A NATION – American history in VOA Special English.

Just before sunrise on 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 military base on an island in the harbor.

The explosion was a signal for all Confederate guns surrounding the fort to open fire. Shell after shell smashed into the 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.

This week in our series, Jack Moyles and Stuart Spencer tell about the attack on Fort Sumter.

VOICE ONE:

The shelling of Fort Sumter

Confederate President Jefferson Davis ordered his commander in Charleston, General [Pierre] Beauregard, to destroy the fort before the food could arrive.

VOICE TWO:

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 ONE:

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 TWO:

Confederate guns fire on 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 ONE:

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 TWO:

The wreckage of Fort Sumter

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 ONE:

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 TWO:

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 ONE:

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 TWO:

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 ONE:

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.

(MUSIC)

ANNOUNCER:

Our program was written by Frank Beardsley. The narrators were Jack Moyles and Stuart Spencer. Transcripts, MP3s and podcasts are online, along with historical pictures, at voaspecialenglish.com. You can also follow our programs at twitter.com/voalearnenglish. Join us again next week for THE MAKING OF A NATION -- an American history series in VOA Special English.

Learning English MP3

Welcome to THE MAKING OF A NATION – American history in VOA Special English.

On a cold and cloudy day in March of eighteen sixty-one, Abraham Lincoln became the sixteenth president of the United States. In his inaugural speech, the new president announced the policy that he would follow toward the southern states that had left the Union.

Abraham Lincoln

This week in our series, Jack Weitzel and Jack Moyles discuss the dispute over the federal base that was being built at Fort Sumter.

VOICE ONE:

On his second day as president, Lincoln received some bad news from Fort Sumter at Charleston, South Carolina. Major Robert Anderson, the commander of the small United States force at Sumter, wrote that his food supplies were low. At most, said Anderson, there was enough food for forty days. Unless he and his men received more supplies, they would have to leave the fort.

Fort Sumter before the first shot

VOICE TWO:

But getting food to Fort Sumter would be a very difficult job. The fort was built on an island in Charleston Harbor. It was surrounded by southern artillery. Southern gunboats guarded the port.

To get supplies to Anderson and his men, a ship would have to fight its way to Sumter. Such a battle was sure to begin a bitter civil war. There also was the danger that fighting would cause slave states still in the Union to secede and join the southern Confederacy.

VOICE ONE:

The Army chief, General [Winfield] Scott, warned Lincoln that it was too late to get supplies to Fort Sumter. He said southern defenses around the fort were so strong that a major military effort would be necessary. He said it would take months to prepare the warships and soldiers for such an effort. Major Anderson and his men at Sumter, he said, could not wait that long.

There was another plan, however, that might work. It was proposed to Lincoln by Captain Gustavus Fox of the Navy Department.

Captain Fox said soldiers and supplies could be sent down to Charleston in ships. Outside the entrance to the harbor, on a dark night, they could be put into small boats and pulled by tugs to the fort. Fox said a few warships could be sent to prevent southern gunboats from interfering.

VOICE TWO:

Lincoln liked this plan. He asked his cabinet for advice. If it were possible to send supplies to Sumter, he asked, would it be wise to do so?

Postmaster General [Montgomery] Blair was the only member of the cabinet to answer 'yes'. Treasury Secretary [Salmon] Chase was for the plan only if Lincoln was sure it would not mean war. Secretary of State [William] Seward and the others opposed it. They said it would be better to withdraw Major Anderson and his men. They felt that now was not the time to start a civil war.

This opposition in the cabinet caused Lincoln to postpone action on the Fox plan. But he sent two men separately to Charleston to get him information on the situation there. One was Captain Fox. The other was a close friend, Ward Lamon.

VOICE ONE:

Union Major Robert Anderson

Ward Lamon went to Charleston after Fox returned to Washington. He, too, met with Governor Pickens and Major Anderson. The South Carolina Governor asked Lamon to give Lincoln this message:

"Nothing can prevent war except a decision by the President of the United States to accept the secession of the South. If an attempt is made to put more men in Fort Sumter, a war cry will be sounded from every hilltop and valley in the South."

Lamon reported to Lincoln that the arrival of even a boat load of food at Sumter would lead to fighting.

VOICE TWO:

At the end of March, Lincoln held another cabinet meeting and again asked what should be done about Fort Sumter. Should an attempt be made to get supplies to Major Anderson? This time, three members of the cabinet voted 'yes' and three voted 'no'.

When the meeting ended, Lincoln wrote an order for the Secretary of War. He told him to prepare to move men and supplies by sea to Fort Sumter. He said they should be ready to sail as early as April sixth -- only one week away.

VOICE ONE:

On April fourth, Lincoln called Captain Fox to the White House. He told him that the government was ready to take supplies to Fort Sumter. He said Fox would lead the attempt.

Lincoln showed Fox a message he was sending to Governor Pickens in South Carolina. It read: "This is to inform you that an attempt will be made to supply Fort Sumter with food only. If this attempt is not opposed, no effort will be made to throw in men, arms or ammunition."

Governor Pickens received the message on April Eight. He immediately sent it by telegraph to Confederate President Jefferson Davis at Montgomery, Alabama.

Davis called a meeting of his cabinet to discuss what should be done. He asked if Fort Sumter should be seized before supplies could arrive.

VOICE TWO:

Robert Toombs

Later in the meeting, Toombs urged Davis not to attack the fort.

