...Over the course years after the American Revolution, Americans typically viewed the revolution as American colonies standing up to the “big bad bully” that is Great Britain and rebel for their freedom and rights and that “these years are the most important in American history, indeed in the history of the world”. That American colonist wanted to be viewed by Great Britain as an independent country. John Merrell thinks that the revolutionary period deserves to be looked at closer. Merrell insist that “the founding fathers would be surprised by our certainty, for they themselves were confused” confused about what they had started in the revolution. In the article merrell talks about how hard it was for john Adams and his friend, Jefferson, to make sense of their Revolution and that they “knew what generations since have largely forgotten” which is that the independence of America was unheard of and such a unbelievable event. Merrell suggest that we have to look past the American heroes to find the real reasoning behind it all. We can find the true impact of the revolution by looking deep into the social aspects in pre-Revolutionary and post revolution. With all the news about a rebellion against Great Britain more social groups started to come into play one of them being white women. In the 1700’s women were not considered a person but as a possession males had, but the boycotting of British goods gave women a bigger role. Merrell suggest that woman played a major role in the...
Words: 1086 - Pages: 5
...Inauguration Speeches are a custom that has existed since the very first inauguration featuring the United States first president, George Washington. During Washington’s second inauguration, after his re-election, Washington gave the shortest Inaugural address on record. This address was just 135 words. Nonetheless, every president since Washington has delivered an Inaugural address. The purpose of this address is for presidents to present their vision of the country (United States) and to set forth their goals for the nation. With that being said, this paper will use the strategy of genre analysis to critique to examine Barack Obama’s second Inaugural Address and John F. Kennedy’s inaugural speech. Genre analysis is a type of rhetorical analysis that examines speeches based on the artifacts or commonalities that contain. The artifacts of speech are created by the rhetor as a response to a specific exigency. So as Bitzer’s essay, The Rhetorical Situation, saw it, in order for a text to be rhetorical, it must come in response to a rhetorical situation. Furthermore a rhetorical situation has three characteristics, an audience, an existence of constraints, and as mentioned above, an exigency. One manner, in which we can analyze an artifact, is through...
Words: 1448 - Pages: 6
...office in general. Andrew Johnson was the 17th president of the United States after Lincoln’s assassination. Johnson was inexperienced in politics. He grew up as a poor tailor before assuming his first role in politics as Tennessee governor. Johnson was not the smartest of people either. He was illiterate until he got married. Johnson got taught by his wife to write and read very long comprehensive documents. During the inauguration of President Lincoln, Johnson was recovering from typhoid fever. He drank whiskey in an attempt to make him feel a little better, although it just made him give a slurred incoherent speech and people assumed Johnson was an alcoholic. Johnson did escape death however, because on the night of Lincoln’s assassination, Johnson’s murderer, George Azterodt, lost his nerve at the last minute (History.com Staff). There is a good chance there would not have even been an attempt to assassinate Johnson if Booth would have known that Johnson wanted to grant amnesty to the South, by letting...
Words: 986 - Pages: 4
...Most Americans nowadays like to think that they have the American Revolution pretty well figured out. Conventional wisdom starts the saga in 1763 when Britain, saddled with debt at the close of the Seven Years' War, levied new taxes that prompted her American colonists to resist, and then to reject, imperial rule. Having declared independence and defeated the British, American patriots then drafted the constitution that remains the law of the land to this day. With George Washington's inauguration as president in 1789, the story has a happy ending and the curtain comes down. This time-honored script renders the road from colonies to nation clear, smooth, and straight, with familiar landmarks along the way, from Boston's Massacre and Tea Party through Lexington and Concord, then on to Bunker Hill and Yorktown before reaching its destination: Philadelphia in 1787, where the Founders invented a government worthy of America's greatness. Those Founders are equally familiar. Washington and Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and James Madison, Sam and John Adams, Patrick Henry and Alexander Hamilton: in the popular mind this band of worthies, more marble monuments than mere mortals, guides America towards its grand destiny with a sure and steady hand. "[F]or the vast majority of contemporary Americans," writes historian Joseph Ellis, the birth of this nation is shrouded by "a golden haze or halo."(1) So easy, so tame, so much "a land of foregone conclusions" does America's Revolution...
