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History Channel America: The Story of US
History has earned some inspiring look at how
self-determination and innovation made
, a special introduction from the President
of United States.
Good
evening. Over two hundred years ago, the world
waited and watched to see if an unlikely
experiment
called
America
would
succeed.
It
has.
Not
because
the
success
was
certain,
or
because
it was easy, but
because generations of Americans dedicated their
lives and the sacred honor
to a
cause greater than has been especially
true in moments of great trial, when a
ragtag
group
of
patriots
overthrew
an
empire
to
secure
the
right
to
life,
liberty
and
the
pursuit
of happiness, when an Illinois
rail
splitter proved
for
all time that
the government
of, by
and
for the people would
endure, when marchers' brave beatings on the
Alabama bridge in the name
of equality,
freedom and justice for
s like these
remind us that our American stories have never
been inevitable, those
made
possible by ordinary people, who kept
moral compass pointed straight and true, when the
way
seemed treacherous, when the climb
seemed steep, when the future seemed uncertain,
people who
were recognized as the
fundamental part of our American character. We can
remake ourselves,
and our nation to fit
our
larger dreams. Tonight,
thorough the series, I hope
you'd be
inspired
by
these extraordinary men
and women, and think about how this generation
will write the next
chapter
in
our
great
American
story.
Thank
you,
and
enjoy
the
are
a
land
of
many
nations.
We are New World explorers. We are the
huddled ng to breathe freedom, we'll risk
it
all.
We
have
the
courage
to
dream
the
impossible,
and
make
it
the
truth.
We
stand
our
ground.
Charge
headlong
towards
our
urers
sail
across
an
ocean
to
start
a
new
life.
A
nation
is born,
which becomes the envy of the world. But in search
of freedom, friends become foes,
and
these new Americans, will wage a
war
against
the
world's
greatest
military
power.
We
are
pioneers
and
trailblazers.
We
fight
for
freedom. We transform our dreams into
the truth. Our struggles will become a nation.
Episode One
Shiploads
of
businessmen
and
true
believers
are
crossing
the
Atlantic
Ocean
to
create
a
new
world.
May 1610. 120 years
after Columbus, it's still a perilous journey. One
ship, The Deliverance,
carries a cargo
that will change America forever.
All
hands
over
here.
Onboard
is
John
Rolfe,
a
24-year-
old
English
farmer.
Ambitious,
self-reliant,
visionary.
A
born
entrepreneur.
What
takes
us
six
hours
today
by
plane
was
then
a
voyage
of
more
than two months. Seven
of the early adventurers out of every ten will be
dead within a year.
Land ahoy! But the
risks are worth it. North America is the ultimate
land of opportunity: A
continent of
vast untapped wealth, starting with the most
valuable resource of all --- land.
What
will
be
home
to
more
than
300
million
people
lies
under
a
blanket
of
forest
covering
nearly
half
the
land. More than 50 billion trees. Further west, 9
million square miles of vast American
wilderness.
60
million
bison
roam
the
plains.
And
underground,
there
are
rumors
of
gems,
silver
and the largest seams of gold in the
world. The settlers expect nothing less than El
Dorado.
But
what
Rolfe
finds
at
the
English
settlement
of
Jamestown,
is
hell
on
Earth.
More
than
500
settlers
made
the
journey
before
Rolfe.
“Hello?”
“Hello?”
Barely
60
remain.
It's
called
Starving
Time
came
across.
“Somebody,
help!”
Three
months
before
Rolfe
arrives,
a
man
is
burned
at
the
stake
for killing his pregnant wife and
planning to eat her.
The
English
arrive
unprepared
for
this
new
world
and
unwilling
to
perform
manual
labor.
Instead
of
livestock,
they've
brought
chemical
tests
for
gold
that
they
never
find.
And
this
is
not
their
land.