"Mr. President," he said, "at this time it is suicide -- murder -- and will lose us every friend in the North. You will strike a hornets' nest which extends from mountains to oceans. Millions now quiet will swarm out and sting us to death. It is not necessary. It puts us in the wrong. It will kill us!"

VOICE ONE :

On April tenth, Jefferson Davis sent his decision to the Confederate commander at Charleston, General Pierre Beauregard. He told Beauregard to demand the surrender of Fort Sumter. If Major Anderson refused, then the general was to destroy the fort.

The surrender demand was carried to Sumter the next day by a group of Confederate officers. They said Anderson and his men must leave the fort. But they could take with them their weapons and property. And they were offered transportation to any United States port they named.

VOICE TWO:

Anderson rejected the demand. As he walked with the Confederate officers back to their boat, he asked if General Beauregard would open fire on Sumter immediately. No, they said, he would be told later when the shooting would start. Anderson then told the southerners, "If you do not shell us to pieces, hunger will force us out in a few days."

General Beauregard informed the Confederate government in Montgomery that Anderson refused to surrender. He also reported the major's statement that Sumter had only enough food for a few more days.

VOICE ONE:

New orders were sent to Beauregard. Jefferson Davis said there was no need to attack the fort if hunger would soon force the United States soldiers to leave. But he said Anderson must say exactly when he and his men would leave. And he said Anderson must promise not to fire on Confederate forces. If Anderson agreed to this, then Confederate guns would remain silent.

This offer was carried to Fort Sumter a few minutes before midnight, April eleventh.

Anderson discussed the offer with his officers and then wrote his answer. He would leave the fort on April fifteenth if the Confederates made no hostile act against Fort Sumter or against the United States flag. He would not leave, however, if before then he received new orders or supplies.

VOICE TWO:

Confederate General Pierre Beauregard

The major shook hands with Beauregard's representatives, and they left the fort. Anderson and his officers woke their men and told them to prepare for battle.

At Fort Johnson, across the harbor, Confederate gunners also were getting ready. These men would fire the first shot at Sumter. That explosion would signal the other guns surrounding the fort to open fire.

(MUSIC)

ANNOUNCER:

Our program was written by Frank Beardsley. The narrators were Jack Weitzel and Jack Moyles. You can find transcripts, MP3s and podcasts of our programs, along with historical images, at voaspecialenglish.com. And you can follow us at twitter.com/voalearnenglish. Join us again next week for THE MAKING OF A NATION -- an American history series in VOA Special English.

Learning English MP3

Welcome to the MAKING OF A NATION – American history in VOA Special English.

By February first, eighteen sixty-one, seven southern states had withdrawn from the United States of America. They created their own independent nation -- the Confederate States of America. The South seceded because Abraham Lincoln, a Republican, had been elected president. Southerners believed he would support a constitutional ban on slavery. They were afraid their way of life would soon end.

This week in our series, Kay Gallant and Harry Monroe discuss the beginning of Abraham Lincoln's presidency.

VOICE ONE:

Abraham Lincoln

Lincoln arrived in Washington nine days before his inauguration. It was a busy time. He talked with many people, including delegates to a peace convention. Every state was represented at the convention, except the states that had seceded. The delegates urged Lincoln to support slavery. They urged him not to go to war over the issue.

Lincoln said only that he would faithfully execute the duties of President of all the United States. He said he would protect and defend the American Constitution.

VOICE TWO:

Lincoln, fourth from left, with cabinet members Montgomery Blair, Caleb Smith, Salmon Chase, William Seward, Simon Cameron, Edward Bates and Gideon Wells

Lincoln chose William Seward as secretary of state, Salmon Chase as Treasury secretary, Gideon Welles as Navy secretary and Montgomery Blair as postmaster general.

Seward did not like Chase, Welles or Blair. He told Lincoln that he could not serve in the cabinet with them. He said they would never be able to work together. Lincoln answered that he would be happy to make Seward ambassador to Britain, instead of secretary of state. Seward gave up the argument and agreed to join the cabinet.

VOICE ONE:

Lincoln and Buchanan entering the Senate chamber before the inauguration

The inaugural ceremony took place outside the Capitol building. Lincoln was to give his inaugural speech before being sworn-in.

He had worked hard on the speech. He wanted to say clearly what his policy would be on slavery and secession. These were the issues which divided the country. These were the issues which were leading the country to civil war.

This is what Lincoln said:

VOICE TWO:

"There seems to be some fear among the people of the southern states, that because a Republican administration is coming to power, their property and their peace and personal security are threatened. There has never been any reasonable cause for such fears. In fact, much evidence to the contrary has existed, open to their inspection. It is found in nearly all my published speeches.

"In one of those speeches, I declared that I had no purpose -- directly or indirectly -- to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it exists. I said I believed I had no legal right to do so, and no wish to do so.

"This statement is still true. I can only say that the property, peace, and security of no part of the country are to be in any way endangered by the incoming administration."

VOICE ONE:

Lincoln noted that seventy-two years had passed since the first president was inaugurated. Since then, he said, fifteen men had led the nation through many dangers, generally with great success. He went on:

VOICE TWO:

A page of President Lincoln's inaugural speech

"The Union is much older than the Constitution. It was formed, in fact, by the Articles of Association in seventeen seventy-four. It was continued by the Declaration of Independence in seventeen seventy-six. It grew further under the Articles of Confederation in seventeen seventy-eight. And finally, in seventeen eighty-seven, one of the declared reasons for establishing the Constitution of the United States was to form 'a more perfect Union'.

