Roots relates a lot to U.S History.

The most obvious of how Roots relates to U.S. History is slavery. In Roots Kunta Kinte was captured by slave catchers and was transported to the American colonies. In history thousands of Africans especially ones that were living in coastal regions were captured and enslaved. Slavery in Africa began about in the 15th century. As European Empires expanded so did slavery. Britain had set up a trading route which began from Britain down into West Africa then to the New World. This is also known as the Triangular Trade.

The passage from West Africa to the colonies was known as the middle passage.By the 17th century American colonies especially the South started to depend on slaves and started to import more. Slaves were primarily used to farm.

After Kunta, Kizzy, and Chicken George we followed Tom. During his story the Civil War took place and they were freed. The Civil War was the bloodiest conflict in American History. It took over 600,000 American lives, destroyed over $5 billion dollars worth of property, but the most important thing is that it ended slavery. The Civil War began when Abraham Lincoln was elected president. 11 Southern States withdrew from the Union and started up the Confederate States of America led by Jefferson Davis as president. On April 12, 1861 Confederate ships bombarded Fort Sumter.

It was the beginning of the Civil War.

The North and South quickly began mobilizing their troops, and required a 3 year enlistment period. The Union strategy to fight the war was to end all resistance and the ability of the Confederates to wage war. The Confederate strategy was to prolong the war long enough so that the North would find fighting useless. Winfield Scott, the general-chief-of the United States Army, came up with a plan to end the war. Scott's plan was to surround and blockade the south and invade it from all sides.

It was named the "Anaconda Plan" after the South American snake that squeezed it's victim to death.

It called for the naval blockade up and down the Atlantic shore to block the Confederates from getting any manufactured goods from European nations. Then they would take the Mississippi River and cut the Confederates in half. Then call for an invasion of the Confederate States from all sides. This laid out a broad plan for the Union to win the war.

By the spring of 1865 the Confederates surrendered. During the war Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation which would free all slaves outside of Union control but there were no way to enforce it. On April 14, 1865 President Lincoln was assassinated in the Ford's Theater by
John Wilkes Booth

At the end of 1865 the 13th Amendment was ratified and ended all forms of slavery.

When Tom and his family discovered they were free they had no idea of what to do. They never went to school and all they knew was how to farm. The south still angry that they lost the war devised up a system to keep former slaves into farming. They devised the Share Cropping System which would leave freed blacks in debt forever so they couldn't leave the farms.

During the Reconstruction Period there was a group that came up. It was the Ku Klux Klan. The early forms of them were called night riders. They would terrorize blacks into staying in farms and keeping them in place.

They had scared Tom and his family into working on the farm again. But when Chicken George came back they had devised a plan and escaped to George's farm which he had bought.

That is how Roots relates to U.S. History. It spanned about 2 centuries 17th and 18th. It took a long time for Kunta Kinte's family to finally be free but they had made his dream come true that his family would one day be free once and for all.

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