An American Century Ends.

• • •
Another Begins
"We are o/course a nafron o/dfferences. Those
dfferences don't make us weak. Th�'re the source
o/our strength. . . . The iuesfron is not when we
came here . . . 6ut w� ourfamilies came here.
And what we did aji-er we arrived "
-JIMMY (ARTER, 1976

What did hawks and doves have to do with the

Vietnam War?
"Hawks" were people who
supported the war; "doves"
were those who wanted
peace. Vietnam was the
most unpopular and
divisive war in American
history, and the number of
doves grew as the war
dragged on.
Antiwar protests started at
colleges and universities
and soon spread across the
country. Most Americans
supported LBJ and the war
until the North Vietnamese
led a 1968 attack called the
Tet Offensive. Tet was the
largest Vietnamese assault
University students protest with a
poster and mock casket. of the war, and though we
pushed the North

CHAPTER 10 193
Vietnamese back, it showed Americans that-despite what
some U.S. generals had been telling them-the end of the war
was not just around the corner. Protesters chanted, "Hey, hey,
LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?" Under increasing
attack, President Johnson decided not to run for a second full
term as president and retired in January of 1969. By that year,
nearly thirty-four thousand men had refused to be drafted into
the army. Some turned in or burned their draft cards. Others
moved to Canada to avoid the draft.
Tension mounted when four college students in an antiwar
demonstration were killed by national guardsmen at Kent
State University in Ohio in 1970. The following year, The New
York Times published articles revealing that the government
had deceived the American people for years about the
country's increasing involvement in Vietnam and surrounding
countries. These "Pentagon Papers" gave the antiwar
movement new credibility, and protests grew in number until
President Nixon agreed to bring U.S. troops home. The day after
the last U.S. forces left Vietnam in 1975, Communist forces
finished taking over the country.

MAJ □ R MILESTONES IN THE VIETNAM WAR

1 9S5-1 97S

1955
The United States provides military training and more
than $200 million in aid directly to the anti-Communist,
South Vietnam government.
1961
President Kennedy sends more equipment and advisors to
Vietnam; by the end of the year, there are 3,205 U.S.
military personnel there.
1964
U.S. planes bomb North Vietnam in retaliation for attacks
on U.S. ships; the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution gives President
Johnson the power to wage war.
194 DON'T KNOW MUCH ABOUT
®
AMERICAN HISTORY
 1965
The war escalates when U.S. air raids begin sustained
bombing of North Vietnam and the U.S. combat troops
reach 125,000.
1968
The Tet Offensive shows the United States that the North
Vietnamese army will be hard to defeat. American citizens
increasingly turn against the war; peace talks between the
United States and North Vietnam begin in Paris.
1969
President Nixon orders the secret bombing of Cambodia.
Nixon begins withdrawing U.S. troops.
1970
Four students are killed when national guardsmen open
fire at an antiwar protest at Kent State University.
1971
The New York Times begins publication of the "Pentagon
Papers," the top-secret history of American involvement in
Vietnam.
1973
A cease-fire agreement is announced; American prisoners
of war are released.
1975
North Vietnamese troops attack major South Vietnamese
cities, including the capital, Saigon, causing the last
Americans to flee; the South falls to the Communists the
next day.

Who were the "hippies"?

Some of those who opposed the war were people who
"dropped out" of mainstream society in the 1960s. These
people called themselves hippies (Why? Because they were
CHAPTER 10 195
hip!), and they believed in a peaceful world where everyone
loved one another. Most hippies were middle class and around
college age, and their lifestyle was an escape from and
rebellion against that of their parents and the older, more
straight-laced generations.

There were very few true hippies, who completely dropped out
of society at the time. But there was a much larger generation
of young Americans who opposed the Vietnam War, worked for
civil rights, and believed in more women's rights. Many of
them sported long hair and worn-out blue jeans. They listened
and danced to the music of Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, the Beatles,
and Jimi Hendrix. Many of them took drugs, and some of them
died from them. Though the hippies and other protesters of
that era grew older and became more conventional, it was still
a generation that helped end America's war in Vietnam and
profoundly changed American culture.

