The battle of Gettysburg and the end of the war
As the war went on, the Union enforced a naval blockade of the south, so that Confederates had problems getting supplies from other countries. Cotton exports to England and other countries came to a halt .
The Battle of Gettysburg was one of the major battles in the war, as well as its turning point. Robert Lee’s Confederate army sufferedits worst defeat. During the course of 1863 the Union took control of the whole Mississippi valley.
In 1864 it became clear that the Union would win the war. The Southerners suffered many losses and northern soldiers occupied large areas of the Confederate States. The south did not get the supplies they needed because transportation came to a halt.
Finally Ulysses Grant, who commanded the northern armies, forced Lee’s Confederate army to surrender in April 1965. Five days later, Lincoln was killed by a southern sympathizer John Wilkes Booth.
Emancipation Proclamation
In the middle of the civil war, on January 1st 1863, Abraham Lincoln freed all slaves in an order called the Emancipation Proclamation.Even though northerners were against slavery, many still thought that Blacks were second class citizens and should not be given the same rights.
Economy during the war
The economy of the north boomed during the war. Farmers produced more food, textile factories made clothes for soldiers and the iron and steel industry manufactured weapons for soldiers. Many factories started producing goods only for the army.
The Confederate economy suffered during the war. Because its farmers produced mainly tobacco and cotton it did not have enough food for its population. It also lacked roads and railway lines to move men and supplies quickly.
On both sides more and more money was printed and inflation grew.
Results of the War
About 600,000 soldiers died during the war on both sides. The Union and the Confederacy paid enormously for the damage done. Many towns and farms, especially in the south, were completely destroyed. For the next generations hate and skepticism dominatedthe relationship between the northern and southern states. In the end the victory of the north kept the United States of America together
American music.
The music of the United States reflects the country's multi-ethnic population through a diverse array of styles. It is a mixture of music influenced by West African, Irish, Scottish, Mexican, and Cuban music traditions among others. The country's most internationally renowned genres are jazz, blues, country, bluegrass, rock, rhythm and blues, ragtime,hip hop, barbershop, pop, experimental, techno, house, dance, boogaloo, salsa, and rock and roll. The United States has the world's largest music market with a total retail value of 4,898.3 million dollars in 2014,[1] and its music is heard around the world. Since the beginning of the 20th century, some forms of American popular music have gained a near global audience.[2]
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Native Americans were the earliest inhabitants of the land that is today known as the United States and played its first music. Beginning in the 17th century, immigrants from the United Kingdom, Ireland, Spain, Germany, and France began arriving in large numbers, bringing with them new styles and instruments. African slaves brought musical traditions, and each subsequent wave of immigrants contributed to a melting pot.
Much of modern popular music can trace its roots to the emergence in the late 19th century of African American bluesand the growth of gospel music in the 1920s. The African American basis for popular music used elements derived from European and indigenous musics. There are also strong African roots in the music tradition of the original white settlers, such as country and bluegrass. The United States has also seen documented folk music and recorded popular music produced in the ethnic styles of the Ukrainian, Irish, Scottish, Polish, Hispanic, and Jewish communities, among others.
Many American cities and towns have vibrant music scenes which, in turn, support a number of regional musical styles. Along with musical centers such as Philadelphia, Seattle, New York City, San Francisco, New Orleans, Detroit,Minneapolis, Chicago, Miami, Atlanta, Nashville, Austin, and Los Angeles, many smaller cities such as Asbury Park, New Jersey have produced distinctive styles of music. The Cajun and Creole traditions in Louisiana music, the folk and popular styles of Hawaiian music, and the bluegrass and old time music of the Southeastern states are a few examples of diversity in American music. Modern day music is heavily influenced by previous and present African-American music genres.
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Folk music in the US is varied across the country's numerous ethnic groups. The Native American tribes each play their own varieties of folk music, most of it spiritual in nature. African American music includes blues and gospel, descendants of West African music brought to the Americas by slaves and mixed with Western European music. During the colonial era, English, French and Spanish styles and instruments were brought to the Americas. By the early 20th century, the United States had become a major center for folk music from around the world, including polka, Ukrainian and Polish fiddling, Ashkenazi, klezmer, and several kinds of Latin music.
The Native Americans played the first folk music in what is now the United States, using a wide variety of styles and techniques. Some commonalities are near universal among Native American traditional music, however, especially the lack of harmony and polyphony, and the use of vocables and descending melodic figures. Traditional instrumentations use the flute and many kinds of percussion instruments, like drums, rattles, and shakers.[14] Since European and African contact was established, Native American folk music has grown in new directions, into fusions with disparate styles like European folk dances and Tejano music. Modern Native American music may be best known for pow wows, pan-tribal gatherings at which traditionally styled dances and music are performed.[15]
The Thirteen Colonies of the original United States were all former English possessions, and Anglo culture became a major foundation for American folk and popular music. Many American folk songs are identical to British songs in arrangements, but with new lyrics, often as parodies of the original material. American-Anglo songs are also characterized as having fewerpentatonic tunes, less prominent accompaniment (but with heavier use of drones) and more melodies in major.[16] Anglo-American traditional music also includes a variety of broadside ballads, humorous stories and tall tales, and disaster songs regarding mining, shipwrecks, and murder. Legendary heroes like Joe Magarac, John Henry, and Jesse James are part of many songs. Folk dances of British origin include the square dance, descended from the quadrille, combined with the American innovation of a caller instructing the dancers.[17] The religious communal society known as the Shakers emigrated from England during the 18th century and developed their own folk dance style. Their early songs can be dated back to British folk song models.[18] Other religious societies established their own unique musical cultures early in American history, such as the music of the Amish, the Harmony Society, and the Ephrata Cloister in Pennsylvania.[19]
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The ancestors of today's African American population were brought to the United States as slaves, working primarily in the plantations of the South. They were from hundreds of tribes across West Africa, and they brought with them certain traits ofWest African music including call and response vocals and complexly rhythmic music,[20] as well as syncopated beats and shifting accents.[21] The African musical focus on rhythmic singing and dancing was brought to the New World, and where it became part of a distinct folk culture that helped Africans "retain continuity with their past through music". The first slaves in the United States sang work songs, field hollers[22] and, following Christianization, hymns. In the 19th century, a Great Awakening of religious fervor gripped people across the country, especially in the South. Protestant hymns written mostly by New England preachers became a feature of camp meetings held among devout Christians across the South. When blacks began singing adapted versions of these hymns, they were called Negro spirituals. It was from these roots, of spiritual songs, work songs, and field hollers, that blues, jazz, and gospel developed.