They build Jamestown
in the middle of a Native American empire. 60
starving settlers among
20,000 of the
Powhatan Nation, armed with bows and arrows that
are up to nine times faster to
reload
and fire than an English musket. They're soon
enemies. Only one in ten of the original
settlers is left. John Rolfe didn't
come to plunder and leave like the others. He's
got his own
plan.
There's
money
in
tobacco,
and
England
is
addicted.
He's
arrived
with
a
supply
of
South
American
tobacco seeds, but
growing it is limited to the Spanish colonies. The
Spanish control the
worldwide trade.
Selling tobacco seeds to foreigners is
punishable by death. But John Rolfe has got his
hands
on
one knows how. And
in the warm, humid climate and fertile soil around
the Chesapeake
Bay,
Rolfe's
tobacco crop flourishes. The first large harvest
produced by these seeds is worth more
than a million dollars in today's
money.
The great strength of America is
our people. If you wanna know what it is the
defining strength
of America, it is our
people, our immigrant tradition, our bringing in
cultures from all over
the world.
I know what goes into making success.
And when somebody's really successful, it's rarely
luck.
It's talent, it's brain power,
it's lots of other things.
Rolfe
marries the daughter of the king of the Powhatan
Empire. Her name becomes legend:
Pocahontas.
In
England,
Rolfe
makes
her
a
celebrity
when
her
face
is
put
on
a
portrait
that
sells
allover London,
advertising life in the New World. Shakespeare
mentions the colony. England's
rich
invest
money
here.
All
of
London
knows
about
this
land
of
plenty.
Within
two
years,
tobacco
grows in every
garden. From a living hell, Jamestown is America's
first boomtown. Two years
later, nearly
1,000 more settlers arrive, including 19 from West
Africa. Slaves. But some go
on to own
their own land in Virginia. 12 years after the
founding of Jamestown, Africans were
playing
a
shaping
role
in
the
creation
of
the
colonies.
That's
pretty
incredible.
30
years
later,
there
are
over
20,000
settlers
in
Virginia.
America
is
founded on
tobacco.
For
the
next
century
and a half, it's the
continent's largest export.
Ten years
after Rolfe arrives in Jamestown, another group of
English settlers lands in North
America. They come ashore on a deserted
beach 450 miles up the coast from Jamestown, and
call
the
place
Plymouth,
after
the
English
port
they
sailed
from.
These
are
a
different
breed
of
settler,
a
group
of
religious
dissidents
with
faith
at
the
center
of
their
lives.
They
made
the
dangerous
Atlantic crossing,
seeking religious freedom in the New World.
24-year-old apprentice printer Edward
Winslow arrives with a group of religious
sectarians on
a boat called the
Mayflower. By April 1621, their settlement is
taking shape. The Mayflower
returns
to England.
The Pilgrims are
on their own in an unknown land. A great hope and
inward zeal we had of laying
some great
foundation for the propagating and advancing the
gospel of the kingdom of Christ,
in
those
remote
parts
of
the
world.
They're
19
families.
Goats,
chickens,
pigs
and
dogs.
They
have
spinning wheels,
chairs, books, guns.
And
no
way home.
If you create
this
environment
as
a
land
of opportunity, then
you're gonna attract those type of people who
wanna take that risk, who
have-- wanna
take that gamble and who believe in a better life.
They were heading for the Hudson River,
but they've landed 200 miles further north at the
beginning of winter. They have arrived
in the middle of a mini ice age, temperatures 2
degrees
colder
than
today.
Winters
are
longer,
growing
seasons
shorter.
The
soil
is
poor.
Little
grows.
Food
supplies run low. In the first three
months, more than half the Pilgrims die.
William Bradford is the governor of a
community soon in desperate trouble. It pleased
God to
visit
us with death
daily. Disease was everywhere. The living were
scarcely able to bury the dead.
They
died sometimes two or three a day. Of
100 and odd persons, scarce 50 remained. At times,
only
six
are
fit
enough
to
continue
building
their
shelters.