Did the cold war ever thaw?

It did, but it took a long time. The thaw began with President
Nixon, who visited two major Communist powers-China and
the Soviet Union-in 1972. The Vietnam War had shown Nixon
that something had to change between the United States and
Communist countries, and his trip to Asia marked a shift in
American foreign policy. It showed America that Communist
powers weren't necessarily connected to one another or
opposed to Western democracies.
Nixon put America on the road to full diplomatic relations with
China and began detente, or the lessening of tension, with the
Soviet Union. We began to develop friendlier relations with the
Soviets and agreed to several treaties that would reduce the
number of nuclear weapons. Between 1972 and 1979, Strategic
Arms Limitation Talks (SALT I and II) resulted in agreements
that limited each country's nuclear weapons. In 1987 President
Ronald Reagan made another major breakthrough in the arms
race when he and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev signed the

19(9 DON'T KNOW MUCH ABOUT

"'
AMERICAN HISTORY
Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces agreement, by which each
side agreed to get rid of an entire class of missiles.

AMERICAN VOICES

''THAT'S ONE SMALL STEP FOR MAN, ONE GIANT LEAP FOR

MANKIND.ft

-American astronaut NEIL ARMSTRONG, wbo made /2isto,y on Jufy 20,

1969, wben be became thefrst person to setjoot on the moon

In July of 1969 people

around the world saw
something on television
that many believed
they would never see: a
man walking on the
moon-240,000 miles
away. Some people
have called the moon
landing the greatest
scientific
accomplishment of the Neil Armstrong's footprint on the moon marked a
grand achievement in the space race.
modern world.
Armstrong and fellow
astronaut Buzz Aldrin spent twenty-one hours, thirty-six
minutes, and twenty-one seconds on the moon. They took
pictures, set up scientific experiments, collected rock samples
for scientists to study back on Earth, talked to President
Richard Nixon via radio, and put up an American flag and a
plaque that read, "Here Men from the Planet Earth/First Set
Foot upon the Moon/July 1969 AD/We Came in Peace for All
Mankind."

In 1975 Americans and Soviets began to work together in

space. The former rivals launched two spacecraft that docked
in space for two days. The astronauts shook hands on live TV
and conducted experiments together.

CHAPTER 10 19 7
Why did President Nixon give up his job?
a) Congress was about to kick him out.

b) Americans found out he had CREEPs working for him.

c) He was tired of being president.

The answer is mostly letter a, with a little of letter b thrown in

for good measure. Richard Nixon did some great things for the
country by starting to make friends with China and the Soviet
Union. But he also betrayed the nation in many ways. The
criminal, secretive side of President Nixon was revealed in a
scandal called "Watergate."

The Watergate crisis began to unfold when five of Nixon's staff

members, who belonged to the Committee to Re-Elect the
President (which became known as CREEP), were caught
breaking in to the Democratic Party headquarters at the
Watergate office building in Washington, D.C., in 1972. When
word got out that the burglars had connections to the White
House, Nixon's advisors offered to pay the burglars to keep
quiet and cover up the crime. But the scandal didn't stay
covered for long. Thro young reporters from The Washington Post,
Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, traced the crime back to the
White House. The Post published what Woodward and
Bernstein found (and in doing so acted as the watchdog the

198 DON'T KNOW MUCH ABOUT

®
AMERICAN HISTORY
press is supposed to be in a democratic society). A criminal
investigation followed.

Nixon repeatedly denied any involvement in the Watergate

burglaries or in the other illegal actions the investigations
revealed (among them, that he let his staff lie, steal
confidential records, and tap phones; and that he used
government money to improve his homes and weaseled out of
income tax payments). One by one the president's aides
resigned. In an unrelated crime, Vice President Spiro Agnew
admitted to filing a false tax return and also resigned.
Investigators asked Nixon to give them copies of tapes that
recorded his conversations in his offices. He finally released
the tapes-with eighteen minutes erased from them. On the
verge of being impeached for obstructing justice and violating
his oath of office, in 1974 Nixon became the first and only
American president to resign from office.

