Part two, “Weapons of War” highlights the then cutting edge technology of the weaponry from the ships designed such as Ironclads which were floating fortresses. President Lincoln refused to give into the demands and the Confederacy fired upon the Union sparking the bloodiest domestic conflict in USA history. The gauntlet was thrown down when the seceding South Carolina militia demanded the removal of Union soldiers from Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor. Correspondence from soldiers, former slaves and civilians is narrated to give context to the events and viewpoints of both sides where in the North a strong abolitionist movement was growing and a call to arms in the South to preserve what they saw as an assault on their way of life. Anti-Slavery politician Abraham Lincoln entered the national stage with his election to the Presidency which immediately divided the country along geographic lines between North and South. The brutality towards the slaves grew as well which was described in graphic detail in former slave Frederick Douglass’ bestselling autobiography “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass”. Slavery grew as the demand for cotton rose. As time went on, the Southern economy boomed from agriculture, particularly cotton. The new nation declared that all men are created equal even though many of our founding fathers owned slaves. Part one titled “The March to War” begins a century earlier as the colonies struggled to gain independence from Britain. Historians, scholars and US Generals David Petraeus and Colon Powell add facts and opinions that bring the war to life but what sets this series apart from the many previous Civil War documentaries is the painstaking restoration of over 500 black and white photographs that brings the human component to the forefront. To commemorate the event, the History Channel is broadcasting a new four part documentary that brings together descendants of both sides, to discuss the details that brought about the conflict including ancestors of Frederick Douglass, General Ulysses S Grant and Confederate President Jefferson Davis. Kidnapped Africans and their native born offspring were often denied life they knew no liberty and didn’t dare to dream about a pursuit of happiness.Īpril 9,, 2015 will mark the 150 th anniversary of the Confederate’s surrender to the Union. The enslavement of human beings flies in the face of that creed. That phrase, written in the Declaration of Independence, is a perfect example of the basic unalienable rights granted to all people of the United States. ("The Aztec Empire," which features some 435 artifacts, is on view through February 13, 2005.The American Civil War was the defining conflict of a nation that based its new model of a Republic behind a simple motto: Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. The annihilation was so thorough that today it is difficult to fully picture the sophistication, opulence and sheer grandeur of the Aztec Empire.Īs it happens, enormous strides have been made in Aztec archaeology since the excavation, beginning in 1978, of the Templo Mayor or Great Pyramid, at Tenochtitlan, in Mexico City, so that now we can begin to see the Aztecs more clearly.Ī new exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City has brought together an unprecedented display of Aztec art, and though certain products of this people's creative energy have been lost forevertextiles, fantastic featherwork, almost symphonic flower arrangementsothers, such as devotional statuary, figure and animal sculpture and elegant calendric stonework, should prove a revelation to museumgoers. By August 1521, Cortés and his Indian allies had conquered Tenochtitlan. Then, in February 1519, eleven ships led by Spanish explorer Hernán Cortés appeared off the coast of the Yucatán Peninsula. The Aztecs were so disciplined, so skilled in the arts of war, that their realm seemed invincible. The metropolis also served as the nerve center of an empire that extended from central Mexico south into what is today Guatemala. Rising from the marshes of an island in Lake Tetzcoco, the site of present-day Mexico City, Tenochtitlan grew into a sort of Venice of the New World, dominated by towering pyramids and traversed by a network of canals spanned by bridges so wide that ten horsemen could cross them abreast. Amazingly, from the founding of their capital city, Mexico-Tenochtitlan, in the early 14th century, to the apex of their power, in the late 15th, the Aztecs built one of the most dazzling civilizations in history. In the space of just a few generations all was staked and lost. Yet the dominion of the Aztecs, a once-migrant people who had settled in the central highlands of what is now Mexico, lasted only from about 1428 to 1521. Five hundred years ago, in Mesoamerica, an empire held sway whose creative energy and sheer ruthlessness announced a long and powerful future.
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