Joseph Mazzani, Italian Patriot

The NBC University of the Air, a public service of a national broadcasting company and its affiliated independent stations, presents another chapter in the historical theory, We Came This Way. Tonight's story, The Second French Republic, or How the Common Man Became a Citizen.

John Doe, being a sound mind, do hereby bequeath to my son John, the sum of ten thousand dollars, to my daughter Mary, my homestead, and all my property, to my faithful friend.

An old man makes his will, The spouses of his worldly goods. To forget him, not many of us are lucky enough to inherit money or real estate. Our story is about another kind of legacy, one that all of us inherit.

It's a legacy of pain and blood and sweat, but a legacy of triumph too. As free men, our legacy is the sum of all the struggles that all the men and all the ages have made for freedom.

from generation to generation that can hand it down to us. It's our most priceless possession. Don't treat it lightly. In Paris of the year 1848, where our story opens, this legacy of struggle is the one thing the common man possesses.

It has come down to him in a song, the Marciels, and in a slogan, liberty, equality, fraternity, in a passionate knowledge that twice within half a century In 1789 and again in 1830, his countrymen have tried to establish democracy and France.

Without this legacy, the lot of the common man would be unbearable. But at the period of depression, three years of bad harvest have been followed by a breakdown in world trade. In this year of 1848, the common man is without a job, hungry, without a vote.