In all, fifty-six men were convicted of Watergate-related

crimes. Some went to jail. Nixon was pardoned by his
successor, Gerald Ford, a decision some people protested
loudly. Others, President Ford included, thought it was best for
the country to try to put the whole awful mess behind it.

AMERICAN VOICES

"... THE PEOPLE HAYE GOT TO KNOW WHETHER OR NOT THEIR

PRESIDENT IS A CROOK. WELL, I AM NOT A CROOK."

-PRESIDENT RICHARD NIXDN, 1974

What could women do in the early 1970s that they

couldn't do before?
A couple of things. After 1972 they could take part in a much
wider variety of high school and college sports. Title IX of the
Educational Amendments passed by Congress that year said
that public schools had to provide equal access and
opportunities for women and girls in education if the schools
received money from the government. These opportunities

CHAPTER 10 199
included sports, and they resulted in major change. Most
schools had offered plenty of sports programs for boys but few,
if any, for girls. In 1971 girls made up only 7.5 percent of U.S.
high school athletes; by 1996 the figure was 39 percent.
In 1973 the Supreme Court gave women the ability to do
something completely different with their bodies. The Court's
ruling in the case of Roe v. Wade made abortions legal within
the first three months of pregnancy. Before Roe, many women
had abortions illegally and in unsafe conditions, which often
caused complications, and sometimes even death. Poor women
were especially at risk. The Court's decision in Roe v. Wade has
been controversial ever since it was issued. Then as now,
people who support the decision say the right to an abortion is
a basic right to safety, privacy, and choice. Many opponents feel
the decision amounts to government-approved murder.

What would you be sure to find at American gas

stations in the mid-1970s?

Long lines and high prices. By the 1970s Americans had

become very dependent on oil, not only for gas but also for
heating homes and making products such as plastics and

200 DON'T KNOW MUCH ABOUT

®
AMERICAN HISTORY
paint. America imported nearly half its oil supply, mostly from
the oil-rich Arab countries of the Middle East. In 1973 the Arab
nations attacked Israel in retaliation for land Israel had seized
during a war in 1967. Because the United States was Israel's
main ally, the Arab-controlled Organization of Petroleum
Exporting Countries {OPEC) cut off oil shipments to the United
States and reduced shipments to other countries.

For Americans and their oversized, gas-guzzling cars, the

energy crisis was a huge wake-up call. The younger
generations that hadn't experienced the sacrifices of the Great
Depression and World War II suddenly knew what it was like
to do without-and they didn't like it. As gas lines snaked
around the block, violence broke out among frustrated drivers.

The Arab boycott was lifted in 1974, but the energy crisis made
some people think about where they got their fuel, what kind
of fuel they used, and how to conserve energy.

What was the "crisis of confidence"?

The energy crisis seemed to be just one thing that made
Americans frustrated, skeptical, and disoriented in the 1970s.
Vietnam and Watergate loomed large in people's memories,
and as oil prices rose, so did unemployment and inflation.
{Inflation means that prices rise and your money doesn't buy
as much as it used to.) Combined, these things left many
Americans feeling powerless and unsure of what they and
their country were all about. President Carter said the
country's lack of confidence threatened to destroy American
democracy.
Jimmy Carter was a caring, approachable, and intelligent man.
As president, he helped make an historic peace treaty between
Egypt and Israel by inviting both countries' leaders to the
presidential retreat at Camp David in 1978. But the Camp
David Accord was overshadowed by a hostage crisis in Iran the
following year, a crisis that confirmed many people's feeling

CHAPTER 10 201
that Carter wasn't a strong enough leader to handle the
country's troubles.
The crisis started with a revolution in Iran. That country's
ruler, the Shah, a longtime U.S. ally, was overthrown by the
Ayatollah Khomeini. The Ayatollah hated the United States for
supporting the Shah. In November 1979, five hundred Iranians
loyal to Khomeini stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran, Iran,
and took fifty-two American diplomats hostage. The hostages
were blindfolded and paraded in front of TV cameras while the
Iranians yelled insults and burned the American flag. President
Carter was determined to get the hostages home safely, but
the rescue mission he ordered not only failed miserably, it left
eight marines dead in the Iranian desert. It was an
embarrassing disaster that made America look powerless and
set the stage for more hostage-taking by Arabs. It also helped
cost Carter the 1980 presidential election, which he lost by a
landslide to Ronald Reagan. The Iranians got in one last jab at
Carter by releasing the hostages just minutes after he left office.

What did President Reagan have in common with a

frying pan?
Ronald Reagan has been called the "Teflon President" because
there were many scandals during his administration, but none
of them "stuck" to him. President Reagan was witty, old­
fashioned, friendly, and optimistic. The oldest president to be
elected, he turned seventy just after his inauguration. He'd
made his living as a radio sportscaster, a TV host, and a
Hollywood actor before going on to become governor of
California. Reagan's background as an entertainer made him
an inspiring speaker. People called him the "Great
Communicator." His confidence and ease gave discouraged
Americans a renewed patriotism and pride.
President Reagan's steady pressure on the Soviet Union is
credited with helping to end the cold war. Still, Reagan's
weakness was his dislike for details. He spoke in broad terms

202 DON'T KNOW MUCH ABOUT

®
AMERICAN HISTORY
and handed many of his responsibilities to his staff. Some say
he didn't pay much attention to what was going on around
him. This inattention, combined with his affable nature, gave
him the "Teflon" quality that let problems slide right off his
back. During his administration, military interventions in
Lebanon and the tiny Caribbean island of Granada cost
American casualties; banking crises caused by lack of
government watchfulness cost taxpayers billions of dollars;
and the national debt quadrupled.

But one of the biggest scandals was the "Iran-Contra" Affair,

which involved two sets of lies tangled into one big mess that
stretched halfway around the globe. The affair involved the
secret sale of missiles to Iran (one of America's enemies) in
exchange for American hostages held by Iranian-supported
Lebanese terrorists. Profits from the secret arms sale were
used to send secret aid to a rebel army known as the "Contras"
in Nicaragua. In 1984 Congress had cut off military aid to the
Contras, who were fighting to overthrow the Communist-like
Sandanistas in their country. The Iran-Contra scandal, which
came to light in 1986, wasn't quite as bad as Watergate, but it
was definitely illegal and unconstitutional. Thro members of
the National Security Council were later convicted of
obstructing Congress. Reagan himself was never charged.

Why was the American space program put on hold

in the 1980s?
Because of an awful disaster. The space shuttle Challenger had
just taken off for its tenth flight in January 1986 when it
exploded in the air, killing all seven people on board. Millions
of people around the world were watching the lift-off because
schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe was on board. McAuliffe,
who'd been chosen to be the first teacher in space, was
planning to broadcast lessons directly to schools from the
shuttle's orbit around Earth.
The Challenger disaster led NASA to stop all space shuttle
missions for nearly three years while the cause of the

CHAPTER 10 203
explosion, a faulty seal on one of the rocket boosters, was
found and fixed. The teacher-in-space program was put on
hold until the next century.

--------AMERICAN * ST □ RIES--------

Why did Indiana teenager Ryan White have to

fight for his right to go to school?
Because Ryan White had AIDS.AIDS (Acquired Immune
Deficiency Syndrome) is a disease caused by infection with HIV
(Human Immunodeficiency Virus),which attacks the body's
immune system and its ability to resist other infections.AIDS is a
pandemic, or a worldwide health crisis.But when the first cases
were formally reported in 1981,no one knew what the mysterious
disease was. AIDS was first detected in homosexual men,then in
heterosexual men,in women, and in children. By the end of 2001,
AIDS had killed 22 million people worldwide,including nearly a
half million in the United States.An estimated 40 million more
were living with HIV/AIDS.
Ryan White got HIV from a contaminated blood transfusion.He
was diagnosed with AIDS in 1984, when he was thirteen.HIV can
only be transmitted by a transfusion of blood or by having sex
with an infected person,but many people then thought you could
catch it from drinking fountains,toilet seats,shaking hands,
sneezing,sweating,and sharing eating utensils.When word got
out that Ryan had AIDS,his life changed dramatically. "Because of
the lack of education on AIDS," he told the Presidential
Commission on AIDS in 1988,"discrimination,fear,panic,and lies
surrounded me....I was labeled a troublemaker,and my mom an
unfit mother,and I was not welcome anywhere. People would get
up and leave,so they would not have to sit anywhere near me.
Even at church,people would not shake my hand."
Ryan White fought nine months of court battles before he won the
right to return to school. He continued to speak out about AIDS
awareness and became known for his courage,determination,and
pride. Ryan died in 1990,a year before he would have graduated
from high school.

204 ®
DON'T KNOW MUCH ABOUT AMERICAN HISTORY
Could weathermen predict Desert Storm?
No, because it didn't have anything to do with the weather.
Operation Desert Storm was the attack phase of the Persian
Gulf War fought against Iraq in 1991. The Gulf War was fought
against Iraq by a coalition, or a group of nations, led by the
United States. It was a brief war in which America's military
strength was overpowering. The attack against Iraq opened
with fierce bombing and ended six weeks later with a
hundred-hour ground war that drove Iraqi forces from Kuwait.
The American-led coalition stopped short of invading Iraq and
trying to overthrow its dictator, Saddam Hussein. But the great
success with relatively few American losses made President
George H. W. Bush very popular. For the first time since the
terrible losses in Vietnam, many Americans felt confident
about the American military once again. With the cooperation
of so many other countries in the coalition, President Bush
also felt hopeful that there would now be a "New World Order."

■
Part of his optimism about a world that worked more
cooperatively came from
another great change at that
time. The long cold war Operation . Desert Storm drove
between America and the
Saddam Hussein out. of Kuwait, but .
the Gulf War ended with the Iraqi
Soviet Union was over. After
dictator still in power. J\fter the
decades of repressive rule,
war's end in 1991, Saddam
Communism had collapsed in continued to pose a probl�m to
many European countries in tfie world community. He .was said
1989 and 1990. The greatest to have used chemkat weapons
symbol of the cold war, the against his own people wlien they
Berlin Wall, which divided opposed him, and he kicked United
Communist East Berlin from Nations weapons il)spectors out of
democratic West Berlin, had his co4ntry-prompting many to
been demolished in 1989. wonder what he was hiding. Many
Communist East and people lSelieve that dictatorial
democratic West Germany teaders such as·saddam Hussein
had been reunited. For a time are a tlireat to peace and stability
in the Middle East and even tbe
it seemed that countries that
worla.
were once enemies, including
CHAPTER 10 205
the United States and Russia, could join together, as they did
to defeat Saddam Hussein, and create a new era of
international peace.

,!t-� "Debugging" a computer once meant removing

.,FA'-
"'
the moths from inside it.
True! The first fully electronic computer, ENIAC, was built for
use during World War II and shown to the public in 1946.
ENIAC was no laptop-it took up an entire room and weighed
thirty tons. The first computers were enormous, expensive,
impractical, and complicated. They could break down if a small
insect got inside them-hence the term debugging. But with the
development of the microchip in 1971, several companies
began building smaller computers that would fit on your desk
at home or at work. In 1977 came the Apple computer, and in
1981 IBM introduced the personal computer {PC). Computers
have been getting smaller and more powerful ever since.

Computers and microchips are the backbone of the technology

revolution that continues to change peoples' lives and

20€, DON'T KNOW MUCH ABOUT

"'
AMERICAN HISTORY
economy today. Now we have
cellular phones, digital AMERICAN ENGLISH

cameras, Palm Pilots, MP-3 The computer age and the world of
players, and all sorts of other "cyberspace" have put folks on the
gadgets that are made information highway to a host of
new words, expressions, and even
possible by the microchip. But
punctuation (dot com). Just a
possibly the most significant smattering of bits and bytes:
development of the software, disk drive, virtual reality,
"information age" is the e-mail, modem, log on, browser,
Internet. Like the first hyperlink, Internet, World Wide Web,
computers, the Internet was surfing the Net.
developed by the U.S. military
and researchers at
universities. It entered mainstream America in the early 1990s,
and soon, millions were "surfing" the Internet via the World
Wide Web. The Internet has changed the way we live, think,
shop, learn, and communicate. People across the country or
around the globe can meet and connect online; the world
seems smaller now.

-------AMERICAN * STORIES--------.

What famous billionaire dropped out of college?

Bill Gates, chairman of Microsoft Corporation. Bill Gates began
programming computers when he was just thirteen. That was
back in 1968, when computers were the size of refrigerators. But
Bill Gates believed that one day smaller computers would be on
every desk in every home and office. Those computers would
need software to run them. Six years later Bill Gates dropped out
of college at Harvard to found Microsoft Corporation with a child­
hood friend. Soon you almost couldn't run a personal computer if
you didn't have Microsoft software (MS-DOS, then Windows). In
2000 Forbes magazine listed Gates as the richest man in the world
for the sixth year in a row. He and his wife, Melinda, have given
away billions of dollars for global health care, American libraries
and education, community programs near their home in the
Pacific Northwest, and other special projects.

CHAPTER 10 207
 Where might you be If you tell .ppl
you'y_e g2g cuz you have hw to do?
If this is the language you're using to_ tell people you've got to go
because you have homework to do, you're most likely in cyberspace,
sencling an e-mail or instant message. Instant messagjng ("Ir-,ing" fur
short), or sending written messages online in real time, is a nightly
activity for millions of teenagers around the world. Surveys have shown
that the m1jorittof American teens who use the .Internet send instant
messages or spend time in online chat rooms. (Adults do these things,
too, but not nearly as much as teens.) Unlike a one-on-one telephone
conversation, instant messag\ng allows people to "talk" to all their
friends at once. Users get immediate feedback-but they also must �pe
quickly, making slangterms and abbreviations like ttfn (ta ta for now)
especially popular.
,:ir,,AbJli,�S �
�,=-

What did President Bill Clinton have in common with

President Andrew Johnson?
He was impeached. President Clinton was charismatic,
hardworking, and uncommonly smart. The boy from small­
town Arkansas could read before he was three and is the only
president to have been a Rhodes scholar at Oxford University
in England. As president, Clinton balanced the budget and
presided over a roaring economy with low unemployment. He
established freer trade with Canada and Mexico with the North
American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1993 and signed
the Brady Bill for handgun control.
Clinton ran into trouble when the public found out he was
having a relationship with a young White House intern named
Monica Lewinsky. When questioned, Clinton denied the
relationship, lying to the nation and to members of his
administration. For these lies, Clinton was impeached by the
House of Representatives in 1998. But like Johnson, the Senate
did not find him guilty of the "high crimes and misdemeanors"
needed to remove a president from office.

Clinton did things that most people considered immoral. He

also lied in a court case, which is usually considered a crime.
208 DON'T KNOW MUCH ABOUT
®
AMERICAN HISTORY
But those things were finally not considered serious enough
offenses by the Senate, though he did lose some privileges as a
lawyer, his profession before he entered politics. How will
history judge President Clinton? Will he be remembered as the
leader of America during a time of peace and prosperity? Or as
the second president to be impeached? It is hard to say so
soon after he left office.

Were the 1990s an age of rage?

In many ways, yes. More and more, violence became an outlet
for the frustration, disagreement, and discontent of people
who felt left behind in the fast-moving America of the
nineties. A month after President Clinton took office, an Islamic
fundamentalist (someone who believes in rigidly following an
extreme version of the Muslim religion) bombed the World
Trade Center in New York, killing six and wounding more than
a thousand. Thro months later, an FBI raid on the Branch
Davidian religious compound in Waco, Texas, left more than
eighty of the cult members dead. Thro years later, in response,
antigovernment extremists Timothy Mcveigh and Terry Nichols
exploded a bomb outside the Murrah Federal Building in
Oklahoma City. The explosion killed 169 people, including 19
children who were at the building's day-care center.
There was race-related violence, too. In 1991 four white Los
Angeles police officers pulled over a black driver named
Rodney King for speeding. They dragged King from his car and
kicked and beat him with nightsticks. The incident was caught
on home video and shown on the news, enraging Americans
across the country. Yet the policemen were acquitted in 1992. A
riot broke out in Los Angeles. Over two days protesters set
hundreds of fires and looted millions of dollars' worth of
merchandise from stores. Fifty-four people died.
There was even violence in schools. In the late 1990s
thousands of students were expelled for bringing guns or other
firearms to public schools. Some students who were not
caught went on rampages, killing and wounding students and
teachers. The worst of these occurred at Columbine High
CHAPTER 10 209
School in Littleton, Colorado, in 1999. Thro boys killed twelve
students and a teacher before shooting themselves. Some
people blamed school violence on the media-violent video
games, movies, television shows, and music-and others
blamed parents who were out of touch with their children.

Why was George W. Bush declared president

twice-in the same election?
Because the race between Bush (the son of former president
George H. W. Bush) and his opponent, Al Gore, was so close
that it was difficult to tell who won the electoral vote. (Gore
won the popular vote, but it's the electoral vote that counts.)
For much of the campaign, Bush and Gore had been neck and
neck, and they stayed that way even after the election.

On election night television stations counting the election

returns estimated that Gore had won the key state of Florida.
As more results came in from that state, however, the stations
retracted the estimate, saying Florida was still undecided.
Meanwhile, results from other states came in and made it
clear that the race hinged on which candidate won the most
votes in Florida. In the early hours of the morning, the
networks said it was Bush who had won the state where Bush's
brother Jeb was governor. But then they took that back, saying
Florida, and thus the race in general, was "too close to call."

210 DON'T KNOW MUCH ABOUT

®
AMERICAN HISTORY
In the first count of the Florida votes, Bush was ahead by
eighteen hundred, but Florida law says that if the margin is
less than two thousand votes, the ballots must be recounted.
For thirty-six days, Americans-including the candidates­
waited in suspense while votes were counted again and again.
Finally, in a controversial decision, the U.S. Supreme Court
overturned the Florida Supreme Court's ruling allowing the
ballots to be counted by hand. That meant Bush's narrow lead
in Florida would stand. Bush would be the next president.
When George W. Bush was
inaugurated on January 20, The election of 2000 marked
2001, he became the second the fourth time in U.S. history, and
American president to be the the first time in more than a
son of a former president. (Do hundre.d years, that the president
you know who was the first hadn't won the popular vote. The
father-son pair? Hint: The close election made people ask
father was the second whether states should update old­
president, his son the sixth.) fashioned voting equipment and
But many Americans believed reform or get rid of the electoral
he had really lost to Al Gore. college (which would require a
Though the contest had been
constitutional amendment).
Because the election had been so
bitter and sometimes ugly,
tigl:it, it left some Americans
Gore gave a gracious
feeling that every vote counts. But
concession speech in which because some votes had been
he called on Americans to tossed out for being unreadable,
unite behind the new others felt just the opposite.
president.

What happened on September 11, 2001, that

shocked the world?
The worst terrorist attack ever on U.S. soil. On a perfect, sunny,
late-summer morning, four American airplanes were hijacked,
or taken over, by terrorists. The terrorists flew two planes into
the two 110-story World Trade Center towers in New York City
and another plane into the Pentagon (our military
headquarters) in Washington, D.C. The fourth plane crashed in
an empty field southeast of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on its

CHAPTER 10 211
way to Washington. Almost three
thousand people were killed in the
attack. More Americans died then
than in the Japanese attack on-Pearl
Harbor during World War II.
Among the dead 4
were more than three -=·-­
hundred heroic New
York City firefighters and
police officers who were in the
Trade Center towers to rescue others
when the buildings collapsed.
The September 11 ''Attack on America" left people scared,
shocked, and filled with grief. Until September 11 Americans
had viewed terrorism as something that happened in other
countries, not at home. The United States is the richest and
most powerful country in the world; its citizens thought they
were invincible. In less than two hours, they learned that they
were not. Yet the attack, designed to bring Americans down, in
many ways made them stronger-a sort of re-United States. It
made people think about what it means to be an American. It
showed them real-life heroes in the firefighters, police officers,
medical personnel, and rescue workers who rushed to the
sites, and in the millions of others who gave food, clothing,
services, or money to help the victims and their families.

