Loyalists and revolutionists describe with vivid detail the experience of the revolutionary life expressing strong opinions about their government, their society and their struggles for freedom.
After all the era of revolution is described, Part four explains the points of view of Jefferson and his slave Hemings, relating what was like to live in that family and showing abysmal differences on the way they saw their life and the way they lived it. The difficulties of a nation rising arise from views of native Cherokees with their story of the Trail of tears and another trail, but not of tears, that lead Lewis and Clark through the west in their expedition. Their language and descriptions of the wild life made me feel as if I were the one going along with them in the Mississippi river. The antislavery movement goes one step further, reaching the national level and gaining new allies within the whites. Excellent literary excerpts rose from the slavery, like Nat Turner and Harriet Jacobs, who are included in this recompilation. Religious and cultural issues like the Seneca Falls Convention and the rising levels of alcoholism are debated by Shay Arthur with his Best-seller and Cady Stanton in her "Declaration of Sentiments". Then the Civil War takes place in America and then it's reconstruction, wich is presented in Part six. The readings in this section reflect the crises the nation faced at mid-century. Cornelia Hancock's description of the battlefield and the accounts by George Wards Nichols and Pauline DeCaradeuc Heyward of the devastation wrought by William Tecumseh Shermans's march through Georgia and the Carolinas graphically illustrate the impact of the war. Ellen Leonard's account of the New York Antidraft riot exposes the dilemma of conflicting visions of the goals of the war. Victory for the Union did not answer all the major questions posed by the antislavery debate and the war.