UNIT 1 Abraham Lincoln
　　abraham lincoln was one of the greatest presidents the usa has ever had. he was an extraordinary man:both humble and ambitious .plodding and piercingly intelligent. his charity ,courtesy and integrity gained the respect. there are many reasons for lincoln's popularity. his career reflected common american belief or dream that everyone could become rich .successful through hard work with all his intelligence and ability.
　　on february 12,1809, abraham lincoln came to the world in a log cabin beside nolin creek, in an inland state, kentucky. his father, thomas, was a cheerful,sociable, obstinate petty farmer who scraped an uncertain living from the kentucky impoverished soil. in 1818, his mother, nancy lincoln, died from tuberculosis.without nancy , shack life soon became chaotic, sordid and miserable, after a year, thomas married a widow called 'saly'.sally was as good as a mother to abraham as his real one had been. although she was illiterate, she understood her stepson's odd ways. she accepted the brooding silences that contrasted so strongly with the jokes that poured out of him when he was in mood .supported by sally,abraham read all kinds of transcriptions lent .but he'd spent no more than a year in classroom. most of his time, he helped his father fell trees and seed crops. sometimes he came to the brook nearby ,watching the dews on the broom, listening the cuckoo or larks. for aught he knew what his future was like .but really he didn't want to reconcile himself to the drudgery. in the spring of 1831, he left home.
　　after several migrations, abraham, taking his baggage tied by elastic bands, settled down in new salem and joined the local debating society, at first, its other members mocked at their new recruit , but then they realized the austere young man in amber suit turned out to be an inborn speaker. for the first time, lincoln showed his eminent aptitude for eloquence . in 1834 ,he stood for election to the illinois state legislature, and the lean - faced, rumpled giant man struk lucky. he'd now add ambition to his list: to be a lawyer ,although he was a layman at that time .fascinated to the courtrooms and by dramas that took place there, he'd pore over the united states constitution, the set of rules by which the country is governed. the declaration of independence kindled his interest.(the following was quoted from the declaration: we hold this truth to be self-evident that all men are created equal :that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happi-ness... today the thoughts have filtered into people's minds.) During the cause ,he took his self-education a stage further in real earnest. in 1837, he qualified as a fully -fledged lawyer and had more chances to unfold his unmatched forensic eloquence. five years later,he married mary , a tiny .vivacious ,fashionable girl ,in spite of the opposition of her family . by the late of 1840s, he and his family have moved into a smart clapboard house of their own. with shutters and a delicate rough -iron balcony.
　　in abraham lincoln's time,the united states of america consisted of thirteen states, not stretc-hing from the atlantic ocean in the east to the pacific in the west.but it was expanding .even as colo-nies, the thirteen states had had very different characters. the south,with its rich soil and mild damp climate, be-came a land of big farms called 'plantation'. the owners enjoyed many prerogatives. for them , the ideal way of life was appropriate to the status of feudal baron: elegant, refined ,sociable, with all the time in the world for outdoor pursuits like riding and in-door amusement like music. the northerners had a differ-ent outlook on life.the were serious-minded; they be-lieved in hard work, education,democracy and equality .
　　the south mainly exported cotton to europe for cash. raw cotton is a white, fluffy lining of a seed pot. the moist. warm climate in the south was applicable to the weed-like plant. so cotton was one of the staples of the south. and across the atlantic, the europe with quickly growing population was eager to buy the cheap, durable fabric that could be made from crude cotton. this resulted in the south monoculture .europe, in fact, was going through a huge upheaval of its own: the industrial revolution. the newly invented machines were throbbing in the factories that were being set up everywhere.
　　the south prosperity was based on the tragic fate of black slaves: africans and their descendants, who were sold like commodities. the transatlan-tic trade in human beings had been going on since the early 1600s, for over 200 years, its merchants had been tearing africans from their homes and families. and plunging them into a hell that is hard to describe and infinitely har-der to endure. of the millions that were crammed into the wooden sailing ships for the voyage west, huge members did not ever survive the journey. for their tor-ment started as soon as they entered the stinking, suffodating cargo-holds that had been pre-pared for them. each adult slave was packed into a space which was about 75 centimeters high. 38 centimeters wide and less than 200 centimeters long. once stowed, the men had to stay where they were, in the very lousy spaces narrower even than coffins .here they ate,slept, voided their torture guts :hygiene conditions were terrible. they were chained down in the disgustful darkness. there were mosquitoes and cockroaches everywhere. ships arrived in the new world with only tow -thirds of the complement loaded, de-ducting the dead and the insane. sometimes the proportion was even lower. the dead and the insane had gone the way of everything else that the crew regarded as useless, and were thrown over the shipboard.illegal ,fast-moving and slimmed with bloodsained profit, the hideous trade went on.
　　the slaves were constrained to work from dawn to dusk .some acted as miners and porters. but most of them worked in the cotton field, tending and picking the precious harvest, they were often savage-ly whipped even when they obeyed the orders they re-ceived.they were disparaged as livestock, branded as a precaution against escaping .even used in-stead of money by keen gambler. without slavery,the wealth of the south would vanish overnight, utterly and completely. they were sold on the auctioneer's platform like furniture through brisk bidding. formal slave mar-riage was banned, but their owners were delighted that they had children, as yielding machines. slave women who managed to survive ten children birth were sometimes given their freedom as a reward, out of the concentration camp.
　　although some northerners did not like the ideas of blacks living alongside whites in some communities , quite a lot genuinely did oppose slavery. a new feeling of com-passion was spreading through the western world.people had started to react against the harsh realities of the industrial revolution. they were discovering how grim life really was for all but rich . and were demanding reforms .slavery contradicted both christianity of the bi-ble and the declaration of independence .which preached the brotherhood of man. as the number of the slae and free states changing , four of the slave states even began to think of the ultimate, desperate remedy: before the union de-stroyed their way of life, they would defy the union altogether and set up an autonomous state, in 1852, uncle tom's cabin, which told of slavery from the slaves' aspect: the terror , the brutality, and the despair, sold by the million. the voices calling for abolition swelled to a deafening cho-rus.
　　in 1854, a fresh shift in usa's frontier provoked an-other crisis .to the fury of many northerners, two new western territories, kansas and nebraska, were allowed to choose slavery or be free for themselves, which wasn't compatible with the clauses of old missouri compromise.
　　lincoln deduced that slavery would die out of its own accord, since intensive cotton-farming exhausted the soil, however, he was not an abolitionist but a realist .modera-tion was one of the main traits in his character. and it was hased, not on ignorance or dogmatism, but on years of hard, self-probing thought, and the learning he'd patiently been accumulating from his childhood.