"I therefore believe that, in view of the Constitution and the laws, the Union is not broken. I shall make sure, as the Constitution orders me to do, that the laws of the Union are obeyed in all the states. In doing this, there needs to be no bloodshed or violence. And there shall be none, unless it be forced upon the national government.

"The power given to me will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the property and places belonging to the government, and to collect the taxes. But beyond what is necessary for these purposes, there will be no invasion, no using of force against or among the people anywhere."

VOICE ONE:

Lincoln then repeated some statements he had made during his campaign for president. He used them to explain the differences between North and South.

One part of the country, he said, believes slavery is right and should be extended. The other part believes slavery is wrong and should not be extended. This, he said, was the only important dispute.

Lincoln admitted that, even if the dispute could be settled peacefully, there were those who wanted to see the Union destroyed. He said his words were not meant for them. They were meant only for those people who really loved the Union. He said:

VOICE TWO:

"Physically speaking, we cannot separate. We cannot remove our sections from each other nor build an impassable wall between them. A husband and wife may be divorced and go away from or out of the reach of each other. But the different parts of our country cannot do this. They must remain face to face. And relations -- friendly or hostile -- must continue between them.

"Is it possible to make those relations better after separation than before. Can aliens make treaties easier than friends can make laws. Can treaties be more faithfully enforced between aliens than laws can be enforced among friends.

"My countrymen -- one and all -- think calmly and well upon this subject. Nothing valuable can be lost by taking time.

"In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen -- and not in mine -- is the great issue of civil war. The government will not attack you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors.

"We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though emotion may have damaged them, it must not break our ties of love."

VOICE ONE:

The 1861 inaugural Bible

Lincoln's first crisis came quickly. It was a problem left unsolved by the out-going president.

Lincoln had to decide immediately what to do about the federal fort in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina: Fort Sumter. The fort was surrounded by southern artillery. Southern gunboats guarded the harbor. The federal troops inside Fort Sumter were getting dangerously low on food. But any attempt to send more men or supplies would be seen as an act of war -- civil war.

That will be our story next week.

(MUSIC)

ANNOUNCER:

Our program was written by Frank Beardsley. The narrators were Kay Gallant and Harry Monroe. Transcripts, MP3s and podcasts of our programs are online, along with historical images, at voaspecialenglish.com. You can also follow us at twitter.com/voalearnenglish. Join us again next week for THE MAKING OF A NATION -- an American history series in VOA Special English.

Learning English MP3

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 Republicans were a new party, and Lincoln was the first to be elected president. They wanted to stop slavery from spreading into the western territories.

Southern states believed they had a constitutional right to take property -- including slaves -- anywhere. They also feared that any interference with slavery would end their way of life.

This week in our series, Frank Oliver and Larry West tell what happened after South Carolina left the Union.

VOICE ONE:

South Carolina faced several problems after it seceded. The most serious problem was what to do with property owned by the federal government. There were several United States forts in and around the Port of Charleston. Fort Moultrie had fewer than seventy soldiers. Castle Pinckney had only one. And Fort Sumter -- which was still being built -- had none.

The commander of the forts asked for more men. Without them, he said, he could not defend the forts. The army refused. It told the commander to defend the forts as best he could.

He was told to do nothing that might cause South Carolina to attack. If South Carolina attacked, or planned to attack, then he could move his men into the fort that would be easiest to defend. That would probably be the new one, Fort Sumter.

VOICE TWO:

A cartoon making fun of both South Carolina Governor Francis Pickens and President Buchanan over the Fort Sumter issue

Six days after South Carolina seceded from the Union, the commander of Charleston's forts decided to move his men to Fort Sumter. They would move as soon as it was dark.

The federal troops crossed the port in small boats. The state soldiers did not see them. The governor was furious when he learned what had happened. He demanded that the federal troops leave Fort Sumter. The commander said they would stay.

The governor then ordered state soldiers to seize the other two forts in Charleston Harbor. And he ordered the state flag raised over all other federal property in the city.

(MUSIC)

James Buchanan

President James Buchanan, who would leave office in just a few months, was forced to deal with the situation. His cabinet was deeply divided on the issue. The southerners wanted him to recognize South Carolina and order all federal troops out of Charleston Harbor. The northerners said he must not give up any federal property or rights.

The president agreed to meet with three representatives from South Carolina. They had come to Washington to negotiate the future of federal property in their state. The attorney general said the meeting was a mistake.

"These gentlemen," he said, "claim to be ambassadors of South Carolina. This is foolish. They cannot be ambassadors. They are lawbreakers, traitors, and should be arrested. You cannot negotiate with them."

VOICE TWO:

The attorney general and the secretary of state threatened to resign if President Buchanan gave in to South Carolina's demands. The president finally agreed not to give in.

He said he would keep federal troops in Charleston Harbor. And he said Fort Sumter would be defended against all hostile action. On the last day of eighteen sixty, he ordered two hundred troops and extra supplies sent to Fort Sumter.

The War Department wanted to keep the operation secret. So the troops and supplies were put on a fast civilian ship, instead of a slower warship. It was thought that a civilian ship could get into Charleston Harbor before state forces could act.

But a southern Senator learned of the operation. He warned the governor of South Carolina. When the ship arrived in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina soldiers were waiting.

VOICE ONE:

The soldiers lit a cannon and fired a warning shot. The ship refused to stop. Other cannons then opened fire.

The commander of federal troops at Fort Sumter had a difficult decision to make. He had received permission to defend the fort, if attacked. But his orders said nothing about defending ships. He knew that if he opened fire, the United States and South Carolina would be at war.

The decision was made for him. South Carolina's cannons finally hit the ship. The ship slowed, then turned back to sea. It returned north with all the troops and supplies.

VOICE TWO:

Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor

"Your forces," he wrote, "fired this morning on a civilian ship flying the flag of my government. Since I have not been informed that South Carolina declared war on the United States, I can only believe that this hostile act was done without your knowledge or permission. For this reason -- and only this -- I did not fire on your guns."

If, the commander said, the governor had approved the shelling, it would be an act of war. And he would be forced to close the Port of Charleston. No ship would be permitted to enter or leave.

The governor's answer came back within hours. He said South Carolina was now independent. He said the attempt by the United States to strengthen its force at Fort Sumter was clearly an act of aggression. And he demanded that the commander surrender.

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VOICE ONE:

During the crisis over Fort Sumter, Congress tried to find a compromise that might prevent war. Lawmakers proposed a new line across the country. South of the line, slavery would be permitted. North of the line, slavery would be illegal.

Many Republicans supported the proposal, even though the Republican Party opposed the spread of slavery into the western territories.

One Republican, however, rejected the idea completely. He was Abraham Lincoln, who would take office as president in March. Lincoln said there could be no compromise on extending slavery. "If there is," he said, "then all our hard work is lost. If trouble comes, it is better to let it come now than at some later time."

VOICE TWO:

The trouble would come soon. One by one, the states of the South seceded.

By February first, eighteen sixty-one, six states had followed South Carolina out of the Union. A few days later, representatives from the states met in Montgomery, Alabama. Their job was to create a new nation. It would be an independent republic called the Confederate States of America.

Jefferson Davis

The convention named former United States Senator Jefferson Davis to be president of the Confederate States of America.

Davis did not want civil war. But he was not afraid of it. He said: "Our separation from the old Union is complete. The time for compromise has passed. Should others try to change our decision with force, they will smell southern gunpowder and feel the steel of southern swords."

VOICE ONE:

Jefferson Davis left his farm in Mississippi to become president of the Confederate States of America on February eleventh. On that same day, Abraham Lincoln left his home in Illinois to become president of the United States.

As Lincoln got on the train that would take him to Washington, he said:

"I now leave, not knowing when -- or whether ever -- I may return. The task before me is greater than that which rested upon our first president. Without the help of God, I cannot succeed. With that assistance, I cannot fail. Let us hope that all yet will be well."

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ANNOUNCER:

Our program was written by Frank Beardsley. The narrators were Frank Oliver and Larry West. Transcripts, MP3s and podcasts of our programs can be found, along with historical images, at voaspecialenglish.com. Join us again next week for THE MAKING OF A NATION -- an American history series in VOA Special English.

Learning English MP3

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. The southern states had finally acted on their earlier threats. They had begun to leave the Union over the issue of slavery.

This week in our series, Harry Monroe and Kay Gallant talk about this critical time in American history.

Abraham Lincoln

The southern states did not want Abraham Lincoln to win the election of eighteen sixty. Lincoln was a Republican. And the Republican Party opposed slavery. Lincoln never said he wanted to end slavery in the South. He did not believe anyone had the right to do so. Yet he did not want to see slavery spread to other parts of the United States.

Lincoln told southerners: "You think slavery is right and should be extended, while we think it is wrong and should be limited. That, I suppose, is the trouble. It surely is the only important difference between us."

VOICE TWO:

Pro-slavery extremists felt this difference was enough. And they were sure Lincoln and his Republicans would soon win control of Congress and the Supreme Court. Before long, they thought, the Constitution would be changed. Slavery would become illegal everywhere.

Even if this did not happen, southerners were worried. Unless slavery could spread, they said, the slave population in the South would become too large. In time, blacks and whites would battle for control. One or the other would be destroyed.

So even before the presidential election, southerners began discussing what they would do if Abraham Lincoln won.

VOICE ONE:

Early in October, the governor of South Carolina, William Gist, wrote letters to the governors of other southern states. He said they should agree on what action to take if Lincoln became president.

William Gist

Governor Gist received mixed answers.

Two states -- Alabama and Mississippi -- said they would not secede alone. But they said they would join others that made this decision. Two more states -- Louisiana and Georgia -- said they would not secede unless the north acted against them. And one state -- North Carolina -- said it had not yet decided what to do.

No southern governor, except William Gist of South Carolina, seemed willing to lead the South out of the Union.

VOICE TWO:

Abraham Lincoln was elected president on November sixth, eighteen sixty. South Carolina exploded with excitement at the news. To many of the people there, Lincoln's victory was a signal that ended the state's ties to the Union. To them, it was the beginning of southern independence.

Both United States Senators from South Carolina resigned. So did a federal judge and the collector of federal taxes. United States flags were lowered. State flags were raised in their place.

The state legislature agreed to open a convention on December seventeenth. The convention would make the final decision on leaving the Union. Several other southern states did the same.

VOICE ONE:

This idea of leaving the Union -- secession -- split North and South just as much as slavery. Southerners claimed they had the right to secede peacefully. Northerners disagreed. They said secession was treason. They said it would lead to civil war.

In the months before Lincoln's inauguration, President James Buchanan tried to deal with the situation. First he proposed a convention of all the states. The purpose of the convention would be to work out differences between North and South. The southern members of Buchanan's cabinet rejected this idea.

The second proposal was a strong policy statement on secession. The statement would include an opinion by the attorney general. It said the government could use force, if necessary, to keep states in the Union. The southern cabinet members rejected this idea, too.

