(单词翻译:单击)
听力文本
Welcome to THE MAKING OF A NATION – American history in VOA Special English. Ulysses Grant was elected president of the United States in eighteen sixty-eight. Grant was a military hero. He led Union troops of the North to victory over Confederate troops of the South in the Civil War. Grant was extremely popular. But he was a much better general than he was a politician. As president, it was not long before he got into trouble in the battles of politics and government. This week in our series, Larry West and Frank Oliver talk about the first term of President Ulysses Grant. Grant resigned from the army to run for president. However, he ran on his record as a winning general. "Let us have peace," he often said. And the people believed he would guarantee peace. In fact, Grant guaranteed nothing. As a presidential candidate, he offered no new national programs. So, as president, he had no new policies to carry out. He had few struggles with Congress, because he rarely asked Congress to do anything. Many events took place during Grant's two administrations. But he usually was not involved directly. He had problems only because he was linked indirectly to the men who were responsible.
One of President Grant's first problems was caused by two of his friends. They tried to take control of the gold market. The men were Jay Gould and James Fisk. Both were extremely rich. Gould and Fisk developed a plan to buy a large part of the nation's gold supply when the price was low. They would hold the gold until demand greatly increased the price. Then they would sell it and make a lot of money. To be successful, they had to prevent the government from selling gold on the market. Government sales of gold would keep the price down. So, Gould and Fisk urged President Grant to stop the Treasury Department from selling gold. Grant refused to give them a firm promise. The two men brought one of Grant's relatives into their plan. They paid him to write a letter to the president. It asked the president to halt government sales of gold. A messenger took the letter to the White House. He then sent a telegram to James Fisk saying the letter had been delivered. The telegram said: "Letter delivered, all right." Fisk thought this meant that President Grant had agreed to halt government sales of gold. So he began buying gold in huge amounts. Fisk was wrong. The words "all right" meant only that the letter had been delivered. They did not mean that Grant had agreed to the plan. In fact, Grant did not agree. He ordered the Treasury Department to sell gold to block the attempt by Gould and Fisk to control the gold market.
The result was that James Fisk and Jay Gould lost a great amount of money. So did other businessmen and bankers. Many Americans blamed President Grant for not acting quickly enough to stop the activity of his two friends. Concern about Grant grew after another incident was reported at the New York customs office. Two of Grant's friends there became involved in a plan to get money from importers. They used their official positions to earn huge amounts of money. Grant also was criticized for one of his few independent actions as president. He tried to buy the Dominican Republic in the Caribbean. The island nation was ruled by a dictator, Buenaventura Baez. Baez was so dishonest that the people of the Dominican Republic were ready to overthrow him. Before this could happen, he offered to sell his country to the United States. When Grant received the offer, he sent a White House official to negotiate with Baez. The official returned with a treaty giving the Dominican Republic to the United States for one-and-one-half-million dollars. Grant immediately sent American warships to the Dominican Republic. He wanted to keep Baez in power until the treaty was completed.
Grant asked the Senate to approve the treaty. Many senators opposed it. They said taking control of the Dominican Republic would cost too much money. They also said it was a bad idea for the United States to take control of any nation in the Caribbean. President Grant went to the Capitol building himself to urge senators to approve the treaty. His efforts failed. The treaty was defeated. Grant's biggest national problem was the political situation in the former rebel states of the South. After the Civil War, most southern states were governed by radical members of the Republican Party. Radicals supported citizenship rights and voting rights for blacks. In the late eighteen sixties, the radicals began to lose power. Many failed to be re-elected to state office. They were being defeated by candidates of the Democratic Party. Democrats did not want blacks to have any rights at all. The first radical Republicans to lose power were those in Virginia. The change there was made peacefully. Not so in other southern states. In Tennessee, Georgia, and North Carolina, Democrats used threats and violence to win elections. Their campaigns often were led by members of the Ku Klux Klan.
The Klan was a secret organization of white men. Members believed white people were greater than black people. Wearing cloths over their faces, Klansmen broke up radical Republican political meetings. They threatened, beat, and killed blacks to keep them out of politics. They did the same thing to whites who tried to organize or help blacks. Before long, Ku Klux Klan groups were formed in every southern state. By eighteen seventy-one, radical Republican congressmen were demanding a new law to destroy the Ku Klux Klan. A committee headed by radicals was named to investigate Klan activities in the south. The committee heard reports of the Klan's brutal acts. It helped prepare a bill to control the Klan. After much debate, Congress passed the bill. The new law gave the president power to declare military rule in the south. Democrats charged that the real purpose of the law was to keep radical Republican state governments in power. President Grant did not wait long to use his powers under the new law. He declared military rule in a large area of South Carolina. Thousands of people there were arrested. They were tried in federal courts. Juries were made up mainly of blacks and radical whites.
