II. Make a mind-map of the period and put it into your portfolio.

III. Look for the information on Native Americans. Prepare a report about the relations between the Native Americans (Indians) and the white colonizers.

IV. Give short reports about six Founding Fathers. Include their biography and interesting quotes:

George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, John Adams.

V. ® Listen to the texts about slaves in America. Say what new information you have learnt. Then tell your partner about slavery in America using the following key-sentences. What books about the treatment of slaves have you read?

Life as a Slave

1. To work the new land, slaves were captured in Africa and brought to America.

2. The slaves were considered to be the property of their masters.

3. Slaves had to obey their masters.

The Way to Freedom

1. By 1800, most of the slaves were in the South.

2. Many slaves risked their lives by trying to escape to Canada through the Underground Railroad.

3. The “conductors” risked their lives, because people could be executed for helping slaves to escape.

GO WEST!

A new frontier

In the 19^th century the country expanded to the west. Some of the land was won in battles, some bought, some presented to the United States.

Having gained control of the continent, the Americans began to expand across it, pushing westwards, forming new farmsteads, villages and towns in the wilds, and displacing and dispossessing the Native Americans in the process.

When Thomas Jefferson became the third president of the United States in 1801, the country still consisted of the original thirteen colonies. The new president wanted to expand the country. On April 30, 1803, he bought 828,000 square miles of French land west of the Mississippi – the present day states of Louisiana , Arkansas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, and North and South Dakota. This became known as the Louisiana Purchase.

In 1804, President Jefferson sent Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to explore and map the territory, and to find a water route for boats from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean. Sacagawea, a Native American woman guide, went with them. The explorers travelled by boat and on horseback from the Mississippi River westward to Oregon and the Pacific Ocean. Their journey to the west and back took almost two and a half years, but they did not find one continuous river route.

Between 1840 and 1870, half a million pioneers set out west to cross treeless prairie, the Rocky Mountains, deserts, and rivers to settle in the territory of Oregon. This route was called the Oregon Trail.

By the end of the century this form of continuous colonizing had led to the settlement of the entire United States from the east coast to the west. For most of the pioneers, life was a constant struggle against the Indians and the land itself, which had to be laboriously cleared before it could be planted.

The Gold Rush

In January 1848, gold was discovered near Sacramento, California. 100,000 people – mostly unmarried men from the East – crossed the continent to look for gold. They were called the Forty-Niners. Thousands of them died because of difficult living conditions and illness.

People from all over the world travelled to California in search of gold. During the first five years of the Gold Rush, more than 285 million dollars’ worth of gold was found in California. Gold and silver were also discovered in Colorado and Nevada. The Gold Rush led to an intensive colonization of the west.

The Wild West

An American West is both a place and an idea. In people's minds, it was a place that promised something better, and was exciting because it was new and unknown. One reason Westerns are popular movies is that they show somethingof this hard but exciting life, although they sometimes they tend to glamorize outlaws of the period like Jesse James and Billy the Kid.

Besides farms, there were many cattle ranches out West. Beef from the cattle that roamed the vast plains of Texas and other western states became a major source of food for eastern and northern cities.

Western ranches usually hired cattle drivers called cowboys to drive the cattle north. Some cattle were transported by train to northern cities like Chicago, a major meat processing centre.

NATION DIVIDES AND REUNITES

The Civil War

To work the new land, slaves were captured in Africa and brought to America. By 1800, there were almost 900 thousand slaves, most of them in the South. Some northern states had abolished slavery. Even so, escaped slaves from the South could be legally recaptured in these states and returned to their masters.

By 1860, the North and South of the United States had very different economic and social aims. The North with the population of 22 million, had many factories and railroads. In the South, there were large cotton and tobacco plantations, and almost half of the nine million people living there were slaves.

Eleven southern states formed the Confederate States of America. The remained states were known as the Union. In April 1861, the Civil War broke out; it lasted until 1965 when the North won. Most of the fighting took place in the Confederate States, and the Confederates won many of the early battles. In 1863, President Abraham Lincoln freed all slaves. After the Battle of Gettysburgh in the same year, the North began to win more battles. The South surrendered in April 1865.

Honest Abe

Although President Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) was president of the United States for only four years, he is one of the most famous presidents in American history. He led the country through the terrible Civil War and preserved the Union of the states. More than 600,000 soldiers died in that war, the most to die in in any war in the history of the United States.

Abraham Lincoln, nicknamed «Honest Abe», is respected for his ideals. In his most famous speech, the Gettysburg Address of 1863, he spoke of his commitment to the unity of the United States and his belief in democracy and freedom: «Now we are engaged in a great Civil War, testing whether that nation can long endure …». His idea of government was one «of the people, by the people, for the people.»

Lincoln was the first president to be assassinated; he was shot by John Wilkes Booth, who was angry that the South had lost the war.

Cultural Background

Ku Klux Klan (Ку-клукс-клан) – a secret society started in Tennessee in 1866. Members wore hooks. They beat and killed blacks, they burnt schools and churches. They frightened people to try to keep them from voting or holding office. The Klan officially broke up in 1871.

Abolitionism (аболиционизм) – a movement against slavery. Abolitionists held large meetings to win support for their cause. They sent papers to the South saying that that slavery was evil. They asked Congress to do away with slavery, without payment to owners. Abolitionism was one of the major factors leading to the Civil war.

The Spanish-American War (испано-американская война) – started in Cuba in1898. The American ship “Maine” was blown up in the harbor of Havana. The Americans blamed Spain for the tragedy. As a result of the war, the USA gained new land in the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea.