The world turned upside down [videorecording] ; Are we to be a nation? / produced and directed by Ellen Hovde, Muffie Meyer ; writer, Ronald Blumer ; a production of KTCA-TV in association with Middlemarch Films.
Host, Forrest Sawyer ; narrator, Edward Herrmann ; featuring, Philip Bosco, J.D. Cullum, Peter Donaldson, Roger Rees, Campbell Scott, Terrence Mann, Donna Murphy. "The Democracy Project."
Contents:
Episode 5. The World turned upside down -- Episode 6. Are we to be a nation?
Summary:
Episode 5. How do Americans, fighting in the name of liberty, justify the institution of slavery? The British hoped to exploit the contradictions posed by slavery and enlist the support of loyalists in the South, but they failed. The convergence of Washington's army and the French fleet at Yorktown trapped a weary British army led by Lord Cornwallis. Two years later, the Treaty of Paris was signed, ending eight years of fighting. Episode 6. Following the war, the nation faced a new set of challenges: bankruptcy, no common currency, no national army, states acting like sovereign nations, and no strong government capable of dealing with these problems. In 1776 a constitutional convention met in Philadelphia which ratified a new system of government and included the Bill of Rights. The revolutionary idea that power should flow upward from the people instead of downward from a king heralded the birth of modern politics.
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