VOICE TWO:

President Buchanan had to settle for a moderate policy statement on secession.

It said the president could send troops into a state to help federal marshals enforce the rulings of federal courts. But if federal judges resigned, there would be no federal court rulings to enforce. Therefore, to send troops to a state where federal officers had resigned -- such as South Carolina -- would be an act of war against the state. And only Congress had the constitutional power to declare war.

Buchanan accepted this statement. He was only too happy to let Congress decide what to do.

VOICE ONE:

South Carolina's congressional delegation, drawn by Winslow Homer in the Harper's Weekly of December 22, 1860

Most of the congressmen from states in the deep south supported secession. They did not want to remain in the Union. Many congressmen from states in the North had been elected because they promised to keep slavery from spreading to the western territories. They did not plan to break their promises.

A few lawmakers hoped President Buchanan, in his yearly message to Congress, might propose a compromise.

VOICE TWO:

Buchanan began by denouncing northern Abolitionists. He said they were responsible for the present problem. Their interference, he said, had created a great fear of slave rebellions in the South.

Then Buchanan called on the South to accept the election of Abraham Lincoln. He said the election of a citizen to the office of president should not be a reason for dissolving the Union. Buchanan declared that the constitution gave no state the right to leave. But, he admitted, if a state did secede, there was little the federal government could do.

"The fact is," Buchanan said, "that our Union rests upon public opinion. It can never be held together by the blood of its citizens in civil war. If it cannot live in the hearts of its people, then it must one day die."

James Buchanan

Buchanan proposed to Congress that it offer a constitutional amendment on the question of slavery.

He said the amendment should recognize the right to own slaves as property in states where slavery was permitted. It should protect this right in all territories until the territories became states. And it should end all state laws that interfered with the return of escaped slaves to their owners.

No one liked President Buchanan's message to Congress. Northerners did not like his declaration of federal weakness in the face of secession. Southerners did not like his declaration that secession was unconstitutional.

The message did nothing to change the situation. Soon after it was read to Congress, South Carolina opened its secession convention.

VOICE TWO:

The Charleston Mercury announces the secession of South Carolina

A committee wrote a secession resolution. The resolution said simply that the people of South Carolina were ending the agreement of seventeen eighty-eight in which the state had approved the Constitution of the United States.

It said the Union existing between South Carolina and the United States of America was being dissolved.

The committee offered the resolution to the convention on December twentieth, eighteen sixty. There was no debate. The delegates voted immediately. No one voted against it.

VOICE ONE:

South Carolina had seceded. But what must it do now. There was the problem of property in South Carolina owned by the federal government. The convention continued to meet to work out details of South Carolina's new position in the world.

That will be our story next week.

(MUSIC)

ANNOUNCER:

Our program was written by Frank Beardsley. The narrators were Harry Monroe and Kay Gallant. Transcripts, MP3s and podcasts of our programs can be found, along with historical images, at voaspecialenglish.com. Join us again next week for THE MAKING OF A NATION -- an American history series in VOA Special English.

Learning English MP3

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 new president could not hold the nation together. The states of the South were very close to leaving the Union over the issue of slavery.

This week in our series, Tony Riggs and Frank Oliver talk about the candidates and the issues in the election of eighteen sixty.

VOICE ONE:

After four years as president, James Buchanan decided not to run again. Buchanan was a Democrat. His party, like the nation, was split over slavery. Southern Democrats wanted the party to support slavery. Northern Democrats refused.

The opposition Republican Party expected to gain votes from dissatisfied Democrats. Republicans had become stronger since the last presidential election in eighteen fifty-six. They felt their candidate would win in eighteen sixty.

Stephen Douglas

The Democratic nominating convention opened in April in Charleston, South Carolina. Senator Stephen Douglas of Illinois was the leading candidate. He had the support of a majority of convention delegates. But he did not have the two-thirds majority needed to win the nomination.

Many Southern Democrats did not like Stephen Douglas. Some did not trust him. Others did not accept his policies on slavery. Douglas did not oppose slavery or the spread of slavery. However, he said no federal law could make slavery legal in a territory where the people did not want it. This was his policy of "popular sovereignty."

VOICE ONE:

The Southern Democrats who opposed Stephen Douglas were led by William Yancey of Alabama. Yancey wanted to get a pro-slavery statement into the party's platform. He was sure Douglas would not accept the nomination based on such a platform.

If Yancey failed to get the statement he wanted, he would take Southern Democrats out of the convention. And out of the party.

The committee on resolutions considered three platforms. One platform declared that the people of a territory had the right to decide if slavery would be legal or illegal. The second declared that the Supreme Court had that right. And the third declared that no one did -- that slavery was legal everywhere.

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VOICE TWO:

William Yancey

Yancey spoke of the danger of a great slave rebellion. He described it as a sleeping volcano that threatened the lives, property, and honor of the people of the South. He said the actions of the North might cause that volcano to explode.

Another convention delegate answered Yancey's speech. He said Northern Democrats were tired of defending the interests of the South. "Now," he said, "Yancey tells us we must agree that slavery is right. He orders us to hide our faces and eat dirt. Gentlemen of the South," he said, "you mistake us. We will not do it!"

VOICE ONE:

In this atmosphere of tension, it was clear that a pro-slavery platform would not be approved. The Alabama delegation announced that, therefore, it must withdraw. The delegations from the other six states of the Deep South -- Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas -- did the same.

Those fifty men organized their own convention. They approved a pro-slavery platform, but did not nominate anyone for president. They agreed to meet again a few weeks later in Richmond, Virginia.

