1 . Directions: Read the following two passages. Fill in the blanks to make the passage coherent. For the blanks with a given word, fill in each blank with the proper from of the given word. For the other blanks, fill in each blank with one proper word. Make sure that your answers are grammatically correct.

American Mikah Meyer has an unusual goal. He wants to visit all of the more than 400 properties operated by the National Park Service.

He spent January 2017 visiting historic areas in the southeastern United States.

One of his first stops was Fort Sumter,     1     former military position in waters just off the coast of Charleston, South Carolina. Fort Sumter is famous for being the place where the first shot of the Civil War     2    (fire). It is also     3     the first person killed in the conflict died.

After years of rising tensions between Northern and Southern states, the two sides clashed in Charleston Harbor on April 12, 1861. That was when the Southern army launched an artillery attack on Fort Sumter. Federal troops surrendered the fort a short time later. Union forces eventually fought     4    (regain) control of the base, and defeated the South in 1865. A lone cannon symbolizes the fierce battle that took place on April 12, 1861, when Confederate artillery opened fire on this federal fort in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina, marking it     5     the day when the Civil War began.

As he stood inside the large walls of Fort Sumter National Monument, Mikah Meyer looked across the water to the port at Charleston. He imagined what the area must have looked like more than a century and half ago. “You’ll see across that bridge, Charleston, South Carolina. It was under siege at one point for 17 months. There were cannons that     6     fire from where I'm standing on the fort all the way to the old town...” Meyer also visited the Charles Pinckney National Historic Site in South Carolina. There he had a chance to learn about Charles Pinckney, who helped write — and was a signer of — the U.S. Constitution. Charles Pinckney was 29 years old when he helped draft the United States Constitution,     7     he signed as a representative of South Carolina. He dedicated his considerable political and legal talents to     8    (establish) a strong national government. “Some people call him our forgotten founding father, but he was a political figure of early America who helped shape     9     our eventual constitution ended up looking like...” The National Park Service helps care for what remains of Pinckney’s former home and farm. Park service workers tell the stories of 18th-century plantation life for free and enslaved people.

During his travels in January, Meyer had a surprise. Barack Obama, in his last few days as president, named a new national park site in Beaufort, just south of Charleston. It is called the Reconstruction Era National Monument. The Reconstruction Era National Monument will help tell the story of post-Civil war America.

The Reconstruction Era     10    (stretch) from 1861 to 1898. It was a period when Americans struggled with the treatment of newly freed African Americans. The new national monument will help tell that story.