AMERICAN VOICES

''GREAT HARM HAS BEEN DONE TO US. WE HAVE SUFFERED GREAT

LOSS. AND IN OUR GRIEF AND ANGER WE HAVE FOUND OUR
MISSION AND OUR MOMENT.

"FREEDOM AND FEAR ARE AT WAR. THE ADVANCE OF HUMAN

FREEDOM, THE GREAT ACHIEVEMENT OF OUR TIME AND THE GREAT
HOPE OF EVERY TIME, NOW DEPENDS ON US.

212 ®
DON'T KNOW MUCH ABOUT AMERICAN HISTORY
 "OUR NATION, THIS GENERATION, WILL LIFT THE DARK THREAT OF

VIOLENCE FROM OUR PEOPLE AND OUR FUTURE. WE WILL RALLY

THE WORLD TO THIS CAUSE BY OUR EFFORTS, BY OUR COURAGE. WE

WILL NOT TIRE, WE WILL NOT FALTER AND WE WILL NOT FAIL.ft

-President GEORGE W. BUSH, addressi"ng Congress and tfie nati'on,

September 20, 2001

Who hijacked the planes on September 11,

and why?
Almost immediately after the September 11 attacks, President
Bush declared a war on terrorism and rallied dozens of nations
to America's side. Few took much persuading, as some eighty
countries had also lost citizens who were visiting or working in
the United States. But this war is not against any country, or
even a visible enemy. (Some people say it shouldn't be called a
"war" at all, since wars are fought between nations.) Terrorist
groups often spin tangled webs all across the globe. So this is a
war of intelligence, diplomacy, and prevention even more than
one of military might.
The attacks came from a small number of Islamic
fundamentalists. The terrorists were led by a wealthy Saudi
Arabian man named Osama bin Laden. In general, terrorists
aim to spread fear that keeps people and institutions from
working and thereby deny them the freedom that keeps the
country alive.These terrorists specifically have a special hatred
for America because they disagree with American culture and
values (such as freedom, diversity, modernity, pursuit of self­
interest, and separation of church and state). They are also
angry about actions America has taken in the Arab world since
the Persian Gulf War, and about the country's support of Israel
in its conflicts with Arab Palestinians over both the creation of
a Palestinian homeland and shared holy sites in Jerusalem.
These are not issues that will be quickly or easily resolved.

CHAPTER 10 213
By 2050, the U.S. Census Bureau projects that only
53 percent of Americans will be

a) black c) green
b) non-Hispanic white d) eating their vegetables

The answer is letter b. We have always been a nation of

immigrants, but that's never been more true than it is today.
Since the government got rid of immigration quotas based on
nationality in 1965, the United States has seen a major wave of
newcomers. When the United States left Vietnam in 1975,
hundreds of thousands of refugees from Southeast Asia fled
their countries, many in small boats, hoping to arrive in
America safely. Immigrants have also come from China, Cuba,
the Philippines, Mexico, and other parts of Latin America.
1\venty-seven million immigrants have arrived since 1965, and
the Census Bureau estimates that 80 million more will reach
the United States by 2050. At that point, the American
population is expected to be 53 percent white (non-Hispanic),
25 percent Hispanic, 14 percent black, 8 percent Asian and
Pacific, and 1 percent Indian, Eskimo, and Aleut. That will
make people of Spanish-speaking origin the largest ethnic
group in the United States.

About one-fourth of immigrants enter illegally, many crossing

the two.,.thousand-mile border with Mexico. Others come
legally, to be reunited with family members, to work, or to seek
refuge from life in war-torn nations. Some Americans say that
high levels of immigration put jobs and the environment at
risk, but many believe it promotes diversity and increases the
number of creative minds and with it, the pace of innovation.
As the nation becomes more diverse, one thing most people
can agree on: With its unique medley of colors, religions,
talents, and opportunities, the United States is still a symbol of
freedom and hope for the world.

214 DON'T KNOW MUCH ABOUT

®
AMERICAN HISTORY