The Northern Democrats postponed their nomination, too. They agreed to meet again in Baltimore, Maryland.

(MUSIC)

VOICE TWO:

William Seward

The Republican platform seemed to contain something for everyone.

For those opposed to slavery, the platform rejected the idea that slave owners had a constitutional right to take slaves into new territories. For foreign-born Americans, it supported their right to full citizenship. For manufacturers, it proposed a new tax on imports to protect American industry. And for those in the northwest, it called for free land for settlers, and federal aid to build roads and canals.

Delegates approved the platform with loud cheers. They would return the next day to nominate their candidate for president.

VOICE ONE:

William Seward was sure he would win the nomination. If not on the first vote, he thought, then on the second. But there was some opposition to Seward. And his campaign organization failed to see its strength.

Abraham Lincoln

The Republican convention voted three times. Lincoln gained support on each ballot. But neither he nor Seward received enough votes for the nomination. Then, before a fourth vote could be taken, a delegate from Ohio asked to speak. The big room became silent. "Mister chairman," he said, "I rise to announce the change of four votes of Ohio to Mister Lincoln."

That was enough to give Abraham Lincoln the Republican nomination for president.

(MUSIC)

VOICE TWO:

One month later, the Democrats re-opened their nominating convention. Most of the Southern Democrats who walked out of the first meeting came back. Many of their seats at the convention had been given to new delegates. So a new dispute arose over which delegates had the right to be there.

A compromise plan split the seats between old and new delegates. But most of the Southerners rejected it. One by one, a majority of each Southern delegation walked out. The remaining Democrats then voted for a candidate. They chose Stephen Douglas.

Southern Democrats nominated their own candidate, John Breckinridge of Kentucky. And a group called the Constitutional Union Party nominated John Bell.

VOICE ONE:

John Breckinridge

Lincoln's supporters organized a loud and colorful campaign, complete with marching bands and signs. Lincoln himself was silent. He said, "It has been my decision since becoming a candidate to make no speeches. I am here only to see you and to let you see me. "

In fact, it was Lincoln's assistants who had advised him to say nothing. They believed he had said enough in the past to make clear his position on the important issues.

VOICE TWO:

Stephen Douglas, on the other hand, campaigned very hard. His health was poor. And he had trouble getting money. But that did not stop him from speaking in almost every state.

Within a few weeks, however, Douglas recognized that he had no real hope of winning. His position on slavery had cost him all support in the South.

Douglas believed that, of the other candidates, Abraham Lincoln had the best chance of winning the presidential election. He also believed pro-slavery extremists would use Lincoln's election as an excuse to take Southern states out of the union. So he turned his efforts to a campaign for the union itself.

He said, "The election of a man to the presidency by the American people, under the Constitution, is no reason for any attempt to dissolve this glorious nation."

VOICE ONE:

Election day was November sixth. The popular vote was close between Lincoln and Douglas. But the electoral vote was not. Lincoln received one hundred eighty. Breckinridge received seventy-two. Bell received thirty-nine. And Douglas received just twelve.

Abraham Lincoln would be the new president of the United States.

He would enter office facing the most serious crisis in American history. For, before his inauguration, southern states finally acted on their threats. They began to leave the union.

That will be our story next week.

(MUSIC)

ANNOUNCER:

Our program was written by Frank Beardsley. The narrators were Tony Riggs and Frank Oliver. Transcripts, MP3s and podcasts of our programs are online, along with historical images, at voaspecialenglish.com. Join us again next week for THE MAKING OF A NATION - an American history series in VOA Special English.

Learning English MP3

Welcome to THE MAKING OF A NATION – American history in VOA Special English.

In October of eighteen fifty-nine, a group of anti-slavery extremists attacked the town of Harpers Ferry. Harpers Ferry was part of Virginia then; today it is located in West Virginia. The attackers were led by John Brown. They seized a gun factory and a federal supply center where military equipment was kept. They planned to use the guns and equipment to organize a rebel army of slaves.

This week in our series, Harry Monroe and Kay Gallant tell us what happened to John Brown after he seized Harpers Ferry.

VOICE ONE:

Marines attack the engine house at Harpers Ferry

John Brown had attacked with about twenty men. Several, including two of his sons, had been killed by local militia. He and his remaining men withdrew to a small brick building. The attack had failed. Not one slave had come to Harpers Ferry to help Brown.

The few whom his men had freed had refused to fight when the shooting started. Brown could not understand the fear that kept the slaves from fighting for their freedom.

VOICE TWO:

Brown and his men were trapped inside the brick building. They held a few hostages whom they hoped to exchange for their freedom.

A drawing of the inside of the engine house just before it was seized by Marines

As expected, Brown refused to surrender. He said he and his men had the right to go free. As soon as Brown spoke, the signal was given. The Marines attacked.

They broke open a small hole in the door of the brick building. One by one, the Marines moved through the hole. They fought hand-to-hand against the men inside. After a brief fight, they won. John Brown's rebellion was crushed.

VOICE ONE:

A few hours after Brown was captured, the Governor of Virginia and three Congressmen arrived in Harpers Ferry. They wanted to question Brown. Brown had been wounded in the final attack. He was weak from the loss of blood. But he welcomed the chance to explain his actions.

The officials first asked where Brown got the money to organize his raid. Brown said he raised most of it himself. He refused to give the names of any of his supporters. Then the officials asked why Brown had come to Harpers Ferry. "We came to free the slaves," Brown said, "and only that."