Blues and spirituals[edit]
Spirituals were primarily expressions of religious faith, sung by slaves on southern plantations.[23] In the mid to late 19th century, spirituals spread out of the U.S. South. In 1871 Fisk University became home to the Fisk Jubilee Singers, a pioneering group that popularized spirituals across the country. In imitation of this group, gospel quartets arose, followed by increasing diversification with the early 20th-century rise of jackleg and singing preachers, from whence came the popular style of gospel music.
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Blues is a combination of African work songs, field hollers, and shouts.[24] It developed in the rural South in the first decade of the 20th century. The most important characteristics of the blues is its use of the blue scale, with a flatted or indeterminate third, as well as the typically lamenting lyrics; though both of these elements had existed in African American folk music prior to the 20th century, the codified form of modern blues (such as with the AAB structure) did not exist until the early 20th century.[25]
Classical music was brought to the United States with some of the first colonists. European classical music is rooted in the traditions of European art, ecclesiastical and concert music. The central norms of this tradition developed between 1550 and 1825, centering on what is known as the common practice period. Many American classical composers attempted to work entirely within European models until late in the 19th century. When Antonín Dvořák, a prominent Czech composer, visited the United States from 1892 to 1895, he iterated the idea that American classical music needed its own models instead of imitating European composers; he helped to inspire subsequent composers to make a distinctly American style of classical music.[31] By the beginning of the 20th century, many American composers were incorporating disparate elements into their work, ranging from jazz and blues to Native American music.
The Presidency of the USA.
Under the United States Constitution, the President of the United States is the head of state and head of government of the United States. As chief of the executive branch and head of the federal government as a whole, the presidency is the highest political office in the United States by influence and recognition. The president is also the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces. The president is indirectly elected to a four-year term by an Electoral College (or by the House of Representatives should the Electoral College fail to award an absolute majority of votes to any person). Since the ratification of the Twenty-second Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1951, no person may be elected President more than twice, and no one who has served more than two years of a term to which someone else was elected may be elected more than once. Upon the death, resignation, or removal from office of an incumbent President, the Vice President assumes the office. The President must be at least 35 years of age and a "natural born" citizen of the United States.
This list includes only those persons who were sworn into office as president following the ratification of the United States Constitution, which took effect on March 4, 1789. For American leaders before this ratification, see President of the Continental Congress. The list does not include any Acting Presidents under the Twenty-fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
George Washington, the first president, was inaugurated in 1789 after a unanimous vote of the Electoral College. A constitutional amendment, affecting presidents after Harry Truman, was passed to limit the number of times an individual can be elected president. Andrew Jackson, the seventh president, was the first to be elected by men of all classes in 1828 after most laws barring non-land-owners from voting were repealed.
The listing below is for the current government of the USA. For this country, however, there were prior governments (including that under the Articles of Confederation). Prior to George Washington as first president under the current constitution, there were twelve people in leadership over the government of the United States of America who held the title of "President". Also during the Civil War, there was the position of "President of the Confederate States of America" in an entity separate from the USA, and this position was held by one person.
Barack H. Obama is the 44th President of the United States.
His story is the American story — values from the heartland, a middle-class upbringing in a strong family, hard work and education as the means of getting ahead, and the conviction that a life so blessed should be lived in service to others.
With a father from Kenya and a mother from Kansas, President Obama was born in Hawaii on August 4, 1961. He was raised with help from his grandfather, who served in Patton's army, and his grandmother, who worked her way up from the secretarial pool to middle management at a bank.
After working his way through college with the help of scholarships and student loans, President Obama moved to Chicago, where he worked with a group of churches to help rebuild communities devastated by the closure of local steel plants.
He went on to attend law school, where he became the first African—American president of the Harvard Law Review. Upon graduation, he returned to Chicago to help lead a voter registration drive, teach constitutional law at the University of Chicago, and remain active in his community.
President Obama's years of public service are based around his unwavering belief in the ability to unite people around a politics of purpose. In the Illinois State Senate, he passed the first major ethics reform in 25 years, cut taxes for working families, and expanded health care for children and their parents. As a United States Senator, he reached across the aisle to pass groundbreaking lobbying reform, lock up the world's most dangerous weapons, and bring transparency to government by putting federal spending online.
He was elected the 44th President of the United States on November 4, 2008, and sworn in on January 20, 2009. He and his wife, Michelle, are the proud parents of two daughters, Malia, 14, and Sasha, 11.
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