America: Our Defining Hours

From the very beginning, America is a nation shaped by adversity. These are the stories of the challenges that helped shape a nation. How our forebears survive the "starving time" of the first colonies; battle their mother country for independence; head out to the frontier and west into the unknown; and spark a resistance to slavery that brings the United States to the brink of civil war.

America is forged in the fires of adversity. These stories chart the challenges that helped shape a nation. In the mid-1800s, America faces its darkest hour yet. Abraham Lincoln is elected President of a United States on the brink of Civil War; the nation that emerges now creates great wealth--but not for everyone; Teddy Roosevelt steps forward, bringing fierce leadership on behalf of the working man--his aim: to hold the nation together.

As the twentieth century continues, America faces perhaps its most daunting challenges yet. The 1930s brings the greatest economic crisis in its history; FDR offers the troubled nation a New Deal, but there are clouds on the horizon; Pearl Harbor is a lightning bolt to the American soul, and in command of the allied invasion, General Dwight D Eisenhower; the U.S. elects its youngest commander-in-chief, 46-year-old John F. Kennedy; and on a bridge over the Alabama river, Martin Luther King's fight for equal rights will face its fiercest test. Then, on a bright September morning in 2001, America faces a new crisis: sudden, overwhelming and deadly.