This kind of justice made southerners feel even more bitterness toward the North. It also angered a number of moderate members of the Republican Party. They said the federal government should not help radical Republicans stay in power in the south. Some of these moderate Republicans broke away from President Grant and the radicals. They called themselves Liberal Republicans and formed a new political party. They held their own presidential nominating convention for the election of eighteen seventy-two. They nominated Horace Greeley as their candidate. Greeley published the New York Tribune newspaper. Democrats believed their only chance to win the election was to support the new Liberal Republicans. So they, too, chose Horace Greeley as their presidential candidate. As expected, the radicals who controlled the main Republican Party nominated Grant for a second term. The campaign between Grant and Greeley was very strange. Grant made no speeches. He spent the summer at a holiday town on the Atlantic Ocean coast. His supporters, however, were not silent. They called Greeley a fool and a traitor. They refused to treat him as a serious candidate. Unlike Grant, Greeley did campaign hard. But he had little financial help. He also was hurt by a poorly-organized campaign. On election day in eighteen seventy-two, Ulysses Grant won a big victory. He got the votes of thirty-one of the thirty-seven states. Horace Greeley died three weeks after the election. The new Liberal Republican Party died with him. Ulysses Grant and the radical Republicans would govern for another four years.
重点解析
1.try to 设法；试图
If you keep the rules, you are not likely to get into trouble.
如果你守规矩，你就不大会遇到麻烦。
2.carry out 实行；开展
Remember to carry out your promise.
记住要履行你的承诺。
3.link to 同......有联系；连结
You can also link to a remote server that stores the required artifacts.
您还可以链接到存储了所需构件的远程服务器。
4.in fact 实际上；其实
You have to admit that you are, in fact, in difficulties.
你不得不承认，你事实上是陷入了困境。
参考译文
欢迎收听VOA慢速英语之建国史话节目。尤利西斯·格兰特于1868年当选美国总统，格兰特是一位军事英雄。他率领北方的联邦军在内战中战胜南方的联盟国军队。格兰特非常受欢迎，但他做将军要比做政治家好得多。作为总统，他不久就在政治和政府的斗争中陷入困境。在本周的系列节目中，拉里·韦斯特和弗兰克·奥利弗将谈论有关尤利西斯·格兰特总统第一个任期的故事。格兰特退伍后竞选总统。然而，他仍然保持着一位胜利将军的本色，他经常说：“让我们拥有和平，”人民都认为他会保卫和平。事实上，格兰特什么也不保证。作为总统候选人时，他没有提出新的国家计划。因此，就任总统后，他没有要执行的新政策。他很少与国会争斗，因为他很少要求国会做任何事。格兰特在任的两届政府都发生了许多事件，但他通常不直接参与。他遇到问题只是因为他与那些负责的人之间有间接的联系。
