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"大国沉浮"课程介绍(5)

Americans began to see the United States as having a sort of manifest destiny, to civilize, quote unquote, North America, but that definition of civilized remains open to question.

More than anything else the American Civil War arose from a dispute over whether the new territories to the west would become free states or slave holding states. Once slavery was abolished and the Union was restored then the Indians bore the brunt of Americas drive westward and once the western frontier closed down in the 1890's America began to look beyond its traditional boundaries.

In all of this and the things we did as a result, as a nation, make up some of the cultural baggage we carry as Americans.

Important as it is to understand who we were as

Americans before we understand who we are as

Americans we do tend to have a fuzzy sense of our nation's history.

Part of the problem is the time factor.

Although I am old and bald and graying I am not old enough to remember the American Revolution.

Even my dad wasn't alive during the

American Revolution. Actually, all of my ancestors were in either Great Britain or Poland around the time of the American Revolution. Neither side of my family made it to the US until the 1850's. Once my ancestors arrived though they willingly became Americans, shouldering all the cultural baggage that I have indicated just above.

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