Research Draft

William Primes

      

                                                                   Turning Points

              In history there have been turning points that have a great impact. Some examples are The Red Scare in which innocent people were being called Communism and back then that was punishable by death or long jail time. Other examples are the Civil War which the slaves were liberated and the south wanted their freedom and The Attacks on the Twin Towers on 9/11. The civil war and the twin towers are two that really had the biggest impact on American history and two situations we still talk about today.The civil war and the attacks on 9/11 are two turning points that had the biggest impact on American history and two situations that we still refer to today.

               The Civil War is the central event in America's historical consciousness. While the Revolution of 1776-1783 created the United States, the Civil War of 1861-1865 determined what kind of nation it would be. The war resolved two fundamental questions left unresolved by the revolution: whether the United States was to be a dissolvable confederation of sovereign states or an indivisible nation with a sovereign national government; and whether this nation, born of a declaration that all men were created with an equal right to liberty, would continue to exist as the largest slaveholding country in the world. The Civil War started because of uncompromising differences between the free and slave states over the power of the national government to prohibit slavery in the territories that had not yet become states. When Abraham Lincoln won election in 1860 as the first Republican president on a platform pledging to keep slavery out of the territories, seven slave states in the South seceded and formed a new nation, The Confederate States of America. They fought for the keeping slaves. The event that set the war in motion is when the South opened fire on Fort Sumter. After that day the war stared and it lasted for 4 years and the north was victorious and the slaves were free, this is a turning point because this changed how the country was going to live on.

                When we think of 9/11, most think of the Twin Towers; but 9/11 was much more than just that.  There were 4 planes, 2 went to the Twin Towers, One crashed in Pennsylvania and the last to the pentagon. The plane crash in Somerset, Pennsylvania was not intended to happen. No one knows exactly where the plane was going, but people suspected it was headed toward the White House. The plane crashed because by this time the passengers had heard what was happening to the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. The passengers attempted to fight the terrorists, but they lost control. The plane did a nose dive straight into the ground of Somerset, Pennsylvania. The plane crashed roughly around 10:03am. Innocent victims yet again were killed. Even though they tried to gain control of the plane and stop it, they did not succeed and died in the process of trying to help their country. The Pentagon is a building located in Washington, D.C., that houses the headquarters of the United States Department of Defense. On 9/11 Al Qaeda drove a plane through this important building. American Airlines flight 77 departed and was bound for Los Angeles. The Twin Towers are the buildings that got the worst of it the first plane hit the first tower at 8:46am. People across America we're shocked, but nothing was thought of it, except that it could be an accident. Shortly after the first plane hit, the second plane hit at exactly 9:03am. This is what shocked everyone, and we knew this was not an accident. After the second plane hit, the first tower fell. After a while of burning the second tower finally collapsed on itself, and thousands of victims were dead. The police and fire department were able to save many people, but some were too high up to be saved.  9/11 was a turning point in history for many reasons. First of all, it changed the way we all see each other. We look at strangers and are scared, thinking they could be a possible threat to us and our country. People walk through the streets scared, not knowing what’s going to happen.  9/11 left us living in fear of everything and everyone. Also, security is much more strict everywhere. Before 9/11 you could walk onto a plane without going through metal detectors, taking off your shoes, and putting everything in a bin to be checked and x-rayed. People were trusted not to bring guns or anything harmful on the planes, which is how the terrorists were able to pull off what they did. Patriotism has changed in America because of 9/11. Most Americans had some patriotism, but since 9/11 it has become much more important to people. It has changed all of our lives in many different ways; from losing family members to security at airports. 9/11 was definitely changed a lot of lives, and was a huge turning point.

Both the Civil War and 9/11 attacks were the biggest turning points in American history because these two events have the biggest impacts in our lives and how we go about our days .Without the Civil War and 9/11 our lives would be drastically different. The Civil War lead to the civil rights movement and the fight for equality for everyone.9/11 lead to the war on terror and the beef up in our security systems. But 9/11 also set us back as a country because nobody trusts each other anymore and it kind of sucks because we can’t move on as a country without trust.  These are the reasons why 9/11 and the Civil War are such big turning points in our history.