格兰特总统遇到的第一个问题是由他的两位朋友引起的，他们试图控制黄金市场。这两位朋友是杰伊·古尔德和詹姆斯·菲斯克，他们都非常富有。制定了一个计划，在黄金价格较低的时候购买全国的大部分黄金。他们会持有黄金，直到市场需求大幅增加其价格。然后他们会把这些黄金卖掉，赚很多钱。为了取得成功，他们必须阻止政府在市场上出售黄金。政府出售黄金会压低其价格。因此，古尔德和菲斯克敦促总统格兰特停止让财政部出售黄金。格兰特拒绝向他们给出坚定的承诺。这两个人让格兰特的一个亲戚参与到他们的计划中，他们付钱请他给总统写信。在信中要求总统停止让政府出售黄金。一个信使把这封信送到白宫。然后，他给詹姆斯·菲斯克发了一封电报，告诉他信已经寄出。电报上说：“信已寄出，一切顺利。”菲斯克认为，这意味着总统格兰特同意让政府停止出售黄金。于是，他开始大量购买黄金。菲斯克错了。“一切顺利”只表明信已经寄出，而不是说格兰特同意了这个计划。事实上，格兰特并不同意。他命令财政部出售黄金，以阻止古尔德和菲斯克控制黄金市场的企图。
结果，詹姆斯·菲斯克和杰伊·古尔德损失了一大笔钱，其他商人和银行家也是如此。许多美国人指责总统格兰特行动不够迅速，没能阻止他的两个朋友行动。在纽约海关报告了另一个事件后，人们对格兰特产生的担忧与日俱增。格兰特在那儿的两位朋友参与了一项从进口商那里获得资金的计划。他们利用自己的官职赚了大笔钱。格兰特还因其作为总统所做的为数不多的几次独立行动，而受到批评。他试图买下加勒比海的多米尼加共和国。这个岛国由独裁者布纳文图拉·贝兹统治。贝兹非常不诚实，多米尼加共和国人民准备推翻他。在这件事发生之前，他提出要把国家卖给美国。当格兰特收到这项提议时，他派出一位白宫官员与贝兹谈判。这位官员带着一项条约返回，条约中写着以150万美元的价格把多米尼加共和国卖给美国。格兰特立即派遣美国军舰前往多米尼加共和国，他想让贝兹继续执政，直到条约执行完成。
格兰特要求参议院批准该条约，许多参议员表示反对。他们说控制多米尼加共和国将花费太多的钱款。他们还说，美国控制加勒比地区的任何国家都是一个坏主意。总统格兰特亲自到国会大厦敦促参议员批准该条约。他的努力失败了，条约被否决了。格兰特最大的国家问题是南方前反叛各州的政治局势。成员统治。激进分子支持黑人的公民权和投票权。在19世纪60年代后期，激进分子开始失去权力。许多人未能重新当选为各州的政府官员。他们被民主党候选人击败了。民主党人根本不希望黑人拥有任何权利。第一批失去权力的激进共和党人是弗吉尼亚州的人。那里的变化是在和平中进行的，而在南部其它州则不是这样。在田纳西州、乔治亚州和北卡罗来纳州，民主党人利用威胁和暴力手段赢得选举。他们的运动经常由三K党成员领导。
三K党是白人的秘密组织，成员们相信白人比黑人优秀。三K党人脸上蒙着布，破坏激进的共和党人举行的政治会议。他们威胁、殴打和杀害黑人以使他们远离政治。他们也同样对待试图组织或帮助黑人的白人。不久，南部各州都成立了三K党。到1871年，激进的共和党国会议员要求通过一项新的法律来消灭三K党。一个由激进分子领导的委员会被任命调查南部的三K党活动。该委员会听取了有关三K党残暴行为的报告，这有助于制定控制三K党的法案。经过多次辩论，国会通过了该法案。新法律赋予总统在南方宣布军事统治的权力，民主党人指责这项法律的真正目的是让激进的共和党人所在的各州政府继续执政。总统格兰特没等多久就利用了新法律赋予他的权力，他宣布在南卡罗来纳州的大片地区实行军事统治，有数千人被捕。他们在联邦法院受审。陪审团主要由黑人和激进的白人组成。
这种正义使南方人对北方感到更加怨恨。这也激怒了共和党的一些温和派成员。他们说联邦政府不应该帮助激进的共和党人在南方继续掌权。一些温和派共和党人脱离了总统格兰特和激进分子，他们自称自由派共和党人，成立了一个新的政党。他们在1872年举行了自己的总统提名大会，进行选举。他们提名贺拉斯·格里利为候选人，格里利出版了《纽约论坛报》。民主党人认为他们赢得选举的唯一机会是支持新的自由派共和党人。所以，他们也选择了霍勒斯·格里利作为总统候选人。不出所料，控制共和党的主要激进分子提名格兰特就任第二个任期。格兰特和格里利之间的竞选活动很奇怪，格兰特没有发表讲话。他在大西洋海岸的一个度假小镇度过了夏天。然而，他的支持者并未保持沉默。他们把格里利叫做傻瓜、叛徒，拒绝把他当作候选人考虑。与格兰特不同的是，格里利努力开展竞选活动。但他几乎没有经济上的帮助，他还受到了组织不善的竞选活动的伤害。在1872年的选举日，尤利西斯·格兰特赢得了一场巨大的胜利。他得到了37个州中31个州的选票。霍勒斯·格里利在选举开始后三周去世，新的自由共和党与他同病相怜。尤利西斯·格兰特和激进的共和党人将再执政四年。
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