Words: 6252 - Pages: 26
...The beauty of Washington City is almost experienced first hand, as is the horror and sadness accompanied with Lincoln’s unfortunate death. At times the story may seem to drag on, piling an overwhelming amount of detail into such limited space. On the contrary, the smallest of details, as noted in following excerpts, can make all the difference: “Mr. Atzerodt was assigned to Room 126, at the head of the stairs, on the left side of the corridor, almost directly above the room occupied by Vice President Andrew Johnson” and “[i]n the early part of 1865, four members of the Washington metropolitan police force were appointed to guard the President. Two were on duty daily from 8 A.M. until 4 P.M. A third came on duty at 4 P.M. and remained at Mr. Lincoln’s side until midnight. The fourth man arrived at midnight, and sat in the hall outside Mr. Lincoln’s bedroom until relieved at 8 A.M.” (Bishop,...
Words: 1262 - Pages: 6
...Reflections on World’s Leadership Mr. Bill Gates (Good Leader) Mr. George Walker Bush (Bad Leader) Presented to: Prof. Dr. Hayfaa A. Tlaiss Prepared by: Sarwat Praveen Student Number: 3518229 Section-2 & Group-2 Table of Contents MR. BILL GATES 2 INTRODUCTION2 ABOUT HIS LIFE…2 LEADERSHIP QUALITIES OF BILL GATES4 GROWING AND LEARNING4 HAVING VISION5 CARING ABOUT PEOPLE5 MY PERCEPTION, WHY BILL GATE IS A GREAT LEADER…6 BILL GATE IS MY INSPIRATION7 MR. GEORGE WALKER BUSH8 EARLY LIFE AND CAREER8 MY PERCEPTION, WHY HE IS BAD LEADER9 GEORGE BUSH FIRST PRESIDENTIAL TERM…9 FEW GOOD STEPS TAKEN BY GEORGE BUSH10 GEORG BUSH SECOND PRESIDENTIAL TERM10 GEORGE BUSH POST PRESIDENCY11 HOW DID HIS LEADERSHIP STYLE IMPECT ME AND MY LEADERSHIP STYLE 11 REFRENCES…13 Mr. Bill Gates INTRODUCTION William Henry "Bill" Gates III (born October 28, 1955) is an American business magnate, philanthropist, investor, computer programmer, and inventor. Gates is the former chief executive and chairman of Microsoft, the world’s largest personal-computer software company, which he co-founded with Paul Allen. He is an exceptional leader in the business field. Being named the richest man in the world for the past decade by Forbes magazine, it was clear that Bill Gates must be an outstanding business leader taking his company Microsoft from a small firm that was founded in 1975 to a global company that is worth...
Words: 3049 - Pages: 13
...on Pearl Harbor, Dunham's father, Stanley, enlisted in the service and marched across Europe in Patton's army. Dunham's mother, Madelyn, went to work on a bomber assembly line. After the war, the couple studied on the G.I. Bill, bought a house through the Federal Housing Program and, after several moves, landed in Hawaii. Barack Obama's father, Barack Obama Sr., was born of Luo ethnicity in Nyanza Province, Kenya. Obama Sr. grew up herding goats in Africa, eventually earning a scholarship that allowed him to leave Kenya and pursue his dreams of college in Hawaii. While studying at the University of Hawaii in Manoa, Obama Sr. met fellow student Ann Dunham, and they married on February 2, 1961. Barack was born six months later. Obama did not have a relationship with his father as a child. When his son was still an infant, Obama Sr. relocated to Massachusetts to attend Harvard University, pursuing a Ph.D. Barack's parents officially separated several months later and ultimately divorced in March 1964, when their son was 2. In 1965, Obama Sr. returned to Kenya. In 1965, Dunham married Lolo Soetoro, an East–West Center student from Indonesia. A year later, the family moved to Jakarta, Indonesia, where Barack's half-sister, Maya Soetoro Ng, was born. Several incidents in Indonesia left Dunham afraid for her son's safety and education so, at the age of 10, Barack was sent back to Hawaii to live with his maternal grandparents. His mother and sister...
Words: 5520 - Pages: 23
...He then became a practicing attorney in Boston. As the war between France and Britain became tense, he supported George Washington’s neutrality policy of 1793. Washington noticed his support and made him U.S. minister to Holland. When his father became president in 1797, he was then chosen as U.S. minister to Prussia. Five years later, he was elected to the Massachusetts legislature, and the following year was elected U.S. Senate. During this time he was a federalist, but the other federalists disagreed with this, so in 1809 he resigned from the Senate and became a Democratic-Republican. However, shortly after that, President James Madison chose for him to be minister to Russia. In 1814, he was to serve as chief negotiator for the U.S. government during the Treaty of Ghent to settle the war of 1812. The following year, he became minister to England, which his father had done...