Susanna
White's
husband
dies
that
first
winter. Edward
Winslow's wife perishes a month after. Within
weeks, White and Winslow marry.
They'll
have five children. Today more than 10% of all
Americans can trace their ancestry back
to the
Mayflower. For a
time, Plymouth provides the sanctuary they sought.
“Edward! Edward!
Edward,
please go and look over there!” But
like Jamestown, there were others here
first.
April 1621. The
Pilgrims have been in the New World for five
months. Barely half survive the
first
winter.
But they're not the first
Europeans to arrive on this coast. Five years
before, European ships
brought light-
skinned people and plague. Almost nine out of ten
of the local people are wiped
out.
The Pokanoket people don't need
enemies. They make peace with the Pilgrims. They
teach the
English how to grow crops in
sandy soil, using fish for fertilizer. But they
want something in
return. They have a
common enemy--a rival tribe.
And
the
English
have
powerful
weapons.
The
Pilgrims
aren't
soldiers.
But
in
the
New
World,
they
have
to
fight
to
survive.
On
August
14,
1621,
Pilgrims
and
Pokanoket,
shoulder
to
shoulder,
will
launch a surprise attack that will seal
their future in this new land. It was resolved to
send
14 men, well-armed, and to fall
upon them in the night. The captain gave charge:
Let none pass
out. The rival tribe
doesn't know what hit them. Surrounded, they have
no answer for English
ket and Pilgrims
find common ground...and a chance to survive. Two
unlikely
allies. A partnership all too
rare in North America.
We
have
found
the
Indian
very
faithful
in
their
covenant
of
peace
with
us.
They
are
people
without
any religion or
knowledge of any God, yet very trusty, quick of
apprehension, ripe-witted...
and
just. Their victory brings a period of
peace to the colony. Their friendship is
celebrated in
a feast.
In
time, it will become known as Thanksgiving.
One of the main themes in the founding
of America was a place to do business, a place to
expand
your horizons, a place to live a
life of your own, practice your own religion.
Those are the
basic
themes
that
brought
people
to
these
shores
to
colonize.
It's
the
start
of
a
period
of
prosperity,
that will
transform North America. From Jamestown and
Plymouth, their descendants grow across
the
landscape.
As
more
and
more
people
cross
the
Atlantic--thousands,
tens
of
thousands,
people
with different
backgrounds, different reasons for being
here...America becomes the place for
everybody from everywhere.
Rolling the dice, coming together to
create 13 colonies. From Jamestown, agriculture
spreads
across the South, dirt farms
transform into sprawling plantations. Irish,
Germans, and Swedes
push back the
frontier. The Dutch bring commerce to a small
island at the mouth of the Hudson
River.
In
time,
it
will
be
named
New
York.
The
colonists
are
2
inches
taller,
and
far
healthier,
than those they
left behind in Europe.
The
Puritans
average eight
children,
and
they
are
twice
as
likely
to
survive
to
adulthood.
They
are 20%
richer
and
pay
only
1/4
of
the
taxes
of
those
in
England.
Many
still
think
of
themselves
as British, but
each generation grows further from its roots.
Nowhere more so than Boston.
May
9,
1768.
Seven
generations
after
John
Rolfe's
first
tobacco
harvest,
the
British
want
a
bigger
piece of the action.
A British customs official springs a surprise raid
on The Liberty, a ship
belonging
to
John
Hancock,
one
of
the
richest
men
in
Boston.
But
Hancock's
crew
has
other
ideas.
They're carrying 100 casks of imported
wine and don't want to pay duty. It's a radical
act of
rebellion
against
taxes
imposed
by
a
king
3,000
miles
away.
To
the
British,
they're
just
common
smugglers.
This
mall skirmish
changes
everything.
The
British seize
Hancock's
ship, triggering
riots that sweep through Boston. We
didn't wanna pay taxes to a king and to a
parliament where