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发布时间：2006-07-17 09:33     点击：

Passage two

In April 1845, when John Wilkes Booth killed Lincoln at Fort’s Theatre, the curtain finally fell on a play that had began almost as soon as the Americans colonies gained their independence from England. In 1776, American’s Declaration of Independence declared that “all men are created equal”; 44 years later we were wrestling with a question: how can a nation founded on the idea of individual freedom reconcile with the existence of human slavery? In 1819, 22 states were in the Union, 11 Free and 11 Slave. The South’s economy was based on the growing of cotton, and cotton was profitable on the backs of slaves. As new states were admitted to the Union, the South wanted as many as possible to be slave states, not only to support their economy, but to prevent the North from obtaining a majority in Congress and quite possibly changing the Constitution to outlaw slavery completely. This issue came to a head when Missouri applied to be admitted as a slave state. Thomas Jefferson called the debate that began with Missouri “like a fireball in the night”, which awakened me and filled me with terror. I considered it at once the knell （丧钟）of the nation.”

War was avoided the time as compromise was reached and Missouri would be admitted as a slave state. Maine, the next state admitted to the Union, would be admitted as free, thereby preserving the balance of power in the Congress.

By 1860, when the new Republican Party nominated Abraham Lincoln for President, compromise would no longer work. Lincoln wanted to contain the spread of slavery. With Lincoln’s election in November that year, the South felt that it was only a matter of time before the Southern States lost their slim Democratic Party majority to those who wished to abolish slavery. It was in this same year that John Wilkes Booth said that “So deep is my hatred for such men that I wish I had them in my grasp and I the power to crash.”

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