Words: 1204 - Pages: 5
...To The Shores of Tripoli Muslim foes. Kidnappings. How the Barbary Wars foreshadowed things to come By CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS Within days of his March 1801 inauguration as the third President of the United States, Thomas Jefferson ordered a naval and military expedition to North Africa, without the authorization of Congress, to put down regimes involved in slavery and piracy. The war was the first in which the U.S. flag was carried and planted overseas; it saw the baptism by fire of the U.S. Marine Corps—whose anthem boasts of action on "the shores of Tripoli"—and it prefigured later struggles with both terrorism and jihad. The Barbary States of North Africa—Algiers, Tunis, Morocco and Tripoli (today's Libya)—had for centuries sustained themselves by preying on the maritime commerce of others. Income was raised by direct theft, the extortion of bribes or "protection" and the capture of crews and passengers to be used as slaves. The historian Robert Davis, in his book Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters: White Slavery in the Mediterranean, the Barbary Coast and Italy, 1500-1800, estimates that as many as 1.25 million Europeans and Americans were enslaved. The Barbary raiders—so called because they were partly of Berber origin—struck as far north as England and Ireland. It appears, for example, that almost every inhabitant of the Irish village of Baltimore was carried off in 1631. Samuel Pepys and Daniel Defoe...
Words: 2459 - Pages: 10
...Washington Irving “Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortune; but great minds rise above them.” Washington Irving, a well-known short story author in the nineteenth century, spoke these words of wisdom. Washington Irving became famous in America for his fine works from The Specter Bridegroom to Rip Van Winkle to The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. These satirical sketches are all based on the local areas in New York where Irving resided. His adventures through life spread the word of his writings and he became one of the first renowned short story writers in Europe. Washington Irving was born in New York, New York on April 3, 1783. His mother, Sarah, and father, William Irving, Sr., had eleven children including Washington. He was named after the United States first president, George Washington who was sought to be the greatest hero of all time to his parents. “… He attended the first presidential inauguration of his namesake in 1789” (Biography Channel). Irving was privately schooled and later went to study law in New York after his return from travelling Europe. In 1804 he travelled to France and Italy, while writing journals and letters. When he returned in 1805, Irving continued law school but did poorly for he barely passed the bar exam. (Biography Channel). After Irving finished his studies, he went on to write humorous essay with his older brother William Irving, Jr., and James Kirke Paulding. The Salamagundi papers published the essays in 1807 to 1808....
Words: 2583 - Pages: 11
...The Constitutional Convention was an important event because it is what lead us to the government we have now. The different compromises are what lead to the methods that were used and still being used nowadays The Constitutional Convention was a meeting that took place in Philadelphia in 1787. The purpose of that meeting was to rewrite the Articles of Confederation. There were fifty five men who were delegates, their purpose was to have the federal government strengthen. The delegates did not think that rewriting the Articles of Confederation would actually work out. Eventually they wrote the U.S. Constitution. George Washington was chosen to lead the convention. All of the delegates had to agree that every state would get one vote. They did not want anyone to know about what was going on during the convention meetings. The delegates made sure to keep everything a secret, anyone who was not a delegate were not allowed to attend any meetings. We have no written documents because they kept everything a secret of what had occurred during the meetings. The only details we have today is from a notebook that belonged to James Madison. However, James Madison is known as the “Father of the Constitution.” He had also helped write the federalist papers. At the Constitutional Convention James Madison had done a very good job. When the delegates had to decided to write the “Bill of Rights” he was against it. James Madison was afraid that the future people would just go by those...
Words: 2520 - Pages: 11
...2008. Anyone watching a television on this important evening knew that everything had changed. Barak Hussein Obama had just been elected the 45th President of the United States of America, and he represented the first African American to ever win this office. To many the election was a fulfillment of Dr. Martin Luther King’s dream for social and political equality for African Americans. Still others, including the newly elected President, reached back to Lincoln. President Obama would also, invoke the founding fathers, giving credit to the social experiment that democracy is and thus hinting to the efforts of Washington and others. The days that followed the Obama election would be filled with symbolism leading to the concert on the steps of the Lincoln memorial, and the day of service, called by the President, in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. the day before inauguration. The election of President Obama seemed to have brought full circle the experiment of democracy. The dreams of the founding fathers were present, the echo of Lincoln’s consequential Presidency were present, and certainly the dreams and speeches of Dr. King were front and center in this cultural moment. Yet the cultural moment represented so much more than a continuum of ideas and dreams of significant men. This moment was one of the first major societal changes in a generation. Perhaps not Ironically, the election of Barak Obama had ripple effects upon social change in the United States and what came...
