Passage 3
Questions11 to 15 are based on the following passage.
Thehistory of the U.S. from Lincoln’s death to the wave of assassinations in the1960s can be seen as a struggle to realize Lincoln’s vision of a society whosecitizens are not held back by parentage or origin. The struggle to secure thischance for all Americans has been bitter and bloody, and it is far from over.After Lincoln's death, the Fourteenth Amendment promised that the Federal Unionwould guarantee the rights of all persons against violation by the states.However, this guarantee was exploited by business corporations while remaininga hollow promise to millions of actual persons. Women did not get the voteuntil five amendments later, and their legal rights were often lost inmarriage. As for blacks, political equality remained mostly something unrealuntil the passage of the Voting Rights Act one hundred years after Lincoln’sdeath.
The struggle to realize Lincoln's ideal was undertaken not only byworkers against capital but also by immigrants against the political system. Inless than one human life span following the Civil War, the U.S. absorbed agreat number of immigrants who formed the next wave of what Lincoln had called"prudent and penniless" beginners. They found that social serviceswere forgotten by a political system that ran on graft (腐败). The risk of injury，disease，and early death were largelyignored, forcing millions to rely on themselves, on family, and on the charityof friends.
To some who watched the immigrants pour in, it seemed thatAmerica would have to reorganize itself according to the multiculturalprinciple that we hear so much about today. The term “multiculturalism” waspopularized by Horace Kallen. He wrote in his book The Nation in 1915 that withthe growth of large immigrant communities, the rate of mixed marriage woulddrop (he was wrong) and the likelihood of a new American race would decline.The U.S., he predicted, would turn into a democracy of nationalities in which"selfhood is ancestrally determined." To other observers，however，the country was simply slidinginto disorder, as it seemed to Henry Adams in 1905 when he looked out of theclub window on the turmoil of Fifth Avenue and felt himself in the disorderly Romeas witnessed by Emperor Diocletian.
Lincoln imagined that the U.S. would be a society free from the influence of one’s____.
A.wealth B.education C.heritage D.personality正确答案C