He continued: "I think that you are guilty of a great wrong against God and humanity. I believe anyone would be perfectly right to interfere with you, so far as to free those you wickedly hold in slavery. I think I did right. You had better -- all you people of the South -- prepare yourselves for a settlement sooner than you are prepared for it.

"You may get rid of me very easily. I am nearly gone now. But this question is still to be settled -- this Negro question, I mean. That is not yet ended."

(MUSIC)

VOICE TWO:

The raid on Harpers Ferry increased the bitterness of the national dispute over slavery. Members of the Democratic Party called the raid a plot by the Republican Party. Republican leaders denied the charge. They said the raid was the work of one man -- one madman -- John Brown. Still, they said, he had acted for good reason: to end slavery in America.

Southern newspapers condemned Brown. Some said his raid was an act of war. Some demanded that he be executed as a thief and murderer. Many southerners said all of the

North was responsible for the raid. They believed all northerners wanted a slave rebellion in the South. And it was such a rebellion that southerners feared more than anything else.

New measures were approved throughout the South to prevent this. Military law was declared in some areas. Slave owners threatened to beat or hang any Negro who even looked rebellious.

VOICE ONE:

The fear of a slave rebellion united the people of the South. For years, rich slave owners had talked of taking the southern states out of the Union to save their way of life. But those who had no slaves opposed the idea of disunion.

John Brown's raid changed that. After his attack on Harpers Ferry, the south spoke with one voice. All southerners declared that they would fight to protect their homes from a Negro rebellion or from another attack by men like Brown. Feelings were especially high in Virginia, the state in which the raid took place. Virginians wanted Brown punished quickly to show what would happen to anyone who tried to lead a Negro rebellion.

There was some question whether Brown should be tried in a federal court or a state court. Brown's raid took place within the borders of a state. But the property he seized belonged to the federal government.

The Governor of Virginia decided to try Brown in a state court. He believed a federal court trial would take too long. If Brown were not brought to trial quickly, he said, people might attack the jail and kill him.

(MUSIC)

VOICE TWO:

John Brown

John Brown's lawyers tried to show that his family had a history of madness. They tried to prove that Brown, too, was mad. They asked the court to declare him innocent because of insanity. Brown protested. He said the lawyers were just trying to save his life. He did not want such a defense. The matter of insanity was dropped.

VOICE ONE:

Brown's lawyers then argued that he was not guilty of the three crimes with which he was charged.

First, they said, he could not be guilty of treason against Virginia, because he was not a citizen of Virginia. Second, he could not be guilty of plotting a slave rebellion, because he had never incited slaves against their owners. And third, he could not be guilty of murder, because he had killed only in self-defense.

The trial lasted five days. The jury found John Brown guilty of all three charges.

VOICE TWO:

The judge asked Brown if he wanted to make a statement before being sentenced. Brown did. He declared that he had not planned to start a slave rebellion. He said he only wanted to free some slaves and take them to Canada.

Brown's statement was strong. But it was not true. He had, in fact, planned to organize an army of slaves to fight for their freedom. He acted in the belief that slaves throughout the south would rise up against their owners and join him.

Brown's words did not move the judge. He said he could find no reason to question the jury's decision that Brown was guilty. He sentenced Brown to be hanged.

VOICE ONE:

One of Brown's supporters attempted to find a way to free Brown from jail. Several plans were proposed. None were tried.

A drawing of John Brown as he is about to be hanged

John Brown was executed on December second, eighteen fifty-nine. His death created a wave of public emotion throughout the country. In the North, people mourned.

One man wrote: "The events of the last month or two have done more to build northern opposition to slavery than anything which has ever happened before, than all the anti-slavery pamphlets and books that have ever been written."

In the south, people cheered. But their happiness at Brown's punishment was mixed with anger at those who honored him. As the nation prepared for a presidential election year, the South renewed its promise to defend slavery -- or leave the Union.

That will be our story next week.

(MUSIC)

ANNOUNCER:

Our program was written by Frank Beardsley. The narrators were Harry Monroe and Kay Gallant. Transcripts of our programs can be found along with MP3s, podcasts and historical images at voaspecialenglish.com. Join us again next week for THE MAKING OF A NATION -- an American history series in VOA Special English.

Learning English MP3

Welcome to THE MAKING OF A NATION -- American history in VOA Special English.

One day in October of eighteen fifty-nine, Americans were shocked by news of an attack led by John Brown. He was an antislavery extremist. Many people also considered him a madman.

John Brown

Brown decided to strike at Harpers Ferry, a small town about one hundred kilometers from Washington. It was part of Virginia at that time, but is now located in the state of West Virginia. It had a factory that made guns for the army and a supply center of valuable military equipment. Brown wanted the guns and equipment for the slave army he hoped to organize.

Harpers Ferry was built on a narrow finger of land where the Shenandoah River flowed into the Potomac. There was a bridge across each river. Brown organized his attack from across the Potomac, in Maryland.

This week in our series, Harry Monroe and Jack Moyles continue the story of John Brown and his raid on Harpers Ferry.

VOICE ONE:

With his force of less than twenty men, John Brown moved through the darkness down to the bridge that crossed the Potomac River.

Two men left the group to cut the telegraph lines east and west of Harpers Ferry.

At the bridge, Brown's men surprised a railroad guard. They told him he was their prisoner. The guard thought they were joking until he saw their guns.

Once across the bridge, Brown and his men moved quickly. They captured a few people in the street and another guard at the front gate of the government armory. They seized the armory, then crossed the street and seized the supply center. Millions of dollars' worth of military equipment was kept there.