Words: 8168 - Pages: 33
...Web of Details Did Enron In as Warnings Went Unheeded Sun Feb 10, 3:15 PM ET By KURT EICHENWALD with DIANA B. HENRIQUES The New York Times Jeff Gerth, Richard A. Oppel Jr., Richard W. Stevenson, and Don Van Natta Jr. also contributed to this article. HOUSTON, Feb. 9 Kenneth L. Lay strode onto a ballroom stage at the Hyatt Regency Hill Country Resort in San Antonio, walking between two giant screens that displayed his projected image. Before him, bright light from the ballroom's chandeliers spilled across scores of round tables where executives from the Enron Corporation waited to hear the words of Mr. Lay, their longtime chairman and chief executive. This meeting of hundreds of Enron executives in the first week of January 2001 was a time of revelry, a chance to celebrate a year when business seemed good even better than good. At night, according to executives who attended, Champagne and liquor flowed from the open bar, while fistfuls of free cigars were available for the taking. Executives could belly up to temporary gambling tables for high-stakes games of poker. Others found their excitement in the company- sponsored car race; one executive had even hired a truck to transport his three Ferraris from Houston for the event. Now, as waiters wearing bolo ties scurried about, the executives listened eagerly to Mr. Lay's descriptions of Enron's recent year of success, and the new successes that were within reach. Already, Enron was near the top of the Fortune 500, a...
Words: 6202 - Pages: 25
...Business Review). Devious acts such as these were frowned upon and were deemed irreprehensible. Prior to the 20th century the judicial system were made up of predominately Muslims countries that invoked the Islamic Law, many sexual acts including same-sex were criminalized by law that carried very strict penalties including execution. During the early 16th century lawmakers in Brittan began to group and categorize homosexual acts as criminal as opposed to immoral and unjust. Henry VIII, who was the king of England, passed the Buggery Act that subsequently made homosexuality punishable by death ; in Brittan sodomy remained as a Capital offense which carried death by hanging until 1861 (Harvard Business Review). As the times changed so did the offenses. Nearly two decades later in 1885, Parliament passed the amendment which was sponsored by Henry Du Pre Labouchere which created and coined the term (gross indecency) relating to same-sex intimacy which prohibited any form of sexual behavior between men also (lesbian sexual acts). Germany also jumped...
Words: 4782 - Pages: 20
...FAMILY OF SECRETS The Bush Dynasty, America’s Invisible Government, and the Hidden History of the Last Fifty Years RUSS BAKER Contents Foreword by James Moore 1. How Did Bush Happen? 2. Poppy’s Secret 3. Viva Zapata 4. Where Was Poppy? 5. Oswald’s Friend 6. The Hit 7. After Camelot 8. Wings for W. 9. The Nixonian Bushes 10. Downing Nixon, Part I: The Setup 11. Downing Nixon, Part II: The Execution 12. In from the Cold 13. Poppy’s Proxy and the Saudis 14. Poppy’s Web 15. The Handoff 16. The Quacking Duck 17. Playing Hardball 18. Meet the Help 19. The Conversion 20. The Skeleton in W.’s Closet 21. Shock and . . . Oil? 22. Deflection for Reelection 23. Domestic Disturbance 24. Conclusion Afterword Author’s Note Acknowledgments Notes Foreword When a governor or any state official seeks elective national office, his (or her) reputation and what the country knows about the candidate’s background is initially determined by the work of local and regional media. Generally, those journalists do a competent job of reporting on the prospect’s record. In the case of Governor George W. Bush, Texas reporters had written numerous stories about his failed businesses in the oil patch, the dubious land grab and questionable funding behind a new stadium for Bush’s baseball team, the Texas Rangers, and his various political contradictions and hypocrisies while serving in Austin. I was one of those Texas journalists. I spent about a decade...
Words: 249168 - Pages: 997
