Страноведческий топик

The US political system.

The colonies in America won the Revolutionary War or the War of Independence. So in 1787 all the states sent their representatives to Philadelphia where they wrote the Constitution. The Constitution is the highest law in the United States.

The US government is like a tree with a strong trunk and three branches. The trunk is the people. Without the support of people there can be no government as the people choose the men who make the laws.

The 1-st branch is the Congress. People elect the representatives into the Congress. The Congress makes the laws. THE Congress is divided into 2 parts, the Senate and the House of Representatives. Every state sends two representatives into the Senate. There are 100 senators in the Senate and their term is 6 years.

Each state sends their representatives into the House of Representatives and they are called congressmen. The number of congressmen depends on the number of people in the state. The large states have more congressmen than the smaller states.. there are 435 congressmen in the House of Representatives. Their term is 2 years.

The important power of the congress is to declare war

The 2-nd branch is the president and his helpers. The president signs bills and they become law. The US president is the Commander in Chief of the country’s armed forces. His term is 4 years and he can be a president only 2 terms. Americans vote for the president every leap year in November. A person who wants to be American president must be born in America, must be 35 years old and must live in America for the last 14 years.

The 3-rd branch is the Supreme Court. It consists of 9 judges and they watch the Congress and the President follow the Constitution. They work in the Supreme Court as long as they live.

The Constitution was written more than 200 years ago. Changes in the Constitution are called Amendments. There are 26 amendments to the Constitution. The 1-st 10 amendments are called The Bill of Rights. The Bill of Rights guarantees to people freedom of speech, press, religion, to have a lawyer, to go to court. After the Civil War the 13th amendment ended slavery, the 14-th amendment made black people citizens of the US, 15-th gave black people the right to vote. In the 20-th century the 19-th amendment  gave women the right to vote, the 26-th amendment gave people 18 years old and older the right to vote.

Two American Presidents.

The most famous American presidents are George Washington and Abe Lincoln. The 1-st US president, known as “the father of the nation”, was G.Washington. He was born in Virginia in planter’s family but they did not have enough money to send George to school in England. So he went to a private school where he was taught how to be a soldier. George Washington became Commander in Chief of the Colonial Army during the Revolutionary War. He was among those who wrote the US Constitution in Philadelphia. He became the 1-st American President and served 2 terms.

The 16-th president was Abraham Lincoln. He grew in the Middle West. His family lived in poverty. They helped to fight against Indians. He joined the militia and fought in an Indian War. After the war he studied law and became a lawyer and a politician. He was elected to the House of Representatives in US Congress. In 1861 he became the 16-th US president. He led the country through the Civil war. He wanted the northern and southern states to stay together and he hated slavery. So in 1863 he signed the Emancipation Proclamation (the document which made all the slaves free).After the Civil war Abe Lincoln was shot in Ford’s theatre in Washington D.C.