VOICE TWO:

At left, the armory

Without firing a shot, Brown now controlled the three places he wanted in Harpers Ferry. His problem now was to hold what he had captured. Brown knew he had little time. The people of the town would soon learn what had happened. They would call for help. And several groups of militia in the area would come to the aid of Harpers Ferry.

Brown planned to use the people he had captured as hostages. The militia would not attack if there was danger of harming the prisoners. He wanted as many prisoners as possible, to protect himself. If his plan failed, he could offer them in exchange for his own freedom and that of his men.

VOICE ONE:

Brown had decided to capture, as his best hostage, Colonel Lewis Washington. The Colonel was a descendant of President George Washington. He lived on a big farm near Harpers Ferry. Brown sent some of his men to capture the old colonel and free his slaves.

They returned from the Washington farm after midnight. They brought Colonel Washington and ten slaves. They also captured another farmer and his son. The slaves were given spears and told to guard the prisoners.

Then, at the far end of the Potomac River bridge, the first shots were fired.

Brown's son, Watson, and another man fired at a railroad guard who refused to halt. A bullet struck his head, but did not hurt him seriously. The guard raced back across the bridge to the railroad station. He cried out that a group of armed men had seized the bridge.

VOICE TWO:

A few minutes later, a train from the west arrived at Harpers Ferry. The wounded guard warned the trainmen of the danger at the bridge. Two of the trainmen decided to investigate. They walked toward the bridge. Before they could reach it, bullets began whizzing past them. They ran back to the train and moved it farther from the bridge.

Then a free Negro man who worked at the railroad station, Hayward Shepherd, walked down to the bridge. Brown's men ordered him to halt. Shepherd tried to run and was shot. He got back to the station, but died several hours later.

(MUSIC)

VOICE ONE:

Brown finally agreed to let the train pass over the bridge and continue on to Baltimore. The train left at sunrise.

An illustration from Harper's Weekly showing armed citizens marching to Harpers Ferry

Soon after sunrise, men began arriving at Harpers Ferry from other towns in the area. They took positions above the armory and started shooting at it.

The militia from Charles Town arrived at the Maryland end of the Potomac bridge. They charged across, forcing Brown's men on the bridge to flee to the armory. Only one of Brown's men was hit. He was killed instantly.

VOICE TWO:

Brown saw that he was surrounded. His only hope was to try to negotiate a ceasefire and offer to release his thirty hostages, if the militia would let him and his men go free. Brown sent out one of his men and one of the prisoners with a white flag. The excited crowd refused to recognize the white flag. They seized Brown's man and carried him away.

Brown moved his men and the most important of his hostages into a small brick building at the armory. Then he sent out two more of his men with a prisoner to try to negotiate a ceasefire. One of them was his son, Watson.

VOICE ONE:

This time, the crowd opened fire. Watson and the other raider were wounded. Their prisoner escaped to safety. Watson was able to crawl back to the armory.

One of the youngest of Brown's men, William Leeman, tried to escape. He ran from the armory and jumped into the Potomac, planning to swim across the river. He did not get far. A group of militia saw him and began shooting. Leeman was forced to hide behind a rock in the middle of the river. Two men went out to the rock with guns and shot him. His body lay in the river for two days.

Later, more people were killed. One was the mayor of Harpers Ferry, Fontaine Beckham.

VOICE TWO:

After the mayor's death, a mob went to the hotel where one of Brown's men had been held since he was seized earlier in the day.

They pulled him from the hotel and took him to the bridge over the river. Several members of the mob put guns to his head and fired. They pushed his body off the bridge and into the water.

Across town, three of Brown's men were in trouble at the gun factory. The factory was built on an island in the Shenandoah River.

The island was now surrounded by militia. Forty of the soldiers attacked the factory from three sides. They pushed the three raiders back to a small building next to the river. The three men fought as long as possible. Then they jumped through a window into the river.

They tried to swim to safety. Men with guns were waiting for them. Bullets fell around the three like rain. One man was hit. He died instantly. Another was wounded. He was pulled to land and left to die. The third man escaped death. He was captured and held for trial.

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VOICE ONE:

All through the afternoon and evening, Brown's men at the armory continued to exchange shots with the militia. Several more on both sides were killed or wounded. One of those was another of Brown's sons, Oliver. He was shot and seriously wounded.

Night fell. Then, a militia officer, Captain Sinn, walked up to the small building held by Brown. He shouted to the men inside that he wished to talk. Brown opened the door and let him in. For almost an hour, the two men talked. They talked about slavery and the right to rebel against the government.

VOICE TWO:

Brown was furious that the crowd outside had refused to honor his white flag of truce earlier in the day. He told Sinn that his men could have killed unarmed men and women, but did not do so.

"That is not quite correct," Captain Sinn said. "Mayor Beckham had no gun when he was shot."

"Then I can only say I am most sad to hear it," said Brown.

"Men who take up guns against the government," said Sinn, "must expect to be shot down like dogs."

VOICE ONE:

In Washington, President Buchanan and Secretary of War John Floyd did not learn of the rebellion at Harpers Ferry until after ten o'clock that morning. The president wanted immediate action.

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ANNOUNCER:

Our program was written by Frank Beardsley. The narrators were Harry Monroe and Jack Moyles. Transcripts, MP3s, podcasts and archives of our programs can be found, along with historical images, at voaspecialenglish.com. Join us again next week for THE MAKING OF A NATION -- an American history series in VOA Special English.

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